Orphaned/Sandbox/Depressing Tropes



The world's an awful place. Sure, you may think you're happy, you may think things will get better, you may think there's good in everyone, but that's not true. Perhaps this list of tropes will convince you. Yes, it's sad to see them played out in movies, but becomes incredibly more depressing to realize that they happen just as much all around you. And worst of all, the world has no happy endings.

Tropes:

 * Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female On Male: No, this is not gender equality at work.
 * Abusive Parents: Kids are treated like dirt by the people that are supposed to care for them, and they get away with it.
 * Adults Are Useless: Adults are supposed to be there to protect you, but a lot of the time, they don't.
 * All Abusers Are Male: Good luck trying not to be in trouble if abuse is involved and you're male. Oh, and abuse doesn't need to be physical.
 * Acceptable Targets: You can make fun of these people. Truly, they're not human or anything.
 * All Gays Are Pedophiles: Let's grasp at straws to justify the hate, oh yes.
 * And I Must Scream: Thought dying was bad? Imagine being in a state where you can only wish to die, just to be free from your current situation.
 * Apathetic Teacher: He's supposed to be teaching your children, preparing their vulnerable minds for the future, but he couldn't care less.
 * Apathetic Citizens: People just don't care, don't care at all.
 * Apocalypse How: The world is going to end, but the question is how?
 * Author Existence Failure: Your favorite author is dead. His family and friends are left to carry on, handle his bills, etc. He will no longer be able to tell funny stories among his friends. And to top it all off you'll never know how your favorite book series is going to end.
 * Banned in China: Censorship on a national level.
 * Bittersweet Ending: Take the good with the bad. It's really the best you can do.
 * Break the Cutie: Aren't you depressed yet? If not, keep reading. This list will surely knock the happy out of you.
 * Corrupt the Cutie: Good becomes bad. It's the natural order of things.
 * Kill the Cutie: Still happy? Still the optimist? Don't worry, even your happy little existence will be cut short at some point, probably in a very gruesome way.
 * But Not Too Black: Yes, your blackness is painful to me and a lot of people. Why can't you be whiter like the rest of us? Not completely, though, just meet us halfway.
 * But Not Too White: You're too white now. Your paleness is insulting. Get out in the sun, Casper!
 * But Not Too Foreign: Why can't you come from where I come from?
 * But Not Too Gay: Your love is disgusting. Tone it down guys. We're not saying not to love each other, just don't do it as much as we do.
 * Hide Your Lesbians: You've got to hide your love away and how!
 * Butt Monkey: Someday, you'll get the respect you so richly deserve. Maybe.
 * Chew Toy: Nevermind people, the universe itself hates you for no good reason.
 * Cassandra Truth: So a murderer's in your house and is trying to kill your entire family? A likely story.
 * Censorship Tropes: What? You think you're allowed to say whatever you want? Tough chance!
 * Moral Guardians: Sometimes, it feels like they want to get mad just to be mad...
 * Cold-Blooded Torture: Feel the pain! Yes, it just won't stop.
 * Comedic Sociopathy: Comedy is often a form of tragedy in itself.
 * Complete Monster: There are people out there that do horrible, unspeakable, and horrific things. And don't expect them to feel sorry about it either.
 * Crack is Cheaper: Thought about getting a hobby? Forget it, it's too expensive.
 * Crapsack World: This is the world we live in.
 * Crap Saccharine World: Even when the world looks like a great place, it isn't. Truly.
 * Creator Breakdown: Both because of how it seeps into the work, and because the circumstances surrounding the breakdown can be upsetting too.
 * Cruel Twist Ending: Some Twist Endings are ironic. Others are just plain mean-spirited.
 * Cut Short/Dead Fic: You'll never know how it all ended. Poor you.
 * Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Seeing so much crapsackery it stops bothering you is disturbingly human.
 * Deconstruction: That cool trope would suck IRL.
 * Defiled Forever: You've gone through a horrible experience, and you'll never recover...EVER!
 * Despair Event Horizon: Yes, this list is terrible, and it's never going to get better. Forget ever being happy ever again. It's not going to happen.
 * A Degree in Useless: So you've worked hard in college for four years, starving yourself and improving yourself, and you've finally met your goal of obtaining a sheet of paper with words on it. Now what?
 * Dogged Nice Guy: The love of your life just isn't that into you. Get over it.
 * Double Standard: No, don't expect girls to be treated the same way as guys. That's just not how we think.
