A
trope which through overuse, misuse, latter day offensiveness, obsolescence, being a notably
Subverted Trope, or just being
widely disliked, has become one which none should dare use
seriously and only belongs in parody, satire, homage or pastiche. Often, if one of these is used straight,
people will assume it's a
Red Herring.
The
Undead Horse Trope are immune to this, for some reason or another.
See also
Dead Horse Trope.
Examples:
- All Just A Dream
- And Knowing Is Half The Battle
- Beautiful All Along
- Big No
- The Calls Are Coming From Inside The House
- Dead Pet Sketch
- Digital Piracy Is Evil - Media industry largely uses it straight, but others do not.
- Disaster Movies involving airplanes - since Airplane! came out, no-one could possibly take one seriously. Unless it was based on a true story. Sort of.
- Drunken Montage
- Easy Amnesia
- Eek A Mouse
- Ethnic Scrappy
- Face On A Milk Carton
- Ghost Butler
- Haunted Castle
- I Broke A Nail
- Its Quiet Too Quiet
- Leprechaun — Only in Ireland itself though, not in America or elsewhere.
- Luke I Am Your Father — use the trope, but don't even think about using that phrase, since it's a Beam Me Up Scotty anyway.
- One Bullet At A Time — subjective; was a technical limitation, but can still be used to prevent some forms of spam.
- That Reminds Me Of A Song - Modern musicals, at least in theatre, are specifically not supposed to play this one straight anymore, though there's still a chance a song of this nature may end up as a Breakaway Pop Hit
- Ret Irony
- The Scream
- So Beautiful, It's A Curse (in serious works, anyway, but crappy fanfic authors still use this trope time and time again)
- Women Drivers
- In modern chase scenes the Fruit Cart, Sheet Of Glass, and Baby Carriage are only included with at least a wink — for serious chases something else that will go splat is used.
- Any trope related to a racial or national caricature is generally avoided, with the notable exception of the Americans, French and Arabs.
- There was one movie review that said that Arab terrorists were becoming a Discredited Trope. This was from before September 11, 2001.
Note that making this list doesn't stop writers who are still living in
Totally Radical from using them.
