Well, the “just the right time” thing is obviously for plot exposition, but if you watch CNN when there is anything remotely resembling “breaking news” they run reports all the time, generally with no new information.
The stories featured on Law & Order (for instance, a sleazy lawyer offering a big reward for info benefiting his client) typically are of the sort you’d see on local Eyewitless News.
I have to believe that the number of criminals who manage to evade the police by using “parkour” to escape across the urban landscape is vanishingly small.
I can’t remember the movie - I think it was a Wayans’ brothers comedy - but there was a supporting character everyone was really intimidated by. He had an eyepatch, and every one talked about how he’d lost the eye in Vietnam, presumably doing crazy special forces shit.
One of the main characters gets to know him, and finds out that he did lose the eye in Vietnam - he was in the typing pool, and he and his fellow office workers were shooting paperclips at each other with rubber bands when one nailed him right in the eye.
I’m Going To Get You Sucka, was going to bring this one up too.
Also iirc everyone is let down except for the one guy in the group who ALSO was actually in the Army Typing Pool, who’s impressed by his service.
Regarding the action movie standard where our hero/heroine(s) break into the bad guys’ lair to find evidence of skulduggery without telling anyone where they’ve gone, are caught by the bad guys and lie unconvincingly about how the authorities will be there any minute:
“He knows too bloody much. We’ll kill him and dump him. He’ll have had no chance yet to tell what he’s seen. We’ll be all right.”…
"Gerard’s apparently untroubled voice rose as if in courteous discussion. “I did of course leave word of where I was going. If I don’t return safely you’ll find the police at your door.”
“They always say that in movies.” Denny said. “It’s never bloody true.”
- from Proof by Dick Francis.
I may have mentioned this earlier in this thread, so forgive me if I repeated myself, but I have a Facebook friend (HS classmate) whose father lost his leg in WWII.
He graduated in May 1945 and immediately enlisted, and while he was in boot camp, he was riding in a vehicle that tipped over, and his leg was broken badly enough that they decided to amputate it. He never saw combat.
The past was a dangerous time. My father’s uncle lost his leg when a truck lost its load of barrels, and one of them knocked him down and crushed it. Apparently, he could still climb ladders, faster than some two-legged folk
I’ll say–100% of all known injuries happened in the past!
Another thing rarely seen IRL that I know of: Those triangular sports banners on a teenager’s or young man’s bedroom wall.
That’s why I’m glad I don’t live then any more.
You mean pennants? I’ve seen them on plenty of walls, but mainly a log time ago, or on the walls of older people. The fad has died away. But at one time, you saw pennants all over the place. Not only for teams, but for tourist attractions.
My older brother had a bunch of sports pennants on his wall. It didn’t seem unusual in the early 70s.
My older brother had a bunch of sports pennants on his wall… early 70s.
Were they hanging on wood paneling? I’ve only seen them on period TV shows or movies, always in a teenage boy’s room.
And I WAS a teenage boy in the early 70s (I got better). Me and my friends would have posters of a team, or more often specific players.
(ETA: Just asked a fellow 70s kid. He had a huge Kareem Abdul-Jabbar poster, but no “Milwaukee Bucks” pennants… “Naah, a pennant wouldn’t have been exciting enough.”)
Well except among baseball fans. The people who owned my current house a few months ago were big baseball fans, and when we toured the house their teenage kid’s rooms both had the pennants for several baseball teams on the wall.
Looks over at the wall…yeah, still a few nails up there. I need to hang something up there. Not pennants.
I know a guy (older than mw) whose walls right now are covered with pennants. Of course, the guy is an obsessive souvenir collector, so he’s not typical. But he’s not alone, either.
Me too.
Yeah, my sisters and I used to have some, and yes, we hung them on our bedroom walls.
They do seem to have faded into the past, though.
This may have been covered already, but how about the elite assassin for hire: the classy, well-dressed gentleman (or sometimes lady), staying in only the finest hotels and dining finely in spots throughout the world they travel to in order to dispatch their targets that they were well paid to take out with a high degree of professionalism. Think John Wick or the whole Wickian universe.
Though, I guess it’s possible that those types do exist, and the only reason I’m still alive is because I don’t know that they do 
And how these assassins are always able to get into the empty building or apartment across the street and a few stories up from their exiting victim. No need to worry about locks and security if you are an elite assassin.