Gruff New York cab drivers with strong Brooklyn accents (‘you wanna go to da choich on toidy toid street?’)
Jokes about yuppies died a slow death in the 90s as yuppie-dom took over the mainstream. (Look at the smirky investor couple in Beethoven - these days, they just come across as slightly more annoying versions of everyday people.)
Hey, they might live, they might die. It’s in God’s hands.
Irish-accented cops.
Bar Mitzvah parties featuring a giant sculpture of the boy of honor made of chopped liver.
It turns out one of the main characters has a doppelganger, a dead ringer who even sounds the same when they talk. This lookalike usually turns out to be evil, or have sinister motivations. If it’s a comedy, hilarity ensues. If a drama, shenanigans ensue. This was a staple of old 60s-70s sitcoms like F-Troop or Gilligan’s Island. On Bonanza, Little Joe had an evil doppelganger at least once, but I’m pretty sure it happened two separate times. The most recent time I saw this trope was on an episode of Monk where a mob guy who was a dead ringer for Monk dies in a random accident, so the cops have Monk pretend to be the mob guy for reasons.
A husband and wife, married for years, often with children, suddenly find out that the pastor who married them wasn’t properly licensed to marry people, so they aren’t actually married. Oh, the scandal! But on the good side, it gives the show an opportunity to have a nice second wedding. Off the top of my head I believe this happened to Rob and Laura on the Dick Van Dyke show and definitely to the Howells on Gilligan’s Island. For the latter, Skipper could remarry them, but only on water, so they built a raft and took it out into the lagoon (Fortunately Thurston had packed a tux for the 3 hour tour, and Lovey as always was looking lovely). Problem solved (despite a little raft mishap that made it a combo wedding / baptism).
A husband and wife (or sometimes roomies- it probably happened with the Odd Couple and Laverne and Shirley) have a falling-out, so they divide the house / apartment into two separate halves, with a big dividing line down the middle. Hilarity ensues.
Law & Order used this trope when the detectives stumbled upon a woman giving birth.
Detective Briscoe mentions boiling water and his partner asks them if they really need to do that. And Briscoe responds with the same line you mentioned–“it’s what they do on TV”
I’ve been rewatching LOST on Netflix and I just saw an episode a couple days ago where two characters were handcuffed together. But that originally aired 20 years ago…
Recent one I noticed watching Young People React type videos for 40 Year Old Virgin (there are a lot since it turned 20 years old. Excuse me while I shrivel up like an apple on fast forward, turn to dust and blow away in the wind) every single person did not understand why he should have been embarrassed by his apartment. Every single one, no exceptions, thought all his action figures and gaming gear was hella cool.
Office setting: man tells his secretary to “take a memo.” He proceeds to verbalize the memo/letter, and she writes or types it word-for-word.
Radiation confers superpowers!
This, of course, was a huge one in the early Atomic Age, when it was dimly known that radiation is a powerful thing, but was otherwise poorly understood by the general public. In old monster movies, radiation made small creatures like ants huge. Peter Parker got his powers by a bite from a radioactive spider.
On the comedy side, Gilligan’s Island (which was basically one big collection of cheesy tropes strung together, like a popcorn garland on a Christmas tree) once had an episode where a crate of vegetable seeds wash up on shore. They grow the vegetables and eat them, but it turns out the seeds had been exposed to radiation in some government experiment. They all temporarily get different superpowers depending on what vegetable they ate-- Gilligan I think got super strong because he ate spinach; someone else ate carrots and had super (x-ray?) vision; etc., etc. This was actually a double trope, because it was not only about radiation conferring superpowers, but also troped on the supposed benefits different vegetables were thought to provide.
The flaming-gay-but-nobody-mentions-it comic relief character, a la Uncle Arthur on Bewitched.
I think they still do gay comic relief gay best friend/assistant characters - off the top of my head, Lloyd on Entourage - but they are very much out.
A 2003 episode of King of Queens - Doug and Deacon got locked in a refrigerated truck - they were transporting penguins and accidentally locked themselves in. Why a refrigerated truck? Because it was necessary for the dopey doofuses’ storyline.
The lowly janitor has lied to his family, telling them that he actually owns the company. But, oh no, they’re coming to visit! Now everybody has to pretend that they really work for him. Hilarious.
Or, alternatively: the nerdy guy has lied to his family, telling them that the superhot female character is actually his girlfriend. But, oh, no, they’re coming to visit! Now the superhot female character has to pretend to be his girlfriend. Hilarious.
This IS an annoying trope but it sure isn’t a dead or nearly dead one. Until we get at least 2 sitcoms that end their run without using this trope at least once.
A similar trope is, the husband who loses his job but is too embarrassed to admit it to his wife. So for weeks or even months he puts on a suit, grabs his briefcase, and kisses his wife goodbye. After which, he goes to a nearby park, sits down on a bench and feeds the pigeons all day. Fortunately the little woman doesn’t bother herself with the household finances, so is none the wiser. Until the nosy neighbor or sister-in-law discovers him at the park, and attempted coverup / bribing into silence hilarity ensues.
Just saw this on a recent episode of Lessons in Chemistry (which takes place back when that trope was prolific). I wonder if writers of period pieces include old tropes because their research (watching old shows and films) convinces them that these things actually happened back in the day.
Lucy Sante makes a convincing argument that many of the familiar character types from old cartoons and such were actually 19th-century clichés that were revived in the 1920s and 30s. To name but a few:
the bartender with his handlebar mustache and spit curls; the crook with his striped sweater, cloth cap, and domino mask; the soubrette with her petticoats and rouged cheeks; the bohemian with his beret and flowing necktie; the poker player with his sleeve garters and green eyeshade; the cop with his twirling nightstick and Irish accent.
It can be seen in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lKeGU_weY8 , World's Shortest (and Most Often Performed) Play | Lavender Luz , and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DXm-kIB2vo , for instance.
…the housewife carrying a grocery bag with the baguette and celery with the leafy part sticking out the top.