In turn based RPGs, chances are if you mash your fingers randomly on the controllers during an offensive move, you’ll have a 50/50 chance of your attack increasing by one or two points.
In RPGs, chances are your character will have a haircut and hue of hair that is most likely physically impossible or would take hours to maintain.
In Online Games, if your opponent has even the slightest advantage over you in anyway, you’re a noob.
Guy 1: I need only one exp. point to get to level 90!
Guy 2: Ha! Get outta here you stupid level 89er or I’ll crush you with my mad skills!
Guy 1: You are exactly one exp. point higher than me.
Guy 2: I think the noob wants to die.
The main base of the head boss is the most physically farthest away from your starting point.
Movies:
Action: The guy armed with a pistol and a few grenades manages to take out the entire armies of nations, only suffering a few superficial cuts and a stubbed toe.
-Action: The hero has 20/20 eyesight, and the inability to ever miss a shot. Similarily, the enemy most likely employs legally blind people.
-School(the type where the school gets a teacher that miraclouslouly finally manages to get some information into the kids heads.) One person will likely be dyslexic, or have a grade 1 reading level.
TV:
Sitcom: A misunderstanding results in wacky and hilarious things happen.
Any scene in which the heroes are being chased in the mountains or in any high place will always result in the heroes coming to a cliff or some other sheer drop into water. At this point, one of the heros will declare defeat. The other hero will then look down and say he’s got a “crazy” idea…“why don’t we jump.” The other buddy will offer a brief protest before they both take a leap which would instantly kill them in any real universe.
This scene can also be performed solo. (See The Fugitive). The crazy-jump-from-a-high-place scene is a staple of Harrison Ford movies.
-Cop Movie: You’ll have the sane, rational cop who follows the rules completely. And his side kick will be one wild and crazy guy who should likely be fired for the too numerous violations of the rules. Basically good cop/bad cop.
Ex. Lethal Weapon
TV:
The characters almost never change their clothes unless it’s relavent to the plot. Note: In some shows, you get to see they do change clothes: They have 50 pairs of the same clothes!
Music:
-In reference to rap music discussions: Chances are you’ll get at least one person complain about rap “being nothing but music about smacking bitches up, pimping and drugs.”
If any character says something in the vein of: “This will be my last dangerous job, after this I’ll retire and go home to my wife and kids” you may count the seconds that character still has left to live.
I’ve noticed one used A LOT lately, but it’s in the commercials I see on TV and hear in radio, not on the shows themselves.
The set-up is some very serious or somber-sounding music being played (often Vivaldi) as the announcer says something like, “X is a very serious thing…” Then they always play the same sound effect: an vinyl record scratching obtrusively. The announcer continues with “…but not anymore!” Then the rock music plays. I have seen/heard this in literally dozens of commercials.
Also, there have been a couple of threads on sitcom cliches which were really fun, but I can’t seem to find them in a search.
-Horror: If you decide to split up, the chances of you dieing increases incredibly. You never, ever split up into groups of two. It’s always one. Even if you don’t split up, some power/ironic twist of fate separates you from the rest of the people you’re with.
Video Games:
-Xbox: It’s SO HUGE! Look at it, it’s like nine times the size of the earth! You could fit several moons between the two analog sticks! It will crush us, like godzilla, except bigger! It appears to be growing larger! Soon it will have the mass of black hole, and with that it will sweep us all across the starry universe and beyond! It’s so incredibly big that the sun, and the other terristial planets now revolve around it!
::Yawn:
TV:
-Sitcom: When eating a exotic or strange type of food, chances are they’ll most likely exclaim “That tastes just like chicken!”.
Sorta a cliche…
-Commercials: In a voice that is speaking at supersonic speeds, you’ll hear them list the side effects that may include Vomiting, Red Eye, Histronics, Ebola, Cholera, Ebonics, and a never ending existence where you wish for death that never comes.
And the minute he has his cuts tended to - usually by a female character - he’ll cringe and shudder at her touch.
This will then lead up to that other screen cliche - the post lovemaking scene where they’re lying in bed, hair perfectly coiffed, bedsheet strategically wrapped round their bodies OR one of them will be making the other breakfast, dressed only in a oversized shirt.
Any Genre: Similarily to what Skijumper said, in some movies you see a scene where a person is about to get naked in the trailer(of the movie ). Then, when you actually see the movie, the camera pans away or their is something strategically placed. Very annoying, isn’t that a violation of misleading advertising?
Ditto any character who goes on and on about how much they love life and how they’ve never been happier.
ex: Dawson’s dad on Dawson’s Creek
Also: a cop movie which, early on, introduces a gung-ho rookie who just can’t wait to hit the streets and rid the city of scum. This is usually accompanied by smirks and giggles by his fellow officers.
That’s not a cliche. It’s a leal requirement. The FDA mandates that known potential side effects of medications be listed in any ad for the medication. Look at a print ad for a medication and you’ll see them in the fine print.
Bad guys can have scars. The hero can be shot (“just a flesh wound”), stabbed (“just a flesh wound”), and thrown through a plate glass window, but will have not a single scar when he is shirtless in the sequel.
-Product X turns geezers into wild and crazy partiers
and recently:
Let’s try some crazy new promotion - enter dream/nightmare sequence of trying said crazy promotion- re-enter “reality” and say "On second thought, let’s stick with our normal promotions.
Exemption to Eats_Crayons’ cliche: heros can have many unobtrusive scars from before they were being filmed. e.g. Lethal Weapon’s scar competition.
TV
-Sitcom: Just as one of the characters is about to annouce something big (“I’m dying”, “I’m pregnant”, “My underpants have fire ants and giant black widows crawling around in them”), their will be an interruption. And then when the character trys to annouce it again a few epsiodes later, another interruption. Finally, the big annoucement usually gets said at the season finale.
Any time there’s a new development in technology, there has to be some lame-oh excuse to use this. For example:
Coloured lights flashing on and off
Pointless texture maps
Corpse kicking and rag-doll physics
The Havok physics package and having every explosing kick everything upwards at great expense to the framerate.
The entire game ‘Red Faction’
The overuse of swinging things infront to lights in any game with realtime shadows
Also, the main bad guy just can’t die once. Oh no, he’s got to threaten the heros again as MechaTechnoMegaSuperDuper Mr X with a brand new attack that does a crap load of damage.
There has to be one hot female chick in skin tight clothes for the demographics.
Any Japanese game with robots.
People who design Doomsday devices that [flash/bleed/causes monster to cringe] when you hit them in the conspicuous weak spot.
“Aha! I shall send my weakest monsters to defeat my inexperiences enemies and make them progressively tougher so that my final showdown with the meddling do-gooders will be a fair fight!”
Movie cliches:
The good guy never feels pain unless there is an animalistic howl and a dramatic pull away shot.
Any plot devices scriptwriters rope in by have a ‘cut to’ scene that will explain (in very small words) something important that will crop up later. (eg ANY sci-fi movie/TV show) And they think that the audience will mistake this for clever writing.
Those bloody L-shaped bankets/sheets in the post make-out scenes
Any scene where there is dramatic irony in the way the main baddie/sidekick dies. And there’s a little pause in the movie where the audience can laugh. And no one does.
TV Cliches:
The use of clones/mirror images. OK, the one in Buffy with Xander was cool, but only because they used his identical brother.
). Then, when you actually see the movie, the camera pans away or their is something strategically placed. Very annoying, isn’t that a violation of misleading advertising?