One of my biggest pet peeves is double standards of the "if the characters' genders were reversed, people would be screaming" variety. Not sure what trope that falls under per se, outside of double standards in general.
Another trope I hate is the Disney Death. Even as a kid, I hated this trope, seeing characters being like “oh my god no he’s a goner... oh my god you’re okay!” is SO annoying. Honestly the last straw for me occurred in How to Train Your Dragon. While seeing Stoick the Vast lament “I did this” when he thinks his son died saving him and everyone from the evil dragon was actually genuinely sad, it was still annoying to see it in such an amazing film that it pissed me off. Watching Doug Walker’s Disneycembers definitely exacerbated my hatred of this trope as well.
Not so much tropes as just things that drive me nuts in TV shows and movies... - Every time we're shown someone sending a text, there's never an existing history, It always looks like it's the very first text ever that Person X is sending to Person Y with the way they ALWAYS start at the top of the screen with nothing but blank dead space underneath. It distracts me every single time I see it happen. - The way people apparently always shut off their vehicle no matter how brief the stop is. I'm sure hearing the engine start right before someone drives away is just a foley artist thing for sake of adding more sounds to a scene, but it's irritating. If you're pulling up to a curb to drop someone off or park beside someone to ask a question, you're not shutting off your friggin' car. - Whenever a petite person, particularly children or tiny 5'0 sized girls, hold & point guns with one hand. Most average sized to large men can't even hold a typical modern hand gun with one hand for an extended period of time, let alone aim and shoot it accurately. And of course, on that note, the lack of any kick whatsoever when these things are shot. 99% of any of the petite people would either be damn near knocked over or least be get it kicked right into their face upon firing. - Haha and the way no one ever safely removes USB's from computers. They always just unplug the second their downloads are done... like maniacs. More than half of these would be instantly corrupted and totally useless.
I mean the ideal Beauty and the Beast theme but gender reverse where the beast person is a woman and the human is a man and i dislike double standards and inequality.
Overcrowded small town streets. Excluding large cities where there really is a lot of people walking around. It seems in shows when characters are in small towns, there are a TON of people walking every which way. Even in residential neighborhoods there are always people walking around. At all hours. I grew up in a small town. There were times I could go around the town and not see a single person walking the sidewalks. When I did see someone, it tended to be just that person (maybe someone walking with them). This isn't really a plot device but a filming one. Time/sunlight jumps. Often a scene will be in the middle of the day and there is a shot used that was clearly filmed when the sun is setting. Then the next show will be back to the middle of the day. Takes me out of the show for a second. Then there is the sun in freefall apparently. Sun sets WAAAYY too fast. I think the move was THE CHASE where the characters were in a car going 80+ mph and they say they are 10 miles from the Mexican border. The sun was setting but it was still pretty bright. They get to the border and it is pitch black. You mean to tell me that in 6-7 minutes, the sun did what in real life would take well over 2 hours to get that dark? Did they turn around, go way up north, turn around again and come back to the border?
Even more heinous, those previous texts would be a way to slip in funny lines (kinda like the screens in Beast Wars if you decode them) or even minor character developing lines. It's not just distracting, it's a waste.
The thing that pisses me off beyond all end is how the website tvtropes has ruined the word "trope" beyond all salvation. I can't have a conversation about film or television or storytelling convention in general, and have the word "trope" come up without an involuntary shudder.
Maybe it's the gun enthusiast in me, but I grew to hate the notion that guns are "primitive weapons" next to something like a blade or a spear. Yes, a highly complex work of engineering is "primitive" next to a wooden stick. Or just slamming your face with the idea of all guns are evil and if you shoot a gun it makes you evil no matter what context or situation you come across with.
While I am able to enjoy genre tropes and conventions (and can enjoy a clever subversion of the like) I admit there area few that annoy me. - The idea that an undercover good guy should be forgiven simply because he was under orders to work for the bad guys. It can't work like that, if you've been working for bad guys, then even if you've been ordered to do so, you breached trust and should put in some work to restore it. - A teacher trying to teach his students self-reliance through riddles and puzzles. I understand the idea is growing intelligence and self-reliance, but there is a very clear chance that with this indirect teaching the message can easily fly over peoples' heads. Teaching people directly sounds more reliable to my mind, like the difference between giving people a map to a destination and sending them into the wilderness with only a compass. (Though this could be opinion)
This. Does anyone in America lock their front doors? At least Friends final scene had everyone leave their keys for the apartment behind, so although you didn't see them use the keys when they entered over the last 10 years, it was implied they were just using their keys to get in (I think when Monica and Chandler went on honeymoon, it was said they took everyone's spare keys with them too so no one could get in, so Phoebe and Joey had to bust down the door), and no one else would come in without knocking. But no one I know would ever just walk into a friends house without knocking. Also needing to have the protagonist linked to the antagonist through a shared history. Usually a presumed dead family member. I'm sick of it. Why not just have a good guy trying to stop a bad guy because that's all they are. It might be an attempt to make the stakes more personal, but all it does is make the world feel smaller.
They called the trope out a couple of other times at least * When Barry charged in while Ross was about to confess his love for Rachel - "We have got to start locking that door" * I don't remember why the door was locked, but Ross once commented something like "Sure... for this they lock the door, but when they're having sex on the couch it's like 'come on in, by butt is surprisingly hairy'"
Does "all action movies MUST have comedy as well" count as a trope? Because I really don't like this stuff. Maybe I just want to see some new action and not laugh every so often? How about that?
Fictional, solitary animals that behave like video game monsters. By which I mean they seem to believe they only exist to try to eat/attack the main character. Is the thing you're attacking in apparent good physical shape? Is it standing its ground, being aggressively loud, and/or making threatening movements? Is it in a group of others in similarly good condition? Have you been significantly wounded, even just once? Are you doggedly pursuing something that's tiny in comparison to you, making it unlikely that you'll actually get any significant energy/nutrition to adequately replace what you've used up in your ill-considered chase? Then stop it already. Animals don't just blindly attack anything they see. And they don't have a do-or-die mentality with success, they'd rather cut their losses and retreat than end up dead. There's a reason predatory animals tend to go after weak or sickly-looking prey, or at least ones they can take unawares: it's easier and more energy-efficient to catch. They don't like "fair", drawn out fights. They want the odds stacked in their favor and to have things done and over quickly. Obviously literal (usually supernatural) monsters get a pass, but if someone's trying to pass it off as "just an animal", then it should actually act like one.
I hate when anyone just starts off a statement with the words "as you know." If they already know then why are you saying it?! It's just a lazy way to dump exposition on the audience.
It's actually not that uncommon to say as an opening statement in real life, especially in business meetings where everyone needs to be on the same wavelength on the current progress. Speaking from personal experience of course.
