20 characters, plots, and tropes that are way overused

Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant character who first came about in the 1880s. Over a century ago, but still going strong due to the world's fascination with a detective who can solve almost anything. Robert Downey Jr. brought the character to the big screen, while countless TV series have taken inspiration from it, including Elementary, Luther, Morris Chestnut’s 2025 Watson, and even shows like House, which mixed mystery-solving with the medical realm. It’s a great character type, but maybe a break is in order.

In the world of superheroes, anything can happen and often does, but there’s something about a multiverse that takes away stakes. If a character dies in one world, don’t worry. A version of them from another timeline can come on through. While it plays out well in comic book form, it can get stale in cinema as there are no actual stakes for moviegoers. What’s the point of mourning a beloved character when they can walk back into the picture down the road because of the multiverse?

Just allow female characters to not care about walking down the aisle in the first place.

Adding a baby to a TV show is always a gamble because, really, babies can’t add to the series in terms of characterization. They don’t talk, can’t walk, and pretty much are just an additional prop that pushes characters toward new scenarios. That’s why babies are often given the ultimate growth spurt. One season, they’re newborns, and the next, they're toddlers, sometimes even older. If a series wants its characters to have kids, just start them out with some, or wait until the final season to add one. That is, unless one is lucky enough to cast child actors like the ones from Modern Family, who, when aged up, were able to dominate the comedy just as well as their older castmates.

This is a trope that dates back to the early days of TV, but it really picked back up in the ‘90s with shows like Home Improvement, Everybody Loves Raymond, and The King of Queens. This trope was so well-known that in 2021, Kevin Can F—k Himself debuted and shined a light on those types of series in a very unique way.

Disney and Pixar aren’t hurting for money. 2025’s live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch made almost a billion dollars at the box office, but some of their animated movies have been underperforming (by their standards) at the box office. Perhaps it’s because all of their films in recent years have all looked…exactly the same. Back in the day, there was no confusing the characters in The Little Mermaid with those in Beauty and the Beast, Mulan, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Now? Elio, Turning Red, and Coco all have similar designs with giant-eyed characters that fall flat in terms of being unique. Their stories are great, but they lack that individualistic style that drove earlier Disney films.

Wacky neighbors used to work because people actually talked to their neighbors back in the day. Now? How many people wait to avoid those they live next to?

Modern Family is a modern sitcom that executed the miscommunication plot very well, but even still, it’s time to abandon it because, with cell phones and constant connection, it’s unbelievable that one would not be able to get their point across to someone in an instant.

Voice acting should be taken more seriously than just actors coming in and using their regular voices. Why does one think The Simpsons are so beloved? It’s because the voices audiences have heard for nearly four decades are specific to each character. It’s not as interesting when the same famous people continue to voice every character, especially when they don’t even try to alter their voice for each. Chris Pratt’s Mario sounded just like his Garfield.

Zooey Deschanel had the world on lock with her “adorkable” ways in the 2010s, but she wasn’t alone. The manic pixie dream girl was the essence of a lot of media then, and with Gen Z’s love of everything Y2K creeping back in, it’s only a matter of time before this character is brought back with a force. The world must get ahead of it before things get overtly manic again.

Yes, the twist of The Sixth Sense still hits as hard as it did in 1999, but most of the time, audiences can smell that “dead the whole time” plot from a mile away.

The world deserves more romantic comedies, and they deserve to have them without those tired counterfeit relationship plots.

Placing one non-white person or even a singular female in a group of males doesn’t equate to diversity.

Rebooting shows isn’t an issue when done right, and while fans can eventually get over some of the discrepancies. Shows like The Conners and Will & Grace completely disregarded their original finales and even omitted some of the younger members of their families, as children were wiped out of existence.

Superhero content has very much become what vampires were in the 2000s.

Why is it that every woman in a romantic comedy works in publishing?

There was no hiding that Scar, Ursula, and Jafar were the villains of their movies. Now? Animated movies like to pull a M. Night Shyamalan and hide their bad guys among the rest of the characters until the end.

Hollywood can chill on the dystopian, end-of-the-world plots. Real life is already stressful enough.

Robin Hood is a fantastic character who comes with a great approach to life. It’s just when you see it on repeat that it can get to the point where you’re asking, “Are we really out of ideas?”

If action movies could drop the bombs, literally, that’d be a great way to enhance the genre and not just fall back on the same old tactics.