Pairing a notable song with a scene in which a character self-harms nearly always turns a song over to the “inseparable” side, whether it’s during Richie Tenenbaum’s beard-shaving scene in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (Elliot Smith’s “Needle In The Hay“) or the unnamed girl who has developed an infatuation with James van der Beek’s Sean Bateman (brother of American Psycho Patrick Bateman) in 2002’s The Rules Of Attraction. The aforementioned girl ends her life in the bath in devastating real time to Harry Nilsson’s “Without You,” ensuring you’ll never hear that sad, romantic song the same way ever again.

Meanwhile, in a multi-levelled example, director and convicted paedophile Victor Salva named an entire film after peppy hit Jeepers Creepers (which was itself written for the 1938 flick Going Places) and the song is played and mentioned several times before the movie’s shock ending, where we discover just what happened to Justin Long’s character after he was snatched away by the monstrous Creeper.

For sure, cinema has taught us that these incidents aren’t always akin to the repetitious acceptance of “I Got You Babe” and there are surprisingly few other songs paired with films that have had the impact that “Stuck In The Middle With You” had with Reservoir Dogs (we’re looking forward to hearing about the ones that have connected with you personally in the comments, should you have time for mulling) but the ones that have made the grade do come up a lot with film fans.

Michael J. Fox rocking out to “Johnny B. Goode“ in front of an increasingly perplexed hall of high schoolers at the Enchantment Under The Sea dance in ’80s time travel hit Back To The Future will probably give you better vibes than “Stuck In The Middle With You,” but you might get a contact low from hearing “People Get Up And Drive Your Funky Soul“ by James Brown if your brain has linked it to images of Tobey Maguire cringeworthily dancing through the streets in Spider-Man 3. The weirdness bubbles up to the strains of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams“ if you’re a steadfast David Lynch fan. Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand“ might conjure meta scenes of Scream queens trying to escape Ghostface (although Peaky Blinders may have co-opted it by now), while “The Killing Moon” could cause your brain to spit out images of Jake Gyllenhaal frantically cycling home in his pyjamas at the start of Richard Kelly’s 2001 sci-fi masterpiece, Donnie Darko. If we played you “Where Is My Mind?” by The Pixies, would you picture Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter watching a skyline full of buildings crumble?

“Yes. You see what I’ve become? See what I must do to survive? Live off another, a mere parasite!”

So how exactly do songs become inseparable from the films they crop up in, and why do our brains struggle to untangle them? We asked neuropsychologist and friend of the site, Dr. Jens Foell, who knows his stuff. He notes that often where these songs are in play, so is a variation of the McGurk effect – an illusion where one sound is paired with a visual of a different sound, leading you to believe there’s a third sound.