In Every Action Film Ever

1. "This. Ends. Now."

2. KABOOM

3. Hanging from a wire on the side of a building/mountain/cliff.

4. Cars explode when shot.

5. evil foreigners

6. "You have a wife, don't you?"

7. Impregnable fortress impregnated.

8. Bad guys are inexpert marksmen while heroes are routinely capable of pulling off nigh-impossible shots.

9. maniacal laughter

10. Bad guy shares master plan with hero prior to a failed attempt at offing hero.

11. Damsel in distress

12. ineffectual superiors

13. The black guy dies.

14. The most masculine woman dies.

15. Anytime one of the good guys shows pictures of his wife or kids to a fellow comrade, he will die within the next ten minutes.

16. Team starts fighting among itself, faces defeat.

17. "I've only shown you a fraction of what I'm capable of."

18. Pretty smart woman is dangerous.

19. Bald dudes

20. Bad guy has hero at gunpoint, hero closes his eyes and accepts death, BOOM!, hero opens his eyes, surprised he's still alive, bad guy has been shot by sidekick everyone forgot about.

21. The new chief/team leader/squad leader turns out to be a double agent and the protagonist tells everybody something isn't right and nobody believes him until a reveal 2/3rds of the way into the movie.

22. A woman is invariably used as a human shield at some point

23. Docking

24. Felching

25. Glory holes

26. Bareback

27. Rubber cock rings

25. retirement (either impending or returning from)

28. Designer jock straps

sorry, 29

30. twitchy nervous fella whose competence no one questions inevitably messes up

(except in ronin.)

31. Epilogue wherein our hero is finally getting to bone down with love interest.

32. Sequel that replaces one or both main actors from first film and bears little resemblance to the concept of the first film

33. the wiseass scientist

34. Cops ruining everything

35. when bad guy is finally captured/subdued/"killed", and hero turns his back and walks away leading us to believe it's finally over, bad guy suddenly goes for a hidden gun/rushes hero with machete. hero turns turns around in slow motion as if driven by a 6th sense and puts the final bullet in bad guy. now that it's finally over, partner/family/cops surround hero and they all crack wise.

36. Smartypants blabbering away explaining something the plan or situation. Hero sums it up succinctly, vulgarly.

37. Race against the clock sequence actually 2-3 times longer on film than it would be in reality.

(ugh, -something, xp)

38. Hero has cupboard/room/lock up filled with a shit ton of guns, ammo and the inevitable rocket launcher.

39. Following form 38: "Now that's what I'm talkin' about"

40. Weird 30 seconds of characterization between car chases, explosions etc.

41. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

42. A moment where someone stops, holds his or her breath and listens, as we view a close up of their sweat-beaded face.

43. Jason Statham

44. if set in LA, car chase down LA River.

45. feds ruin everything (corollary to 34.)

46. loud explosion preceded by high pitched noise.

47. loud explosion. character loses hearing. audio of the film drops out to reveal their perspective.

48. Vehicle explodes behind hero, who doesn't flinch, look round, or break stride.

49. sprained ankle

50. "Forget me! Save yourself!"

51. Advancing age making secondary protagonist feel as if he might not be cut out for the sort of caper depicted in the film, and saying so. (ref. #25)

52. Sacrificial death of secondary protagonist

53. Asses busted back down to sergeant (military/cop movies only)

54. billions of dollars worth of property damage forgiven

55. Hardly any public.

56. People with surnames like Ortega & Kowalski

57. A character nicknamed "Ace".

25. retirement (either impending or returning from)

51. Advancing age making secondary protagonist feel as if he might not be cut out for the sort of caper depicted in the film, and saying so.

'i'm getting too old for this shit'

25/51a. In fourth or fifth sequel, lead makes self-deprecating reference to being too old for this shit.

58. if you need to get inside a secured building just set off a minor explosion outside the building and everyone will run out to look at the explosion. except for the guy you're coming to confront, who will be calmly sitting at his desk sorting through his crime paperwork.

59. digital enhancement of blurry photos

58b. if you're already inside the building but there's a barrier point somewhere you need to get past you can still do the explosion trick or just activate the alarm system somehow and everyone in the building will start running past each other in every direction as fast as they can for up to 15 minutes or so. just walk quickly and purposefully through the melee to where you need to go and even if someone tries to stop you it's never more than one guy at a time and you can just punch that guy.

60. upon entering a room, the protagonist will immediately open the correct drawer/box/folder/secret compartment to find what he is looking for

61. if you're in a fight with eight guys at once each guy you dispatch in succession will drop directly to the ground except for the last guy, who will teeter woozily in place with his fists still up until you step up and tilt him over with a tap to the chest or else lean in and whisper "timber" into his ear and then he just collapses.

62. Huge wall map of city in police headquarters

63. helicopter refered to as "chopper"

64. if you're in a heist group of n members, there will be a series of nested betrayals equal to n-1. for example, j.d., the fish, and markov betray giles as planned; j.d. and the fish then betray markov, also planned; and then j.d. betrays the fish, as planned.

you need to count up all the secret plans you have to betray someone in the group and then add one to see if that equals the total number of the group to see if you're okay.

65. if you do something improbably destructive with a gun like shoot down a room of fifteen guys in a flurry of fire or if the villain is barreling down on you in a tanker truck and you explode the tanker truck with a single shot and it flips over and all the villain's henchmen drive their cars into the overturned tanker truck and they also explode, you get to stare bug-eyed at your gun in amazement like you're examining it for a special kaboom feature that you weren't aware of.

you also get a special magnum p.i. dispensation in which you slowly turn to the audience and shoot them a brief "did you see that shit?" look but you only get this once per movie if that.

66. at least one one exploding neon sign. In the drinking game version, this would be "drink once when a neon sign explodes. drink twice if it's a Kanji/Thai/Chinese sign"

67. music soundtrack best described as "Jan Hammer/Trevor Rabin"

68. Hot female assassin.

69. Showdown with the bad guy: click, click, click...out of ammo!

70. In the final act, hero/heroine's previously incidental skill with something (computers, juggling, whatever) becomes CRITICALLY IMPORTANT.

14. The most masculine woman dies.

no

It's true, they even have a page listing all the examples at TV Tropes:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VasquezAlwaysDies