Pratchett. But yeah, that's my favourite part of Jingo--my least favourite of any book of his since Equal Rites. (I think he really hit his stride with Mort.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

You must have said this before, since you say it now.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Forgive me if this has been mentioned before:

• Bad guys have glowing red eyes. When a character turns bad or is possessed by an evil spirit, their eyes suddenly turn red or black, yet nobody around them notices.

If only it were that easy in real life!

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion has several quests where you come into contact with vampires who've burrowed into society. Two quests in particular involve innocents having been accused of being vampires.

Thing is: in-game vampires (with one immersion-breaking exception) have unique eyes: the eyeballs go black with red pupils as a result of the disease.

There are two quests in which a casual examination of the accused vampire's eyes would be sufficient to clear the (innocent) accused parties. Unfortunately, that factoid wasn't written into the game. Even if the protagonist is entirely familiar with vampires (mine being a highly experienced mage-healer, among other things) the player isn't given the option of examining the victims and offering a medical opinion based on the objective lore.

In one odd case, the game's quest implies the presence of a hostile vampire, and you end up hunting him down in a densely-populated vampire's nest, and yet an earlier conversation with this very person showed clear, perfectly normal human eyes.

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[Dr. Horrible]___________________________[Penny]
Listen close to everybody's heart________And you believe there's good in everybody's heart
And hear that breaking sound_____________Keep it safe and sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart____With hope you can do your part
And crashing to the ground_______________To turn a life around

In a similar vein, when a character's body is possessed by the mind/spirit/soul of another, and begins inexplicably speaking with the possessor's voice. (extra credit if other characters don't notice the change)

A few others, completely unrelated (to each other, or the above):

Any ventilation ductwork large enough for an adult human to crawl through is also hung securely enough to support the weight of said adult human... until it becomes least convenient for such structure to fail.

Anyone shooting at someone else (usually Our Hero™) can manage to hit narrow intervening objects (e.g. banisters, lamp posts, sign posts, fence posts) but still completely miss their intended target (file this one under "hero armor")

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"Earth diameter is 7,900 miles, and Moon diameter is 2,160 miles. It takes on average 90 minutes to complete one Earth orbit, so one Moon orbit should take roughly 25 minutes." - Sam "NasaScam" Colby

Bearer of the highly coveted "I found Venus in nine Apollo photos" sweatsocks.

DataCable^2008 A+

Most British comedy relies on this, If someone has to be chosen to dress as a woman it's always the big burly one. In the 'Carry On' series of films Bernard Breslaw is usualt the one selected. 'Carry on Girls' and 'Carry on Matron' (subtitled 'From Here to Maternity)

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

SG-1 hung a big lampshade on this. "Oh, look, his eyes are glowing. I knew he was a Go'uld!"

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Well, sure, but most English women do look like big, burly men.

(Hey, c'mon. You offer up a straight line like that, you gotta expect a come back.)

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

In one of the DCOMs, the people controled by the evil spirit have glowing neon green eyes. That really surprised me, as I'm used to associating neon green with good.
How many evil spirits have you met in real life?

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

You are?!

Plenty, I assure you.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

The opposite often seems to be true also, as evidenced by this:



Oops! Grabbed the wrong image file.
Here we go:



Right folder, but still the wrong file. Close, though, since she's working on an album with the Spamalot co-creators.
OK, one more shot:

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Its probably been done but my #1 scifi cliche is super-advanced laser weaponry that just keep on missing their targets. Didn't any of the R&D budget go into a decent targeting system? Gee perhaps they should try a laser sight on their laser weapons so they'll be able to hit the side of a barn next time!

My favorite handgun is from an Ian M Banks short story - it was intelligent enough to talk to you out of doing something stupid or immoral, it never ever missed except when it wanted to and it had enough grunt to bring down an armoured spaceship!

Usually, red glow-y stuff is bad and green glow-y stuff is good.

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

The Turbolasers from the first Death Star.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

TIE fighters shot green beams while X-wings shot red.

But then Luke had a green lightsaber in Return of the Jedi while Vader's was always red, so it works both ways.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

I was thinking more of magic than technology in terms of the glow stuff.

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

Interestingly, despite the number of times it's been mentioned in thread, I don't think anyone here has actually tried to explain deja vu.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

She was that Barsoomian princess who married John Carter.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort