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Author Catchphrase

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"THE END! Though, as I've been known to say, 'It never ends!'"
— Simon Furman describing one of his Furmanisms in You Can Draw Transformers!

Basically this is when the author of a novel reuses the same line (or a variation) in their work. This isn't as much a Running Gag, a Meaningful Echo or a Shout-Out as it is simply recycling the line. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, however.

Remember, it doesn't have to be a line of dialogue. It could also be a description of something, or always including an Expy of a character from an earlier work.

Contrast with Character Catchphrase, where the same line or quote is used by characters in a single work.

Related: Creator Thumbprint, Signature Style, Author Vocabulary Calendar, If It Was Funny the First Time....

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Cross Category 
  • "Derp" was apparently a nonsense word invented on the set of Baseketball to exemplify stupid humor. It has been carried over to South Park in several forms, with no in-show explanation or link between them. Once there was a substitute school chef named "Mr. Derp" who did stupid physical gags; another time there was a Rob Schneider movie trailer (as part of a running gag of successively stupider movie trailers) whose narration consisted almost entirely of nonsensical permutations of the word "Derp".
  • Multiple lines from Strangers with Candy show up in near identical form in the book Wigfield written by the show's creators (Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, and Amy Sedaris).
    • In Strangers with Candy, Stephen Colbert chastises Jerri, "you can't unfry things." In his interview chapter in Wigfield, Dillard notes that if there's one thing he's realized, it's that you can't unfry things.
    • Both the episode "Hit and Run" and the second interview with the Grimmets in Wigfield include a debate over whether a feature of a hideously deformed face is an eye or a mouth, with one party arguing that it's a mouth because it's where the sound comes from and the other countering that whenever they tried to feed it there it would wink at them.
    • Both the series finale and the first interview with Hoyt Gein include the phrase "Think about it—I haven't." Which was then Covered Up when Colbert used it in his WHCA speech.
    • "You touch [forbidden object] again and you're gonna pull back a bloody stump," which apparently one of Colbert's older sisters used to say to him when they were kids, appears in the SWC movie, an Exit 57 sketch, and... something else.
    • "The insane ramblings of a syphilitic brain"
    • "I wasn't pushing you away, I was pulling me towards myself" appeared in an Exit 57 sketch, an episode of Strangers with Candy, and then the movie.
  • Both Shaun of the Dead and Spaced feature a gag where Simon Pegg denies that Nick Frost is his boyfriend, followed immediately by Nick Frost getting something for him and Simon Pegg thanking him with "Thanks, babe". Word of God states this was by accident.
  • Brad Meltzer has used the line "I'm not obsessed/addicted. I can stop any day I want, but today won't be that day. Neither will tomorrow..." in both the Identity Crisis (2004) miniseries and The Book Of Fate.
  • Charlie Brooker
    • Across his writing and TV commentary, he describes people by making unflattering comparisons, and there are a number of adjectives he returns to time and again, including "haunted" (describing Gordon Brown as a "haunted grandfather clock", a pair of The X Factor contestants as "haunted porcelain dolls", etc.) and "dented" (describing Jade Goody's mother as "Dot Cotton reflected in the side of a dented kettle", himself as having a face "like a rucksack full of dented bells", etc.).
    • He also enjoys calling people, often older women, "Peter Cushing", presumably for no reason other than that it's funny.
    • In the introduction to his collection of Screen Burn columns, he mentions that he actually had to cut down the number of references to things being as unpleasant as "shitting out a pine cone", not realizing how many times he used the phrase.
    • And Bibble.
  • John Kricfalusi used to say "What are ya?" around the Ren & Stimpy offices, so the line was used in a few Games episodes.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Nasuverse
    • The fandom would have you believe Kinoko Nasu's H-writing involves a lot of food metaphors, specifically seafood, specifically mollusks.
    • Also, describing anything "on a completely different level".
    • And "If A is X, then B is Y." as in "If A's strikes are like lightning, her enemy's attacks are like a thunderstorm."

    Comic Books 
  • Chris Claremont. Many of his X-Men plots are to a certain extent strings of mind control and transformation tropes linked to mutant wangst and peppered liberally with catchphrases—and there are lots, even excluding the characters' signature lines. See a representative list here; others include:
    • I can't—won't—betray that trust.
    • My life. My risk.
    • Your choice. Your funeral.
    • More fool I.
    • The last—and the best!
    • He/she/they (will) (always) find a way to win.
    • My gift, my curse.
    • Using "scrap" to describe all fights.
    • Using "warrior born" to describe someone who is good at fighting.
    • Using "clandestine" to describe anything.
    • Reminding someone that saying you're sorry isn't good enough.
    • As much _____ as _____. (E.g., "Her sword is as much friend as weapon.")
    • No quarter asked. And none given.
    • Bang! You dead.
    • What the devil?!
  • Whenever a larger-than-human opponent shows up in a story written by John Byrne, expect the phrase "How can something so big be so fast" or a variant thereof to be said at some point.
  • Stan Lee-style old-school Marvel Comics
    • 'My (eye beams/magic powers/heart condition) would kill (me/everyone else) without the aid of my (ruby-quartz visor/magic willpower/metal chest plate).
    • Or, 'My (superpower you might have forgotten about) will protect me!'
    • '@&* ^!'. They could swear in comics if they wanted to, that's just for flavour.
    • "Just what the doctor ordered!"
    • Snowclone titles on the lines of "If This Be (whatever)...!" and "My (brother/father/landlady etc.), My Enemy!"
    • One well known Lee-ism is variations on the theme of "I've never seen him this (angry/agitated/etc.)", as used by Iceman in X-Men #1: "I never saw the Professor like this before ... so grim, so intense!"
    • "Excelsior!"
  • Everything by Simon Furman. EVERYTHING. He uses certain phrases so much that they have become known as "Furmanisms" amongst the Transformers fandom, and are something of a joke. (Even Furman knows about them and uses them consciously.) A few favorites, with the Furmanism in bold, include:
    • "I've stood here and watched humans — frail flesh creatures — fight and die for their world. CAN I DO LESS?"
    • "Yeah. Better to FIGHT AND DIE— than live with the knowledge that I ran!"
    • "This is no demon, no ghost! It is metal and circuitry! It can feel pain — IT CAN BE HURT!"
    • "Do you not understand? It's OVER — FINISHED!". An April Fools' Day "preview" for Transformers: Shattered Glass played with this one; normally it's rendered as "over — finished!", but the aforementioned gag preview instead rendered it as "finished — over!". The Mirror Universe is so mirrored, even the Furmanisms are backwards!
    • "I wish I could share their elation, believe that is truly over. Before he died, Jhiaxus mentioned a name, a place. In my heart of hearts, I know... IT NEVER ENDS!"
    • "I now believe a SECOND menace exists, one that hovers like some predatory bird at the edge of my consciousness."
    • "Thunderwing. HNH. Never DID want to live forever."
    • "No! Y-you were dead... I killed you!"
    • "If all those Autobots, all those humans, couldn't save Earth... WHAT CHANCE DO WE HAVE?"
    • Furman's own Stock Sound Effects; among these are SPOOM!, CHUK! and the legendary death cry of SHEEAAAGH!, which even spawned a child in having a truncated "Got to-" in front of it. Basically, look for these in ANYTHING Furman writes....but please don't make a drinking game out of them with the rule of one glass downed for every Furmanism. If you do want to go that route, don't start with Rythms of Darkness; you'll be utterly tanked by the end of it, and it may be wise to skip the issue on full drinking games to avoid either alcahol poisoning or making you so shit-faced you can't read anymore.
    • Furmanisms reached Ascended Meme status in The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers, when the Autobot author "Fisitron" wrote after-action stories about the Wreckers that were full of Furmanisms.
  • Furman's predecessor in The Transformers (Marvel) series, Bob Budiansky (the person primarily responsible for the Transformers universe and its characters, actually) had several tendencies of his own:
    • He often named women characters "Charlene" and men "Jake." There are several of each.
    • On several occasions, he's ended a sentence with the construction, "[action] in the [action]-ing." For example, Laserbeak will extract information from any Autobot prisoners - even if they die in the telling.
    • There's also "You <fight> better than you <verb>", such as "I hope you shoot straighter than you think, Weirdwolf!"
    • Finally, Budiansky tended to use a combination of Expo Speak and Bad Ass Boast as a convenient way to name-drop characters and their weapons/powers: "Leave a few of those little critters for me, Octane — so my ionic displacer rifle can atomize 'em!"
  • Jhonen Vasquez has a number of these in his Johnny the Homicidal Maniac comics. "Nugat", "Bees are scary", and the word "Doom", just to name a few.
  • Ken Penders' run on Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) can be recognized by all characters' peculiar overuse of "I've", such as "I've only one chance!" instead of "I only got one chance!", which sounds kind of oddly refined for an unruly blue teenage hedgehog. A small quirk, but an identifying one.
  • Alan Moore loves the word "incidentally." Once he starts using it, he can't stop!
  • Frank Miller often has protagonists saying "No reason to play it quiet" or "I have to play this quiet." Sometimes, it is said by the same protagonist at different points in which being quiet is either a good idea or a bad one.
  • Brian Michael Bendis is fond of the phrase "You ruined the world!" or similar variations when a hero calls out a very destructive Big Bad.
  • Warren Ellis has Emma Frost saying "If I must/have to X, I shall simply Y."
  • Judd Winick has a few. The old carnival slang phrase "Hey, Rube!" shows up repeatedly in Exiles, Outsiders, and The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius as an emergency signal, and his characters are very fond of threatening people with head trauma that will "leave them in a lower reading group." Characters accusing each other of something being "on the nose" is another good one.
  • Garth Ennis is very fond of characters responding to someone else making a good point with a simple "Point."
  • Greg Pak's run on Hercules was punctuated with characters responding to jokes or stupid comments with a flat "Ha." or "*Tch*".
  • Mark Millar often makes his characters ask "What are you talking about?"
  • The phrase "It's true" appears a lot in Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics.

