I’ll go first. Mine is the instant knockout drug. Like Dexter’s intramuscular injection that causes someone to immediately lose consciousness. Or in the movie Split where there’s the aerosol spray in your face that makes you instantly unconscious. Or pretty much any time someone uses chloroform.
The worst is when a show or movie establishes that X can’t be done, because Y. Then in a later scene X is done without addressing anything about Y. It’s actually pretty common, especially when run time needs to be padded with a side quest.
Ever try holding your breath for as long as a TV or movie character is getting smothered to death? It’s not even uncomfortable.
YES, another one of mine. To be fair though, most TV shows and movies don’t have the time to dedicate to an actual strangling or suffocation. Those things take a while.
Funny story. I took my dad to Saving Private Ryan. After the movie was over and we’re walking away he turned to me and said…
“You know the actual D-Day took a lot longer than that.”
When they are kissing right after waking up with that morning breath.
Fridging, it’s just plain lazy.
Die off-screen? Definitely alive and will show up the next act.
The problem with this one is that, as a reader/watcher/whatever, it affects your experience even when it doesn’t happen. I was so convinced that Dumbledore was alive at the end of book six. Fell off a balcony? Point of view character gets dragged to the infirmary so we can’t see what happens after that? There’s a phoenix, a bird associated with healing and rebirth, conspicuously singing? That guy is pulling a Gandalf in the next book for sure.
So I spent the whole next book waiting for the dramatic reveal that never came…