Supernatural (TV series)/Tropes A-E

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"Castiel: Tell your flock where your genitals have been before you speak for me."
 * Abusive Parents:
 * He might have meant well, but John Winchester was a neglectful bastard who messed up his sons incredibly badly. Even Dean, who began the series utterly devoted to John, eventually admitted that he was an "obsessed bastard."
 * Max Miller's father and uncle beat him up daily while his stepmother stood by and said nothing.
 * Bela's father.
 * Bobby's father beat him and his mother, at least until
 * Accidental Kiss: Bobby excitedly lays one on Sheriff Mills after she discovers that.
 * Adorkable: The titular character in "The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo" is very plainly this, almost excessively so.
 * Adult Fear: Episodes like "The Kids are Alright," "Home," and others deal with things that would scare the hell out of any parent with a young child.
 * Affably Evil: Casey in "Sin City," the old Pagan God couple in "A Very Supernatural Christmas," Lucifer, Patrick (the card-playing he-witch in "The Curious Case of Dean Winchester") and Crowley. Osiris often comes across as this in "Defending Your Life".
 * Aliens in Cardiff: Monsters and demons in Small Town America!
 * Almighty Janitor:
 * In "Tall Tales" the janitor turns out to be a Trickster, a demigod that can create things out of thin air in order to cause chaos and mess with people. Later it is discovered that.
 * In the episode "Dark Side of the Moon" the lone angel that God still speaks to is not Michael or any of the other archangels, but Joshua, Heavens' gardener.
 * All Urban Legends Are True
 * All Powerful Bystander: The Trickster, God, and Death.
 * All Webbed Up: The victims of the Arachne in "Unforgiven".
 * All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Roadhouse is destroyed by demons in the Season 2 finale, and  is destroyed by the Leviathans near the beginning of Season 7.
 * All Your Powers Combined: The only way  is to   on hand. That is basically   required to put down
 * Always a Bigger Fish: When the Winchesters have been taken captive by a dozen pagan gods from different pantheons, they are "rescued" when Lucifer arrives and kills them all.
 * Anal Probing:
 * In "Tall Tales," in which the Trickster forges lots of strange happenings in a college town, one of them involves a guy who has been abducted by "aliens." The victim's experience involved being repeatedly probed (a total of eight times according to the dialogue). This ordeal apparently paled in comparison to being forced to slow-dance with one of the aliens to "Lady in Red."
 * In "Clap Your Hands If you Believe" Dean is on his cell phone with Sam when what appears to be a UFO's search light starts chasing him. Figuring that Dean is having a close encounter of the third kind, Sam advises "Third kind already? You better run, man. I think the fourth kind is the butt thing."
 * And I Must Scream:
 * Season 2's "No Exit" had Dean, Sam and Jo trap H. H. Holmes (the United States' first recognized serial killer) spirit in a ring of salt, in the middle of an iron barred sewer, because they could not salt his bones since they were encased in tons of concrete. To make sure that his spirit never got out, they encased it in tons of concrete.
 * In Season 3's "Time Is On My Side", Dean and Sam face the immortal Dr. Benton. Unable to kill him, they bury him alive to be trapped underground forever.
 * And Your Little Dog, Too: People do this to Dean pretty often (in the form of "I'll kill your brother" or "Sam doesn't need legs), and it's always a bad idea.
 * Animal Wrongs Group: Surprisingly, the Devil and his followers. He actually wants to turn Earth into a massive nature preserve...but he also wants to murder most of humanity and zombify most of the survivors.
 * Animate Inanimate Object: Dean's
 * Anthropomorphic Personification: the Four Horsemen.
 * Anti-Anti-Christ:
 * The Antichrist:
 * Anti-Hero: Though the protagonists work for the greater good, they support themselves financially through gambling, hustling pool and credit card fraud.
 * Anyone Can Die: Whether they stay dead is another matter.
 * Arbitrary Skepticism:
 * The Hunters fight demons all the time, but refuse to believe in angels.
 * Despite there being hundreds of years of lore and mythology relating to dragons that pre-dates their inclusion in fantasy fiction and video games, both Sam and Dean believe that they can not exist because they only exist in fiction and video games.
 * Archangel Michael: Season 5 reveals that
 * Archangel Gabriel: Season 5 reveals that.
 * Archangel Lucifer: Season 5 reveals that.
 * Archangel Raphael: Season 5 reveals little of import about him, but he.
 * Asexuality: Angels generally don't care about sex or sexual orientation even a tiny bit. Now, hypocrisy is something else entirely.

