Fun ITT we list our favorite movie and tv tropes

One of the two people in a Will they/won’t they walks away after they part cordially, and they run back and kiss the other person

 

Edit: I didn't read the thread title properly.

When an alien invades a character's body and their friends barely notice that something is amiss.

 

In romance movies, when the female lead has to choose between the stable yet boring guy and the off-kilter yet fun guy, she'll always choose the latter. And at least 50% of the time, the former will be shown as not just boring, but villainous to some extent.

(I have to admit that this is one that really irritates me, for a number of reasons.)

 

And very often the boring one is such an obviously bad potential partner that it makes implausible that she was dating him in the first place.

 

man and woman pair who work together , always arguing , at some point during a furious argument will stop ... and lunge at each other for sex; one pushing the other rapidly across the room into a wall.
Like has anyone ever done that ? Good way to get concussion.

 

American love stories used to have all the same format

1) they meet
2) at first they don't like each other
3) they fall in love
4) they have a big argument
5) one of the two does something crazy to win the other back
6) happy ending

the necessity for number 4) as an irresistible constant of love stories always felt weird to me.

 

Aesop amnesia in TV comedies and dramedies

 

There's a love triangle and the protagonist gather with their friends to make a pros and cons list of the two potential partners to choose whom they like more.

 

A character who has a prized, valuable possession (a vintage car, a priceless painting, etc.) has very good odds of seeing said possession utterly destroyed before the end of the story. Those odds double if the character is the antagonist.

 

Who characters who are supposed to hate each other have a heated argument that suddenly transforms to angry sex.

 

Among the large group of by-the-book, stiffly legalistic authority figures who condemn and oppose the unconventional, somewhat unscrupulous yet still good-hearted rebel hero in the story, there will always be one bigwig who secretly and grudgingly admires the non-conformist, even while standing against him. This changes at the end, when the bigwig will suddenly step forward and support the rebel with a stirring speech that saves his job and/or freedom.

 

courtroom dramas have a bunch of tropes , a witness getting caught out on the quality of their eyesight springs to mind.

 

The protagonist has to make some audition/interview and it isn't going very well because they're shy/insecure, but then the take the courage, the music starts and they start a tear-dropping speech like "you know, I grew up in the streets. Things have never been easy for me. I had to fight every day. But I never gave up".

And the audience is moved.

 

Character is doing the wrong thing, and then the sound of their phone ringing reminds them of that.

 

The vending machine.

someone , often under stress, puts their coins in a vending machine , presses the button and... the chocolate bar fails to drop. A stranger will then offer some advice on how to make it drop , they get talking and thus begins a romance / friendship/etc.

 

Yeah this is a nice one.
Or the little variant, like, some plot twist happens to someone important, and consequently all the phones start ringing at the same time, and the character has the face "we are screwed"

 

Two characters won't see each other again, and one of them has flashbacks of all the beautiful moments they spent together.

 

One character enters a room, and starts talking animatedly. The character they are talking to either isn’t there, is emotionally vulnerable, or is guilty of wrongdoing.
Character 1 talks for a long time before they realize the other character isn’t on the same page.

 

In crime dramas, evidence from a crime scene, particularly DNA evidence, is brought back to the lab and fully processed in a matter of hours. As opposed to real life, where the process and work backlog can cause it take weeks.

 

In any crime drama made after 1980, if a cop/detective tells a frightened witness, "We can protect you," expect said witness to be dead within the next twenty minutes.

 

Character or characters are trying to get through a doorway or gate, and they ask the official to make an exception. The official refuses, and so the characters sneak or bolt past them.

 

the insecure guy will meet a mentor full of self-confidence. They'll offer to smoke a cigarette and the insecure guy will try and start coughing, generating the laugh of the mentor.

 

In Thrillers there's a nervous character who refuses to say anything about what they saw , later in the film they'll phone the detective and say they're prepared to talk , but not over the phone , only face to face . By the time the detective arrives to meet them they're dead.

 

We explain a plot badly by referring to other characters played by an actor.

 

That one's always been a mystery to me.

You've got 24 hours to solve it otherwise I'm closing the case.