Cartoon Cliches You're Tired Of...

[Yuss]

Thought of one: Where a character is dreaming, and someone in their dream starts saying their name over and over, and it turns out to be someone in real life saying their name over and over, trying to wake them up...

 

[Geezil]

And then there's ...

... this very annoying cliche, imported wholesale from comic books, even though it barely worked on paper the first time and becomes infinitely more ridiculous on a cartoon soundtrack:

The villain renders the hero immobile within an energy field/diabolical machine/planet-sized ball of taffy, and as the hero begins to struggle pathetically against his/her/its bonds, his/her/its language skills are suddenly reduced by half. ("Tangled! ... in ... terrible ... taffy! ... Can't ... move! ... Only ... Molasses Man! ... can ... help ... now!")

BTW, a good place on cable to find many examples of this silly device is the "Boomeraction" block on Boomerang.

 

[StrangerAtaru]

I like the "legs" comment. Personally, I thought "No Smoking" made a good comment on that, yet sadly in the Cow and Chicken series, they kept going with that joke making it completely and totally stupid.

Here are some other things:

-The "incurable disease/bad situation" that must be fixed by this one thing, and the hero somehow or another gets it in the end and everything returns to status quo.
-The one hero syndrome. You know, how one hero is always the one who gets the finishing blow even if everyone else does the work? Or how everyone but that one is defeated, then they come in and save the day?
-Never giving the adults, especially the parents of a kid, names other than "Mom" and "Dad". Do you know how many series do that sort of stuff? Why can't parents ever have real names, even ones they can say to each other?

 

[livingfruitvirus]

Man. My list is long. :/

1. When someone is about to attack someone from the air, and when we see them coming down, the camera zooms in and repeats, 2-5 times. Why is that necessary? As if the audience member missed it. Gee. I'm so sick of that.

2. When an evil little girl is only evil when adults are not around, and when they are she's super nice and disgustingly cute (kinda like Angelica Pickles). On the other hand, I love it when evil little girls are evil all the time. Even extremely evil.

3. Anime: When pre-teen girls have 19 or 20 year old perfect bodies. Agh. I'm surprised women in Japan aren't disgusted by the fact that anime girls have to have perfect, thin bodies most of the time to turn on the boys.

4. Superheroes that have absolutely no friends or social lives. That's a reason why I like Batman Beyond. None of that crap I listed above.

5. Anime: Boy pilots giant robot to save world. Question. Why a boy? If you're gonna steal the original concept of Mobile Suit Gundam 0079, steal it and improve upon it. A couple shows have done that successfully though.

6. Villain from hero's mysterious past all of a sudden reappears. I'm trying to eliminate this in my comic story. Usually when this happens, I ask "Man! Where were you all this time?! Hiding in a cave?!" Why didn't they follow the hero around for a while and attack every so often?

7. The final episode is a clip show. (nuff said)

8. When the boy who's in love with the girl NEVER, EVER...EVER GET'S A BREAK. The girl's always mean to the boy, never apologizes, is never nice, and the boy always ends up more heartbroken. It's so depressing.

9. When the villains are defeated with a small, simple item. Like food, or toys, or something.

10. There's no way out of this story, so SINGING FIXES EVERYTHING!!! Maybe if the writers didn't write themselves into a corner, this wouldn't have happened.


TEH END. I'll probably think of more later.

 

[Mackenzie Rainelle]

Originally posted by livingfruitvirus

3. Anime: When pre-teen girls have 19 or 20 year old perfect bodies. Agh. I'm surprised women in Japan aren't disgusted by the fact that anime girls have to have perfect, thin bodies most of the time to turn on the boys.

::smirk:: If they're like American fangirls, they're too busy enjoying all the pretty boys to complain that much about it. ^_~

 

[Anthonynotes]

>>>
1. When someone is about to attack someone from the air, and when we see them coming down, the camera zooms in and repeats, 2-5 times. Why is that necessary? As if the audience member missed it. Gee. I'm so sick of that.
<<

Guess this is more of an anime thing vs. American animation thing...though it was sort of funny when they used it on the Powerpuff Girls (once when Mojo shows up on the Utonium doorstep

>>
2. When an evil little girl is only evil when adults are not around, and when they are she's super nice and disgustingly cute (kinda like Angelica Pickles). On the other hand, I love it when evil little girls are evil all the time. Even extremely evil.
<<

Guess this might be more of a reference to "Leave It To Beaver"'s Eddie Haskell (sp?), a kid who bugged the "Beaver" when adults weren't around, but when they were, acted extremely polite and whatnot...

