James Hoskin's

aircraft

• It's easy for anyone to land a plane providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.
• Landing a Jumbo jet is like landing a two-seater plane. (Executive Decision)
• If the hero flies a "no-name" airline you can bet its going to crash. Conversly, if they fly a well-known airline they are bound to arrive safely.

animals

• Most dogs are immortal.

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bedrooms

• All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets which reach up to the armpit level on a woman but only to waist level on the man lying beside her.

bureaucrats

• If your town is threatened by an imminent natural disaster or killer beast, the mayor's first concern will be the tourist trade or his forthcoming art exhibition.

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computers

• Computers never display a cursor on screen but will always say: Enter Password Now.
• Computers will always give a graphical reply to the user when a few lines of text would suffice. (Jurassic Park)

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dancing

• If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.

driving

• Even when driving down a perfectly straight road it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.
• Cars that crash will almost always burst into flames.

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elevators

• Movie elevators are always ready at that floor. But if the hero/heroine is being chased, the elevator won't come.
• If hero/villain takes an elevator, villain/hero can beat it by taking stairs, even if the trip is 20 floors.
• Most elevator shafts and wires are clean and dust/grease free, and there's plenty of light so that the hero neither gets dirty nor needs a flashlight or some other equipment to see. (Speed)
• When one character is pursuing another (good guy after bad or vice versa) and they reach the elevator just before it closes, they never stick their hand in the door so it will automatically open back up, nor do they press the call button to get the door to open.

environment

• Thunder and lightning always happen at the same time.
• Storms start instantaneously: there's a crack of thunder and lightning, then heavy rain starts falling.
• Heavy rain causes no loss of long-distance visibility.
• Everything is blue at night-time.
• Caves always have flat floors, and it's never fully dark.
• There is always someone in the canal or the storm drain when the flood hits.
• The moon is always out at night (except for those cheaper movies where the sun is still out).
• Full moon can occur for several nights in a row.
• Eclipses happen frequently, and without any warning.
• If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it.

evidence

• Incriminating evidence can be found either as photograph number four in a stack, or in the next to bottom drawer.
• All important tapes, such as the one labelled "Incriminating evidence against Senator Smith showing him taking bribes and then fondling the drug lord's daughter" or your computer floppy disks labelled "All the nuclear launch codes are on here" should be left where they can be easily found.
• All characters keep detailed news clippings of important events in their lives, particularly those events that must be painful to recall, such as the loss of the character's immediate family due to their own negligence. NB: If the news report would have come out while the character was in jail or on the run, all the more reason for the character to have kept it intact.

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fencing/swordplay

• At some point in a duel, the hero and villain will cross swords at face level, allowing them to grip each other's weapon while making nasty/sarcastic comments before they break the clinch and continue fighting. (Why doesn't anyone just ram the sword guard into their opponent's face, stun him, and then finish him off?)
• If the hero and villain's swords cross at or below waist level, they will break the clinch, fall back, and pause - despite the fact that a simple up thrust into the opponent's belly after the break would end the duel right there and then.
• If there is a candelabra, the villain will show how talented he is with a sword by cutting the candles and watching them fall over; the hero will do the same but the candles won't fall until after the villain has made a comment about the hero's lack of fencing ability, at which point the hero will topple the cut candles, showing that he is more skilled than the villain because his candles didn't fall over from the force of the cut.
• During a duel, the hero will jump or climb onto a table/bench/piano/platform that raises him above the villain. At that point, the villain will swipe at the hero's legs, which the hero avoids by jumping up in the air over the villain's blade.
• Duels usually have one scene where the actors go out of frame and you watch their shadows fighting.
• If the villain wounds the hero in his sword arm, one of three things will happen:
  1. hero becomes ambidextrous and fights with sword in other hand;
  2. hero finds something else to defend himself with (tapestry, chain, shotgun) that can be used with the other hand;
  3. hero's girlfriend/sidekick comes up behind villain and impales him, thus saving hero.
• If hero is disarmed by villain, one of three things will happen:
  1. villain will show a trace of honour and allow hero to get his sword;
  2. hero will make mad dash/leap over or around villain to regain sword;
  3. just when it looks like the end, hero's girlfriend/sidekick throws a sword to him, which he manages to grab easily.
• If there are stairs, the hero will be forced up them backwards by the villain, at which point the hero will either leap to the ground or swing from a rope/chandelier/tapestry to get away.
• If there is a tapestry or chandelier, the hero will cut it loose and drop it on the villain's henchmen unless the movie is a comedy, in which case the hero will drop it on his own men by accident.

