Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Turns out that all the events which just transpired in the story were a mere dream. This can be incredibly frustrating for the audience if done poorly.

The Master, Vampire overlord, loves his black clothing. And when Willow goes evil, instant Black Hair dye.

When a character, almost always female and always physically attractive gets naked and relaxes in a bath.

Xander and Cordelia

Willow has an evil vampire counterpart in an alternate dimension, as does Xander.

Giles, Angel

The bad guy urges the protagonist to kill him.

A character with a God complex has intense feelings of superiority and megalomania. They believe they are above the law, and feel they have the right to become judge and jury, "punishing" those who do not line up with their visions accordingly.

Whenever somebody is escaping from underground, they always have a dramatic shot where they show the hand breaking out from the ground.

A person who rips the heart out of the victim to die instantly.

A Heroic Sacrifice is when a character makes a sacrifice for the benefit and well-being of others. This is quite possibly the most prevalent cliche in cinema today.

Death was not the end! This person had died but came back, possibly as a vampire or simply because time had reset itself.

All the vampires and some demons

Nowadays, smoking in films is usually reserved for the rebels, brooders, or villainous.

Quite a few horror and action flicks play on this old trick. The main characters believe the main villain or all bad guys are dead. Just as they and the audience feels safe, POW! The bad guy pops up, ready for round two. Sometimes, this round ends with a quick roundhouse or bullet. Other times, the excitement goes on to bring even more thrills.

'Dead Man's Party'

When nursing clearly fatal wounds which would mean certain death in real life, fictional characters have a tendency to shrug it off as if it's nothing more than a flesh wound.

You see the protagonist looking down a hallway, the music begins to lower, just as she's about to open the door at the end of the hallway BOOM a cat jumps out followed by a loud stinger.

A woman who is particularly sexy will often don a sleek red dress at one point or another. This will inevitably turn the heads of most men in the general vicinity.

A character is feared/attacked solely due to appearance, i.e. because he/she is ugly and/or scary in some other way. But in the movie it turns out that the character redeems himself/herself by doing good deed(s), and the final consensus is that the character is basically good, just a bit misunderstood. May also be referred to as the "Frankenstein" cliche.

Angel & Buffy, Buffy & Spike

Clearly the best way to catch someone by surprise is to punch through the wall they are right behind.

Those greedy gods are always asking for goats, virgins, or babies, for payment of their services.

Faith after waking up from her coma.

Cool guys have muscles and they just love to show them off. The only way to do that is to take off their shirts and flex. These are the films that help them do that.

Angels smoked whenever he is evil

In the musical episode "Once More, with Feeling" (S6E8), a demon causes everyone to spontaneously sing and dance in Sunnydale throughout the episode.

The all-too-common tactic of making the audience jump by faking out a character with a cheap scare.

Weirdly, the person most responsible for this sort of thing is Richard Curtis, who IS actually English. Suffice to say we all don't have bad teeth and talk like the Queen.....

Having a character smoke a cigarette is good way to convey their extreme anxiety or distress. Especially effective if the character in question is normally a non-smoker.

Vampires that have sympathetic or redeeming qualities. They they lead a tragic existence, and usually seek out a cure.

When a hero is defeated, defenseless and completely at the will of their nemesis the bad guy has a terrible habit of finding their gift for gab right then and there, revealing the entire nefarious scheme and usually allowing the protagonist to rally or notice a convenient trap door.

Ms. Calendar, a computer science teacher.

"What could possibly go wrong?"

That girl or boy in your life who you never knew could be the one true love of your life!

When a very vile evildoer is attempting to take over the world, or end someone's life they wound up getting themselves killed by heroes, anti-heroes, or even other villains or they probably suicide themselves for that matter.

In an effort to prove that they aren't chauvinist pigs, directors of action movies often include exaggeratedly masculine - yet still pretty - women in their team of heroes. Examples include Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 and Jenette Goldstein in Aliens. See: Michelle Rodriguez's entire career. DOES-NOT-INCLUDE-MOVIES-WHERE-A-CENTRAL-AND-NEEDED-CHARACTER-IS-A-TOUGH-LADY-(such-as-Aliens-or-The-Hunger-Games)

Audiences love a sarcastic character who cracks wise at every opportunity--they just don't want that character to be at the forefront of the movie. Hence the wisecracking best friend, the one you insert into a scene to give a bit of levity from whatever heaviness the protagonist is dealing with.

A troublesome relationship between parents and their children which must be dealt with for the character to move on or have closure

Spike, Angel

Wanna make your vampire movie "edgy" and "cool?" Add a wrinkly forehead appliance and weird nose to your vampire to make it look more ferocious. Hooray for Count Orlok!

Some "good" vampires choose not to feed on humans, instead finding other sources of blood to nourish themselves with.

A common taunt made by the villain to the hero.