# Tired fictional tropes you hate **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 16, 2020, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937 "2020-05-16T19:07:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/161 "2020-05-19T03:59:55Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > Ehhhhh… maybe not absolved, but far too readily seen as having their actions at least mitigated by their expressed loved of family. Because Cersei absolutely was a monster, even if Tyrion (as written for the series) was too dumb to see it. But mitigated by whom? I know there is no scene from Breaking Bad or Ozark where the “good guys” learn what the protagonist is is doing and say “Oh it was for family? No you’re cool, it’s ok!” No one is giving them a free pass because they did bad things “for their family.“ ---
**Author:** ![Biotop](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biotop/32/321_2.png) [@Biotop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biotop)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/162 "2020-05-19T04:23:09Z")
> [@DesertDog](#): > > For your viewing pleasure.[Double-click for rude gestures.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRQTAKtanjc) Thanks. That was hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/163 "2020-05-19T04:23:16Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > But mitigated by whom? By the audience, of course. That’s who these kinds of statements are directed at. The audience continued to root for Walter White long past the point where he was revealed to be a monster. And even in the finale, he was allowed to protect his family and pass his remaining blood money on to his son. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/164 "2020-05-19T04:43:57Z")
a) Top of the annoying list: the evil brilliant enemy who is So Fucking Smart and outplots and out-anticipates the good guys at every turn and is always one step ahead and taunting the good guy team to boot. b) Also perennially annoying: the one single Enemy who is part of a team of bad guys and the good guys and bad guys square off with Big Scene fight but eventually it all comes down to the One Good Guy taking on the One Bad Guy and everything else quits happening and nobody jumps in and whacks either of them upside the head 'cuz they’re not looking or anything, and it becomes all about we’re gonna decide this thingie mano a mano, you 'n me. c) Because I don’t read books to see if I can outwit the authors, I read books to be entertained, the mysteries where the author has pretzeled the possible behaviors of the characters introduced to come up with a way that the likely suspect isn’t the murderer or whatever, instead it is this here totally unsuspected person right under our nose the whole time, who is unsuspected because it’s not freaking consistent with that character’s personality and behavior. [Yo, J.K. Rowling, take this here _Goblet of Fire_ and shove it into an orifice, still pissed at you over Mad-eye Moody] ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/165 "2020-05-19T04:54:31Z")
The whole dancing-back-and-forth-while-ear-cutting thing… Enough! ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/166 "2020-05-19T05:35:47Z")
That is _ **NOT** _ how an Eclipse works. ---
**Author:** ![Fugazi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f08c70/32.png) [@Fugazi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fugazi)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/167 "2020-05-19T14:03:35Z")
In sci-fi when our hero lands somewhere on a planet looking for someone and runs into them 5 min later. Umm planets are really freaking big. Imagine landing on Earth and finding 1 person out of 7 billion. Even if you knew the right city, it would still be pure luck. Sure, sometimes they know right where to go. But too often they just run into the person they were looking for. ---
**Author:** ![pullin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@pullin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pullin)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/168 "2020-05-19T14:31:36Z")
> [@misling](#): > > This one is probably more common in fantasy/scifi/comics, but: Everybody of any importance to the whole plot line, no matter how galaxy-spanning, turns out to be closely related. Childhood buddies, first cousins, parent/child, brother/sister, mentor/student, whatever. Small Small Universe, ain’t it? Or Captain Kirk knew him back when they were in the Academy. My own personal hated trope: A complex and threatening problem cannot be solved by the town’s adults, but is fixed by a group of middle-school kids on bicycles. I’m sick of these. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/169 "2020-05-19T14:34:57Z")
> [@Fugazi](#): > > In sci-fi when our hero lands somewhere on a planet looking for someone and runs into them 5 min later. Umm planets are really freaking big. Imagine landing on Earth and finding 1 person out of 7 billion. > > Even if you knew the right city, it would still be pure luck. Sure, sometimes they know right where to go. But too often they just run into the person they were looking for. Speaking of sci-fi planet tropes, planets that each have only one climate is a common one, is it not? Star Wars is certainly guilty of this, with the ice planet Hoth and the desert planet Tatooine. Planets with life-bearing ecosystems don’t work that way. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/170 "2020-05-19T15:32:57Z")
> [@DCnDC](#): > > The hero and the villain dropping their guns and punching it out “just to see who’s the best.” Usually preceded by a lot of unfinished fights, close call encounters, and intense staring throughout the story up until that point. > > Also, a group of henchmen surround the hero, but instead of just tackling him, they take turns fighting one-on-one (and of course get their asses kicked in order). One thing I loved about the old “Wild Wild West” television show was that James Gordon was a master at fighting multiple assailants simultaneously. Four guys would rush him and Jim would throw one into another, punch the third and judo kick the fourth. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/171 "2020-05-19T15:45:47Z")
> [@solost](#): > > Speaking of sci-fi planet tropes, planets that each have only one climate is a common one, is it not? Star Wars is certainly guilty of this, with the ice planet Hoth and the desert planet Tatooine. Planets with life-bearing ecosystems don’t work that way. “It was raining on [Mongo](http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/making-believable-planets/) that morning.” ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/172 "2020-05-19T16:08:07Z")
