Firefly

Tall Card - As seen in: Firefly

As the above entries prove, you can’t very well create a sci-fi television series without also coming up with its own arcane pastime, and Tall Card is, in the universe of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, the poker-like card game of choice – though exactly what the rules are is anyone’s guess. Tall Card’s briefly seen in the episode, Shindig, where Simon hosts a game to decide who’ll carry out various boring chores. “Plums are tall,” he says, mysteriously. “No tall card claim.”

Writer Jane Espenson briefly got everyone’s hopes up when she claimed that a full list of Tall Card’s rules were available on Fox’s website – something that later turned out to be a false alarm. Firefly fans are endlessly inventive, though, and some have managed to piece together their own version of Tall Card based on its brief cameo in the series. This means that, with the help of an inkjet printer and a pair of scissors, you too can use Tall Card to decide who will do the washing up, hoovering or septic tank cleansing.