"Castiel: You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of hell, and I can throw you back in.
 * Asshole Victim
 * All of the Trickster's victims are described as being "dicks."
 * The victims chosen in "Yellow Fever" were all described by Sam as being "dicks."
 * Subverted in "Defending Your Life". Dean initially dismisses Osiris' victims as this, only for Sam to point out they were all repentant for their crimes.
 * An Astral Projection Not a Ghost: One of the hauntings dealt with some time in season 3 turns out to not be a spirit, but the projection of a girl in a coma.
 * The Atoner:
 * Sam in Season 5, in response to his behavior in Season 4.
 * Castiel in the seventh season episode "The Born-Again Identity" when he tries to fix what he has broken.
 * At the Crossroads: The show takes the ancient association of crossroads with witchcraft and communion with the dead and the Robert Johnson Deal with the Devil myth and makes crossroads the preferred locale for demon deals. There is an entire cabal of demons (Referred to as Crossroads Demons) who can be summoned at a crossroads and specialize in making deals with humans in exchange for their souls.
 * Author Avatar: The prophet Chuck writes his books under the name of Carver Edlund. Two of the show's writers are called Jeremy Carver and Ben Edlund.
 * Author Appeal: Sera Gamble, one of the lead writers and executive producers on the show, is in fact a successful, award-winning writer of erotic fiction. Although she was not a writer on the show from the outset, Jared Padalecki has noted at conventions that she does seem to enjoy having Sam tortured. A lot.
 * Back From the Dead: Multiple characters return from the dead, sometimes repeatedly. Sam, Dean, Castiel and Bobby are the characters who return to life and the continue living (Although sometimes they die again later on).
 * Bad Dreams: The main characters get hit by these a few times.
 * In season four, Dean spends many nights tossing over his nightmares of hell. In season seven, Dean is once again having nightmares, this time about
 * Sam had nightmares throughout Season 1. While some were visions, the ones where he watched his girlfriend die over and over again still affected him like this. In season seven,
 * In one episode, Bobby's nightmares are used against him by a Monster of the Week, as are Dean's.
 * Background Halo: In a promo pic of Dean.
 * Bad Bad Acting: Sam and Dean playing Jared and Jensen playing Sam and Dean
 * Badass Boast:
 * The angels get a few of these.

Zachariah: In Heaven I have six wings and four faces, one of which is a lion.

Lucifer: I will never lie to you; I will never trick you; but you will say yes to me.

Castiel: Maybe someday, but today, you're my little bitch."

"Castiel: We still have orders to kill you.
 * Anna gets two in "On the Head of a Pin":

Anna: Somehow, I don't think you'll try.

And, later:

Uriel: There is no will! No wrath! No God.

Anna: Maybe, maybe not. But there's still...me."

"Crowley: I've sold sin to saints for centuries."
 * Demons get these too:

"Castiel: Will you, boy? How?
 * Sam, demanding (not asking for) Castiel's help, say's he'll force the incredibly powerful angel to help them

Sam: I don't know. But I'll find a way. And I don't sleep."

"Dean: (after throwing a pen into a gun) I'm amazing... (knocks mook out with a TV remote) I'm Batman.'''"
 * Dean is absolutely no exception, as he claims so in two words.

": "Word of advice--don't piss off the nerd angels.""
 * Badass Longcoat:
 * Castiel as part of his regular outfit.
 * Although it looks decidedly less badass when
 * Dean in the episode "Frontierland."
 * Angel-hitman Virgil.
 * Both brothers get one in season 7's "Out With the Old".
 * Badass Family: The Winchesters, the Campbells and the Harvelles.
 * Badass Normal:
 * Dean does not have Sam's Psychic Powers to work with, but he holds his own pretty damn well against the Monster of the Week with a shotgun, some Latin, holy water and kick-ass fighting skills.
 * When Castiel's angelic abilities dwindle to nothing during his estrangement from Heaven in season 5, he switches to knives, guns, and the odd molotov cocktail to get the job done.
 * Sam too. He only really uses his powers during seasons 4 and some of 5.
 * Bad Guy Bar: Shows up in "The Magnificent Seven" and ends with a hunter chugging drain cleaner while his wife watches.
 * Ballistic Discount: A mind-controlled man pulls this off, finishing by shooting himself.
 * Bavarian Fire Drill: In order to find clues about the Monster of the Week, the boys regularly pose as police, FBI, priests, Forestry Service rangers, Homeland Security agents, Center for Disease Control officers, Health Department inspectors, state police troopers - they even pulled out badges to convince a little girl that they were teddy bear doctors.
 * Because Destiny Says So: The whole reason in season five.
 * Because I Said So: Dean still pulls this on Sam, and the Dad abused this trope their whole lives.
 * Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Samuel Colt and Elliot Ness were both hunters.
 * Being Good Sucks: Sam and Dean's job as hunters is dangerous, completely unremunerative and, aside from individual thanks from the people they save, the good they do is largely overlooked. The law is after them for a good portion of the series, both their parents and the great majority of their friends and allies have died in the fight, Dean's, Sam , and all without a roof over their heads. It is a wonder these guys can even get out of bed in the morning.
 * Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Ruby states that demons used to be humans, before their humanity was tortured out of them in hell.
 * It's also implied that.
 * Berserk Button:
 * Do not call Sam Winchester a freak. He will kick your ass.
 * DO NOT threaten Sam in front of Dean.
 * Do NOT insult Eve (the mother of monsters) in front of her children, especially the Alpha Vampire.
 * Beware the Nice Ones: Sam Winchester - he's always got a kind word for someone shell-shocked from a brush with the supernatural, prefers to do research rather than pick locks and break faces, and will most certainly fuck you up if you even think about hurting his older brother.
 * Castiel may seem amusingly out of touch much of the time, but you really don't want to make him angry. Hell, not even Castiel's True Companions are safe from this. At a perceived betrayal, Cas beats to within an inch of his life. Cas going off the rails is not a pretty sight.

