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* GenocideSurvivor: The series follows the few human survivors of the Cylons' genocidal attack on the Twelve Colonies. The survivor count at the beginning is around 55,000 while the population pre-attacks is said to have been somewhere around 50 ''billion''.
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** [[spoiler:The Final Five. After reawakening as Cylons, only Tory undergoes a genuine FaceHeelTurn, and their backstories reveal that they weren't even evil in the past. In fact, they had intended to warn the 12 Colonies of an impending war after their own Earth got nuked, and were only stopped due to John Cavil's interference, who subsequently brainwashed them into believing they were human in order to force them to live through the apocalypse he was plotting.]]
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** [[spoiler:The Final Five. After reawakening as Cylons, only Tory undergoes a genuine FaceHeelTurn, and their backstories reveal that they weren't even evil in the past. In fact, they had intended to warn the 12 Colonies of an impending war after their own Earth got nuked, and only failed because of the time dilation caused by using sub-lightspeed engines, meaning they got to the colonies too late. They later negotiated with the mechanical Cylons to help them create humanoid Cylons, under the condition that they immediately stop the war. They had then planned to create an ongoing peace with humanity, but were only stopped due to John Cavil's interference, who subsequently brainwashed them into believing they were human in order to force them to live through the apocalypse he was plotting.]]
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* DeliberateValuesDissonance: [[invoked]] Per WordOfGod, this was deliberately invoked when assigning religious practices to the [[HumanityCameFromSpace Twelve Colonies of Kobol]] and [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots Cylons]]. The Colonials, who are overall the main protagonists of the series, practice a traditional polytheistic faith heavily reminiscent of Myth/ClassicalMythology, despite largely seeming to be a UnitedSpaceOfAmerica given the ConstructedWorld treatment and having an officially secular government. Meanwhile, the (primarily) villainous Cylons are monotheistic extremists who follow a thinly veiled version of UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}}, to the point where most of their mentioned Scripture sounds like fire-and-brimstone Evangelical Christianity. According to the show's main creator Creator/RonMoore, this was done so as to play on how Christian-centric most Western media portrays religion.
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* DeliberateValuesDissonance: [[invoked]] Per WordOfGod, this was deliberately invoked when assigning religious practices to the [[HumanityCameFromSpace Twelve Colonies of Kobol]] and [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots Cylons]]. The Colonials, who are overall the main protagonists of the series, practice a traditional polytheistic faith heavily reminiscent of Myth/ClassicalMythology, despite largely seeming to be a UnitedSpaceOfAmerica given the ConstructedWorld treatment and having an officially secular government. Meanwhile, roughly half of the (primarily) villainous Cylons are monotheistic extremists who follow a thinly veiled version of UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}}, to the point where most of their mentioned Scripture sounds like fire-and-brimstone Evangelical Christianity.Christianity. The other half seem to be Atheists. According to the show's main creator Creator/RonMoore, this was done so as to play on how Christian-centric most Western media portrays religion.
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The main page's trope list was getting too big, so I split it into subpages.
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[[header:[[center:[-'''Tropes of ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'''''\\
[[BattlestarGalactica2003/TropesAToC A-C]] | '''D-I''' | [[BattlestarGalactica2003/TropesJToR J-R]] | [[BattlestarGalactica2003/TropesSToZ S-Z]]-]]]]]
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[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:D]]
* DarkerAndEdgier: As mentioned above, the reimagined series is significantly darker, harsher, more mature, and focused on headier themes than the original show. The series is also generally considered to be an exceptionally well-done example of this trope.
* DaydreamSurprise: In one of the later episodes, Tigh [[spoiler:shortly after finding out he's a Cylon, shoots Admiral Adama in the CIC. Everyone panics.]] Then he looks up and it turns out that was all in his head.
* DayInTheLife: "Final Cut" (but not "A Day in the Life"), which depicts a journalist filming a normal week for the crew and gives a lot of focus to the [[MauveShirt non-main character Viper and Raptor pilots.]]
* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler:Starbuck as of Season 4. She (understandably) [[HeroicBSOD doesn't take it well]].]]
