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** The video for "Persona" begins with a classroom suspiciously similar to the one used in the teaser for the "No More Dream" MV, features RM in outfits reminiscing to the ones used in the School Trilogy era, includes a scene of him surrounded by mirrors (the main motif of his character in the BU) that reminisces similar scenes en the videos for "Fake Love" and "Reflection", and even features a gigantic CGI version of himself similar to the ones that appear in "IDOL".
** The official MV for "ON" ends by calling back the title screen of their very first MV single "No More Dream", same typography and all. Except that, in "ON", the first two words dissolve, leaving only "Dream".
* [[Cerebus Syndrome]]: The video clip for "I Need U", with its shocking plot and high angst content, marked a change of direction onin the group career. Not that they stopped having silly or light MV and songs, but the video clips for its more serious song became darker and filled with symbology, and their songs became to treat more serious themes. To an extent, the album from where the song came out also counts.
* [[Concept Video]]: "Spring Day", "N.O", all their Comeback video clips, among others. The ''BU'' is a whole continuity of these.
* [[The Danza]]: In the ''BU'', the characters have the same real name than the group members - and to an extent, similar personality traits and interests.
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** The international name of the group is an initialism for "Bangtan Sonyeondan (which is given the official translation "Bulletproof Boyscouts"). They decided that since 2017 it would also mean "Beyond the Scene".
** The name of their fan club, ARMY, stands for "Adorable MCs Representatives of Youth"
** Note the titles of their documentaries: '''''B'''urn '''thet'''he '''S'''tage'', '''''B'''ring '''t'''he '''S'''oul'', '''''B'''reak '''t'''he '''S'''ilence'' . They try to keep then on translations whenever possible
** RM has stopped using his original stage name Rap Monster since 2015 and has claimed different meanings for the initials he currently uses (one of them being "Real Me").
* [[Growing the Beard]]: The era of ''The Most Beautiful Moment In Life'' albums is acknowledged as the moment BTS step up their game and grew out of their initial "bad boys" image and overwhelming rap sound, with their songs growing in quality, their sound becoming more poppier while also venturing in other genres, their video clips actually getting a budget, the group refining their choreographies and stage presence, and the metaplot making its apparition.
* [[Guyliner]]: excesivellyexcessively prevalent during their early years.
* [[I Have Many Names]]: Note that the members tend to use both their stage and their given names interchangeably and that some have extra stage names (Suga's mixtapes were released under the stage name Agust D) and additional nicknames.
* [[Jack of All Trades]]:
** Jungkook, which has earned the nickname of "Golden Maknae" due to his ability to flawlessly sing, dance, rap, produce and compose, among other talents.
** J-Hope, along with being one of the main dancers, also raps, sings vocals on his own verses, and has a producer/composer credit list almost as long as Suga and RM.
* [[Lighter and Softer]]:
** The 2019 track "Boy with Luv", with its soft sound, sweets lyrics, and downright fluffy MV where the featured artist, Hasley, is treated as just one more of the group, is this compared to 2014' "Boy in Luv", featuring macho-charged lyrics to a harsh sounding tune and a gritty MV taking place in an even more gritty school where the group members treat the girl character/love interest as an object and manhandle her.
** ''Love Yourself: Her'' is a subversion, as it was released after the quite heavy and philosophically charged ''WINGS''. The album does begin with soft and sweet-sounding love songs, but when you pay attention to the lyrics you notice that each song features an increasing amount of obsession towards the love interest... and then mid-album the songs change the tone and become more introspective and dense.
** J-Hope mixtape, ''Hope World'', when compared with the very introspective mixtapes by RM and the autobiographical ''Agust D'' by Suga.
** The first comeback trailer released for ''MOTS: 7'' was "Shadow", interpreted by Suga, which was a song about the negative aspects of fame and whose MV was filled with oppressive imagery and dark colors. It was immediately followed by "Ego", interpreted by J-Hope, which was way much cheerful in sound, themes (it was equally introspective but in a more positive way), and imagery.
** ''Be'', an album filled with songs with uplifting messages and deliberately created as a response forto the [[COVID-19 pandemic]] crisis, after the celebratory but very introspective ''MOTS: 7''.
* [[Money Song]]: "If I Ruled the World".
* [[Never Trust a Trailer]]: a rare musical version. Every MV release is usually preceded by a short teaser; however, the teaser usually presents fragments of the song or instrumental versions that rarely coincide with the actually released song. For example:
** The teasers for "I Need U" and "Blood, Sweat, Tears" use the mellow bridges of said songs, giving the impression that the songs were R&B ballads instead of the more bombastic rock-sounding and trap-leaning tracks they respectively are.
