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{{quote| "''Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.''"}}
 
''Percy Jackson & the Olympians'' is a [[Fantasy]] series by [[Rick Riordan]] based on [[Classical Mythology|Greek mythology]]. A [[Sequel Series]], ''[[The Heroes of Olympus]]'', is in the works. Its first two books,''The Lost Hero'' and ''The Son of Neptune'', have already been released. [[The Film of the Book]], ''Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief'', was directed by [[Chris Columbus]], the same guy who directed the first two movies in the ''[[Harry Potter (Filmfilm)|Harry Potter]]'' film series.
 
In the books the Greek gods have moved to the United States, and their home, Olympus, is now located above the Empire State Building. They have many [[Half-Human Hybrid|demigod]] children with mortal humans. Unfortunatly, these demigods [[Weirdness Magnet|attract mythological monsters]], so they must travel to a safe haven in Long Island, NY, called "Camp Half-Blood", and learn to fight. The books get progressively [[Darker and Edgier]] throughout the series as a war with the Titans approaches.
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* ''Demigods and Monsters''
 
'''Please add all new character tropes to the [[Percy Jackson and& Thethe Olympians (Literature)/Characters|Character Sheet]].'''
 
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{{tropelist}}
* [[A Birthday, Not a Break|A Birthday, Not A Break]]: Percy forgets his [[Dangerous Sixteenth Birthday|sixteenth birthday]].
* [[Abusive Parents]]: Many gods neglect their children. It's the biggest reason why there ''is'' a Titan army. There are kids who are ''never'' claimed.
** {{spoiler|Nemesis, God of Balance and Revenge,}} to Ethan. The one time they meet, she blinds his left eye with the promise that he would {{spoiler|bring balance to the world once again}}.
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** Zoe when Atlas is about to stab Artemis.
** {{spoiler|Atlas being returned to his chains.}} "NOT AGAIN!"
* [[Black and Gray Morality]]: Help the Gods who are often [[Jerk Withwith a Heart of Gold|jerkasses]] and sometimes cause problems, or serve a [[Big Bad|Titan]] who [[Abusive Parents|devoured his own kids]] and uses humanity as a source of [[Gladiator Games|cheap amusement]] or as [[To Serve Man|a snack]].
* [[Blessed Withwith Suck]] / [[Cursed Withwith Awesome]]: [[Your Mileage May Vary]] depending on whether you prefer being dyslexic, but having a perfect understanding of ancient Greek, and whether you are willing to tolerate having ADHD as a side effect of your supernatural combat instincts. And then there's all the monsters you attract, especially if you carry a cell phone
* [[Bound and Gagged]]: Several times in the book series, [[Fan Service|for the enjoyment of the fans]].
* [[Break the Cutie]]: Nico, Thalia, Luke, and Annabeth.
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**** This is changed in the film. Here Gabe is literally [[Too Dumb to Live]] as Percy puts the head in the fridge, chains up the door, and puts a note on the door saying to '''never''' open it. Disregarding the warning Gabe breaks the chains and opens it to get a beer.
* [[Divine Parentage]]: Of course.
* [[Down in Thethe Dumps]]: In book three, Percy and crew wander into the "junkyard of the gods" and end up setting off a giant automaton. Naturally.
* [[Dramatic Thunder]]: It tends to happen a lot thanks to Zeus, so naturally it's [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded.]]
* [[Dream Spying]]: All. The. Time.
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** Thalia {{spoiler|driving the airborne sun chariot in schoolbus form.}} Mainly due to her [[Irony|Acrophobia]]. She can drive well on land, though.
* [[Dodgeball Is Hell]]: A bit more literally than you might think at the beginning of the second book.
* [[Duel to Thethe Death]]: Happens so often, you lose count.
* [[Due to Thethe Dead]]: Heroes are cremated with funeral shrouds embroidered to indicate their divine parentage and just what made them great.
{{quote| ''"We need a shroud. A shroud for {{spoiler|the son of Hermes}}."''}}
* [[Dying Moment of Awesome]]: Anyone who dies goes out with a [[Out Withwith a Bang|really, really loud bang]].
* [[Early-Bird Cameo]]: {{spoiler|Hestia}}. Pay attention to that little girl at Camp Half-Blood in "The Lightning Thief".
* [[El Cid Ploy]]: {{spoiler|Silena}} disguises herself as Clarisse to lead the children of Ares into battle in the final book. {{spoiler|She dies just as Clarisse shows up.}}
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**** The test was who could make an explosion first so they were probably using dangerous chemicals.
*** Even if the explosion were somehow nuclear it wouldn't make a mushroom cloud, it would have to be much larger and hotter to do that.
* [[Everything's Better Withwith Rainbows]]: The ever-handy Iris message.
* [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin]]: It's Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The titles of the books and chapters do this a lot, too, only [[It Makes Sense in Context|remove any context and most mythical elements,]] making them sound bizarre and hilarious, at the expense of making Percy sound like a madman.
* [[Fan Nickname]]: R.E.D.
* [[Fail O'Suckyname]]: Gabe ''Ugliano''? Keeping a rebellious streak aside, there's absolutely no way Percy's mom would have sacrificed her maiden name for that surname.