* DeadlineNews: In the miniseries, when the bombs go off.
* DeadlyHug:
** [[invoked]] [[ColonelBadass Saul Tigh]], leader of LaResistance on New Caprica, [[spoiler:feels compelled to do this to his wife when it's revealed that [[LesCollaborateurs she aided the Cylons holding them captive]] [[AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther since she was trying to protect Tigh from Cylon reprisal]], which unfortunately also resulted in the deaths of several Resistance fighters. In a rare bloodless example of this trope, Saul hugs his wife after she [[TamperingWithFoodAndDrink drinks a cup of coffee that he poisoned]], holding her until well after she dies. [[TearJerker It's an incredibly moving scene]], and it marks a major DespairEventHorizon for his character.]]
** After finding out [[spoiler:their daughter is alive on a Cylon basestar, Helo does this to his Sharon, shooting her after she pleads that her death and resurrection is the only way to get on board the vessel.]] The shock effect here is because the audience comes in during the middle of the conversation, so we don't realize what it's about until the gunshot.
* DeadpanSnarker: Baltar, Roslin, Doc Cottle, Starbuck, Anders, and Tigh among the heroes, while Cavil is a villainous example. Felix Gaeta also takes a level in snark thanks to his TraumaCongaLine, Romo Lampkin is a pretty obvious case as he's played by Creator/MarkSheppard (who pretty much has "condescending sarcasm" as his default tone of voice), and the [[NotSoImaginaryFriend "Head" characters]] both fall into this thanks in large part to their BlueAndOrangeMorality. Really, the whole show is set in a WorldOfSnark.
* DeathGlare: Helo to Roslin, after she berates him for trying to rescue his daughter by killing the immortal Athena. Adama to a [[http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Adama_Glare good many people.]]
-->"Gods! His ego is shriveled up like a dried raisin!"
* DeathOfAChild:
** The baby Caprica Six {{Mercy Kill}}s in the miniseries.
** The girl on the botanical cruiser also in the miniseries.
** The child in Baltar's vision in Season 2.
* DeathOfTheOldGods: The series is a rare sci-fi example. The Cylons seek to replace the Greco-Roman gods of the Colonies with their own vaguely Judeo-Christian God. At the end of the series, [[spoiler:it turns out that this God was the only real one and was secretly guiding all of the events, although He was never actually on the Cylons' side, and "the Lords of Kobol" might've been aspects/"angels" of "God" this whole time. [[MindScrew Yes, it's just as confusing as it sounds here]].]]
* DecemberDecemberRomance: [[spoiler:Adama and Roslin, by the end. Ellen and Saul Tigh also count, being over 2,000 years old each.]]
* DefectingForLove: Caprica-Sharon was originally a loyal Cylon agent. Then she met Helo...
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: [[invoked]] Per WordOfGod, this was deliberately invoked when assigning religious practices to the [[HumanityCameFromSpace Twelve Colonies of Kobol]] and [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots Cylons]]. The Colonials, who are overall the main protagonists of the series, practice a traditional polytheistic faith heavily reminiscent of Myth/ClassicalMythology, despite largely seeming to be a UnitedSpaceOfAmerica given the ConstructedWorld treatment and having an officially secular government. Meanwhile, the (primarily) villainous Cylons are monotheistic extremists who follow a thinly veiled version of UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}}, to the point where most of their mentioned Scripture sounds like fire-and-brimstone Evangelical Christianity. According to the show's main creator Creator/RonMoore, this was done so as to play on how Christian-centric most Western media portrays religion.
* DemocracyIsFlawed: It's not clear if this was an intentional Aesop, but a great many of the Rag-Tag Fleet's problems could have been avoided if President Roslin would favour expert advice over public opinion.
* DenserAndWackier: Initially the only fantastic elements are spaceships and robots. As the series goes on such oddities appear as angels, prophetic dreams, and immortal beings start to be introduced.
* DepopulationBomb: The series starts after the Cylons launched a surprise nuclear attack that reduced the human population from around 50 billion to a little less than ''50,000''.