"Dean: (Panicked) Who are you?
 * Big Bad:
 * Azazel in Seasons 1 and 2, Lilith in Seasons 3 and 4.
 * In Season 6, after much competing between Crowley, Eve, Raphael and, the true Big Bad turns out to be.
 * And in the season 7 premiere,.
 * The Big Bad Wolf: In "Bedtime Stories", a young man with a Wile E. Coyote tattoo gets hypnotised into being this.
 * Big Damn Heroes:
 * In "On the Head of a Pin," saves Castiel just as he is about to be killed by.
 * pops in to save Sam and Dean in the Season 5 premiere. He plows through two angels and scares Zachariah away.
 * Big Entrance: Castiel's first scene. All the lights start flickering and bursting, the roof starts rattling, and the barn door breaks open, and Castiel casually strolls in amidst the howling wind and sparks.

Castiel: I am the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition."

"Sam: No!
 * Big No:
 * In "All Hell Breaks Loose", Dean lets out one when he just finally found Sam and seen him get stabbed in the back. Helped by the fact that the viewers are probably feeling the same thing and his look of complete panic and devastation at the sight of his little brother getting knifed.
 * Played absolutely hilariously when a wishing well turns a girl's teddy bear into a life-sized, sentient being. A very depressed, alcoholic, somewhat perverted, plushy sentient being. Eventually, he (it?) decides to end it all and sticks a shotgun in its mouth, graphically blowing a cloud of fluff across the room. Which doesn't kill it, as apparently cotton batting doesn't double for brains. Despairing, the teddy raises its paws to heaven and implores "WHHHYYYYYYY?!"
 * Sam also lets one out at the end of the pilot episode when Jessica dies.
 * This is Gordon's reaction in "Fresh Blood" as he's being.
 * Dean reacts this way in "Swan Song" when Sam!Lucifer telepathically snaps 's neck.
 * Black Comedy Rape: What happens to the frat boy in Tall Tales.
 * Blessed with Suck: Sam's visions of doom. As one of a group of psychic children, some of whom have powers such as Super Strength, Mind Control, Telekinesis and the ability to electrocute people with a touch, he gets uncontrollable, painful visions of violent deaths. As one of the other psychics put it: "Dude, [that] sucks."
 * Blind Seer: Silas in the Rising Son comics, and Pamela in the main series after having her eyes burned out by Castiel.
 * Blood From the Mouth: It would perhaps be easier to list episodes where this did not happen.
 * Blood Lust: Several creatures.
 * Blood Magic:
 * Human blood is used by demons to contact other demons, and can be used by Angels to communicate across dimensions.
 * Demon blood can be drunk by certain chosen humans in order to give them demonic powers and control over other demons.
 * Any blood can be used to create sigils to ward off and disperse angels, and specific quantities of virgin blood can be used to open doorways to purgatory.
 * Bloody Bowels of Hell: How describes Hell in "Born Under a Bad Sign." This is later changed
 * Bolivian Army Cliffhanger: The show is fond of these:
 * Season 1 Finale: John and the boys have just been.
 * Season 3 Finale: Dean is . Overlaps with Downer Ending.
 * Season 4 Finale: Castiel is, and Sam and Dean are faced with.
 * Season 6 Finale: Castiel gives an ultimatum:.
 * Season 7 Finale: Castiel and Dean
 * Bound and Gagged: Sam for a few minutes in "Bloodlust" and Dean for about half of "Hunted." Sam has visions of being this when he is going though.
 * Break the Game Breaker: Any time Castiel was killed or sent away by sigil; basically the whole of his depowering in five. In season 7,
 * Bratty Teenage Daughter: Krissy from "Adventures in Babysitting."
 * Break the Cutie: Poor Sam. Poor Castiel. And poor, poor Dean.
 * Breather Episode: Usually the signal for the next episode to crank the Angst! Up to Eleven.
 * Brick Joke: In The Devil You Know, Crowley angrily shouts that demons are rampaging around the Earth, causing death and destruction and also "ate [his] tailor!!" Six episodes later, in Weekend at Bobby's, it's revealed that Crowley was a tailor when he was human.
 * In The French Mistake, after getting thrown into the "Real World", the directors discuss salvaging the footage of the brothers being thrown through the window by freeze-framing right before the interference. At the end of the episode, when they're getting thrown back into their own universe, how do you think they film it?
 * Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: In the season five finale, Sam invokes this trope to stop the apocalypse. He
 * In the season seven finale,
 * Broken Angel: Castiel, more and more as Season 5 progresses, and to an extreme in the future timeline of episode 4 "The End".
 * Broken Hero: Both Sam and Dean qualify, though their optimism has been somewhat drained by circumstance.
 * Cas (from season five onwards) and Bobby definitely qualify too. Although Bobby is probably the most functional of the group, he's still alcoholic and pretty messed up about his wife's death.
 * Cain and Abel: Hinted from day one. Season 5 tells us that.
 * The Call Knows Where You Live: Happens twice in the pilot episode for Sam. First, his Dad goes missing and Dean comes to get him. He refuses that after killing the Monster of the Week, but watching his girlfriend burn up on the ceiling like his mother finally forces him to take the call for good.
 * In fact, any time either boy starts thinking about getting out of the business, they're dragged back in by rather brutal means. The Call doesn't just know where you are, it will stalk you from Hell and back. Literally. As in, angels besieged Hell and dragged Dean out because they had work for him. They dragged the brothers back from Heaven, too.
 * In seasons four and five and most of three, The Call is in fact semi-omniscient beings, requiring them to travel under a couple different types of mystic shielding. It steps up from hex bags to ribcages engraved in Enochian so Heaven and Lucifer wouldn't turn up and explain with nasty graphic examples why You Can't Fight Fate.
 * The other Call instances are mostly equally engineered, although the menace that sends Sam into Dean's neighborhood in season six, dragging Dean slowly back onto the road after over a year of retirement, was just a monster seeking revenge on them for an earlier kill.
 * Call Back:
 * In "Home", Sam hands the kid he just rescued to the kid's big sister and says "Take your brother outside as fast as you can, and don’t look back," echoing his father's words and actions to Dean in the pilot.
 * Dean slams Sam against a wall in "Pilot" for questioning the family mission; Sam slams Dean against a wall in "Salvation" for doing the exact same thing.
 * In "What Is and What Should Never Be" there's a ton, visual and verbal, to the pilot episode: Mary going down the stairs (replaced by Sam), Dean and Sam fighting in the dark after Dean breaks in, "Lookin' for a beer," etc.
 * After finally killing Azazel at the end of Season 2, Dean tosses the Colt in the Impala's trunk, says, "We've got work to do," and closes the trunk, which is what Sam says and does (though not with the Colt) at the beginning of Season 1 after Azazel kills Mary and Jessica. This gets yet another Call Back when Dean is resurrected in Season 4 and Castiel tells him that he was brought back "Because we have work for you."
 * Season finales "Devil's Trap" and "No Rest For The Wicked" both involve
 * Compare the Season 3 and Season 5 finales:

