Things We Wouldn't Know Without Movies

[qspeechc]

I got these 24 from http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/6268.htm" .

24. It’s easy for anyone to land a plane, providing there is someone in the
control tower to talk you down.

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

22. During all police investigations, it will be necessary to visit a strip club at
least once.

21. 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.

20. 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.

19. 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.

18. When paying for a taxi, don’t look at your wallet as you take out a bill -
just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.

17. Kitchens don’t have light switches. When entering a kitchen at night, you
should open the fridge door and use that light instead.

16. Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at
that precise moment.

15. A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of Wembley Stadium.

14. Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.

13. It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting.

12. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.

11. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts
- your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a
threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.

10. Police Departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are
deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.

9. An electric fence powerful enough to kill a dinosaur will cause no lasting damage to
an eight-year-old child.

8. If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their
most revealing underwear.

7. It is not necessary to say hello or goodbye when beginning or ending phone
conversations.

6. 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.

5. Even when driving down a perfectly straight road it is necessary to turn the
steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.

4. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.

3. You’re very likely to survive any battle in any war – unless you make the
mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

2. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when
a woman tries to clean his wounds.

1. If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St.
Patrick’s Day parade—at any time of the year.


http://www.actioncutprint.com/files/201Things.pdf"'s a document with 201 of them

 

[Newai]

Oh, you'll love this website then:

http://www.moviecliches.com/

 

[Evo]

Those are great!

 

[Jonathan Scott]

14. Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.

I thought many movies promoted the opposite fallacy, that they had terrible teeth.

(Peasants didn't consume sweet foods or fizzy drinks in those days, so even though their tooth-cleaning methods were more primitive, they didn't have excessive amounts of decay, and the main difference from modern times is that their teeth were often worn down more, which has been attributed to traces of grit getting into their bread).

 

[Evo]

I thought many movies promoted the opposite fallacy, that they had terrible teeth.

(Peasants didn't consume sweet foods or fizzy drinks in those days, so even though their tooth-cleaning methods were more primitive, they didn't have excessive amounts of decay, and the main difference from modern times is that their teeth were often worn down more, which has been attributed to traces of grit getting into their bread).

Don't forget they didn't have braces. Many people had very crooked and out of place teeth, terrible over and under bites, and chipped/broken teeth.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Don't forget they didn't have braces. Many people had very crooked and out of place teeth, terrible over and under bites, and chipped/broken teeth.

Many people still do!

I have however heard that in medieval times they apparently suffered less from the "overcrowding" effect that we often get now. In the past this was thought to be a genetic change, but I think it is now thought to be more environmental, possibly because their jaws grew more with the exercise of chewing tough foods and because wear between the teeth (from gritty food) allowed the teeth to move closer together.

 

[epenguin]

Hilarious two links above! :rofl:

One I didn't find there is that it is very dangerous for a woman to take a shower. She will be stabbed, to death of course otherwise she might identify her assailant - no one else ever sees his face. Tragically she is the only one who does not know this is going to happen as the noise of the shower drowns out for her the music that gives the rest of us two minutes' warning.

 

[qspeechc]

Here are some I like from the other website I gave.

All 20-year-old women are attracted to men thrice their age.

All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red
readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off.

All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just
underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff
of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backward.

All mothers are under 30 unless they have teen-aged children, in which
case they are allowed to be 35.

All telephone numbers in America begin with the digits 555.

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.

Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function.

Any photograph can have minute details pulled out of it. You can zoom
into any picture as far as you want to. Example: "What's that fuzzy thing in
the corner? I don't know, let's check. It's the murder weapon! Let's look
under the bed for the killers shoes. no, just some comics books (Marvel
1954, very rare). Let's check the closet shelves...!"

At least one of a pair of identical twins is born evil.

Cars and trucks that crash will almost always burst into flames.

During a very emotional confrontation, instead of facing the person you
are speaking to, it is customary to stand behind them and talk to their back.

Evil scientists always have Nazi-sounding names and outfits.

If you are blonde and pretty, it is possible to be a world-famous expert
on nuclear fusion, dinosaurs, hieroglyphics, or anything else, at the age of
22 (coff coff Dan Brown)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

All telephone numbers in America begin with the digits 555.

For a long time, so the story goes, that was used by Hollywood because the prefix 555 wasn't assigned for actual use. Not too long ago I noticed the first 555 number I've ever seen.

I've noticed that people in movies are incredibly good at guessing computer passwords. No one would ever use a random code for supersensitve access. Obviously the first choice is the name of their lost child.

 

[Calrid]

If you are staring in a horror movie by Stephen King and you are black or Gay you gone die.

Not that I think stephen king is racist or homophobic it's like people in red uniforms in Start Trek TOS. You just gone die might as well plant the axe in your back yourself.

Same goes for saying things like maybe we should check the cellar it could be a burglar in any horror movie or any other stupidity induced action in a neighbourhood currently being terrorised by a lunatic/monster.

If you are a Storm Trooper do not attempt to hit the heroes rather aim to miss, it couldn't hurt because no matter how skilled you look or how many hundreds of you there are, you are still not going to hit the lead players. Presumably this is because you lack the force because Sith Lords seem to have no problem in this area.

 

[fillipeano]

Wherever you are driving to, there will be a parking spot open right in front.

EDIT just noticed it was already in there, haha..

Okay how about...
You will have perfect aim when shooting henchmen. When shooting the person you are after, it takes multiple tries.