> [@2Bits](#): > > You left out this: the about-to-retire character must die! It’d be funny to have a movie where the about to retire last day on the job detective repeatedly avoids multiple “Final Destination” threats to his life. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/173 "2020-05-19T16:52:56Z")
> [@DCnDC](#): > > Pregnant women. With exceedingly rare exception, they exist in any movie for only one of three reasons: > > [ul] > [li]to go into labor at \*exactly \*the wrong moment.[/li][li]to be taken hostage, usually eventually followed by the above.[/li][li]as purely ancillary characters who are tragically the spouse/partner of a more important character that’s going to die later. Usually involves a “last phone call” ending with “I \*promise \*you I’ll be okay.”[/li][/ul] _ **Fargo** _ being one of those notable rare exceptions. The officer’s unremarked pregnancy being one of the things that underscore the routineness of life even during a murder investigation. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/174 "2020-05-19T17:13:57Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > c) Because I don’t read books to see if I can outwit the authors, I read books to be entertained, the mysteries where the author has pretzeled the possible behaviors of the characters introduced to come up with a way that the likely suspect isn’t the murderer or whatever, instead it is this here totally unsuspected person right under our nose the whole time, who is unsuspected because it’s not freaking consistent with that character’s personality and behavior. [Yo, J.K. Rowling, take this here _Goblet of Fire_ and shove it into an orifice, still pissed at you over Mad-eye Moody] If we’re going to include mystery novels, there are billions, but here’s one that stands out and can occasionally be found in movies as well. Someone has been murdered and the police realize that a bystander may have witnessed the crime. The bystander is not anyone connected to the crime or known to the killer. Marshaling the entire resources of a major metropolitan police force, they finally track down the bystander… only to find that the killer had gotten there five minutes earlier. It will never be explained how the killer found out. ---
**Author:** ![Biotop](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biotop/32/321_2.png) [@Biotop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biotop)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/175 "2020-05-19T17:47:24Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > If we’re going to include mystery novels, there are billions, but here’s one that stands out and can occasionally be found in movies as well. > > Someone has been murdered and the police realize that a bystander may have witnessed the crime. The bystander is not anyone connected to the crime or known to the killer. Marshaling the entire resources of a major metropolitan police force, they finally track down the bystander… only to find that the killer had gotten there five minutes earlier. It will never be explained how the killer found out. It is usually because the bystander, instead of going to the police, attempts to blackmail the murderer with predictable results. ---
**Author:** ![Arcite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/67e7ee/32.png) [@Arcite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arcite)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/176 "2020-05-19T18:04:44Z")
This is a fairly minor one, but my father used to point this out when I was growing up, and ever since, I always notice it: characters in movies in TV shows never use the phrases “go to sleep” or “go to bed” or “take a nap.” Instead, it’s always “get some rest” or “get some sleep.” “You’ve been working too hard at this, why don’t you get some rest?” “The shuttle leaves at oh-six-hundred tomorrow; let’s get some sleep.” This annoys me just because no one in real life talks this way. Think about it; when you’ve stayed up late watching a movie, the credits roll, you look at the clock and it says 1:00 AM, do you turn to your husband or wife and say “we need to get some sleep?” I speculate that the reason they do this is that it conveys more of a sense of motion and action. The detectives are on a stakeout that’s not over; the crack lawyers have been up all night working on their case; the engineer on the spaceship has been working on fixing a problem that’s going to destroy the ship if it’s not done in a few hours. Whereas “let’s go to bed” or “you should go to sleep” would convey a sense of finality that doesn’t draw the viewer into this sense of continuous action. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/177 "2020-05-19T18:07:58Z")
> [@Arcite](#): > > Think about it; when you’ve stayed up late watching a movie, the credits roll, you look at the clock and it says 1:00 AM, do you turn to your husband or wife and say “we need to get some sleep?” Yes? This seems like a completely normal turn of phrase to me. ---
**Author:** ![ZonexandScout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zonexandscout/32/544_2.png) [@ZonexandScout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZonexandScout)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/178 "2020-05-19T18:24:03Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > I hope you saw the 😛 This actually was discussed in a thread a couple years ago. I don’t want to say “previous wife,” or “deceased wife.” It was suggested that I use “late wife.” Yes, I’ve been married three times. Divorced one, buried one, and (currently) have one. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/179 "2020-05-19T18:43:18Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > _ **Fargo** _ being one of those notable rare exceptions. The officer’s unremarked pregnancy being one of the things that underscore the routineness of life even during a murder investigation. There were a few offhand remarks, but that’s about it. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937/180 "2020-05-19T18:57:44Z")
> [@Biotop](#): > > The geeky member of the good side’s team who can always get into anyone’s password protected computer. My favorite similar one is that the ability to do that is solely based on skill, and furthermore, the time it takes depends on skill. Which is absurd. You can only transfer data so fast from a hard drive or whatever to analyze it or search it or whatever. Sometimes it takes hours upon hours to actually catalog and index a hard drive. And then you have to usually hunt around and do some trial and error, unless you know exactly what you’re looking for. Even then, it’s not always a slam dunk. Yet on TV, the whiz-bang tech kid will do it in like 30 minutes, with the implication that it’s their skill and intelligence that made the difference. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tired-fictional-tropes-you-hate/853937.md?page=10)