fights

• If a character uses martial arts rather than a weapon, his opponents will always face him one-to-one. Spare bad guys may dance around the fight taunting our hero, but none will engage until his predecessor has been disposed of. And if it's an oriental martial arts film, they will fight in perfect one-two rhythm and form, hit-block-hit-block.
• Two guys or a bunch of guys go at it, repeatedly bashing each other in the face with massive blows, or hitting each other with chairs, sticks, refrigerators, whatever - and they go on doing this, sometimes for minutes at a time.
• People can be rendered inoperative by bumping them on the head. Beware, though; after you have left the scene, this person will regain consciousness and be more determined to attack you.
• Clasping your hands together and hitting the bad guy's back will also guarantee unconsciousness
• All fights taking place on the edge of a canyon, tall building, or other high place require at least one bad guy to get plugged by a bullet, arrow, or other missile weapon, causing them to fall, but keeping him alive long enough to hear his scream of terror echo as he plunges to his doom.
• NOTE: whenever someone falls off of a cliff or building, no matter how much damage they take beforehand, they scream, even if they were shot through the lungs twenty or thirty times, or were apparently unconscious.
• In the West, the favored hand-to-hand combat technique is to throw yourself prostrate on the other guy and hug him.
• When a villain is trying to murder someone with a knife, they'll often use just one hand. The victim meanwhile (usually a woman) is using both hands to restrain the villain's arm and keep the knife from stabbing her. But the murderer will NEVER simply use his other hand to take the knife and easily stab the victim. (see Knives).

food & eating

• All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French Bread.
• Pastries are always in plain pink boxes. When we see a plain pink box, we expected to know that the box contains donuts or cake or some related item.
• All movie mothers will prepare a breakfast, usually consisting of scrambled eggs, bacon, etc. Dad and the kids will invariably arrive at the table 30 seconds before Dad has to leave for the office and the kids have to catch the school bus. Each will have time only for a sip of coffee/juice and/or one bite of toast.

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helicopters

• In movie land, there's an abundance of corrupt helicopter pilots.
• Villains have no problem renting a helicopter complete with pilot who doesn't mind shooting total strangers, or being shot at.
• When a helicopter is hit by a bullet or rocket, it'll explode immediately if it contains a villain, but if the hero is on board, it will loose power, smoke will come out of the doors, and it'll just reach the ground in time for the hero to get clear then duck just at the moment it explodes.
• People standing outside a running helicopter can always talk in normal or just slightly louder than normal voices.
• A pursued hero, with the bad guys just yards behind him, can jump into a shutdown helicopter, run through the twenty-five item startup checklist, engage and spin up the rotors, take off and be out of pistol range before the bad guys catch up.
• Bullets shot at a helicopter bounce off the fiberglass and aluminum "fuselage" components but make neat little holes through the Plexiglas bubble.
• When a helicopter's engine dies, the main rotor immediately stops and the helicopter drops straight to the ground. If a bad guy is flying, the helicopter disappears in a ball of flame, but good-guy pilots just get out, dust themselves off, and walk away.
• When a turbine-powered Bell Jet Ranger helicopter is shot at, it's engine coughs and sputters, chugs along for a little while as staggering through the air uncertainly, and then crashes using the good/bad pilot algorithm noted above.
• Every helicopter shutting down emits the chirp-chirp-chirp sound of the rubber drive belts disengaging, in spite of the fact that only the famous Bell 47G (the M*A*S*H chopper) actually makes this sound.
• Piston helicopters always start up with screaming turbine engine sounds.
• Rambo-style pilots can fly with one hand on the cyclic stick while the other fires an automatic weapon out the door. The helicopter automatically knows when to change altitude to fly over obstacles without the pilot worrying about that pesky collective pitch control.

