I’ll go first. Mine is the instant knockout drug. Like Dexter’s intramuscular injection that causes someone to immediately lose consciousness. Or in the movie Split where there’s the aerosol spray in your face that makes you instantly unconscious. Or pretty much any time someone uses chloroform.
Hearing the exact wrong part of the conversation, and then making a horrific assumption and spinning off into zany misunderstandings instead of, just, “Hey, what did I just hear?”
Whenever the plot entirely revolves on avoidable misunderstandings from character that nothing in the story prevents from having a clarifying chat. It’s weak storytelling.
Also whenever the characters don’t react to enormous thing A because advancing the story requires them to immediately ask about thing B.
Lastly whenever you end up screaming at the tv “you have enough clues to call for backup” or “enough reason to worry to call 911” yet they proceed alone. Bad writing.
I feel like there’s a lot of script writers that want the emotional wrenchingness of “this character’s personality and history means that they will never see the simple solution” but have no idea how to actually pull it off.
Breaking Bad pulls this off wonderfully multiple times, where the “right” decision is right there but for the character to be able to do it, they couldn’t be who we’ve learned them to be so far.
But most directors amd scriptwriters are nowhere near that level.
avoidable misunderstandings
You didn’t watch a lot of Three’s Company, did you? :-D
Explosive decompression in space. It seems to always last forever, suck EVERYTHING out, even if it’s a tiny hole through which a giant xenomorph is liquified. The delta P is like one atmosphere, pathetic really.
Then there’s noise in space.
“The mentor/parent has to die so that the hero can prove they’re self-actualized” or whatever. It’s okay for your hero to have living parents, even if their parents are also heroes. I promise your story won’t be less interesting if your character’s mentor figure survives.
In my tabletop RPG campaigns I always make it a point for my characters to have at least one living parent, and usually two. These games are always so full of haunted orphans whose villages were burned to the ground or whatever.
Well adjusted individuals with a good social/familial network rarely become wandering mercenaries, but it’s so refreshing when everyone else is an orphaned lone-wolf prodigy with secret ancestry in the royal family
I dunno, I can pretty easily come up with reasons why events would force someone to venture out into the world. See The Lord of the Rings and also basically every JRPG from the 1990s.
Frodo was an orphan that never quite fit in at Brandy Hall. Some JRPG protagonists are left as fairly blank slates (Crono, Link), while Cecil of Final Fantasy IV was an orphaned prince, in Fire Emblem Marth loses his father and sister at the start if his adventure, and while not strictly a JRPG, Samus was raised by foster parents and was genetically modified to be a super soldier.
Sure, not every game or plot followed the trope, and there are plenty of great examples that break the trend or flesh the story out to carry it well, there’s a reason “orphaned chosen one” is a trope in the first place.
It’s also just something silly to point out and chuckle over. Sure, there are positive, story compelling reasons for a random commoner to be thrust into extraordinary situations and become a hero of the realm! But there’s also little (normal) reason for Bob the Baker to leave his life as a staple of the community with a loving family and steady work to wander the realm facing dangerous monsters and delve into ancient tombs. When you find a way to make the later work, it’s amazing, though!
Idiot balling. If your plot hinges on everyone suddenly being incompetent af, having the emotional maturity of a hamster or leaving out key details without reason, you fucking suck at writing
Honestly this is far more believable ever since Donald Trump became a viable politician. It sure does seem like there is no bottom to the well of human stupidity these days
It doesn’t bother me so much when a character in a show has to take a turn with the idiot ball, but when a video game wants me to hold the idiot ball it really makes me want to stop playing. Recently I was checking out Fallen Leaf and the very first level ends with a character politely but firmly indicating that I can’t go further in this random cave I’m exploring, because there’s something dangerous stored there… while standing under a stalactite that the game clearly wants you to drop on them. No, god damn it, I am not going to commit murder just to unleash the ancient evil that I would clearly spend the rest of the game stopping. I can just quit here and not be a murderer and the world can stay safe.
I did not even humor it by hitting the stalactite to see what happens, I just pressed alt-F4 and went to play something else.
Picking a lock with just one pick. That’s not how it works, you need one to apply a rotating force and another one to lift the individual pins. Sometimes shows even get it right in one season and then totally blow it in the next one.
