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I previously made a thread
asking for help organizing the tropes
on Film.Meet The Parents Film Series and had no response. What should I do? Here’s a full list of tropes that don’t mention a specific film for example.
- Accidental Truth: When the family finds out that Greg got a cat to be a fake Jinx which trashed the family room and lied about it, Pam rhetorically asks him this:
Pam: Now what are you going to tell me next? That you set Kevin's altar on fire? (chuckles nervously. Greg keeps his silence, causing Pam to stop smiling, and realize that what she just guessed was actually true) Oh my god.
- Actor Allusion: Jack mentions to Greg that he spend 9 months in a Vietnamese prison camp.
- Adaptation Expansion: Compared to the 1992 film, the main characters' backstories are much more developed, and Pam gets one additional sibling as well as a specific job as a 2nd grade teacher.
- Adaptation Species Change: Bingo the dog from the 1992 film is replaced by Jinx the cat.
- Adaptational Jerkass:
- 1992's Irv Burns is presented as a typically serious, conservative, cigar-smoking, gun-wielding Midwestern American father. A realistically intimidating father-figure, if you will. Still, he is initially trusting of Greg until his would-be son-in-law's accidents cause the family to collapse. Jack Byrnes, however, is a paranoid, overly accusatory former CIA agent who is immediately suspicious of Greg and goes to comical extremes to confirm his suspicions that he's an unsuitable suitor for his daughter, as he did for all of her past suitors.
- Downplayed with Greg. In the 1992 film, he always apologizes and tells the truth, even if no one believes him. However, in the Hollywood trilogy, he tends to make up lies and excuses when something goes wrong, but he's trying to save, not ruin, his relationships with Pam and her family.
- Adaptational Job Change:
- 1992's Greg (no last name) is an advertising agent. 2000's Greg Focker, on the other hand, is a male nurse.
- Also in the indie flick, patriarch Irv Burns was a gas station owner who eventually sold his business to Japanese investors and retired on the income. Here, Jack Byrnes is a Vietnam War veteran and retired CIA operative whose cover story is that he's a retired florist.
- Adaptational Name Change: Besides Greg being given an embarrassing last name when he originally had none (plus an embarrassing real first name), the Byrnes family last name was originally spelled "Burns" in the 1992 film. Likewise, Jack, Dina, and Debbie were once called Irv, Kay, and Fay.
- Adaptational Nice Girl: Pam's 1992 sister Fay is a creepy, obsessive lunatic who can't stand anyone criticizing her singing, and her interactions with Greg lead to the whole family's downfall. Her 2000 sister Debbie, though, is happily engaged to a man named Bob and isn't given much characterization beyond that, as the bulk of the film focuses on the Greg vs. Jack dynamic.
- All Take and No Give: Jack's Circle of Trust, despite its intentions, is unfortunately this. Jack expects the select few in the circle to be utterly honest, but he cannot keep his suspicions in check.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents:
- The free-spirited Fockers. They Cannot Keep a Secret and have no boundaries whatsoever, especially when it comes to sexuality.
- Jack Byrnes to a slightly lesser degree - it's clear that Pam has grown very tired of his overprotectiveness and the lengths he is willing to go to nitpick any potential suitor of hers. Not to mention, he wears a fake boob for much of the second movie.
- Ashes to Crashes: Greg breaks the urn containing the ashes of Jack's beloved mother trying to open a champagne bottle. To make it much worse, Mr. Jinx mistakes the resulting pile for a litter box.
- Blatant Lies:
- Pam telling Greg that her dad is "the sweetest man in the world". Also, later, when Jack claims to be a very accepting person.
- Greg himself is guilty of a few, especially the one about the time he milked a cat.
- Bourgeois Bohemian: The Fockers. They're portrayed as well-meaning and friendly (certainly much moreso than Jack's family) if a little loopy and too open.
- Butt-Monkey: These films are all about making poor Greg Focker actually, Gaylord as miserable as possible, having everything that could possibly go wrong, go wrong starting with when he's meeting his girlfriend's parents and continuing the trend well after he's managed to marry her and start a family.
- Cannot Keep a Secret: When Pam reveals to Greg that she's pregnant (and the Fockers figure it out on their own), he's afraid Jack will find out because his parents are so open about everything and refuse to keep secrets. Ironically, Greg ends up being the one who spills the beans to Jack, albeit under the influence of truth serum that Jack injected him with.
- Cats Are Mean: Even Mr. Jinx seems to have it in for Greg.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The "bingo bango bongo" guy in the second film who turns out to be the county judge.
