A great many of these tropes intersect with the Evil Overlord tropes.
On “Law and Order,” it would be refreshing if the rapist or killer DIDN’T turn out to be a white millionaire.
Our first house did too. 1970s design with a galley kitchen. You may have seen a similar design in Breaking Bad with the White’s house. (A somewhat different design in a newer part of town, and I think it was a modified plan to boot–my parents were the second or third owners, so I don’t know for sure.)
While admittedly I never watched her show, I can’t exactly see Angela Lansbury’s character sitting in a darkened office with the obligatory shadow of Venetian blinds on the wall behind her, with her fedora, triple scotch, three day stubble, and Camel dangling from the corner of her mouth, mordantly pondering the existential dread and ennui of “too many women, too many pills”* thing.
*thank-you, Mr. Johnson
Or more importantly, it would be refreshing if the rapist or killer on “Law & Order”, “Law & Order SVU” DIDN’T turn out to be the big name guest star on that episode.
You could make the argument that Three’s Company fits this trope. Jack Tripper has to pretend to be gay to be able to stay in his apartment. There was also an episode where he had to pretend to be his own twin brother.
Somebody needs to produce this show now!
If we’re locked in to “three day stubble,” then perhaps we should cast Chynna instead.
Also, the jet engine.
Also, Mal (?) in a life-or-death struggle with a villain, and his allies come onto the scene, and one says, “This is something he needs to finish himself,” and he says, “No, no, you can kill him!” so they all shoot his opponent.
Fans of Sherlock Holmes could point to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Adventure of the Yellow Face” as an example of a story in which the genius detective comes up with a solution to a case that is brilliant, logical, and completely wrong.
At the end of the story, Holmes tells Watson “If I ever become too arrogant, kindly mention ‘Norbury’ to me.”
Villain grabs hostage, points gun to hostage’s head, tells cop, “Drop your gun or I’ll kill him/her.”
Rather than complying and putting the gun down (as always happens,) the cop simply takes a well-aimed shot and kills the hostage-taker.
A similar scene I like seeing subverted: the protagonist is a regular person (not a cop or a soldier or something like that) being menaced by a villain. “You don’t have the guts to pull that trigger!”
Protagonist empties the clip into their chest.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang pulled that one off brilliantly.
Nick Nolte shot the bad guy holding Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours.
In post #14, Leo Krupe gives a written quotation from a movie without mentioning what movie it is. It’s from L. A. Confidential. Here’s the scene:
The best subversion I have seen of that:
Bruce Willis in the Fifth Element.
The natives are just as petty, violent, mean-spirited, cruel and avaricious as the outsider interlopers, have NO mystical connection but only *seemed *closer to the soil because they had no choice to survive, and are eager to get themselves some material possesions, technology and money.
Hell yeah I’ve argued for these for a while.
Always? IME, that’s how a minority of how those scenes go.
Most often - hero doesn’t put the gun down, but keeps talking, trying to talk the villain down. Usually works. When it doesn’t, the bad guy usually gets shot (often by the lead’s partner). Occasionally they’re taken down without gunfire. Rarely does the situation work out for them.
Next most - hero does just what you say and shoots the guy.
Rarely - hero shoots, either shooting the bad guy through the hostage, or just shooting the hostage.*
And a lot of the time, when the lead does put down their gun, they’ve got backup that the villain doesn’t see.
- My favourite version of that version, from Star Trek: Enterprise…the Enterprise crew is fighting a bunch of old-west outlaws (it makes sense in context, and not through time travel, either)… One of them grabs T’Pol, and makes his threat. Reed shoots T’Pol with his phase pistol’s stun setting…the bad guy just looks confused as he drops what he thinks is T’Pol’s corpse, and Reed stuns him.
To some extent, that was Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto.” It showed the Indians as brutal savages who pretty much DESERVED to be crushed by the Spanish conquistadors.
As for small towns, well, let’s face it, there is a plethora of novels, plays, stories and movies showing small town America as Hell. Everyone from Edgar Lee Masters to Sinclair Lewis to Grace Metalious to Shirley Jackson has told us that small town America is filled with ignorant, bigoted, provincial, hypocritical assholes.
That’s at least as popular a meme as “small town Americans are the salt of the Earth.”
Making a phone call…as soon as the number is dialed, an incoming call is already coming in, but it’s fucking impossible to retrieve the incoming call because the phone is being douchey and not letting you answer the fucking thing, and instead just goes into voicemail, essentially tying up your phone for a bit, as you wait there…
…meanwhile a smiling Fernando Rey putters away on his pleasurecraft…
ETA - another phone thing -
“Ok talk to you later.”
“Yeah bye-bye.”