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

5. Cars Are Extremely Flammable

The Trope

This is a trope that's celebrated by fans of the action genre no matter how silly it can look - that any car or road vehicle is basically a tinderbox on wheels, whereby shooting a single bullet into the gas tank is enough to send it up in flames.

Perhaps the best ever example comes, unsurprisingly, from Michael Bay's The Rock, where a car chase climaxes with a tram car sliding down a hill and smashing into a parked car at relatively slow speed.

Rather than simply send some metal and glass smashing together, the collision triggers a gigantic explosion, catapulting the tram car a good 20-30 feet into the air. Right.

The Reality

While we're all aware of the possibility for cars to end up aflame following an accident, the incidence is decidedly less likely in real life. Thankfully, a few films have subverted this quite hilariously.

In Last Action Hero, when the titular hero Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger) travels from his movie world to our own reality, he's shocked that firing a few easy bullets into a car doesn't cause it to explode into a fireball.

21 Jump Street also did a terrific job mocking this, with the final car chase constantly teasing cliched explosions that never happen...until a gigantic fireball is finally triggered by...a chicken coop.