"You guys think bar scenes always have to start at a billiards shot?"
This inherently punny Hollywood trope is where, all of a sudden, a pool table is shown at an angle. Balls are racked up and the player makes a shot. There is a satisfying "click" sound as balls fly off in all directions, then the camera pans up to show the player, typically a shady character, or a big Badass Biker in a cowboy hat. Bonus points if a jukebox is playing Country Music in the background.
Related to Bad Guys Play Pool, but this one is not a character trope, it's a scene-establishing device, showing that the scene is in a drinking establishment. It may range from a friendly Local Hangout in a good neighborhood to a rough and tumble roadhouse or even a Bad Guy Bar in a Wretched Hive.
Subtrope of Establishing Shot.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Cowboy Bebop: Spike playing pool at a bar is kicked off with a billiard shot.
Films — Live-Action
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day starts the bar scene with a pool table shot before it pans up to show the biker watching the T-800 enter.
- In The Butterfly Effect, the college bar scene opens with a pool table shot as Thumper demonstrates his pool prowess to Evan.
- In Thor, the scene of Thor and Selvig getting a drink at the local bar after getting Thor out of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s custody opens with a pool table shot.
- A rack is broken in Capricorn One to open the scene where Intrepid Reporter Caulfield meets his contact in a bar. The contact starts explaining that the mission's telemetry is completely wrong, but when Caulfield gets distracted, his contact has vanished.
- In Deadpool (2016), the scene at the bar where the recruiter approaches Wade starts with a pool table shot.
- One of the scene at the youth club in Dazed and Confused starts with an overhead shot of a rack being broken by one of the characters.
- A bar scene in A Beautiful Mind starts off with one character breaking the rack.
- The second scene of Kiss the Girls at the night club where Casanova picks up a new victim is kicked off by a billiard shot.
Live-Action TV
- In The West Wing episode "Manchester Part II", the scenes go from flashback to present. One "present" scene opens with the camera on a pool table in the bar the senior staff is hanging out in.
- The Twilight Zone (1959): The episode "A Game of Pool" starts with one of these. The camera follows the ball's trajectory, then focuses on Jack Klugman's character's reaction to it.
- Played straight and then lampshaded by Abed in Community episode "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television" when the scene cuts to the group at Britta's bar and we see a close-up of Abed breaking a rack.
Abed: You guys think bar scenes always have to start at a billiards shot? Or do you think every time someone takes a shot in billiards they start a new bar scene without knowing it?
- Daredevil (2015): After the Kitchen Irish are massacred in the second season premiere, such a shot is used to cut to Matt, Karen and Foggy playing pool at Josie's, or rather, Matt and Foggy standing on the side as Karen sinks balls effortlessly.
- In the pilot of Altered Carbon, Kovacs invites Ortega for a drink. The scene then cuts to a bar scene that starts off with a pool table shot.
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem: At the Nest bar in Harbor Town, a patron sinks all the balls in a pool table once Ann gets nearby.
Western Animation
- Rick and Morty: Coop, the first soldier in "Rick and Morty's Thanksploitation Spectacular, gets introduced striking a pool ball.
- Danger Mouse: "The Intergalactic 147" (the original series finale) shows that a galaxy-wide game of snooker is underway with a rocket-propelled cue stick hitting a white sphere which has already knocked Mars into a black hole. Earth is the next to be pocketed to gain the maximum score of 147, so DM races the clock to save the planet.
