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First Rule of the Yard

148 statements
27 feature instances
13 referencing feature instances

First Rule of the Yard	type	FeatureClass
First Rule of the Yard	label	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard	page	FirstRuleOfTheYard
First Rule of the Yard	comment	Whether it is a temporary jail-cell in a small-town precinct or a privately owned maximum-security nightmare, you are likely to be stuck in an enclosed area full of tough-as-nails, neck-tat hooligans who will either poke you full of holes or plug the holes you already have at the first sign of weakness. Might Makes Right and dog-eat-dog in a place full of serial-killers and thugs who think that Violence is the Only Option and you need to send a message that you ain't nobody's bitch. Or at least that's how it always is in the movies. When stuck in a cell, the main character or their overconfident, instigating friend will instantly try and be the tough guy. When played seriously, the first person they meet will immediately want to pick a fight with them out of a show of dominance, or perhaps they just don't like their face and we need something to justify their time in this cell. In other cases, the protagonist or their friend will have a case of Wrong Genre Savvy and act out the trope with the belief that there is Truth in Television. Either way, someone is going to get hurt. If the guards don't notice any of this, then The Guards Must Be Crazy.
First Rule of the Yard	fetched	2024-03-17T16:01:59Z
First Rule of the Yard	parsed	2024-03-17T16:01:59Z
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First Rule of the Yard	processingComment	Dropped link to InvertedTrope: Not an Item - IGNORE
First Rule of the Yard	processingComment	Dropped link to parodiedtrope: Not an Item - FEATURE
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First Rule of the Yard / int_1367cea0	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_1367cea0	comment	Worm: When Lung is first put in the Birdcage, he decides to invoke this. He's fully aware he's not the strongest parahuman in the place, but he still goes on a rampage and murders a few of the weaker inmates just to prove he's too dangerous for anyone to screw with. That, and the first inmate he murdered was his former subordinate, whom he blamed for having gotten them locked up in the first place.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_17030ab1	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_17030ab1	comment	Subverted in the The Cyanide & Happiness Show short "Prison", where a new prisoner plans to beat up the biggest, meanest looking guy around to gain respect. He lands a series of sucker punches on a huge, heavily tattooed man... and finds out that the guy he attacked is the most beloved and nicest man in the prison. All the other prisoners promptly attack the new guy in outrage.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_24ffd341	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_24ffd341	comment	In the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life", Frank and Mac knock Dennis unconscious with a nail-gun and drive nails into his hands with it to fake a stigmata in order to act out the fictional parts of Dennis's erotic memoir to legitimize them. It Makes Sense in Context. When he wakes up, he finds himself in the rehabilitation center that Frank and Mac left him in, only to be verbally assaulted by Sinbad and his "bitch" Rob Thomas. His entire stay there, Dennis is abused by Sinbad, who acts as though they are in a prison that Sinbad tries to be the dominant one in, made especially funny when the employees don't run it like a prison and Sinbad pretends to be affable when they are around. Considering we find out later that the clinic is actually just an empty warehouse and that Sinbad is a figment of Dennis's concussed imagination, Sinbad's role as the Scary Black Man is all just a part of Dennis's own Wrong Genre Savvy.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_2b727723	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_2b727723	comment	Sam Garland from Reddit, better known as Poem_for_your_sprog, observes that trying to enact this trope in real prison is a very good way to get yourself killed:
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First Rule of the Yard / int_38edabf0	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_38edabf0	comment	Discussed in Office Space: "Conjugal visits? Not that I know of. Now, a minimum security prison is no picnic. I have a client in there right now. You see, the trick is, kick someone's ass the first day or become someone's bitch. Then everything will be all right. Why do you ask, anyway?"
