The Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Clichés/Section II: Overused Settings and Characterizations

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.



Note to Tropers: All of the original entries come from The Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Clichés. The list item text and order should not be changed. Adding relevant links to tropes is encouraged, as long as they don't change the displayed text.


Section II: Overused Settings and Characterizations

  1. Aliens whose thinking is so different from ours that no communication is possible.
  2. Alien races that find our women attractive, while we find theirs to be repulsive.
  3. Alien races who differ from us only in skin color and/or facial features. [1]
  4. Aliens that are incomprehensible to humans but understand humans perfectly.
  5. Alien species depicted as having no ethnic, religious, cultural, philosophical or political variance, especially:
    1. Wise mystics
    2. Stoic warriors
    3. Pastoral innocents
    4. Cowardly sneaks
    5. Amazon babes
  6. Alien species with personality traits or cultural mores that are treated as invariable laws of nature.
  7. Alien races whose names all have lots of hard consonants. [2]
  8. Lots of apostrophes are packed into alien words and phrases for no apparent reason.
  9. Humans of the future have no ethnic, religious, cultural, philosophical or political variance.
  10. Cities of future are depicted as though sanitation workers have been on strike from now until then.
  11. The entire story setting is dominated by huge impersonal business conglomerates.
  12. Planets with the same exact climate planet-wide (planets without atmosphere excepted).
  13. Super-intelligent AIs that speak, behave, and act in a manner indistinguishable from the human characters.
  14. The incredibly competent man-of-action with more skills/degrees than you can shake a blaster at.
  15. The incredibly competent woman-of-action with large breasts, no sexual inhibitions, and more skills/degrees than you can shake a blaster at.
  16. Shadowy malevolent Pentagon officials.
  17. Each and every character has a tainted history.
  18. A society that manages to remain at a high technological level consists of:
    1. A handful of ultra-powerful ultra-rich;
    2. Criminal lords who control everything not controlled by the ultra-rich;
    3. Police whose only principle of operation is maintenance of the status quo;
    4. Hordes of poor people starving in the streets;
    5. Absolutely no middle class whatsoever.
    Nonetheless, the society manages to remain at a high technological level.
  19. Societies where all technology has been destroyed except automobiles and their equivalents, which are still running yet there are no mechanics, workshops, or gas stations.
  20. Heroes who are so emotionally stunted that they don't care about close friends/relatives that die as long as they complete some mission.
  21. Any character with a perpetual two-day growth of beard.
  22. Futuristic societies where only the ultra-rich can afford quality healthcare, and everyone else is reduced to selling their bodily organs.
  23. Beings of pure energy.
  24. A society in which everyone is required to die on his or her Nth birthday.
  25. Creatures from our mythology (e.g., centaurs, dragons) occur among the wildlife native to an alien planet.
  26. Aliens whose sociology, values and beliefs are indistinguishable from those of an Earth culture, e.g., feudal Japan.
  27. Eccentric scientists.
  28. The assistant to the scientist who is either deformed or dating the scientist's daughter.
  29. Future societies that have relapsed into feudalism.
  30. Alternative Earths where society is just like some society of the past, with some technodoodads added.
  31. Palace guards who are ineffectual due to ineptitude or inattentiveness.
  32. Fantastic but non-viable creatures (men with tortoiseshell backs, gigantic insects) made possible by high levels of radiation, and which don't suffer any ill effects from it.
  33. Aliens that speak human languages without error, having taken no pains to learn how.
  34. An alien tongue is translated into perfect English; that is, except for profanity and units of measurement.
  35. Aliens whose vocal apparatus is just like ours, so that they can speak human languages with only a slight accent.
  36. Omnipotent pacifist aliens who impose their philosophy on us without bothering to protect us from the races they have left alone.
  37. Men and women live in separate societies (and we're not talking Mars and Venus, either).
  38. Clones are inexplicably different from regular people in a particular manner (mentally unstable, don't mind being used as cannon fodder, etc.).
  39. The vast majority of alien races consider 20°C to be room temperature.
  40. Societies that are utopian in every regard except for one serious drawback that completely outweighs the utopian aspects, such as having the death penalty for some really minor offence.
  41. Disembodied live brains living in tanks.
  42. Eyes that glow (sometimes accompanied by minor-key chords in TV and film).
  43. Sentient artificial intelligences that wish to eliminate the human race.
  44. Sentient artificial intelligences that select a human figure to holographically represent themselves.[3]
  45. Computers with voice synthesizers either use a sensuous female contralto, a threatening male baritone, or a nasally tinny neutral voice.
  46. Bad guys who miss everything they shoot at.
  47. Beginning warriors who hit everything they shoot at.
  48. Characters who are always ready for intimate relations.
  49. All genetically superior humans have an innate drive to rule, conquer, or kill everyone else.
  50. Alien vampires that feed on brainwaves/life-force/exotic biochemicals/psychic energies that can only be obtained from sentient life forms.
  51. Post-cataclysmic societies that treat items of the Lost Technology as holy relics.
  52. Alien monsters that find humans edible, tasty, and non-toxic.
  53. The evil duplicate of the hero, sidekick, universe, etc.
  54. The grammatical differences between the languages used by humans and aliens are cited as conclusive proof of radically different ways of thinking.