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* [[Foreshadowing]]: You can guess that Bianca and Nico are [[Older Than They Look]] in ''The Titan's Curse'', when, to evade their pursuers in Washington, D.C., they duck into the Metro. To Bianca and Nico, the Metro seems new to them, and they mention that the last time they came through D.C., the Washington Metro did not exist. This initially does not make sense because the di Angelos are in their teens, and transit buffs know that the first segment of the Washington Metro opened in 1976, well before they were supposedly born. Once you learn about their stint in the Lotus Hotel & Casino, and the establishing scene of them being put up in the hotel in ''The Last Olympian'', [[It Makes Sense in Context]].
* [[Full-Name Basis]]: Riordan must really like the name "Rachel Elizabeth Dare", because he repeats it constantly whenever she shows up, instead of just using it once and then switching to "Rachel" through the rest of the book.
* [[Genre Blindness]]: Percy and Annabeth have an absolutely terrible track record in terms of recognizing the various mythic monsters and traps they stumble across, even though most of them are obvious variations on well-known episodes from things like ''[[The Odyssey (Literature)|The Odyssey]]''.
** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] once when Percy mentions that they should know they are walking into a trap but after walking for hours, not eating, and craving a bed to sleep on they tend to do stupid things.
** By the time ''Labyrinth'' rolls around, they're more or less [[Genre Savvy]], whereupon the universe actually starts ''changing the rules'' just to throw [[Genre Savvy]] people off.
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** The series never outright calls any of the demigods illegitimate, though at one point Hera calls Percy "one of Poseidon's...children," and Percy knows she ''definitely'' implied something else.
** In the movie, Persephone hates Hades so much she has "visitors" every once in a while. When she comes across Grover, she says, "I haven't had a satyr... ''visit'' before." Mreowr...
*** Also in the movie, Medusa tells Percy "I used to date your daddy." As any student of Greek mythology knows, it was more of a one-night stand. [[Double Standard Rape (Divine Onon Mortal)|A non-consensual one-night stand.]]
** When the protagonists are at the Hoover Dam
{{quote| '''Zoë''': "Let us find the dam snack bar."<br />
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* [[Leeroy Jenkins]]: And how!
* [[Let's Get Dangerous]]: In ''The Last Olympian'', it's calm, quiet {{spoiler|Sally Jackson and Paul Blofis. Who thought that two humans, one of whom can't even see through the Mist, could kick so much monster butt?}}
* [[Libation for Thethe Dead]]: Nico must offer food and drink to consult spirits. One chapter in ''Battle of the Labyrinth'' is even titled "Nico Buys Happy Meals For The Dead." Typically he uses french fries and coke.
** Midas, his [[Treacherous Advisor]], complains that it's traditional to use animal blood for necromancy. Nico tells him to shut up.
* [[L Is for Dyslexia]]: Half-bloods are all dyslexic, since their brains are "hard-wired" to read Ancient Greek instead of English.
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** It's even [[Lampshaded]]. During a war, Percy and another half-blood have an exchange about how they need to sleep but ''really'' don't want to. Percy, in narration, explains that demigods' dreams suck, since they're frequently visions and prophecies and other psychic junk which isn't fun at all, and the more tense things are the worse the dreams are. For a while, Percy even had Kronos showing up in his dreams to taunt him (and Kronos is good at it, too.)
* [[Punny Name]]: Cassandra Dare (as opposed to [[Cassandra Truth]])
* [[Put Onon a Bus]]: {{spoiler|Thalia, the Hunters, Chris. The implication is that they're off having adventures, just like Percy and his friends.}}
* [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old]]: All the gods, plus several demi-gods.
* [[Recycled in Space|Recycled]] <small>[[Recycled in Space|IN SPACE]]</small>: Although [[Tropes Are Not Bad|it's done well]] in this case. Many of the plots or subplots are the major arcs of well-known Greek myths. ''Sea of Monsters'' is Jason and the Argonauts and the Oddessey stuck together. {{spoiler|Silena's fight against the monster in the final book and Clarisse's subsequent beatdown of the monster that killed her is Patroclus stealing Achilles' armor and Achilles' fight with Hector, complete with dragging the corpse around behind her chariot.}} Riordan was quite clever in working the myths into his books.
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* [[Sequel Hook]]: The prophecy at the end of ''The Last Olympian''.
* [[Sequel Series]]: [[The Heroes of Olympus]]
* [[Shipper Onon Deck]]: Aphrodite is a big Percy/Annabeth shipper. Though (understandably) she thinks life is a soap opera ([[Lampshaded]] by her beau, Ares), and so assures Percy that she won't let things be easy for them ( {{spoiler|unintentionally lampshaded by Annabeth herself at the end}}), with plenty of [[Wangst]], [[Will They or Won't They?|indecision]], etc.