    Comic Strips 
  • Peanuts is full of these—mostly expressions of dismay, since Charles M. Schulz didn't swear in Real Life. Good grief.
    • While a lot of the phrases used in Snoopy's mind are genuine catchphrases (most notably: "It was a dark and stormy night", which Schulz made his own), the way most of his fantasies begin with a simple "here's" ("Here's Joe Cool hanging out at the dorm", "Here's the World War I flying ace", "Here's the world-famous lawyer") is more of a verbal tic.
    • One of Schulz's idiosyncrasies is that he puts nicknames (other than those that are variants of a given name) into apostrophes - thus it is not "Peppermint Patty" but "'Peppermint' Patty". This even applies to Snoopy's biplane: "Here's the World War I flying ace zooming through the air in his Sopwith 'Camel'..."
  • For a time in the 1980s, characters in Garfield were very fond of responding to situations with the word "natch" (short for "naturally"). The word was used as a punchline on at least two occasions.
  • The Far Side has had an improbable number of captions that start with someone exclaiming, "For crying out loud!"
  • Just about every young person in For Better or for Worse says "an'." Not "and", they always leave off the "d" on the end of the word.

    Fan Works 
  • Swing123: "Help. Cry for help." It first shows up in "Calvin and Hobbes III: Double Trouble", and then goes on to be in other Calvinverse stories, like "Retro Chill" and "Calvin & Hobbes: The Series" (in the episodes "The Black Turning Funnel Part 1" and "Monkey See, Monkey Maim").
  • He doesn't use it as much as he once did, but there was a time Occam Razor (writer of "Yu-Gi-Oh! The Thousand Year Door" and the "ShadowchasersSeries") could not get five paragraphs without someone shouting "What? No!" He was also addicted to having his heroes call his villains "cowards" in lieu of any other insult.
  • Nimbus Llewelyn has a number of tics, including a tendency to use the word 'eyeing/eyed' , to use brackets or dashes - like this - for aside notes and, more infamously, starting a sentence which either doesn't finish or ends up in a very different place to where it began as a result of going off on a tangent. Apparently the latter is the product of a somewhat stream of consciousness themed writing style (i.e. he's making it up as he goes along).
    • He likes using ellipses (...) too. In fact, it's rare to go more than paragraph without one cropping up. Also popular is the use of 'blinked', often simply to space out dialogue. He likes the word 'simply', too.
    • Also the use of 'it was' to emphasise sincerity or conviction - though he doesn't seem to do that as much these days.
  • Almost every fanfic written by Andrew Troy Keller (a k a Cannonball) has the main character realising that they're "experiencing pure, untamed erotica... and enjoying every minute of it".
  • Stories by Total Drama fanfic writer Gideoncrawle are likely to have at least one narrative sentence begin with "So it was", usually in the form, "So it was that X".
  • "How dare you..." from The Prayer Warriors. It's used in many different contexts, from the Prayer Warriors complaining about the "satanic" things their enemies are doing, to the author using it on his critics.
  • Using "ejaculated" as a synonym for "to exclaim". While technically accurate, it's more often used by people purposely writing So Bad, It's Good fanfics.
  • The author of Christian Humber Reloaded often likes to write "and I did" after Vash narrates what he intends to do, and he did.
  • Danganronpa: Darkened Hope: Each execution ends with the phrase "[Killer's full name], the Ultimate [killer's talent], had been executed."
  • In Despair's Last Resort, the author writes that second and fourth culprits were "unfazed by the accusation," after being identified as the murderer, while the third similarly replies "in an unfazed tone."
  • RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: Rainbow Double Dash has a fondness for "[character] pressed their lips together". Some fics use it more than others. Crisis on Two Equestrias in particular - making a drinking game of it with that fic is not advised.
  • Like Chris Claremont and Simon Furman above, Iron117Prime loves to reuse a lot of lines and dialogue concepts across his fanfics with some variations. Notable examples include:

    Films — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • Lemony Snicket in A Series of Unfortunate Events: "A word/phrase which here means..."
  • The Bible
    • St Paul likes to ask his reader a question and then answer with "God forbid!" or "Certainly not!", depending on your translation.
  • Dan Brown
    • Whenever he wants a male character to give a speech/lecture/lesson to a group of people, he will always address his audience as "My friends..." (Examples, Robert Langdon from The Da Vinci Code, Senator Sexton from Deception Point.)
    • Also Dan Brown's opening sentence, of the format "[Occupation] [Name] [Action]," such as, "Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery." The people who begin the books also die within a few pages due to some kind of foul play. To be fair, though, Geologist Charles Brophy showed up in the second sentence of Deception Point rather than the first.
  • Children's author Edward Eager
    • He will frequently have a character make a statement, followed by evidence of that statement happening "just to prove it."
    • He also seems to be fond of annoyingly childish adults, who will invariably want to play make-believe type games involving "a dear little fairy" with the various protagonist children.
    • He also likes "s/he said ungrammatically."
  • Rudyard Kipling often uses "O best beloved" to address the reader in his Just So Stories.
  • Terry Pratchett
    • He often has a reference to something expensive being made of something rare and endangered (e.g., the fur coat Vimes refuses to be bribed with in Thud! and the chairman's desk in Making Money).
    • Quite a few characters are named Ronald: Ronald Rust, Ronald Soak, a king Ronald, Ronald Saveloy, Foul Ole Ron...
    • And, of course, he has his footnotes. He generally uses a lot of original comparisons - for characters, places, things, situations, everything. You'll recognize 'em when you see 'em. "The X was like <very original, funny comparison>."
    "Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl."
    • One that crops up quite often, particularly in the earlier books, is thrown weapons - usually axes - being described as moving through the air "like a partridge". Alternately he uses Buffy Speak: "It was as overwhelmingly powerful as a very overwhelmingly powerful thing."
    • "That was a pune, or play on words..." (in various permutations).
    • (X) is not the opposite of (not-X). It is its absence. The real opposite of X is (cool made up/magical thing).
    • Most every book has somebody misunderstand, mispronounce or comment on somebody's unusual fantasy name. About five times a book for Moist von Lipwig and Adora Belle Dearheart.
    • Many variations on "but that was a metaphor, i.e., a lie."
    • Some version of "Character X didn't think he'd ever forget it, especially around 3 am on windy nights".
    • "The leopard can't change his shorts," and variations, has become a tic for Pratchett in his later books.
    • Many of the earlier books started off with a description of the world turtle, Great A'Tuin.
    • 'Phenomenon X was something that happened to other people' tends to pop up on occasion.
  • Robert Rankin
    • "It must be a tradition, or on an old charter or something."
    • The repeated use of "stout sticks".
    • "Most people think A is the opposite of B. C is what happens when you take A and go out the other side."
    • "The transperambulation of pseudo-cosmic antimatter."
    • "It is a well-known fact to those who know it well:"
  • Frank Herbert: "Ah-h-h-h." [sic]
  • John Mortimer has several different receptionists named Angela and inns called the Stag At Bay in his works.
  • Steven Brust always has a young girl named Devera appear in his works. She isn't a catchphrase so much as a Running Gag. She's a single character, not a reused name, and it's a bit of a game among readers to find her in each new book.
  • Similarly, nearly every series by Anne McCaffrey includes a character whose name is somehow based on the name John Greene. The character Jayge in the Dragonriders of Pern series is one example. According to the official biography written by her son Todd, John Greene was a family friend who was murdered, and this is Anne's way of giving him extra lives to make up for the one he lost.
  • Robert A. Heinlein
  • Brian Jacques' Redwall series
    • He really, really likes writing songs and poetry, which is probably why every single book turns on Only Smart People May Pass.
    • And every book also includes at least one Heinlein-esque description of the sumptuous Redwall fare. With October Ale. Can't forget the October Ale.
    • Also, in several of the books his characters tend to "salute smartly", usually while holding something with their saluting paws.
    • He is very fond of using "Poleaxed" to describe a creature getting it very hard and knocked to the ground.
  • Most of Michael Crichton's novels include a character named Levine. Sometimes it's a minor character, sometimes it's a major character. Other than the name, there's no indication that any of the Levines are related. Also Levy, Levitt, etc.
  • "The leaden circles dissolved in the air," from Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.
  • Diane Duane's books:
    • They seem to contain many more "Ha!"s placed after an unlikely sentence than your typical book.
    • The same with "Right" in response to an order or request. Lampshaded in one case, where a character does not say this after being forced to stop being a Technical Pacifist, and someone else notices.
  • David Eddings:
    • Is a fan of the word "defenestration", including its potential for misunderstandings...
    • Characters saying a variation on "...Did you notice? I thought I noticed you noticing."
    • Anyone attempting to read the Elenium/Tamuli or Belgariad/Malloreon books one right after the other will notice quite rapidly just how many characters use "Be nice" as a playful admonishment, or "He's such a nice boy!" as a form of praise. They do it so much, one can only assume that they're universal idioms in Elene culture or something.
    • Anyone reading the Belgariad/Malloreon and assorted prequels, sequels, and related books will notice that the phrase "what an amazing thing" is often reused.
    • And he's terrified that someone will forget that Silk is a "rat-faced little Drasnian."
    • Also: "Trust me" and assorted comments to that phrase, usually that it makes the other character nervous.
    • Not to mention the fact that almost any conversation of any length seems to involve copious amounts of shrugging.
  • Although this is partly the result of Having a Gay Old Time, J. R. R. Tolkien uses 'captain' in a manner much more general than one would expect (nowadays), essentially as a synonym for 'leader'.
  • Terry Brooks' Shannara series
    • He has a few key phrases that pop up on a frequent basis: "There was stunned silence," an older man's face described as "all planes and angles", etc.
    • In his earlier books of the same franchise, he had a tendency to overuse "wordlessly" or some variation thereof.
  • Mercedes Lackey
    • Re-uses several proverbs across different series, attributing them to various in-universe sources. The most common one is probably "it is easier to apologize than to ask permission."
    • She also uses the phrase "hit in the back of the head with a board" frequently. It seems that is the only way to describe shock in her world.
    • Every character licks their lips before speaking, no matter what they're feeling.
    • In the most recent Valdemar books, Lackey has been overusing the term al fresco, an Italian phrase meaning "in the open air", with no explanation of how the Valdemarians know Italian.
  • Every Animorphs book begins with the first person narrator saying something to the effect of: "My name is ''(blank). I can't tell you my last name, or what city I live in, or even what state. I can tell (about the Yeerks...)." This made the revelation of one character's last name very meaningful: with the villains aware of their identities and able to come down on them in force, there was now no reason to bothering hiding their last names, along with ages.
  • The Wheel of Time
    • Robert Jordan was a big fan of "arms folded beneath her breasts" and "handsome woman". The former in particular is excessively mocked in the fandom.
    • Then, of course, you've got the many, many times characters "sniff" or "snort" to express derision, indignation, or what have you. Women sniff; men snort (except Siuan, a handsome woman who snorts.)
    • The phrase "Nynaeve yanked on her braid" and all variants thereof were exceptionally numerous. Smart money says that Nynaeve would become the first woman in Randland to go bald.
    • Every single book begins with the phrase
      "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose [in some place]. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of time. But it was a beginning."
  • Terrance Dicks, much-beloved Doctor Who television, novelisation and Expanded Universe writer
    • He has many, commonly subject to Affectionate Parody: "The mysterious traveller in time and space known only as the Doctor...", "A wheezing, groaning sound" (as a descriptor of the TARDIS sound effect), as well as stock descriptions of individual Doctors. (He did not, however, come up with the equally famous and much-referenced chapter title "Escape To Danger", which first appears as Part 3 of the television story "The Web Planet" by Bill Strutton.)
