Urban Legends in Movies!

The Legend: One of the most well-known legends. A young couple is making out in their car when they hear a radio report of a crazed killer with a hook hand on the loose. They hear strange scraping noises outside their car and drive off in a panic. When they get back home, they find his hook hanging from one of the doorhandles, implying that they just escaped with their lives.

The Movie: This urban legend in movies has shown up a few times, most notably I Know What You Did Last Summer, which featured a hook-handed antagonist. It also featured, in an altered form, in Urban Legend. Bill Murray tells it to some campers in Meatballs and an episode of Arrested Development uses Buster's prosthetic hand to set up some horrible jokes.

The Legend: A babysitter is home alone at night, having already put the kids to bed. She starts receiving phone calls from an unidentifiable voice urging her to "check the children." She writes it off as a prank, but eventually gets so scared that she calls the police. They trace the call and tell her that it's coming from inside the house - there is a serial killer upstairs trying to lure her up to become his next victim.

The Movie: The most famous urban legend in movies version of this is When A Stranger Calls, which is pretty much a straight-up telling of the tale.Other movies have used the trope, most notably Scream.

The Legend: This is a popular urban legend across many college campuses. Essentially, it states that if a horrible event happens close to the end of term, any students who might have been affected by it will automatically pass their classes. Obviously, no such rule exists at any university on Earth, otherwise students would be killing each other left and right. The BBC actually investigated policy on this matter and found some colleges that let students keep their current grade and others that give students a "predicted grade" if they can't return to class.

The Movie: This urban legend in movies has figured into a number of flicks, notably a pair in 1998. Dead Man On Campus was a comedy that starred Zack Morris and another dude as they looked for a depressed roommate they could push over the edge to suicide, and The Curve was a drama about the same thing.

The Legend: A girl is at home alone with her dog when a radio broadcast about a crazed serial killer comes on. She locks all the doors and goes into her room with the dog to protect her. She wakes up in the middle of the night to a scary noise, but is comforted when she feels her dog lick her hand. In the morning, she wakes up to find her dog dead and "HUMANS CAN LICK TOO" written on the wall in its blood.

The Movie: Urban Legends: Final Cut uses the story to set up a kill by the movie's villain, and Urban Legends: Bloody Mary also uses it. It was also told around the campfire on an episode of The L Word. This urban legend in movies gets around!

The Legend: A woman is driving alone at night. A car comes up behind her, tailgating, honking, and flashing his highbeams. She panics and starts to drive faster, trying to get away from her pursuer. She eventually loses him and makes her way home, only to discover that the other driver was trying to warn her about the unknown passenger in her back seat, who kills her.

The Movie: The first Urban Legend starts with this scene, where Natasha Gregson Wagner gets her noggin chopped off by an axe-wielding maniac, and it also featured in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.

The Legend: If you look into a mirror in a dark room and chant "Bloody Mary" three times, the ghost of a dead girl will appear to you. Exactly why you would want to do this is still a mystery, but this is an extremely popular urban legend that shows up all over the world. When Bloody Mary appears, there are a variety of things she's supposed to do, including ripping your face off or scratching you to death with her talons.



The Movie: This is one of the most popular urban legends in movies. 2006's Bloody Mary features the ghost as the primary antagonist, and the Candyman movies use a variation on it. Supernatural has an episode titled Bloody Mary and it's all about the legend. Most recently, the trailer for Paranormal Activity 3 sees characters chanting the name in front of a mirror.

The Legend: Before Bubble Yum hit the market in 1975, bubble gum was rock-hard and needed to be masticated vigorously to get it to chew-ability. Naturally, people were a little freaked out by the new technology, and an urban legend quickly sprang up that a spider laid eggs in a match of Bubble Yum and baby spiders would come swarming out of your mouth if you chewed it.

The Movie: This one seems like it would be rife for exploitation in the movies, but unfortunately it's only in a single installment of the Urban Legends series. Arachnophobia uses a variant of the trope, where a boil on somebody's face turns out to be a nest of spider eggs.

The Legend: After a night of heavy drinking, a person wakes up in a bathtub full of ice cubes with a pain in their side. Examining the area, they find a fresh surgical scar. Sometimes there's even a note that says "Thanks for the kidney." Organ harvesting is incredibly difficult, as preserving your guts after they're out of your body is not easy. It has happened - most notably to prisoners in Chinese prisons - but we don't really see it in the Free World so much.

The Movie: A variant of this urban legend in movies happens in Crank 2, where Chev Chelios ends up strapped to an operating table having his heart removed. Kidney theft is also the center of the plot-line in gore horror flick Turistas.