# Cliches that you HATE! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 20, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255 "2006-10-20T17:50:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SurrenderDorothy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/surrenderdorothy/32/1221_2.png) [@SurrenderDorothy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SurrenderDorothy)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/41 "2006-10-21T15:18:07Z")
The good guy will get some crazy wound- like a sword through to stomach or the back of their head bashed repeatedly against a rock or something, and will be temporarily stunned- maybe even fall over and spit blood or something… but then, all of a sudden he/she is back up and fighting more fiercely than ever! despite their cracked skull or bullet to the chest or whatever. And then, they never recieve medical attention. They just ride off into the sunset with their sucking chest wound. ---
**Author:** ![Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a8b319/32.png) [@Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spatial_Rift_47)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/42 "2006-10-21T16:19:25Z")
“Head 'em off at the pass?? I HATE that cliché!” - _Blazing Saddles_. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/43 "2006-10-21T16:28:37Z")
[QUOTE=DesertDog] The Hollywood Physics (?) site calculated the ammunition weight that would need to have been carried in the _Navy Seals_ movie at about three hundred pounds each. [/QUOTE] I think you mean [this](http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/) site. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/44 "2006-10-21T16:32:27Z")
[QUOTE=Reno Nevada] This is related to Chekhov’s maxim that if you show a gun in act 1 then somebody gets shot in act 3. His point was that if nobody gets shot in act 3, then why are you wasting time in act 1 on a gun that has no relevance to your story? [/QUOTE] How about verisimilitude? Real life is full of events that foreshadow nothing. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/45 "2006-10-21T16:35:49Z")
[QUOTE=Thirty-Nine] **The Comic Misunderstanding** Sorry, this is the one cliché that actually makes me laugh. That’s the scene where somebody is talking about something completely innocent, but another character (for whatever reason) thinks they are talking about something obscene. Full of double entendres, and guaranteed to please pun lovers like myself. This method must be presented in the first lecture of Comedy Writing 101, because it happens so much. [/QUOTE] This lady walked into a bar, and she asked the bartender for a double entendre. So he gave her one. [rimshot] ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Mapp](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miss_mapp/32/369_2.png) [@Miss\_Mapp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Mapp)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/46 "2006-10-21T19:16:58Z")
[QUOTE=MrSquishy] Or how about when the bad guy suddenly springs up with the knife/sword/gun to kill the unsuspecting/defenseless hero, and the hero’s dying sidekick (mortally wounded earlier in the battle, possibly believed already dead) appears and kills the bad guy just in time. Blah. [/QUOTE] I’d call that a variation on the same theme–killing the bad guy via surprise-thought-dead-buddy-defense instead of self-defense; it still saves the hero from killing the baddie himself in cold blood, as he had a chance to mere minutes before and refused. Still irksome. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/47 "2006-10-21T20:08:49Z")
[QUOTE=SurrenderDorothy] A girl wearing lots of eyeliner is either troubled or hispanic. She doesn’t need therapy or, really, love. She just needs to wash her face and then she’ll quit being troubled. [/QUOTE] But will she quit being Hispanic? Am I really the first one to mention The Twisted Ankle? Or did I miss it? The bimbo is running from the monster and is making pretty good time until she keels over and twists her damn ankle. ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/48 "2006-10-21T20:10:17Z")
Every lead actress’s best friend is a Gay man who is fit and trim, has perfect taste and dresses in designer clothes (you haven’t been to any Gay bars I go to.) The sole purpose of a staircase in a soap opera is so that the pregnant actress can fall down it. At the end of the big action scene, with 10,000 bullets fired, several bombs exploded and 35 dead bodies on the ground, the cop hero only has a little scratch on his forehead - and as he and his buddy slowly walk out, only then, at that exact moment, do a swarm of police cars show up to help out…and they always pull in, in formation, at the opening of the garage door to the warehouse. Dead bodies - women are always found in a field, nude. Men are found in alleys, fully clothed. (Come on people, Gay men watch films too!) Every fridge in America has a kid’s crayon artwork stuck to it with a magnet. It is usually stick figures of mommy and daddy, especially if a kidnapping is involved. A detective only has to walk four steps in a house to find a framed photo of the murder victim with college friends/family priest/ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. That photo will be a major clue in solving the murder. Every “two bit hooker” has perfect teeth and a fantastic wardrobe…(drive down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood some night…have I got a surprise for you). Also, all hookers have a heart of gold, are single mothers, and have a crazed, junkie ex-husband/boyfriend. If the scene takes place in the suburbs, it is morning and the kids are late for school. In the history of America, no child in the suburbs has ever been on time to go to school. And should the divorced mother or father want to see their kid, they only have to drive to the playground in front of the school and their child will always be playing two feet from the fence and will look over and see them. Stupid lines: Hero has 20 minute fight, killed ten guys, jumps through a plate glass window, falls 10 stories and lands on his back and woman asks, “Are you all right?” Woman hears husband/boyfriend was brutally murdered and someone says, “get her some water” and “she needs to get some rest”. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/49 "2006-10-21T20:25:03Z")
How can you tell the good guys from the bad guys if the good guys do all the stuff the bad guys do? (Jack Bauer, I’m looking at you!) I hate the clichés with the gorgeous, brilliant, accomplished women with the schlub guys who don’t even treat them right. Puh-leeeze. ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/50 "2006-10-21T20:28:09Z")
