“The eight plots all movies are based on?” You mean stories aren’t limitless? There’s not an endless supply of plots? No. There are only a small collection of plots in all of plot-dom, and everything else is merely permutations and combinations of them. According to Irish playwright Denis Johnston (1901–1984), there are only eight. These plots can be presented in endlessly different forms—tragedy, comedy, farce, whodunit, and flipped and inverted—but they remain the building blocks of all story-telling in movies. Because think about it: How many stories can there really be? There are only so many situations that humans, family, friends, community, can find themselves in. Here are the eight categories, and examples of movies that tell these particular tales. The 8 Plots All Movies Are Based On 1) Unrecognized Virtue at Last Recognized. This would encompass the fable of the “Tortoise and the Hare,” and the fairy tales of …