1 : , Note: I hope people's submissions are checked before being posted. I edited the entire list, added several dozen, deleted the ones not specifically about sci-fi or which are artifacts of necessity in a TV show ("The aliens all speak English", "The main characters never die", etc.), and I corrected most of the others with spelling, grammar,etc. -- faye kane, homeless idiot savant http://tinyurl.com/fayescave ======================================== • Characters who have access to futuristic, efficient ray-guns, will eventually resort to using simple primitive weapons or means (knife, blunt instrument, cauldron of hot liquid, etc…) • Even though 21st century weaponry can automatically lock onto enemy craft, starships of the future rely on a human using a joystick to target the enemy craft manually. • Earth people catch a deadly alien virus which just happens to have evolved to infect humans • A scientist unlocks new science / technology which is not supposed to be in human's hands, because it goes against "nature" and allows him to "play god". Eventually, everything goes wrong and the scientist is punished for his Hubris. Humans realize that some things should be left alone. • The protagonist is never even tempted by the power of the evil side. • A huge alien is able to take the form (or fit inside the body of) humans until the climatic confrontation scene where it suddenly reverts to its gigantic size. • Any computer or security system can be overcome by a kid with a simple hack. • The Captain of the Good Guy's ship is never a mutant, alien or non-standard human stock, even when other people on the ship are. • If the Good Guys destroy the entire social structure and governmental system of the society they encounter, no one complains. • The smaller the alien, the more fur it has covering a larger percentage of the body. You never see a small, hairless, alien, or a hulking furball. Wookies are the exception. • In the future, vehicles look exactly like the ones from the 20th century, except with a more angular body and a painted symbol, a blinking light and control surfaces. • If soldiers have been engineered into perfection, they either 1) go rogue as individuals, 2) turn against their government, 3) are dysfunctional in normal society. • There is an entire world of peaceniks and pacifists who have absolutely no military or planetary defenses of any kind, even though the galaxy is full of invading alien species. • Computers and machinery of the future are gaudy with colored flashing lights. • One good guy is a traitor. • Alien species are contemptuous of humans, calling their technology primitive and their ways savage. • A brain-dead character who is physically unharmed is taken over by an alien who just happens to need a body. • The main character's best friend dies and he is never sad about it. He drops to his knees and yells "NOOOOOOOOO!" then goes on an alien-killing rampage. • Reconstructing a new person from DNA restores all the memories, mannerisms, and learned skills that were in the DNA-donor's brain. • Whatever just happened to happen is the "correct" timeline and must be restored. • A neutral, non-sentient life form seeks to devour all intelligent life on the planet / in the solar system / in the universe • Alien societal structures, morals and technologies are of an earlier historical era on Earth (fur-wearing cave-men, medieval, industrial era, 20th century). • If a character obtains a weapon such as a metal pipe or axe they will only use it once then drop it • Ammo always runs out when they are about to kill the bad guy and then they have to resort to melee combat • Starships appear visible and in perfect lighting, no matter how deep in space they are. In orbit, they cast no shadows on themselves. • There are lots of Asians in space but no Jews or gays in space or the future. There is always exactly one black character in every sci-fi. • Humans must go on simple-but-dangerous missions instead of sending robots. •Spaceships must bank in order to turn • Control panels of the future and in space ships have ungrounded high-voltage inside and can blow up in a shower of sparks if they're shaken real hard. • A character massively affected by a violence or mutation, when cured, looks exactly as he did before the whole ordeal. • The heroine, even though an adult, is inexperienced romance-wise. If she does have any children, prophecies and proof will surface that her offspring are extremely special, gifted, and powerful and are destined to save the world, universe, rabbit-kind, blah blah. • They can control matter to the atomic level and can cure wounds instantly with a medical ray gun, but haven't cured aging or death. • Planetary defensive fleets successfully protect the home planet in orbital combat because the attackers would rather fight one-on-one than fire numerous small, fast, nuclear (or worse) weapons from orbit. • The evil ruler has never done any good whatsoever and is compulsively evil, and psychotic for no apparent reason, yet everyone under him thinks this is perfectly okay. • Humans have a certain something that makes them special compared to all other races. • The prettiest, most refined female cast member is a brunette with either short hair or an strange-looking hairdo. • Entire planets are used as rubbish dumps. • Though there are many strange species, the leader of the Galactic Government is always human-looking. • An entire planet is populated my peaceniks and pacifists who have absolutely no military or planetary defenses of any kind despite the galaxy being full of marauding imperialist cutthroats. • Societies with advanced technology suddenly halt for no apparent reason but leave their machines intact and running. • The bad guy is an Evil Overlord dictator who makes all the decisions. When he dies, none of his people move into the power vacuum; instead, his empire collapses. • Someone or something gets sucked into the vacuum of space. • Despite advances in bioengineering, the good guys drink alcohol off-duty. Even if synthohol is available, they STILL drink alcohol. • Concrete and steel in the future has some niffy sounding prefix. • The words used to characterize spacecraft and the crew based on naval terminology and vessels resemble ships, with a top, bottom, and sides. • Any whiz-kid or droid can override the security protocols for the city or spaceship's central computer. This possibility never occurred to the designers. • The thousand year-old alien battle machine of a long-gone empire is always more powerful than the most recent state-of-the-art starship and is always malevolent. • Terrifying, evil warriors who have conquered other civilizations and planets are defeated by confused, inexperienced, untrained youngsters. • The computer can inform the crew of catastrophes and impending destruction, but cannot execute any countermeasures like cutting the fuel supply to the overloading engine, using sprinklers to put out the fire, etc. • Interstellar transmissions are flawless, but SOS messages are incomplete and filled with visual and audio noise. • The characters in action movies end up, for no particular reason, fighting in a functional, operating factory completely devoid of employees. which manufactures nothing in particular, in which flames periodically burst skyward from the roof