Supernatural (TV series)/Tropes A-E: Difference between revisions

** Bobby's father beat him and his mother, at least until {{spoiler|Bobby killed him}}

* [[Accidental Kiss]]: Bobby excitedly lays one on Sheriff Mills after she discovers that {{spoiler|Borax can hurt Leviathans}}.

* [[Adult Fear]]: Episodes like "The Kids are Alright," "Home," and others deal with things that would scare the hell out of any parent with a young child.

* [[Affably Evil]]: Casey in "Sin City," the old Pagan God couple in "A Very Supernatural Christmas," [[Satan|Lucifer]], Patrick (the card-playing he-witch in "The Curious Case of Dean Winchester") and Crowley. Osiris often comes across as this in "Defending Your Life".

** Subverted in "Defending Your Life". Dean initially dismisses Osiris' victims as this, only for Sam to point out they were all [[The Atoner|repentant]] for their crimes.

* [[An Astral Projection Not a Ghost]]: One of the hauntings dealt with some time in season 3 turns out to not be a spirit, but the projection of a girl in a coma.

** Sam in Season 5, in response to his behavior in Season 4.

** Castiel in the seventh season episode "The Born-Again Identity" when he tries to fix what he has broken {{spoiler|in Sam's head by absorping Sam's crazy into himself}}.

* [[Bavarian Fire Drill]]: In order to find clues about the [[Monster of the Week]], the boys regularly pose as police, FBI, priests, Forestry Service rangers, Homeland Security agents, Center for Disease Control officers, Health Department inspectors, state police troopers - they even pulled out badges to convince a little girl that they were teddy bear doctors.

* [[Because Destiny Says So]]: The whole reason {{spoiler|Lucifer and Michael want to fight}} in season five.

* [[Beethoven Was an Alien Spy]]: Samuel Colt and Elliot Ness were both hunters.

* [[Being Tortured Makes You Evil]]: Ruby states that demons used to be humans, before their humanity was tortured out of them in hell. {{spoiler|Dean himself gets tortured enough in Hell so that he finally breaks and starts torturing others and enjoying it because it isn't him.}}

** It's also implied that {{spoiler|Anna's [[Face Heel Turn]] is a result of her being tortured in Heaven}}.

* [[The Big Bad Wolf]]: In "[[Bedtime Stories]]", a young man with a Wile E. Coyote tattoo gets [[Mind Control|hypnotised]] into being this.

* [[Big Damn Heroes]]:

** {{spoiler|Castiel}} pops in to save Sam and Dean in the Season 5 premiere. He plows through two angels and scares [[Jerkass|Zachariah]] away.

* [[Big Entrance]]: Castiel's first scene. All the lights start flickering and bursting, the roof starts rattling, and the barn door breaks open, and Castiel casually strolls in amidst the howling wind and sparks.

'''Castiel''': I am the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition. }}

* [[Big No]]:

** Played absolutely hilariously when a wishing well turns a girl's teddy bear into a life-sized, sentient being. A very depressed, alcoholic, somewhat perverted, plushy sentient being. Eventually, he (it?) decides to end it all and sticks a shotgun in its mouth, graphically blowing a cloud of fluff across the room. Which doesn't kill it, as apparently cotton batting doesn't double for brains. Despairing, the teddy raises its paws to heaven and implores "WHHHYYYYYYY?!"

** This is Gordon's reaction in "Fresh Blood" as he's being {{spoiler|turned into a vampire}}.

** Dean reacts this way in "Swan Song" when Sam!Lucifer telepathically snaps {{spoiler|Bobby Singer}}'s neck.

* [[Break the Cutie]]: Poor Sam. Poor Castiel. And poor, ''poor'' Dean.

* [[Breather Episode]]: Usually the signal for the ''next'' episode to crank the '''[[Angst]]!''' [[Up to Eleven]].

** In ''The French Mistake'', after getting thrown into the "Real World", the directors discuss salvaging the footage of the brothers being thrown through the window by freeze-framing right before the interference. At the end of the episode, when they're getting thrown back into their own universe, how do you think they film it?

* [[Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu]]: In the season five finale, Sam invokes this trope to stop the apocalypse. He {{spoiler|invites Lucifer to possess him, then [[Heroic Willpower|throws the both of them]] back into the Devil's Cage.}}

'''Lucifer:''' Yes! ''(tries to beat him to death)'' }}

** While trying to convince Sam to come with him, Dean admits that he doesn't want to do it alone. He mentions this again in season seven {{spoiler|while on trial}} in "Defending Your Life".