Lilith: Yes! (tries to fry him)"

"Dean: No!
 * and:

Lucifer: Yes! (tries to beat him to death)"

"Am I the only game piece on the board who doesn't underestimate those denim-wrapped nightmares?!"
 * While trying to convince Sam to come with him, Dean admits that he doesn't want to do it alone. He mentions this again in season seven in "Defending Your Life".
 * Calling the Old Man Out: When Gabriel and Lucifer come face to face, this is the first thing Gabriel proceeds to do with his arrogant brother. "Lucifer, you're my brother, and I love you; but you are a great. Big. Bag o'dicks!" As Gabriel goes on, he insists that humans are not only better than Lucifer thinks, but deep down Lucifer is just jealous of 'Dad's' new creation. Lucifer does NOT take this well.
 * Bobby does this to his drunken, abusive father in "Death's Door", though technically it's an interactive memory of his long-dead father rather than the real thing.
 * Bobby also once did this on Dean and Sam's behalf, as seen in a memory in "Death's Door", where he gave John a piece of his mind for not treating them like children. This is probably what started the argument mentioned in Series 1 which ended in Bobby pointing a shotgun at John and threatening to shoot him.
 * Came Back Wrong:
 * In Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things,.
 * Heavily implied/outright stated for.
 * In season 6, Dean's suspicions that
 * Cartwright Curse: Poor Sam.
 * Lampshaded in "Season Seven, Time for a Wedding!"
 * Cassandra Truth: Gordon was right all along about Sam.
 * Catapult Nightmare: Averted--surprisingly-- when Dean startles awake from dreams of his time in hell with nothing more than a slight twitch.
 * Played straight when Dean wakes up from a nightmare in 7.05 "Shut Up, Dr Phil".
 * Catch Phrase:
 * Bobby's "Idjit"[sic]. Judging by the episode "Weekend at Bobby's," he apparently tends to say "balls" often when frustrated when he is alone (and thus has no one to say "idjit" to).
 * "Son of a bitch!"
 * "Bitch!" - "Jerk!"
 * Caught with Your Pants Down: Implied in an episode, although when two male characters who are not having sex spend all their time together, it is to be expected.
 * Chekhov's Gun:.
 * Chekhov's Gunman: Hey, remember how throughout season five, the angels want Dean to be the vessel for but he keeps rejecting them? Remember how the ability to be a vessel is a bloodline trait? Remember the Winchesters' half-brother Adam from a few seasons back who turned out to have been killed by a ghoul?
 * Midway through Season Six we meet Bobby's friend Dr. Visyak, a professor with knowledge of the supernatural. In the penultimate episode of the season, we discover that
 * Chekhov's Skill: In "On the Head of a Pin", . In "Abandon All Hope...,"
 * Chess with Death: Dean has one of these with Death: in exchange for bringing Sam's soul back to his body Dean has to do his job for a day. Dean ends up failing the test, but Death returns the soul anyway. Firstly because his real reason for the task was to show Dean what forces he was messing with by constantly resurrecting, and also because Sam and Dean's current investigation suited his purposes. He may have wanted a day off too.
 * The Chew Toy: With what they go through and the fact that they looked so darned pretty when being put through pain, both of them (but especially Dean) are walking a very fine line between this and pure-and-simple Woobification.
 * Christianity Is Catholic: Subverted in 99 Problems. The very Christian anti-demon militia in Blue Earth, Minnesota is Lutheran.
 * Chronic Hero Syndrome: Sam has this whenever he's not otherwise occupied.
 * Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: A season 5 episode introduced Jesse Turner, a young boy explicitly identified as the Anti Christ, resulting from a union between a demon and a human, which somehow imbued him with Reality Warper powers. Possibly realizing how little sense it made that this would result in the most powerful character depicted in the show up to that point (with the exception of God) and the Story-Breaker Power it entailed, the writers immediately sent the character off to nowhere.
 * Classical Movie Vampire: Beautifully (and hilariously) played with in "Monster Movie," this vampire.
 * Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: Sam may have kicked the demon blood habit, but shanking demons for a living is doing nothing for his self-control.
 * Comatose Canary:
 * Dean at the beginning of Season 2.
 * The daughter in the Season 3 episode "Bedtime Stories," who somehow makes the people in her town re-enact the fairy tales read to her by her father.
 * Sam in season six. it is mentioned at the beginning of "Like a Virgin" that Sam has been "asleep" for almost ten days. Also