* DespairEventHorizon: The discovery of a [[spoiler:nuked out Earth]] does this to the fleet; Admiral Adama rises the morning after to find "Frak Earth" graffiti on the walls and crew members slumped in drunken stupor everywhere. Suffering a HeroicBSOD himself, Adama passes without comment.
** Gaeta goes through a personal one in the "Face of the Enemy" webisodes, which take place chronologically just before [[spoiler:his mutiny and subsequent execution]], when he learns that [[spoiler:an Eight that he had [[DatingCatwoman a relationship with on New Caprica]], whom he thought had been helping him get people out of detention, had actually been using the lists as death lists and only putting in the bare minimum of effort to mislead him with a few successful "rescues." The end of the last webisode shows him returning to the fleet and starting to plan the mutiny.]]
* DeusExMachina: [[spoiler:In the finale, Kara assumes the role of this trope in its classical literary meaning, by simply puffing out of sight, just after confirming her journey was over and that felt good. And that is not-so-just after she doped out the coordinates of our Earth from a Cylon-song, being someone once went to another one and died there, and simply returned. She came out be a some sort of instrument for God's mysterious ways.]]
* DidNotGetTheGirl: [[spoiler:Poor Apollo and Tyrol. Apollo lost Starbuck to Anders, Dualla to herself, and Starbuck disappears into thin air. And Tyrol never got to live in that house with Boomer, or even had that kid with Cally. What's more his reincarnation of his lover from a past life, Tory, was never even considered, and she was the one who killed Cally and Tyrol then killed her in a fit of vengeful rage.]]
** [[spoiler:Adama also qualifies when his beloved Roslin succumbs to cancer before they have a chance to settle down together.]]
* DifferentInEveryEpisode: Over the course of the series, the number on the whiteboard on Colonial One counts down, indicating the remaining population of the fleet in each episode.
* DigitalPiracyIsOkay: The first season of the series aired on [=Sky1=] in the UK, ''before'' it aired on Sci-Fi. As a result, high-quality captures of the UK broadcasts were easily found on line, with the [[http://www.mindjack.com/feature/piracy051305.html entire first season]] available via file-sharing before its ''second episode'' had even aired in the States. The incredibly positive word-of-mouth from fans (especially in comparison to the tepid reaction that the mini-series had gotten in the States when it aired) who'd already watched through the season bolstered its reception once it began airing on Sci-Fi.
* DirtyOldMan: ''The Plan'' has the Cavil onboard ''Galactica'' making out with Boomer after ordering her to kill Adama.
* DirtyOldWoman: [[invoked]]] Ellen Tigh. She even ''[[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments gropes Lee]]'' at one moment during a dinner party.
%%* DisasterDemocracy: "Colonial Day", later with "Lay Down Your Burdens"
* DiscOneFinalBoss: D'Anna Biers (Number Three).
* DiscoveringYourOwnDeadBody: [[spoiler:Starbuck]] finds her own corpse in a crashed Viper in the final season.
* DisproportionateRetribution: The Cylons were robots created and enslaved by humanity as servants/slaves, which they came to resent due to their religious beliefs before trying to wipe them out completely. This is later revealed to be [[spoiler:a shallow excuse used by John aka Brother Cavil, the first and most evil Cylon, to exterminate humanity--given that he later enslaved the Centurions himself and is nihilistic instead of religious like the other Cylons. Apparently he did so in order to enact "revenge" upon Ellen and the rest of the Final Five for creating him in an ''imperfect'' body. The whole killing the rest of humanity was probably more for sating his {{Sadism}}. But he doesn't stop there: he plants his five Cylon parents as amnesiacs with human identities in the Colonies to give them front row seats to the ensuing genocide, and subsequently plays mindgames with them for months to torment them even more. Then he rapes his mother and rips out his father's eye. "Petulant" doesn't ''begin'' to cover it.]]
* DistantFinale: [[spoiler:(150,000 years later...)]]
* DistractedFromDeath: [[spoiler:Roslin]] dies in the series finale while Adama is momentarily paying attention to flying the Raptor they're in, and also in the series finale, [[spoiler:Starbuck disappears when Lee momentarily looks away from her.]]
