5. One Brief Symptom Is Enough To Diagnose An Entire Illness
Picture this. You're feeling a bit under the weather and decide to visit your doctor. When you arrive, you're called into his office and asked to take a seat. You cough suddenly, and the doctor stares at you as though you've brought his wife's head in with you wrapped in a plastic bag. "You coughed," he says. "You have cancer." That kind of insane logic is exactly that, of course:
insane. But movie-goers know better. If a character coughs at any point during a movie (and they're not caught in a sandstorm or in a cellar with a dead body), it almost certainly means that they are terminally ill and the movie is politely telling you to prepare yourself for this earth-shattering revelation. The same goes for a number of varying conditions you might notice on a whole host of your favourite characters. A light-headed character, of course, points directly to an incurable brain tumour. A character who is bizarrely forgetful? That's Alzheimer's disease, I'm afraid. The logic here is that this is a simple way for a screenwriter to slip in a dramatic plot point with the absolute minimum effort. Just once we'd like to see a character who coughs up some blood and feels light-headed and forgets their name who turns out to be absolutely fine and is just, like, an asshole or something.