20 Awful, Tired Tropes (and the Movies That Totally Pulled Them Off)
![20 Awful, Tired Tropes (and the Movies That Totally Pulled Them Off)](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/3/859453_320x180.jpg)
To cut a long story short, tropes are ways to cut a long story short, as in the phrase “to cut a long story short.” They’re visual, narrative, or structural cues used to transmit precise information by shorter, commonly-known means. Take for example one of our favorite trope-discussing meta movies: Funny Games. Early on, the camera focuses on a knife falling on the ground — Chekhov's knife, if you will, and we know you will. The movie does this because, at least unconsciously, viewers know that focusing on a random object at the beginning indicates the object will be used later on. Of course, in Funny Games the knife isn’t actually used, which makes it a subverted trope. This is not what we’re discussing today, but you get it. Yeah, you do. Look at you, grinning while saying “hell yeah! Random Funny Games references!” We know, we know.
Anyway, at least in fiction, and for better or worse, tropes tend to work. In real life, you can have someone spending decades giving off every single trope for slimy corruption and a giggling grandpa surrounded by chirping birds like a friggin’ Disney princess – and it’ll still be the former who will get to be president twice because the Controlled Opposition Party will do nothing after their purely symbolic hearings. Real life does not follow tropes. Instead, real life laughs chaotically in the face of their order-providing narrative function. Or come to think of it, perhaps real life is one big Michael Haneke movie. In any case, and just like singing, sentient animals in old-timey Disney movies, some tropes have managed to work wonderfully. In this Pictofact, we discuss awful, trite, and tired tropes that have been nevertheless pulled off in awesome ways, whether by the movies that invented them or by later ones that made great use of them. To cut a long story short, cutting a long story short can do wonders – Chekhov's trope, if you will.
Deus Ex Machina
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) Jurassic Park (1993) DEUS EX MACHINA The definitive dino flick manages a kick-ass climax via the completely unironical use of the oldest narrative trope ever. We assume the T. rex was sneaking on tippy toes, just waiting to save the day. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/8/859478.jpg)
Jump Scare
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) JUMP SCARES Even horror movies pushing for quality and originality often ruin their surprises with the cheap trick of loud noises. But the videocam scene in this masterpiece is just an earned and clever jump scare. The Descent (2005) CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/5/859465.jpg)
Goon Politeness
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) FAIR PLAY GOONS Overwhelm the hero with sheer numbers? No, no, that would be unsportmanslike: everyone must patiently wait for their turn to fight (and be dispatched). Yes, it's not exactly a sound tactic, but damn if it doesn't make for amazing fight scenes in Kill Bill. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/7/859467.jpg)
More: 6 Absurd Action Tropes You Never Noticed And Can't Unsee
Mexican Standoff
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) Face/Off(1997) MEXICAN STANDOFF You know a trope has gotten lame when friggin' Transformers movies reference it. But Sergio Leone and Quentin Tarantino have given us quality standoffs, and Face/Off (John Woo's best American actioner) is an entire movie made up of those. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/4/859474.jpg)
Getting Caught Was The Plan
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) GETTING CAUGHT WAS THE PLAN ALL ALONG This was already tiring when Star Trek Into Darkness and Skyfall did it. In The Avengers it was kinda- sorta interesting, but nothing really compares to the Joker being captured as part of his overall plan (which he totally doesn't have, pinky swear). The Dark Knight (2008) CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/4/859464.jpg)
Split Personality
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) Persona (1966) SPLIT PERSONALITY TWIST One would expect Fight Club or A Tale of Two Sisters mentioned here, but we're going with this classic by Ingmar Bergman-which along with Psycho was one of the first movies to pull off this final twist. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/5/859475.jpg)
The Discarded Image/YouTube
More: 5 Obnoxious Movie Trends You Can't Unsee
Edgy Song
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) The Matrix (1999) FADE TO EDGY THEME SONG The Simpsons lampooned this action movie cliché with the (historically accurate) Zorro rap. But we have to give it to The Matrix: ending a subversive action movie with Rage Against the Machine kicking in is art. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/1/859471.jpg)
Discarded Protection
