Optical wavelength light curves of an example SN II together with the labelling of the different light curve phases. The distinct shaded regions are used to define where different physical processes dominate the luminosity of SNe II (see details in text). The generic naming scheme used in the literature to label these phases is given, together with observational parameters used to characterise those phases in brackets (from A14 and Gutiérrez et al. 2017b). It should be noted that phase boundaries are not necessarily well defined – they change between different SNe II, and are shown here as distinct abrupt changes for visualisation purposes. (While ‘SBO’ – shock breakout – is labelled on this plot and discussed in the text, it is not observed for this example SN II, nor for any other event in our sample).