[QUOTE=Otto] But will she quit being Hispanic? Am I really the first one to mention The Twisted Ankle? Or did I miss it? The bimbo is running from the monster and is making pretty good time until she keels over and twists her damn ankle. [/QUOTE] And never forget the car that won’t start as the bad guy/psycho killer/alien/ vampire/werewolf/zombie /generic monster/rabid dog is approaching you. If you’re a red shirt it won’t ever start, if you’re the protagonist it will start at the last second as the bad person/thing has it’s hands/paws/claws/tentacles on the car door or trunk. Sometimes it will leap on the car as you drive off and appear on the windshield as your driving away or after you thought you were safe. ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/51 "2006-10-21T20:33:05Z")
[QUOTE=AWB] I loved the antithesis of this as play out in [“Sleeping With The Enemy”](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102945/). She has a gun trained on her psycho husband who has tracked her down. He tells her that she won’t kill him. She calls 911, and says, “Come quickly. I’ve just shot an intruder,” hangs up, and shoots hubby-dearest. [/QUOTE] Or on the short-lived TV show _The Inside_, a character blows away a guy holding one of his agents hostage, THEN shouts “Let her go!” Then he chides himself for getting it backwards. ---
**Author:** ![gallows\_fodder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/52 "2006-10-21T21:12:09Z")
> [@](#): > > **Hated cliche:** > John: Come on, I need you to do [some bizarre/insane/life-threatening/stupid thing I’m not going to explain]! > Joe: Wha-? Why? > John: Just trust me, okay? > Joe: _shrug_ Okay! Or > [@](#): > > **Hated cliche** : > John stares at something with an odd look on his face… > Joe: John. What’s wrong? > John: [puzzled silence]…nothing… > Joe: _shrug_ Okay! > [Five minutes later: EXPLOSION (of the literal or figurative kind)] Whatever, people! TVland folks are unbelievably trusting when exposition would get in the way of the action. This is reason #917 **Supernatural** rocks. With them it’s: Sam: [stares at something with an odd look on his face] Dean: What is it? Sam: [puzzled silence]…nothing… Dean: Dude. What’s going on? Sam: [explains] You know, like, the way it happens in real life. See, it’s not so hard! ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2006, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/53 "2006-10-21T23:36:20Z")
[QUOTE=Mouse\_Maven] :smack: There are times when I’m to stupid to be on the Dope. [/QUOTE] Come now. What a thing to say! It should be **too** stupid to be on the Dope. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/54 "2006-10-22T00:42:53Z")
The hero/heroine accidently find out about some dark plot of extreme significance (Head of State to be assasinated ,nuclear power plant is skimping on radioactive shielding,the government is engaged in extensive drug trafficking !you get the picture !) and instead of phoning every single t.v. and radio station (plus all the newspapers)with the news and so ensuring that the evildoing will be addressed,and also making it a waste of time killing them ;they keep it to themselves except for telling one trusted associate who`s advice they ask (and who always turns out to be one of the conspirators) and then get hunted by the bad guys en route to the one other person they can really,really trust! ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/55 "2006-10-22T00:54:21Z")
[QUOTE=SurrenderDorothy] The good guy will get some crazy wound- like a sword through to stomach or the back of their head bashed repeatedly against a rock or something, and will be temporarily stunned- maybe even fall over and spit blood or something… but then, all of a sudden he/she is back up and fighting more fiercely than ever! despite their cracked skull or bullet to the chest or whatever. [/QUOTE] Typically, this miraculous recovery is accompanied by the fast-healing hero saying something on the order of: My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/56 "2006-10-22T01:01:12Z")
Doesn’t happen so often now, but used to appear quite frequently. Main character finds murder victiom. Gets police. Comes back. Body has disappeared… ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/57 "2006-10-22T01:13:24Z")
A guy who’s a lawyer/banker/stockbroker/politican and is incredibly focused and driven is suddenly given “a new chance at life” with an adorable kid and a suburban life. Heaven forbid we suggest that living in a penthouse with $200 suits isn’t a fufilling existance. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/58 "2006-10-22T01:21:58Z")
I assume you mean $1200 suits. These days you can hardly find a $200 suit at Men’s Wearhouse. My clichés: Hit men who are supposed to be undercover, but who dress like, well, hit men. Lots of black, lots of leather (also black), white hair or bullet heads, conspicuous sunglasses. The convention that the heavy must die by falling from a great height. This one’s so obvious I’ve always assumed the filmmakers are either joking or obsessively serious about observing it. ---
**Author:** ![Nefarious\_Chipmunk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nefarious_chipmunk/32/1045_2.png) [@Nefarious\_Chipmunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nefarious_Chipmunk)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/59 "2006-10-22T02:05:30Z")
[QUOTE=Wile E] And never forget the car that won’t start as the bad guy/psycho killer/alien/ vampire/werewolf/zombie /generic monster/rabid dog is approaching you. If you’re a red shirt it won’t ever start, if you’re the protagonist it will start at the last second as the bad person/thing has it’s hands/paws/claws/tentacles on the car door or trunk. Sometimes it will leap on the car as you drive off and appear on the windshield as your driving away or after you thought you were safe. [/QUOTE] Don’t forget the part where they drop the keys while trying to unlock the door only to have them somehow role underneath the car. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2006, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255/60 "2006-10-22T13:53:14Z")
Innocent person walks in to a home/apt/business where all is eerily quiet, there may even be some signs of a struggle. They find a gun\* on the floor _which they pick up!_ and look at, then they find a murder victim which they are standing over holding the gun when the police arrive. \*sometimes it’s a bloody knife or rarely a bloodied heavy blunt object. It’s really hard to root for a protagonist that does something that stupid. I’m looking at you Hiro! Oh, and speaking of blood, why do people always have to stick their fingers in blood spots and smear it around on their fingers? Do they really think it might just be paint or ketchup? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cliches-that-you-hate/377255.md?page=4)