Mixing links and dropdowns is a 'well-known' antipattern, in the sense that lots of people don't know not to do it, so everyone is familiar with it once you bring up the subject, but most people don't think about it until someone mentions it.

This is why you see icons in the menu bar indicating that clicking here doesn't navigate you away from the page, but clicking over here instead might send you away from whatever it is you're doing here.