    • One of his stock Doctor descriptions is Fifth's "pleasant open face", which The Complete(ly Useless) Doctor Who Encyclopedia considers a disturbing disfigurement that thankfully wasn't present on screen.
    • He also had stock descriptions for each recurring alien menace. The Ice Warriors, for instance, were "a once proud race."
    • One novelization had 'hum of power' appear three times in two pages. That phrase, and 'bench packed with complex electronic equipment' appeared so often that he must have been taking them off the scripts.
  • Ian Fleming
    • Over the course of his James Bond novels, it's amazing just how many things (especially physical features) are described as "cruel." Only in Thunderball is an attempt made to justify this strange choice of words in-dialogue.
    • He is also another Food Porn writer. Every single Bond book contains descriptions of high-life cooking that puts his pulpy descriptions of women to shame quality-wise.
  • Read just about any Magic: The Gathering book that has J. Robert King as the author. Play a drinking game using the word 'sanguine' or any reference to something ancient. Watch your liver and/or bladder die quickly!
  • Stephenie Meyer uses the words 'chagrin' and 'dazzle' amazingly frequently in her Twilight books. 'Chagrin' was also used quite a few times in her other book, The Host (2008). Those words are used so frequently, in fact, that the fans who love to hate Meyer and Twilight use the phrase 'chagrined my dazzle' to express sadness or disappointment.
  • It seems like every book Desmond Bagley has written has a scene where someone is found dead with their head split open and their "brains leaking out".
  • P.C. Hodgell in Chronicles of the Kencyrath loves the word "askance".
  • Tom Holt regularly features the phrase "appeared like Romulans decloaking" in his Fantasy Kitchen Sink novels.
  • German Author Wolfgang Hohlbein is really fond of "a darkness that was more than just the absence of light"
  • Eoin Colfer
    • He likes this exchange:
    Character A: Tell me this thing that you are keeping secret from me!
    Character B: I'll tell you, but you won't like it.
    Character A: Tell me anyway!
    Narrator: B told A. A didn't like it.
    • Also, characters responding to technobabble with "I see," only for the narrator to inform us that this was a lie. Sometimes two or more characters will say it simultaneously.
  • Bill King in Games Workshop Gotrek & Felix novels
    • He always starts fights by having Gotrek "Run his thumb along his axe until it drew blood." Considering the nature of his axe (one of the most powerful rune weapons in the world, originally thought (and made out to be) one of the two belonging to a Dwarf god!), it's a wonder Gotrek has any thumb left. Of course, it's because he's just that badass.
    • Felix "throwing his red Sudenland wool cloak over his shoulder" is practically a drinking game in itself, appearing as it does multiple times per book.
  • The Warhammer 40,000 Horus Heresy novels, as well as several other in-universe novels by the same authors
    • They have a liking for describing vast rooms as "cyclopean" and doorways as "tenebrous." The first three books in the series start by recounting the same story (how Horus killed the Emperor) but with very different inflections and context, although this is less an Author catchphrase and more Arc Words.
    • There is also a tendency to describe characters as having "patrician" features.
  • Stephen King
    • Ever since he started The Dark Tower, he keeps putting references to "ka" in a lot of his books.
    • He has also become inordinately fond of the phrase "[character name] had an idea that [theory about something]." For example: "In his deepest heart [Tian] had an idea that madrigal would sow no more than the porin had before it."
    • Things never simply move along in a King book; they "trundle", and things are never simply flat, they are "spatulate".
    • King seems particularly fond of the phrase, "My friends and neighbors," during first-person narratives. It's used when characters are addressing an imaginary audience within their own minds. Depending on the character narrating the audience may be the readers themselves. A less subtle example would be its frequent use in non-fiction work while he speaks directly to reader.
    • He also likes phrases like "This was the last time [character name] saw [character's loved one] alive...".
    • King also seems to have a fondness for knees that "pop like gunshots" when a character crouches or stands from a crouch.
    • He has characters digging their nails into their hands so hard they draw blood in quite a few books and stories.
    • Not to mention "bottle-green eyes".
    • "Close enough for government work" is a phrase spoken by several different characters across several very different stories.
    • His characters with thick Maine accents never say yes, they say "ayuh."
    • Likes to refer to his readers (in introductions and non-fiction) as “Constant Reader”. Usually with init caps.
  • Lee Child never fails to mention that "Reacher said nothing".
  • Older Than Feudalism: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were originally orally passed down; with each recitation, the bard spoke these stories out loud and re-composed them along the story outlines using memorized stock phrases. As such, the written versions known today have many, many repeated phrases, including "Grey-Eyed Athena," "the Well-Greaved Aegeans" and "Rosy-fingered Dawn."
  • The Aeneid
    • Despite being written instead of spoken, it keeps in Homer's tradition with "Pious Aeneas", "Savage Juno", and "mixed with a great heap" (the last one is alliteration in Latin).
    • Also "roaring rocks", "two toothed sheep chosen according to custom", and "Sacred groves". The Aenied was purposely written in the style of earlier Greek epics.
  • The Book of Isaiah: Isaiah refers to God as "The Holy One of Israel" numerous times. This phrase is rarely if ever used outside of Isaiah.
  • Weiss & Hickman's Dragonlance stuff uses "the spidery language of magic" a bit too regularly.
  • J. K. Rowling
    • She is unusual in that with each Harry Potter book, she seemed to pick a particular unusual word to use multiple times, though generally usage of the word is not restricted to just one of the books. For example, in Half Blood Prince, she uses the word "surreptitiously" about seven or eight times.
    • At least twice, a character "ejaculates".
    • Especially later in the series, there are multiple times per book that Harry gets a feeling or sensation "that had nothing to do with [the current situation]" to show that his mind is elsewhere entirely.
    • There are some words that recur throughout the series, however, including "shrilly", "dully", "matter-of-factly", and "thunderstruck". Stephen King once said of Rowling (in his review of Order of the Phoenix) that Rowling “never met an adverb she didn’t like.”
    • She mentions socks so often throughout Harry Potter, many fans were convinced that they would somehow be a Chekhov's Gun.
    • Also, Snape's long black cloak sure does a lot of billowing. And his face is always framed by "curtains of greasy black hair,"
    • Several times she makes use of an unusual "he, [character], [action]" form of narrating, often during dramatic moments, such as when Sirius is killed and shortly before the chapter ends the book says " Sirius must be just behind the curtain, he, Harry, would pull him back out again..."
    • She likes to describe colors in exact shades, such as Harry's bottle green dress robes, or the sky (as well as one set of Lockhart's robes) being forget-me-not blue.
    • Harry's green eyes are usually described as almond shaped. They also look exactly like his mother's. That and the fact that he otherwise is a twin to his father are said so often that even Harry gets tired of hearing it.
  • Simon R Green
    • He has a really, really bad habit of picking up a phrase and running with it through a series. If he uses "death's-head grin" or a variation thereof in the Deathstalker books ONE MORE TIME...
    • Also, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" in the same work.
    • also the phase "Watch Me" when someone says that can't do something.
    • Try reading his Nightside novels. Apparently many things are "the easiest thing in the world" when John Taylor uses his Third Eye ability.
    • During the several-page monologue in the first Nightside, and a few other times in the same book, John Taylor picks up "I don't carry a gun. I've never felt the need."
  • Laurell K. Hamilton
    • She is very fond of the phrase 'red ruin' to describe lacerated bodies in the Merry Gentry series, and less frequently in the Anita Blake series.
    • LKH has a ton of these, especially in her (far too frequent and recycled as the series continues) sex scenes. How many times has someone kissed someone else 'like [person 1] would eat [person 2] from the mouth down'?
  • H. P. Lovecraft
    • He often uses similar phrases and words to describe his, erm, indescribable monsters, including "eldritch", "Cyclopean", "bachtrian", "gibbering", "non-Euclidean", and "torn from the underside of _____".