 * Companion Cube: The Impala to Dean.
 * Conspiracy Theorist: At least two such characters show up:
 * Ron Reznick in "Nightshifter", who is convinced that the shapeshifter attacks he's been doing independent research on are caused by "mandroids".
 * In "Slash Fiction" paranoid whackjob Frank Devereaux doesn't put much stock in magic, but he's sure that "The government's been cloning people for years."
 * Continuity Nod:
 * Sometime off-screen third season, the Winchester brothers each got a possession-blocking protective tattoo. From that first appearance onward, the tattoos can be seen from time to time over the collar of their shirts, though attention is almost never drawn to them again.
 * The opening of "Clap Your Hands if you Believe", which was itself a Shout-Out to The X-Files, was put together from clips of previous episodes - including the slow-dancing alien from the first Trickster episode.
 * Dean's amulet, which at this point has been missing from the show for two full years, appears on Dean's neck in a flashback in the season 7 episode "Repo Man."
 * Cool Car: The Impala. So much so it even has its own Fan Nickname: The Metallicar.
 * The Coroner: A different one appears in many episodes (since they're moving all over the country working on cases) to explain to the Winchesters how the latest Victim of the Week met his or her gruesome end.
 * Corrupt the Cutie: Sam Winchester's entire life consists of a plot to do this to him. It sort of works, to the point where the Big Bad manipulates him into starting the Apocalypse thinking he was preventing it, but it doesn't stick.
 * The Corruption: At the end of season four, Castiel tells Dean that
 * Cosmopolitan Council: In Hammer of the Gods, the council composed of.
 * Council of Angels: Heaven is apparently somewhat of a bureaucracy, as.
 * Creator Provincialism: It is...interesting...how the vast majority of the important events of the apocalypse take place in the continental United States. Kali is actually rather upset over this fact, and laments that "Westerners" are trying to take away her rightful spot in her own Apocalypse.
 * Possibly Justified. The Apocalypse is taking place in America because that's where Sam and Dean are. It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for Lucifer to be doing his thing in the Middle East or Europe or anywhere else when his  lives in America. Now, the fact that Sam and Dean are American in the first place is all on the writers, but they can hardly be blamed for that.
 * Fortunately Castiel is on hand to pop over to the Holy Land to fetch any necessary Plot Device that the boys have need of, thus sparing them the onerous burden of international travel. As long as you have the right roadies you don't have to put any more effort into obtaining Holy Oil from Jerusalem than J-Lo does to getting Perrier from across town.
 * Crossover Cosmology: Just like All Myths Are True, so do all gods exist. Though they are apparently not all equal
 * Crystal Dragon Jesus: Teetering on the precipice of this trope. While pretty much all of the Apocalypse storyline contains heavy use of individual elements and characters from Christian eschatology, the actual usage of God, Lucifer, the angels and the demons, to say nothing of the complete and utter absence of Jesus, really ends up presenting a pseudo-Christian world where most of the Biblical characters are really Captain Ersatz versions of the ones from the source material and their link to the religion overall is essentially as a fantasy remake of the original with updated, modernized, characters cherry-picked for dramatic convenience.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: The Winchesters, especially, get their asses handed to them by the Big Bad all the time.
 * This happens several times with Alastair and Lilith, who pwn humans and angels alike to begin with, only for Sam to eventually kill them with his brain.
 * Anything attempting to take on an archangel ends up burned to dust with a simple touch, or exploded with a snap of the fingers. Lucifer slaughters pagan gods without breaking a sweat.
 * In the Season 6 finale the final battle between  ends up being like that.   merely snaps his fingers and   explodes into bloody goo.
 * Cut Apart: In "Folsom Prison Blues",
 * Dangerously Genre Savvy: Crowley. He correctly deduces Lucifer’s inherent hatred of Demons, while his Demonic compatriots are all blind to this. In season 6 he takes the Winchesters very seriously as a threat and takes appropriate steps to foil them (including ), even pointing out all the Big Bads who were killed or defeated by failing to do just that.

