Cinematic Clichés: Mexican Standoff

In cinema there are few as often used clichés as the Mexican standoff.

...So what actually is a "Mexican standoff"?

Here's the dictionary definition: "A Mexican standoff is a confrontation where no strategy exists that allows any party to achieve victory. Anyone initiating aggression might trigger their own demise. At the same time, the parties are unable to extract themselves from the situation without either negotiating a truce or suffering a loss, maintaining strategic tension until one of those three potential organic outcomes occurs or some outside force intervenes."

There are also thematically similar scenarios implying same type of logic, which I won't be including on this list, such as "Catch-22", "Prisoner's dilemma", "Polish parliament", and "Deadlock". (These problematic situations might actually be stuff for another list).

It isn't very clear, when Mexican standoff was used the first time in its cinematic context. I would firstly assume that the earliest examples may not always be easily identified as a Mexican standoff, at least not in the sense as we understand it today. According to IMDb Keyword -search, there are 669 titles which currently (January 2024) have the keyword "Mexican Standoff" attached to titles, and the earliest one on the list generated that way, is The Green Hornet (1940).

This list will only include fictional movies, videos, and TV series (specific episodes only - and some TV shows will have numerous episodes with a different version of Mexican standoff, such as The Blacklist (2013–2023)).

Not all Mexican standoffs feature guns. Some variations don't incorporate any weapons at all, and some feature a variety of "weapons" such as rubber links, flower pots, or common office staplers to create a comedy effect, thus acknowledging the cliché -aspect. The endings and solutions for Mexican standoff are at best innovative, at worst predictable and plain dumb. Only a very lazy or unimaginative writer/director would use a Mexican standoff exactly the same way someone else has already done - Unless it's especially used to underline or highlight the cliché to a desired effect, or doing an easily recognizable "homage", to quote Quentin Tarantino saying of himself copying with small changes to some of John Woo's most famous and innovative Mexican standoffs.

One of the best, weirdest, utter bonkers version is Mexican standoff seen in Danish indie cult classic In China They Eat Dogs (1999). Very innovative and totally unexpected, yet most hilarious ending. Then of course there are the classics found in westerns, such as the most famous one featured in the finale of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966). A very unusual version can be found in Rio Bravo (1959), where the standoff has four people involved within it, and only one of them have a weapon in hand when the scene begins - yet immediately when the standoff ends one of them will be dead, yet two other people will now have guns and one person has dropped her "weapon" to distract the now dead one originally only person with a gun in hand. Yes, Howard Hawks was a genius!

NOTE: I apologize in advance after creating this list, that it will initially only include a few titles. I intend to add many more titles after I have either watched/re-watched the scene verifying it qualifies for this list, or if I simply recall the scene. This list should eventually include hundreds of titles from many different countries and languages.