Trollpasta Wiki:Trollpasta Clichés

The following is a list of common Trollpasta clichés. It's important to note that just because they've been used so many times, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use them. A common mistake among Trollpasta writers is the assumption that random mentions of clichés makes the story automatically funny or entertaining. More often than not, pastas will say stuff like "An old man gave me a creepy disc for free and it had scary blood and death in it then I died" and call it day. This is lazy writing. So if you're going to include clichés in your pastas, try and attempt to make them funny/interesting or add a twist that makes the cliché seem fresh. If used correctly, almost all of the clichés listed on this page can be funny.

Clichés List

General

1. Creepypasta parodies: Parodying famous pastas such as Jeff the Killer, Sonic.exe, and Squidward's Suicide. These pastas could sometimes get derivative by just editing the original story and adding/removing stuff from it. These were especially common around Trollpasta's peak.
2. Lost media: Pastas about sinister lost/cursed media are perhaps the most common pasta-type. The story usually begins with the main character stumbling upon a strange disc/tape/cartridge of a (usually) kid-friendly show/game they grew up with. They then take it home and document watching/playing the media. The lost media will portray the original media as something evil or creepy, often accompanied by static, eerie silence, blood, violence, and death. Depending on the story, the lost media can sometimes affect real life and make bad things happen to the characters. At the end, the main character will usually attempt to destroy the media and vow to never watch/play the original ever again.
3. Hyper-realism: Describing something, especially blood and eyes, as "hyper-realistic." This cliché is most common in pastas about media with cartoony art styles.
4. Creepy sellers: A common trope found in creepy/lost media pastas. Typically, the main character will run in to an elderly person selling a lost piece of media at a yard sale, and sometimes they'll give it away to the main character for free.
5. Satanic elements: Many Creepypastas rely on Satanic imagery in an attempt at being scary. For Trollpastas it is mainly used to be ironic, with "666" being a common phrase used.
6. Graphic imagery: Blood, gore, and excessive violence are some of the horror genre's most popular tropes. They're very common in Trollpastas and Creepypastas as well, mainly used for pastas about cartoony media in an attempt to "shock" the reader.
7. Death: Death in Creepypastas and Trollpastas are very common. The main character dying, or everyone in the story dying is especially common in Trollpastas.
8. Stopwatch: Ever find it weird how the protagonist knows the screen has been static for 26 seconds exactly? It's almost like they have a stopwatch...
9. Ending phrases: A lot of pastas will end their story with one of the phrases "You shouldn't have done that...", "YOU'RE NEXT", "DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU", or "AND THEN A SKELETON POPPED OUT."
10. Unoriginal characters: You know Jeff the Killer? Well, this is a new character named Bleff the Killer! These types of characters are usually made to mock Creepypasta characters. Taking a character and putting "XXX" at the end is another thing some pastas like to, as homage to PATRIXXX.
11. Bad MS Paint drawings: These revolve around taking a screenshot, typically from a video game or a "lost episode", and drawing over it in MS Paint to make it look bad on purpose.

Humor

1. Juvenile humor: Some pastas will overuse sex jokes and potty humor in order to get a cheap laugh. Though, this can be done right if the writing is good.
2. Randomness: Some will add tons of completely random elements to their story to make it seem more funny. Often times it doesn't work, because being random doesn't automatically make something funny.
3. Excessive profanity: Many pastas will overly rely on swearing in a cheap attempt at comedy. It can be funny if done right, but saying "fuck" a hundred times doesn't automatically make the pasta funny. In fact, it can make them seem obnoxious.
4. Repetitive gags: This is usually a single joke that is repeatedly brought up through the pasta. Overdoing it can lead to your pasta being obnoxious to read.

Formatting

1. Poor grammar and spelling: A Trollpasta staple, especially in the beginning. Popular misspelling were usually of the word "the" with stuff like "le", "teh", "hte", "de" or "da". Over time purposely terrible grammar/spelling got stale quick, so steer clear of making your pastas borderline unreadable, because most of the time it falls flat and makes the story obnoxious. "1337" text also used to be common, but this has fallen out of practice in recent years, and for the better.
2. ALL CAPS: A very common gag in Trollpastas is making the entire story in ALL CAPS. It stopped being funny quick, so it's best to avoid making Trollpastas in this style.
3. Lowercase: On the flip side, pastas with no punctuation and capitalization at all is also common.
4. Wall of text: Pastas that are a big wall of text with no line breaks whatsoever are common as well. Try to avoid doing this, because it can made reading the story tedious.
5. !!!!11: One of the most common formatting clichés is the excessive use of exclamation marks, which is done to emphasize dumb or satirical moments in the story.

Fads

1. Shrek: Back when Shrek was a big meme, many pastas revolving around Shrek would put him in a creepy, rapey role, where he would often violate the main character. They were usually formatted in green text, a popular post formatting used on 4chan. Many stories with this cliché have been deleted due to their overly explicit NSFW nature. The most popular of these stories was The Tale of Shrek.
2. My Little Pony: The MLP fad was extremely popular during the height of Trollpastas and Creepypastas, so dozens of MLP pastas were made across both genres. The Creepypasta stories would involve the pony characters being put in extreme horror situations, such as in the notorious Cupcakes. At one point there was an even a category for MLP pastas on the site, but it's since been deleted.
3. Meme translations: From 2013 to 2014 there was a trend of putting a serious pastas through Gizoogle or Bad Translator. Many of the pastas in this style can still be found in the Ghetto Talk category.
4. MLG humor: References to this meme in pastas were common back when MLG was a very popular internet meme. Several of these elements would be used: xXx_W4ckY_MLG_n4m3s_xXx, Mountain Dew, Doritos, 420 BLAZE IT, creating MLG versions of existing stories, etc.
5. Vinesauce memes: 2014 to 2016 saw the rise of memes like Expand Dong and BonziBuddy, which were heavily associated with Vinesauce. Sometimes they would be used in Trollpastas during the time.