"Misha Collins: (Typing into his phone) Ever. Get. The. Feeling. That. There's. Someone. In. The. Back. Seat? Frowny-face."
 * In "Season Seven, Time For a Wedding!",
 * "The Girl With the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo", Charlie, learns about Leviathans, and reasonably assumes the person she got the info from is nuts. Then she accidentally learns they're real, and promptly tries to pack up and vanish. When the Winchesters show up, she reasonably assumes they're Leviathans, until they prove otherwise. For the duration of the episode, she tries to stick to her skill set instead of getting in fights, and
 * Danger Takes a Backseat: Lampshaded in "The French Mistake".

"Henrickson: Smart. How long have you had those [tattoos of magical possession protection]?
 * Dark and Troubled Past / Dysfunction Junction: if you haven't realised already that this show 'is this trope incarnate, then you obviously have not seen the first episode. Or any episode. Or were severely inebriated or high while watching... Or some combination of the above.
 * Even Bobby (previously the Only Sane Man... okay, still the Only Sane Man but for this show that doesn't say much for his comparative sanity) has massive problems.
 * Dark Messiah: in Season 4,
 * The Dark Side: After spending three seasons trying to avoid "going dark side", Sam kills Lilith, therefore (inadvertently) starting the Apocalypse.
 * The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: By the end of the fourth season, Sam pretty much runs out of legitimate excuses for his dark side-skirting behavior. He cops to this in early Season 5.
 * Darker and Edgier: Season 1 is more or less a show about two brothers trained to fight the supernatural, looking for their lost father. Then It Got Worse.
 * Dead Baby Comedy: Crowley's "muffin" in "Slash Fiction."
 * Dead Ex Machina: in the second half of "All Hell Breaks Loose."
 * Dead Little Sister:
 * Gordon's sister. Subverted since he killed her himself after she became a vampire.
 * Played straight in Sam and Dean's case. Sam's death is the final straw for Dean and he makes a desperate and suicidal Deal with the Devil to bring him Back From the Dead.
 * The real Meg's sister who committed suicide.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Both of the brothers. Especially Dean.
 * Dean Ex Machina: Dean always seems to pop up and save the day whenever Sam (or anyone really) is in trouble.
 * Deal with the Devil:
 * In several episodes, including "In My Time of Dying", "Crossroad Blues", "All Hell Breaks Loose Part II", and a major plot point in Season 3.
 * Recurs in season 5.
 * Crowley as well. Turns out he sold his soul while human for a "few more inches below the belt".
 * Death By Pragmatism: Subverted by.
 * Death Faked for You: Dean and Sam after their run-ins with multiple law enforcement personnel. Most notably in Season Four and in season seven episode Slash Fiction.
 * Death Is Cheap: Actually averted. The writers are well-aware that all their viewers know they'll never kill off Sam and Dean for real, but they still manage to make the death scenes extremely poignant and moving.
 * Death Is Dramatic:
 * Averted in "Mystery Spot", as none of Dean's onscreen deaths are dramatic/demonic-related. Especially his final death, where he gets shot by a mugger. No going out in a blaze of glory, it could have been easily prevented and nothing heroic about it whatsoever.
 * Played straight with many other deaths, most notably those of and.
 * Death Montage: Courtesy of the Groundhog Day Loop episode.
 * Death Seeker: The brothers live here.
 * Dean's earliest brush is season one episode "Faith" when he learns that a faith healer saving him caused the death of a young man. After his Dad dies for him, he becomes tired of this life, selling his soul to get Sam back when he dies. By season five, Dean's even more tired of the life, even willing to be possessed by Michael to stop Lucifer.
 * In Season One, Sam was willing to die killing YED, and in season two, he wanted to be killed before his destiny could change him. Sam's entire season four arc was suicidal, as was season five, which ended with Sam
 * Debate and Switch: Frequently, usually in the form of whether to let someone who is doing bad things against their will (e.g., a werewolf) go, or kill them. The person usually dies or makes some sort of Heroic Sacrifice by episode's end.
 * Demonic Possession:
 * While demonic possession features heavily, particularly in later seasons, only one of the brothers has ever been possessed, and that was only once. This is explained through the use of protective charms and, later, through magical protective tattoos.

