John Doe



A man wakes up on an island off the coast of Seattle, unsure of who or where he is, unable to see in color, and with a strange mark on his body. But he knows everything, every single scene of every single movie, the composition of bullets from all sorts of Rare Guns, the full history of Jack the Ripper, etc. He makes friends and solves crimes for the police.

The series was canceled by FOX and ends on a Cliff Hanger revealing PHOENIX to be led by.

Not to be confused with another "John Doe" who served in a military unit named FOX, or the serial killer, or the Metasyntactic Variable.


 * Artistic License Physics: John's science can be a little spotty at times.
 * Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Then you have to "fall back to earth", so to speak.
 * Ancient Conspiracy (PHOENIX)
 * Awesomeness By Analysis: He doesn't just know everything, he has the ability to apply that knowledge.
 * Brain Uploading: A scientist experimenting in this field is killed. At the end, it is revealed that the scientist encoded his mind onto bar codes of several ordinary-looking items.
 * Brought Down to Normal: In one episode, a lightning strike causes John Doe to regain his color sight and lose his Encyclopaedic Knowledge of nearly everything. The status quo is restored at the end of the episode by another electric shock.
 * California Doubling (Vancouver variant)
 * Chewing the Scenery: John can get a little... emotional when angsting about his amnesia and special abilities.
 * Death in the Clouds ("Manifest Destiny")
 * Do Not Pass Go: Doe confronting a serial killer with all his abilities (living Magical Database, monochromatic vision) after faking his death and appearing behind him to tell him he has been caught.
 * Dropped a Bridge on Him:
 * Encyclopaedic Knowledge: John Doe knows everything. Well, almost everything.
 * Episode on a Plane: With the tagline "How do you solve a mystery at 30,000 feet!?" The answer being, of course, by knowing everything, as usual.
 * How Many Fingers?: One of the first signs of John Doe's unusual nature. He responds to the question using medical jargon to explain why the thumb is not technically considered a "finger."
 * I Am Who??: John's reaction when someone
 * Instant Expert
 * Laser-Guided Amnesia: John's one of the more unique cases.
 * Magical Database
 * Mr. Smith: "John Doe" is, of course, a placeholder name.
 * No Name Given: His name remains unknown (up to the point that the producers of the show never made one).
 * Omnidisciplinary Scientist (Justified by the premise)
 * Omniglot: Due to his Magical Database nature.
 * Put on a Bus: John's girlfriend. The series was cancelled before it became clear whether or not it was a Long Bus Trip.
 * Quest for Identity
 * Retired Badass: Digger.
 * Space Madness: A metal dome in the forest turns out to be a simulated space vessel, in which astronauts have been confined for months to test the mechanisms and psychological hazards of a manned trip to Mars. Initial investigation suggests the crew have killed each other due to Space Madness from prolonged isolation
 * Stalker Shrine: The protagonist has one about himself, as he tries to find clues about who he is. Upon discovering it, Karen comments that it looks like a serial killer's shrine.
 * The Bartender: Digger.
 * Word of God (explaining a lot of things due to cancellation)

Spoiler tropes: (Kept separate to avoid self-fulfilling spoilers.)

 * : The pilot episode.
 * : The pilot episode.
 * : The pilot episode.
 * : The pilot episode.