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Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Difference between revisions
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (view source)
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[[File:SVUopening.jpg|frame]]
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* Warner: unethical medical practices
* Rollins: Rape and sexual assault {{spoiler|since it happened to her, possibly by a superior}}. Now expanded to include {{spoiler|gambling}}, though so far she's handling her problems quite sensibly.
* Amaro: Cheating and deception, since {{spoiler|he suspected his ex-military wife of cheating on him with an army buddy. Bit him in the rear when at least one of her "dates" was with a shrink}}.
This trope works backwards too; we learn more about the detectives by noticing what kinds of people they empathize with. When the usually cool attorney Casey Novak is uncharacteristically lenient to a young girl who committed vehicular manslaughter while off prescription medicine (thanks to following the advice of a popular artist who was against them, after his own tragic story), you later find out that, quite predictably, she has a [[Broken Bird|personal history]] with mental illness - her ex-fiancé (who she abandoned and later found in the streets) suffered from schizophrenia.
Detective (later Sergeant) John Munch is a crossover character who started out in the (originally unconnected) show ''[[Homicide: Life On the Street]]''. Also, Captain Cragen appeared in the early seasons of ''[[Law and Order]]''.
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** Never again is erroneous. Olivia takes issue with Porter's weak evidence against environmentalists in "Infiltrated". The episode "Denial" (in the same season as "Wrath") also shows Olivia suggesting that more evidence should be gathered before charging a murder suspect.
** Cragen and Elliot have also had weeks where they've been forced to learn that railroading suspects can lead to wrongful convictions and they need to consider that the suspects they finger might be innocent after all before pushing it. But then continue to operate like that at least every other week.
*** This was subverted in the episode "Double Strands", where they look into the background of a seemingly-guilty suspect, and find the true culprit, {{spoiler|the original suspect's twin brother}}.
* [[Aluminium Christmas Trees]]: The 2011 episode "Flight" seems to be obviously based on the Dominic Strauss-Kahn case, but in fact predated the incident by several months.
* [[Always Female]]: The ADA. There have been more than half a dozen recurring ADAs, all of whom lacked a Y-chromosome:
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{{quote|'''Cragen:''' You find me a replacement for Alex Cabot?
'''Blaine:''' Still Looking. Stuck with me for now. }}
* [[Ambiguous Situation]]: [[Law and Order SVU]] loves to leave stuff unresolved for the audience to ponder. Usually it's on the simple level whether the guy is guilty or not (such as in the episode "Doubt"), but sometimes they take it to a much deeper level. The detectives just keep spawning new theories, and none of them either gets verified. For example, the episode "Slaves" features a husband, his wife, and their nanny/girlfriend/SexSlave Elena. They keep the relationship hidden...
** ''Either'' because Elena is in the country illegally, and also because her conservative aunt and other relatives would not approve of her living in a polyamorous relationship,
** ''Or'' because they have kidnapped Elena and held her against her will until [[Stockholm Syndrome]] set in.
** So, it's pretty much [[Safe, Sane, and Consensual]], [[Polyamory]] and [[Casual Kink]] versus [[Complete Monster]] and [[A Match Made in Stockholm]]. The husband claims the first option, but that might just be [[From a Certain Point of View]] or even [[Blatant Lies]]. As for Elena, she never gets a voice in the matter. The kidnapping theory is implied to be the correct one, but if it's actually verified then that happens ''after'' the episode is over.
*** The only outright verification given for the [[Complete Monster]] viewpoint comes from the wife, and only AFTER she has been...
*** A. proven guilty of murdering Elena's aunt without her husband's knowledge or consent.
*** B. force-fed "oh, go ahead and blame it on your husband anyway" by the detectives as a [["Get Out of Jail Free" Card]].
* [[And Starring]]: The credits have always ended with "And Dann Florek". The credits have always started with "Starring Christopher Meloni, Mariska Hargitay, Richard Belzer". In the first season, Florek immediately followed Belzer; as of Season 12, there have been a total of eight people credited in between the two of them (at different times).
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== B ==
* [[Bad Boss]]: The abusive female boss of Luscious Grape wine, who's a cross between [[wikipedia:Leona Helmsley|Leona Helmsley]] and {{spoiler|[[wikipedia:R. Budd Dwyer|R. Budd Dwyer]] }} in that her dog got all her money while her abused employees got nothing after she {{spoiler|held a news conference to publicly blame everyone except herself for her misfortunes and then shot herself in the head}}.
