Heroes (TV series)/Tropes R-U

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    • E10 The Moment of Truth
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    • E01 The Second Coming
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R

• Rage Against the Mentor: Matt and Nathan spend much of the second Volume interrogating and browbeating (and Mind Rapeing) each others' and their own parents for answers. Answers about their origins and Jerkass activities: the creation of the Men in Black-like Company, their controlling their children, never helping with their abilities, and basically being dicks "for their sakes", and committing Karma Meter -reducing sins "for them". All while never being clear or concise on what they had in mind or why they did these things. Needless to say, fans are exasperated at all this holding out too. All together now: Oh, Kudzu Plot, we hate you!
• Random Events Plot: About everything in Volume 3.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Or... doesn't. Due to the writers' strike.
  • Sylar gaining shapeshifting powers was a pretty obvious attempt to keep the character around despite Zachary Quinto being absent for long periods of time due to being the new Spock.
• Really Dead Montage: Sylar gets one in the graphic novel following the Volume 4 finale. Not to mention the final scene of Volume 4 itself, with all of the heroes coming together for the first time ever in the show specifically just to watch him burn.
  • But this is Sylar we're talking about, so he's not dead, he's hiding. In Nathan.
• Really Gets Around: Sylar.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Seems to have become Sylar's signature move in Season 3 (Volume 3 and 4), as he often delivers one to each of his victims before killing them. Apparently, this is a function of his original power (understanding how things and people work) combined with one of his acquired powers (learning the history of people and objects through touch).
  • Also Adam Monroe caps off the final episode of Season 2 with a magnificent diatribe against humanity's petty nature, successfully arguing in the process that Hiro Nakamura, the man who has come to stop him, effectively turned him into the man he is today.
• Rebellious Princess: Claire Bennet.
• Recap Episode: At least once a Volume.
• Redemption Equals Death: Ted calms down and finally gets off his revenge kick, just in time to be snacked on brain-finger-banged by Sylar. And later, Maury Parkman gets swiftly executed for defending his son.
  • Also, Nathan Petrelli in the Volume 4 finale, during a "face" portion of his Face Heel Revolving Door. Fandom was NOT amused.
  • Volume 5: Redemption seems to be taking this as literally as possible. Victim #1: "Nathan", who attempts to atone for a Ted Kennedy-esque incident from his past where he accidentally caused the death of a young woman, which only results in him being murdered by the young woman's mother... which also incidentally pops open the lid on the Person-Shaped Can that was keeping Sylar sealed away. Nice going there.
  • Interestingly averted with Sylar, where it may actually work out.
• Redemption in the Rain/Happy Rain: "Into Asylum". Angela and Peter in one scene, Sylar in another.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Peter and Nathan.
  • Peter and Sylar.
  • Ted and Matt.
  • Flint and Meredith.
• Reed Richards Is Useless/Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Name a character. Literally any character.
  • Sylar deserves special mention , because it seems like his first "superpower" (his ability to intuitively understand how things fit together) would allow him to, among other things, make a killing in business and on the stock market.
• Engineer Exploited For Evil: Mohinder Suresh in the first two seasons, particularly the episode "Five Years Gone".
• Repetitive Name: Peter Petrelli.
• Replacement Goldfish: Mind wiped Sylar becomes one for Nathan.
  • Thus far, it seems Volume 5's main plot involves Samuel Sullivan screwing with the Heroes in order to find which one is a suitable Replacement Goldfish for his dead brother Joseph. He seems to have finally settled on Sylar. Yeah, that's going to end well...
• Ret-Gone: Daniella Parkman and Noah Gray.
• Retcon: In Volume 1, Chandra Suresh's theory about the existence of "specials" is just that: a theory. He has no firsthand experience with metahumans and he is as giddy as a schoolboy to discover Sylar. Fast-forward to Volume 4, in which we are informed that he was the chief medical officer at Coyote Sands, a concentration camp for metahumans built in the American Southwest in the early 1960s.
  • Sylar's reason for being a a serial killer: Complexes thanks to his (adoptive) mother, being a victim to his own power, being manipulated by the Company, having it In the Blood, having lost himself because of his many powers (Clair's theory)...
• The Reveal: Warning, SPOILERS ahead. Swipe at your own risk.
  • Volume 1:
    • "In His Own Image": Two from the end of the episode: the Man with Horn-Rimmed Glasses is Claire's father, and Nathan (not Peter) can fly!
    • "Better Halves": We have to wait all episode to learn that D.L.'s power is walking through walls. And Eden works for Bennet!
    • "Six Months Ago": Sylar's a cute nerdy guy with crazy eyebrows!
    • "Fallout": The Hatian can talk!
    • "The Fix": The man behind Hiro and Ando's kidnapping is Hiro's father.
    • "Distractions": Nathan is Claire's birth father!
    • "Parasite": Mohinder's not quite as dumb as he looks. And Mr. Linderman knows all about you, your brother, your daughter, and the bomb.
    • "I'm your grandmother." Interestingly, the revelation here is not that Mama Petrelli is Claire's grandmother, but that she knows she's Claire's grandmother.
    • Speaking of Mama Petrelli, she gets a couple more this season. In ".07%", she reveals that she knows all about her sons' superpowers. And in "Landslide", we learn that she knows all about the bomb - and is totally on board with it!
    • "Five Years Gone": President Nathan is Sylar!
    • "The Hard Part": Bennet's tracking system is Molly Walker.
    • "How to Stop an Exploding Man": "Call me Noah."
    • And throughout the season... The bomb is Peter! No, it's Ted! No! Sylar! No, wait... It's Peter.
• Revealing Hug: HRG (Noah Bennet) has done it to members of his family more than once, and it happens with the Petrellis fairly often too. Even Sylar has done it at least once.
• Rich Idiot With No Day Job: Hiro now owns Yamagato. The Petrellis have money. Otherwise it's pretty much a mystery how most Heroes off chasing their destiny have money for groceries.
• Right-Hand Hottie: The Haitian, to Noah Bennet. Played by former Hugo Boss model Jimmy Jean-Louis, no less.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory
• Rival Turned Evil: Takezo Kensei/Adam Monroe.
• Romantic Two-Girl Friendship: What Claire and Gretchen seem headed for.
  • They've officially become Schoolgirl Lesbians.
    • On the Bisexual scale, Claire is somewhere between 1 and 2 while Gretchen is a solid 4.
• Room Full of Crazy: Sylar's closet. Also Future!Hiro and Future!Peter's string collection timelines. And Mohinder's room full of cocoons.
• Rule of Scary: First Volume Sylar. Later on... not quite as much.
  • Though in Volume 4 he managed to be properly terrifying, stalking around, on the edge of a nervous break down and giving up unpleasant "Bad touch" vibes around Claire.
• Running Gag: Killing Nathan in each Season Finale
  • Hugs always seem to turn disastrous for Peter. Peter finally turns the tables in one Volume 4 episode where he hugs Nathan, secretly absorbing the latter's flying ability, to make a quick and badass escape when Nathan tries to capture him.
  • Hiro knows Nathan's name and how he feels about revealing his powers, but still insists on punching his fists in the air and shouting "FLYING-MAN!!!" every time he sees him.

