Minor tropes that annoy you to no end.

So I've just now started playing BioShock Infinite, and one of the first things I noticed was the lens flare. Why is that there? People's eyes do not behave like that, and they certainly don't gather rain on them like cameras do. I don't want to make this about BioShock Infinite, though, since I've seen this in tons of other media (yet for whatever reason, Skyrim is the only other example that comes to mind). Here are some more examples:

• Whenever somebody's brakes fail in a movie or something, nobody ever thinks of using the emergency brake. You know, the brake you use in an emergency. Their response is usually to continue mashing on the brakes or to jump out of the vehicle, like there's no middle ground.
• I don't know how to describe it, so I'll just link you to this screenshot. How is Lois staying afoat? Shouldn't she be dangling for dear life on Superman's grip? It's not even a speed thing; I've seen that happen at slower strolling speeds.
• GmZ was here.

So anybody have any media annoyances like that?

That nobody says bye to each other at the end of a phone call in American TV shows/movies. It's just so rude.

They mentioned this in the Bombcast or some random stream, but for years, hanging up the phone without saying goodbye bothered me. When I was younger, I would always think, "That person is an asshole, they just hung up!"

I got over it sometime ago once I realized it had no place in movies. We talk like idiots on the phone, especially when we're trying to end the conversation. "Okay...I'll let you...what?...yes...no, I know....okay...yep...okay...okay...goodb-...what?...sure, sure...okay...see you...okay...okay...bye...bye-bye."

EDIT: Ah, I see I'm not alone.

I guess this is more of a major trope, but I am really sick of the villain getting captured on purpose plot point you see all over the place in media at the moment.

More to the point I've really started noticing the silent when off screen phenomena, like when a helicopter manages to surprise people when flying out from behind a building, they should have been able to hear the helicopter from miles away.

I don't know how to describe it, so I'll just link you to this screenshot. How is Lois staying afoat? Shouldn't she be dangling for dear life on Superman's grip? It's not even a speed thing; I've seen that happen at slower strolling speeds.

I'm glad I'm not the only one bothered by that.

• I'm bothered when the protagonist fails in a cutscene after a difficult section.
• I hate button mashing QTE's
• Turret sequences are boring
• End credit stingers for movies should come after the animated closing credits, not after the entire credit scroll. I don't know who these people are and I don't think they feel better now that I've read their name on a screen and then instantly forgot it.
• This may not be a trope, but I'm bothered by youtube videos that features tons of jump cuts.

I'm tired of monsters having no problem stabbing minor characters or tearing out their hearts, but as soon as it starts fighting the protagonist, "eh I'll just throw him into a wall a couple of times."

Hollywood's idea that people wake up in the morning with perfect hair and makeup has always driven me a tiny bit crazy.

I've always been kind of bothered by fictional dialogue as a whole. The exposition that wouldn't make sense to say in reality, the cadence, the lack of stutters, stops, repeats and fillers (and when they do try to make it more natural, it takes you out of it even more because it's so rare)... I know I wouldn't want to see a fiction movie where people talk as sloppily as they do in reality, but I still notice it.

Edit: Oh, and knocking people out for extended periods of time with a quick blow to the head, as opposed to the half-second or so they'd actually be out.

When people in movies/shows gets zapped by a taser/stun gun, and it completely paralyzes them for a while.

That's not how stun guns work.

Checkpoints behind un-skippable cut scenes.

Ha! Yes, Breaking Bad and Dexter pull that all the time. Saying 'bye' is just not dramatic, I guess.

When monsters/bad guys can easily kill people but as soon as it's time to fight the hero all he does is knock him around and never goes for the killing blow like all the others.