>>
4. Superheroes that have absolutely no friends or social lives. That's a reason why I like Batman Beyond. None of that crap I listed above.
<<

Yeesh... don't get me started (namely, this leading into a tirade on how Batman's written in the "real" comics these days---which opinion of involves the use of language on par with Axel Foley's) Guess the writers figure that heroes sitting around in spandex 24-7 and brooding all the time about their losses/why they can't find the "Geo-Orb Card of Power hidden somewhere in Neo-South Bend, Indiana" is more appealing to fans than seeing them act something *vaguely* like normal human beings


>>5. Anime: Boy pilots giant robot to save world. Question. Why a boy? If you're gonna steal the original concept of Mobile Suit Gundam 0079, steal it and improve upon it. A couple shows have done that successfully though.
<<

Not too up on my anime history, but wasn't there a Japanese cartoon from the sixties revolving around a boy piloting a giant robot? Guessing it might stem from this (or action cartoons often favoring men over women as the center of action, I suppose)...

>>6. Villain from hero's mysterious past all of a sudden reappears. I'm trying to eliminate this in my comic story. Usually when this happens, I ask "Man! Where were you all this time?! Hiding in a cave?!" Why didn't they follow the hero around for a while and attack every so often?
<<

Guess they were too busy plotting their next line of evil attack to bother with "attacking every so often"?

>>
7. The final episode is a clip show. (nuff said)
<<

Well, there was the "Pinky and the Brain Reunion Special"...

I've got another cliche of my own to list:

- villains *never* manage to hit their targets with guns firing (esp. in action cartoons); similarly, no one ever gets struck by guns firing (see: Batman cartoons where he's always managing to seemingly outrun machine guns firing).

- apparently it's possible to swing across an entire city from a rope (see again: Batman).

- similarly, on the Spider-Man cartoon of the 90's, Spider-man *always* seemed to either run out of web fluid and/or got his web line cut in mid-swing in almost every episode.

- it's possible (in Batman, once more) to jump from building rooftop to rooftop without worrying about breaking one's legs or anything.

- finally (once more for Batman), it's possible to project a Bat-shaped signal on an ever-convenient nearby cloud/air pollution in the sky/seemingly nothing at all.

-B.

 

[StrangerAtaru]

The "boy pilots his father's robot" cliche has been around since Tetsujin 28/Gigantor, even though at the time it was by remote control. The "super-hero robot" bit was invented with Maginzer Z (I think) in the 70's, with the only real changes to it since being the "fighting robot in the middle of a real war", as in MS Gundam, and that concept taken even further with Evangelion. (now tell me, was there any moment Shinji even liked Gendo ever in the entire series?)

 

[Lonestarr]

Geezil - That whole clipped speech bit does provide some (unintentional) humor.

StrangerAtaru - The whole "Mom/Dad" cliche is pretty stupid, but there was a fun twist on it in a Fairly Oddparents episode ("Father Time"): Timmy accidentally destroys his father's trophy with heat vision, so he goes back in time to stop his dad from winning the trophy. When Timmy meets his dad as a kid, he says his real name, but it's blocked by a truck roaring by.

That gets me thinking about another cliche: I hate it when a character says something to another character, only to have what they're saying drowned out by noise.

Another cliche I hate appears mainly in shows with a preteen girl as the lead character. It's like clockwork that some witch of a classmate will be put there only to berate the heroine/try to ruin her. Examples are:

Nina on Braceface
Miranda on As Told by Ginger
Bonnie on Kim Possible
Gem on Sabrina: TAS
LaCienega on The Proud Family

Just once, could there NOT be a character like this on shows like that?

 

[StrangerAtaru]

Believe it or not, I did remember actually seeing that Fairly Oddparents ep. (one of the very few I have seen) And that bit was pretty funny.

 

[Yuss]

Relevent yet pointless quote

"That's ______, but everyone just calls her Mom."

 

[livingfruitvirus]

Ok. Pardon my robot bit.

Some more.

11. When the hero wins through deus ex machina. Ack. This just gets annoying. Like, the hero's about to lose, then his ancestors ghost or some sort of heritage doowhacky occurs, and he gains new power and wins. Or she. Got to be PC here folks. ^_^

12. The out-loud soliloquy. Hold on I'm getting to it. Usually when a character is talking outloud, and they're in a crowd, and nobody hears a word they say, and it's so relevant. The Simpsons did a gag on this which I liked.