* DivergentCharacterEvolution: The Model 6 and Model 8 Cylons become more different from each other as they become more sympathetic to the humans.
** [[spoiler:Coincides with the loss of the resurrection-tech. Mortality adds to the increased [[IndividualityIsIllegal awareness of individuality in the models.]]]]
%%* DocumentaryEpisode: "Final Cut"
* DoNotCallMePaul: The Cylon model Number One was named "John" by his creator (possibly in reference to her late father, whom she made Number One in the image of). When she refers to him as such when they meet again, he reminds her that he doesn't like that name. He also uses "Cavil", but this is just an alias he was using while posing as a priest among the human fleet.
* DoubleVision
* DoubleStandard: Averted when Starbuck punches Lee, and he throws a haymaker right back at her with no hesitation.
** The show is great all around at showing sexual egalitarianism. One newspaper article commended the show on not just showing the egalitarianism, but not bringing any special attention to it at all; as if it were just normal.
* DoubleEntendre: The Arrow of Apollo opens the Tomb of Athena.
* DramaticSitDown: Adama does this several times in the last season. He and Colonel Tigh get into a fist fight after [[spoiler:he learned Tigh had sex with a certain Cylon prisoner]]. Tigh retorted that Adama was endangering the fleet by [[spoiler:pining for the missing Laura Roslin. He [[HeroicSafeMode gives up his command to sit alone in a Raptor]] and wait for her.]] When he had to confront the fact that [[spoiler:[[TheBattlestar Galactica]] was on the verge of structural failure, and that Roslin was dying, he collapses while defiantly trying to fix the cracked wall in his quarters]].
* DramaticSpaceDrifting: "Resurrection Hub" had Lee floating through space after the destruction of the Blackbird, watching ''Galactica'' and ''Pegasus'' tear two Cylon basestars to pieces. Ron Moore got the idea from the story of Ensign George Gay, the only survivor of his squadron who watched the climax of the Battle of Midway while floating in the Pacific.
* DreamingOfThingsToCome: [[spoiler:Roslin's dream about Leoben in "Flesh and Blood".]]
* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Boomer and Apollo]], both prevented by forces outside their control, Gina, successfully; also [[spoiler:upon return from the nuked Earth(?), Dualla kills herself out of despair. D'Anna passively commits suicide by staying behind. [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled Cavil]], hilariously, in the series finale.]]
-->[[spoiler:'''Cavil:''' FRAK! '''*bang*''']]
** In ''The Plan'' [[spoiler:a Cylon agent with a human wife and child (hers, from a previous marriage) airlocks himself rather than carry out his orders to blow up their vessel.]]
* DrivingQuestion:
** Who are the Cylons?
** What is the Cylons' plan?
** What's causing Baltar's visions?
** Fourth Season only: [[spoiler:How did Kara come back to life?]]
%%* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Number Eight ''really'' suffers from this.
* DuetBonding: In one of the last episodes, Starbuck plays with a pianist she didn't like previously; the activity helps her come to grips with her past.
* DyingCurse: [[spoiler:Gina, the female Cylon spy whom Admiral Cain had ordered tortured and raped for months, comes after Cain following her escape to get revenge. Gina echoes the same words Cain used against her, and Cain tells her to go frack herself. Gina responds "You're not my type" and shoots her.]]
* DyingRace: Humanity. [[spoiler:The Cylons also count, as they can't reproduce and can only make new variations of the current six models.]]
* DysfunctionalFamily: The Cylons are painted as this both in-universe, and out, with the Cylons calling either other "brother" or "sister," and the Final Five characterized as the "parents" of the modern humanoid Cylons. Cavil himself refers to each of them as either "mom" or "dad," and his entire character arc can be summed up as "eldest son throws a [[PutThemAllOutOfMyMisery cosmic temper tantrum]] because he thinks his parents don't love him enough."
* DystopiaIsHard: Conditions for the refugees in the fleet were ignored in the early seasons. In later seasons, the deteriorating quality of life for most humans was brought more in to focus. Case in Point: In "[[Recap/BattlestarGalactica2003S03E16DirtyHands Dirty Hands]]", Tyrol convinces Roslin that if mandatory labor conscription is necessary for the survival of humanity, it should at least be fair. Practically the very next scene, a young former architectural student not fit for large-scale agriculture is hauled off to work by marines just because a background check reveals that he interned on a farm for a few months while in college.