** Bobby does this to his drunken, abusive father in "Death's Door", though technically it's an interactive memory of his long-dead father rather than the real thing.

** Bobby also once did this on Dean and Sam's behalf, as seen in a memory in "Death's Door", where he gave John a piece of his mind for not treating them like children. This is probably what started the argument [[Continuity Nod|mentioned in Series 1]] which ended in Bobby [[Harsher in Hindsight|pointing a shotgun at John and threatening to shoot him.]]

* [[Came Back Wrong]]:

** In season 6, Dean's suspicions that {{spoiler|Sam is different since returning from Hell are confirmed by Castiel, who reveals that Sam has no soul. This is remedied by midseason.}}

** Lampshaded in "Season Seven, Time for a Wedding!"

* [[Cassandra Truth]]: Gordon was right all along about Sam. {{spoiler|Subverted: while Sam definitely has darkness in him and accidentally started the Apocalypse, he sacrifices himself to save the world instead of siding with the demons or helping Lucifer take over the world.}}

** "Son of a bitch!"

** "Bitch!" - "Jerk!"

* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: {{spoiler|The Horsemen's rings are needed to trap Lucifer in Hell again}}.

* [[Chekhov's Gunman]]: Hey, remember how throughout season five, the angels want Dean to be the vessel for {{spoiler|Michael}} but he keeps rejecting them? Remember how the ability to be a vessel is a bloodline trait? Remember the Winchesters' [[Long-Lost Relative|half-brother Adam]] from a few seasons back who turned out to have been killed by a [[Our Ghouls Are Creepier|ghoul]]? {{spoiler|Remember how the angels can bring people back from the dead?}}

** Midway through Season Six we meet Bobby's friend Dr. Visyak, a professor with knowledge of the supernatural. In the penultimate episode of the season, we discover that {{spoiler|she is an escapee from Purgatory, and is the only one who knows how to open a portal to it.}}

* [[Chekhov's Skill]]: In "On the Head of a Pin", {{spoiler|Alistair escapes from the devil's trap when Uriel manipulates a nearby water pipe}}. In "Abandon All Hope...," {{spoiler|Cas pulls something similar on Meg to get out of the angel equivalent of said trap.}}

* [[The Chew Toy]]: With what they go through and the fact that they looked so darned pretty when being put through pain, both of them (but especially Dean) are walking a very fine line between this and pure-and-simple [[The Woobie|Woobification]].

* [[Chronic Hero Syndrome]]: Sam has this whenever he's [[Despair Event Horizon|not]] [[Psycho Serum|otherwise]] [[I Let Gwen Stacy Die|occupied]].

* [[Chuck Cunningham Syndrome]]: A season 5 episode introduced Jesse Turner, a young boy explicitly identified as the [[Anti Christ]], resulting from a union between a demon and a human, which somehow imbued him with [[Reality Warper]] powers. Possibly realizing how little sense it made that this would result in the most powerful character depicted in the show up to that point (with the exception of God) and the [[Story-Breaker Power]] it entailed, the writers immediately sent the character off to nowhere.

** Sam in season six. {{spoiler|After getting his soul back from Death}} it is mentioned at the beginning of "Like a Virgin" that Sam has been "asleep" for almost ten days. Also {{spoiler|at the beginning of the last episode of Season 6 "The Man Who Knew Too Much" as the mental wall keeping all of the hell memories at bay has been destroyed by Cass}}

* [[Companion Cube]]: The Impala to Dean.

** Ron Reznick in "Nightshifter", who is convinced that the shapeshifter attacks he's been doing independent research on are caused by "mandroids".

** In "Slash Fiction" paranoid whackjob Frank Devereaux doesn't put much stock in magic, but he's sure that "The government's been cloning people for years."

* [[Corrupt the Cutie]]: Sam Winchester's ''entire life'' consists of a plot to do this to him. It sort of works, to the point where the [[Big Bad]] [[Unwitting Pawn|manipulates]] him into [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|starting the Apocalypse]] thinking he was preventing it, [[Must Make Amends|but]] it [[Heroic Sacrifice|doesn't stick]].