 * Driven to Suicide: Often the best solution to any problem.
 * Dystopia: The ultimate goal.
 * Utopia Justifies the Means: Perhaps we truly can achieve the perfect world, no matter how many innocent people have to die in order to achieve it.
 * Everybody's Dead, Dave: It happens.
 * Failure Is the Only Option: It truly is.
 * Faux Action Girl: Women can´t fight, sooner or later, they require men to help them.
 * Finagle's Law: The probability of something happening is measured in how bad it is for you.
 * Forced to Watch: Physical torture? Who needs that when being forced to watch loved ones suffer.
 * Forgotten Fallen Friend: You probably died for your friends. And they forgot about you.
 * Gendercide: Sexist genocide
 * Heteronormative Crusader: There is only one correct lifestyle, and they'll make sure you live it, whether you like it or not.
 * Hollywood Pudgy: You know that beautiful, voluptuous celebrity you like so much? Better not get too attached to her...
 * Hopeless War: It's win or die. And you can't win.
 * Huge Schoolgirl and by extension, No Guy Wants an Amazon. You probably don't understand, but if you're a tall girl and are insecure about it, the former's very name is hurtful.
 * I Just Want to Have Friends
 * I Just Want to Be Special
 * I Just Want to Be Normal
 * Innocent Flower Girl: Too harmless and heart-wrenching to live.
 * Innocent Inaccurate: If only they knew how horrible the situation really was...but they are just too innocent to realize. And they would be absolutely devastated if they only knew.
 * It Got Worse: Because things didn't suck enough yet. Often due to Diabolus Ex Machina. Can be due to Diabolus Ex Nihilo, if you're really lucky.
 * It's Popular, Now It Sucks: It's one thing for a work to be disliked due to its flaws, but it can be frustrating and saddening to see your favorite work being bashed just because of its popularity.
 * Jumping the Shark: Again, if you were a fan of the series, the moment that it went to Hell may feel horrible.
 * Karma Houdini: If a Complete Monster gets away scot-free.
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: You may never be able to get a decent copy of the work legally. In fact, there might hardly be any copies left at all in the world.
 * Lost Episode: All copies of the work ceased to exist at all, and no one will ever see it again.
 * Kids Are Cruel: Some children are so sadistic they make you wish for their comeuppance.
 * Killed Off for Real
 * Kill'Em All
 * Knight Templar: And then the "good" guys did monstrous things.
 * Littlest Cancer Patient: Because you know what's going to happen to the poor kid sooner or later.
 * Lostalgia
 * Lost Forever: No Hundred-Percent Completion for this run. What's that? This file is a few hundred hours in? Sucks to be you.
 * Point of No Return: Just to drive the point home more.
 * Love Makes You Crazy: Anti-love lesson
 * Love Makes You Evil: Needs darker
 * Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal
 * A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Some thoughts are better off not read. Trust us on this.
 * Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: Instead of understand the simple notion that men and women are just, well... HUMANS, we take worthless, baseless, and really fucking stupid stereotypes to judge genders and separate them, just like if we were enemies.
 * Men Are the Expendable Gender: If you are a member of the "expendable gender" don´t click the link or you will take the risk of view yourself as an useless piece of meat. And the most scary, stupid and infuriating thing about the trope is that, in most cases, men are considered expendable by OTHER MEN. Feel free to get depressed and consider most men retards.
 * Misplaced Nationalism: Especially if you're an American.
 * Missing Episode
 * Money, Dear Boy: Ah, money. People sure do love the stuff. They'll crush your dreams and drown your hopes if it pays enough.
 * Monster Fangirl: Makes you wonder about the sanity of at least some of the distaff half of the species (and some of the men).
 * Mood Whiplash: It doesn't matter how silly, happy and lighthearted something seems. It can quickly turn dark and depressing.
 * Moral Event Horizon: Particularly painful with characters that were once likable; you'll never be able to find happiness in watching former good guys when going back to earlier episodes/installments in a series.
 * Most Writers Are Male: Completely depressing if you want cool female characters and the only things you find, thanks to the incompetence of writers about creating them, are Fan Service bimbos, flat, flawless, unrealistic, closer to Earth Mary Sues (generally overshadowed by not so perfect males at the end) or Faux Action Girl types that will be rescued by The Hero at the end. Are writers are completely unable to create flawed, funny and strong female characters without making a rancid and cheap aesop about gender equality? dammit...