* [[The Bad Guys Are Cops]]: At least in ''Bedtime''. Who killed Cal Cutler? {{spoiler|Oh look, it was the former patrol cop played by Jaclyn Smith! And another surprise! Cal Cutler isn't dead after all!}}
* [[Backstab Backfire]]: At the end of "Criminal". One man has a gun to the head of another, intending to kill him, but is eventually convinced to spare his life and let the police take him into custody for a crime he committed. As he walks away, the guy he wanted to kill picks up the discarded gun and attempts to shoot him in the back--only to be gunned down by a police sniper.
* [[Bavarian Fire Drill]]: ''Authority''.
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* [[Cold Reading]]: Done to the cops by the villain in "Pure."
* [[Conspiracy Theorist]]: Munch. Hearing a police officer rant about the nefarious machinations of The Man make them sound all the more ridiculous.
** On the rare occasion an episode will hilariously turn it into a case of [[Chekhov's Hobby]] whenever the case involves needing to worm through a layer of paranoid conspiracy nuts. Then Munch becomes an effective means of getting through to them.
* [[Continuity Nod]]: Munch listing the former partners who have left him? Cassidy, Jeffries, and even Bolander from ''[[Homicide: Life On the Street]]''.
* [[Crime and Punishment Tropes]]
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* [[Double Standard]]: The treatment of female villains and male victims on the show is vastly different then the treatment of male villains and female victims.
* [[Double Standard Abuse (Female on Male)]]: This was the general belief for the majority of the episode "Ridicule". This belief was due to {{spoiler|the victim Peter Smith being a stripper}} and male actor. Also, many people thought he was lying about being raped because he was a man.
* [[Downer Ending]]: Starting with the events in "Venom", "[[Meaningful Name|Screwed]]". Everything goes downhill for the cast as their past mistakes come back to bite them. Not to mention the results of those mistakes become the key reason why {{spoiler|[[The Bad Guy Wins|Darius Parker walks away]] [[Karma Houdini|scot- free]]}}.
** A significant chunk of the episodes fall under this.
** Another big example is "Unstable". Basically, a serial rapist was caught, exonerating another man falsely imprisoned for his crime. {{spoiler|However, either due to the actions of the [[Cowboy Cop]] or the perp escaping, the guy dies and is therefore unable to testify, meaning the wrongfully imprisoned man doesn't get released.}}
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** The end of ''Smoked''. Despite the three men responsible for her mother's death being incarcerated (the rapist, the man the rapist hired to intimidate his victim but went one step further and murdered her, and an ATF agent who gave the murder weapon and then tried to cover it up), her daughter {{spoiler|goes into the precinct, and after finding out from Benson who they all are, shoots all three and also several other innocent people for no good reason. What's more is that the murderer survives and eggs her on, saying that he should have killed her as well. She then tries to shoot him again, but Stabler fatally wounds her and she dies moments later. At the end, at least four people are dead (the girl, the rapist and the ATF agent, and the recurring character Sister Peg), while the psychopath who murdered her mother right in front of her survives. [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]], full stop.}}
*** Not to mention this leads to {{spoiler|Elliot Stabler leaving the force}}.
* [[Dramatic Irony]]: Olivia frequently expresses her fears that the combination of an alcoholic mother and a rapist father will one day make her into a monster; Elliot reassures her that she's fine, and that it's not all about the genes.. but he's the son of a mentally unstable mother and a physically abusive father, and he's been violent with at least one of his kids, and his daughter has the same mental difficulties as his mother.
* [[Dressing as the Enemy]]: Undercover gigs are a staple of this show. One episode in particular, "Demons", had Elliot pretending to be a convicted sex offender in order to get close to a rapist who had just been released from prison. Not only does this [[Not So Different|challenge Elliot with his own issues]], but at one point said sex offender orders Elliot to [[If You're So Evil Eat This Kitten|rape a teenage girl]] while he watches. It's as intense as it sounds.
* [[Driven to Suicide]]: Often spurred by somebody crossing the [[Despair Event Horizon]]; most often a victim who's given up on seeing justice done or a former suspect who couldn't take the team's usual methods of interrogation.
