Not sure this is a “trope,” but movies in which the family (or hero and heroine) are united with each other in the heat and din of combat/aliens/bad guys/dinosaurs/something-to-kill-them and they insist on spending maybe 20 seconds bonding, hugging, kissing, mwuah-mwuah - again, in the heat and din of action, with death potentially killing them any second. You have all the time in the world to do that kiss-kiss/hug-hug stuff later, once you’re out of danger and in a place of safety - why don’t you first run for your lives now and do all that stuff later?
My single favorite thing about the TV series Monk was how it obliterated this trope. As the series started, everyone was skeptical of the title character because he was a weird dude with a mental illness and an off-putting personality. But once he had solved, like, three straight crimes, everyone started believing him. They didn’t always like him, didn’t always enjoy his presence, but they acknowledged that he was usually right and acted accordingly. Sometimes they didn’t want him to be right - sometimes they fervently hoped he wasn’t right. But they didn’t waste screen and story time ostentatiously doubting him, which was great.
Yeah, but the problem with that is you then swing to the other extreme, where the obstacle boyfriend is such a dick that you start to seriously question the awareness, judgement and self-worth of any woman who would willingly spend time with him. Which would be fine for an actual drama with real characters, but in a fun, lighthearted-as-spun-sugar romcom (where the female lead is typically not just hot but also ostensibly Generally Awesome) it just tends to drag the whole thing down. (See, e.g. the Wedding Crashers and Bradley Cooper’s repulsive fiance.)
Similar to this is when you have a row of buildings or bank of servers or something and someone kills the power, they always shut down in sequential blocks with a satisfying “Schunk! Schunk! Schunk!” as each section goes dark. Heck, they even do it with street lights. Electricity moves a bit faster than that.
Fat people just go crazy when you take their food away! Har har har!
I’m watching Brooklyn 99 right now, and find it pretty funny and clever, but the Scully and Hitchcock “fat guys who fight over food and eat scraps off the floor” shtick was dead on arrival.
It’s practically a rule: if a comedy has an overweight character, they will inevitably do crazy and unrealistic things for food, because OMG fat people can’t resist the shittiest morsel, amirite!?
I just read a couple of hundred (yes, literally) robot stories and comic books and strips from the 30s and 40s. A few tropes get used over and over again.
If there were a horde of robots to deal with, then there would be a central control to turn them all off with one switch. (You’ll see this in zillion of movies even today and stopping the bomb with one second left is just a variant.)
Giving a robot feelings was always deadly.
Giant robots were controllable from inside their hollow heads, even if they were designed to be run by remote radio signals. Sometimes the villain would leave an instruction book inside so the hero could use the robot against the villain.
Human-sized robots were also often hollow so that the hero could climb inside them like Iron Man putting on his suit. Where the robots’ internal workings were was never explained.
A good robot always proved he was worthy by sacrificing himself for humans. (I don’t know of a single example of a female robot doing this.) Today every kids movie about robots and lots of kids books end this way, but since robots aren’t people, they are always rebuilt just the way they were for the happy ending.
One that drives me crazy in modern movies is disabling a robot by shooting it in the head. There’s no reason to put the CPU or any other critical component in the head, when you could put it in the torso where there is more space and better protection. (It’s true that headless robots sometimes still function in a fashion, but they behave like headless chickens.)
The only reason for ever making a robot look human is for the audience, not for the robot.
The CPU may not be in the head, but at least with humanoid robots, the cameras are, and in many cases the microphones are too. Knocking a robot’s sensors out is a good way to disable it.
There’s a commercial running right now where the bad guy is giving the hero a long Power Point report on his plans, and the hero is bored to tears.
Death must be a horrible way to die.
sniff
Speaking of, and in the general sphere of “Robots are just mechanical people”, I still have a burning case of the eye-rolls for this Sinfest comic where an android brings up a map display on her arm and looks at it with her eyes in order to know where she is going. So if you poked her in the eyes, she’d have no idea what the map looked like?
I learned about the comic book “hero” Bozo the Iron Man (who long predated Tony Stark) from Jon Morris’ League of Regrettable Comic Book Heroes
Hugh Hazzard and his robot Bozo behaved just as you described
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/b/bozo.htm
Although, to be honest, Tony Stark’s Iron Man is just as ludicrous (where DOES hestore all that propellant, not to mention whatever the hell powers his Repulsor Beams?
So, a teenaged girl has a crush on some oblivious boy. What is she to do? Ask him out herself? Oh no, we can’t be breaking traditional gender roles. Spend more time with the boy and get closer to him? Nah. No, clearly the answer is to pretend to be in love with some random other guy so that the first guy starts acting all jealous. Because nothing says keeper like a guy who won’t respect your own decisions.
God, there’s just so much wrong with this trope.
Bozo was invented long before Bozo the Clown, BTW, back when a Bozo was a big, dumb, tough guy.
Fewer have ever heard of the Invisible Scarlet O’Neil comic strip. She gained the ability to turn invisible in 1940 (a year after Bozo’s debut) after being hit by a ray from her inventor father. She runs into an inventor who’s built a robot that doesn’t work. Not surprising: there’s nothing inside of it. It opens up by splitting from head to toe into two halves on a hinge. She walks inside when he’s not looking. Presto! A working robot, suddenly speaking in a woman’s voice. And the inventor simply accepts it.
Person 1: “I have something extremely, earth-shatteringly, life-alteringly important to tell you.”
Person 2: “Me too! I’m getting married!”
Person 1: “Oh! Um… That’s… great. I’m so happy for you” (while looking very sad)
Person 2: “Thanks! Now, what were you going to tell me?”
Person 1: “Oh… Nothing.”
Person 2: “OK, I’ll just ignore your body language and verbal cues, not ask any follow-up questions, and never mention this conversation again. Bye!”
in any detective/cop/mystery show the first thing the pd will do is walk in a room a look around for 30 seconds declare it a robbery
Hero: “I’m off to do something heroic!” strides away
Sidekick: “Yay you! Oh, and Hero… [beat] [beat] [beat] …be careful!”
Every fucking time and it makes me want to break shit.
snaps pencil in half glares menacingly
Monsters, Dinosaurs, Beasts, Bears, Lions, any big scary thing always ALWAYS stands there, opens their big mouth and ROARSCREAMS. Over and over again. Sorry, nope.