Sam: Not long enough."

"Castiel: This is a den of iniquity. I should not be here.
 * Season 4 introduces the concept of angelic possession, as seeing the true form of an angel can burn out your eyes. See Blind Seer.
 * Season 6 also introduces
 * Demon Slaying
 * Den of Iniquity

Dean: Dude, you full-on rebelled against Heaven. Iniquity is one of the perks."

"Dean: Killing that guy, killing Meg - I didn't hesitate, I didn't even flinch. For you or Dad, the things I'm willing to do or kill, it scares me sometimes."
 * Depending on the Writer:
 * Sam's bitchiness and self-absorption, along with Dean's ditziness, go up and down like a bloody yo-yo.
 * An in-universe example during the first half of "Tall Tales."
 * Depleted Phlebotinum Shells
 * Depth of Field:
 * This show seems to LOVE placing having Dean and Castiel in the background/foreground of one another's scenes. Seriously, they do it all the freaking time. Some fans find this very useful for making LJ icons and so forth.
 * The shallow depth of field in most close shots is starting to work against them with the advent of HD - seeing Dean's stubble or Bobby's whiskers slip in and out of focus through the course of a scene as the cameraman fails to hold it just right is a common occurrence.
 * Despair Event Horizon:
 * Dean crosses this in "On the Head of a Pin", and it takes angelic intervention to snap him out of it.
 * Bobby, Dean and Castiel all crash through this over the course of two consecutive episodes in Season 5. Sam probably crossed over at the end of Season 3.
 * Dean appears to have crossed it again in Season 7, to the point that he
 * Devil but No God: Basically assumed true until Season 4, where angels of the Lord started showing up. God is confirmed to exist in Season 5, but he.
 * Did Godzilla Just Punch Out Cthulhu: Demons, angels, archangels, the horsemen, God... The entire purpose of Team Free Will was to stop this happening . Because this would unfortunately have the tiny little side-effect of destroying nearly all life on Earth.
 * Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Dean attempts to steal Death's ring from him. Death sits him down, offers him pizza and then tells him how annoyed he is that although he is infinite, eternal, and will eventually reap the entire universe, he is stuck being tagged to one tiny little planet with one puny little being (a.k.a Lucifer). ... upon hearing this Dean has a little trouble swallowing his pizza. Death does this a second and a third time when the Winchesters (mostly Dean) encounter him, as he has quite a fondness for fast food.
 * Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?:
 * Winchesters! Stop pissing off insanely powerful creatures who already do not like you!
 * "Castiel. Did you just Molotov my brother...with holy fire?" "Uhh...no."
 * Did You Just Index Cthulhu: The Winchesters are fighting Eldritch Abominations every other day of the week, what do you think?
 * Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Sam and Dean actually manage this once or twice. Although as often as not their attempts will end up in Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu.
 * Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?:
 * Lucifer manages to trap Death into his servitude. Death, who is very annoyed that he's being leashed by a petulant child with daddy issues (...yes, that is how Death perceives the Devil), proves that it's not a good idea to piss off an eternal and infinite force of nature by actually helping them imprison him again.
 * season 7's first episode
 * Diner Brawl: Happens frequently.
 * Dirty Business: The first season finale has the first instance of the Winchesters being able to kill a demon - if they're willing to ice the innocent, possessed human too.