    • He was phobic of anything to do with fish or the sea. This accounts for frequent descriptions such as "batrachian", "ichthyic", "pulpy", "tentacled", and "stench of a cloven sunfish".
  • Dave Barry really likes to write "I am not making this up", "This really happened", or "I am not making up this _______" after something that is strange but true. He uses a lot of hyperbole, so this explains that, no, he is not exaggerating for comedic effect.
  • Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant novels
    • He really likes to use unusual words like "fey", "anile" and "abnegation".
    • The essay "The Well Tempered Plot Device" suggests playing "Clench Racing" with the Thomas Covenant books by opening one at random and looking down the text until you find the word "clench". It won't take you long.
  • Neil Gaiman
    • He has a habit of describing things (usually but not always characters) as "smelling of X, not unpleasantly", where X is some smell that's distinctive but not usually considered appealing, like sweat (as with Hunter in Neverwhere), which also has a description of the "under city" of Bangkok smelling "not unpleasantly of sex". Likewise, Mr. Nancy's tobacco-permeated hat in Anansi Boys is also described in this manner.
    • He's also fond of having characters describe their ages by having them say they are "As old as [their] tongue, but a little older than [their] teeth". Mr. Wednesday, Hunter, and the Kindly Ones from The Sandman (1989) all answer with this when asked how old they are.
  • Alternate History author Harry Turtledove uses a few.
    • His favourite seems to be the narration, "It never even crossed their mind..." when he describes a character doing something suspect. A less common one is a character saying, "You're not wrong," or a variation thereof.
    • Very common, however, is a character involved in an argument/debate telling another "Tell me I'm wrong," and the other being unable to say so. Especially in recent books, this happens virtually every time two characters have a mild disagreement or are just having a bull session about some issue of the day.
    • Also ludicrously fond of variations of the phrase "The shiver up his back had little to do with the cold air".
    • It's also possible for capital letters to be heard and many locks and doors have a final sound to them.
  • Going by the evidence presented in Reckless Sleep, one could be forgiven for thinking the only adjective Roger Levy knows is "fat". Fat guns, fat tears, everything.
  • David Gemmell had a few stock phrases that he often fell back on, one of the most prominent in his later works being a tendency to describe a new character as being round-shouldered.
  • Christopher Moore has a few phrases which crop up often in his books. "Heinous fuckery (or alternately, "Henious fuckery most foul")" is used often, along with extremely... explicit descriptions of women's bodies.
  • Louisa May Alcott loves the phrase "like a true man/woman" and the words manly, womanly, and mien.
  • Larry Niven's tendency to spell "yeah" as "yah".
  • David Weber novels
    • When combat inevitably results, something will do something "with contemptuous ease".
    • Encountering the phrase "palm up" in a David Weber novel is a miracle of very nearly biblical proportions. Palms are nearly always "uppermost" instead.
    • Some variant of the phrase "Such as it was, and what there was of it" shows up in nearly every novel.
    ...the entire Siddarmark Navy — such as it was, and what there was of it — wasn't quite able to believe that anyone else would take it seriously...
  • Jim Butcher is so fond of this, you'll all but grimace. Other favorites in The Dresden Files include "predatory grin," "it hurt" (as in, "a hundred nails pierced my skin. It hurt."), and calling a supernatural woman "too terrifying to be beautiful" before describing exactly how beautiful she is.
    • He's also exceedingly fond of the word "chitinous" as a description of a monster's skin, fond enough that it's rare for any of his books to go by without it being used.
    • Every single one of the books and short stories will use the word "glower" at some point. It's especially noticeable in the audio versions.
  • A. A. Milne's in Winnie the Pooh is saying that someone said something carelessly. What that is supposed to imply about how the line was said, no one really knows.
  • John Green
    • He tends to describe things in situations in the form of semi-nonsensical lists in his novels. It's easier to show an example than to explain:
    I became a smoker because 1. I was on an Adirondack swing by myself, and 2. I had cigarettes, and 3. I figured that if everyone else could smoke a cigarette without coughing, I could damn well, too. In short, I didn't have a very good reason. So yeah, lets just say that 4. it was the bugs.
    • He also makes sure to use the word 'deadpan' once in every book.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire. Characters repeat a number of cliches within the world of the novels, some popping or gaining greater frequency in later books.
    • In later books, characters say "little and less," and "much and more" a lot. They pop up in the narration, and are used by various characters. You can expect to see one or the other about once every three chapters.
    • Characters are often said to be "green as summer grass."
    • Characters often describe any long distance as "a thousand leagues" or "thousands of leagues," even though 1,000 leagues is 3,000 miles, which would usually be an absurdly long distance in context. Characters seem to be exaggerating for effect. Also, given the technology level of the world, cartography isn't exactly a popularly known science.
    • People don't want to do things; they "have a mind to" do them, or they "have half a mind" if they aren't completely decided.
    • Martin also has the tendency to use the word "ululating" with great frequency. If someone is chanting or making a wordless cry, expect it to be described this way.
  • Gordon Korman likes to use the name "Gavin Gunhold" in his novels.
    • In A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag, it was the name of a major character in the plot. He just happens to be dead. Our two leads chose him as their term paper author before learning this fact. Fortunately, one of them has a bored grandpa...
    • In No More Dead Dogs, the in-story book Old Shep, My Pal won the "Gunhold Award".
  • Melinda Metz, author of the Roswell High series and the Fingerprints series, uses the sentence "[Character] wasn't going to wait for an engraved invitation" multiple times in both works to demonstrate someone leaping to do something at the first chance they got.
  • Neal Stephenson isn't interested in "Japan". It's always "Nippon", which is peopled by "Nipponese". This is fine in the parts of Cryptonomicon that were set in WWII, when that was apparently the common moniker, but makes less sense in the 1990s part of Cryptonomicon or in Snow Crash or in The Baroque Cycle, which is set in the late 17th/early 18th century. Perhaps this is what he does instead of putting in airships. This is generally more of a thing that the narrator does; characters frequently refer to Japan.
  • P. G. Wodehouse had scads of these; mark, for example, the number of times he compares the eyes of characters to those of (different varieties of) fish, or likens a character's expression of disgust to that of someone fishing a caterpillar out of a salad. Or describes someone as "a twenty-minute egg" (i.e., 'hard-boiled'). Or as a "baa-lamb" (adorable, lovable). Or...well, there are literally dozens upon dozens of these in Wodehouse. He mixes them in judiciously, and usually puts some sort of fresh spin on them in each case, but it's rare to find a Wodehouse story without a few (by no means all, but a few) of his trademark catchphrases woven in.
  • David Drake's protagonist characters often refer to "wogs". However, it is only in settings where it is clear the characters actually are somewhat bigoted. In the Belisarius Series, for example, he snuck it in in the last book. The "wogs" are often bigoted right back.
  • Both of Dave Stone's Doctor Who New Adventures novels include the phrase "Kill you! Kill you now and make you dead!" He's also fond of apparently finishing a sentence and then adding modifiers to it after the full stop. For some reason. At some point.
  • From Joe Abercrombie's The First Law series:
    • Multiple characters across the books refer to male genitalia as "the fruits", especially in the context of them being injured. The euphemism seems to be favored by people of multiple cultures, and is even used by characters who are otherwise prone to more direct profanity.
    • There's a repeated phrase (usually when Shivers, the Bloody Nine, or Black Dow are threatening to kill/about to kill someone) about being close enough to kiss their victim/being as close as a lover/or something to that effect to get at the almost sexual thrill they get from murder.
    • On several occasions, after being exposed to a very frightening situation that threatened their life, a character will reference being cold and wet on the back of their legs- a roundabout way of saying they pissed themselves from fear.
