NCIS/YMMV

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• Angst? What Angst?: Ziva. Though we do get shown some moments, most of the time she's surprisingly chipper considering everything that's happened to her.
• Canon Sue: Arguably, Ziva. Highly skilled assassin and investigator who is extremely young for her skillset and can do no wrong? Strikes a suspect in the throat, leading to his death, and suffers no lasting repercussions? Assaults a crippled Tony with a loaded firearm and is welcomed back into the team with open arms? Her impulse control issues and assaults would get her drummed out of any remotely competent local police force, let alone a federal law enforcement agency. But she's still around...
• Complete Monster:
  • Ari Haswari ends up becoming one.
  • Kyle Boone from "Mind Games" - one of the sickest villains from this show.
  • Nick, the drug dealer in the episode "Angel of Death." After his drug mule got stuck in the hospital with a broken leg, he cared more about getting the drugs than the man's health. After the balloons burst and killed the man, his only concern was getting the drugs from his dead body, even with his sister in tow. After sneaking into the morgue and finding the body, he cracks jokes and prepares to cut him open in front of his sister.
  • Rogue CIA agent Jack Canton from "Marine Down". What a sociopath.
  • Mossad Director Eli David. Raised his children to be weapons, is implied to have had his son's mother killed to "harden" him, and orders his daughter to kill her half brother, and later abandons her to die and then tries to frame her for a murder committed by another agent acting under his orders.
• Crowning Music of Awesome:
  • "Kangaroo Cry" by Blue October; it played during the ending montage to the episode "Faith." Between the song and the montage, it was powerful.
  • A spine-chilling use of Johnny Cash's "Ain't No Grave" in the penultimate episode of Season 7 that leads to a Cliff Hanger.
• Counterpart Comparison: Shown in the S2 Ep12 episode "Doppelgänger", with the team working with civilian law enforcement, which are all extremely similar to the characters.
• Designated Hero: Memetic Badass though he may be, Gibbs can definitely be seen as this, given his occasional penchant for assholish behavior, bending or even breaking the very laws he's supposed to be enforcing, and utter hypocrisy in how he interacts with agents/officers from outside the team who're working on the same case.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: People who dislike and/or outright hate every other character on the show will still love Ducky. But hey, it is Ilya Kuryakin...
• Evil Is Sexy: Agent "Pouty Lips" Lee.
• Fan Disservice: Used to excellent effect in "Kill Ari", contrasting the Kate-visions of McGee, Tony, and Abby (!) with Ducky and Gibbs' decidedly more morbid versions.
• Fan Nickname: The Gibbs Slap, McNicknames, and 'autopsy gremlin' for Palmer.
  • "Gremlin" for Palmer is actually used in the series. Gibbs even mentions that they shouldn't get Palmer wet, or feed him after midnight.
  • Alison Hart, the character played by Rena Sofer for a few episodes of season seven, was referred to by some fans as "Bitchy McLawyer."
• Foe Yay: Between Kate and Ari in the first two seasons, even acknowledged by the other characters. Also, arguably, Tony and Trent Kort, the CIA agent who tried to kill him once.
  • And now Gibbs and M. Allison Hart.
  • With bonus Les Yay in The Curse. A female suspect smiles at Kate and says "Come on home with me, honey." Kate does.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: Early jokes about "why Gibbs has three ex-wives" seem a lot less funny when the real reason becomes clear.
• Ho Yay:
  • In earlier seasons Gibbs and Tony have their moments.
  • McGee and Tony get in many awkward situations.
  • Tony and crook-of-the-week Jeffrey White in the episode "Chained." (Technically doesn't qualify as Foe Yay, since Jeffrey didn't know they were enemies until the last five minutes.)
• Jerk Sue: Kate. Ziva. Also Gibbs, to anyone who is not his team, Ducky, Palmer, or Abby.
• Large Ham: Tony.
  • Abby, at times. "...and AH WIYLL CRUUUUCIFAH HIYM,", anyone?
• Like You Would Really Do It: In one episode, Gibbs is "shot" as part of a sting. In the season 5 finale, killing Jenny Shepard offscreen. Subverted, as they darn well would. She takes four baddies with her, though. And the serial killer's plan to get himself shot and ruin Gibbs' life...it fails. Badly. "Requiem" opens with Gibbs having apparently drowned.
  • Like you would really blow up Tony and his old flame with an RPG. Your Target Is In Another Safe House.