"Alistar: Go directly to Hell. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars."
 * In seasons four and five, every time Sam drinks demon blood to fuel his powers he looks at it this way.
 * Disabled Snarker:
 * Pamela, after she loses her vision (although she was plenty snarky before that, as well).
 * In Season 5,.
 * Disappeared Dad: For a while, at least.
 * Disc One Final Boss:
 * In Season Six, Crowley appears to be this to Eve, the Mother of All.
 * In the season finale, it turns out that.
 * Disney Death: The Season 5 finale, BIG TIME. First, die abruptly and shockingly. And then  - in what appears to be a chilling Kill'Em All ending. By the end of the episode, however,.
 * Disposable Woman: There are already two by the first episode. In fact, one wonders if there were any women on the writing team. Well, except for all the Fetish Fuel. (Although, to be fair, those two women were not forgotten. The men who loved them basically declared war on the forces of hell over them. Also, really, anyone who's not actually Sam or Dean dies, regardless of sex.)
 * Distracted by the Sexy: "Don't objectify me!" cries Dean to a Bela, after she proposes they have angry sex.
 * Distressed Damsel / Distressed Dude: So they might be big, tough men, but they've got nabbed enough times for this trope to apply. Sam is more often the one in peril, but when Dean is captured, he is usually captured for longer (for instance, in "Hunted"). Notable instances are when Sam is taken in "The Benders" (and then it was subverted by him getting out and Dean winding up being captured instead), in "Bloodlust" (although the vampires just wanted to talk with him and they release him afterwards), in "Home", "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1", "Long Distance Caller", "Time Is On My Side", and "Ghostfacers." Dean is captured in "Hunted", "Wendigo", "What Is And What Should Never Be", "Monster Movie", and "Scarecrow." Both are captured in "Skin" (Dean gets them out), "A Very Supernatural Christmas" (they somehow managed to get out off-screen) and "Shadow" (Sam gets them out, though Dean was pretty close). To list all the times one has been helpless/at the mercy of the MOTW so that the other can save him would be far too long especially in the case of Sam, Season 1 (and Dean managed to catch up in Seasons 2 and 3) -- it's more than half the episodes. Not to mention that every episode there is at least one person (usually female) who needs to be rescued.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?:
 * The Monster of the Week in "Something Wicked" was played like a pedophile.
 * The male vampire in Fresh Blood is portrayed like a date-rape sexual predator.
 * The Dog Is an Alien: There are Skinwalkers who can take the form of a dog. One of them becomes attached to the family he lives with.
 * Doppelganger: Shows up in "Skin" and in "Nightshifter." And "The End", to an extent.
 * Do Not Pass Go: Said verbatim by the demon Alistair during Dean's Cold-Blooded Torture of him.

"Castiel: I found a liquor store.
 * Downer Ending:
 * "Metamorphosis", "Time Is On My Side", "Red Sky At Morning", "Jus in Bello" , "Crossroad Blues", "What Is and What Should Never Be" , "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part I" (, "Heart" , "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" , "Everybody Loves A Clown" , "In My Time of Dying" , and...this is too depressing. There are a lot of downer endings for this show. A lot.
 * The third season finale sets a whole new record by . And no one knew if there would be another season because of the writers' strike.
 * "Heaven and Hell"
 * "Jump the Shark":.
 * The penultimate episode of Season 4, "When the Levee Breaks", laid a damn good claim to the record, until "Lucifer Rising" managed to one-up it:
 * Abandon All Hope:
 * "Dark Side of The Moon":
 * In season six episode "You Can't Handle the Truth": Sam's been acting weird all season The next episode reveals that this is because
 * "The Man Who Would Be King":
 * "The Man Who Knew Too Much"
 * In season seven's "Hello, Cruel World":
 * "Death's Door":
 * Dramatic Irony: After finding out what Castiel has done, Dean tells him he should have come to them. As revealed in the flashback in "The Man Who Would Be King", Castiel wanted to, but didn't because Dean was so happy living with Lisa and Ben and he didn't want to ruin that. But it was ruined anyway, thanks to him.
 * Dreaming of Things to Come: Sam, for the first two seasons.
 * Driven to Suicide:
 * Arguably, Dean in "All Hell Breaks Loose."
 * Dean in "What Is And Never Should Be." Sort of. Damn alternate universes make these things confusing.
 * Another two for Dean would be "Croatoan" where he stays with his possibly psychotic-due-to-being-infected brother and "Faith" where he accepts his pending death and doesn't even run away when the reaper is after him. My God, that kid is screwed up.
 * Sam in "Salvation" and, in an I Cannot Self-Terminate moment, "Playthings."
 * Another for Sam would be the angst-filled, additional I Cannot Self-Terminate in "When the Levee Breaks." In the finale of Season Four, Sam doesn't believe he will--or want to--survive either.
 * Almost happens to Dean in "Point of No Return", also arguably Castiel.
 * Sam at the end of season five in "Swan Song" (unless ).
 * Dean slips into suicidal Death Seeker mode quite often given the opportunity. He will sacrifice himself in a heart-beat to save someone and his complete lack of self-worth adds some very disturbing implications to his actions.
 * In Season 7,
 * Dean seems to have backslid into this again in the Season 7 episode Defending Your Life, where he is way too calm at the prospect of
 * Let's not forget the Suicide Bear in "Wishful thinking".
 * Drowning My Sorrows:
 * The standard Winchester coping mechanism. Especially Dean. This seems to be a common thing among hunters in general.
 * Castiel engages in this in "99 Problems", though it's tough for him due to his angelic constitution:

Sam: ...and?

Castiel: And I drank it!

Later, Dean asks where he's been and he replies, "On a bender.""


 * Drunk on the Dark Side: At the end of season six and the beginning of season seven, this has happened to  he threatens his friends' lives, goes out for some Disproportionate Revenge, and then accidentally releases unkillable monsters on the world.
 * The Dutiful Son:
 * Dean, oh so very much. Except, for the most part (it was revealed in "Skin" that he does feel resentful of Sam getting to leave), he's a dutiful brother as well.
 * , who is even more this than Dean.