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Heroes (TV series)/Tropes R-U: Difference between revisions
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** Volume 5: Redemption seems to be taking this as literally as possible. Victim #1: {{spoiler|"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 [[Sealed Inside a Person Shaped Can|Person Shaped Can]] that was keeping Sylar sealed away. Nice going there.}}
** Interestingly averted with {{spoiler|Sylar}}, where it may actually work out.
* [[Redemption in the Rain]] / [[Happy Rain]]: "Into Asylum." Angela and Peter in one scene, Sylar in another.
* [[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.
* [[Reluctant Mad Scientist]]: Mohinder Suresh in the first two seasons, particularly the "Five Years Gone" episode.
* [[Repetitive Name]] - Peter Petrelli
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*** "How to Stop an Exploding Man" - {{spoiler|"Call me Noah."}}
*** And throughout the season... {{spoiler|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 [[Friends Rent Control|have money for groceries.]]
* [[Right-Hand Hottie]]: The Haitian, to Noah Bennet. Played by former Hugo Boss model Jimmy Jean-Louis, no less.
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* [[Rival Turned Evil]]: {{spoiler|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 <s>string collection</s> 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 unpleaseant "Bad touch" vibes around Claire.
* [[Running Gag]]: {{spoiler|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.
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** 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 Two 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 [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|Great Power And Great Insanity]]. And then abandoned that plotline again.
** Danko is very clearly HRG's [[Evil Counterpart|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 This Person Save the World|"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 {{spoiler|Sylar wasn't the direct cause of the explosion}}, preventing Sylar from absorbing Claire's ability wasn't actually necessary to stopping it.
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** Sylar's original use of his power to [[Watchmen|fix watches]].
*** Not to mention that the big plan in Volume One is to {{spoiler|destroy New York to unite the world}}...
** Hiro, {{spoiler|after getting mindwiped}}, is in shock at then-recent [[Marvel Comics]] plots: "[[Captain America (comics)]] is dead!? [[Spider-Man]] [[Civil War (Comic Book)|revealed his secret identity]]!? And [[The Hulk]] is [[Red Hulk|RED]]!?"
** Apparently, Ando is now capable of using the [[Dragonball Z|Kamehameha]].
** The Volume 4 episode Into Asylum has a [[Shout-Out]] to [[Se7en]]. What's in the box? {{spoiler|A severed head.}}
** [[Mind Over Matter|Telekinetic]] [[Big Bad]] [[Luke, I Am Your Father|Sylar is searching for his father]] with a semi-apprentice figure with daddy issues... called ''[[Star Wars|Luke]]''.
** Everyone loves Waffles... just like on that [[Dead Like Me|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 neccessary. Sound like Magneto's origin? Well it's also Angela Petrelli's as per "1961".
** The [[Psycho]] [[Incredibly Lame Pun|way]] Sylar deals with his mommy issues.
** ''[[Portal (series)|"...cake?"]]''
*** The cake is a LIE!
**** [[Incredibly Lame Pun|The cake made them DIE]].
** ''[[The Matrix|Bennet: (freaking out Mohinder) I'm sure there's a lot of Sureshs where you're from. Its like Smith... or Anderson.]]''
*** [[Badass Longcoat|Also the "5 Years Gone" wardrobe.]]
** Also, one [[MacGuffin]] is a [[Pirates of the Caribbean|compass that doesn't point north.]]
** [[Pearl Jam|A troubled teen named Jeremy and "we could have saved him."]]
** [[Death Note|There's a kid with the power to kill people... and then there's Parkman's apple-eating invisible friend...]]
** [[Marx Brothers|Lydia the tattooed lady]] has eyes you'll adore so & [[Toplessness From the Back|a torso even moreso]].
** [[Chrono Trigger|"She's the Marle to my Chrono!"]]
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* [[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 [[Run for the Border|getaway flight]].
* [[Spike Shooter]]: Perrin Crocker from the comic books has this ability.
* [[Stalker with a Crush]]: Invoked almost word-for-word with {{spoiler|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 [[The Dragon|Dragon]] [[Evil Is Not a Toy|''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 unpleaseant Marine in "The Recruit" webisodes.
* [[Stealth Hi Bye]]: Sylar.