heros

• If the hero has a psychological/physical problem which has prevented him from effectively dealing with problems, you can rest assured that this problem will disappear at an opportune time. (Die Hard)
• The hero always misses the villain leaving the scene by seconds.
• Stripping to the waist makes the hero invulnerable.
• The hero will always be paired off with a female character. The sidekick never will.
• The hero's best friend/partner will usually be killed by the bad guys three days before retirement.
• The hero's new wife will be mown down by 80 machine guns right after the wedding or during the honeymoon.
• Heroes can go without food or sleep, with no measurable drop in physical or mental faculties, for at least 72 hours.
• The hero will always have a small trickle of blood in the right corner of his mouth after a fight. His lip will never be split in the middle, and his upper lip will always be invulnerable. He will wipe the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, then look at it. If his face displays any other injury, it will usually be a small abrasion on his right cheekbone. He will wear a bandage on this for one day, after which it will be miraculously healed.
• The hero will always refuse the assistance of friends or medical personnel after a fight.
• If the hero gets into a second fight, his most injured body part will always be punched or kicked.
• A hero will show no pain even during the most terrific beating, yet he will wince if a women attempts to clean a facial wound.
• When a hero is paired with a weak sidekick, that sidekick will invariably save the hero's life at a crucial moment, or show remarkable proficiency with weapons in a key scene.
• If the hero is a white male and has an assistant/sidekick who is either not white or not male the assistant/sidekick will die, preferably in an act of heroic sacrifice.
• If the movie hero has a sidekick and he mentions his family in the first two minutes of the film, the sidekick will surely be killed.
• The movie hero is (almost) always divorced, but he still has some contact with his ex-wife who tells him that she could not stay married to him because she loves him too much.

hiding places

• The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. No-one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building you want without difficulty. (Die Hard)

houses

• People never answer the door until the doorbell or knocking has sounded at least three times.
• The hero lives in New York City working at some okay, but not particularly high-paying job, and yet he or she has a roomy apartment filled with nice stuff, generally with a good view, and sometimes a nice, romantic rooftop to go to.
• People never get out of the house when there is obvious danger there (ghosts, murderers).
• People who hear something weird outside will go OUT to look, even if they know there's a homicidal maniac on the loose.
• When someone's in bed and hears a sound outside, he'll get up and turn the lights on before looking out of a window, even if this usually guarantees that he'll never be able to see anything going on.
• If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear.
• When an intruder is in the house, the occupant will sneak along a wall with his back pressed to it tightly and his arms out a bit from his body, palms flat against the wall.
• When there's an intruder somewhere in the house, the thing that jumps at the heroine in the dark turns out to be the cat, even if it comes from places cats wouldn't be, like inside a cupboard! As soon as she relaxes, the killer will show up and strangle her.
• Kitchens don't have light switches. When entering a kitchen at night, you should open the fridge door and use that light instead.
• Any apartment in Paris will have a view of the Eiffel Tower.