Nonsensical or thoroughly debunked technobabble. The most annoying for me is faster than light communication via quantum entangled particles. Yes entangled particles will change each other’s state faster than light but this effect CANNOT be used to send information of any kind. At all. Ever. This has been known since engagement was first discovered but Hollywood is always like “I’m just going to ignore that second part.” I don’t even have anything against ftl comms or any other physics breaking things, just use an explanation that isn’t literally impossible and well known why it’s impossible for God’s sake.
Better yet, don’t use an explanation at all!
If you establish something as just being part of your setting that is accepted by the characters in it like it’s no big deal, you can just move on with the actual plot. If it’s not actually going to be relevant to anything plot wise, don’t waste time with useless technobabble!
Slap a “Zephyr FTL Communications” logo on the side of the terminal and call it a day. The audience doesn’t always need to know how, just what. And show, don’t tell.
You can have a character exposition dump about a piece of tech that should be as normal to the other characters as a telephone (so why would anyone talk about it existing casually outside of very specific circumstances), or just… have the character use the damn thing and add a little splash screen on the device “Thank you for using Cisco Intergalactic FTL calls”.
Why?
Normalization of the protagonist using violence before any attempt of diplomacy, without the narrative condemning this action
Knights getting stabbed with swords through plate armor.
We’re re-watching GoT and were at the Brienne/Jaime fight on the bridge, and I was just yelling at the screen. He’s in rags and she’s in plate, both wielding swords, he doesn’t have a snowballs’ chance in hell if she protects her head and just tackles him. That’s what the fucking armor is for! Coincidentally that also would be way more likely to achieve her goal to subdue but not hurt him.
“Here, I got you this gift.” Hands wrapped gift to the recipient. Recipient: “What is it?”
Motherfucker I swear every movie character does this. It’s like they’ve never received a gift before what the hell
I do this irl
I think your writers are on strike
When you do this, what do people say? Do they say “Open it!” or do they ever tell you what it is?
What is the point of wrapping the gift if you’re just going to tell the person what’s inside?
I don’t like the expectations around gifts in my culture, I don’t like surprises, i despise consumerism, I am a minimalist, and I don’t like gifts being wrapped. My friends know this.
Usually my response when someone hands me a wrapped gift is to frown and ask what it is and why they got it for me. The feeling is usually “damn it. How many wage slaves suffered for this thing?” And “ugh, now I have something else that I have to lug around and figure out how to find it a new home where it won’t end up in a landfill”
If they want to give me something nice (eg cook me dinner or hand me a flower), its appreciated. But not on some strange cultural expectation or wrapped in a dead tree or uncompostable plastic single use trash.
The expert who somehow knows all things science and engineering, like they’re all just basically the same. Just once I’d like to hear, “I’m an astrophysicist, not a cybersecurity expert. I don’t have the first clue where to begin hacking any computer, let alone an alien one that I’ve never seen before.”
Bonus points if the characters have to look for a different solution due to their lack of on-hand expertise in a particular area.
I just saw that in WandaVision. Darcy is an Astrophysicist but was also hacking through various firewalls to get at some secret data.
People getting shot with a shitty handgun and they’re dead as soon as they hit the ground. Even if its a fatal shot, chances are quite high you’re going to die minutes or hours or days later if you make it to a hospital.
People hiding behind cars from bullets. Bullets being shot at the car and somehow not hitting them. Only the engine block could stop most bullets.
Guns in general are a lost cause at this point. Even shooting a 22 outside is doing hearing damage, but plots rely on people shooting 9s and 45s indoors and having normal conversations immediately afterwards.
A 22 can penetrate all the way through a car and still be dangerous
Anything but a direct hit on the head or heart is going to take at least a minute for someone to die. Conversely, the chance of dying from a non-lethal shot (or having lifelong complications), even to an appendage, is nonzero.
At the same time, getting hit by most calibers isn’t gonna knock someone down or blast them back like they got hit by a car. Human skin is soft, very little energy is transferred into the body’s mass as the bullet travels through.
People shooting guns in a car and then continuing their conversation…
You would be deaf.
Some romance tropes.
People doing creepy things and it being portrayed as romantic. Like stalking, or not taking no for an answer.
Love triangles. I spend a lot of time with polyamorous people, and would like to see more representation. and not like “a cishet monogamous person’s idea”. But even if you are monogamous, you can date different people for a bit before going all in on someone.
How every injury requires blood to be spit up.
I’m sure it been said already but:
The villain who wanted to change society for the better but took it too far (which invariably involves just doing something randomly evil with the implication that their criticisms are now invalidated)
