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.
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".
I hate when biological cloning has some sort of "memory" technomagic scribbled on. Clones don't fucking pick up a dead person's memories, especially not as a default feature!
"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.
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.
Magic computers that can sharpen and enlarge a grainy CCTV frame enough that you can read what people are typing on their phone.
The American president that goes "gee-haw we really need to stop Voldemort so the people of Agrabad can enjoy democracy and human rights!"
The divorced single-parent cop who struggles to make family life work despite being good at solving big scary crime.
The "we just want to do senseless evil for no apparent reason" terrorists
I despise the “flashback to a thing that literally happened five minutes ago to make sure you connect that with whatever just happened/is about to happen.”
Total fucking turnoff. I’m here watching the show and I’m not an idiot. Flashback to something last season or a number of episodes ago? Fine. Some people need a reminder. Within the same episode? GTFO of here with that shit.
Most movies and TV shows are created these days with the assumption that people are on their phones at the same time. I mean actual studio notes to that effect when the plot becomes too difficult for the average person to follow when they have it on while they're also watching TikTok.
"you biiig fuckin idiot. You're such a dummy, you need this flash back from 5 minutes ago because you're too stupid to connect the moment otherwise"
But also "if someone slices you across the stomach with a big sword you don't bleed you just hold your stomach and fall over while going 'arrghh'"
Rightful heirs and similar shit. I hate this monarchist propaganda with a passion.
For all the faults of the final seasons of Game of Thrones, I appreciated that this was the consistent message in the novels and show: beware powerful men and women, and those who aspire to be, because your interests are not their interests. The government formed at the end of the show was basically the least-worst option available in a feudal society.
Even the attempt to improve society somewhat was mocked, given the swerve treatment https://redsails.org/the-swerve/ and even "winter is coming" which was supposed to be some big imminent ignored menace was undone in one cheap stab so the nobles could continue status quo enjoyment minus a melted throne.
The overall muddy message was "sure everything is shit and covered in blood and shit, but attempting to improve society somewhat is naive and stupid and will maybe make things worse or just (at the very finale) be laughed at by your masters. Just go along with their whims."
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)
Oh boy, another excuse to link this article!
Wait, the goodies tell us. Wait for Albion. It’ll arrive. Just be patient. Well, Albion is a very old promise… and, whatever the panglossian liberal morality plays we call family entertainment may say, we’re still bloody waiting. At least the villains, unlike Merlin, are trying to kick up a stink about the delay.
I am so very sick and tired of born-special chosen ones of epic destiny, and by extension, I am also so very tired of secret societies that actually run everything from behind the scenes that have their secret wishes carried out by what amount to magic cops that were born special with an epic destiny. When these things are perceived as an acceptable status quo or even as good in the fiction, that's especially exhausting.
When a story starts to bring in prophecy as part of the writing. As soon as a character does something "because the prophecy speaks of...", I feel that the writers ran out of plausible ideas and use that as a cheap crutch.
Battlestar Galactica was a great show, but they should've skipped that part.
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.
When the driver of a car is looking more at the passenger they’re talking to than the road. Probably a dead giveaway that the scene is shot with green screen or the car being towed on the back of a truck.
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.
The comic relief only character.
No they're not funny, you can't write.Whooshing rocket noise in space, people outrunning explosions, "hero"'s every shot a kill while "baddies" hit nothing.
