- "Relationships cannot succeed." I hate it when a show spends months or years gradually getting a couple together, and then once they are together, they don't know how to write interesting stories about a partnership that survives, so somebody has to have an affair or, as in your love triangle trope, become an arsehole. Or they kill one of them off.

- Keeping secrets for plot tension: the secret identity thing is a subset of this. I hate the "will they find out, wont' they find out?" thing, and I suspect it dates back to watching Lois and Clark - I'm not sure if they ever actually did a reveal that wasn't retconned away, but I remember it as this interminable situation that you knew would never change, yet they insisted on dangling the possibility in front of you forever.

- A friend brought this one up years ago in relation to Atonement and I agree: Surprise War, i.e. any story that doesn't start up being about war, but the character joins up and suddenly you're reading a bloody war book you didn't expect.