* [[The Corruption]]: At the end of season four, Castiel tells Dean that {{spoiler|consuming enough demon blood to kill Lilith will permanently mutate Sam into a monster. Possibly, God cleaning it out of his system prevented this.}}

* [[Council of Angels]]: [[Heaven]] is apparently somewhat of a [[Celestial Bureaucracy|bureaucracy]], as {{spoiler|[[God]] has gone AWOL. In season six Heaven has descended into full scale civil war as Michael, its former leader (After God), has been trapped in Hell with Lucifer}}.

* [[Creator Provincialism]]: It is...interesting...how the vast majority of the important events of the apocalypse take place in the continental United States. [[Hindu Mythology|Kali]] is actually rather upset over this fact, and laments that "Westerners" are trying to take away her rightful spot in her own Apocalypse.

* [[Crossover Cosmology]]: Just like [[All Myths Are True]], so do all gods exist. Though they are apparently not all equal {{spoiler|given how easily Lucifer mows down a dozen of them in "Hammer of the Gods."}}

* [[Crystal Dragon Jesus]]: Teetering on the precipice of this trope. While pretty much all of the [[The End of the World as We Know It|Apocalypse]] storyline contains heavy use of individual elements and characters from Christian eschatology, the actual usage of God, Lucifer, the angels and the demons, to say nothing of the complete and utter absence of Jesus, really ends up presenting a pseudo-Christian world where most of the [[The Bible|Biblical]] characters are really [[Captain Ersatz]] versions of the ones from the source material and their link to the religion overall is essentially as a [[Reimagining the Artifact|fantasy remake]] of the original with updated, modernized, characters cherry-picked for dramatic convenience.

** This happens several times with Alastair and Lilith, who pwn humans and angels alike to begin with, only for Sam to eventually ''[[Psychic Powers|kill them with his brain]]''.

** Anything attempting to take on an archangel ends up burned to dust with a simple touch, or exploded with a snap of the fingers. Lucifer slaughters pagan gods without breaking a sweat {{spoiler|and then kills his brother - the ''archangel'' Gabriel - just as easily}}.

** In the Season 6 finale the final battle between {{spoiler|Castiel and Raphael}} ends up being like that. {{spoiler|Amped up on purgatory souls, Castiel}} merely snaps his fingers and {{spoiler|Raphael}} explodes into bloody goo.

* [[Cut Apart]]: In "Folsom Prison Blues", {{spoiler|Sam and Dean pull a jailbreak and go to the cemetery to destroy the remains of a nurse who is haunting the prison. The FBI is headed to the cemetery to recapture them. The camera cuts back and forth until it is revealed that the FBI was directed to the wrong cemetery.}}

{{quote|''Am I the only game piece on the board who doesn't underestimate those denim-wrapped nightmares?!''}}

** In "Season Seven, Time For a Wedding!", {{spoiler|Becky doses Sam with love potion, and then conceals it from Dean with the knowledge she learned from reading the Supernatural novels. She ''instantly'' realizes the guy who's been giving her the love potion is a Crossroads Demon when he flashes his demon eyes at her, and is reluctant to accept this offered [[Deal with the Devil]]. And the devil in question has been taking advantage of loopholes in the deal.}}

{{quote|'''Misha Collins''': (Typing into his phone) Ever. Get. The. Feeling. That. There's. Someone. In. The. Back. Seat? Frowny-face. }}

** Even Bobby (previously the [[Only Sane Man]]... okay, still the [[Only Sane Man]] but for this show that doesn't say much for his comparative sanity) has massive problems.

* [[Dark Messiah]]: in Season 4, {{spoiler|Sam heads this way, fully [[Driven to Suicide|expecting]]/[[Death Seeker|intending]] to die killing Lilith and willing to [[Shoot the Dog|shoot a few dogs]] to do so. In his [[Pride|arrogance]], he doesn't realize he's [[Unwitting Pawn|played right into Lilith's hands]] until [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|it's too late]].}}

* [[Death Is Dramatic]]:

** Averted in "Mystery Spot", as none of Dean's onscreen deaths are dramatic/demonic-related. Especially his final death, where he gets shot by a mugger. No going out in a blaze of glory, it could have been easily prevented and nothing heroic about it whatsoever.

* [[Death Montage]]: Courtesy of the [[Groundhog Day Loop]] episode.

