- Adaptation Displacement - The Shining, Carrie, The Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me, 1408
- Archive Panic: Once parodied on a Mad Magazine back cover: a fake ad for a "Coffee Table Book Of The Month Club" features one selection titled "Stephen King: Eighteen Novels Written Last October".
- Complete Monster - A lot of King's villains tend to dance with this trope, if not fully embrace it. The ones that so happen to be actual monsters are, with few exceptions, tamer than the human villains. A good list of them can be seen here.
- Crowning Music of Awesome:
- The Maximum Overdrive soundtrack.
- John Carpenter's own soundtrack for his film adaptation of Christine (whatever you happen to think of the film as a whole).
- Director Displacement - For most of the films based on his work.
- Fan Dumb - Not from his fans (except maybe a few hard-core ones), but from the Twilight readers who utterly howled when he dissed Meyer's writing and claimed "he's just jealous", apparently ignoring the fact that he's been a popular, bestselling author since about the time Meyer was born.
- Nightmare Fuel - So needless to point out.
- Protection From Editors - Averted; despite his big-name status, King works closely with an editor to improve his writing. A few of his books have even been dedicated to their editors.
- Recycled Premise - Many have noted similarities between The Simpsons Movie and Under the Dome, but this time it's just a coincidence.
- Seinfeld Is Unfunny
- Tear Jerker - Try reading "The Last Rung on the Ladder" or "The Woman in the Room" without weeping.
- What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: Inverted with Cujo. King wrote it when he was at the height of his cocaine addiction and claims that he doesn't even remember writing it, but it's one of his most mundane stories.
- The Woobie: Several of his characters. They all end up in horrible situations. Hey, it's horror!