** A big one is {{spoiler|the mentally ill witness whom Olivia bullies into temporarily stopping taking his meds so he can testify in a specially difficult case. She later finds the dude's lifeless body, as he has hung himself due to both her behavior towards him and the side-effects. [[Karma Houdini|That's the only punishment she gets]] for basically ''driving a mentally-unstable person to commit suicide''.}}
* [[Driven to Villainy]]: Seen in many guest stars, often thanks to the actions of the detectives.
** One notable example is in "Spectacle" where a girl is taken captive and raped with one of her kidnappers threatening to kill her when confronted unless his demands are followed. {{spoiler|Turns out it was all a ruse (with his partner and ''the victim herself'') to get the police to search for his younger brother, after being pushed aside so many times for other events, [[Genre Savvy|knowing that they would do so]] [[Missing White Woman Syndrome|if the life of a young girl was at stake]].}}
* [[Drop the Hammer]]: "[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Hammered]]".
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== E ==
* [[Early Installment Weirdness]]: The first season was, surprisingly enough, probably the closest the franchise has gotten to outright comedy. Obviously, given the show's subject matter, this resulted in a lot of [[Mood Whiplash]] moments (this is ''very'' evident in the Pilot). This is in stark contrast to the melodramatic and somber atmosphere associated with the show today.
* [[Empty Cop Threat]]: A favorite trope of the entire franchise. Don't expect anyone to be called out on it no matter how much they use it to strong-arm people into talking.
* [[Enhance Button]]: Used often. Notably deconstructed in ''Authority'' guest-starring [[Robin Williams]]. He acts as his own defense attorney and questions the techie on the software used to enhance a photograph that showed him leaving a library, which was the key piece of evidence against him. He coaxed the techie into admitting that the software can only make educated guesses based on various factors of the picture itself and can't actually recreate the scene shown the photograph in higher resolutions. Williams's character then presented the original photograph, where his face is too shadowed to be seen. It works and the jury lets him go.
* [[Ephebophile]]: The writers think these guys are scum. [[Writer on Board|We get it already.]]
* [[Every Car Is a Pinto]]: Occurs to hilarious effect in "Bullseye". A suspected pedophile takes off in his car outside of a courtroom and drives into the side of a truck at a relatively low speed. The crowd reacts with shock as the officers sprint towards the crash, and after several seconds have passed, the car explodes in a spectacular fireball complete with several-story high flames. From minor front end damage that barely even crumpled the bodywork.
* [[Evil Counterpart]]: [[Robin Williams]]' character in "Authority". As a freedom-loving, anti-authoritarian anarchist whose "noble" goals are actually a cover for more selfish personal motives, he forms a poetic contrast to the SVU crew, whose fascistic tendencies are born out of a genuine, if perhaps misguided, desire for the greater good of the people.
* [[Evil Twin]]: the plot of the episode {{spoiler|Double Strands}}. The detectives arrest a suspect for a series of rapes, even tying him via DNA evidence and a distinctive tattoo, but further investigation into the suspect's background leads them to a twin brother that he did not even know about, but knew about him.
* [[Exotic Entree]]: One episode has a character with an animal smuggling ring, whose members eat several of the animals.
* [[Eye Scream]]: In the episode "Quickie", a man who is knowingly spreading around HIV is put on trial. One of the women he has infected comes up to him at the end of part of the trial and sprays him in the face with hydrochloric acid-maiming him and blinding him in one eye. Yikes.
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*** No, the best part has to be Olivia fooling the suspect into confessing by ''pretending'' to be a lesbian, [[Fetish Fuel|swaggering into the interrogation room in a leather jacket.]]
* [[Females Are More Innocent]]: Despite the fact that they have meet several bad women the detectives of this show seem to stubbornly believe this especially if the girl is childbearing age (older women are sometimes considered capable of evil). The worst offender is probably Olivia who has at various times refused to believe that a woman was capable of murder, bent over backwards to prove a vicious female rapist and mutilator was justified in her actions, refused to arrest a girl for filing false charges and killed an even younger girl, and once even argued that [[Double Standard Rape (Female on Female)]] because a teenage girl that raped and killed her sister was also abused when she was younger. (She was overruled on the last two).
* [[Flanderisation]]: UnStabler. If you go back and watch the pilot, El is actually the more sensible one of the two of them, and chews out Liv for yelling at a victim's wife. Add eight seasons, shake, and serve the resulting king of the [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique]] in a highball glass. [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Or maybe that should be screwball.]]