13. This is a long one. When the main character is trying to keep a secret from the parents or surrounding people, when it's RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR FACES!!! I'm talking of course about Dexter's Laboratory, Timmy's godparents, the Rugrats' ability to talk, etc. etc. etc. Are the adults THAT stupid? (I guess I can see that in TFO) But seriously. Sometimes in Rugrats the babies are talking when their parents are carrying them. They MUST be deaf or something. Not to mention the parents could talk when they themselves were babies too!! BTW, why can't Dil talk? Does God hate him? Also, I don't see why it has to be kept a secret (in any of these situations, except for TFO). Like the parents or other people will suddenly curl up and die and vomit up their stomachs and lungs or something. That's one reason I like Kim Possible. Kim's parents know she's a spy.

14. While traveling back through time, you accidentally end up in the land of the dinosaurs. (Sheep in the Big City says it best: "The most cliched time portal of all." And it's not 1970s New Jersey)

15. The smart people, and the rich people, have accents. (simple enough)

16. While this isn't a cliche, I hate it when in cartoons, the outlines are SO INCREDIBLY THIN, that when I watch on my HD, it looks like a pixelated crappy line.

 

[Nin-Nin69]

The main characters get into a fight and make up at the end of the show.

Anything that tries to make fun of rap, but has no clue about anything except the cheezy clothes and the random catch phrases that mostly aren't from rap. (Tiny Toons, Trix, PPG's)

The whole episode was a dream.

The hero sneaks into the evil villan's base, the guards never see nor catch him every time he goes, and he allways does something stupid like bug a room or steal some blue prints rather than destroying the base. If you sneak in every *'n day then why don't you destroy it? Are you you worried about loosing your job? Just blow up the base, kill the villan, the day is saved, everyone lives happily ever after, you get laid, end of story. Sonic the Hedgehog is the best example of this plot in cartoons.

Showing a character from the legs down.

Refering weapons to the Star Wars Universe.

The villan is an old guy in a suit scaring everyone away from some town or place and teenagers with a talking animal have to solve the mystery.

Having a re-make of the origional series and throwing out 1/2 the cast and plot and making up stories that don't mix with the origional series.

Voice overs with babies that are just plain creepy.

Never pulling the trigger while the animal is talking to you and in your face.

Betty Boop wannabes.

The hero allways wins. The villan never wins.

A villan doing a plan they did in the past.

People who can't here animals/babies talking to each other.

Bulldogs are the only dogs in the world of animation.

Your dead ancestors help you conquer evil.

Very bad dubbing of anime.

Characters they show clips of who are allready dead, but are somehow still there.

The spoiled brat. (Sylvester did a good job making fun of that. )

People who try to act like Simpson's characters.

Watching a horror movie with the main character that is a combination of Jason Vorhees/Michael Myers/Leatherface/Freddy Kruger.

 

[Anthonynotes]

>>>Ok. Pardon my robot bit.

13. This is a long one. When the main character is trying to keep a secret from the parents or surrounding people, when it's RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR FACES!!! I'm talking of course about Dexter's Laboratory, Timmy's godparents, the Rugrats' ability to talk, etc. etc. etc. Are the adults THAT stupid? (I guess I can see that in TFO) But seriously. Sometimes in Rugrats the babies are talking when their parents are carrying them. They MUST be deaf or something. Not to mention the parents could talk when they themselves were babies too!! BTW, why can't Dil talk? Does God hate him? Also, I don't see why it has to be kept a secret (in any of these situations, except for TFO). Like the parents or other people will suddenly curl up and die and vomit up their stomachs and lungs or something. That's one reason I like Kim Possible. Kim's parents know she's a spy.
<<<


My assumption is that the adults in "Rugrats" only hear baby-gurgles from Tommy & co.; presumably, the baby-babble is translated into English only for the benefit of us...

Of course, the ultimate example of this scenario is Clark Kent; a pair of glasses and slicking back his hair all equal the ultimate disguise---no one figuring out he's really Superman, even if they've got seperate photos of each of them...