- Closer to Earth: Played straight with the Byrneses; Dina is far more sane and rational than Jack. Averted elsewhere, though. Greg, despite being a klutz, is otherwise a fairly level-headed guy and on par with Pam in terms of overall intelligence and sanity. As for Bernie and Roz Focker, they're both pretty loopy.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Greg's parents to a T. Kevin evolves into this by the third film. And Jack, in his own paranoid and overprotective way.
- Conflict Ball: And how! The entire trilogy's biggest conflicts all revolve around Jack thinking Greg is out to do no good when it's all misunderstandings and not waiting until he has all evidence before confronting Greg.
- Control Freak: Jack Byrnes' Fatal Flaw, on top of being Improperly Paranoid, is that he needs to be the leader of the situation and only his opinions matter. The further down the trilogy he goes, the less control he has, the more stress he gets, which culminates with him getting several heart attacks in the third film.
- Cringe Comedy: Any lesser man would have pummeled Jack Byrnes to a pulp (or would have risked serious injury/death trying), hollered his feeling fed-up with the crap he's been through, and gone back home. Which goes to show how determined Greg is to make things right.
- Daddy's Girl: Pam, being Jack's oldest daughter. Debbie to a slightly lesser extent.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: Not just Greg, but most of Pam's exes as well. There's nothing really wrong with the guys, Jack is just that overprotective
- Dead Pet Sketch: With a cat.
- Decomposite Character: 2000 Pam's sister Debbie and brother Denny are two components of 1992 Pam's sister Fay, one being a woman and the other being a secret marijuana user. Neither, however, has inherited Fay's trait of being an obsessive would-be singer who can't take criticism.
- Digging Yourself Deeper: Greg just can't help himself.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": For obvious reasons, Greg Focker does not like using his actual first name: Gaylord.
- Embarrassing First Name: Greg's real first name is Gaylord. His parents also call him "Gay". What sort of parents call their son Gaylord Focker? Hippies, of course. It is also implied with the airport security officer Norm, considering Greg's sarcastic "Bye, Norm." after Jack shows up to interrogate Greg instead.
- Empathy Pet: Jack's beloved Mr. Jinx is equally intelligent, standoffish and mean to Greg. Bernie's dog Moses humps everything that moves.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- While Jack has all but delighted in giving Greg a hard time from the moment they met, he cannot abide by Denny's mean-spirited mockery of Greg's legal name. In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it background moment, you can see Jack soberly gesturing to Denny that his joking isn't appropriate and he needs to stop. Despite being Greg's biggest critic, even Jack's one of the few who doesn't find it amusing.
- In Meet the Fockers, Roz causes Greg much embarrassment when she talks about Greg's circumcision, and shows the Byrneses his saved foreskin. Even Bernie, who's notorious for being TMI and causing embarrassment by it, thinks that Roz is taking things too far.
- Failed a Spot Check: The ultra paranoid and suspicious Jack is unaware that his own son Denny smokes pot.
- Fatal Flaw: Jack's hyper-paranoid humorless Control Freak tendencies and how because of them he's constantly stressed. The fact that this almost becomes a literal fatal flaw is an important plot point of the third film.
- Flanderization: Jack is a domineering Papa Wolf / Knight Templar Parent in the first film and gets even worse in the sequels. Greg/Gaylord, meanwhile, gradually becomes marginally more self-sufficient and assertive and by the third film, is almost Jack's equal in terms of being a hardass.
- Greeting Gesture Confusion: When Greg first meets Dina, she holds out her hand for a handshake while he goes for a hug.
- Happily Married: Bernie and Roz Focker, to the point that the level-headed Dina is secretly jealous that they have such a successful sex life at their advanced age.
- Hippie Parents: Roz and Bernie to Greg.
- Horrible Judge of Character: For someone who claims to be an expert in reading people, Jack is astoundingly bad at it. His laser-focus on Greg makes him completely miss Bob's character flaws and he only realizes it when Bob cheats on Debbie. He also thinks that Kevin, who, while wealthy, is a flighty In Love with Love airhead who believes in "alternative medicine" and is bold enough to make advances on an already-married woman whom he is suggested to have an unhealthy fixation with, is a better match for Pam than Greg, a skilled nurse who rose through the ranks to become department chair and is clearly dedicated to his wife and children. Dina, in fact points out how he treated Kevin similarly to Greg when he and Pam were dating, and only developed this idealized view after they had broken up.