** This could be explained, at least partially, by Olivia being new to SVU in the first season. As she gets more used to dealing with victims, she becomes the more rational of the two. Especially because in one episode they mention that Eliot's been in SVU for something like six times longer than the average cop.
* [[Foreshadowing]]: In "Bedtime", Jaclyn Smith greets Stabler and Benson at the front door of her apartment. {{spoiler|Note that she does not seem to let them inside, and yells to 'Pietro' that she's stepping out for a moment. Gee, I wonder what she could be hiding?....Cal Cutler maybe?}}
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* [[Good Cop, Bad Cop]]: Has been subverted, averted and played straight at various points through the series. It also Lampshaded on multiple occasions (usually by [[Genre Savvy]] suspects). Justified, because cops actually do use this technique in real life, though less blatantly.
* [[Gory Discretion Shot]]: When investigators find a woman's chopped-off and buried breasts the camera pans up as the box is opened, so all we see is the disgusted reaction of the investigator.
** Also an episode that opened with two guys finding a drowned baby in a cooler.
* [[Halfway Plot Switch]]: Done more each season.
* [[Harmful to Minors]]: the unit has to deal with cases like this quite regularly.
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* [[Hide Your Pregnancy]]: Mariska Hargitay
* [[Hidden Depths]]: The [[Badass]] undercover FBI Agent played by Marcia Gay Harden is also a [[Happily Married]] [[Action Mom|mother]] of two and lives in the girliest apartment ever seen in the series.
* [[Hollywood Law]]: Frequent, a solid "objection" seems to be "anything that upsets me."
* [[Hostage Situation]]: ''Shattered''.
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* [[Karma Houdini]]/[[Ultimate Job Security]]: Over the show's 11 seasons, the SVU detectives have gotten ''at least'' a couple ''dozen'' innocent people killed, either through insane violation of common sense (putting a (wrongly) accused sex offender in the same cell as a biker gang, allowing a blatantly unstable victim to interact with an accused suspect without first searching her for a weapon) or railroading a (incorrect) suspect combined with suggestively leading a traumatized victim or family member to the mindset where they're ready to commit a vigilante execution. They've suffered no consequences for any of these incidents, and even Internal Affairs never brings it up even when they're butting heads with the team. You'd think that after so many deaths somebody would file a civil suit, or at least the media would pick up on the pattern and jump all over it.
** To be fair, none of the detective are [[Magnificent Bastard]] enough to deliberately set up the vigilante executions, but after the first six or seven you'd think they'd have learned some kind of lesson.
* [[Kayfabe Music]]: The show used this twice. Two big scary musicians, suspected of horrible crimes.
** One is a black "gangster" rapper suspected of rape/murder on a white woman. However, he is actually quite naive and has no experience of real crime, his gangster persona being nothing more than a kayfabe persona. {{spoiler|The woman was one of his friends, and he ends up getting killed by a ''real'' gangster (who just happens to be white) as he's trying to help the detectives catch the real villain.}}
** The other is a "vampire" who is afraid of getting HIV from real blood.
* [[Kicked Upstairs]]: Detective John Munch, after over a decade between ''Homicide'' and this series, is finally promoted to Sergeant, due to his taking the exam (which he claims was because of a bar bet). In practice, though, this is mostly just an excuse for keeping him away from the action and offscreen.
* [[The Killer Becomes the Killed]]: "Chameleons" begins with the team going after a sexually motivated spree killer, who ends up being killed by a serial killing prostitute.
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* [[The Lab Rat]]: The Crime Scene Unit {{spoiler|two less as of 2009}}
* [[Lantern Jaw of Justice]]: Stabler's Epic Chin of Justice.
* [[Last of His Kind|Last of its Kind]] The only remaining first-run series in a franchise that once roamed the NBC schedule like buffalo.
* [[Left Hanging]]: The season eleven episode "Savior" did this. A young prostitute goes into premature labor and her baby is put on life support. The mother then runs away, giving power of attorney to Olivia, effectively giving Olivia the choice of whether the baby lives or dies. The episode ends with the baby needing immediate brain surgery and the doctors hammering Olivia for a decision that she never gives. This turns into a case of [[What Happened to the Mouse?]], as neither the baby nor the mother are ever seen or heard from again.
