21 Jump Street

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The movie toys with this cliche, building up expectations for large explosions which never actually happen, which bewilder the main characters. When an explosion finally does come, it's caused by a truck full of chickens.

Ice Cube: "You sons of bitches are going to college!" Schmidt: "Yes!" Jenko: "No!" -THE END-

The Chief of Police is always angry. He hates the protagonist and yells at his subordinates. Nothing will ever make him happy. Everything has to be done by the book or the mayor is going to have his ass.

The stars and planets align to guarantee the bad guys receives maximum pain!

"The bad guys are always lousy shots in the movies. Three villains with Uzis will go after the hero, spraying thousands of rounds which miss him, after which he picks them off with a handgun." --Roger Ebert

The character who apparently has nothing better to do than make the protagonist's life a living hell

If one looses sight in one eye, it destroys their depth perception and much of their visibility. Yet in movies, the most formidable villain is obviously blind in one eye, but his sword fighting, archery, and marksmanship are perfect.

People don't actually fly backwards when bullets hit them, you know. Movies consistently pretend that they do though.

Crazy things happen when teens get together to drink out of red cups when their parents are out of town.

People in movies and tv always choose, impractically, to wait until the last minute to cock their gun. When that *click* comes, you know things just got real.

Sometime characters like drugs a little more than they should and can occasionally slip into a fantasy realm of their own imagination. These dreams can range from psychedelic wonderlands to nightmarish incarnations of hell.

A character is shot, stabbed, or otherwise in a condition where he or she may die at any moment. But instead of passing on, as most dying people tend to do, the character will find time to give a dramatic final speech.

When a car falls off a cliff or careens into a brick wall at speed it will inevitably explode into a beautiful orange blossom of fiery death. I thought they recalled the Ford Pinto years ago...

Backup always arrives at the exact moment when they are no longer needed.

Science says it is really, really bad for you; but movies say getting drunk is perfectly fine.

Nothing says "I'm a badass" like holding your gun sideways. Unless, of course, you actually want to hit anything, in which case it will merely throw your aim off significantly and eject hot spent casings into the general vicinity of your face.

In most Hollywood films, the lead male heroic protagonist, usually ends up with the main female character by the end of the film. Tom Cruise made a career off of this cliche.

Jenko takes a bullet for Schmidt.

No matter how many enemies he faces, no matter how many bullets are sprayed at him, the hero in this simply cannot be hit by bullets. There may be a token flesh wound at the end of the film, however.

Bad guy's cornered, so what does he do? Why, point a gun at some innocent person!

When someone gets slashed or stabbed, a fountain of blood sprays out.

Most movies and shows use this just for humor. It's all fun and games until someone gets hit square in the crotch. Sometimes the fun continues afterwards.

In which soldiers, police officers, or someone in another kind of strict hierarchical organization is given explicit orders from a superior, only to ignore, disobey, or explicitly rebel against those orders because they believe that following them would be wrong.

Or in this case, an awkward threesome.

No matter how badly a character is hurt, shot, impaled or stabbed, moments later the injury will be treated no worse than a shaving cut.

You've stepped over the line one too many times, and I've got the commissioner breathing down my neck.

Once captured, the traditional request by the main protagonist to the main antagonist to let his love interest go free. Generally makes the protagonist look more heroic, and is always denied by the antagonist. Usually preceded by "Do whatever you want with me...". Sometimes "the Girl" is replaced with other loved ones, friends, or just innocent civilians.

Regardless of what science says, many filmmakers insist that the best way to chillax is with marijuana.

In movies, when real guys want to hang out, they have to do it by getting wasted.

In some movies, usually comedies, or action/comedies, a nerdy character exists that continually gets ridiculed, mocked, and humiliated yet keeps quiet out of fear of retaliation or other reasons. Usually 3/4 through the movie, an opportunity opens up for the nerdy character to seek revenge and he takes it, usually in the form of some type of physical violence or by some device he invents which he uses against his antagonist that is unexpected.

A character is calmly in the middle of a sentence when suddenly they are shot or stabbed by something off-screen. Examples of this are Wash from Serenity or the Doctor from 3:10 to Yuma.

The nerd is hopeless until a popular girl, whether bribed or on her own, helps him go from nerd to cool.

Knock the baton out of your competitor's hands, then throw your own baton across the finish line. Celebrate with a baton penis.

My fist is hard, but your face is harder. I gotta shake that one off, because I probably never punched someone before this anyways.

The troops are rallied, the weapons are equipped, the enemy is at the gates, and you can clearly see every detail as the drama crawls slowly across the screen.

Checking bathroom stalls one by one to find someone you're looking for. Bonus points if you get distracted and leave before checking the EXACT stall the person is hiding in.

Jenko says that they need doves for the prom. When someone asks him why, he responds: "because doves make you look like a badass".

The hero equips their gear through a montage.

Why? To look cool.

Just when somebody is about to get shot a friend jumps in front of him or her to take the bullet.

This movie has fun playing with cliches and acknowledging it. Early on Ice Cube acknowledges that his character is a stereotype of the "angry black police chief". Later on, Schmidt and Jenko keep expecting things to blow up like in every action movie they ever see, but when it finally does happen it's totally anticlimactic.

My high school teachers never looked like they do on television ... damn you reality!

The 360 shot is when the camera spin around orbits around the action. It became a recent cliche and been in recent movies.

The universal area code that is shown whenever a phone number appears on screen in a TV show or film. And no matter where you are in North America, the 555 area code seems to work.

Nothing says badass quite like having a scar over a character's eye.

Schmidt shoots the gym teacher in the junk.

A cast composed entirely of young white people will include one black person in an effort to claim the producers aren't racist. Better known as the "token minority". In older thriller and horror movies, this person is almost guaranteed to die.

When the protagonist is facing down his toughest opponent and receiving the beating of their lives they always find a way to tap that extra reserve of strength and rally to smash their enemy's face in and win the day. Violence...hoorah!

The film's tagline: "They're too old for this shift". Clearly this writer deserves a pay raise.

When a big tournament is on the horizon and it's crunch time for the protagonist you can be sure that an entire week's worth of board-breaking, stair-climbing and extreme meditation will be compressed into a two-minute slideshow set to electric guitar licks and/or heavy electric synthpop.