** In Season One, Sam was willing to die killing YED, and in season two, he wanted to be killed before his destiny could change him. Sam's entire season four arc was suicidal, as was season five, which ended with Sam {{spoiler|jumping into Hell's solitary confinement to take Lucifer with him.}}

* [[Debate and Switch]]: Frequently, usually in the form of whether to let someone who is doing bad things against their will (e.g., a werewolf) go, or kill them. The person usually dies or makes some sort of [[Heroic Sacrifice]] by episode's end.

** Bobby, Dean and Castiel all crash through this over the course of two consecutive episodes in Season 5. Sam probably crossed over at the end of Season 3.

** Dean appears to have crossed it again in Season 7, to the point that he {{spoiler|seems resigned to being blown up by Jo in ''Defending Your Life''.}}

* [[Did Godzilla Just Punch Out Cthulhu]]: Demons, angels, archangels, the [[Horsemen of the Apocalypse|horsemen]], God... The entire purpose of Team Free Will was to stop this happening {{spoiler|between Michael and Lucifer}}. Because this would unfortunately have the tiny little side-effect of destroying nearly all life on Earth.

* [[Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?]]: Dean attempts to [[Too Dumb to Live|steal Death's ring from him]]. Death sits him down, offers him pizza and then tells him how annoyed he is that although he is infinite, eternal, and will eventually reap the entire universe, he is stuck being tagged to one tiny little planet with one puny little being (a.k.a Lucifer). ... [[Go Mad From the Revelation|upon hearing this Dean has a little trouble swallowing his pizza]]. Death does this a second and a third time when the Winchesters (mostly Dean) encounter him, as he has quite a fondness for fast food.

* [[Did You Just Index Cthulhu]]: The Winchesters are fighting [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abominations]] every other day of the week, what do you think?

* [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?]]: Sam and Dean actually manage this once or twice. Although as often as not their attempts will end up in [[Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu]].

** Lucifer manages to trap Death into his servitude. Death, who is very annoyed that he's being leashed by a petulant child with daddy issues (...yes, that is how Death perceives the Devil), proves that [[Do Not Taunt Cthulhu|it's not a good idea to piss off an eternal and infinite force of nature]] by actually helping them imprison him again.

** {{spoiler|The Winchesters attempt it themselves in}} season 7's first episode {{spoiler|in a last-ditch effort to stop the newly godlike Castiel. Death warns them that it won't end well for them, but he doesn't follow through on his threat after Castiel unbinds his restraints because the "mutated angel" is a bigger concern for him.}}

* [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]:

** The [[Monster of the Week]] in "Something Wicked" was played like a pedophile.

* [[The Dog Is an Alien]]: There are [[Skin Walker|Skinwalkers]] who can take the form of a dog. One of them becomes attached to the family he lives with.

* [[Doppelganger]]: Shows up in "Skin" and in "Nightshifter." And "The End", to an extent.

** "Jump the Shark": {{spoiler|Not only has Adam, the kid the brothers were trying to save, been dead all along, he actually ''was'' their brother. When Sam suggests calling in a favor from Castiel to bring him back, Dean replies it's better to leave him where he is because the world is going down the pooper pretty soon anyway}}.

** The penultimate episode of Season 4, "When the Levee Breaks", laid a damn good claim to the record ({{spoiler|Dean and Sam have a seemingly irrevocable parting of the ways}}), until "Lucifer Rising" managed to one-up it: {{spoiler|[[God]] is M.I.A., the senior angels ''want'' the Apocalypse so they can beat the demons and care not about the collateral damage, Ruby is evil and has been manipulating Sam all along, and Lilith ''is'' the final seal and killing her will free Lucifer...which Sam learns about ten seconds after killing her. *gulp*}}

** "Dark Side of The Moon": {{spoiler|Well, if the episode starts with our heroes getting shot in the chest with a shotgun, it's a pretty good indicator of how the story's gonna go. Let's see, Dean is resentful of the fact that Sam's version of Heaven is completely made up of times that he was away from his family, Zachariah is personally out for vengeance upon Sam and Dean for moderately petty reasons, Joshua informs them that God knows, he just doesn't give a damn, Castiel, Dean and Sam basically give up their faith... But hey, at least we got some laughs out of Ash, right?}}

