Over a pint last night the conversation turned to the sad death of Patrick Swayze. My friend said she dreamed of marrying Johnny Castle (his name in Dirty Dancing), I thought it was a stupid name. Never wanting to be sad in a pub, we started thinking of other daft names in movies.

In Point Break, Swayze is just called Bodie - the really bad name is reserved for Keanu who is known as Special Agent Johnny Utah!


My own favourite unreal character names are Cole Trickle - Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder - apart from being a bad name, in the commentary of the races later in the film there is a line "...and it's Trickle on the move" OK maybe it's just me that found it funny. Snake Plissken is Kurt Russell in Escape from New York and Castor Troy who is both Cage and Travolta in Face Off.

It got me wondering why films have people with such unbelievable names - anyone else find this amusing and got examples of crappy names? Why can't John Smith save the world for once...?