• Grenades are always given plenty of time to explode, even if the idea is to throw them just before they go off.
• The bad guy is the foreigner.
• People in movies rarely have to shave, and whenever a guy does shave, he will be interrupted while half finished, and will wipe the remaining shaving cream off with a towel.
• Nearly everyone speaks English, no matter where they are from. Even aliens from outer space, despite the fact they have never been to Earth.
• Elite units are expendable even though they cost much more to train and maintain.
• In the future, everyone will spend their time standing around explaining everyday objects and practices to each other in terms of their 21st century equivalents.
• Decisions to murder people are usually made on the golf course.
• People on foot who are being chased by a car will keep running down the middle of the road instead of ducking in somewhere where a car cannot go.
• The password is very simple.
• Bad things usually happen to women who are alone in the house on stormy nights.
• If you chase someone through a park you will never step in dog poop or chewing gum, but you will always step on someone’s picnic.
• People told to stay somewhere never do.
• The entire British population lives in London.
• Summer camps are filled with the musically gifted and psychopathic.
• People never obey warnings.
• The woman will always fall down trying to escape.
• It’s very easy for a computer hacker to break a security code and find just the information he’s looking for in less than a minute.
• If you’re calling someone, you’ll never get a wrong number, busy signal or voice mail.
• As soon as soldiers start to eat/drink/change socks/go to the bathroom, they get orders to "move out immediately!"
• Villains are fond of explaining everything to anyone in sight.
• Action heroes never face charges for manslaughter or criminal damage despite laying entire cities to waste.
• All caves have smooth, even floors.
• You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.
• Villains are improbably competent and inventive, but can only make money by pulling stupid robberies. They will risk everything they have and are to get revenge on some guy who once thwarted them.
• The immediate reaction of anyone in the path of something life threatening is to stand completely still and stare at it.
• All Victorian street urchins don't own shoes, but they all have a hat.
• Everyone knows the words to every song you want to sing and will sing along with you. They can even carry the solo part so that they can sing the song back to you, even if they have never heard the song until you sang half of it.
• Large loft-style apartments in New York City are well within the price range of average people - whether they are employed or not.
• A candle or table lamp can light a whole room and at night time, it’s blue.
• A person being pursued always stops to throw something at the person chasing them even though it takes three times longer to stop and throw obstacles than it takes the pursuer to jump them.
• No one involved in a car chase, hijacking, explosion, volcanic eruption or alien invasion will ever go into shock.
• New replacements get killed before you learn their names.
• People speak a foreign language either fluently or not at all.
• Rich women will fall in love with poor men, but rich men will never fall in love with poor women.
• A truck is almost indestructible, apart from the brakes which are incredibly fragile.
• Stolen cars are always fully fueled.
• German soldier always wear grey uniforms and jack-boots, though these uniforms were phased out by mid-1943.
• All cops carry the right equipment for picking locks and have a friend/partner who disapproves of this.
• All aliens resemble either humans or bugs. Never dogs, birds, etc.
• During interrogations, if pointing a loaded gun to someone’s head isn’t enough to make them give you important information, loudly cocking the gun always does the trick.
• Soldiers and sailors must have at least on barroom brawl, followed by a scene where they come to each other's mutual aid.
• People on TV never finish their drinks.
• No movie character ever uses, or even refers to, a safety on any firearm.
• Even in space, explosions make noise.
• The only people who wear crucifixes are priests, nuns, and psychotic killers.
• Ugly women never need to be rescued.
• It only takes a few days of training to become an astronaut.
• Every hospital maintains a complete spare staff of doctors and nurses that do nothing else but sit around and wait for the next emergency case to be brought in.
• Western characters are never shot in the legs while hiding behind wagons.
• All electronic equipment is powered by 40 gajillion volts, and explodes very nicely.
• When crossing a rotting suspension bridge with wooden slats, a slat always breaks when a woman steps on it.
• There are tiny cameras mounted everywhere, on every panel, in every spaceship. No matter what happens anywhere in the ship, you can just ask the computer to replay that scene for you later.
• When you turn off the light to go to bed, everything in your bedroom will still be clearly visible, just slightly darker and blurry.
• If you need to reload your gun, you will always have more ammunition -- even if you haven't been carrying any before now.
• It is necessary to move the steering wheel vigorously left and right every few moments even when driving down a perfectly straight road.
• Bad guy hand grenades make noise and smoke but no real damage, while good guy hand grenades are devastating but selective.
• A leap from a hotel roof is completely safe as long as you can land in the pool.
• A person who is about to be attacked will refuse to look in the obvious direction from where the threat will come.
• Automatic weapons are useless when confronted by a pistol.
• During a heated gun fight where you are out numbered, disadvantaged and ducking for cover there will always be a large barrel or container of explosive material near the enemy that can be ignited with a well placed single gun shot.