 

[BobG]

When traveling in space, it's impossible to leave the plane of a solar system's planets. That makes it impossible to plot a trajectory above or below and asteroid belt. The only possible route is directly through the asteroid belt.

And the asteroid belt in our own solar system is an anomaly in that it's incredibly sparse. Every other solar system has asteroid belts so thick the chances of successfully navigating one is 3,720 to 1.

C3PO: Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!
Hans Solo: Never tell me the odds.

How the conversation should have gone:

C3PO: Sir, the density of asteroids in a belt is actually extremely low, and quite easy to navigate. If you're hoping to evade pursuit, you're sorely mistaken.
Han Solo: Never tell me the facts!

In fact, the odds of even seeing an asteroid on a random trajectory through our solar system's asteroid belt is pretty low. The Cassini space probe passing throug the asteroid belt did photograph one that came within about 1.6 million kilometers of the Cassini spacecraft .

Likewise, the development of intelligent life is somehow related to the orientation of our solar system's axis of rotation. For this reason, when two spacecraft from different galaxies meet at random, their 'top' and 'bottom' directions are always oriented in the same direction.

Of course, the intelligence of life is also limited by the orientation of our solar system. Any space captain that can envision any type of 3D battle tactics can only do so in a flash of superhuman intelligence that can never be used again for the rest of the movie. In fact, maybe it isn't physics that make it impossible to go over or under an asteroid belt - maybe it's simply because of the intellectual limitations imposed by our solar system's axis of rotation.

Or maybe the universe really is flat. Sooner or later, we'll see a movie where a starship travels so far that it falls off the edge.

If the captain of a starship didn't look out the window once in a while, he'd run into a star. Why else would a starship designer put the captain's bridge right up top and out front where it would be vulnerable to enemy lasers? If it were somehow possible, the logical place for the captain's command and control center would be in the center of the ship where it would have the entire ship as shielding. The captain has to look out the window because starships are obviously moving incredibly fast - you can even see stars, located light years away, moving past the windows.

 

[Calrid]

Nice Bob. Ah Star Wars we love it but in space no one can here you scream!

 

[turbo]

In a karate movie, the "good" kid will be nearly crippled in the final match of the tournament thanks to deliberate fouls from his "bad" opponents, yet will come back from behind to win thanks to some over-the-top move.

 

[turbo]

From old B movie matinées from my childhood: kids can make money for a good cause simply by putting on a theatrical show - even in the depths of a depression. (Mickey and Judy)

 

[BobG]

Don't search the basement if the power's gone out.

If workers at Fukushima would have watched more movies, they wouldn't have waded through radioactive water.

 

[DanP]

That Dark Helmet is Lone Star's father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

This one's from TV as well as film;

All science labs are dark places lit sporadically by UV lamps. They are always thoroughly tidy, full of multicoloured/glowing liquids and have a liberal spattering of touch screen surfaces. The scientists themselves are bumbling idiots with no knowledge of how-life-works and only practice evil perversions of nature

 

[BobG]

Most people have memories much better than mine. In fact, I must have some brain malfunction that causes partial amnesia.

People in movies always know where they were and what they were doing at 7:36 PM 3 weeks ago from Tuesday. Police ask me that question and I ask, "What date was that?" as if the date might actually help me remember.

Just by coincidence, even looking at a calendar, I happen to know what I was doing at around 7:36 PM on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday of that week, but I have no idea what I did Tuesday of that week. What rotten luck!

Of course, I can't remember what I did Sunday that week, or Friday or Saturday that week, so it was just coincidence that the three days I could remember happened to surround the day I picked at random.

Although, on further review, I do remember what I was doing at 7:36 PM on the Sunday after that Tuesday and I do remember what I did that Saturday, but not necessarily what I was doing at 7:36 PM.

 

[Calrid]

Apparently in America everyone automatically gets a movie reference because everyone is born with an encyclopaedic knowledge of movies. So that knowing dialogue about X movie in Y film is absolute fact!

Imagine my surprise to find that some Americans were just as clueless as everyone else about the media of film?!

 

[BobG]

How to predict the number of deaths in a slasher movie. They actually follow a mathematical formula:

B = 2n+12(Z-R)+2c+2S+3

B = Approximate onscreen body count
n = The number of the installment in the series
Z = Zombie factor (i.e., is the film directed by rock-‘n-schlock auteur Rob Zombie? 1 for yes, 0 for no)
R = Is the film part of a reboot? (1 for yes, 0 for no)
c = The number of colons in the title
S = Does the film take place in outer space? (1 for yes, 0 for no)

All the variables are pretty self evident except for R. By reboot, it means the movie isn't actually a sequel chronologically. In other words, if the movie just doesn't project the main character to some later date - it flashes back to an earlier time in the main character's life, for example - the body count could actually go down.

Of course, reboots are rare, so the body count almost always rises in slasher movie sequels.

And, obviously, if the movie is a space sci-fi thriller that tries to hide the fact that it's really a slasher movie, the equation has to be modified.

B = Sn^2 + 12(Z-R)+2c + 3

B = Approximate onscreen body count
n = The number of the installment in the series
Z = Zombie factor (i.e., is the film directed by rock-‘n-schlock auteur Rob Zombie? 1 for yes, 0 for no)
R = Is the film part of a reboot? (1 for yes, 0 for no)
c = The number of colons in the title
S = Does the film take place in outer space? (2 for yes, 0 for no)

Which matches the body count in the Aliens series perfectly if you take into account that androids can't really die and being cocooned by aliens isn't the same as dying.