101 things we've learned from videogames

42. As long as you are wearing at least one ring you will never die.

43. Pulling out a weapon makes you see a + sign wherever you look.

44. Running from side to side or backwards is just as easy and quick as running forwards.

45. Never trust a giant monkey wearing a tie.

46. Graveyard zombies are predatory homosexuals, who’ll strip you down to your Y-fronts.

47. Bus-loads of people will turn up to a mostly empty field to see a man in a hippo costume stand next to a mail box.

48. Fat people are always evil. If not from the beginning, they will betray you eventually.

49. You can only use a pair of skis once and the only shop selling them at resorts is invariably on the other side of a busy motorway with no visible means of a pedestrian thoroughfare.

50. Not only is it perfectly normal for animals to talk, but their default attitude is “sassy”.

51. Modern tank warfare will be replaced in the future by building a very large number of tanks on the battlefield itself, then attacking the enemy’s strongest point head-on with hundreds of them at once.


52. You know when you have won a fight when your opponent stands still, waiting for you to decapitate him.

53. Prostitutes will judge you on the fanciness of your car and give you 25% bonus health post-sex. This is only in the pre-AIDS ’80s. In 2008, you will be tsk-ed at by an Eastern European, which makes you feel sick and guilty, even though you’ve been stabbing people all day.

54. Karate and driving can both be learned in minutes simply by repeating sequential dance routines as requested by cartoon animals.

55. Wearing a pair of white gloves to work every day may seem an unwise choice if your chosen career is plumbing, but, in reality, you will never have to dirty your pristine mitts by fishing a swollen, fetid tampon from a shit-clogged outflow pipe.

56. The bodies of your murdered victims will fade and disappear if you wait for a few seconds.

57. Explosives are not stored, as you might expect, in secure containers in controlled environments, but in barrels that are littered around combat zones at random. Highly-trained evil soldiers are quite happy to engage in sustained fire-fights while standing next to them.

58. Doing athletics really hurts your wrist after a while.

59. You can’t ever trip, even when running backwards as fast as you can while firing a shotgun.

60. World War II infantry jargon included such phrases as “lol”, “n00b” and “OMG HaXXoR!!11!” Modern counter-terrorist SWAT teams use the same phrases.

61. People wink out of existence when you’re not there to see them.