This is an index of people, places, things, and tropes that will almost always lead to conflict, whether it be a Flame War, Bar Brawl, Blast Out, or even a full scale actual war.
These Stock Characters and people are looking for trouble.
- Angry Mob: A bunch of people just waiting to have a fight
- Blood Knight: Someone who wants to fight at any cost.
- Boisterous Bruiser: Someone who has no problem with fighting and is capable of doing so
- Bounty Hunter: He (or she) is almost always around for a reason... and that reason or the bounty hunters' zeal in going after it will ruin your establishment or your day...
- Complete Monster: An irredeemably evil villain who wants to hurt and kill people, often in the most horrifying and sadistic ways possible.
- Death Seeker: Someone who wants to die at any cost, but not necessarily by their own hand.
- The Fundamentalist: Someone who wants you to believe and practice their belief, and only their belief.
- Heteronormative Crusader: If you're anything but straight, this person will ruin your day at best and your life at worst.
- Hired Guns: Whether they are Bounty Hunters, Professional Killers, Private Military Contractors, or just plain hired thugs, they'll cause all sorts of trouble for whoever's willing to pay.
- Girl with Psycho Weapon: A living Chekhov's Gun. Even though the weapon is rarely a gun.
- Jerkass: Someone who, through actions or attitude, can easily provoke a fight.
- Knight Templar: When The Fundamentalist goes past screaming tirades into physical violence.
- Leaking Can of Evil: A powerful imprisoned dark force that is still able to exert influence on people.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Someone who charges into a situation and starts a chaotic, unplanned fight.
- Lower-Class Lout/Proud Warrior Race Guy: A stereotypical someone from a culture that celebrates violence and fighting.
- The Most Wanted: Someone did something so terrible (or was framed up for it) that is wanted for more than one side. That's trouble for sure.
- Powder Keg Crowd: Slightly different from the Angry Mob, but can become it with just the slightest spark...
- Omnicidal Maniac: They want to kill anything and everything.
- Organized criminals in general: When the Gangbangers, The Mafia, The Mafiya, Murder, Inc., The Triads and the Tongs, and/or the Yakuza (or even just The Family for the Whole Family) show up, you know there's going to be trouble. And if they're all converging on one location, it's probably going to be a Blast Out at best.
- Serial Killer: Someone who wants to kill people.
- Slobs Versus Snobs: When both sides of the tracks meet, they can come to blows.
- Troll: Starting fights is their raison d'etre, and forms of this behavior do exist off the Internet
- The Warlord: Someone who profits from war and destruction, and may want to start one on their own.
- The "Why Wait?" Combatant: No matter the conventions, this person can't hold back from fighting.
- Violent Glaswegian: Another stereotypical someone who likes fighting and violence.
This place is just bad news.
- Bad Guy Bar: A place where troublemakers of various sorts congregate
- Diners: Because why just have dinner when you can have a fight with dinner?
- The combination of Crapsack World and Empathic Environment: Everyone feels like crap, and wants to take it out on someone else.
- Cyberbullying: Welcome to the internet, where anyone can hurt you anonymously and make your social media life a living hell.
- Post-Apocalyptic Traffic Jam: People don't just abandon their cars en masse unless something very bad happened.
- Sealed Evil in Another World: Where the villain is "trapped" in another world.
- Urban Hellscape: A city (or cities) that devolved into violent warzones.
- World of Ham: You would barely survive in a place where everything is taken OVER THE TOP AS POSSIBLE!!!!
- Wretched Hive: A lot of very bad people centered in one very bad place.
- Vice City: A lot of very bad people and a lot of money circulating around one place.
That thing looks dangerous.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Alcohol lowers inhibitions and increases aggressiveness.
- Berserk Button: Don't Touch It, You Idiot!!
- Any Chekhov's Gun: Why yes, they will be fired
- Contamination Situation
- Hate Plague: If someone (or some group of people) contracts this, fighting will ensue.
- Happy Fun Ball: Because someone will discover that it is nowhere near as innocent as it looks.
- Inevitably Broken Rule: Rules are made to be broken...Oh, Crap!!
- Inferred Holocaust: Yes, that war/natural disaster/plague/etc. killed all those people.
- Moral Event Horizon: Doing this means you are beyond any redemption or hope.
- Nuclear Weapons: if one ever gets set off, war (and The End of the World as We Know It) will ensue
- Politics: There is a reason why it's banned or heavily restricted as a topic of discussion pretty much anywhere that it's not the only topic of discussion. Religion is very, very close to it. Combining the two will almost always lead to fights.
- The Plague: A devastating disease can drive societies to chaos as people left and right drop like flies.
- Post-Peak Oil: Restricting modern society from one of the most, if not the most important substance can lead to a complete breakdown and collapse of it.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Probably one of the very first examples. Opening it is not a good idea. And yet of course someone will...
- Terminally Dependent Society: Society depends so much on a particular Phlebotinum or MacGuffin that not being able to use it or not having it anymore will cause (or at least majorly contribute to) the collapse of that society.
Why did you have to invoke that?
- Any of the "All X are Y" tropes. This includes such tropes as All Gays Are Pedophiles - stating straight belief in them around anyone who is part of the X group but not the Y group will almost always start a fight (or at least lead to very uncomfortable silence)
- Axes at School: Unless it's a school of warfare (and even then sometimes) bringing a weapon into school will cause major trouble. (Hello, Ax-Crazy!)
- Commie Nazis: Conflate "Commies" and "Nazis" to a Russian who remembers how hard the Communists fought the Nazis (or to any other anti-fascist Communist or Marxist, specifically, Soviet Russia lost more civilians and soldiers and did more of the on the ground fighting of World War II than the USA, and many anti-Fascist/anti-Nazi movements exist among Marxists), get anything from slapped to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
- Fist of Rage: Something is making someone angry, and their clenched fist signals they may well be seeking vengeance.
- Guns in Church: In some settings, and in MOST settings in Real Life, openly carrying or especially brandishing a firearm will lead to an arrest, a fight, or sudden death.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: If someone decides to invoke this, of course there will be conflict.
- My Country, Right or Wrong: Can start a war. Sometimes literally.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: One decides to set things right despite what the law says, even if it means killing someone to save another
- In fact, many Screw The Rules Trope involves this, whenever it's due to having connections, the looks, and/or the money. The worst one, someone who actually make the them.
- Stay in the Kitchen: Invoking this to most women who don't believe in it will start a fight
- Strawman Political: Invoking this will almost always start a fight
- Urban Hellscape: A look 20 Minutes into the Future, where the city is infested with violent criminals, and the police are either too ineffectual to stop them or can only do so by being that much more brutal.
- Violence is the Only Option: Obviously, if someone thinks this, there is going to be violence.
