Tropes relating to social or personal awkwardness.
Compare Index of Shame and Anxiety Tropes.
Tropes:
- Adorkable: The audience finds an awkward person cute.
- Air Hugging: Avoidance of full-on hugging.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: A character's parents tend to embarrass them in front of other people.
- Annoying Dinner Music: A musician personally performs for someone at a restaurant and ends up embarassing/annoying them.
- Awkward Collar Pull: A character who is nervous or embarrassed tugs on the collar of their shirt.
- Awkward Father-Son Bonding Activity: Father tries to bond with son; son is not feeling it.
- Awkward First Sleepover: Someone (normally a child) is having their first sleepover, which causes them to have a lot of self-doubts and commit some faux pas.
- Awkward Kiss: Two characters kiss awkwardly, making it a very un-romantic moment.
- Awkward Poetry Reading: A character awkwardly says a poem.
- Awkward Relatable Schoolkid: A dorky kid who struggles to fit in at school.
- "Awkward Silence" Entrance: Someone enters a public establishment and is greeted with awkward stares and dead silence.
- Awkward Stoplight Moment: Someone stops at a stoplight, notices another driver they don't want to see, and embarrassedly tries to avoid eye contact with them.
- Backing Away Slowly: May be a reaction to awkwardness.
- Better with Non-Human Company: May be caused by being awkward around other people, but not things other than people.
- Cannot Talk to Women: A male character is hopelessly awful at talking to women, and makes a fool of himself when trying to interact with them.
- Caught Singing: A character who was singing out loud discovers they were not as alone as they thought they were.
- Caught with Your Pants Down: Someone walks into the room while someone else is masturbating; cue awkwardness as they try to hide the fact that they were jerking off.
- Change the Uncomfortable Subject: Someone who doesn't want to talk about an awkward/embarrassing subject quickly decides to cut the conversation short.
- Chirping Crickets: Visual/audio representing silence, often of the awkward variety.
- Cringe Comedy: Comedy that evokes awkwardness for humor.
- Embarrassing Hospital Gown: Wearing a hospital gown is seen as embarrassing, bothersome, or humorous.
- Embarrassing Voicemail: Someone leaves a voicemail that is embarrassing in some way or another for the person listening to it.
- Endearingly Dorky: A character finds someone else's awkwardness cute.
- Fee Fi Faux Pas: Social blunders.
- Forgotten State of Undress: A character is too preoccupied to notice their state of undress.
- Funny Conception Story: Someone tells an embarrassing story about how a character was concieved.
- Greeting Gesture Confusion: Mismatched greeting gestures can cause awkwardness, especially if they have different intimacy levels.
- Intentionally Awkward Title: The title of a work is made as bizarre and awkward to say out loud as possible.
- Intimate Lotion Application: Applying lotion on another character as a way to create sexual tension, romantic intimacy, awkwardness, or humor.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: A stock reaction to awkward moments.
- Mistaken for Bad Vision: When someone sees something awkward (or at least out of the ordinary), they assume it's because of their eyesight being on the wonk.
- "No Peeking!" Request: A character requests another to turn away or not to look while they perform an action.
- No Sense of Personal Space: Often awkward for the person on the receiving end.
- No Sense of Privacy: A character creates an awkward moment for someone else by invading their privacy.
- No Social Skills: Someone has no idea how to interact with other people, and thus embarasses themself in the process.
- Not Under the Parents' Roof: Parents are perturbed by the idea of their kids having sex at home.
- Overly Long Hug: A hug that goes on for too long becomes awkward.
- Parents Walk In at the Worst Time: Someone's parents barge into the room while they're doing something they would rather not have their parents knowing about.
- Please Put Some Clothes On: Someone walks in to see someone else naked, and embarrassedly asks them to put on some clothes.
- Reluctant Fanservice Girl: A girl is dragged into doing Fanservice against her will, and she finds it too embarrassing for her.
- Shamed Before the Whole School: A child is shamed or humiliated in front of the whole school.
- Shower of Awkward: Someone walks in on someone taking a shower/bath, and an awkward moment is made out of this.
- Socially Awkward Hero: The protagonist tends to have social anxiety in everyday situations despite them being capable of taking heroic action anywhere else.
- Sorry to Interrupt: Character catches another in a compromising position, leaves.
- The Talk: Having to explain sex to a child is very often awkward.
- Toilet Paper Trail: Toilet paper getting caught on clothes after exiting a bathroom.
- Trapped with the Therapy Session: Being forced to be a witness to other people's relationship issues.
- Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: A group of characters share an awkward moment together in an elevator, since elevator shafts aren't necessarily the best places to socialize.
- Undressing the Unconscious: Can be awkward for the person doing it.
- The Un-Hug: Awkward hugs.
- Unwanted Date Participants: Awkwardness surrounding a person that either one or both parties didn't want on their date.