- Improperly Paranoid: Jack's Fatal Flaw – he would rather believe Greg (and his parents, and everybody else who so much as saw his girls) is actively and maliciously trying to do something (and put him through utter hell to force him to tell the truth) than accept that his son-in-law is just a Butt-Monkey. The "circle of trust" system is also supposed to allow for an open inter-family relationship, but it becomes apparent long before Pam and Dina call B.S. that Jack is the only one allowed to have secrets. Not to mention that he's so focused on Greg that he's caught completely by surprise to learn his other son-in-law, Bob, has been cheating on Debbie, which then indirectly causes him to double down on his paranoia toward Greg over something innocent his granddaughter says.
- Innocent Swearing: Little Jack repeating the word "asshole".
- Insistent Terminology: Jack always says that Greg's job is "male nurse" rather than just "nurse".
- Irony: Even though Jack is one of the best examples of a Knight Templar Parent, his favorite song is the one that exemplifies childlike innocence: "Puff, the Magic Dragon."
- It's All My Fault: After Jack learns that his daughter Deb has broken up with her husband at the start of the third movie, he blames himself for not seeing the signs that Bob was cheating, claiming that he was so focused on Greg that he didn't pay attention to Bob.
- Jerkass:
- Jack. Pam's entire family, in fact, except Dina and Pam herself. Even his cat is a Jerkass.
- The redneck cop in the second movie.
- The Lawful Stupid airline employees that Greg had to put up with in the first film.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While Jack clearly disliked, bullied, and had many unfounded suspicions about Greg, not all of it was unjustified. Greg did unwittingly cause a lot of property damage, and a lot of trouble for the family, and always lied about it, or made excuses, rather then simply fess up, apologize, and try to make amends. Even Dina and Pam couldn't argue with Jack that this was disgraceful, and sided with Jack, when he finally threw Greg out. On the other side of the coin, Jack claimed if Greg had simply been honest about everything, he would've been completely accepting of him. Additionally, while his biases may have led him to assume the worse, quite a few of the things that sour his view of Greg throughout the trilogy are based on Not What It Looks Like examples that Greg is initially unaware of and lacks the opportunity to refute, so a few of his bad impressions are based on not entirely unreasonable deductions.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Jack a very restrained type considering the actor that is playing him; he clearly loves his daughter and wants only the best for her, but his extreme Papa Wolf personality makes it difficult for her to have any successful relationships. Though he does push it with how much he tortures and refuses to reason with Greg and his family. The "Circle Of Trust" and control-freak tendencies make it clear he's pretty difficult to live with, which even his own wife and daughters admit. That being said, he does come to respect Greg by the end of each film, even if he slips into Aesop Amnesia in the next film and has to relearn the same lesson all over again.
- Kafka Komedy: All 3 movies revel in being this.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Jack, who dotes on Jinx like crazy. The "kindhearted" part is extremely debatable to say the least, though.
- Knight Templar Parent: This describes Jack Byrnes to a T.
- Large Hams: The Koshers - er, Fockers, oh damn.
- Let Her Grow Up, Dear: Pam's mom is definitely more supportive of her relationship with Gaylord than Jack ever will be.
- Lighter and Softer: Very much so compared to the 1992 movie, in which most of the main characters die, including Bingo the dog. The worst example we see of animal cruelty in this movie is Greg accidentally losing Jinx and replacing him with a stray, spray-painting his tail.
- Living Lie Detector: Jack places his thumbs on Greg's wrists as an impromptu lie detector in their last major scene.
- Which may border on to research failure as using your thumbs to take a person's pulse is not correct; your thumb has its own pulse and thus may give a false reading.
- Some have speculated that Jack was counting on Greg not knowing that, and getting distracted from hiding other signs that he's lying. Though he'd already learned that Greg aced the MCATs.
- Lovable Sex Maniac: Greg's parents.
- Luke, I Might Be Your Father: See Ethnic Menial Labor above.
- M.D. Envy: Inverted; although Greg scored top marks in medical school, he chose to be a nurse so he could spend more time with patients. Jack and the rest of the Byrnes family (which include several doctors themselves) grill him on why he just didn't become a doctor and even refuse to believe he passed his MCAT with top marks.
- Military Alphabet: Jack uses this when talking to his CIA contacts.
- Nasal Trauma: Greg accidentaly breaks Debbie's nose during the volleyball scene.
- Not Under the Parents' Roof: Greg and his fiancee Pam are staying with her parents, Jack and Dina. After a disastrous first day, they are just about to have sex in her room, only to be interrupted when Jack and Dina knock at the door. They're there to say not to worry about the events of the day... and to inform Greg that he will be sleeping downstairs in the den. As Dina is leaving, Jack casually informs Greg that while he realizes the two of them have probably had "premarital relations", while they're under his roof, it's his way or the Long Island Expressway.