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independence day

• It is reasonable to assume that the quality of the training of United States Marine Corps pilots is such that any Marine fly boy could hop into an alien spacecraft and immediately be able to fly it into deep space.
• The White House press secretary has a listed phone number.
• When stuck in a tunnel and faced with Armageddon in the form of a fireball that is capable of obliterating all life in Los Angeles, simply duck into a maintenance closet and let the end of the world pass you by.
• High class strippers with a heart of gold can operate most heavy equipment.
• It is not beyond the realm of imagination that the President of the United States would be a fighter jock and would be willing to return to active duty to do battle with invincible alien bad guys.
• Alien spacecraft the size of Australia can be taken out with one well-placed sidewinder missile.
• Most laptops are configured with interfaces powerful enough to override the communications systems of the most sophisticated futuristic societies.
• Despite the fact that they wear biomechanical body armor that can only be removed with a scalpel and the fact that they possess hyper-developed brains that allow them to destroy their enemies simply by thinking about it, alien fighter pilots have a glass jaw and can be knocked unconscious for hours with one punch.
• If you are a woman who:
  1. survives a blast from an alien spacecraft that wipes out Los Angeles;
  2. lives through the ensuing helicopter crash;
  3. survives while buried by rubble;
  4. survives despite being transported by open backed diesel truck across the worst terrain ever created.
  
  Do not check into a military hospital with the best medical help money can buy because YOU WILL DIE!
• Despite the fact that no living person, even on a clear day with a map and two state troopers providing an escort, can negotiate the Los Angeles freeway system without getting lost, nearly-blown-up women can drive through the shattered ruins of a decimated Los Angeles straight to El Toro.
• When you crash an alien spacecraft into the high desert because you were hurtled back through the earth's atmosphere by an atomic blast you set off, the fact that you do not have a parachute or any other visible means of slowing your fall does not mean that you should not walk away from the wreckage completely unscathed and straight into your girl's arms.
• The standard trip home from space, when assisted by an atomic blast, lasts approximately two to three pulls on a cigar.
• Although aliens possess technological capabilities millions of years beyond our own that enables them to embed secret codes in our satellite network, they can be stymied by Morse Code, which is generally printed on the front panel of a child's walkie-talkie.
• The most sophisticated labs in the world have impenetrable vault doors buried 30 stories into mountains but use regular glass panes for observation rooms in the lab nerve center.
• Although aliens possess tentacles dexterous enough to manipulate human vocal cords from outside the throat when the need to speak strikes them, they can not open a door for themselves.
• The correct military honor for a hero who saves the world by sacrificing his own life by flying directly into the alien death ray is to clap and cheer wildly in front of the hero's family immediately after he perishes.
• Any vehicle can make the trip down from Manhattan to Washington D.C. in just a few hours in grid locked end-of-the-world type traffic.

injuries

• When the hero is knocked out, he won't get a concussion or brain damage.
• People hit on the head will not throw up.
• When a hero gets a bloody nose, he'll stop bleeding almost immediately.
• When a hero suffers through car chases and crashes, he never has to worry about unfelt spinal injury from impact.
• A slight blow to the head is usually enough to cause total amnesia.
• No-one involved in a shooting, car chase, hijacking, explosion, volcanic eruption or alien invasion will ever go into shock.
• The hero will always get shot in the shoulder, yet will be able to use his arm.
• A facial scar is likely to make you go insane and seek revenge for the rest of your life.
• If you lose a hand, it causes the stump of your arm to grow by six inches.
• A lost hand either comes crawling back, or a mad surgeon will replace it with one transplanted from an executed strangler.
• If a person gets shot they have plenty of time to tell all kinds of things except the most important information (like the name of the murderer).
• A person shot to death will immediately do just that - die. Their bodies do not flop and jerk around for a few minutes as the muscles contract involuntarily and sporadically as the brain dies a slow electro-chemical death (as with real gun-shot deaths).

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kids/teenagers

• A kid always knows more than an adult.
• A kid can fend for himself even if his parents have gone to Paris, leaving him with no food, electricity, heat, money, etc. (Home Alone)
• No child can ever be killed - even if they're electrocuted on a high-voltage electric fence that could kill a dinosaur (Jurassic Park).
• Eight to ten-year-old kids are the best computer hackers on earth and can break into any system. (Jurassic Park)
• Girls who can't find a date to the prom in high school films are usually the girls that, in most high schools, would have almost every teenage boy asking them.