The biggest one of all however -in any medium- is the idea of the bad guy that is leading an army and kills off his own men all willy nilly or in games when the bad guy faction doesn't have medics to heal their soldiers. I don't care how evil you are, that's just dumb and doesn't make any sense tactically. It takes years of training and tons of money to make each guy in that room. KIlling your own men at a whim is just dumb. Even more so when they are high ranking officers as the skills and experience that allowed them to obtain that position takes even longer to develop. If it's a life or death situation where he needs to kill off his own men so that he can get away and survive that's one thing, but killing your own men because they failed a mission or didn't do something exactly how you wanted is just silly. Torture the guy so that the next time he is in a mission he will work that much harder to avoid the torture and he will have learned from his past failures to make sure they don't happen again.

Other then that the only other one that comes to mind are when characters seem to make decisions that no person would make or that are extremely out of character for them and it's obvious they are only doing it to progress some plot point.

Yes, and anytime one combatant has another in an inescapable death grip and decides the next best course of action is to throw them into some harmless scenery, I want to turn off the television immediately.

I hate when a flash monsoon hits right before the big outdoor fist fight starts.

...which inevitably ends moments after the fight is finished.

...unless there is a rain-soaked kiss to be had.

Dramatic exposition monologue, usually about the character's past or worst case scenario about their secret evil plot.

Is this video/channel/his website a parody or not? I really can't tell.

I don't like how movie characters (usually the main ones and especially the protagonist) can just take punches like sponges. It's always refreshing when two people are fighting and they actually seem to be doing some damage. It's especially annoying if the hero has just KO'd a bunch of grunts with a handful of punches but of course he takes a fuck tonne with only minor cuts and bruises.

I don't know what to specifically call it, and I haven't played a CoD game in years, but during the single player campaign, when you get knocked down by a blast or something heavy and don't control your duder for a few seconds and get dragged by a teammate infuriates me for a few reasons. 1) The few seconds always felt like 10 minutes because of the frantic pace of those games and 2) I don't care how "cool" you think is nuke explosion is devs, if I think it looks cool, I'll check it out on my own time. I don't need the AI to slowly drag me through it while the screen is moving horrible slow.

When characters wear full body armor but leave their head and neck exposed.

Another one that has popped up in BioShock Infinite: first person games where I can't block the projector. Am I a naked, translucent man just running through the sky streets of Columbia?

Yes.

Platforming

QTE's should fucking burn in hell. Bulletstorm, Halo 4, and Far Cry 3 all had horribly unsatisfying QTE boss fights. God of War did it right when you had a great boss fight followed by a QTE that looked cool, and even then I hardly think they're necessary.

Also, I'm not really a gun nut, but the few times I have fired a weapon at a target, it has been drilled into my head that you should keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire. I have since noticed that almost no one in any movie does this - they will hold the gun without being ready to fire it with their finger on the trigger, sometimes waving it around or pointing it dangerously.

How about when a character's punches do inconsistent damage? Like, in one fight he'll really mess some guy up, but in another it will take him some time to take a guy down?

Whenever someone in the spotlight uses a word that's not heard often and eeeeeeeeeeeeveryone else starts using it.

For example, barely anyone said the word trope until Anita Sarkeesian said it.

Everyone but the main character being an idiot is something that pisses me off.

I want a game where at some point the main character gets killed by an enemy and the game just fades to black and ends.

@flstyle:

What about TVTropes?

First-person games where the character's hands come up in front of the camera (usually as a helicopter spins out of control)

Video game plots that introduce a character and kill them off 10 minutes later like I am supposed to care.

@video_game_king said:

Notice you have no reflection in the water either after being baptized into Columbia. The only reflection you ever have is in the baptism bowl in the lighthouse. Not sure if it's a trope though, more of "hey I'm a videogame."

One trope I hate that I notice happen far too often in the Yakuza games is that the good guys always turn their attention away from the bad guy every time they think they have him beat. No, just cause you beat the guy up, doesn't mean he still can't reach for the gun that fell 10 feet away from him or the one hidden in his pocket. This always leads to a character death. ALWAYS. That or an unnecessary standoff. For gods sakes, keep your eyes on the bad guys! It always pisses me off because it is one of those predictable "don't go in the house" moments that makes the main character look like a blind moron with no situational awareness.

