1) My Legions of Terror / henchmen will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, NOT face-concealing tinted ones !!
2) My ventilation ducts will be far too small for a human being to crawl through.
3) My noble half-brother, whose throne I have usurped, will be killed, NOT kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dark, dingy dungeon near any possible escape routes.
4) I will NOT use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. “Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse”. Instead, it will be more along the lines of; “Turn on that thing there”.
5) The artefact which is the source of my power will NOT be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in a socking great big dirty safe-deposit box with a big lock. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.
6) If a group of my henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will NOT berate them for incompetence then send the EXACT same group of idiots back out to try the same task again !!
7) When I've captured my adversary and he says, “Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about ??” I'll say, “Nope”, and shoot him. No, on second thoughts, I'll just shoot him, and THEN say “Nope”.
8) After I have kidnapped the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, NOT a lavish spectacle held in a castle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out !!
9) I will NOT include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will NOT be a large red button marked “Do Not Push”. The big red button marked “Do Not Push” will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it..
10) When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will ALWAYS travel in groups of at least two so that if one goes missing, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.
11) I will NOT design the Main Control Room in my impenetrable fortress / space station so that every single workstation is facing away from the door !!
12) One of my advisors will be an average eight-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be immediately corrected before implementation.
13) All my slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, NOT left for dead at the bottom of a cliff near a village of wise, kindly old martial arts teachers !!
14) My vats of hazardous toxic chemicals will ALWAYS be covered when they are not in use. Also, I will NOT construct flimsy wooden walkways right above them !!
15) I will NOT employ any device with a digital countdown. If such a device is unavoidable, I will set it to activate so that when the counter reaches 117, it explodes just as the hero is just putting his plan into operation.
16) I will NOT utter the sentence “But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know”.
17) If an advisor says to me “But my liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do ??”, I will reply; “THIS, you pillock !!”, and shoot him between the eyes.
18) I will NOT have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it could also provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point.
19) I will NOT have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father … especially if the hero looks like Johnny Depp.
20) Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will NOT indulge in ever increasingly loudening maniacal laughter.
Now, if the makers of “Stardust”, “Star Wars Episodes I-III”, “The Princess Bride”, “The Mummy”, “The Chronicles of Narnia”, “Eragon”, “The Golden Compass”, “Enchanted”, "The Spiderwick Chronicles", and all those fantasy films we’ve been subjected to over the past few years could PLEASE bear these rules in mind !!
Thank you.