  • Like you would really blow up Gibbs, Abby, Tony, Ziva AND McGee, and give Ducky a heart attack at the news. Yep, that's the season nine cliffhanger ...
• Magnificent Bastard: Ari starts off as one of these (shooting Gerald and managing to escape), then does a Heel Face Turn when he saves Presidents Bush and Sharon, then turns into a Complete Monster in his final appearance when he murders Kate and tries to kill Abby.
• Mary Sue: The writers would quit before they let Ziva miss a shot, or lose a fight.
• Moral Event Horizon: Ari shoots Kate and tries to shoot Abby to deliberately cause Gibbs grief, despite the fact that he could have easily shot Gibbs instead at the time and Gibbs was a more tactically valuable target.
  • It's strongly implied that Eli David ordered the missile strike that killed Ari's mother, in order to "harden" him into a better killer. Keep in mind that Ari was a child at the time, and Eli was his father. If that wasn't enough, he orders his daughter Ziva to kill Ari, her half-brother, after Ari proves to be disloyal.
• More Popular Spinoff: NCIS has far outstripped its parent show JAG, to the point that many viewers haven't even heard of the latter.
• Narm: The climax of the Christmas Episode Newborn King. A pregnant Marine is giving birth while Ziva holds off the mercenaries who are trying to kidnap the baby...but all dialogue and sound effects are muted, with the soundtrack playing "Silent Night." Painfully overdone.
  • Given that "Silent Night" was probably an intentionally ironic use of Soundtrack Dissonance, it could qualify as Narm Charm.
    • Abby's "crucify him!" speech.
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: In the episode "Dead Reckoning," an international crime lord is played by some guy you've probably never heard of before. Meanwhile, the timid accountant who turns informer against him is played by Emmy Award winner Christian Clemenson. If you guessed just by reading that sentence that Clemenson is, in fact, The Man Behind the Man, you win a cookie.
  • The episode "A Weak Link" had guests Adam Baldwin, Julie Benz and Doug Savant. Subverted - None of them did it, it was a suicide.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The video game wasn't very well received. For starters only one voice actor from the actual show was in it, it was near impossible to lose, simple plots, poor visuals, etc.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Director Vance wasn't well liked until it was revealed there's more to him than meets the eye, and he very likely isn't Vance at all.
• Shown Their Work: All of the Hebrew in the show, plus the Jewish references related to Ziva are all accurate, and Cote De Pablo's accent is pretty spot-on.
• Squick: In one episode, a woman and her son with a vendetta against Ducky kidnap him, strap him to an autopsy table, and try to kill him by bleeding him out through a huge needle in his neck.
  • Don't forget when Gibbs find the husband-wife toe-eating team.
  • The Cold Opening of "Murder 2.0". A woman turns on her shower, her husband puts on mood music, Bra Hits Floor, blood starts spurting from the shower head.
  • "Angel of Death". A drug dealer and his addict girlfriend try to retrieve the body of a Mule, who had the package burst inside him. While the stand-off happens, the addict gets on the table and begins snorting straight out of the opened corpse. Bonus Squick for the corpse in question being her brother!
  • The exploding bodies in the crypts in "Skeletons."
• Stoic Woobie: Gibbs, Ziva.
• Tear Jerker: The flashback of Gibbs' family in "Requiem", and his memories of them in "Hiatus".
  • The ending of the season 4 episode "Iceman", where even though Mike Frank's son (which he didn't know he had until a couple of years ago) is dead and he's lost so much, he managed to save his daughter-in-law and his grandson.
  • Abby's confrontation with Gibbs in the S7 episode "Borderland" after the cold case she worked on in Mexico turned out to be the man who murdered Gibbs' family and Gibbs subsequently killed.
  • The whole episode "Friends and Lovers".
• The Woobie: Various characters have been this at times. Tony sometimes skirts into Jerkass Woobie territory.
• Unfortunate Implications: The character of Director Jenny Shepard, in spades. Introduced as the first female director of an armed law enforcement agency and a possible testbed for future women being promoted to positions similar to hers. Of course, she ends up using her position of power to pursue a private vendetta (an enormous abuse of power) and it is implied that this vendetta was the sole reason why she pursued the Director's position in the first place. Her general behavior around Gibbs, constantly reminiscing about their past relationship and acquiescing to his demands, didn't do her any favors either.
  • It may be coincidence, but it bears mentioning that every single gay character on the show has either been a Psycho Lesbian (three, in fact), suicidal, anguished, or just a breathtakingly incompetent agent. Seriously, the dude forgot his gun.