  55. Sentient AIs that communicate with other sentient AIs via their voice synthesizer.
  56. The intelligent and confident woman who can be bribed with a dress.
  57. Androids with intelligence equal to an IQ of around 1000 who can't seem to figure out human emotions, humor, or verbal contractions.
  58. Everyone in the post-catastrophic future dresses like heavy metal musicians.
  59. A common proverb gets "translated" into more generic terms, resulting in obfuscation of the meaning.
  60. An alien race has a trait that greatly complicates interacting with them, but even after centuries of contact with humans they still manage to keep it secret.
  61. The ancient spacefaring alien race that:
    1. Has existed for zillions of years;
    2. Went into hiding, left this universe/dimension, or went extinct so long ago that no current spacefaring race has ever met them;
    3. Is known solely through legends, ancient artifacts of amazing technological advancement, and/or evidence that they created one or more (sometimes all) currently living races.
  62. Aliens whose language is not pronounceable by humans, but who can still speak human languages with relative ease.
  63. The villain who can infallibly predict how the protagonists will react to a given turn of events.
  64. All religious figures are:
    1. Intolerant hatemongers who make Hitler look like Jesus;
    2. All-tolerant lovemongers who make Jesus look like Hitler;
    3. Ignorant, unwashed rabble.
  65. A society of aliens and/or villains that are amazingly similar to an infamous human political movement.
  66. Societies wherein gender roles and attitudes are completely reversed.
  67. Whiz kids.
  68. Most aliens breathe oxygen, just like humans do.
  69. Bored, omnipotent, immortal beings.
  70. An immortal being that wants to die.
  71. People with cyborg implants will needlessly exhibit the benefits of this hardware just to relieve boredom or show off.
  72. Children with access to the highest levels of military planning, scientific research, and governmental decision-making.
  73. A smart, courageous, gorgeously attractive woman who is rarely if ever asked out.
  74. Every planet seems to have a surface gravity of 9.8 meters per second squared and rotates around its axis in about 24 hours, just like Earth.
  75. All of the spacefaring races have roughly the same level of technology.
  76. Aliens that transform into a colorful puddle when they die.
  77. The Free Love Utopia, populated only by fabulously good-looking people, that somehow remains free of sexually transmitted diseases, has no relationship turmoil, and is not inundated with hordes of people looking for easy sex.
  78. The untrained, average Joe who can take on and defeat highly trained and well-equipped operatives.
  79. The Wise Race of Ancients who do nothing for the protagonists except offer advice.
  80. The Wise Race of Ancients that secretly supports the protagonists.
  81. The former Great Man of Action who is now just a washed-up drunk.
  82. An interstellar realm is ruled by a handful of powerful families, each scheming to eliminate the rest, instead of forming alliances.
  83. Except for the distinguishing marks on aliens and bad guys, everyone has perfect skin.
  84. Upon arrival in a distant epoch, the time travelers can speak the local language without accent.
  85. The city's main computer can be accessed from any of a number of public-access terminals located conveniently throughout the city.
  86. The less technologically advanced a culture is, the more spiritually advanced it is.
  87. The modification of one custom, law, or common belief would transform Western society into Utopia.
  88. All female scientists are good-looking; male scientists are average-looking.
  89. Except for full-blown dictatorships, government officials of the future never abuse their powers.
  90. Not even the soldiers or marines make vulgar jokes.
  91. In the future, everyone's taste in music and literature extends solely to the classics.
  92. Immortals who assume many identities over the course of human history.
  93. Everyone's counterpart in the parallel universe has, as his/her associates, the counterparts of the same people that the primary knows in this universe.
  94. Whenever The Captain walks onto The Bridge, the same people are always on duty.[4]
  95. Superheroes wear primary colors (red, blue, and yellow).
  96. Supervillains wear secondary colors (green, purple, and orange).
  97. Only bad guys have goatees.
  98. In the future, everyone is good in bed.
  99. Entire cities whose buildings use the same architectural design.
  100. World governments are enlightened and efficient; nation-states are backward and primitive.
  101. In the future, everyone either supports their government fully, or is engaged in a terrorist campaign to overthrow it.
  102. In the future, government corruption has been eradicated.
  103. The tribal chieftain's eldest child is a defiant free-spirited youth, and if female is the sexiest member of the tribe.
  104. The alien's superpowers become manifest when he/she/it is exposed to Terran conditions.
  105. All alien females, galaxy-wide, use cosmetics the same way that Western women do.[5]
  106. Although humans still have multiple languages, each alien race has only one language.
  107. Kindly enlightened races are native to beautiful planets with congenial climate; cruel, benighted races arise on ugly planets with brutal weather.
  108. The ship's computer is programmed to track the location of each and every person aboard, but is never programmed to report personnel in unauthorized areas, or those who suddenly disappear.
  109. Among the intelligent creatures, man-sized beings predominate.
  110. The token black guy is the muscular scion of a Noble Warrior culture.
  111. The entire population of the planet lives in one city.
  112. The Energy Being takes the form of a mass of flickering lights.
  113. Military spacecraft have a light-colored exterior, making them easy to see. Only the Bad Guys ever appreciate the danger of this.
  114. The time traveler meets an ancestor who looks so much like him that the same actor can play both characters.
  115. In the future, all that remains of Earth's flora is a small garden, or even just one plant.
  116. All girlfriends are hotties.