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First Rule of the Yard / int_3c3aec97	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_3c3aec97	comment	In Paradise PD, Hopson advises Dusty to find the biggest inmate he can and bash their face in with a lunch tray. Dusty realizes that he's the biggest inmate, and starts hitting himself in the face.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_42efb78	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_42efb78	comment	In Deadpool 2, both Deadpool and Russell Collins wind up in the Ice-Box, a Hellhole Prison designed to imprison dangerous mutants. Familiar with the trope, Russell stashes a pen in "the old prison wallet" with the intent of finding the toughest prisoner there and shanking him with it. When he tries invoking it on Black Tom Cassidy, he gets punched in the face for his trouble. Undeterred, he tries several more times and suffers a worse beating each time. Deadpool eventually chides him for it and points out how this will end, and advises Russell befriend the toughest guy instead. He takes this to heart and has success with the actual toughest guy in the slammer, Juggernaut, who has to be kept in a separate cell.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_455e3038	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_455e3038	comment	King of the Hill gives us a junior version in "Bobby Goes Nuts" when Bobby is sent to detention for kicking a bully in the testicles. When several other delinquent kids start to crowd around him, Bobby calmly stands up and asks which of them is the tallest, giving that kid and another toady each a nasty hit to the balls to establish dominance.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_468bebb0	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_468bebb0	comment	In the Discworld tale Gap Year Adventures, the first experience Rivka ben-Divorah has of Smith-Rhodesia is a prison cell. It's down to a forgotten lump of bhong resin that Customs find in her travelling backpack. Of course, the Queen Bee in the cell thinks a petite, slightly-built, foreigner is going to be easy meat. Rivka remarks afterwards
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First Rule of the Yard / int_4e45b093	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_4e45b093	comment	Parodied in The Big Bang Theory when Sheldon Cooper — a character who might otherwise be thought to be vulnerable — is briefly imprisoned. Thrown into a holding cell, he is appraised by the other inmates in a way that he is oblivious to and which might not augur well if played for drama. Instead, Sheldon glares at the big, hard, tough-looking con in the place nearest the door and says "You're in my spot". Figuring that anyone that harmless-looking who is willing to get in his face must be a real maniac psycho, the tough-looking con surrenders the spot. Sheldon is unmolested.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_546876cb	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_546876cb	comment	Parodied in Sonic Boom, when Sonic reveals why he's never taken swimming lessons to correct his Super Drowning Skills:
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First Rule of the Yard / int_55fcb799	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_55fcb799	comment	The Grand Budapest Hotel: M. Gustave mentions that in prison, "never be a candy-ass". He gets in a fight with an inmate who questioned his virility, and this gets him accepted by his cellmates as one of their own.
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The Grand Budapest Hotel	hasFeature	First Rule of the Yard / int_55fcb799
First Rule of the Yard / int_56cb92c3	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_56cb92c3	comment	In Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), after Peter, Groot, Rocket and Gamora wind up at the Kyln, a big blue inmate caresses Peter inappropriately, implying that he plans on raping him, before Groot grabs him by his nostrils. Rocket proceeds to make it clear to all of the other prisoners that Peter belongs to him and that anyone who even thinks of going after them has to get past Groot.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_5a3533fe	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_5a3533fe	comment	On My Name Is Earl, Earl is sent to Prison in Season 3, and worried about how he's going to survive. He tries to pick a fight with the biggest, toughest-looking guy there, but chickens out. (And though that guy looked big and mean, later in the episode it's revealed that he's more of a Gentle Giant than anything else.)
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First Rule of the Yard / int_629cfea5	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_629cfea5	comment	The Kiwami remake of Yakuza states that this was partially the reason why the Tojo Clan chairman sent an assassin after Kiryu when he was in jail. A substory reveals that Chairman Sera did so partly to see if Kiryu was capable of surviving prison as well as to ensure that no one would mess with him afterwards.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_6744d821	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_6744d821	comment	Parodied in The Owl House: After seeing how worried Luz is about starting school in "The First Day", Eda gives her the advice of walking up to the first student she sees and punching them in the face "to establish dominance".