** Which becomes [[Fridge Horror]], as there's a very, ''very'' sound reason [[Downer Ending|why the baby wouldn't be heard from again]]...
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** And the time that Cragan found a child that had been missing for years in a case that had always grated him. Turns out said kid was in a perfectly loving foster family only to be taken away from them once his biological father is discovered.
* [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]]: Occasionally there are characters based on real-life celebrities such as the [[Michael Jackson]] and Jack [[Mc Clellan]] stand ins in "Sick" and "Confession" respectively.
* [[No Ending]]: The episode featuring Billy Campbell as an art professor accused of raping his student. We never find out whether he was found guilty or not.
* [[No Periods, Period]]: Averted in one episode. A serial rapist kept track of his numerous victims' menstrual cycles because his entire intention was to impregnate them.
** Another episode had a [[Stalker with a Crush]] (sorta) acquit herself when her blood was found at a crime scene: She and the victim's husband were about to have sex, but her period came. [[Squick|And she kept the sheets.]]
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** Played straight at a number of points in an episode with MS patients.
* [[Older Than They Look]]: Invoked in "Pretend," which involves a 16-year-old high school student who {{spoiler|turns out to be a 28-year-old woman who's been posing as a teen for ten years in order to scam the foster-care system}}.
* [[Old Man Marrying a Child]]: This show has an episode about this. The marriage is not legally binding, but it's treated as a real marriage by the cultists.
* [[Online Alias]]: One season 11 episode has a guy who goes by "Master Bater" online.
* [[Only Sane Man]]: Criminal profiler and FBI Special Agent Dr. George Huang often fills this roll pointing out things like sexuality is complicated and a person can be attracted to both men and women in "Lowdown" while every one else believes that there are [[No Bisexuals]]. Or pointing out in "Clock" that sleeping with some one of legal age that is [[Older Than They Look]] is not a crime. Unfortunately they usually do not listen to his (professional and usually well-informed) opinion.
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* [[Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil]]: The monologue at the beginning of each episodes states that '' sexually based offences are considered especially heinous''.
* [[Reactionary Fantasy]]: A favorite of the whole franchise, but taken to new levels considering this show focuses around sexual crimes. What would the horror of kidnapping a teenage girl be without a lurid recounting of the bondage and sexual perversions she suffered?)
* [[Reality Ensues]]: Season 13 seems to be built completely out of these, from a legal standpoint.
* [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]]: {{spoiler|Fin}} gives one to {{spoiler|Elliot}} near the end of "Cold."
** Olivia launched a classic one to the leader of the teen pregnancy pact in "Babes." Flaunting pregnancy (as a teenager) is one thing, but bringing up Liv's [[Berserk Button|biological clock]] is just asking for it.
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* [[Ripped from the Headlines]]: Just too many.
** To the point where an SVU marathon on the USA channel was called the "Ripped from the headlines SVU marathon".
* [[Romanticized Abuse]]: The show sometimes go for having their cake and eat it too, denouncing the horrors of sexual abuse by displaying it in almost pornographic details.
** One episode, named "Slaves", revels in the details on how a young Romanian woman has been imprisoned, brainwashed and used as sex toy by an American couple. Lots of neatly presented details about the horrors she endured makes for a strange mix of [[Fetish Fuel]] and [[Nausea Fuel]]. {{spoiler|Surprisingly, the detectives let the wife off the hook in exchange for selling out her husband, in spite of the fact that she murdered the girls aunt without even informing her husband about it afterwards.}}
** Another episode, named "Spectacle", runs on the principle that no one can resist watching a good rape. The episode starts with a video broadcast of a woman getting raped by a masked man popping up on the intranet of a university campus. {{spoiler|It turns out that the guy who had the woman kidnapped and raped lost his little brother a long time ago. The brother was kidnapped, and the police gave up searching after a little while. After this cold case is solved, the unsurprising reveal is made that they was simply playing make-believe rape as a little [[Activist Fundamentalist Antics]] plot to get the police's attention.}}
*** To be fair it was said they tried closing the window but couldn't. And everyone couldn't tell if it was real or not.
* [[Running Gag]]: As Benson puts it, "why does everyone think I'm a lesbian?"