S

• Sadistic Choice: Sylar presents a number of these to Claire and Bennet in the Volume 3 finale. They each opt to Take a Third Option.
  • Doyle does this to Claire as well when he holds her, Sandra, and Meredith hostage and makes them play Russian Roulette. Luckily, Claire manages to knock him out.
• Salaryman: Hiro Nakamura, and—even more so in Volume 2 -- Ando, who was stuck back in his cubicle as Hiro has wacky adventures traveling through time...
• Sarcastic Confession: In the series premiere, Sandra Bennet asks her daughter what she did that day. Claire replies, with complete truthfulness, "I walked through fire and didn't get burned." Sandra assumes she is being metaphorical and praises her for being "profound".
• Scary Black Man: Volume 3 introduced us to Benjamin "Knox" Washington, a black man who derives superhuman strength from people's fear. While technically he himself doesn't have to have caused that fear, it sure looks that way in most of the scenes he has appeared in. Some fans have thus dubbed him the King of the show's many Unfortunate Implications.
  • Subverted with DL who is suggested to be this at first, only to be revealed as a compassionate, kind man who wants to lead a good life and look after his wife and child, having completely abandoned his criminal past. Sadly he winds up dying in the second stupidest death on the show (right after Adam Monroe's but just before Elle's on the list of pointless death scenes).
• Screams Like a Little Girl: In "Into Asylum", Fake!Sylar is about to be killed by the real one. Cue Zachary Quinto's high-pitched squeaky screaming like a little 'bitch', and the Internet busting a collective gut. Seen again in Pass/Fail, when Claire sticks a pen in his eye, with similar audience reaction.
  • To be fair, it is to show that Sylar, without his menacing, is still that gawky Gabriel Gray underneath.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Volume 2's Big Bad, Takezo Kensei aka Adam Monroe. Volume 3 went this way too with Level 5. And Adam. Again. For two episodes.
  • Mind-wiped Sylar. How long do you REALLY expect that to last?
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: Sylar again. Although the twist is that the "can" seems to be Matt, rather than "Nathan".
• Second Episode Introduction: Matt doesn't appear until the second episode.
• Seeking Sanctuary: Angela and Peter in "Into Asylum".
• Seen It All: Claude.
• Self-Deprecation: Consider Noah's following comment about the events of "An Invisible Thread"; was it an apology by the writers for the utter absurdity that was the Volume 4 finale?

