Fairy Tale Tropes

Tropes common to Fairy Tales. See also Mythical Motifs.

Surprisingly, fairies in the winged, fluttery sense are absent, as are modern, pointy-eared versions of the Fair Folk.

• An Arm and a Leg: All variants of the Girl Without Hands have her mutiliated.
• Androcles' Lion
• At the Crossroads
• Back From the Dead: common (though not invariable) for heroes, but rare for other characters
• Baleful Polymorph / Animorphism: Frequently a curse cast by a Wicked Witch, Wicked Stepmother, or so on.
• Be Careful What You Wish For
• Beast Fable: The original Funny Animals.
• Big Bad Wolves
• Big Fancy Castle
• Blue Blood
• Bride and Switch
• Cain and Abel
• Changeling Tale
• Cinderella Circumstances
• Child Marriage Veto: One day a youngest child wins is by not rejecting the bridegroom that all her sisters have.
• Clingy MacGuffin
• Curse
• Damsel in Distress: though not as common as you may believe
• Dances and Balls: But be back before 12 o' clock!
• David Versus Goliath: The youngest or smallest one will turn out to be smarter than his big enemies.
• Deader Than Dead: common in disposing of the villains
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: The Missing Mom or Disappeared Dad will have been a saint; the living dad and his Wicked Stepmother will be indifferent or actively hostile to the young protagonist.
• Distressed Dude
• Don't Go in The Woods
• Don't Touch It, You Idiot!
• Dude, Where's My Respect?
• Due to the Dead
• Earn Your Happy Ending
• Engagement Challenge
• Everything's Worse with Bears
• Exact Eavesdropping: Talking Animals have a marvelous tendency to talk where the hero can overhear them.
• The Fair Folk
• Fairest of Them All
• Fairy Tale Motifs
• Fake Ultimate Hero: a form of the false hero
• Family-Unfriendly Aesop
• Family-Unfriendly Death
• Family-Unfriendly Violence
• Faux Death
• Feminine Women Can Cook: How to prove your worth as a bride — for frogs.
• The Fool
• Forbidden Fruit
• Gender Flip: usually played straight
• Giant Food
• Gingerbread House
• Girl in the Tower
• Goldilocks And The Mines Of Moria
• Greed
• Green-Eyed Monster
• Grimmification
• Hair of Gold: more in the illustrations than in the text, though it's not unknown there.
• Happily Ever After
• Haunted Castle
• Hedge of Thorns
• Heir Club for Men
• Hitchhiker Heroes
• Honorary Uncle — in The Three Spinners and its variants, the heroine's helpers want to be her Honorary Aunts.
• Impossible Task
• Impossible Thief
• Involuntary Shapeshifting: Though not as common as the Baleful Polymorph transformations mentioned above.
• Law of Inverse Fertility — in the "want but can't get" form only
• Leaf Boat
• Little Red Fighting Hood- common in Fractured Fairytales
• The Lost Woods
• Love At First Sight
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter
• Malicious Slander
• Meaningful Name: Characters will be named after their visual appearance or characteristics.
• Mock Millionaire
• Moving the Goalposts
• Nameless Narrative: Sometimes one or two characters (hero, heroine, villain) get names, but frequently none do.
• Noble Fugitive
• Offing the Offspring
• Once Upon a Time
• Our Dragons Are Different
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same
• Our Gnomes Are Weirder
• All Trolls Are Different
• Overprotective Dad
• Parental Incest: A common motive for the heroine to flee home is that her father has decided to marry her.
  • Brother-Sister Incest: sometimes a brother substitutes for the father. Same plot, though.
• Pinocchio Syndrome
• Please Shoot the Messenger
• The Promise
• The Quest
• Rags to Royalty (often after a decline from royalty, or at least wealth, to rags)
• Rapunzel Hair: though only in certain types of fairy tales.
• Ravens and Crows
• Redheaded Stepchild
• Rescue Romance
• Rip Van Winkle
• Royal Brat
• Royal Blood
• Rule of Three: Three siblings of the same sex is the commonest.
• Rule of Seven: Seven children, seven brothers, seven dwarfs, seven goats
• The Runt At the End
• Save the Princess
• Scullery Maid: Running away from your father's attempt to marry you often leads to this.
• Secret Test of Character
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Shapeshifter Showdown
• Shapeshifting Lover
• She Cleans Up Nicely
• Sibling Triangle: The hero's brothesr or the heroine's sisters/stepsisters are often the final obstacle, and can be quite serious.
• Soul Jar
• Standard Hero Reward
• Swans-a-Swimming
• Sweet and Sour Grapes
• Talking Animal: one of the commonest, found virtually everywhere in fairy tales
• The Wild Hunt
• Threshold Guardians
• Trail of Bread Crumbs
• The Trickster
• True Love's Kiss
• Values Dissonance
• Walking the Earth
• Wealthy Ever After
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve
• Wicked Stepmother
• Wicked Witch
• Wonder Child
• World Tree
• Year Outside, Hour Inside
• You Have Waited Long Enough
• Youngest Child Wins