either one of their army buddies has flanked the enemy soldiers and silently killed them, or an enemy soldier is about to surprise them by jumping out from an unexpected place.
Whenever a judge talks to the lawyers at sidebar…
…he’s ripping the hero attorney (or hero’s attorney, depending on who’s the main character) a new one.
A cowboy always…
has a horse.
(C’mon, you’ve got to give a little more lead-in than that!) 
A cowboy on the run from the bad guys will always, when crossing a river,…
…pause, and stare dramatically at the camera.
(Incidentally, not a single one of my questions was answered the way I anticipated. Apparently, I’m not as cliched as I thought!)
In a war movie, there’s always a scene after the first few days of training where the main characters are relaxing and talking to each other. One, though, is sullen and quiet. Why?
He just got a “Dear John” letter, and now he doesn’t think he has the heart and strength to fight a war with the support of his “girl back home”
His commanding officer will invariably tell him…
in a stern but somewhat kindly manner, that the mission is more important than any girl back home.
An elderly black man is always…
…outwardly cantankerous, but really kind and filled with profound, earthy wisdom that he’s dying to share with young white kids.
Even four decade after Vatican II, every nun who appears in a movie…
wears a habit, wimple and crucifix.
A bad guy in a gunfight who uses a baby as a human shield…
will invariably die, horribly.
Foreigners will, when amongst themselves, speak
- What language?
- How?
…English, with a heavy accent.
If there is more than one robot in a movie, how can you separate the good robots from the bad robots?
The good robot is either cuter, smaller, or has a more expressive face (even if it’s of an identical model to the others).
A big-city cop in a film before 1970 invariably has…
Crew-cut hair and a disdain, if not outright hatred, for hippies. (P.S., Elendil’s Heir, what were you thinking of?)
If the head of a corporation smiles a lot and calls his employees by their first names…
he will screw over any one of them in a heartbeat if it means advancing his career.
Lumpy, I was thinking of, “an Irish accent, a big gut and a well-worn billy club.” But yours is accurate, too. 
The long-sought and much-craved treasure chest in a pirate movie will, when opened, reveal…
Depends: if the one opening it is a good guy, it will contain a large amount of Spanish gold doubloons (Because, while Portuguese or Dutch ships were neigh unsinkable, the Spaniards apparently made theirs out of cardboard and spit).
If its a bad guy, it will contain nothing, according to the laws of dramatic irony.
If a protagonist visits any place where a secondary character has stayed for a certain period of time, like a cell or a hotel room, he will find…
Blood. Lots and lots of blood. And somewhere, hidden in a tiny nook, is his last words, either written in a shaky hand, or (depending on the movie’s target audience) smeared in blood.
If three bad guys are fighting, one with a gun, one with a sword, and one with his bare hands, which will win?
The one with the sword, but he’ll be badly injured and probably die soon afterwards.
A knight in shining armor who approaches a strange castle will invariably…
Shout out his name and his quest to the guards on the ramparts.
In car chases, one of the vehicles will always…
(if in a city) land so hard that sparks fly from underneath, or (in the country) either skid sideways in a huge cloud of dust, or do a bootleg turn.
Escaped slaves in Civil War-era movies will always…
…be hidden from the lawmen searching for him/her & smuggled across the Mason-Dixon borderline by a white confederate slave-owner who has had a change-of-heart and now sympathizes with the abolitionists.
A protagonist who is a fugitive from justice will at least once narrowly escape being apprehended by doing what?
…hiding underwater and breathing through a reed.
If a girl tries to play sports on a male team, first she’ll be laughed at, and then…