Noah: I'm sorry about the Sylar thing. We all admit it was a terrible idea.

• Self-Duplication: Eli, a carny from Season 4 who could only be defeated if you took out the "true" him and whose clones were not real equals.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Pretty much everything Peter does in Season 1 leads him closer to, rather than further away from, becoming a nuclear bomb and blowing up New York.
• Self-Made Orphan: Sylar kills his adoptive mother and later finishes Arthur Petrelli as Peter was unable to do so.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Or will go wrong, as it were.
  • Hiro uses this exact phrase and then some in his mental trial of himself. It might have worked... if David Anders hadn't called him out on simply "...saying the opening to Quantum Leap!"
• Shadow Archetype: The Volume 2 episode "Cautionary Tales" pretty much states outright that Elle is what would have happened to Claire had Mr. Bennet not hidden her powers from the Company. Word of God is that they were originally meant to be sisters, further highlighting the parallels.
  • Also, Peter and Sylar. Both capable of Mega Manning, but one kills to do it and the other tries to save people. And in Volume Three, they're claimed to be brothers. The Powers That Be also briefly mixed up who's the "shadow", with Sylar attempting to go straight and Peter gaining his Great Power And Great Insanity. And then abandoned that plotline again.
  • Danko is very clearly HRG's dark counterpart, a stark illustration of what Bennett would become without Claire and his family. While HRG may occasionally toe the Moral Event Horizon line, Danko gleefully leaps over it
• Shaggy Dog Story: The whole "Save the cheerleader, save the world" thing was based on Future Hiro's faulty information about what caused the nuclear explosion in New York. Since Sylar wasn't the direct cause of the explosion, preventing Sylar from absorbing Claire's ability wasn't actually necessary to stopping it.
  • On the other hand, an invincible Sylar would have been better able to capitalize on the tragedy, creating the kind of Bad Future seen in "Five Years Gone". And it's implied that Claire's presence in New York contributes to Nathan's last-minute Heel Face Turn. So it's perfectly possible that saving the cheerleader did save the world - just not for the reasons Future Hiro thought.
  • Volume 3 seemed like a Shaggy Dog Kennel, specifically where Peter and Sylar are concerned (and ESPECIALLY the latter's ludicrous redemption arc) Tell me, Peter absorbing Sylar's power was supposed to save the world HOW? Not that it matters since Peter was completely depowered shortly afterwards.
• Shapeshifter Swan Song: Happens during Sylar's ultimate defeat in the Volume 4 finale, when he involuntarily undergoes a shapeshifting spasm through all his previous forms after Peter uses his own copied shapeshifter power to overload Sylar's.
• Shapeshifting Seducer
• Shapeshifting Squick: Why are we so surprised that Sylar would immediately use his newly acquired "Turn Into Anyone You've Met" powers to deeply freak people out?
• Shared Universe: With Las Vegas (because of the Montecito) and therefore with Crossing Jordan as well (due to those two shows having a Crossover). Although see Shout-Out below...
• Shipper on Deck: You wouldn't believe me even if I told you: In "Pass/Fail", Sylar. For Claire and Gretchen. "Subtext" indeed.
• Ship Sinking: Volume 3 crushed Matt/Mohinder Audrey shippers with a forced romance between Matt and new character Daphne Millbrook, and Sylar/Elle shippers could not have been happy when Sylar kills off Elle in a painfully transparent attempt to get rid of Kristen Bell's character.
• Shirtless Scene: The entire main cast and often (although not often enough in some cases). In fact, Peter and Sylar have at least one per season.
• Should Have Thought of That Before X: In the episode "Parasite":

Isaac Mendez: How am I supposed to pretend this didn't happen? Candice Wilmer: Maybe you should have thought about that before you shot her. Twice.

