One that annoys me is "Oh, you can't pay for your food, you work for the restaurant now till you're paid off!"
Getting past the absurd number of Labor Laws and Sanitation Regulations we're violating with that set-up, in addition to how badly this is pissing off of the union if the restaurant happens to be unionized...
Most modern restaurants have dish washing machines minimizing the need for bus boys.
Additionally, there's a little thing called job training that typically has to be done. You don't just throw a mop at a guy and tell them to get to work, even if they're experienced each place has their own way of doing things. It's why it's actually really hard to get fired in real life, laid off sure, but actually fired? Unless you're just THAT incompetent... Cause these things take time and money.
And because you didn't do any training, all your deadbeat patron has to do is cut his hand trying to dry off a knife and he's not only paid off, but he's gonna own the fucking joint when his lawyer hears about this shit.
So what DOES the establishment do? Well it depends, but the most common scenario I've heard is that they take some form of collateral until you come back another day to pay them, and that's usually for a fancy restaurant. For most places though you'd pay before you even got your food making this a non-issue.
That's the most common one, there are some that are less common but still get on my nerves.
It could make sense if it's a long time ago when the population is much lower, there aren't as many labor laws, but I think even by the 60's this scenario would be bizarre if it actually happened. I could see it happening in modern day, but it'd have to be a very specific set of circumstances
Easy Sex Change - Now the name for this might be somewhat dated because no one refers to it as a "Sex Change Operation" anymore, but I can't think of a better name for it. Basically there's this idea in fiction that you can just go into any hospital looking like Fred Flintstone, and come out the same day looking like Pamela Anderson in her prime.
Medical Science does not work that way
The Transgender Healthcare standards wouldn't let it happen that quickly as you need doctor's notes (Hell I'm Post-Op for the better half of a decade and I'm still trying to get a note for a purely cosmetic boob job)
Doctors actually trained to do Genital Reconstruction Surgery are extremely rare, nearest one to me is three states away, and I'm not even sure he's still alive because that was 8 years ago and he was older than dirt.
Genital Reconstruction only changes what you've got going on down there, and until very recently wasn't covered by most insurance. All the other changes? You have to do estrogen for years and hope for the best.
The body can't recover that quickly (I literally had to spend the better part of a morning learning how to walk again after being bedridden for two to three after that... till then my body was still healing and I was basically immobilized.. also having to learn to pee was weird. Trust me you don't wanna be in a situation where you really have to pee but literally don't know how because the functionality of your genitals has been reversed.)
Admittedly I'm seeing it less and less as the idea of transpeople existing is mainstream now, but from the perspective of a transwoman like myself it's the trans equivalent of someone asking a homosexual male how they know which man's penis will open up to accept the other's.
Ordering food at a doctor's office - I've not seen this too often, but I have seen it more than once, which is enough to baffle me.
The Death Card - I just want a script writer to do a scene where someone draws Death, gets super scared, has it explained to them that the card isn't that bad. As it refers to death in a spiritual sense, meaning not the cessation of existence, but rather the continuous cycle of rebirth.... So it's actually referring to change.... And then immediately they draw the Inverted Tower (Which actually does mean that you're in for a bad time). I'm just surprised I haven't seen this joke done before...
Though to be fair, I think this is one everyone who isn't in Hollywood knows at this point. But as someone who actually practices Tarot it is annoyed.
The movie Clerks 2 - Look I love Kevin Smith, I think he does great work, I'm even one of the only people who love Clerks 3.... but... I can't just point to one thing in this film. Pretty much everything about Clerks 2 requires a lot of suspension of disbelief as it's obvious that Kevin Smith is too rich in 2006 to know how fast food joints work at the time.
The part where they close up to a Donkey Show definitely stands out, as chain franchised Fast Food restaurants are not only too busy for that to be plausible unlike a random gas station in the boonies (like in the first movie), but it's 2006, while it's not as common of a practice now, most McDonald's/Taco Bells/Wendy's of this era would have been 24 hours.
Video Games in general - If movies are to be believed, video games now are basically the same as they were in the 70's. Atari sound effects, high scores, limited lives, games having "levels".... When in reality games have moved on, most games don't really test the player's skill so much as tell you a story through in an interactive medium. So your progress isn't really based in how many points you're getting, but rather how far in the story you've gotten. Lives aren't really a thing anymore for the simple fact that if your streaming platform gave you an overly tough quiz half-way through the movie about things you saw in previous scenes, and punished you by making you re-watch the whole thing up until you got to the quiz again. No one would watch movies ever again.
Actually it's become a bit of a problem for the market as too many gamers are becoming annoyed that games are too much like movies funnily enough...
Now Mobile games play more like classic arcade games, sure.. but in movies they're clearly playing consoles. Heck even re-releases of games that did have limited lives and a scoring system (Sonic Origins for example) took them out to modernize the experience. Which is kind of a good thing because older games were artificially difficult to prevent you from beating the game over the weekend as a method to discourage rental services.
In the early 2000's, sure I guess I can buy that. Gaming was a niche hobby, good to dumb it down I guess. But nowdays it's considered weirder to not play games than to play them, so I don't know how this mistake keeps getting made.
I wouldn't be surprised if my grandmother had a fucking Steam account to play TF2 Themed Solitaire on. Because the oldest guy in my writing group has one to play Civilization and he's fucking 80.
Ditching a cop - In movies if you get in trouble and police are after you, just run away! You'll ditch them and whatever you did will be forgotten about. In reality: Warrants for arrest exist, the charge for resisting arrest exists, and so do body cams... So, no, not really.
My final one is
The Monitor is the computer! The tower is just decoration! - But, this cliche has vanished thanks to computer use becoming more common.
I've done that too... On a bicycle no less, and the cop was on a motorcycle. But I knew the neighborhood better. Basically if you can get far enough ahead to take a couple turns, and the last turn isn't an obvious one, and you don't have/they haven't seen a license plate, it's possible. Still a bad idea, I will not argue that.
I was 18, but yes, that would have been 1994 or 5, so no bodycams, meaning if the guy had caught me, he could have beat the shit out of me with impunity.
"Oh, you can't pay for your food, you work for the restaurant now till you're paid off!"
...
but I think even by the 60's this scenario would be bizarre if it actually happened.
I did it as recently as 1994... Little bit different situation, I let them know in advance I had no money, but was willing to work for a meal, I didn't surprise them by ordering first then telling them when I was done... But they did have me eat first before putting me to work. I think that was to see how serious I was- feed me first, then if I'm a bum, they're only out one meal, but if I'm still willing once I've eaten, I'm probably worth trusting with a few basic tasks. It worked out, I ended up staying there a couple days (slept on a couch in their lounge, it was a truck stop so they had showers too) and in addition to a few meals, $50 cash.
What you say is mostly true about big chains like Denny's, or anywhere near a city, but most rural mom & pop places would at least consider it.
I dunno, I live in a pretty rural area and pretty much every small business would either laugh at that offer or just give you the food for free because they felt sorry for you.
A GM at a restaurant chain I worked for tried that once. Then the homeless guy hit a customer in the head with a 2x4 he found out back and the GM was fired pretty immediately. He was giving the homeless guy free food in exchange for taking the trash from the back door to the dumpster.
That was my intent, if we lived in a world where doctors could wave their magic wand and turn us all into curvy cuties overnight... well that'd be awesome but I'd wonder why this magic wand doesn't curse cancer.