** In season six episode "You Can't Handle the Truth": Sam's been acting weird all season {{spoiler|not because he's a doppleganger or still possessed by Lucifer, but because he's emotionally dead. The episode ends with Dean beating him unconscious and not stopping.}} The next episode reveals that this is because {{spoiler|Sam has no soul anymore.}}

** In season seven's "Hello, Cruel World": {{spoiler|The fates of Castiel and Bobby don't look so good, the Leviathans appear to be nigh invincible, Sam's hallucinations take a turn for the worse, and the episode ends with Sam and Dean being rushed to the very hospital that the monsters have taken over, unable to defend themselves. In addition, the brother's last safe haven, Bobby's house, has been torched.}}

** "Death's Door": {{spoiler|Bobby is dead and has yet to make the choice of whether or not to move on, Dean and Sam are totally and completely alone but for each other, they have no Cas, no Impala, and now Bobby is gone. And the Leviathans are running around, still thinking the Winchesters cannot stop them, and the only clue they have to stopping them is a group of numbers, 454895, that link to the Leviathan's plan that Bobby caught a glimpse of and was very scared by it. Dean and Sam have faced hardship but this is the harshest situation they've ever been in.}}

** Almost happens to Dean in "Point of No Return", also arguably Castiel.

** Sam at the end of season five {{spoiler|(with Dean and Bobby's reluctant approval!)}} in "Swan Song" (unless {{spoiler|deliberately planning on jumping into Hell is seen as [[Fate Worse Than Death|anything other than suicide]]}}).

** In Season 7, {{spoiler|this seems to be where Sam's hallucinations are trying to push him - in ''Hello, Cruel World'' Lucifer suggests it ''three times''.}}

** Dean seems to have backslid into this again in the Season 7 episode ''Defending Your Life'', where he is way too calm at the prospect of {{spoiler|Jo killing him by gas explosion}}

** {{spoiler|The [[Archangel Michael]]}}, who is even more this than Dean.

* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: True form Angels. Physically, they (to each other) meet the descriptions of them in religious literature. People look at an angel in his true form have their EYES BURNED OUT. They inhabit human vessels to be able to interact with other humans safely however. It's notable that they're one of the few if not only creatures fitting the definition of an Eldritch Abomination in this series, as the other adversaries are almost all [[Humanoid Abomination|Humanoid Abominations]].

* [[Enemy Mine]]: The brothers team up with Crowley to stop Lucifer, who plans to wipe out humans and demons alike.

** Don't forget later in season 7, where Crowley promises to keep his people off the boy's backs while thy squash the Leviathans.

* [[Enfante Terrible]]: Lilith

* [[Evil Mentor]]:

** {{spoiler|Ruby}}

** In season 5, {{spoiler|Zachariah for Adam}}.

* [[Evil Versus Evil]]: Season Six ends up using this trope by the end: {{spoiler|In order to stop Raphael from restarting the Apocalypse, Castiel [[Enemy Mine|allies with Crowley]] to gain control of Purgatory and all its souls. But this causes Cas to eventually [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|jump off the slippery slope]] and decide to [[A God Am I|become the new God]], so he cuts Crowley out of the deal. Which causes Crowley to, in turn, ally with Raphael against him.}}

* [[Expy]]:

** Series One is full of bits which are lifted from [[The Ring]]. Examples include {{spoiler|the boy scrawling a black circle endlessly until it's a pitch black well in 01X03, the water flowing down the stairs when the mother killed the children by drowning in 01x01, the girl crawling out of the mirror - complete with jittery effect - in 01x05. The writers must really have loved that film. 01x04 also has the bath-tub water going black, just like The Grudge.}}

** The angel Balthazar is an Expy of [[Archangel Gabriel|Gabriel]] who {{spoiler|was killed in season 5. Prior to season 6 the producers confirmed that he would return in one way or another, they just didn't know in what way yet. This is how}}.

** The demon Crowley is an Expy of, er, the demon Crowley, from Good Omens, himself named after occultist Aleister Crowley. Fanfiction writers have been known to make use of this.

** The Colt is an Expy of the Ace of Winchesters, an all-killing gun from ''[[Hellblazer]]''.

* [[Eye Scream]]:

** Most humans who look at the true form of an angel will have their eyes burned out. This also happens to the host when angels exorcise demons.

** In "Bloody Mary," the title ghost, in the coroners words, "essentially liquefied" her victim's eyeballs.