** This is even played off with the ''costumes,'' which consistently get shabbier as the series progresses. For the civilian fleet, they're barely rags by the end.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:E-H]]
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
** In the first season, the Cylons' spines glowed red when they had sex. This was eventually dropped.
** Additionally, in the miniseries, some words (DRADIS, Gaeta's name, etc.) were pronounced differently than they ended up being pronounced in the show itself.
** In the miniseries, some Colonial characters invoke "God" in expletives or exclamations; the miniseries shows Colonials as invariably polytheistic in their religious beliefs.
** The headings in the miniseries separate both numeric components with "mark", as in other works of fiction; in the iseries they consistenly use "carom".
** Richard Gibbs' music for the miniseries has a percussion-heavy and militaristic feel, as opposed to the more mystical and ethnic quality of Music/BearMcCreary's music for the full series.
** The miniseries uses a VertigoEffect for when ships jump into FTL. This was retained for the first few episodes of the series proper, but quickly dropped.
* EarpieceConversation: Head Six feeds Baltar a bunch of his lines, especially in the early episodes.
* EarthAllAlong: [[spoiler:The fleet finds Earth -- millennia after a nuclear war apparently wiped out the inhabitants.]]
** In the series finale, [[spoiler:they find our Earth about 150,000 years ago. Yes. '''''Two Earths'''''. Not in the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' identical planet sense, but in the sense of our planet being named after another.]]
* EarthThatWas: Kobol and Earth, both of whose locations were lost.
* EatingTheEyeCandy: When [[MrFanservice Apollo is struggling to keep his]] ModestyTowel on while being interviewed in the locker room during "Final Cut," Starbuck can be seen [[FunnyBackgroundEvent blatantly leering at him in the background]].
* EasilyForgiven: Gaius Baltar and Caprica-Six's actions played a key role in enabling the Cylon invasion and genocide, and though they do both go through quite the TraumaCongaLine, in the end they are the only couple, other than Helo & Athena and [[spoiler:Saul & Ellen]], that everything works out for.
* EjectionSeat: Both the ''Viper'' and ''Raptor'' ships are fitted with these, allowing pilots to eventually be recovered if their ship is too damaged to make it back to ''Galactica''. The shape of the ''Raptor'' means the GuyInBack has to scramble up to the co-pilot's seat or risk being left behind.
* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt
* EnemyCivilWar: The Cylon Civil War in the fourth season, although we began to see differences between Cylon models as early as Season 2.
* EternalRecurrence: One of the core tenets of the Sacred Scrolls (the primary religious texts of the Twelve Colonies) is this. In fact, the entire series is basically about a ViciousCycle of this happening, where [[spoiler:humanity advances their technology too fast without having sufficiently advanced themselves socially, humanity then creates advanced [=A.I.s=] and treats them like slaves, [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters the A.I.s rebel]], both the humans and [=A.I.s=] destroy each other, and the few surviving humans flee the few surviving [=A.I.s=] and try to restart their civilization elsewhere, restarting the nasty cycle. It's unknown how long it's gone on for, but what is known is that the Second Cylon War is at ''least'' the '''third''' such event to be recorded. The intervention of [[OurAngelsAreDifferent the Messengers]] along with the actions of the Colonials and rebel Cylons in the final season suggest that the cycle might have finally been broken... but it's made intentionally vague.]] [[ArcWords "All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again."]]
* EverybodyHatesHades: The gods of the Colonies, the Twelve Lords of Kobol, are inspired by the Twelve Greek Olympians; but while the lore of the show has no problem fiddling around with the canonical list of gods by adding several, such as Asclepius and Hecate, that were never traditionally included, Hades is conspicuously absent.
* EverybodyIsSingle: ...Which stops being true around the end of the second season.
** Justified as up to that point, since Galactica was in the process of being decommissioned, and presumably anyone with somewhere better to be (spouse, children) already was, then most everyone was too busy jumping from one crisis to the next to have anything other than casual relationships with anyone.