• Shout-Out: Lots. Most are to comics, including specific title and issue references. Television Without Pity have commented that some lines and scenes seems like shout-outs to them.
  • Although Hiro correctly cites Kitty Pryde in Days of Future Past from the X-Men comic book, he is a couple of issue numbers off.
    • When he meets Charlie the waitress with an Eidetic Memory, he discusses the same storyline, and she corrects the issue number for him.
  • Watch the scene where Hiro incapacitates Adam Monroe. Then read/watch the scene in Naruto where Shikamaru incapacitates Hidan. Really, you only need to see one or the other. They're almost exactly the same scene.
  • Mr. Claremont, the swordsmith from Episode 22 "Landslide", is named for Chris Claremont, who wrote one of the most successful arcs of the comic book X-Men.
  • The license plate on the limousine belonging to Kaito Nakamura is NCC-1701, the call sign for the original Enterprise starship from Star Trek. It's probably worth mentioning that Kaito Nakamura is played by George Takei, the actor who played Hikaru Sulu from the original Star Trek.
    • Similarly, the catalogue number for Kensei's katana in the private collection is CRM-114, the cipher for plane communications in Doctor Strangelove.
  • And when Claude first appears, he says "Fantastic!", which was Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor's Catch Phrase. It should also be noted that Doctor Who is Britain's equivalent of Star Trek.
  • It's also no accident that the climax of the first Volume winds up taking place at Kirby Plaza (as in, famed comic artist Jack Kirby).
    • And Kirby is also the name of a video game character that devours his enemies and copies their abilities. Sound familiar?
  • The name Takezo Kensei is a Shout-Out to historical Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, aka Shinmen Takezo (or Takezo Shinmen in the western order).
  • Simone may be named after comics writer Gail Simone.
  • Best of all, the bits in the Volume 3 premier that suggest the writers are aware of us! For example, Claire asks "What Kind Of Lame Power is Healing Anyway?"
  • Hiro has now shouted "MUDAMUDAMUDA!" twice. First while fighting samurai in "Lizards" (Season 2 Episode 2), then while teleporting around Daphne the speedster thief in "The Butterfly Effect" (Season 3 Episode 2).
    • Not to mention his constant exclamations of "YATTA!!!"
  • Magneto The German.
  • Sylar's original use of his power to fix watches.
    • Not to mention that the big plan in Volume One is to destroy New York to unite the world...
  • Hiro, after getting mindwiped, is in shock at then-recent Marvel Comics plots: "Captain America (comics) is dead!? Spider-Man revealed his secret identity!? And The Hulk is RED!?"
  • Apparently, Ando is now capable of using the Kamehameha.
  • The Volume 4 episode "Into Asylum" has a Shout-Out to Se7en. What's in the box? A severed head.
  • Telekinetic Big Bad Sylar is searching for his father with a semi-apprentice figure with daddy issues... called Luke.
  • Everyone loves Waffles... just like on that other show Brian Fuller worked on.
    • There once was this... frog who lived with her mother and father and brother and Mr. Muggles...
  • As a child a person with powers is trapped in a "Relocation" camp full of people who are different. They survive but their family and countless others are killed by their captors in a mass wipe out. They go on to help form a group of people with abilities to protect their own kind against humanity by any means necessary. Sound like Magneto's origin? Well it's also Angela Petrelli's as per "1961".
  • The Psycho way Sylar deals with his mommy issues.
  • "...cake?"
    • The cake is a LIE!
      • The cake made them DIE.
  • Bennet: (freaking out Mohinder) I'm sure there's a lot of Sureshs where you're from. Its like Smith... or Anderson.
    • Also the "5 Years Gone" wardrobe.
  • Also, one MacGuffin is a compass that doesn't point north.
  • A troubled teen named Jeremy and "we could have saved him."
  • There's a kid with the power to kill people... and then there's Parkman's apple-eating invisible friend...
  • Lydia the tattooed lady has eyes you'll adore so and a torso even more so.
  • "She's the Marle to my Chrono!"
  • Mohinder watches a grainy film with lots of cuts in it that gives cryptic clues about a secret scientific society where everyone involved was killed. It might as well just be called the Orientation film for Coyote Sands, really.
  • Claude Rains is The Invisible Man.
  • Hiro Nakamura might have been named after Hiro Okamura, the Japanese Toyman, most recently seen in Superman/Batman: Public Enemies. Both are Ascended Fanboys who want to be heroes, as opposed to most people in Nakamura's milieu, who can't seem to do anything but complain about it.
  • Hiro's sister calls his and Ando's Dial-a-Hero service Heroes For Hire
  • "Objection, your honor! He's reciting the opening to Quantum Leap!"
  • Hiro and Ando in Vegas, descending an escalator in expensive suits they won by using Hiro's superpowers to gamble.
  • It's been noted that Gabriel Gray looks eerily like Clark Kent and his watch shop has a crystal shaped like the Fortress of Solitude.
  • Not only do we get a children's choir singing the theme from The Greatest American Hero, but William Katt, Ralph Hinkley himself, plays one of Traci's victims. Believe it or not.
  • When Gretchen encourages Claire to investigate her roommate's "suicide" by using the "jump, push, fall" method, she says she saw it on an episode of Crossing Jordan (Tim Kring's previous series - and both shows have episodes called... you guessed it).
  • Mr. Linderman's casino is the Montecito.
  • When he sees Isaac's painting of him fighting a dinosaur, Hiro's first response is, "What if I step on a bug? I could change history..."
  • Can it be a coincidence when the woman who played Serena Southerlyn is taking pains to deny that she is "shoving my liberal agenda down your throat"?
• Shrouded in Myth: Both Mr. Bennet and Sylar seem to have something of a legendary reputation amongst the super-powered community; Bennet as the guy who comes when superpeople misbehave to kick their ass, and Sylar as the unstoppable power thief who hunts you down and steals your brains.
• Shut UP, Hannibal:

Sylar: From cheerleader to stone-cold killer! Who's the monster now? [Ka-chuck. BANG! Busy signal.] Claire: You are.

• Sigil Spam: The logo of The Company is either Sigil Spam or a Running Gag.

Given that it is visible in the Suresh's DNA program, which would make it way older than any possible conspiracy, it's more of a Running Gag.

• Signature Sound Effect: Sylar has his clock ticking whenever he is being particularly evil, and in Volume 3, Mohinder's more... erm... interesting actions are accompanied by the sound of June Bugs.
  • Other good examples are the distinct sounds made by different abilities. Apparently, the Haitian's ability sound was given the name "Haitian Grab" by the production team.
• Sitting on the Roof: Peter in the early episodes. Also the roof of the Deveaux building is a popular meeting place.
  • "The Deveaux Building? Really? Everyone and their mother goes there! Literally!"
• Slipping a Mickey: "Cold Wars" has Bennet unknowingly ingesting a roofied drink and he's hauled back to a hotel room by Peter, Mohinder, and Matt to be interrogated. Especially ironic when Bennet does the same thing to Parkman in the first season. Mohinder pulls this on Sylar in the first season as well.
• Slow Electricity: In "Dual", when the lights go off in the Primatech medical facility's hallway. Possibly justifiable in that maybe Sylar did it that way on purpose.
• The Slow Path: In Season 1, Hiro meets a diner waitress with super memory on the day she is murdered by Sylar. He travels back in time 6 months and lives with her for the interim, falling in love along the way. Conveniently, this is how he learns English.
• Snow Means Cold: Alice Shaw makes it snow in the desert as a test of her weather-manipulation powers.
• Soaperizing
• South of the Border: The Maya y Alejandro subplot in Volume 2, Nathan and Claire's getaway flight.
• Spike Shooter: Perrin Crocker from the comic books has this ability.
• Stalker with a Crush: Invoked almost word-for-word with Gretchen.
  • Sylar, who has stalked Claire since the beginning of the series, has started to show a sexual attraction towards Claire, beginning with the Volume 4 finale, when he suggested, in the creepiest speech in the show's history, that they get married and live together for, literally, the rest of eternity.
• Stalking Is Love: West. Just West.
  • He got better and maintains his prior friendship with Claire via Facebook.
  • West is a pretty vanilla example of this trope. Samuel takes it Up to Eleven.
• The Starscream: Sylar. Trying to recruit him as your Dragon never ends well for you.
• Staying Alive: Sylar. So much so that they don't even bother explaining how he survived seemingly being perma-killed by Claire then left to burn in the Volume Three final showdown (after several episodes they finally throw in some jazz about "melting glass"). He's Sylar, for crying out loud. Of course he survived.
  • And as of the Volume 4 finale it seems not even attacking his weak point For Massive Damage works anymore, eliciting a well-deserved Oh Crap reaction from Danko.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Ryan Hanover, the sexist and unpleasant Marine in "The Recruit" webisodes.
• Stealth Hi Bye: Sylar.
• Stepford Smiler: Angela.
• Steven Ulysses Perhero: Hiro, again.
• Stockholm Shnozzing: Arthur ships Sylar and Elle by locking them together in a cell.
• Stock Super Powers: For a while, they seemed to be going down the list—then they jumped to things like "Ability to Talk To Machines".
• Stop Trick: Some of Hiro's teleports are achieved this way.
• Storming the Castle: Matt and Bennet storming Primatech in the Season 1 finale.
  • In Volume Four, Matt and Peter storm Building 26, armed only with the power to control minds.
• Story-Breaker Power: Peter, Sylar and Hiro have these. Fortunately the writers realized this and Nerfed Peter and Hiro in Volume 3. And those that are overpowered tend to forget how insanely powerful they are at critical moments.
• Story Arc
• The Straight Man: Nathan in any scene he shares with Peter or Hiro.
• Strapped to An Operating Table: Bennet does this to Matt and later to Sylar at Primatech in Volume 1. Mohinder does this to Nathan and Tracy and Arthur does this to Peter at Pinehearst in Volume 3.
• String Theory: Both Mohinder's map of specials and Future Hiro's map of time.
• Stuffed Into the Fridge: Many female characters (see Unfortunate Implications in the YMMV section). However, Charlie appeared to be climbing back out, only to be Stuffed into a different fridge by the Volume 5 Big Bad.
• Stupid Sacrifice: Nathan in the Season 1 finale. We all remember that Peter can't die, right?
• Subways Suck: Subverted -- Future Badass Hiro stops a subway train with his time manipulation powers.
• Super Empowering: Ando's power.
• Super Family Team: The Petrelli's... sometimes.
• Super Human Trafficking: The Company.
• Superhuman Transfusion: The effects of Claire and Adam's blood when donated.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Super-powered parents have super-powered kids, though this is at least partly the result of a breeding program by The Company.
  • Subverted With Niki, Tracy, and Barbara who are identical triplets (just go with it) with powers but got them artificially.
• Superpower Lottery: Sylar, Peter, Hiro, Eden, and perhaps definetly Matt now. Hopefully he won't be killed/depowered for it. Arthur Petrelli, Alice Shaw.
• Superpower Meltdown: Ted, Peter, Gabriel/Sylar (in an alternative future).
  • This is what kills Meredith at the end of Volume 3.
    • Meredith's death isn't confirmed. Until stated otherwise, she's MIA.
• Super Senses: Dale Smither from Volume 1 had super hearing.
• Super Serum: The Volume 3 MacGuffin.
• Super Soldier: The Pinehearst Marines in Volume 3, most notably Scott and Rachel Mills.
• Super Weight:
  • Type -1: Alejandro, most people without abilities.
  • Type 0: Sandra, Kyle, Caitlin, Ando (pre-Volume 4), early-series Mohinder.
  • Type 1: Noah, Danko.
  • Type 2: Most of the specials.
  • Type 3: Hiro, Ted, Sylar, Peter (Volumes 1-3; he becomes a wild card in Volume 4), Arthur Petrelli, Samuel at full power.
• Sword Fight: Hiro and his father, Hiro and Kensei.