• No matter how fast someone runs through the woods, the killer will be able to walk and manage to get just in front of the person as they fall or turn around.
• Women can run in whatever footwear they're got on.
• Movie airlines never overbook.
• Landlords are always able to remember the exact height, weight and hair color of every stranger that ever visited one of their tenants.
• No matter how populated an area, stray bullets never hit innocent bystanders.
• Giant mutant creatures always head for "downtown" locations, presumably to shop.
• Explosive decompression on a plane will cause the overhead bins to open which then are full of loose paperwork.
• When people are chasing you, you can easily evade them by running into an alley and pressing up against the wall.
• An electric fence powerful enough to kill a dinosaur will cause no lasting damage to an eight-year-old child.
• An explosive device capable of leveling a large office building will fit inside a toolbox or small backpack.
• However threatening its predicament, the dog won't die.
• All the characters, even "dumb blondes", became all-knowing super-mega-nerds once behind a computer. They always know what to do and how to avoid things.
• If the human race ever becomes mostly wiped out due to a plague or nuclear war, our lawns will still be well-maintained somehow.
• Two spacecraft meeting in deep space always agree what orientation is up and down before doing so.
• Any drug deal usually involves multiple fatalities.
• Bullets are unable to penetrate water.
• It is not necessary to say "Hello" or "Goodbye" when beginning or ending phone conversations.
• In every high school, the 3 most beautiful girls are good friends and tend to walk down the hallway in sync while wearing matching (and somewhat revealing) outfits, and all the boys stare in awe.
• If the main guy is in love with the main girl, he will always get her in the end, even if she’s married. If she is married, her husband will always say “oh well, if it makes you happy”… and he’ll never go to beat the crap out of the other guy.
• Australian accents in American films always sound like a mix of Cockney, South African and New Zealander. And they say things like “Streuth!” and “Blimey!”
• When someone is typing on a computer, they never use the space bar or backspace.
• Major disasters always happen in New York.
• Every college dorm roommate will be messy and dysfunctional like a punk-rocker, goth, metal, drug user, or other similar stereotype.
• It's easy to knock someone unconscious using blunt force trauma or even asphyxiation without causing any permanent problems.
• Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.
• Archers always have an endless supply of arrows.
• Smokers smoke only when there is a romantic or dramatic reason to.
• Movie gunmen never lock and load their weapons when anticipating a life-or-death confrontation.
• The average hotel pool is always deep enough for you to survive a fall from any floor.
• No gun ever jams or misfires during a quick-draw.
• Secret agents cannot drown because they have special lungs that allow them to breathe forever.
• If you're a high school student in a film, you always have one of the preferable eye-level lockers.
• Home-made time bombs always explode right on the split second, even if they’re attached to the type of cheap alarm clock that's always inaccurate.
• If you're ever caught up in a misunderstanding that could be quickly cleared up by a simple explanation, keep your mouth shut.
• In addition to your computer booting up instantly, it can also be turned off in a flash.
• The driver can take his eye off the road, talk to the passenger for five minutes straight, and not hit a darn thing.
• All handcuffs can easily be opened with nothing more than a paper clip.
• Any machine gun nest can be approached from behind without difficulty, but not until half the unit has been wiped out.
• Machine guns submerged underwater won't jam or misfire when the hero pops up to use them.
• The biggest solider will die first and the stupidest officer will usually survive.
• Movie Little League baseball teams still use wooden bats even though every real Little League team is forced to use aluminum bats.
• People swimming underwater can not only see everything clearly, but can hold their breath for at least ten minutes.
• If you're trying to stop a madman, let him capture you. He'll tell you everything you want to know about what he's trying to do (making it very easy to stop him), and he will then try to kill you.
• A dam has only one purpose, to break.
• Any priest is either kindly or the villain. Nuns are never villains.
• If someone tells you that your plan will never work, that it’s too risky – this is a sure sign that the plan will work.
• One person in every group knows Morse code. And even though the person won’t start translating until sometime after the message has started, they will somehow get the message from the beginning.
• Potentially fatal attacks are always preceded by a false alarm a few seconds earlier.
• If you are a cowboy, aiming your rifle while using your horse as a support will always assure a first round hit.
• No matter how badly a spaceship is attacked, its internal gravity system is never damaged.
• You can only electrocute someone while you are looking directly at them.
• Asking the question "do you think we'll get out of this?" never elicits an honest answer.
• By the 24th century the concepts of circuit breakers, fuses, and uninterruptible power supplies will have been lost.
• All sub-machine guns sound alike and have the same rate of fire.
• Bullets removed from shooting victims and displayed to the camera will not be misshapen in any way from the impact - and will sometimes still have the casing attached.
• If you need to shoot through a window, it's better to break it with the butt of your gun than it is to just open the dang thing.
• You can find whatever you want on the Internet in a matter of seconds.