Tropers' additions to this list

  1. Regardless of who else is in the room, the scientist will give the explanation of what happened/will happen as though talking to kindergarteners, even though everybody else listening are also scientists. If they are actually talking to kindergarteners/mooks/Phillip J. Fry, they will use an easily understood metaphor, usually involving balloons.
  2. To trigger the childish explanation, one character will always say, "In English, Doc."
  3. Regardless of how advanced the civilization is, the assistant or the scientist will carry a clipboard and/or wear a lab coat. To show rank, the lead scientist will sign something on the clipboard.
  4. A male wearing glasses always indicates intelligence.
  5. A female wearing glasses will usually result in a dramatic and/or sexual scene later that involves taking them off.
  6. Spaceships that are always named after what they are used for or what they look like, instead of people or places like seagoing vessels are.
  7. Having any experience, ever, of being "a pilot" means you can fly any spaceship ever made, but you have to say, "It's just like my <insert model of old ship>" first.
  8. The proper response to "Let's use the X Maneuver!" is "Like we did at the Battle/Planet of Y?"
  9. All climactic space battles must have more ships involved than previous battles.
  10. If the situation appears hopeless, fire a beam at it. Frequency adjustment might be necessary.
  11. Aliens with a Hive Mind are exempt from the "no genocide" rule.
  12. Flashing, unlabeled buttons on a flat console always indicate a more advanced technology. Conversely, anything made out of dirt, wood or stone indicate a primitive technology. Computers inside caves indicate a lost civilization.
  1. ↑ Added by someone: Extra breasts on the alien women.
  2. ↑ Added by someone: Alien women whose names coincidentally end in 'a' or 'ia'.
  3. ↑ The original list didn't have the icon, but this does apply to the EMH on Voyager.
  4. ↑ The icon on this one is misleading, in that it didn't take place in TOS or TNG.
  5. ↑ The icon wasn't on the original list, but it also applies here.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Grand_List_of_Overused_Science_Fiction_Clichés/Section_II:_Overused_Settings_and_Characterizations?oldid=1950831"