History Friends / TropesKToO

* OnceASeason: Chandler runs into an on-again-off-again girlfriend Janice at least one episode every season, sometimes for a multi-episode arc. It typically results in a ContrivedCoincidence, and when she is revealed she says, in her think New York accent, "Oh, my, God!"
* OneCrazyNight: The episode "The One Where They're Up All Night" opens with the characters watching a meteor shower on the roof, then moves on to various other things that happen that night. (Chandler and Monica keeping each other awake, Phoebe being harassed by a smoke alarm, Rachel and Tad going back to the office to look for some paperwork, and Ross and Joey trying to get down from the roof.)

* OneHourWorkWeek: At least four of the Friends have full-time jobs for most of the series, but they have endless amounts of time to hang out at Central Perk or Monica and Rachel's apartment. This is Lampshaded in one episode, where the Friends note that their bosses don't seem to like them... at which point Joey [[LampshadeHanging points out]] that this may be because they're hanging out at a coffee house at 11:30 on a Wednesday morning.
** Made more fun by the fact that Joey is one of two people in the group - the other being Phoebe, and even then Phoebe sometimes does hold regular jobs as a masseuse - who works as a free-lancer.
** Joey shouldn't be let off the hook either. It was justified when he was a struggling and mostly unemployed actor. However, daily soap opera stars have incredibly long work hours.
*** Joey was unemployed at the time.
** Rachel and Chandler the ones with ordinary office jobs appear to take lunch breaks for hours at a time.
*** Though in many scenes, Chandler is shown wearing his office attire, implying that they take place just before/after his work day or during his lunch break.
*** Chandler at one point looks at his watch and says, "Well, it's 4:30, I guess my lunch break is over..." Chandler is mid-level management who apparently does his job well despite his disinterest and absenteeism. His affable demeanor probably helps him smooth out any complaints he gets about not being at the office. In fact, the only time he seems to be in serious danger of losing his job is the time he accidentally agrees to move to Tulsa and then back out of it.
** Monica has several character arcs about her career as a restaurant chef, eventually becoming Head Chef at a very prestigious restaurant. This is usually a job with 14 hour days, often seven days a week, but she seems to work about as much as Joey when he's unemployed.
*** She also seems to only work during the day. She's always off work in the evening. As a head chef, she would definitely be at the restaurant during the dinner rush in the evenings.
** Not to mention Ross, who in later seasons is a university professor, a career involving not only teaching but tons of grading papers, tutorials and your own research. He seems to go to campus once a week at most.

** The creators of ''Friends'' did take in the criticism and therefore cast a black woman as a love interest for Joey and Ross in the later seasons. While it was nice of them, it also was kind of odd, considering the Monochrome Casting of the love interests prior to her.

** In "TOW The Late Thanksgiving," Joey gets his head trapped in the door, and to get him free, the gang have to push him through. Cue him crashing into the table and getting food ''everywhere''. When Chandler points this out to major-neat-freak Monica, she stares at them and simply says: "I don't care." [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments Turns out that she's just got off the phone with the adoption agency and they're getting a baby]].

* LoveHurts: Ross and Carol. Ross and Rachel. Joey and Rachel. Phoebe and David. Monica and Richard. Chandler and Kathy.
** Subverted with Monica and Chandler who are blissfully happy together and end up HappilyMarried. Also Phoebe and [[spoiler: Mike]].

* LookingForLoveInAllTheWrongPlaces: Everyone, always.

** This can result in odd situations where the title won't always correspond to the logical "The One With" name. For example, "The One With The Embryos" is more well-known as the one with the trivia contest that leads to the guys and girls switching apartments and "The One With The Kips" is commonly referred by fans as "The One Where Joey Finds Out About Chandler and Monica."

** ChekhovsGun: "TOW The Poking Device". Joey makes a poking device out of chopsticks he'd been saving for no reason.

* {{Malapropism}}: Joey's infamous "moo point".

** In "The One Where Chandler Can't Cry," Rachel's sister breaks Ross' projector for turning her sexual advances down, and then shames him and asks him: "How gay are you?"

* AManIsAlwaysEager: In "The One With Phoebe's Birthday Dinner," Chandler and Monica have a fight about him smoking, she then pretends she's not mad to get him to have sex with her (as she's ovulating), he's angry about this but it ends with essentially 'you got to have sex so why you are mad' and him bitching that he's too much of a girl. Monica also mentions the time he wanted to have sex just after her uncle's funeral.

** Ross buys one of these. Too bad it's so small it gets stuck in the parking space. Why they couldn't have grabbed some of their TwentyFourHourPartyPeople friends and just ''carried'' the thing out is difficult to understand. He also quickly abandons the car when an old, bald gentleman shows up driving the exact same car.

*** Well, they ''tried'' carrying it out. Also, Ross offers to sell the car to Joey after the bald guy shows up. Joey passes.
** In an earlier episode, Ross and Monica's father mentioned buying a Porsche when he turned fifty. A few seasons later he later gave it to Monica (as an apology for using the boxes with all her childhood relics to block flooding water in order [[SkewedPriorities to protect the car]]).