- Not What It Looks Like:
- Many of Greg's problems with Jack come from Jack jumping to erroneous conclusions based on limited information; he assumes Greg is giving Pam fetish clothes when he examined a suitcase that was sent to Greg by mistake, he believes Greg didn't take the MCATs but in reality Jack's contacts didn't find Greg's marks because Greg took the tests under his legal name of Gaylord, etc.
- In the third film, Andi gets drunk and tries to force herself on Greg, but he rejects her. Jack arrives, planning to apologize to Greg for their earlier falling out, but gets the wrong idea when he sees them from afar.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: Different types: the Fockers are of the "so embarrassing to be around that they feel like a plague" type, while the Byrnes are of the "make your life hell via constantly point out any little flaws you have" type, with Jack being the exaggerated version of that, that being "Personal version of Big Brother Is Watching You".
- Old People are Nonsexual: Jack and Dina are implied to be this in the first, while Bernie and Roz are definitely not. By the end of the sequel, Jack and Dina pick up a few tips from the latter and proceed to do it in the RV.
- Only Sane Man: Dina's the only member of Pam's family who is remotely nice to Greg.
- Overly Long Gag - see Punny Name below.
- "Are you prepared to be... the Godfocker?" "The Godfocker." "Yes. The Godfocker." "I'm not sure I like the name 'The Godfocker'".
- Papa Wolf: Jack to a disturbing degree.
- Jack learns to his dismay that Bernie Focker can be one when he finds out that Jack drugged Greg with truth serum.
- Parental Marriage Veto
- Precision F-Strike: "Ass...oooole..."
- Profound by Pop Song: Greg is asked to say grace at dinner. He tries to improvise a prayer, which ends up as the lyrics to "Day by Day" from Godspell.
- Punny Name: Mo Focker, an unseen relative. A conversation between Jack and Greg reveals that's not the extent of it, either:
Greg Focker: You meet some of the... eh... some of the cousins?
Jack Byrnes: I met some, yes. I met some... Dom? Greg Focker: Yeah, Dom Focker, that's my dad's... uh... first cousin. You meet his kids, Randy and Orny?- Put on a Bus: The first scene we see of Bernie Focker is him taking dance classes... in Spain. It seems this will be his only appearance in the film... until he makes a surprise return home in the second half of the movie. Originally, Dustin Hoffman could not agree to work on the film due to disagreements with the production studio on the scope of his role... but this changed, thanks to negotiations that included a bigger paycheck. He ended up being added via reshoots
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- After spending most of the movie being dumped on by his prospective in-laws, Greg finally loses it and gets thrown off an airplane for giving this to a flight attendant.
- Jack also gets this from Pam and Dina after they realise he's just been looking for excuses to kick Greg out, and from Greg himself when he shows up at the airport. In all cases, he's basically being called out on being an overbearing Control Freak Boyfriend-Blocking Dad.
- Running Gag:
- At the end of each film. At the end of the first two Jack views a video of Greg ragging on him via "hidden" camera. At the end of the third film Jack views a Youtube video of Greg talking about Jack at a seminar and Reiterating the crazy antics Jack pulled in the films.
- People (usually Jack) taking pot shots at Greg for being a male nurse. Even Kevin gets in on it in a backhanded way when he equates nursing with volunteer work.
- Sadist Show: The basis of the humor in the movies is that the universe seems to hate Greg Focker. Also, his new father-in-law is a sadist who refuses to let Greg ever come out of something looking good, and most of his in-laws are sardonic snobs who ridicule Greg at every opportunity. Even the cat seems to delight in making Greg look bad.
- Second Place Is for Losers: The attitude expressed by Jack and (to a lesser extent) Dina after they see the "Wall of Gaylord" put together by Bernie and Roz.
- Shout-Out:
- When Greg and Jack fall into the ballpit, the Jaws theme starts playing. When Greg notices a Worm Sign circling him, a dolly zoom occurs and he starts screaming for the kids to get out of the ball pit.
- Greg and Jack listen to "Puff the Magic Dragon", and Greg brings up the common reading of it as a weed metaphor. Jack is unimpressed.
Greg: Some people think that to "puff the magic dragon" means to smoke a marijuana cigarette.
Jack: Well, Puff's just the name of the boy's magical dragon. Are you a pothead, Focker?