10 Ridiculous Movie Tropes So Common People Think They're Real

1. Undercover Cops Have To Admit They're Cops If Asked

The Trope

Here's a trope so common in cop shows and movies that your average criminal absolutely believes it's true, that if you're in the presence of an undercover cop and you ask said cop if they are indeed an undercover cop, they're legally obliged to tell the truth in order to avoid entrapment.

In movies this will often play out with the undercover cop jokingly "confessing" to being a cop in such a jovial manner that the criminals don't actually take their confession seriously - as Laurence Fishburne's undercover cop did in the 1992 cult classic thriller Deep Cover.

The Reality

This is, of course, total nonsense. No police force on the planet would ever make undercover cops come clean if asked, because above all else, there's a good chance they'd be executed or seriously injured on the spot.

More to the point, a cop refusing to disclose they're a cop does not constitute entrapment: entrapment would be a cop inducing a criminal to perform an act they otherwise would not have, rather than simply tricking them into getting caught in an existing criminal enterprise.

This was subverted quite hilariously in Breaking Bad's second season, where gullible drug dealer Badger (Matthew Lee Jones) is told the myth by an undercover cop himself (DJ Qualls), only for the cop to buy drugs from Badger and arrest him immediately afterwards.