** Also the fact that Elliot gets terribly wounded every time he runs into a certain FBI Agent, Dana Lewis. {{spoiler|In the most recent episode "Penetration", he actually gets ''shot'' by her because a bullet she fired at her rapist ricocheted off of a metal beam. The resigned look on his face after getting shot is absolutely [[Crowning Moment of Funny|hilarious.]]}}
{{quote|'''Elliot''': [[Lampshade Hanging|She's not gonna stop until she kills me!]]}}
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* [[Shot in the Ass]]: Happens to {{spoiler|Munch}} when a bunch of {{spoiler|Neo-Nazis shoot up a courtroom.}}
* [[Should Have Thought of That Before X]]: In one disturbing example, a man is framed for raping a teenage girl, and is subsequently abused in prison. He pleads with the officers for protection but they just tell him, "You should have thought about the pecking order before you raped that girl." {{spoiler|He ends up getting killed.}}
* [[Shout-Out]]:
** Elliot and Olivia are named after two of Dick Wolf's children.
** In "Pure", Huang basically outlines the premise of ''[[Lie to Me (TV series)|Lie to Me]]'', including namedropping Lightman's real-life counterpart, Paul Ekman.
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{{quote|'''Fin Tutuola''': Just keep at it; the flashbacks will go away. They did for me.}}
* [[There Should Be a Law]]: To the point where the show isn't even about a sex crime half the time.
* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: In "Personal Fouls", a manager of the basketball star Prince Miller had told detectives he was wearing custom-made prototype shoes. {{spoiler|He wore those shoes when he killed a man who would effectively expose the fact that Prince had been sexually abused by his coach years ago}}.
* [[Took a Level In Badass]]: Melinda Warner in "Shattered"; she resisted passing out and guided Olivia through keeping pressure on her wound and even ''draining her lung, which was filling with blood'' after {{spoiler|she was shot by an emotionally unstable mother whose son had just been killed}}.
* [[Torture Cellar]]: "Signature" had a pretty horrific one.
* [[Totally Eighteen]]: The show sometimes treat the fact that a certain character is over 18 as an annoying technicality that make it harder to arrest people for having sex with them.
** In one episode the sex is consensual and the woman loves her boyfriend. It's just that she happen to have a medical condition that make her [[Older Than They Look|look like lolicon]]. The detectives [[What the Hell, Hero?|consider her chronological, mental and emotional maturity to be a technicality]].
** In another episode, a girl is raped at gunpoint. She looks very young, and throughout the episode she is is consistently portrayed as a teenager who is not yet fully adult - neither intellectually nor emotionally. This is not held against her, instead it simply underscores how vulnerable she is. However, she happens to be 19, so the prosecution must prove that she didn't consent. And of course, the defense has [[Blatant Lies]] about the gun as one of their top priorities.
* [[Trapped by Gambling Debts]]: Random asshole of the week tries to pull this on {{spoiler|Rollins. She}} shows an impressive presence of mind, promptly confessing the problem to fellow officers and seeking help.
* [[Traumatic C-Section]]
* [[Trailers Always Lie]]: Previews made it seem like Tutuola was going [[Vigilante Man]] on the gay-bashers who beat his son's fiancee into a coma; actually {{spoiler|the gay-bashers were found fairly quickly and the real story was about a copy-cat}}.
* [[True Companions]]: A notable subversion. Sometimes it's as if this lot are a family (there are certainly a few intensely close friendships amongst them, and woe betide anyone who hurts Casey Novak), but actually, they turn on each other pretty quickly. Fin and Elliot are consistently awful to each other, Munch took the sergeant's exam behind ''all'' their backs, and there is pretty sketchy suppport when any of them try a [[Clear My Name]] [[Bunny Ears Lawyer]] gambit. It shows up when you compare it to something like ''[[NCIS]]'': when Tony is framed for murder, they all assume he's being framed and do everything they can to keep him in the loop. When Liv is framed for murder, they all act suspicious and do everything they can to stonewall her.
* [[Truth in Television]]/[[This Loser Is You]]: The characters [[Plot Induced Stupidity|occasionally display or outright express offensive, untrue, or ignorant beliefs about rape and sex in general.]] (See [[Double Standard]] for one of many examples.) They often reflect offensive, untrue, or ignorant beliefs about rape and sex in general held by people in [[Real Life]].
* [[Twincest]]: {{spoiler|Rose Macgowan's con-artist character}} truly loves her twin brother (it helps that they [[Half-Identical Twins|don't look]] [[Huge Guy, Tiny Girl|alike at all]]).
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