* [[Stepford Smiler]]: Angela.
* [[Steven Ulysses Perhero]]: Hiro, again.
* [[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".
* [[Stockholm Shnozzing]]: {{spoiler|[[Evil Overlord|Arthur]] [[Shipper on Deck|ships]] Sylar and Elle by [[Locked in a Freezer|locking them together in a cell]].}}
* [[Stop Trick]]: Some of Hiro's teleports are achieved this way.
* [[Storming the Castle]]: Matt and Bennet storming Primatech in the Season One finale.
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* [[Strapped to An Operating Table]] - Bennet does this to Matt and later to Sylar at Primatech in Volume 1. {{spoiler|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]]) However, {{spoiler|Charlie appeared to be climbing back out, only to be Stuffed into a different fridge by the Volume 5 [[Big Bad]].}}
* [[Stupid Sacrifice]]: {{spoiler|Nathan}} in the Season 1 finale. We all remember that Peter ''[[Healing Factor|can't die]]'', right?
* [[Subways Suck]]: Subverted -- [[Future Badass]] Hiro stops a subway train with his time manipulation powers.
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* [[Sword Fight]]: Hiro and his father, Hiro and Kensei
* [[Take Your Time]]: With some rather [[Squick|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 [[Mind Over Matter|TK]] and limped away.
* [[Tangled Family Tree]]: The Petrelli's immediate family thus far includes Angela and Arthur, {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|was teased for a bit as a [[Long Lost Sibling|third Petrelli brother]]; [[From a Certain Point of View|this was a lie]] but he's now Nathan's [[Replacement Goldfish]].}}
* [[Taxidermy Is Creepy]]: Sylar's biological father, Samson, turned to taxidermy to keep his hands busy after he stopped killing people.
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** 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 realise his heroic potential.
** It's also worth noting that [[Divided We Fall|any time the characters]] ''[[Divided We Fall|don't]]'' [[Divided We Fall|work together]], the results tend to be... [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|not pretty]].
* [[Technicolor Fire]]: Flint's pyrokinetic fire burns blue because unlike {{spoiler|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.
* [[Christmas Special|Thanksgiving Special]]
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** 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 {{spoiler|"Nathan"}} will end up answering to.
**** {{spoiler|[[Knights of the Old Republic|"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. {{spoiler|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]]
* [[Theyd Cut You Up|They'd Cut You Up]]: Seems to be the plot of Volume Four.
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* [[Third Line, Some Waiting]]
* [[Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo]]
* [[This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself]]: Kirby Plaza, Peter ([[Lady of War|to Niki]]): [[Honor Before Reason|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 [[The Three Faces of Eve|Child]], Niki is the [[The Three Faces of Eve|Seductress]]/[[The Hecate Sisters|Mother]], and Angela is the [[The Hecate Sisters|Crone]].
* [[Time Travel]]: Hiro Nakamura multiple times. Peter, too, for some [[Story-Boarding the Apocalypse|apocalypse storyboards]].
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* [[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]]: <s>Mystery Sock</s> Isaac
* [[Trailers Always Spoil]]: Ok, Heroes. I get it, you don't want to kill anyone. {{spoiler|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 [[Die or Fly|throwing him off of a skyscraper]], Hiro's training Adam to be a Samurai by introducing him to the [[Good Thing You Can Heal|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 Two
* [[Turtle Power]]!: [[Misplaced Wildlife|He's actually a tortoise]], but Matt would, in all likelihood, respond, "[[Book Dumb|Wait, there's a difference?]]"
* [[Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty]]: EVERYONE!!!
* [[Twin Threesome Fantasy]]: Referenced, along with [[Screw Yourself]]
* [[Two Lines, No Waiting]]
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* [[Umbrella of Togetherness]]: Peter and Simone. Aww. Redone in the online comic to include [[Ho Yay|Peter and Mohinder]] instead!
* [[Uncomfortable Elevator Moment]]: Sylar in Volume Three after {{spoiler|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 One, 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.
* [[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.
* [[Underwater Kiss]]: Claire and Alex in a pool.
* [[Unexplained Recovery]]: {{spoiler|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.}}
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** Happens a few times with [[The Ghost|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".
* [[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 Bad|Big Bads]].
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