Don’t forget Ghost! 
That reminds me:
All accomplished women are gorgeous and well dressed at all times. Accomplished men can be as unkept as they like. (All incarnations of CSI, I’m looking at you.)
Have you seen She Hate Me (fictional film with a few scenes featuring actual filmed live birth)?
Or overcome, say, the white guy’s golfing problems. This is patronizing stuff, and I’m amazed people ever go for it.
The loud black character (usually a fat woman) who helps the white person loosen up is also very annoying. C.f. Bringing Down the House. White people may be square, but I think there’s more than enough proof that white people can rap at this point, so could the filmmakers please tone it down with the “white people are all square” crap?
Me too. Especially if it’s mine. 
How about the summer camp movie where the the fat kid wins the big athletic event with some accidental/contrived circumstance?
Or the Inspector Clouseau cliche: the inept investigator who stumbles onto the solution either completely accidentally or through the machinations of his brilliant, competent sidekick?
I also hate the contrived contest cliche: the big time developer is going to destroy the poor persons home/orphanage/playground and can only be stopped by losing a skateboarding contest to a bunch of scrappy, lovable losers.
I forgot the cute cliche animal. It has become part of the formula to have a subplot with the offbeat pet of one of the characters. There’s the little dog in “Something About Mary,” the duck in Vin Diesals baby-sitting flick, and the ferret in “Along Came Polly.”
All excellent choices so far and I agree with all of them. I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the good old “Two people that always argue or down right hate each other have a big fight then immediate snog like crazed monkeys”.
Action scenes involving wrecking cars, or explosions, or exploding cars. They show the same damned scene over and over because it cost a lot of money, so we must also want to see it over and over, right. Wrong.
And, of course, extras are always shown running away from the wreck/explosion unharmed because, apparently, seeing someone die in an obviously fatal situation would harm our delicate psyches.
Well, that DOES happen in real life.
Okay, flame time, but somebody has to say this. You know what cliche I’m really starting to hate? Cafe Society threads about cliches that we hate.
I mean really folks, isn’t this like the gazillionth time we’ve covered this topic? And I haven’t even read any of the posts but I’ll betcha I know what’s been mentioned -
- cars that explode when they crash,
- fat schlubs married to hot babes,
- poor twentysomethings living in unbelievably posh downtown Manhattan apartments,
- grocery bags with a loaf of french bread & carrots sticking out the top,
- people who type on computers superfast w/o making typos,
- ‘ugly’ girls who are really hot girls wearing glasses,
- a bedspread that is draped just so as to cover the naughty parts of the naked couple lying in it,
- the supposedly dead bad guy gets up again just as the hero has turned his back.
- the supermodel scientist who is supposedly smart & self-reliant at the movie’s outset, but turns into a screaming shrinking violet in need of rescuing by the end.
- a cat jumping out of the closet in a horror movie.
- trailers that start out with “In a world…”
I think it’s time to give the “cliches” topic a rest. But that’s just MHO.
Your post is SOOOO cliched… 
Some random cliches;
Houses/apartment floorplans that violate the laws of physics (Brady Bunch, Golden Girls, I Love Lucy, etc. And why does every sitcom house seem to have stairs in both the living and kitchen rooms.
If a female character is a vegetarian or vegan and she gets pregnant she’ll find some excuse to eat meat no matter how out-of-character it is or how militant she was about her diet (Phoebe, Abby, to name a few).
Everyone has huge bathtowels that make for very modest coverup without the need to constantly hold them together.
If a couple are in bed naked together one of them is always on top of the sheet but under the blanket so E can get up and take the blanket with em and leave eir partner covered.
Men are always totally incapable of caring for children or doing basic household tasks. In older sitcoms women were equally incapable of working, but that’s no longer the case.
Any show involving a teenage male will have an episode where he learns he’ll be required to shower after gym class (few schools even expect their students to shower let alone require it anymore). He’ll panic, try several schemes to get out of it, have a conversation with an older male relative, and get over his modesty.
No matter how religious a Christian character is E’ll rarely if ever mention Jesus (7th Heaven). The exceptions are religious fundalmentalists there for comic relief.
This one seems to be pretty ubiquitous in sitcoms these days: two straight male characters in some kind of non-romantic relationship, acting as though it’s a romantic one. They might be regularly playing pool, or have gotten into a particular card game, or whatever. One will then go and pursue said activity with another, and accusations of cheating, tears, and puns will follow. I don’t mind the puns so much, but this whole scenario seems to be getting pretty tired.
Speaking of gay jokes. Son starts acting outside stereotypical gender-roles (not interested in sports, likes drama, etc). His father panics that his son might be gay so he trys to get him interested in “many” activites (perhaps inadvertently exposing his son to gay culture) to no avail. Then at the end of the episode we learn that the son is in fact straight, often the nonconforming behavior was to impress a girl. The parents are relived that their son’s straight and we the audience is supposed to share their relief. King of the Hill, the War at Home, every episode of Still Standing, even the Simpsons did it.
The Simpson’s episode where Homer thought Bart was gay was simply to show how ridiculous homophobia is. Since John was gay, Homer started looking for signs of Bart “turning gay.” As Marge put it: You don’t even know what you’re scared about.
The standoff with good guy and villain both pointing guns at one anothers’ heads.
They both really want each other dead. What the fuck are they waiting for?
When the good guy finds out the bad guy’s big secret, and confronts him when they are all alone and the bad guy is holding a weapon.
The Mad Scientist that wants to Take Over the World!
GMAFB!
The most scientists want to take over is their granting agency. Actually, just the money from their granting agency - with some decent funding they can go back to the lab and do some real Science and not have to sit in any more #*$(@ meetings, or wear ties (or pantyhose, for female scentists) or any of that annoying crap.
You could buy off most scientists with the change from between the cushions of Dr. Evil’s sofa.
Has there ever been a scientists’ coup? Or even close? (Stalin’s “Doctor’s plot” was a paranoid delusion.) But it’s in every … single … spy movie.
One that’s really annoying to me; Death Cleans All. The example I’m thinking of, if I remember correctly, is “Cruel Intentions.” The handsome but rakish guy who’s been a complete bastard the entire film dies saving someone’s life. Suddenly, he’s okay. Nothing bad he did in life matter, because, you know, he died saving someone (and in that particular movie, the death and ‘saving’ were so telegraphed and poorly done it was, if anything, even more painful than the cliche.). Argh. Hate, hate, HATE that cliche.