and live steam suddenly shoots out into work areas even though no pipes have broken. • Though they are frequently tossed around like toy dolls, nobody ever wears seatbelts • Meteors, when falling on the ground, make craters not much bigger than themselves, whereas a real meteor larger than a few feet would destroy a city. • A starship that loses power will grind to a halt. • Passing spaceships make a "wooshing" sound and explosions in space make noise and expel shock waves. • Computers make sounds when presenting information on a screen. • When humans confront unfriendly aliens, the humans talk among themselves but the aliens are silent except for one spokesman. • Male aliens prefer human women. • Someone's clone is more than a mere twin, just like millions of other twins. There is some conflict or special link between them, or one of them, though intelligent, is to be used for spare parts. • Clones never have to go through childhood and are the same age is the clone. • Computers make noise when computing the answer to a question. • When anything on a large spaceship breaks down, their is never backup functionality and the results are always catastrophic. • Everyone reads text on a computer screen out loud and speaks every word they type. • A group of bad guys will attack the good guy one at a time, even as they see how he he handily kills them individually. • Every teenage boy is a genius but everyone else either doesn't notice or doesn't care. Every teenage genius is confident, extremely attractive, never wears glasses, and has a cute girl who hangs around with him but with whom he never wants to kiss or have sex. • Large spaceships are not equipped with defensive weaponry, but require a fleet of fragile dogfighting, one-man craft they store in hangars. • Robots either are made of metal and have two legs and a bubble head with lights in it, or they are perfect androids except for one visible, unnecessary difference. In either case, the robot's "brain" is always in its head. • A key crew member who should be managing others in a large starship does all the work himself. The captain and the topmost officers all leave the ship for every dangerous expedition. • People hit by ray guns go unconscious immediately and never feel, say, a painful shock. • If the past is altered in any way, the alternate timeline is not equivalent though somewhat different; it's much, much worse. • If there is a hero and a woman shows up, they will eventually kiss and probably fuck. Neither ever falls in love with an "ordinary" person unless it's a common alien woman on another planet. • If a ground team is attacked by a single alien, it is always the captain who engages in fistfights, not the security guy, since they never bring a security force. The other crew members stand around and watch. If there is a security force, it is a single guy with a single handgun who is both useless and the first to die. • No one who time-travels into the past is asked about future history or science / technology questions which have puzzled humanity for thousands of years. • Large explosions in space are accompanied by fireballs which aren't spherical, don't move directly outward from the wreckage, and behave as if they were driven by convection and pushing against an atmosphere, like mushroom clouds. • No one who travels to the future ever does it on purpose, and while there, they never chose to stay in the obviously better future. • Though the humans they encounter bend over backwards to be peaceful and thoughtful, wise aliens condemn humans for being warlike and barbaric, but never the far worse enemies the humans are fighting. • Everything destroyed explodes. • Aliens who work with humans look just like humans except for a single deformity, like a wrinkled forehead, a wrinkled nose, or strange patterns drawn on the skin. • No civilization besides humans and Vulcans just want to discover stuff. They all have some big deal going on. • No one who encounters the first alien on Earth thinks it's a huge, historical event. They treat the alien as just another person. • Except for the blond girl in the first Romero film, no one who encounters rotting dead people walking around is particularly bothered by the the fact that something impossible is happening. • Any information in any computer anywhere can be undetectably altered by bad people and children. • Aliens, and humans from the future, dress in identical uniforms. • Little kids never die. • When the evil overlord is killed, his massive headquarters destroys itself in a huge explosion. • Experiments in modifying the human genome always create monsters. • Some alien species go to the expense and trouble of crossing the galaxy for the sole purpose of destroying stuff, like it's their job. • If Scotty or McCoy as much as speaks to a woman on an earthlike planet who is not involved in their "mission", they will fall immediately and deeply in love and the woman will die. • Little kids never die. • Everyone, good and bad, is on some serious "mission". No one sees life as just being fun. • Bad aliens are physically stronger than humans. Good aliens are either our equals or far more fragile. • If someone is accidentally time-traveled to a random place and time on earth,it will always be on land and right before some important historical event. • Men on large spacecraft never dog or try to "pick up" the women crew members. • Bad guys may be good-looking, but an insectoid, lizardlike, ugly, or disgusting species is always bad. • Whenever you call someone on a videophone, the person is always home, they're never in the bathroom, and the line is never busy. • Everyone who answers a videophone at home is fully dressed, with perfect hair. • Though there are sentient robots and energy can be manipulated on a massive scale, mining of raw materials is done manually by teams of workers using simple tools. • Humans and aliens can not only fuck, but they can have half-breed children--despite the fact that humans cannot productively mate with even the most closely-related earth species. • No one questions teenagers wandering around secure military installations. • Ad-hoc equipment rigged up from loose junk works flawlessly the first time. • You can time-travel, but you can never change history, even when doing so would be extremely easy (e.g. killing John Wilkes booth). Whenever you DO change history, another event occurs which has the same result in the future. • Whole civilizations on other planets are retarded, and will either mindlessly mimic Earth or fall for any trick that a bad guy uses to manipulate their entire society. • Human bad guys (from bank robbers to world-conquerors) can buy arbitrarily expensive, advanced, and dangerous technology that no one else has. • The spacecraft crew gets into a bad situation with an obvious solution which never occurs to them. • Hibernation chambers are always transparent tubes and the people inside are never naked. • Sentient computers, including androids, are exactly as intelligent as humans. No more, no less. • There are countless entities in the galaxy which are "as evolved beyond us as we are above the amoeba", but they never make their existence known except by accident and they never seem to know each other. • Good-Guy women never act slutty or even sexual, but the men always do.