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language

• Even when depicted as foreigners (including aliens from outer space) all actors speak and understand a common language (usually English) unless the film's plot depends on a language barrier.
• When foreigners appear in movies (Hispanics in particular) they seem to be able to speak perfect English without making one single mistake except it seems they NEVER manage to learn how to say "Sir" or "Thank you" - they always say "Senor" and "Gracias".
• When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.
• Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do.

light

• A malfunctioning or burnt lightbulb usually means that someone is hiding in the room, ready to jump on our hero/heroine while he/she's busy hitting the switch or tapping the bulb.
• When someone lights a match in a dark old house (etc.) that single match has as much power as a 1000 watt bulb! Alternatively, they light a match, and then light an old oil lamp which has a vast amount of power.
• When people switch a light off, it will still be possible to see everything in the room, just in a slightly subdued/bluish colour.
• Lightbulbs blow up:
  1. when something psychic happens;
  2. when someone opens the power box, rips out the biggest cable, and touches it to the rest of the stuff in there.
  3. in a timed sequence, if they are in a row.

locks

• Any lock can be picked with a credit card or a paper clip, unless it's the door to a burning building with a child trapped inside.
• Any safe can be opened in a few minutes with a stethoscope or some high-tech equipment with lots of blinking lights.

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medicine

• More often than not, the best method to revive somebody after their heart has stopped, assuming that there has already been a lengthy attempt to revive them with CPR, those electric zapper things, etc., is screaming at them something like "You never backed away from everything in your life, now fight! Fight! FIIIIGHT!" or "You can't do this to me! I love you, goddammit!"

men

• When men drink whiskey, it is always in a shot glass, and they always drink it in one gulp. If they are wimps, they will gasp for air, then have a coughing fit. If they are macho, they will wince briefly, flashing clenched teeth.
• Men on rafts, jungles, deserts or other extended duty don't have to carry razors because their beards don't grow. (Unless they drink, in which case 3-day stubble appears in 3 hrs).

middle ages

• Medieval peasants always have filthy faces, tangled hair, ragged clothing and perfect, gleaming white teeth. (Braveheart, any Robin Hood movie).
• If you are a princess, you always have a favorite lady in waiting, and you always send her to warn the hero of the evil king's intention just in time.
• NOTE: the lady in waiting is never quite as beautiful as the princess. However, she still always catches the eye of the hero's sidekick.
• In a swordfight, you can always parry behind your back, and you must always find a set of stairs to fight on so that the loser can roll down them and die at the bottom.
• Horses never get winded, throw a shoe, etc., until the pursuing sheriff is right behind the hero.
• NOTE: the wagon that breaks an axle or gets stuck in the creek is always the one carrying the king's entire treasury, which he takes around with him every time he goes gallivanting through bandit-infested countryside.

minorities

• Minorities such as Native Americans or Asians will always have some sort of mystical knowledge or innate fighting skill. For example, the Native American always knows the course of events to come from some sign in nature, and Asians are all born with Martial Arts skills they can use to battle the bad guys.

money

• Gangster's Briefcases either contain weapons or banknotes. No one ever gets coins at a robbery.
• Briefcases are designed to hold exactly three rows of banknotes. As if it had power by itself money likes to be sorted in nice packs and rows, even if it had been thrown into the briefcase by a terrified casher at a bank.
• When you use a movie taxi don't ever give any change. Drivers won't know what to do with it. Just say "thank you" when you pay a bill, reach into your pocket without looking, take out whatever note is in it, and will just fit.
• Same is true in restaurants. Checks are always designed to be 15 percent under the sum the male customer has in his hands first.

monsters

• After fleeing a monster, you will want to call for help from a public phone within ten feet of where you last saw the monster.
• Interbreeding is genetically possible with any creature from elsewhere in the universe.

motorcycles

• Motorcycle engines in movies can inexplicably change from 4-stroke Otto cycle to 2-stroke cycle operation.
• Motorcycles usually change from Harley Davidson choppers when engaged in highway operations to Yamaha Dirt bikes when operated off-road (as in "Then Came Bronson"). Police Harleys will morph into Triumph Bonnevilles when operating in tight quarters (on the ship in "Magnum Force").

music

• Many musical instruments, especially wind instruments and accordions, can be played without moving the fingers.
• Native musicians are highly skilled, and can make simple instrumental bands sound like a full light orchestra.

