Underused tropes in fiction, TV & film

[Elpenor]

And nobody is 'tortured for all eternity', that's another bollix.

We're poor little lambs who've lost our way,
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We're little black sheep who've gone astray,
Baa—aa—aa!
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,

 

[frogwoman]

A child in a thriller that doesn't get kidnapped and just gets left to their own devices.

 

[frogwoman]

Agree with poo in books and films. You never have a scene with characters on the toilet.

 

[frogwoman]

A single dad being the protagonist of a psychological thriller.

 

[krtek a houby]

Agree with poo in books and films. You never have a scene with characters on the toilet.

Trainspotting, though.

Characters on and in the actual toilet .

 

[frogwoman]

Trainspotting, though.

Characters on and in the actual toilet .

That was kind of deliberately disgusting and making a point though?

 

[krtek a houby]

That was kind of deliberately disgusting and making a point though?

How about John Travolta in Pulp Fiction?

 

[Spandex]

Agree with poo in books and films. You never have a scene with characters on the toilet.

The first time a toilet appeared on the big screen was in the silent 1928 movie The Crowd. Owner of MGM studios Louis B. Mayer famously hated the film because of the scene — he called it that “damn toilet film.”

Toilets then didn't appear in film for another 32 years. While the Hayes Code didn't specifically mention loos, their appearance would likely have been covered by "vulgarity". A toilet is mentioned in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), but remains off screen. Psycho (1960) is the next film to actually show a toilet on screen.

In The Party (1968) bumbling Peter Sellers breaks his host’s cistern. Luis Buñuel's 1974 Phantom of Liberty features a scene in which the well-dressed bourgeoisie sit around on toilets, chatting happily to one another about excrement, before one of them excuses himself to visit a small cubicle at the end of the hallway where he furtively eats dinner.

Toilets and seweage have become more common, whether it's the cliché of women in the public bathroom fixing their hair in the mirror, or the trope of someone using sewers to get in or out of somewhere (Slumdog Millionaire, The Hobbit, The Shawshank Redemption). There's comedy toilet scenes (Austin Powers, Dumb & Dumber). There's Nicole Kidman sat on the loo in Eyes Wide Shut or Julianne Moore in Maps to the Stars.

One reason something we all do every day isn't more common is that we tend to go alone and nothing much happens sat on the loo, so unless it's plot or joke specific it would be a pointless few minutes of someone just sat there with their trousers round their ankles or skirt hitched up.

 

[Combustible]

The protagonists win a climactic battle at great cost to their own side, and spend the rest of the film dealing with overwhelming grief and PTSD

That's basically the end of LOTR. The long drawn out ending of Return of the King is often mocked, but it's basically preserving that sense from the books, which was a deliberate choice by Tolkien for obvious reasons.

 

[Chz]

And lock the fucking car for once! Just lock it, how hard can it be?

Reminds me how, 30+ years on from them being mandated in cars in the US, the number of times an airbag goes off in a crash in a major motion picture can be counted on your fingers.

 

[Chz]

In detective/ Christie-style crime films, whenever someone wants to knock out with a blow to the head the protagonist or an innocent party who has unexpectedly shown up is and about to see them at a place they shouldn’t have been, they misjudge the force of the strike and cause permanent brain damage or death instead of the intended 30-minute period of lights out.

Conversely, when the antagonist wishes to kill the inconvenient witness or murder their victim with just a single blow to the head, leaving them laying on the floor seemingly dead and bleeding profusely from the head, they find out in the morning that the victim had just suffered a nasty concussion and cut to their scalp, had regained consciousness an hour or two later, and were resting in hospital and expected to make a full recovery.

That falls into a far larger trope around the fact that it's impossible to just quickly "knock someone out" harmlessly. There's no magic sort of chloroform that will render you instantly unconscious (it takes time, there would be a struggle). Tranq darts take more than enough time to take effect that someone can raise an alarm. Conking someone on the head hard enough to black them out for more than 3 seconds carries a very real risk of lasting brain damage. It's only because the film censors have rules around massive dead body counts that they do this. Can you imagine an action film where the hero leaves everyone in a wheelchair, or permanently needing a feeding tube?

The only way to safely knock someone out in under 5 seconds is with a cannula.

ETA: Oblig. TV Tropes knockout link: Tap on the Head - TV Tropes

Any sort of damage to the brain, even 'minor' trauma, can have devastating results. It's the difference between turning a computer off by shutting it down and by hitting it. The latter is likely to cause serious long-term damage.

Instant sedation - TV Tropes

 

[DaveCinzano]

The only way to safely knock someone out in under 5 seconds is with a cannula.

ETA: Oblig. TV Tropes knockout link: Tap on the Head - TV Tropes

Any sort of damage to the brain, even 'minor' trauma, can have devastating results. It's the difference between turning a computer off by shutting it down and by hitting it. The latter is likely to cause serious long-term damage.

Instant sedation - TV Tropes

So can I turn my laptop off with chloroform or not?

 

[A380]

Reminds me how, 30+ years on from them being mandated in cars in the US, the number of times an airbag goes off in a crash in a major motion picture can be counted on your fingers.

And when they do they are a big balloon that slowly deflates. Rather than cushion sized thing with massive holes in it that is only formed for about 100 mS after the charge goes off.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

Can you imagine an action film where the hero leaves everyone in a wheelchair, or permanently needing a feeding tube?

Tbf we don’t often go back to the henchmen after they’ve been knocked out. (((henchmen)))

Even further to that (and I think someone brought up strangling earlier too), isn’t that part of TV and film showing incorrect ways to kill so it’s less obvious for people to use those ideas in real life? Classic examples would be breaking a neck using a sideways motion and various methods of suicide.

Spoiler: Suicide trope

Actually a really grim underused trope would be the aftermath of uncompleted suicides that cause huge medical impairment or delayed death, which may then be regretted. Hollyoaks did the latter I recall - paracetamol overdose that didn’t cause immediate death but a protracted one over a week, with no real pain relief. And even then you only really saw the news of this future being broken to the character.