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) A Fistful of Dollars (1964) DISCARDING THE PROTECTION We have mixed feelings about this Sergio Leone classic: On the one hand, Clint Eastwood's character could have really used more bulletproof protection, but on the other, the scene where he drops his improvised armor plate is absolutely awesome. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/8/859468.jpg)
More: 6 Absurd Action Tropes You Never Noticed And Can't Unsee
Office Misery
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) 4210 1/s GRA Boa dellew - - - - - - 1 - - Office Space (1999) WORKPLACE MISERY We could write an entire piece on how peak-'90s neoliberalism movies depict offices as the place where the human spirit goes to die. But Office Space focused on its specifically absurdist, Kafkaesque angle, making for a particularly smart example. Swinglina CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/6/1/5/859615.jpg)
Source: WatchMojo.com/YouTube
Nosebleed
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) Scanners (1981) PSYCHIC NOSEBLEED Stranger Things uses nose bleeding as a sign of psychic activity because it's a totally '80s thing - in fact, it almost started with the '80s, first appearing in David Cronenberg's movie. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/3/859463.jpg)
Source: Screen Rant
Liquid Nitrogen
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) LIQUID NITROGEN DEATH Demolition Man, Timecop, Goldeneye, Jason X- death by liquid nitrogen was all the rage for some time. But the movie that turned it into an iconic thing was this, the last Terminator ever made. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/2/859472.jpg)
Movie Scene on YouTube
More: 6 Weirdly Specific Tropes Movies Got Briefly Obsessed With
Dangerous Woman
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) Audition (1999) FEMME FATALE One of the oldest tropes in the book just rocks in Takashi Miike's classic rom-com. Well, it starts like a rom-com. Seriously guys, respect women or they'll put you in a bag and cut off your tongue and fingers. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/3/859473.jpg)
Source: Wikipedia
Dream
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) The Holy Mountain (1973) IT WAS ALL A DREAM By now, this twist only works as a joke. Still, some movies like Jacob's Ladder have managed to pull it off-but we're going with the Alejandro Jodorowsky classic that twisted it into a fully self- abolishing version, by showing us it was all a movie. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/9/859459.jpg)
Love Declaration
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) When Harry Met Sally... (1989) FINAL DECLARATION OF LOVE Rob Reiner's classic wonderfully pulls off this sappy trope, as the cherry on top of a smart, multi-layered, still unsurpassed movie. The final declaration makes narrative, emotional, and structural sense. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/9/859469.jpg)
Dead
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) The Sixth Sense (1999) DEAD ALL ALONG This quickly became a joke, but it packed quite a punch in The Sixth Sense-and since it wasn't just a gimmick but the final payoff of a well constructed, complex story, it still does. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/0/859460.jpg)
Evil Children
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) Who Can Kill a Child? (1976) EVIL CHILDREN This Spanish horror movie did wonders with this trope that won't die. It's campy '70s horror, but it keeps getting better and better until the ending. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/6/859466.jpg)
Source: Wikipedia
Uncooperative Car
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) Double Indemnity (1944) THE CAR WON'T START This horror movie cliché didn't actually originate in a horror movie, but in this classic noir film. Billy Wilder was apparently inspired by something that actually happened to him. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/0/859470.jpg)
Sources: Wikipedia, Movie Scene on YouTube
House Calls
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) Black Christmas (1974) THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE This is usually associated with 1979's When a Stranger Calls, but Larry Clark's movie is the true pre-Halloween gem of the trope (and of the overall slasher genre, while we're at it). CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/8/859458.jpg)
Source: Screen Rant
Rock Bottom
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) The Invisible Man (2020) SECOND ACT ROCK BOTTOM You just know that however bad things are, it'll all work out in the end. But The Invisible Man successfully drops its main character into an inescapable abyss of hopelessness by its second act. Two words: restaurant scene. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/7/859457.jpg)
Sky Beam
![Tired Tropes (And The Movies That Pulled Them Off) BIG BLUE SKY BEAM Remember when every movie ended with one of these? The Avengers, Suicide Squad, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon... Independence Day did it so awesomely two decades earlier, we'll just assume all those movies were trying to replicate that. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/6/859456.jpg)
Movie Scene on YouTube
More: 6 Weirdly Specific Tropes Movies Got Briefly Obsessed With