* [[Ship Tease]]: Thalia/Luke. Two best friends who ran away together for roughly three years. Then Luke {{spoiler|joining the Titans because one of his reasons was because of her death.}} ''The Titan's Curse'' also has a lot of moments where you find out that Thalia once considered {{spoiler|joining the Hunters, but did not want to because she would be away from Luke.}} Then there was their final battle in ''The Titan's Curse'' which implied quite a bit.
** Also, Annabeth/Luke. It started out as a crush on Annabeth's side. Annabeth also defends Luke many, many times in the books. In ''The Last Olympian'', Thalia said that she [Annabeth] always saw Luke as her hero.
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* [[Shout-Out]]: Too many shout outs to [[Greek Mythology]] to list. The author really has [[Shown Their Work]]
** The security guard for Olympus apparently keeps up with Young Adult Literature fads.
*** In ''The Last Olympian'' he's reading '[[Twilight (Literaturenovel)|a big black book with a flower on the cover]].'
*** In ''The Lightning Thief'' he is said to be reading [[Harry Potter|"a huge book with a picture of a wizard on the front."]]
** Then there is the Mythomagic card game, a reference to card games such as Magic.
** Nico references [[Spider -Man|Spidey]] at one point: [[Comes Great Responsibility|"With great power..]][[Subverted Trope|.comes great need to take a nap."]]
* [[Shown Their Work]]: If a monster is named in the books, it exists in Greek Mythology exactly like it does in the books. References to the Illiad and The Odyssey abound. if there's a place described that exists in real life you can recognize it from descriptions. Even epithets are alluded to (grey eyed Athena for instance). Riordan has clearly read the Theogony, the Illiad, The Odyssey, and a number of other minor books including Ovid's Metamorphoses. It shows up with bits like Apollo mentioning he really hates it when girls get turned into trees, or a thermos that perfectly mimics Odysseus' bag of winds.
** Rick Riordan had been an editor of mythology books in the past - and it shows. He even brings other mentions into its sequel series, bringing in "Roman aspects".
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* [[So My Kids Can Watch|So My Kid Can Read]]: ''Literally''.
* [[So Proud of You]]
* [[Spell My Name Withwith an "S"]]: Canon example. The two first gods of earth and sky are Uranus/Ouranos/Ouranous and Gaia/Gaea.
* [[Steven Ulysses Perhero]]: Several demigod children, including Travis and Connor "Stoll", the sons of Hermes, god of thieves, and Katie "Gardner" and Miranda "Gardiner" both daughters of Demeter, goddess of Agriculture.
* [[Stuffed in The Fridge]]: Seems to be a recurring theme in Hades's family, what with being the God of the Underworld and all.
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** Hair grows out, so maybe after a year the color returned to normal and they could cut the grey streak out.
* [[Uranus Is Showing]]: Averted because he is called Ouranos.
* [[We Are Asas Mayflies]]: Humans, from the perspective of the gods or any of the other mythological races.
* [[We Can Rule Together]]: Luke offers this to Annabeth and Thalia
* [[Weirdness Censor]]: The Mist.
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* [[The Film of the Book]]
* [[Gorgeous Gorgon]]: Medusa, played by [[Uma Thurman]].
* [[G-Rated Drug]]: The Lotus Hotel in the film. While in the book, it was the [[Lotus Eater Machine|arcade games]] that kept you there, the film has them literally [[The Odyssey (Literature)|eat lotus blossoms]] during their stay. This is treated as them getting high.
{{quote| Annabeth: I think I figured it out, I know why we're here. <br />
Percy: Why are we here?<br />
Annabeth: To '''HAVE FUN!''' }}
* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: The movie seems to be full of this, starring the likes of [[Kill Bill (Film)|The Bride]] and [[The Lord of the Rings (Filmfilm)|Boromir]]/[[Goldeneye (Film)|006]] and [[James Bond (Filmfilm)|James Bond]]. Not to mention rather than going to Percy, it seems Poseidon could have just had [[Rome|Titus Pullo]] handle things like normal.
** Hades kidnapped and married [[Rent|Mimi]].
** [[Supernatural|Sam and Dean's half brother, Adam]] is a half blood.
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*** Untrue, Grover is stated as having brown curly hair and white skin, kinda different than the actual actor, hmm?
*** True for Hephaestus and Persephone though, who even if they had been described as particularly pale, are still DNA-less gods who possess the ability to change their appearance. There's no reason that any of the [[Unfortunate Implications|gods or their children had to be white]]; they don't live in Ancient Greece anymore.
* [[Rock Me, Asmodeus]]: [[Invoked]]. Hades has the appearance and mannerisms of a [[Heavy Metal (Music)|Heavy Metal]] star.
* [[Running Gag]]: Grover getting flirted with by hot girls, from the camp to the ''underworld'' counts.
 
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* [[Sassy Black Woman]]: Oh, Persephone...
* [[Shirtless Scene]]: Remember those two scenes with Percy swimming, which was the first thing shown in the commercial? It wasn't in the book.
* [[Shout-Out]]: While passing the river of lost dreams thing in Hades, one can see a [[Citizen Kane (Film)|little sled]] floating by.
* [[Title Drop]]: Count the number of times they say some variation of "Lightning Thief" in this movie.
* [[Uncle Tomfoolery]]: Grover
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