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nightmares

• Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright in bed. Instead of just lying there going "eeewww!" as most of us do.

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phones

• All phone numbers have 555 in them.
• People speaking on the phone never introduce themselves, and never ever say "good-bye" at the end of a conversation.
• A ringing phone is usually picked up within 3 seconds.
• Don't give the person on the other end of the phone time to say what they have to.
• You also never have to look up a phone number, for anyone.
• When a phone line is broken or someone hangs up unexpectedly, communication channels can be restored by frantically beating the cradle and saying "Hello? Hello?".
• Always knock over the phone if it wakes you up. If you are expecting a call, make sure that you pull the covers up completely over your head so that knocking it over becomes easier.
• All houses have phones next to the bed.
• There's a dial tone to be heard on A's phone immediately after B has hung up on his/her end.
• There are two types of phone conversations:
  1. The movie telephone time vortex.
     Hero/Heroine answers phone. "Hello. Yes. O.k. Right. Thanks, Goodbye." (Total elapsed time on phone: 5 seconds.) Hero/Heroine turns to other character and gives a 2 minute explanation of what was said on that call.
  2. The one sided conversation.
     Hero/Heroine answers phone. "Marilyn hasn't shown up at the lawyer's office yet? (PAUSE) And you already called Bill's? (PAUSE) What did he say? (PAUSE) He hasn't seen her either. (PAUSE) So, John's getting nervous? (PAUSE) He's going to call the police...
• When phone-calls are traced you can see a map on the screen with a beam closing in on the caller, and the caller always knows how long they can talk before they have to hang up so as not to be traced.
• Video-phones display pictures of the callers looking straight into the camera. The camera must be in the middle of their screen, in other words.
• If the hero tries to call someone he needs urgently he won't need more than three rings to know that he/she is not there.
• If someone wants to call the hero, he/she will let the phone ring forever before hanging up, especially if the caller does not know that the hero has to fight his way to the phone through a bunch of bad guys.
• When a person places a phone call to a company, such as "Sports Illustrated" the phone at the other end is picked up, and the person PLACING the call says, "Hello, Sports Illustrated?", as if they are checking to make sure they called the right place. What this means is that at a major company, someone is answering the phone with "hello" and that's it! Not "hello, Sports Illustrated, can I help you?" or anything like that, just "Hello!"

police

• The Chief of Police is always black.
• Police Captains/lieutenants are always angry at their star detective and yell at him, threatening suspension if he doesn't drop the case.
• NOTE: it is only after the detective has been suspended that he can crack the case.
• During all police investigations it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.
• Many police chiefs are in constant contact with their city's mayor who will often "chew their ass" about a single criminal investigation out of the thousands going on in a city. (note: See "I Married an Axe Murderer" for a hilarious send-up of the "mean chief" cliché).
• The police will never question the hero, even if he kills lots of bad guys.
• The cops never show up during massive gun battles in city streets that involve bystanders and exploding cars. After the fact, you might just hear a siren in the distance.
• More murders always happen during the investigation of the first one.
• The last living suspect is the murderer.
• Most homicide detectives are brooding, near-crazed loners, most likely divorced or widowed, borderline alcoholics. Of course, there are more respectable-looking detectives, but they are inept and not nearly as tough as their mentally-troubled colleagues.
• Many detectives are recruited directly from the police academy, therefore accounting for youthful "seasoned detectives" (see "Speed" and "Stakeout").
• Police Departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.

