Storyteller's Playbook: Bad Story Ideas

I was questing about for story ideas for a short story I'm writing for my daughters, and I came across this list:

Stories We've Seen Too Often

 After the jump, you'll see a HUGE collection of over-wrought cliches that the editors of Strange Horizons magazine have seen a million times.  I loved these. 

My favorites:

1. Protagonist agrees to go along with a plan or action despite not having enough information about it, and despite their worries that the thing will be bad. Then the thing turns out to be bad after all.
2. White protagonist is given wise and mystical advice by Holy Simple Native Folk.
3. An alien observes and comments on the peculiar habits of humans, for allegedly comic effect.
   
   1. The alien is fluent in English and completely familiar with various English idioms, but is completely unfamiliar with human biology and/or with such concepts as sex or violence and/or with certain specific extremely common English words (such as "cat").
   2. The alien takes everything literally.
   3. Instead of an alien, it's people in the future commenting on the ridiculous things (usually including internal combustion engines) that people used to use in the unenlightened past.