T

• Take Your Time: With some rather Squicky implications. Noah learns that the eclipse temporarily neutralizes powers. Seeing this as his chance to kill Sylar for good, he grabs a sniper rifle and sets up where, through the scope, he can see Sylar and Elle kissing, fully clothed. End episode. At the opening of the next episode, Sylar and Elle are post-coital in a sleeping bag, and Noah's still out there aiming...
• Taking You with Me: The first battle between Peter and Sylar ends with them grappling and throwing each other off a 30 ft drop off the bleachers. Peter died, but came back to life, Sylar slowed his fall with TK and limped away.
• Tangled Family Tree: The Petrelli's immediate family thus far includes Angela and Arthur, Angela's sister Alice, sons Peter and Nathan, Nathan's wife and legitimate kids, and Claire. Claire, in turn, has the Bennets as her foster family as well as biological mother Meredith, making Meredith's brother Flint her uncle. Sylar was teased for a bit as a third Petrelli brother; this was a lie but he's now Nathan's Replacement Goldfish.
• The Taxi: Mohinder's day job at the beginning of the series.
• Taxidermy Is Creepy: Sylar's biological father, Samson, turned to taxidermy to keep his hands busy after he stopped killing people.
• Taxidermy Terror: Sylar steals a rabbit from his father's trailer and leaves it in plain sight at Danko's apartment. Danko is understandably weirded out.
• Team Spirit: A recurring theme in Season 1 is that the characters get a lot more accomplished when they work together. Played fairly subtly most of the time, but made very obvious in the finale, where only by the combined efforts of Peter, Matt, Niki, Hiro, Claire, and Nathan is Sylar defeated and New York saved.
  • Made explicit in Peter's conversations with Claude. Claude maintains that relationships are distractions, but Peter eventually concludes that it is only by letting other people in that he can fully realize his heroic potential.
  • It's also worth noting that any time the characters don't work together, the results tend to be... not pretty.
• Technicolor Fire: Flint's pyrokinetic fire burns blue because unlike his sister he embraced his powers and practiced burning it REALLY hot. Peter's fire looks like this too since he mimicked it from Flint.
• Terrible Ticking: The ticking clock sound effect that plays whenever Sylar's up to his old tricks evokes this trope. Even though it's not literally a ticking he can hear, it symbolizes that he can see how everything works in a way no one else can, which drives him batty.
• Thanksgiving Special
• That Man Is Dead: Sylar pretty much refuses to answer to "Gabriel" most of the time, but goes back to it when he's repressing his "hunger".
  • Subverted and made all the more intriguing by the fact that when he is Gabriel repressing the hunger, he takes the opposite stance, refusing to answer to Sylar. His little identity crisis is edging dangerously close to split personality disorder (now THAT would be awesome).
    • Makes one wonder what "Nathan" will end up answering to.
      • "I'm not Darth Sylar anymore. I'm X now."
• That's What I Would Do: Nathan cites his belief that the government would capture and experiment on anybody with powers as exactly what he would do in the situation. And then he does.
• Theme Music Power-Up: Sylar, Peter, and Spider-Mo
• There Are No Therapists: ...and that one time there was a therapist, she only survived for half an episode.
• There Is No Try^[context?]
• They'd Cut You Up: Seems to be the plot of Volume 4.
  • This is why HRG keeps Claire's abilities a secret for most of Volume 1. And he should know. After all, he supervises the cutting.
• Third Line, Some Waiting
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Kirby Plaza, Peter (to Niki): Thanks, I've got this. Go back to your family.
• The Three Faces of Eve/The Hecate Sisters: They don't form a Power Trio, but the three main female characters all have elements of these tropes. Claire is the Child, Niki is the Seductress/Mother, and Angela is the Crone.
• Time Travel: Hiro Nakamura multiple times. Peter, too, for some apocalypse storyboards.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The "Fantastic Aesop" entry above pretty much covers it