>>14. While traveling back through time, you accidentally end up in the land of the dinosaurs. (Sheep in the Big City says it best: "The most cliched time portal of all." And it's not 1970s New Jersey)

Related to this cliche, there's several mandatory destinations that *all* time travellers/superheroes/etc. must eventually visit:
- the Old West
- King Arthur's Camelot (or medieval times)
- Robin Hood's era (or also the general setting of medieval times)
- the age of dinosaurs
- the far future
- a point in time in one's personal past (their childhood, their parents in high school, their old age, etc.)
- the Dawn of Time itself

Each one's basically the "Grand Canyon" of time-travel destinations

-B.

 

[ChuckRoast]

The hero sneaks into the evil villan's base, the guards never see nor catch him every time he goes, and he allways does something stupid like bug a room or steal some blue prints rather than destroying the base. If you sneak in every *'n day then why don't you destroy it? Are you you worried about loosing your job? Just blow up the base, kill the villan, the day is saved, everyone lives happily ever after, you get laid, end of story. Sonic the Hedgehog is the best example of this plot in cartoons.

That reminds me of the episodes of the Legend of Zelda cartoon.


Here's something I really, really hate:


Character A: Look's like it time for plan "X".

Character B: Not plan X. ANYTHING BUT PLAN X...... by the way, what's plan X?


Who ever thought up that line need to be hit in the head with a wet stinky fish!

 

[Tommy Lawson]

Related to this cliche, there's several mandatory destinations that *all* time travellers/superheroes/etc. must eventually visit:
- the Old West

See Back to the Future Part III.

- the far future

See Back to the Future Part II.

a point in time in one's personal past (their childhood,
their parents in high school, their old age, etc.)

See Back to the Future Part I. Do you sense a pattern here?

Each one's basically the "Grand Canyon" of time-travel destinations

Braintara, of course those are "Grand Canyon" time-travel stories. The Back to the Future trilogy helped to make them that way, being among the most popular movies of the mid 1980s to early 1990s. As long as I can remember, cartoons have always referenced popular culture in their stories.

As for cartoon cliches, I don' t really mind them too much. There are some cartoons that inherently rely on them or use them for their plotlines, such as Totally Spies for example, which has a shrinking, alien, and robot episode. And there are also cartoons that rely on one continuing concept for its entire run. The Back to the Future cartoon relied on the concept of time travel, and really, Braintara, which eras would you like to see them go to? I know there was a Salem witch trial episode of that show that I liked.

As long as the show has entertaining qualities, the writers can use as many cliches as they want. I'll still be watching their shows.

 

[Hitchhiker]

I also thought of another anime cliche. The Journey to the west as the story base. I know its a good story, but half of all action anime (and some not action) have their base in that legend.

 

[D.Shaffer]

Originally posted by Batman192
See Back to the Future Part C.

Pah! Dr. Who beat em ALL to the punch!

 

[Lonestarr]

I've thought of another cliche. This one popped up at the Adult Swim board, and I thought I'd mention it: when one character wants another to do something and the other character says, "No! No way am I doing that. Forget it." The next shot usually features the character performing the task and saying, "I can't believe I'm doing this." Personally, this gag runs hot and cold for me; sometimes, it's funny, while other times, it's annoying.

 

[God_of_Death]

Yu-Gi-Oh's Mai, there are so many characters with the "I cant trust anyone, I do not need friends" attitude. It's just too damn pathetic to think like that...

 

[Anthonynotes]

Originally posted by Batman192
Braintara, of course those are "Grand Canyon" time-travel stories. The Back to the Future trilogy helped to make them that way, being among the most popular movies of the mid 1980s to early 1990s. As long as I can remember, cartoons have always referenced popular culture in their stories.

As for cartoon cliches, I don' t really mind them too much. There are some cartoons that inherently rely on them or use them for their plotlines, such as Totally Spies for example, which has a shrinking, alien, and robot episode. And there are also cartoons that rely on one continuing concept for its entire run. The Back to the Future cartoon relied on the concept of time travel, and really, Braintara, which eras would you like to see them go to? I know there was a Salem witch trial episode of that show that I liked.

As long as the show has entertaining qualities, the writers can use as many cliches as they want. I'll still be watching their shows. [/B]

Um.... I didn't say I had a problem with those time-travel destinations--- "Back to the Future" is one of my favorite films. I'm just pointing out that those particular destinations seem to be such heavy favorites (and have been used for well before BTTF was made in other time-travel stories) that they're somewhat cliched, that's all... no need to get upset.


-B.
Who figured he was the only one to like the BTTF cartoon, as well...favorite ones included visiting Doc's childhood, a visit to 1967, and back to World War II...