"These are the top 10 ways to break stuff."
— A David Letterman spoof on Beavis And Butthead
Any tropes about things getting broken or outright destroyed.
Compare Death Tropes, Injury Tropes, Anatomy Agony.
Tropes
- Accidentally Broke the MacGuffin: The plot device is accidentally destroyed, eaten, etc.
- Agitated Item Stomping: Whatever is there for your feet to show frustration.
- Appliance Defenestration: Large objects are best broken when thrown from the second story or so.
- Bad Vibrations: An animal is so strong they can move and shake and topple things from a long distance due to the sheer force of their footsteps alone, oftentimes without noticing.
- Breakable Weapons: Nice sword you have. Too bad it only has a few slashes left before it breaks.
- Breaking the Bonds: A showcase of power by destroying the restraints.
- Break-Up Bonfire: Burning mementos of a past relationship.
- Brick Break: A brick is a black belt's favored target.
- Broken Glass Penalty: A window is accidentally broken by people playing a sport, much to their chagrin.
- Broken Lever of Doom: A broken lever makes a machine run out of control
- Broken Treasure: One character breaks something very important to another character and tries to hide the fact.
- Broken-Window Warning: A threat made from throwing an object in through a window, breaking the window in the process.
- Burning the Flag: Protesting a country by attacking a symbol of it.
- Bystander Action-Horror Dissonance: The collateral impact of a fight on the civilians is shown.
- Clothing Damage: Fashion getting torn for Fanservice.
- Collateral Damage: Character has a mission but destroys things or kills people unnecessarily in the process.
- Crash in Through the Ceiling: A falling character enters a building the hard way.
- Credit Card Destruction: A store cuts up a customer's credit card when it gets declined.
- Crush the Keepsake: Destroying a character's prized possession.
- Damage Control: Whatever is being wrecked, mitigating the damage is first priority.
- Defenestrate and Berate: Destroying stuff by throwing it out of the window, and screaming for good measure.
- Destination Defenestration: Through the window is faster than going down the stairs.
- Destroyer Deity: Bring on the smiting!
- Destroying a Punching Bag: Hitting a punching bag so hard that you break it.
- Destroy the Product Placement: Any Product Placement has a bullseye on it.
- Destroy the Security Camera: Break or sabotage a surveillance camera to avoid detection.
- Destroy the Villain's Weapon: Destroying the bad guy's weapon.
- Destructible Projectiles: Projectiles that can be destroyed before hitting their intended target.
- Destructive Saviour: Save the day, wreck everything else.
- Destructive Teleportation: Teleportation that involves destruction of the teleported object.
- Destructo-Nookie: Smashing hot sex.
- Die, Chair, Die!: Every other thing, in some games, is breakable.
- Doomed New Clothes: Nice dress you bought. Shame if something were to...never mind, it already got ruined.
- Dramatic Shattering: Breaking stuff gives a scene an emotional kick.
- Drill the Lock: There's a locked door and it has to be opened as fast as possible. A power drill (or similar instrument) can be used to break the lock.
- Earthquakes Cause Fissures: The ground shakes and the ground breaks.
- Everything Breaks: Most things in a game are designed to be wrecked.
- Fruit Cart: No chase scene is complete without hitting one.
- Gasoline Dousing: Pouring gasoline on something and then setting it ablaze.
- A Glass in the Hand: A cup makes a poor stress ball.
- Glass-Shattering Sound: A chalice cannot withstand these notes.
- The Great Fire: The whole city goes up in flames.
- Grievous Bottley Harm: Bottles as improvised blunt weapons.
- Halloween Trickery: People use Halloween as an excuse to vandalise property
- House of Broken Mirrors: Broken mirrors as a representation of insanity, especially if there are multiple broken mirrors.
- Hat Damage: Your headwear might as well have a target painted on.
- Ill-Fated Flowerbed: Your plants are disaster magnets.
- In Case of Boss Fight, Break Glass: To beat this boss, just break the glass chamber.
- In Case of X, Break Glass: If it's usually sealed, it's not to be used lightly.
- Interrogation by Vandalism: Talk or your shop gets it.
- Kung-Shui: Not the kind of remodeling you were looking for.
- Literally Shattered Lives: People being broken.
- Mirror-Cracking Ugly: Something is so ugly that mirrors would rather break than reflect it.
- Monumental Damage: We can't know the disaster is really serious until we see significant historical architecture getting hit.
- Mourning an Object: An inanimate object is broken or destroyed and is treated by the characters as though it has died.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Rivals!: Fighting over an object leads to it being destroyed.
- Ominous Crack: The prelude to something important breaking.
- "Open!" Says Me: Kicking or smashing a door in.
- Paper Destruction of Anger: Destroying a piece of paper in cold or hot anger.
- Piggy Bank: A ceramic figure of a pig used for storing money. Often shattered in order to obtain the money within.
- Planet Destroyer: The ability to cause an Earth-Shattering Kaboom.
- Poster Patchup: Hiding a hole in the wall with a poster.
- Priceless Ming Vase: It's rare and expensive, so fiction wants it gone.
- Rage Against the Reflection: Mirror + Anger = 7 years bad luck.
- Rewarding Vandalism: There were coins hidden in the brick I just smashed?
- Ridiculously Potent Explosive: When real-world explosives just aren't potent enough.
- Ring-Ring-CRUNCH!: You're no longer in the mood to merely hang up or hit the snooze button.
- Rockers Smash Guitars: You can't be a good hard rocker without breaking your instruments.
- Sentimental Sacrifice: A character destroys something deeply precious to them for the greater good.
- Shattered Sanity: A broken object symbolizing a broken mind.
- Shattered World: What remains after an Earth-Shattering Kaboom.
- Sheet of Glass: You can't show the destruction in a car chase without these.
- Shoot the Television: Because you can't angrily press "Off" on the remote.
- Sickening "Crunch!": The sound of bones breaking.
- Smash the Symbol: Overthrowing a regime isn't complete without some Rule of Symbolism.
- Soft Glass: Throwing yourself through glass, without your skin getting lots of cuts.
- Suspiciously Cracked Wall: There has to be something behind this wall, so I'm gonna wreck it!
- Symbolically Broken Object: A broken object represents the death of a person or the destruction of a relationship.
- That Satisfying "Crunch!": Smashing as a release.
- There Was a Door: I make my own doorways.
- Tilting Tower of Pisa: Tipping a famously tilted monument to collapse or tip at a new angle.
- Trash the Set: A/the primary location of a series is destroyed, sometimes with the actual set being destroyed.
- Troubled Toybreaker: An abused, neglected or otherwise troubled child vents their anger by destroying toys.
- Vandalism Backfire: Destroying what you assume is someone else's property, then finding out that what you damaged wasn't even theirs in the first place.
- Vinyl Shatters: Vinyl is basically glass in fiction.
- Walking Wasteland: Someone has supernatural powers that destroy things on contact, is big enough to achieve the same, or just somehow directly manages to cause destruction wherever they go.
- Weapons Breaking Weapons: A weapon breaks another weapon (e.g. a sword slicing through another sword).
- Wreaking Havok: The physics engine to simulate destruction in games.
- Wrecked Weapon: Your weapon is supposed to do the smashing, not be smashed.
