A lone hero goes up against a crowd of drug dealers/Nazi motorcyclists/terrorists/zombies, and the black hats attack him one at a time!
The AK-47-wielding bad guys unload a truckload of ammo at the good guy, and miss, while the hero picks each baddie off with his little handgun. I’ve never been in the military, but I strongly suspect that the guy with the assault rifle has a decided advantage over the guy with the 9mm.
i LOVE all the cliches mentioned thus far except for can’t-aim-baddies.
In all fairness, dramatic tension isn’t suppose to make you “believe” per se, in the way that you believe the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning. We make ourselves believe–that’s why it’s called “make-believe.” That’s the nature of fiction.
Or do you think we’re expected to believe that Jack Bauer is a real person at all in the first place?
Can you disqualify yourself from ever getting a Nielsen ratings box?
See Mook Chivalry, Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, and Improbable Aiming Skills.
Actually, there’s probably a TVTropes page on most of these cliches.
But, Tropes Are Not Bad.
Well, not to defend it, but it depends on how good a shot the bad guys are. Some are very bad shots who don’t use the sights. There are many instances during urban combat in Iraq of a Marine or soldier killing AK-47 armed insurgents with a 9mm handgun. Usually the Marine/soldier takes a round or three for his trouble, but not always. Google Brian Chontosh.
You forgot the bounding dog!
The annual “It’s A Wonderful Life” ripoff episode.
StG
I’m perfectly capable of suspending belief. I watch a lot of sci-fi so that’s pretty much a requirement. It mostly bothers me when I’m watching with my wife and she asks if the good guy is going to die. It takes me out of the moment and I have to acknowledge that no, the good guy won’t die
You forgot the weddings that’re held way out in the woods, then the father of the bride has a heart attack, only for it later to be revealed (after much detouring through some family change of fortune bullshit) that he died cause it took the ambulance too long to get there!
But that’s too implausible; no one would ever try to sell something like that.
Any sci-fi, horror, or paranormal setting where people do any of the following things:
[ul]
[li]Someone shoots the monster point blank with a handgun at close range. No effect. The person stands there pumping ineffective rounds into the monster as it closes on them.[/li][li]Instead of running as far and as fast as possible or trying to get help, the protagonists take on the horror themselves.[/li][li]If they do try to get help, they stumble into a police station and tell the desk sergent or the sheriff the utterly implausible truth, and are dismissed as hoaxers or kooks. They almost never tell a plausible lie to get armed authorities to go out and see the truth for themselves*.[/li][/ul]
*Brilliantly lampshaded in the SyFy channel movie Chupacabra, where the captain of a cruise ship, instead of trying to convince the authorities that a monster is loose on board, tells them that the ship has been boarded by terrorists.
That sounds more like it was averted than lampshades.
Or, expanding upon bouv’s post, how about the “does anyone object to this marriage” type thing where the man/woman changes their mind at the last minute, during the final vows of the wedding, and runs off with someone else.
How romantic! How unlikely!
How the hell is that new relationship going to work out?
Someday I’d like to see that scenario as the back-story for a soured marriage where the husband and wife hold huge resentments against their dog until the day it dies.
Arrested Development had an interesting take on that. 
When the woman in question lets down her hair, it’s frizzy and out of control; when she takes off her glasses, she turns out to be cross-eyed without them.
My hate: crime shows with “devastatingly witty” detectives who wear designer suits to crime scenes and have a clever comeback to just about anything anyone could ever say to them. Which is why I love The First 48. It’s a documentary, so obviously it’s in a different genre entirely, but regular joes with beer guts and bad ties are much more fascinating and suspenseful than their fashionable, fictional counterparts.
Especially when it would have been quite easy for them to talk and clear up the misunderstanding.
The unbelievably stupid man, married to a ball-chomping harpy of a wife. Everybody Loves Raymond is the most obvious example of this, but it shows up regularly on other shows as well.
IIRC police miss 90% of the time they fire their weapons.
The police only hit their target about 15% percent of the time and the majority of those shootings happen at less than 10 feet. If both people are running, then having no shots hit the target is the probable outcome.
I always wondered if the Emperor’s cousin had the contract for stormtrooper armor, since it never seemed to protect them from anything, including Ewok rocks.