Drinking Game - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Perhaps booze would alleviate this situation."

—Tom Servo, Mystery Science Theater 3000

At least in the United States and Canada, the university system tends to lead to people having a lot of free time, communal televisions, and access to alcohol.

The television drinking game is an ancient and much-respected system for trope identification that evolved out of these factors. In the days before resources such as this catalogue, the drinking game was the most popular and accessible means of identifying tropes and cliches.

It works like this: each regular occurrence in a show is documented, and assigned a numeric score based on its prevalence, triteness, or perversity. During a viewing of the show, each time such a documented phenomenon occurs, players drink a number of sips of their preferred alcoholic beverage equal to the numeric score.

There's another version where you drink a different, non alcoholic beverage. Like milk. Of course, this is still pretty adventurous if you're lactose intolerant. Thus, for example, whenever someone mishears a conversation in an episode of Frasier, take a sip.

Many such games also feature an "alcoholic's version", which recognizes that a particular trope is used excessively by assigning drinks to it. Such variants should be played with caution as they can lead to alcohol poisoning. For example, whenever William Shatner overacts, take a sip.

Some games also feature a cynical "teetotaler's version", where drinks are assigned only for realistic behaviors which are conspicuously absent from the show (such as a lack of Genre Blindness). This variant should also be used with caution, as it can lead to remaining sober enough to realize you're wasting your life watching TV. For example: drink the whole jug when the Doctor isn't familiar with the Monster Of The Week.

Thanks to modern technology, this wiki can be used to generate new and exciting drinking games on the fly for other shows. Here's how:

When a marathon of your show of choice is about to air, look up its entry in Series and print a copy. Now, look at the section titled "This series provides examples of" for a list of tropes, devices, idioms and cliches. (And remember, while Tropes Are Not Bad, neither is any excuse to get drunk.)

For every use of a Trope, take one sip.
For every parody or use of a Subverted Trope, take two sips.
For every use of a Discredited Trope or Dead Horse Trope, take two sips.
For every use of a Characteristic Trope, take three sips.

For alcoholics: Do the same thing, but instead of looking up the show in Category Series, type the title into the search box to generate your list of tropes

For teetotalers: Drink only when a law or formula is broken.

Perhaps the original television-related drinking game is "Hi Bob!" Simply pick an episode of The Bob Newhart Show and drink whenever anyone says "Hi Bob!" This game has an elegant simplicity which is lacking from many television-themed drinking games, in that there is only a single relevant event, easy to remember even after many occurrences of "Hi Bob!" Many other drinking games result in lengthy lists of events to drink on, which can be fun to read but may be impractical for actual play. The level of drunkenness achieved in "Hi Bob!" can also vary widely with the episode chosen—with a little knowledge and/or advance research, one can select an episode with a desired level of inebriation in mind.

And, seeing as we have everything else...