• All female scientists are pretty.
• Fallen soldiers don’t die quickly. They give 5-minute monologues while the hero (ignoring the battle around him) cradles the soldier in his arms. The fallen soldiers last words will trail off as he dies.
• Guns never run out of ammunition unless escape would be otherwise impossible.
• Long before sunbathing was fashionable, men and women had tan lines and white bottoms.
• During emotional confrontations, instead of facing the person you are speaking to, stand behind them and talk to their back.
• Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch-enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gases, lasers and man-eating sharks that will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.
• A single match can brighten any room, no matter the size.
• Honest and hard-working policemen are gunned down with days of their retirement.
• Megalomaniacs intent on world domination can't resist detailing their evil plan to their arch-nemesis.
• All planes are always completely serviced, fueled and ready for instant departure, just waiting for crooks to show up and steal them so they can make their getaway.
• Anything alien that turns up on our planet uninvited is invariably out to kill us all.
• Movie characters' suitcases are always weightless.
• The President is always very considerate and well-spoken.
• Each small town in America has a bitter and twisted individual whose sporting career was cut short by an unfortunate accident.
• A small goat is capable of propelling a fully grown man through the air by butting him with it’s horns.
• If you’re a bad guy and you switch sides, you’ll die. If you’re a good guy and you switch sides, you’ll die. So pick a side and stick with it.
• No one ever aims at the legs of a monster that's chasing them. They just keep running away, pausing every now and then to pump bullets into its torso, until it overtakes and kills them.
• Many animals, when they consume alcohol, will take on human drunken characteristics, usually to the sound of a trombone being played.
• If there is a large bump in a downhill road, a speeding car will fly over it and hit the ground in shower of sparks. Unsecured passengers will not be injured, and no tire damage, broken axles, or suspension failures will occur.
• If a car is shot it will explode.
• If someone jumps off a bridge into a river, lake, etc., the water will always be deep enough to keep them from getting hurt. But when a bad guy falls from a river, they are good as gone.
• Even weapons experts freeze when confronted with a weapon that's not in firing condition, i.e., an un-cocked single action revolver or a submachine gun with its breech closed (also un-cocked).
• The password is already typed in.
• People marooned on desert islands soon learn to make almost anything from bamboo.
• Many musical instruments — especially wind instruments and accordions — can be played without moving your fingers.
• Detectives can watch a drug deal (carried out furtively in a shop doorway) go down from a distance of five yards away by the simple expedient of sitting in a car with a newspaper raised to eye level.
• All Australians live in the Outback.
• It's easy to walk through an unfamiliar forest on a moonless night.
• Mobile phones work almost anywhere unless it's important that they do.
• People who oversleep and get woken up by phone calls go straight to work without making the bed, but when they get home at night, their bed is made.
• Bullets fired in aircraft cause explosive decompression.
• A violent armed robbery will occur while you are shopping in the back aisles of a convenience store.
• People's hands playing a light piano medley will always be hidden from view.
• Aliens are either very nice or very evil. None are just kinda OK.
• No one that goes to summer camp has ever heard "The Hook" before.
• If being fired at by Germans, hide in a river — or even a bath. German bullets are unable to penetrate water.
• Full moons occur several nights in a row.
• In the event of a worldwide disaster, Paris will be the first city to be destroyed.
• In a spaceship, inertial dampers prevent passengers from being plastered against the walls during acceleration to warp speed and yet any explosion sends them reeling across the ship.
• Every unit has a "Scrounge" who can get you anything from an atomic bomb to a date with the general's daughter, for just a bottle of cheap scotch, or vice versa.
• All minorities possess mystical knowledge. If they wind up in a fight where their choice of method is either Western technology or some kind of mystical tribal thing, the fight cannot end until the former has failed them and the latter has been invoked.
• All funerals are attended by the person responsible for the death.
• The only time people do say hello on the telephone is when it turns to be the bad guy on the other end of line calling to torment them.
• Electricity will travel any distance through water to electrocute the villain, rather than go immediately to ground (e.g. a toaster tossed into the shallow end of a swimming pool will nail the bad guy over by the diving board).
• Cars are never locked, and contain the keys needed to start them.
• In a duel or in a gunfight between two characters standing in a street, at least one character will be hit during the first exchange of gunfire.
• When using a torch for light, hold it right in front of your face. It won't blind you.