** The teaser for "Spring Day" uses an arrangement with chorus and organ that isn't used in the version of the song featured on the MV (said fragment was used in the "Brit Rock" remix of the song released on SoundCloud)
** The teaser for "IDOL" used an arrangement with more Korean instruments; the arrangements on the released song isare based more on African instrumentation.
* [[The Oner]]: The video for "Save Me" was filmed in one take.
* [[Pep Talk Song]]: since their stated mission is to give people a respite from their difficult lives with their songs, this is a given. Among their most notorious are "Not Today", "No More Dream", "21st Century Girl" and "A Supplementary Story: You Never Walk Alone".
* [[Pretty Fly for a White Guy]]: due to their heavier hip-hop/rap leanings around their debut era, their initial image threaded towards a "gangsta" line. However, after 2014 and their boot- camp in actual hip-hop culture for ''American Hustle'', they dropped this image like a hot potato, with RM even publicly apologizing for his initial gaffes and putting it under [[Old Shame]].
* [[Protest Song]]: "No More Dream" and "N.O" are protests against the Korean education system. "Baepsae", meanwhile, does so towards the Korean class system and their contradictory bouts of [[Tall Poppy Syndrome]] towards people who want to socially ascend and victim-blaming towards the ones who cannot do so. "Am I Wrong?" is a call out to the youth that doesn't care onabout the state of the world and disentangle them from politics, paradoxically helping bad politicians with their indifference.
* [[Rated "G" for Gangsta]]: Played with. Their styling and sound are notoriously softer than the ones they had around his debut era and early years (just compare the MV of "No More Dream" to the ones for "I Need U" or "DNA"), but the themes they tackle in their songs had become harder and more serious.
* [[Running Gag]]:
** During the ''WINGS'' era, they made a habit of one member displaying a paper heart from somewhere in their clothing, usually revealing it from some hidden place. This gag got to its end and logical extreme in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6gzgV1fBxg their New Year stage for "Go Go" in MBC], with ''every member'' revealing a paper heart from increasingly more outrageous places.
** Jin, arguably the most [[Bishonen]] of the group, after becoming [[Memetic Mutation|memetically known]] as "Third guy from the left" after his appearance in the magenta carpet for the 2017 Billboard Awards was noticed by global internet, was asked in an interview how he felt about it. He jokingly answered "I'm worldwide handsome" to that question. Since then, he ''always'' introduces himself as "Worldwide Handsome" in every interview and presentation to western media.
* [[Shout-Out]]: Part of BTS's fame is that they use references to western literature that aren't commonly seeseen in Asian pop, or in pop in general.
** Their album "Wings" is full of references to the famous [[Hermann Hesse]] novel ''Demian''. The short films used to promote the individual songs of the members all begin with a reading of select quotes offrom the novel, and feature imagery of Abraxas, the deity revered by Demian.
** Their video clip for "Spring Day" visibly features a hotel named Omelas, a reference to [[Ursula K. Le Guin]]'s famous short story ''The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas''. The song and its video clip were rumored to have been created to memorialize the victims of the Sewol Ferry tragedy.
** "Blood, Sweat, Tears" quotes [[Friedrich Nietzsche]]'s ''[[Thus Spake Zarathustra]]'' and its video clip features, along with the ''Demian'' references above mentioned, the famous pictures ''The Lament for Icarus'' by Herbert James Draper, and Pieter Bruegel's ''Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'', and ''The Fall of the Rebel Angels''.
** The series of albums "Love Yourself" are said to be inspired by Erich Fromm's ''The Art of Loving''. Their official Korean e-store even sold a special edition of the book.
** "Magic Shop" was titled and inspired by the memoir ''Into the Magic Shop'' by James R. Doty
** Their song "Anpanman" was inspired by and named after [[Anpanman|the titular Japanese character]]. The choreography they use for this song hadhave the members doing famous poses from superheroes of Marvel and DC (and, of course, Anpanman's too).
** Their albums ''Map of the Soul: Persona'' and ''Map of the Soul:7'' are named after Murray Stein's ''Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction''. The songs used for the comeback trailers for these albums, "Intro: Persona", "Interlude: Shadow" and "Outro: Ego", have several references to [[Carl Jung]]'s psychological concepts ("Persona" use more of the psychological terms, while the other songs are more descriptive of the concepts themselves).
** Their song "Attack on Bangtan" evidently references ''[[Attack on Titan]]''. This one is especially obvious because the Japanese version of the song was titled "Shingeki no Boudan", after the manga's original Japanese title "''Shingeki no Kyojin''".
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