** In universe, Mr. Heckles (the crazy downstairs neighbor of Monica and Rachel) was killed off for good. Except for the flashback episode in the third season, when he actually plays a pivotal role in Joey's becoming Chandler's roommate. But as the episode takes place before the beginning of the series, it makes sense that Heckles was still there.

** There's also the time Chandler drunkenly kissed one of Joey's sisters. Joey started out angry and concerned that Chandler was just using his sister as a rebound after breaking up with Janice again. Chandler denies it which calms Joey down...until he learns Chandler doesn't actually know which of his seven near-identical sisters he made out with.

** In "TOW The Late Thanksgiving," Joey gets his head trapped in the door, and to get him free, the gang have to push him through. Cue him crashing into the table and getting food ''everywhere''. When Chandler points this out to major-neat-freak Monica, she stares at them and simply says: "I don't care." [[SugarWiki/CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming Turns out that she's just got off the phone with the adoption agency and they're getting a baby]].

** "The One with Chandler's Work Laugh" features Ross agonizing over telling Chandler that he had a brief relationship with the latter's ex-girlfriend, Janice. Finally, at the end, Ross confesses and Chandler openly indicates that he doesn't care, what with having no lingering feelings for Janice.

** In "TOW The Boob Job", Monica and Chandler have financial problems, and Chandler refuses to borrow money, so Monica asks Joey in secret if she can borrow from him. When Chandler is onto her, and asks Joey why she would want to borrow money if it can't be because of their economy (which Joey convinced him wasn't), he answers from the top of his head that she wants a boob job. Chandler later goes on an on about telling her that she's perfect the way she is and wouldn't want to change anything on her body, to which she thinks he means the obesity she'll undergo during pregnancy. When confronting Chandler about it, HilarityEnsues.

** Joey is almost as bad in this regard. He constantly mooches off Chandler (with everything from rent payments to acting classes), he refuses to maintain a steady romantic relationship even when he's well into his mid/late-30's, and he's hopelessly idealistic about his acting career despite clearly being a pretty lousy actor.

** Rachel has a childish need to be the center of attention, refuses to take responsibility for her own actions, and constantly whines to her friends about her personal problems.

* MayDecemberRomance: Monica's boyfriend Richard was "a person who can drink" older than her.
** "I'm dating a man whose pool I once peed in!"

** In response to that, Rachel said, "Yeah, you and that girl from the copy place." She was claiming that Ross's cheating on her (which Ross vociferously insisted wasn't really cheating because they were "on a break") was the ''sole'' reason for their breakup, even though there were numerous problems in their relationship well before that. Or that she had the guy Ross was jealous of come over to comfort her not an hour after their big fight (and when Ross calls to try and patch things up he can hear the guy in the background). Other occasions have her claiming Ross begged her for sex even though ''she'' came onto him.

** In another episode Phoebe references the time a peacock bit Chandler in the zoo. This is actually mentioned in two separate episodes in the first season, suggesting that the writers were planning on making it a RunningGag, but then decided against it.

* NotWithThemForTheMoney: Monica towards Pete. Despite his offers to buy her a restaurant (and escape her horrible job) and Rachel's encouragement to date a billionaire she turned him down until she developed genuine feelings. This contrasts with former GoldDigger Rachel, who encourages her to date him anyways because he's a billionaire.
* NoSenseOfPersonalSpace: The gang as a whole, justified given how close [[{{TrueCompanions}} they are to each other]]. However in early seasons Monica and Chandler were worse than the rest, (at least with each other), frequently cuddling on the couch, absentmindly stroking each other, curling up and watching movies, draping across each other, holding hands, hugging while ''half-dressed''.... When they started their SecretRelationship they actually seemed ''less'' cuddly in public! It does explain how they kept it hidden for so long though.

** Chandler does it too, especially after getting together with Monica, pretending to be worse a competitive games than he really is.

* OneDialogueTwoConversations: Occurs between Rachel and Phoebe in "TO Where No One Proposes", when Joey accidently proposes to Rachel and she needs to think about it. Rachel thinks they're talking about Joey, and Phoebe thinks they're talking about Ross:

* OpeningCreditsCastParty: The opening has the characters goofing around a fountain in the park. The odd part isn't that the characters are all together (they almost always are in the show itself), it's that they're apparently having a late-night party in the middle of a deserted park... that has a ''couch''!
** And a lamp that's hooked up to the fountain's floodlight!
*** Fans have attempted to shoehorn this into the show's canon by saying that it was a photo shoot that Joey was participating in early in his acting career. For some reason, they needed five other extras in a hurry, so Joey called up his friends.
** The fountain rarely makes an appearance in the show itself.
** Distressingly, David Schwimmer's "Mr. Roboto" dance was removed in later versions.

** "The One With the Routine" has Monica and Ross attempting to get on TV whilst on-set filming ''DickClark's New Year's Rockin' Eve''.