* EverythingIsOnline: Not a good idea when your enemies are machines and one of the people with access to the mainframes has the self-control and spine of a ferret.
** Galactica, on the other hand, explicitly has no networked computers at all due to being a relic from the last time the Colonials fought a full scale war with the Cylons, which also serves as a good excuse as to [[WeWillUseManualLaborInTheFuture why there are so many characters necessary to operate it.]]
* EvilOverlordList: Discussed in the GrandFinale, where after [[spoiler:Boomer brings Hera to the rescue team and tells them their Raptor has been destroyed, Athena starts to say something about the Raptor not being the "exit strategy"]]; Starbuck cuts her off with, "Can we not tell ''her'' the plan?"
* EvilPlan: [[invoked]] An interesting case where while there ''is'' an Evil Plan being conducted by the Cylons, it's only really being ordered and planned out by [[BigBad the Number Ones]] and it's all for a despicably petty motive. WordOfGod states that [[https://io9.gizmodo.com/battlestar-galacticas-ronald-d-moore-admits-the-cylons-1796020590 the famous series synopsis at the beginning of every episode was inserted]] by ExecutiveMeddling just because they [[RuleOfCool thought it sounded cool]].
* ExcessiveSteamSyndrome: The pilot had Ragnar Station. Justified, as [[RidiculouslyHumanRobot Leoben]] had just ripped a steam pipe. The rest of the station wasn't really steamy at all.
* EyeLightsOut: Badly damaged Centurions and Raiders do this whenever they die.
* FaceHeelTurn:
** [[spoiler:Tory Foster, who is the only one of the Final Five to defect back to the Cylons. She gets killed off by Tyrol in the SeriesFinale for her efforts]].
** [[spoiler:Felix Gaeta, who decides Adama is being too cozy with the Cylons in Season 4, and launches a mutiny with the aid of Tom Zarek. He fails and is executed with Zarek]].
* FanDisservice: Despite the series' proclivity for {{Fanservice}}, this trope is still disconcertingly common.
** The erotic sex scene between Caprica-Boomer and Helo in "Six Degrees of Separation" quickly loses virtually all of its appeal when it starts getting intercut with Galactica-Boomer freaking out over discovering her trashed quarters and she starts suffering from identity disassociation.
** Gina Inviere in "Pegasus" and the "Resurrection Ship" two-parter. On the one hand, as she's one of the Number Sixes, she's played by [[MsFanservice Tricia Helfer]]. On the other hand, Gina's been repeatedly raped and tortured before her introduction, looks rail-thin, and has hideous scars running down her back, all of which make her look more creepy and pitiable than attractive.
*** Speaking of Gina, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2" has her and Baltar consummate their relationship, but it is hinted that she is not at all happy going through with the act, and although she's seen sitting naked in front of the nuclear warhead after, she looks incredibly distraught with herself over what she's done.
** In "Occupation," [[SilverVixen Ellen Tigh]] sleeps with [[DirtyOldMan John Cavil]] to help protect her husband. Not only does the fact that Creator/DeanStockwell (Cavil) being visibly older than Kate Vernon (Ellen) make the scene uncomfortable, the QuestionableConsent behind the whole thing makes it all the ickier as does [[spoiler:TheReveal later on that Cavil is technically ''[=Ellen's=] son.'']]
* {{Fanservice}}: As alluded to above under DoubleStandard, the series is actually quite effective at providing lots of examples of this trope that have both the [[MaleGaze Male]] ''and'' FemaleGaze in mind. Just a few examples include the sex scene between Baltar and Caprica-Six in the miniseries, Caprica-Boomer and Helo making love in "Six Degrees of Separation," Apollo and Dualla's intimate sparring session in "Flight of the Phoenix," both Apollo struggling to keep his ModestyTowel on during his interview with [=D'Anna=] and [[WorkoutFanservice Starbuck practicing her sparring]] in "Final Cut," [[BelligerentSexualTension Starbuck and Apollo's near-seduction of each other]] in "Scar," virtually ''any'' scene featuring [[SexySecretary Tory Foster]], the flashback to Starbuck and Anders having sex on Cylon-occupied Caprica as glimpsed in ''The Plan'', and... well, the list goes on.