pregnancy & childbirth

• The fact that a woman is pregnant or the fact that she notes her pregnancy is introduced by a scene where you hear the woman vomit.
• Whenever a woman announces to her husband/boyfriend that she's pregnant, it comes as a complete surprise to him, whether pleasantly or otherwise.
• No one is in labor for hours and hours - they pop out babies in a matter of minutes.
• No one is ever offered an epidural or medication, everyone uses le-mans (pant method), but they often scream at & demean those around them.
• Most babies are born clean, with perfectly shaped heads and dry hair.
• All movie babies are born HUGE, usually the size of the average two month old.
• Women who give birth are perfectly made up afterwards.

prison

• In jail, there must be a brutal guard and an evil scheming warden.
• Inside a prison there is always a boss among the convicts. Usually he's black, blind and crippled surrounded by tough black musclemen, and he is the one the white hero has to see to get something.
• In a prison or a gym, when someone is about to be threatened, it usually takes place when the subject is on his back pumping iron and the bar is lowered onto his neck.

product placement

• Time will stand still when when the hero is in the presence of a company logo.
• When a character picks up a bottle of whiskey or a pack of cigarettes, the label will always be clearly visible.
• If the producers find no company to invest into the picture, strange things happen to the world: gas stations have no brand names visible, all smokers use silver cases for their cigarettes, etc.

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radio, TV & video

• A character turns on the radio just in time to hear a special announcement or some important news item. Then turns the radio off.
• The phone rings. Caller says, "You better check out what's on the news". They turn on the TV and get the report from the beginning.
• All televisions show cowboy-and-Indian chase scenes a large proportion of the time.
• All VCRs in films are always cued up exactly to the portion of tape you want to show someone.
• You will always be able to rewind the tape precisely to the beginning of the segment you want to see again.
• Whenever anyone scans through a videotape or audio tape on home equipment you can hear the audio portion of the tape being fast forwarded or rewound.
• Freeze frame is flawless.
• Whenever someone reviews surveillance video taken from a preceding scene, the camera angle is never high above the actors, it's right up close, and looks a lot like the angle the film camera used when shooting the picture. Additionally, the audio is always crisp and clear, there's no background noise, because all security cameras come equipped with boom mikes.

restrooms

• In film, no one uses the restroom, except as a venue for escape.
• If there are multiple people in the restroom, expect a minor character revelation while they stand at the mirror.

ropes

• When people are tied up in the movies, which is usually loosely and incompetently, they can't escape without finding some convenient device to burn or cut through the ropes.
• NOTE 1: There is always a convenient device at hand.
• NOTE 2: If the method involves burning the ropes, the person's hands will be tied at least a foot apart.

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weapons

• If you need to reload your gun, you will always have more ammunition even if you haven't been carrying any before now.
• When you throw a knife, the blade will always be the first thing to hit the target.
• Unless you turn the knife around first.
• A competent knife thrower can work equally well with throwing knives, Swiss Army knives, butcher knives, table knives or swords.
• Although in the 20th century it is possible to fire weapons at an object out of our visual range, people of the 23rd century will have lost this ability.
• You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.

westerns

• Stagecoaches/horses can gallop at full speed for hours on end. Horses never drop from exhaustion like they would do in real life.
• Men can come in from riding the range for several days with their clothes clean, hair combed, and not one drop of sweat showing anywhere.
• The hero's horse is always bigger than the sidekick's horse.
• The hero's gun is always bigger than the sidekick's gun.
• The hero is always a good-looking guy. Men who are short, fat, scarred, crippled, do not have a deep authoritative voice, or have no charisma can not be a hero - they can be the bad guy though.
• During the last ten minutes of the film the hero will become invincible. They will instantly spot any trick, become the luckiest guy in the world, and will never miss when firing their gun. Also the townspeople will suddenly realise they should not be siding with the bad guy, and will switch allegiance to the good guy.

women

• Once applied, lipstick will never rub off, even while scuba diving.

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