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A vertical drama is a series designed for phones, with episodes lasting only a minute or two. Their main appeal is how they get right into the action, with most of the budget going to the first few episodes, as well as most of the outlandish plotlines. The idea is to hook the user in and never let them go.
The genre has an increasing cluster of tropes, including contract marriages, hidden identities, revenge, secret pregnancies, and long-lost heirs. Here are some of the strangest plots from vertical dramas that we could find,but with there being so many, there’s probably something even more out there we missed.
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The Billionaire Baby Plot That Keeps Escalating
Pregnant By the Billionaire starts with a struggling woman marrying wealthy CEO Carter Prescott through a deal, then adds a pregnancy, a jealous ex, and the revelation that the ex is her long-lost stepsister. Somehow, that’s only the premise.
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Marie Antoinette Gets A Second Chance
The Return of My Drama Queen begins with Marie Antoinette awaiting execution before she wakes up in the modern world inside a failed actress. Naturally, reincarnation becomes an opportunity to fix her mistakes, find love, and fight familiar villains.
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The Mafia King Who Needed Eight Years To Wake Up
In The Return of My Mafia Husband, Leo secretly dates ordinary Olivia while hiding that he’s the Mafia King. A car accident puts him in a vegetative state, and eight years later, he wakes up and immediately proposes.
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The Werewolf Pregnancy With A Life-Saving Fruit
The Price of Loving You combines pregnancy, werewolf politics, a failing body, and a sacred magical fruit. Ally is carrying Alpha Cyrus’s child, but the only apparent cure requires Cyrus to obtain the Arbor Vitae fruit while he’s distracted by another woman.
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Five Models Versus Ancient Werewolves
Models vs. Werewolves sends five young models and influencers to a remote Airbnb for a full-moon manifestation ritual. Unfortunately, their spiritual getaway awakens ancient werewolves that begin hunting the group, transforming a girls’ trip into supernatural survival horror.
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The Heiress Who Returns With A New Face
I Am The Real Heiress gives the usual long-lost-heiress story an especially nasty twist: the adopted daughter rises through betrayal and arson, while the real heiress eventually returns with a new face and a revenge plan.
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The Woman Who Faked Amnesia To Catch Her Boyfriend
Faking It with My Ex’s Best Friend starts with Clara pretending to have amnesia to test her boyfriend. She catches him cheating, then fake-dates his best friend for revenge, only for their pretend relationship to become increasingly real.
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The Billionaire Who Becomes A Pastry Apprentice
My Sugar-coated Mafia Boss has a remarkably vertical-drama premise: Athena saves a mafia boss, Dax, but someone else takes credit. Dax subsequently becomes her pastry apprentice, while secretly being an undercover kingpin whose identity she doesn’t know.
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The Secret Stripper Double Life
The Virgin Stripper and the Hockey Star gives its heroine two completely different identities. She’s a quiet student by day and secretly works as a stripper to pay her sister’s medical bills, until her school rival encounters her at the club.
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Reincarnation Into A Completely Broken Family
Taming the Scandalous begins after Thea is reborn into the life of a woman whose superstar husband is surrounded by stand-ins, whose son is notorious, and whose daughter has a questionable boyfriend. Her solution is basically to reform everyone.
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The Mafia Princess Gets Another Life
Mafia Princess Returns combines family abuse, organized crime, betrayal, and reincarnation. After years of suffering at the hands of her mafia family, Francesca receives a second chance at life and gets the opportunity to rewrite her fate.
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The Heiress Who Marries The Wrong Man, Dies, Then Tries Again
His Secret Heiress gives its protagonist an impressively miserable first life: Bonnie suffers disfigurement, betrayal, and the destruction of her wealthy family after marrying the wrong man. Then she is reborn and begins plotting her revenge.
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When The Billionaire And His Employee Swap Bodies
Swapped Bodies With My Secret Crush turns the enemies-to-lovers formula into literal identity chaos, with its protagonists switching bodies. The resulting vertical drama mixes romance, humiliation, school rivalries, and fantasy, ensuring that even ordinary arguments become much stranger.
The post 13 of the Strangest Plots From Vertical Dramas appeared first on Den of Geek.