 * Netorare: Sexual jealousy Played for Drama.
 * Network Decay: If you liked the channel best when it was living up to its name, then it fits here.
 * Magazine Decay: Basically the same thing, but with magazines.
 * Never a Self-Made Woman: No matter how great your accomplishments are, as long as you're a woman they just don't count since you don't count to begin with.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero
 * No Export for You: Nothing is worse than wanting to see certain things come overseas yet never will.
 * Bad Export for You: How bad it is decides how depressing it is.
 * No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: When doing the right thing results in karmic backfire.
 * Old Shame: For the creator, that is.
 * Paedo Hunt: Depressing both because there are some utter sickos out there and because innocent people can all too easily be mistaken for them and have their lives ruined as a result.
 * Please Wake Up: But they will never wake up.
 * Police Are Useless
 * Power-Up Letdown
 * Awesome but Impractical
 * Precious Photo: "Oh? Your wife and kids? Where are they?" "Dead."
 * Prom Is for Straight Kids
 * Rape Tropes: The tropes themselves -- all of them -- as well as the fact that we need an index for that at all.
 * Sadist Teacher: Especially if you've spent much of your schooling surrounded by amazing teachers who do everything right.
 * Science Marches On: Want to make your work as scientifically accurate as possible in order to give perceptive readers/viewers extra enjoyment? Well too bad, because in the following decades, all the things you had researched will turn out to have been false.
 * Screw the Rules, I Have Money: Far truer than it should be.
 * Screw the Rules, I Make Them: Then follow them. Oh right. You have power.
 * Screwed by the Network: Some stories are never given the chance to be told.
 * Senseless Sacrifice
 * Sex Is Evil: Please outgrow that outdated mindset already.
 * Sex Is Evil and I Am Horny: There really are people who ruin their lives, and each other's life, this way.
 * Shaggy Dog Story: For everything you've accomplished, you might as well have sat at home smoking pot. Worse yet...
 * Shoot the Shaggy Dog: You sacrificed your life among other things, and it was all for nothing.
 * Songs of Solace: People listen to sad songs when depressed as a way to make themselves feel better.
 * Subverted Innocence: It gets worse.
 * Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: That little girl. She... she just tried to seduce me, didn't she?
 * Enfant Terrible: A Complete Monster kid. Need I say more?
 * Suicide tropes tend to be depressing as a rule.
 * Tear Jerker: After reading enough of the examples, you may end up feeling teary yourself.
 * That One Index: If you're not laughing about others' gaming pain, you'll be crying with them.
 * They Just Didn't Care
 * Too Dumb to Live: That Egregious level of stupid.
 * Too Good for This Sinful Earth
 * Too Good to Last
 * Too Happy to Live: Too happy! Fixing. The fun.
 * Torture Always Works
 * Tough Act to Follow: Got hopes of becoming a great author with lots of successful works? Well good luck if you get even two, because everything you'll ever do will be overshadowed from there on.
 * Trauma Conga Line: When beloved or sympathetic characters suffer from one thing after another after another.
 * True Art Is Angsty
 * Tropes Will Ruin Your Life
 * Toyless Toyline Character: If you really want a toy of that character.
 * Typhoid Mary: Not aware of it, but spreading disease.
 * The Plague: If you're immune, this could easily be what you become, with parts of the above or below.
 * Synthetic Plague: It gets even better when you realize that it's all the fault of some inept scientists.
 * Zombie Infectee: You can spread it and may be living on borrowed time regardless.
 * Unpleasable Fanbase: There is no right move. Failure Is the Only Option.
 * Vaporware: For gamers who were waiting, only to get...
 * Development Hell: Potentially why, but you may get...
 * Obvious Beta or Perpetual Beta when you see something to tease you further, though it's usually not too good, but there's hope until...
 * Money, Dear Boy, or maybe, They Just Didn't Care to begin with.
 * What Measure Is an Index?: Take your pick.
 * What Could Have Been
 * Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Because a few bad apples ruined it for everyone else.
 * Locked Pages: Especially if the page in question is in need of Wiki Magic.
 * The Woobie
 * Would Be Rude to Say Genocide: Refusing to call an obvious genocide a genocide to justify a lack of intervention.
 * You Can't Fight Fate: Especially when it's a hero or a genuinely decent and likable character who fails in their attempt to Screw Destiny.
 * You Need to Get Laid: Sex can, magically, solve all your problems in life!

Here's some comfort.