• Title Drop: Ted Sprague in Volume 1: "If we can help ourselves, we could save others. We could be... heroes."
  • If you count "hero", then there are lots. Most of them ironic. A rare non-ironic example is said after Peter saves Claire from Sylar:

Claire: You're totally my hero.

• • Of all people, Sylar does this in the series finale when Claire is about to reveal her ability to the world:

Peter: "What the hell does she think she's doing? She's going to change everything." Sylar: "That's right. It's a brave new world."

• The Tokyo Fireball: In New York in one timeline. Some prophetic paintings suggested one was up and coming for Washington D.C.
• Too Dumb to Live: Claire edged dangerously close to this in Volume Two. She knows the kind of people looking for her family. She knows her flyboy has sworn a vendetta against her father. She's caught him spying on her at her house. How certain are we that Sylar didn't steal her brain? However, the true champions of stupidity have got to be Maya and Alejandro, with Alejandro actually getting killed by Sylar and Maya trusting Sylar completely, even after she's found out that he was wanted in connection with his mother's murder. Also, Mohinder Suresh is an example of this most of the time, but especially in the Volume 3 opener.
  • Then there's Peter, who in the very first episode decides to test his theory of Flight by jumping off the roof of an apartment building. Peter, I think I've spotted a tiny flaw in your experiment design. Can you see it?
  • Nathan too from time to time.
• Took a Level in Badass: After spending Volume 2 wallowing in her own pain, Claire spent Volume 3 kicking ass and generally being much more proactive in dealing with life's hard knocks.
  • Matt seems to have taken at least half a level in Volume 4.
  • Micah apparently took one in Volume 3. In Volume 4, he's adopted the codename "Rebel" and is organizing a resistance effort against the government.
  • Peter does this, twice. First, by actually getting a grasp on his powers after his training with Claude. Later, when his DEPOWERING followed by his new NERFED ability, he becomes one of the most strategically intelligent characters of the show.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: One result of Peter's time with Claude, if the end of "Unexpected" is anything to go by.
• Toplessness From the Back: Lydia the carnie from Volume 5 has some sort of precognitive power that only works by displaying images of people important in the immediate future... on her back in Samuel's tattoo ink. She's topless in one scene to display the tattoos.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot
• Trademark Favorite Food: Hiro loves waffles. Everybody else seems to love blueberry pancakes. Sylar prefers pie.
• Tragic Hero: Mystery Sock Isaac.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Ok, Heroes. I get it, you don't want to kill anyone. But why put the last minute of the finale, featuring one Noah Bennet, in a finale promo trailer airing for weeks, if you are putting him in a situation that he could possibly die in a cliffhanger in the penultimate episode!?
• Training from Hell: Claude's training of Peter involved beating him with a stick and throwing him off of a skyscraper, Hiro's training Adam to be a Samurai by introducing him to the 90 Angry Ronin, also standard Company training is done The Spartan Way.
  • Not to mention Meredith's training Claire to teach her regeneration isn't everything...
• Trauma Conga Line: Peter, ESPECIALLY in Volume 3.
• Trickster Mentor: Again, Claude, whose training methods involve gleefully whacking his pupil repeatedly with a pole and throwing him off a building. Given the circumstances, it's often hard to tell whether Claude sincerely cares about his pupil or hates his guts.
• Try Not to Die: Bob to Mohinder in Volume 2.
• Turtle Power!: He's actually a tortoise, but Matt would, in all likelihood, respond, "Wait, there's a difference?"
• Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty: EVERYONE!!!
• Twin Threesome Fantasy: Referenced, along with Screw Yourself.
• Two Lines, No Waiting
• Tyke Bomb: Elle Bishop.