• Interbreeding is genetically possible with any creature from anywhere else in the universe.
• A million dollars in cash or drugs will invariably take up exactly the amount of space available in your briefcase.
• All writers are wealthy; all publishing companies are glamorous; all artists are self-supporting and have large attractive well-lit loft studios.
• All of life's most important moments come with musical accompaniment.
• Large cities always make their buildings of roughly equal height and close enough together that you can jump from one roof to another if you're involved in a chase.
• If you are driving somewhere on any other route other than a city roadway, you will probably have that road all to yourself and will not pass or be passed by another vehicle.
• Water is always harmless. Falling into a wading pool after jumping out of that 747 will leave you unscathed and with an opportunity to thank any nearby people for letting you "drop by".
• In you input a partial password on someone else's computer, the system will give you additional prompts that will enable you to guess the rest.
• Characters shot with guns will fly backward, or upward and backward, through the air, the laws of physics not-withstanding.
• Dogs are good. Cats are evil.
• Grocery shopping bags are made out of brown paper and there is always enough shopping to fill two bags exactly.
• Close blood relatives usually look nothing like each other, or have only a passing resemblance.
• A slight blow to the head is enough to cause amnesia.
• Women always stand and watch the bad guys who are about to shoot them, even if there's cover nearby.
• High schools always have a socially inept outcast who is secretly talented.
• Half of all henchmen are mute.
• It never takes more than a second to get an internet connection or to load up a web page.
• The battle-hardened vet will always fall on a grenade for the new guy instead of just picking up the grenade and throwing it away or jumping out of the foxhole.
• When a person is knocked unconscious by a blow to the head, they will never suffer a concussion or brain damage.
• In every school, there is at least one nerd or wimp that will be shoved into a locker big enough to hold him.
• All superheroes leave a ‘calling card' so others don't take credit for their work.
• Text appearing on a computer monitor appears letter by letter and making a sound as if it was produced by a typewriter.
• Young kids are always smarter than adults.
• After a person on the other end of the telephone hangs up you will immediately hear a loud dial tone signifying that they have ended the call at that very moment.
• Mice can somehow fashion a perfectly semi-circular entrance to their dwelling.
• Soldiers ask for keys to military vehicles even though these vehicles don't use keys.
• Any lock can be picked by a credit card or a paper clip in seconds - unless it's the door to a burning building with a child trapped inside.
• Most dogs are immortal.
• An aircraft will fall from the sky if left unattended for 10 seconds.
• A credit card or a paper clip can pick any lock in seconds - unless it's the door to a burning building with a child trapped inside.
• Failing businesses are run by old people, successful ones by greedy ones.
• When people fall from high buildings, they always look back at where they came from.
• The hero can jump on top of a moving vehicle, maintain his balance or hang on with one hand, and shoot at the bad guys.
• In the future, all clothing will be made of saran wrap.
• If a blonde and a brunette are in equal peril, the brunette will die.
• Stolen clothes are always a perfect fit.
• There appears a very slow bar saying “copying”, “deleting” or “printing” and it is finished just before the bad guy, the security guard or the janitor comes in.
• When a cop is close to solving a case, he'll be suspended from duty, which he'll ignore.
• No matter how well a Hispanic person speaks English, he will never be able to say ‘sir’ or ‘thank you’. He will be forced to say ‘senor’ and ‘gracias’ instead.
• Never disarm a bomb unless it has one second left on the timer. The same goes for escaping from areas with a timed locking mechanism.
• Rope bridges can be quickly and easily cut with any sharp object.
• Natural disasters only occur where they can cause the most damage and casualties.
• It doesn’t matter who you call, if they choose not to answer their phone you will get their voicemail in less than 2 rings.
• Women always have an ex-boyfriend who can fix cars.
• Although in the 21th century it is possible to fire weapons at an object out of our visual range, people of the 23rd century will have lost this technology.
• Bullets, even though they are only pieces of lead sometimes encased in copper, always make little explosions when they strike any kind of inanimate object.
• Trains are just about to leave the station when you arrive on the platform or the station is totally deserted.
• The bad guy will always tell the good guy every detail about his master plan instead of just shooting him.
• If someone begins a sentence with "If I didn't know any better, I'd say..." the phrase that follows will turn out to be true.
• Animals are sometimes allowed on sports teams, but usually girls are not.
• No one ever has to go to the bathroom.