I only became aware of that website a few weeks ago when I was checking to see if the Giant Bomb wiki page for Divekick was still the number one google search entry for Divekick. The Divekick entry for that website was on page 1, but as of my check just now to see if it was there it's gone. I would've never had known about that site otherwise.

It's the "yeah we mean business!!!" thing that also applies to villains who kill one of their goons.

Also, the villain getting captured on purpose, it's been done to death.

@flstyle:

Fair enough, but the site's been well known for a while. Since 2011, maybe? I'm not good with estimates, but it's been a while.

I've known about TVtropes long before the Anita Sarkeesian thing. It's easy to lose a couple hours just browsing the site and going "yeah, that's spot on." Giant Bomb themselves are on there and they list the Persona 4 Endurance Run as if it were a TV show and name all the tropes in there.

"Death is only temporary--thanks to amazing technology or powerful magic--until it's not." Final Fantasy VII and Borderlands 2 are good examples.

I've just played the first hour of the new Tomb Raider and the QTE's are doing my fucking head in. Half the time it doesn't recognise the button push, and there are just so many of the bloody things. Now I remember why I pretty much stopped playing this style of game. I just want to do some runny, jumpy, climby stuff and not be praying that the next couple of footsteps are going to trigger another 'dramatic' QTE.

@minipato: @video_game_king: Interesting, sounds like I should go get lost in it sometime.

@spaceinsomniac: This. Like use a damn phoenix down already. So stupid.

This is only occasionally tangentially related to video games, but I really hate pull quotes in articles. They annoy me to no end, and they're probably my least favourite thing about the whole of the latest site design. I get that you want to make the articles look all nice with fancy formatting and stuff, but why not put something new there, rather than just copypasting a line from later on in the page? Perhaps a picture, or maybe a graph, or, just possibly, a quote which is there just once and not repeated?

It's just kind of annoying to have to read the same sentence twice

I mean, I don't have the attention span of a gnat. I'm going to read your article - if I wasn't I probably wouldn't have scrolled down far enough to get to the pull quote in the first place - and so you don't need to remind me about all the neat text I'm going to get to in half a paragraph's time. Plus it's just kind of annoying to have to read the same sentence twice; it's like you're almost spoiling me on the bit I'm about to read. But whatever, I can almost guarantee I'm the only person who thinks this.

The main character instantly trusts a new character. Then that character betrays them, SURPRISE!

With you on that one. Tomb Raider is GREAT, but only once you get past that shitty beginning sequence of basically nothing but press x to not die sequences.

I REALLY don't like when armor suddenly does nothing. Biggest offender I can think of off the top of my head is Batman Begins. Effin' love me that movie something fierce, but at the end when he is fighting Liam Neeson, suddenly his bulletproof, metal plate reinforced Batman armor is doing nothing against a dude fighting him with punches.

Squicky doors. Stop it.

TVTropes will destroy an entire day if you let it.

Also when every character has to kick open/shoulder check(bad idea, never do this)/blast the lock off of or otherwise just force open every unlocked door they come across. Why can't they just open things like a normal person?

Yes it will. I've lost hours.

Still better than when you're looking for a specific trope on the site, but cannot find it anywhere, even when you know where to look.

Uh no? Word was popular well before her, though I'm sure she'd love to take credit for it.

Uh yes? Uh don't try to use your snarky "Uh No?" on me? Uh ok?

Oh the usual stuff just off the top of my head-

JRPG plotlines that end in attempting to save the world. Or even the World being the stakes. The All-Story in general

The fact very few video game romances ever mention the word "love", and even fewer have either character utter the word.

Player Characters ambient complaining/whining about things they are doing. I'm playing the game because I find it fun, I don't want to hear the PC having a miserable time all the time (even if they realistically would).

I've been seeing the word trope pretty regularly since about 2009. Maybe you just aren't hanging around the right(wrong?) crowds?

That could very well be the case.