  • James Sallis has, especially in his "Drive" series, a tendency to describe both the music and the food of any given situation. Things like describing the music in a scene as "slippery and eel-like. Sinatra, maybe" and going into detail about the "steaks smothered in a slurry of peppers, beans and onion. Pimento-studded rice, hand-shaped tortillas."
  • In John Vornholt's Star Trek novels, there are frequent occurrences of "so-and-so plied his/her console."
  • Dennis Wheatley often opened his "Modern Musketeer" novels with two of the characters at a lavish dinner. More than once he used the phrase "(Character 1) and (Character 2) had gone into dinner at eight o'clock, but coffee was not served until after ten" followed by a few paragraphs of food porn describing the menu and surroundings... then the two diners would discuss their reason for meeting, usually to plan the rescue of one of their friends.
  • Every chapter of Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Cycle begins with a simple declarative sentence, generally of the form "The <noun> verbed."
  • If you're reading a book by Dan Simmons, expect to hear something described as Lapis Lazuli. In the Hyperion Cantos, the sky above title planet is this color, so it gets mentioned a lot.
  • When R.A. Salvatore writes combat scenes, any impact "blasts" the target, especially evident when Wulfgar was throwing his magic hammer.
  • R. Scott Bakker's Second Apocalypse series often uses the adjective "marmoreal," a fancy way of saying "marble" or "like marble."
  • A few times in Katherine Kerr's Deverry novels, a character shows their lack of pretension by eating something "[they] were holding in [their] hand like a peasant".
  • Jack Higgins often recycles lines and descriptions across his novels. The one that always leaps out is that of a pistol being fitted with a 'bulbous silencer.'
  • Sweet Valley High often features characters using numbers ending in "thirty-seven" for dramatic effect.
    Jessica Wakefield: Oh, my head is going to burst into at least five hundred and thirty-seven pieces!
  • Michael Grant really likes "judge, jury and executioner". It shows up in Gone, Messenger of Fear, and the Animorphs books he ghostwrote.
  • It's sometimes possible to tell who's writing which book in Star Wars Legends simply by their catchphrases:
    • Timothy Zahn:
      • Zahn's characters, in and out of Star Wars, responding to a statement with "Point."
      • Zahn also likes to ensure that everyone in the universe knows that Thrawn's eyebrows are blue-black, and that he likes to cock them. He also has featureless glowing red eyes.
      • A lightsaber activating always has the written sound effect "snap-hiss". A few other writers pick up on this.
      • When there are two characters of the same gender in one scene, at some point the narration will call one "the other", as in "Jonny caught the other's eye."
      • How many characters in The Thrawn Trilogy react to unexpected news by having a muscle in their cheek twitch?
      • Let's not forget the enormous number of Deadpan Snarkers who respond "sardonically."
      • If there's a smile, it's "wry" more often than not.
      • R2-D2 sure makes a lot of untranslated statements that are some variant of "short, blunt and to the point" when Zahn has his hand on the tiller.
    • Kevin J. Anderson's Young Jedi Knight books uses the phrase "brandy brown eyes" so many times.
      • Kevin J. Anderson also manages to work a really horrible cancer metaphor into virtually everything he writes.
    • Many Expanded Universe sources have, among other things, referred to Wookiees as "walking carpets" and had a character tell a recently rescued character "Maybe you'd like it back in your cell?" after the rescued one complains about the sloppiness of the rescue job.
  • Despite "Erin Hunter" being a pseudonym for several authors, this still happens occasionally in Warrior Cats, sometimes confined to an individual book:
    • 5 out of 6 books in the first arc have a moment where a character "shook his/her head to clear it" - it can happen up to three or more times in a single book.
    • The scent of nearly every Thunderpath (road) is specifically described as "acrid".
    • In Dark River, hedgehogs are used as a comparison an unusually large number of times - a couple characters' fur is spiked out like one at different points, one character is "no bigger than a hedgehog", a sleepy character is claimed to be hibernating like a hedgehog, and one character's difficulty in talking to her sibling was compared to picking fleas off a hedgehog.
    • There are many instances when a hungry character comments, "My belly thinks my throat's been clawed out".
    • Characters letting out a mrrow for various reasons (such as laughter) happens almost exclusively in books written by Cherith.
    • "Bile rising in (a character's) throat" is often used.
  • Several Betsy Byars books include the line "[Character]'s tongue flicked over his dry lips."
  • Jonathan French has a habit of describing his characters using the same phrase in the Grey Bastards series:
    • Polecat will always be called "hatchet-faced."
    • Hoodwink is "the pale-skinned mongrel."
    • Oats is always introduced with his "spade-shaped beard."
  • In Accel World, Reki Kawahara likes using the phrase "any number of times," to describe something that happens often.
  • Mystery writer Lawrence Block seems to really like three-syllable surnames, with the stress on the first syllable: Rhodenbarr, Ehrengraf, Ackermann, Onderdonk...
  • Characters in Agatha Christie books, particularly Hercule Poirot, are constantly shrugging their shoulders.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Aaron Sorkin
    • Three of his shows (Sports Night, The West Wing, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) have ended their first season with an episode named "What Kind of Day Has It Been" and The Newsroom used the same title for the final episode of the third and final season. The sentence is also said aloud by Leo in the season 4 finale of The West Wing.
    • Also he has a trademark on characters starting a revelatory speech with the words "You know, not for nothing, but..."
    • He also has a thing for ending conversations with "Okay" or some variation of "I don't care". Or "Oh my god, were you talking to me that whole time?" or "I wouldn't know, I wasn't really listening."
    • There are also a couple cases where he takes lines from Sports Night and reuses them verbatim in The West Wing.
    • And in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip as well, such as the Government Camp/TV Camp speech.
    • Aaron Sorkin likes to use the phrase "board-certified in thoracic surgery" to indicate a character's medical competence. It shows up in Malice, A Few Good Men, and The West Wing.
    • Partial summaries are available here and here.
    • He's also oddly fond of names like Donna, Dana, Donny and so on that are very often screamed across rooms/hallways by male characters.
  • Chuck Lorre tends to use "Nope, nothing not a damn thing" in both Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory.
  • The first several seasons of Smallville almost invariably ended with one character asking another at the end of the show, "How you holding up?"
  • There's a few of these in the latter Star Trek series.
    • The most common are: the number 47 (originated by TNG writer Joe Menosky, later adopted wholeheartedly by other writers) and the name "Bozeman" (usually as a place or ship, and in reality the hometown of writer and producer Brannon Braga).
    • There's a tradition of one of the main characters calmly saying 'Now would be a good time,' when they're waiting for a last-second transport away from a life-threatening situation.
  • Russell T. Davies
    • It seems in his work, most notably Doctor Who, he is apparently very fond of the word "burn" to mean "be destroyed." The Time Lords burned. Skaro burned. Gallifrey burned. The Earth burns. Donna will burn. You'd think the whole galaxy was made of matchsticks.
    • He also has a very noticeable penchant for giving grandiose, incredibly abstract names to things that are only mentioned in the very, very briefest of throwaway lines. The Skaro Degradations, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King, the Army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres, the Medusa Cascade, the Silver Cloak... The list goes on.
    • Professor Yana tells Martha that he and his pocket watch were found "on the shores of the Silver Devastation". Awesome!
  • Steven Moffat is rather fond of his "What will you do with it? Assemble cabinets?" joke at the sonic screwdriver's expense.
  • If David Mitchell is around, you'll probably hear the word "massive" used with peculiar emphasis... not necessarily by him.
  • In Babylon 5 and its spinoffs, J. Michael Straczynski loves naming characters "Elizabeth" or "David". The former includes Elizabeth Lochley, Elizabeth Sheridan, and Elizabeth Trent, while the latter includes David Corwin, Jeffery David Sinclair, David Mckintyre, two David Sheridans, and David Martell.
  • The Daily Show. It has a number of Running Gags, but the writers have always gone well out of their way to insert certain phrases into stories whenever they can.