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First Rule of the Yard / int_74603f32	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_74603f32	comment	Arcane: Vi's supplementary Council Archives material indicate she was causing fights almost from the time of her arrival at Stillwater Hold, starting with strangling a guard almost to death with her shackles. When she was still a teenager, she had already caused so many fights with inmates that the guards stopped keeping count, and by the time she was in her 20s she had a reputation as someone for other inmates to avoid.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_87b55b5d	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_87b55b5d	comment	The Onion: Biggest Guy In Prison Tired Of Every New Inmate Beating Shit Out Of Him On Their First Day
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First Rule of the Yard / int_87c6ac8e	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_87c6ac8e	comment	Invoked by Link in Monsters vs. Aliens when introducing himself to Ginormica.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_971cb5be	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_971cb5be	comment	In Life (1999), the two leads Ray and Claude are asked (read: confronted) for their corn bread by the massive Goldmouth. Claude concedes but Ray stops him, pointing out that it's a slippery slope to much worse "favors". Ray then goads the behemoth inmate into a yard fight; he gets KO'd, but gains everyone's respect.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_b2d7b634	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_b2d7b634	comment	Shadow and Bone: Upon Pekka's arrival at Hellgate, Matthias' cellmate immediately tries to kill him for revenge against his dead brother. Pekka overpowers him and bashes his head in, quickly bringing the prisoners under his sway.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_b40554c8	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_b40554c8	comment	In the Black Dynamite episode "Taxes and Death or Get Him to the Sunset Strip!", Black Dynamite and Richard Pryor get thrown in a jail cell when Richard recklessly fires Black Dynamite's gun and shoots a tire on a police car. In the cell, the unprovoked Richard decides to issue ultimatum to the other cellmates that the improbably cool Black Dynamite will "whoop [their] ass[es]" if they try anything. Since everything Richard Pryor says elicits uncontrolled laughter to those around him, any attempts at being serious falls flat.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_c7f1fdfe	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_c7f1fdfe	comment	Variation in American History X. Derek Vinyard is sentenced to two years in prison for manslaughter for his killings, and knows he has to join a gang to survive. He does this by deliberately working out in front of a black gang with his massive swastika chest tattoo on full display, in view of a group of onlooking Neo-Nazi gang members.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_cd713f4	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_cd713f4	comment	As a youth The Stainless Steel Rat gets himself thrown into prison so he can be educated on how to be a criminal. When his cellmate tries to attack DiGriz he easily disarms the man, whereupon his cellmate breaks down crying. It's then that DiGriz realises this wasn't such a good idea after all, as he's stuck in prison with petty bullies and losers instead of criminal masterminds.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_cf8a4c05	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_cf8a4c05	comment	Escape from Butcher Bay. Within a day of arriving in the Single-Max level of Butcher Bay, Riddick has openly challenged, then hunted down and killed Rust, heretofore the toughest inmate and leader of the Aquila Gang. This earns him the enmity of Abbot, the chief guard and The Man Behind the Man to Rust, and directly leads to a Prison Riot because of the resulting Evil Power Vacuum.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_d8c2cfe4	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_d8c2cfe4	comment	Subverted in Ant-Man. The movie opens with Scott in jail facing off against another inmate, but it turns out to be a sort of friendly hazing for people being released from jail.
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First Rule of the Yard / int_de90693a	type	First Rule of the Yard
First Rule of the Yard / int_de90693a	comment	Spider-Gwen: During Gwen's stint in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s prison she runs afoul of Titania, a superpowered inmate who has routinely been the victim of this trope and decides to invert it by attacking the new inmate first.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

First Rule of the Yard	processingCategory2	Prison Tropes
First Rule of the Yard	processingCategory2	Violence Tropes
The Punisher MAX (Comic Book) / int_86408bad	type	First Rule of the Yard
American History X / int_86408bad	type	First Rule of the Yard
Deadpool 2 / int_86408bad	type	First Rule of the Yard
Office Space / int_86408bad	type	First Rule of the Yard
blackâ€¢ish / int_86408bad	type	First Rule of the Yard
Time (2021) / int_86408bad	type	First Rule of the Yard
Escape from Butcher Bay (Video Game) / int_86408bad	type	First Rule of the Yard
The Cyanide & Happiness Show (Web Animation) / int_86408bad	type	First Rule of the Yard
A Heist with Markiplier (Web Video) / int_86408bad	type	First Rule of the Yard
The Onion (Website) / int_86408bad	type	First Rule of the Yard
Monsters vs. Aliens / int_86408bad	type	First Rule of the Yard

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