Current Events > What are your favorite "recycled plots"?

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In other words, storylines that are often recycled in multiple sitcoms, and/or cartoons. Examples include...

Hall monitor episode - One of the characters becomes Hall Monitor or Safety Patrol Something and the power goes to their head, and everyone starts to hate them for it. As seen in The Brady Bunch, Jimmy Neutron, Rocket Power, Hey Arnold.

Meet a celebrity by pretending to be sick and writing them a letter. As seen in The Brady Bunch and Diff'rent Strokes.

Somebody gets to see their favorite action star live on the set only to see that they use a stunt double. As seen in Rocket Power, and Hey Arnold.

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It hasn't been much of a thing lately, but "magic duel" was a big thing in the 80s and 90s. Like, not characters who usually use magic, but a stage magician would come to town, challenge the regular characters (or a one-off friend) to a duel and they'd have to do tricks, either with real or stage magic.

Defenders of the Earth, Jem, Batman, two different generations or My Little Pony and I think Tiny Toons all did it.

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Mike_Stanton denying certain major historical atrocities

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Overhearing a conversation and taking it the wrong way

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I never can decide if I like or loathe the classic "endless quest" plot from Samurai Jack, Wheeled Warriors, the 80's Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, etc.

The entire Scrooge plot.
The It's a Wonderful Life premise.

Except I saw so many renditions of these plots as a kid that I hate them, so maybe "favorite" doesn't apply here.

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Sitcom episodes where due to a mixup with a stranger, characters have to pretend they are someone else, usually involving a cascading sequence of lies as more people are roped into the ruse.

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- Guy sees his beloved ______ get murdered, grows up through a hard-knock life, sees the ____ that killed his _____ then beats them.


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Bottle episode!

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Time travel stuff is always fun

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ApherosyLove posted...

Bottle episode!

The Fly, Remedial Chaos Theory, and.... fuck, I forgot the other one.

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Best friends stop being friends, but always make up by the end of the episode. As seen in basically every sitcom and cartoon ever.

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Mike_Stanton posted...

Best friends stop being friends, but always make up by the end of the episode.

The inverse of that, enemies working together for this episode because a bigger threat appeared, is even better.

People switching roles for a day, and seeing the unseen shit the other person deals with regularly.

Future episodes where you see where characters are in 10 or so years.


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maybe when characters get super addicted to a game like Hank Hill playing a GTA clone, Arthur and friends playing the duck rpg, Recess gang playing that card game, etc.

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ApherosyLove posted...

Bottle episode!

Tell your disappointment to SUCK IT

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- Characters overreacting to a traffic violation ticket only to contest it in court and lose.

Funniest shit ever.

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It's more of a trope or rhetorical weakness, but I also like what I call "Dark Lord Syndrome." So the protagonists or main antagonists will be vry ebil and have to go out of their way to be contrarian to nice things.

So you get them running around with "Oh, that cake is so sweet and tasty and therefore disgusting! I would much rather eat worms, which are delicious, by which I mean gross."

"Praise our wonderful, by which we mean bad, Dark Lord, the master of all that is good, by which we mean evil in the world, like pain, which we find pleasurable and fun, because it's unpleasurable and bad."

"Today is gloomy and rainy and stormy. How glorious it is, by which I mean nasty and foul."

The new Sabrina on Netflix did a lot of that in the first season.

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They recycled a lot of plots in those classic Kung Fu movies. Stuff like, bad guys kill kids family and he learns Kung Fu to get revenge. Those are always a good bet.

Then theres the classic, poor person realizes he/she is royalty and overthrows the corrupt ruler story. You see this in eastern and western stories.

ApherosyLove posted...

Bottle episode!

Teen Titans Go had a great one.
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The Rashomon.

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