    Music 
  • Wesley Willis uses the phrase "Rock Over London / Rock On Chicago" towards the end of EVERY song and follows it by reciting a company jingle.
    • He liked to reuse some phrases in many songs. He described any music he liked was called Rock and Roll and/or Rock. Crowds at concerts "roared like a lion," the actual music at a concert is a "jam session," and the band "got down like a Magikist." He also frequently mentioned sexual acts with animals, in very explicit terms. Anything that was good was a "joy ride," and anything that was bad was a "Hell ride," or a "demon Hell ride" if it was really bad.
  • Marilyn Manson has a love for the number 15, due to being born on January 5th. As such, the number appears again and again in art, lyrics, titles, and is even tattooed behind one of his ears. For a few years, his name was even stylized as "Mar1lyn Man5on", which reappeared on the cover of a single over a decade later.
  • Four completely different songs by Sting (The Police's "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" and "Oh My God" from Synchronicity; and Sting's solo songs "Seven Days" and "If You Love Someone, Set Them Free") feature the following lyric:
    Do I have to tell the story of a thousand rainy days since we first met,
    It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting wet.
  • There's a whole wiki devoted to keeping track of all the cross-references and recurring images in The Hold Steady's lyrics. Various characters get "high as hell" and/or "born again," tend to be in search of a "saviour," and praise drugs with a "five-second delivery;" all kinds of things are described as "hot [and] soft;" the title of their first album, Almost Killed Me, appears in half a dozen songs, and even the name of the band comes up on a few occasions ("It's hard to hold it steady when half your friends are dead already.") Lampshaded in "The Cattle and The Creeping Things": "Hard drugs are for bartenders — I think I might have mentioned that before."
  • The band Savatage has used a pair of recurring verses, "I never wanted to know, never wanted to see-" and "I am the way, I am the light-" in between three songs off three albums, "When the Crowds are Gone" (Gutter Ballet), "Believe" (Streets), and "Alone You Breathe" (Handful of Rain). Of them, "Believe" makes use of both.
  • Rolf Kasparek of Running Wild is fond using the "Wild and free!" line on his songs.
  • Japanese artist GACKT tends to use the phrase "Dakishimete" at least once in his songs. Has evolved into a Running Gag amongst his fans.
  • Ronnie James Dio has numerous songs with some combination of "I am/you are/life is" like "a wheel/a rainbow/a never ending journey" ("Self Portrait", "Wishing Well", "Rainbow in the Dark", among others). He also employed an "evil woman" trope about once per album (i.e., "Starstruck", "Lady Evil", "Don't Talk to Strangers"). Fittingly, he sang in Rainbow with Ritchie Blackmore, who frequently reused the riffs from "Speed King", "Smoke on the Water", "Woman From Tokyo", and "Burn" as new songs, with only slight variations.
    • Dio used "rainbow", "sacred", "evil", "rock and roll", "master", "magic", "night" and "king" in his song titles, between most to all of his work.
  • Pioneering Speed Metal band Riot wrote two separate songs named "Run For Your Life" at different points in their career.
  • "Hold on" is definitely this for Gary Barlow since Take That (Band) reformed. He can't go an album without including it in their lyrics.
  • The reason that the NINwiki has a list of recurring lyrics in Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails works. Two examples are "a million miles away", and "nothing can stop me now".
  • "Kurikaesareru shougyou mujou, yomigaeru seiteki shoudou" (impermanence repeats itself, sexual pulse arises again) is a phrase heavily featured on each of Japanese experimental rock band Zazen Boys' (led by former Number Girl frontman Mukai Shutoku) albums.
  • Counting Crows are very, very fond of circus-related imagery.
  • Keith Urban has several. Among them are references to the sun shining, driving in a car and/or listening to the radio, and variations the phrase "yes, you did".
  • Oasis (or their main songwriter, guitarist Noel Gallagher, loves to use the word "Shine". This is made more prevalent when you consider that their singer Liam Gallagher has an... unusual pronunciation of shine, making it sound more like sheeeiiiiiiiiiyne. You'd think that it was done on purpose, for the songwriters own amusement.
  • Any Nightwish song title has the potential to become one of these. The number of century children, dead boys, and ocean souls is staggering, and it seems like there will soon be just as many meadows of heaven.
  • Many Charles Wesley hymns have phrases or key words that show up repeatedly, such as "atone". He also tended to reuse a lot of slant rhymes, such as claim/lamb and prove/love.
  • The Beatles had "you" and "true" as a Stock Rhyme of choice in their early days:
    • "Love, love me do. / You know I love you. / I'll always be true."
    • "All my loving, I will send to you. / All my loving, darling I'll be true."
    • "If I fell in love with you, / Would you promise to be true?"
    • "You'll never leave me and you know it's true / 'Cause you like me too much and I like you."
    • "For red is the color that will make me blue, / In spite of you, it's true."
    • "Words of love you whisper soft and true / Darling I love you."
    • "A friend says a love is never true / And you know that this don't apply to you."
    • "Because you're sweet and lovely girl I love you, / Because you're sweet and lovely girl it's true."
    • "I've got everything that you want / Like a heart that is oh so true / Just call on me and I'll send it along / With love from me to you."
    • "Oh, I need your love, babe / Guess you know it's true / Hope you need my love, babe, / Just like I need you."
      • The Beatles have a thing for the sun, mentioning it in at least a dozen songs, and including as a part of song titles a few times as well. Makes a bit more sense considering that they're most often thought of as writing "happy" music (and considering the climate they grew up in).
  • My Chemical Romance says "carry on" on multiple albums.
    • "Did you get what you deserve?" In the songs "Dead!" and "Cemetery Drive"
  • Classical music performers have good reason to associate the term "nobilmente" with Edward Elgar.
  • Bob Dylan uses the phrase "keep on keepin' on" a lot.
  • Pitbull randomly exclaims "dale" (pronounced "dah-lay") in every one of his songs, often multiple times.
    • He loves naming cities, often three in a song and not necessarily the same cities across songs.
  • Soviet/Russian rock musician Boris Grebenschikov uses the words "beyond the glass" or "on the other side of the glass" a lot.
  • Pizzicato Five had a deliberately cultivated catchphrase, "A new stereophonic sound spectacular!". It turned up at least once on most of their albums, usually as sampled speech.
  • Da Yoopers frequently use deer/beer as a Stock Rhyme. They also frequently use Finnish slang such as "Sisu" (roughly, "determination").
  • Feeder had several recurring themes about plastic in their first few albums (their first full length album was even called Polythene), usually as a stifling or choking coating, with three songs having lines about being wrapped in cellophane. Also common are suffocation/drowning lyrics, their third album has two songs with almost identical lines ("Under the Water, Don't think we'll recover" / "It's dragging me under, Don't think I'll recover")
  • Cheap Trick is very, very, very fond of using the word 'tonight' in their songs - especially in their earliest albums. It can be heard in almost half those songs, sometimes repeatedly. In fact, Cheap Trick's 3rd album is titled "Heaven Tonight".
  • YouTube has some Fully Automatic Clip Show videos demonstrating how some musicians just love certain words: "Metallica likes death", "Slayer likes Satan (and hell)", "Megadeth likes to kill (and life" - that one is probably motivated by Metallica's one), and "AC/DClikes rock n' roll".
    • AC/DC likes the word "balls" and "ball" a lot.note 
    • Metallica also has plenty of songs mentioning fire\flame, and phrases starting with "you".
  • Nine Inch Nails: a lot.
  • Green Day really likes "testify," "suicide," and any reference to crucifixion.
    • Also "cigarettes." It appears at least once in every album they have ever put out, and was almost part of an album title.
  • It seems Rhapsody of Fire say "mighty" at least once a song, on their older albums at least. "Holy" is also an unusually common adjective ("unholy" is frequent too for that matter). "Abyss" gets a lot of use two, pronounced "ah-BEES" due to Fabio Leone's Italian accent.
  • Disturbed tends to use the word "hell" a lot, including a song carrying the name. Averted by "Shout 2000" however; it's a cover with "Gave'em hell" already in its lyrics.
  • The list of Rammstein songs that reference the sun shining in some way includes "Rammstein," "Engel," "Küss Mich (Fellfrosch)," "Mein Herz Brennt," "Sonne," "Mutter," "Morgenstern," "Mann Gegen Mann" and "Hilf Mir." Liebe Ist Für Alle Da is the only album where this theme does not come up.
  • Hymn writers do this frequently, and not just because of common subject matter; for example, Fanny Crosby (1820-1915) seemed to have a particular thing for vineyards, especially "The Vineyard". In her defence, she wrote over 8,000 religious poems, so some repetition is inevitable.
  • Kamelot lyrics seem to like to use carmine wherever a word meaning a shade of red needs to be used. Singer Roy Khan seemed to like the phrase "my history," as well.
  • Britney Spears: Known to use "Baby" and "Crazy" to the extent special videos have been made about her habit of using these words.
  • Ville Valo of HIM seems to have a fixation on the words "baby" and "darling", and will put these two words into his lyrics whenever possible. Same goes for "six six six".
  • Australian Idol Singer Cody Simpson likes to start his songs with the ad-lib, "I like this right here".
  • Miley Cyrus and "something special", either as herself or Hannah Montana. "Life (is) what you make it" often appears, too.
  • Roger Waters frequently mentions "the stone", walls, pigs, dogs and sheep, "recourse to the law", "pie in the sky", "Donald Duck light", "crazy", and using "babe"/"ooh babe" as an affectionate name for a female (usually in character) (or as the mother in The Wall to Pink).
  • Sakanaction's lyrics use quite frequently the words "ame" (rain) and "kaze" (wind), plus several references to the night.
  • Lana Del Rey really loves going downtown, red lipstick, red dress, being a beauty queen and vintage all-American references such as: James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Lolita and Coney Island.
  • Aerosmith and certain Steven Tyler-penned running jokes like "you got the right key but the wrong keyhole" and "don't give me no lip, I got enough of my own".
  • Roger Hodgson, in his Supertramp and solo work, frequently uses "get high"/"be high", "the garden", "crazy", "let me know you", "tell me"/"help me"/"hear me" and addresses a "Mary" (either some kind of fictitous person or [as with "A Soapbox Opera" the Virgin Mary on occasion). He addresses himself as "boy" sometimes, too.
  • Dream Theater went through a phase of using the word "conscience" to mean "consciousness," not technically a mistake but it's relatively archaic, and sticks out quite a bit. Vacant and Octavarium are the key examples - released in 2003 and 2005, on two consecutive albums, with both lines written by the same lyricist.
  • Gustav Mahler's symphonies sprinkle the wind instrument parts with the performance directions "Schalltrichter auf" (bells up) or "Schalltrichter in die Höhe" (bells in the air). While Mahler was not the only one to direct wind instruments to play like this (The Rite of Spring does it a few times), he did it more often than any other famous composer.