U

• Umbrella of Togetherness: Peter and Simone. Awww. Redone in the online comic to include Peter and Mohinder instead!
• The Un-Reveal: HRG's first name. Of course, eventually we find out that it's Noah.

Sandra Bennet: It is so funny how all of y'all call him Mr. Bennet over there. I've always just known him as – (Sees Mr. Muggles chewing on Sylar's shoelaces.) Stop that, you!

• • Happens a few times with Linderman in Season 1. One of the characters is all set to meet with him - only to be confronted with a middle-man instead. Nathan eventually comes face to face with him in "Parasite".
• Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: Sylar in Volume 3 after acquiring the ability to sense truth. Sylar is utterly casual in the elevator, as is his fellow passenger... albeit for different reasons given Sylar is drenched in blood.
  • Another memorable one happened all the way back near the finale of Volume 1, where Matt, Niki, HRG, and D.L all find themselves sharing an elevator (the last time Matt saw Niki, she was throwing him out a 10 story window... which she outright reminds him of just prior to getting into the elevator). Complete with cheesy muzak in the background.
• Underwater Kiss: Claire and Alex in a pool.
• Unexplained Recovery: Now that we know Linderman was a hallucination, Fridge Logic means that, for the time being, we must assume this is how Nathan recovered from being shot, twice. Then again, it worked for Matt and he got shot four times. Sucks for D.L., I guess. Although, given sudden religious streak Nathan embarks on shortly after his death, there are certain implications that he was either miraculously saved or just got really, really lucky.
  • Future!Peter kissed him on the forehead just before he revives, so it is always possible he had gained Hiro's mother's power at some point in the future, through judicious time travel.
  • It seems Nathan's luck has run out, as his character is Killed Off for Real (with his pseudo-personality residing for a while in a mind-blanked Sylar).
  • Tracy Strauss had this after being frozen-shot by Danko in Volume 4: come Volume 5, she's a water-toting ice queen with a score to settle with Building 26's remaining occupants.
• The Unfavorite: A staple of Petrelli family dynamics. Also Mohinder was the unfavorite to his dead little sister.
• Unflinching Walk: Volume 5 Big Bad Samuel gets a totally badass one; after some corrupt cops brutally murder an evolved human, Samuel uses his earthbending ability to level the police station, then walks towards the camera as the station collapses behind him.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: As one editor joked during one episode (and this is but the most spectacular example of many), "Wouldn't you know it? That's the second time in as many years the corpse of a cute blonde girl suddenly vanished off one of our operating tables!"
  • A truck driver who picks up a hitchhiking Hiro and Ando learns that the baby the two of them are carrying has the power to shut down machinery (i.e. the trucker's truck) when upset (which is pretty much all the time). His only reaction is to politely ask them to remove their "magic baby" from his truck so he can continue on his journey. It's especially notable that this polite nonreaction occurs in the middle of a plot arc about how normals would be so threatened by the existence of supers that they would commit mass genocide against them if they ever learned about them. There's either something very profound there, or it's just a funny piece of dissonance in a comic relief scene.
    • He most likely didn't know how to react to a "magic baby". And it was the government who were shown to be paranoid of Specials, not mankind as a whole. We've seen several ordinary people on the show happy to be around evolved humans without being threatened.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: This is basically the mantra of all of the show's Big Bads.