    Pinballs 

    Religion 
  • "It came to pass" appears over 1400 times in The Book of Mormon, averaging more than twice per page.note 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • The phrase "lay down a withering hail of fire" has been used past saturation point in related material.
    • "Trapped behind their own defenses" has recently joined this trope having appearing in no less than six various books by Matt Ward.

    Video Games 
  • Games created by Sonic Team frequently include the line "long time no see", even the ones not related to Sonic the Hedgehog.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • Various enemies use the expression "rip the flesh from your bones" or a variation of it when engaged or as a battlecry.
    • Quest givers are also fond of telling players "we have much to discuss".
  • Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair
    • Characters often swear with "Curses," including the ones who use actual profanity.
    • When narrating, Raiko often notes how many pairs of eyes are looking at someone or something that has captured everyone's attention.
  • Naoki Maeda of DanceDanceRevolution fame uses the word "UNLIMITED" a lot in his works:
    • During his tenure as a BEMANI musician, many of his tracks would be credited to "NM SEQUENCE UNLIMITED" in soundtrack credits.
    • Tracks he's produced for the BEMANI series include "MAXX UNLIMITED" and "UNLIMITED".
    • One of the several dozen aliases he used for BEMANI songs is "Luv UNLIMITED".
    • In crossbeats REV., the hardest chart difficulty is called "Unlimited".
    • The development studio in charge of SEVEN's CODE is called UNLIMITED STUDiO.

    Web Comics 
  • Whenever anyone in Sluggy Freelance cedes an argument, they'll almost inevitably acknowledge that the other person has a point by simply saying the word, "Point." (See above under Timothy Zahn.)
  • Arthur, King of Time and Space often acknowledges that some of the Arthurian legends are ... somewhat derivitive of older stories by having someone say "Can't beat the classics." Both AKOTAS and Gadzikowski's crossover fanfic comic The Hero of Three Faces are fond of the line "Everyone thinks he's the first".
  • Andrew Hussie
    • MS Paint Adventures' creator tends to use a lot of tropes. All of the tropes. All of them. He also rather likes to use the words 'Ascend' and 'Descend', and variations there of ("Rise Up", etc.)
    • Along with Homestuck's penchant for repeating damn near everything, this leads to a great deal of reappearing lines, not to mention poses and panels.
  • Many of the page titles in Bar'd begin with the phrase "How to:...", followed by the theme of the comic.
  • In Space Kid the team's headquarters is always introduced as "the vigilant space station known as Space Kid Island". Space Kid himself frequently summons the others to action by saying "Let's rocket, team!"
  • In El Goonish Shive, most of the monstrous characters emit a distinctive "Skree" noise at least once despite having completely different origins and forms.
  • The Rant for Gunnerkrigg Court has several:
    • "Mystery solved!" when a page answers a previous question in a way that opens up several new ones, or if the characters know an answer that isn't revealed to the audience.
    • "The big guy is Eglamore" whenever Eglamore appears (or "This is not Eglamore" if it's a character who is obviously not him) after readers failed to recognize him on one page.
    • "It's this guy / that guy / those guys" and any permutation of that phrase you can think of whenever someone who hasn't been seen for a while shows up.

    Web Videos 
  • Doug Walker really likes to end phrases with "if you will" when a sarcastic metaphor is in order.
  • World War II: In Episode 40 - "Brexit at Dunkirk", host Indy Neidell reuses the catchphrase "this is modern war" from The Great War.
    Indy: Until May, 1940, they thought they knew what modern war involved, but this, this is modern war.

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