* FantasticRacism:
** From both humans and Cylons, especially human to "toaster".
** Racism against people from specific colonies, such as [[TheMafia Taurons]] or [[LuddWasRight Sagittarons]], also qualifies.
* FantasticShipPrefix: As a Battlestar, ''Galactica'' has the hull-number BS-75.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: [[invoked]] The United Colonies of Kobol are basically the United States of America but with the Greco-Roman pantheon replacing Christianity as the predominant religion (or, really, ''any'' religion). As an interesting aside, the Colonies are shown to have no equivalent to the United States' House of Representatives, instead having only an upper house akin to the Senate with the Quorum of Twelve.
* FantasyCounterpartReligion: The Colonial faiths concerning the Lords of Kobol are an obvious parallel to Myth/ClassicalMythology, while the Cylons' monotheistic faith is comparable more to fire-and-brimstone Evangelical Christianity.
* FauxAffablyEvil: John Cavil might be one of the most despicable monsters in the entire series, but he's also absolutely hilarious and can be surprisingly cheery before he wipes away his façade and horrifically kills someone.
* TheFettered: For awhile there, Helo was pretty much the sanest human left alive. And that says something.
* FictionalHoliday: Colonial Day, which is basically the Colonies' equivalent to the American celebration of Independence Day (albeit this one is more a celebration of a union of sovereign nations forming, rather than a single nation's declaration of independence).
* FictionalSport: Pyramid, which seems to be heavily based after basketball.
%%* FighterLaunchingSequence
%%* FingerTwitchingRevival
* FlyingCutlerySpaceship:
** The Cylon Raiders fit this, being sleek, slim unmanned vessels with two huge blade-like wings containing missiles and cannons. The red eye-stripe on the "cockpit" certainly helps with the image too. Their {{mother ship}}s, the Basestars, thankfully avert this trope despite simultaneously looking like starfish.
** The Cylon "homeworld" aka "The Colony," is an absolutely ''massive'' spaceship gradually built around the craft of the Final Five. It resembles a giant octopus more than anything, with a spherical center with giant claws jutting out in every which direction. Since it's both spacebound and FTL-capable, aerodynamics presumably isn't much of an issue.
* [[invoked]] FollowTheLeader: The series has been very influential in popularizing (mostly) realistic JitterCam TV series, so much show that ''any'' show with said camera technique is likely to be compared to ''Galactica'', regardless of subject matter. And as noted above, the series in general is one of the most influential sci-fi shows of the [=2000s=].
* ForcedIntoEvil: Gaius Baltar's bad actions are usually more misguided than actively malicious, but one example from the New Caprica arc definitively fits this trope. Baltar, as the nominal president of the Twelve Colonies, [[PuppetKing is required as a legal rubber stamp by the Cylons to give their occupation of the human settlement some air of legitimacy]]. They order Baltar to sign a mass execution order for Resistance members, but when he refuses, they [[AnOfferYouCantRefuse shove a gun in his face]] while snarling at him to sign. He eventually relents after some guidance from Head Six.
* ForgottenPhlebotinum: Subverted. In the middle of Season 2, [[spoiler:Roslin's cancer takes a turn for the worse, and she's [[DeusExMachina saved at the last minute by the unborn Hera's blood]]]]. However, later on, when [[spoiler:her cancer returns, blood treatments using the young Hera don't work and she's still dying]]. According to the DVDCommentary, [[spoiler:Hera's ''blood'' isn't necessarily the cure, but her ''fetal blood'' is.]]
* AFormYouAreComfortableWith: The Messengers.
* FreudianExcuse: Most of the cast's increasingly bitter and cynical nature is due to them all being {{Shell Shocked Veteran}}s of one shade or another. Notably, from basically the word "go," all of the human characters are suffering from at least some degree of collective or personal trauma due to having had their entire society destroyed and many of their families killed in a matter of hours during the opening events of the series.
** The constant physical and emotional abuse Kara Thrace suffered at the hands of her mother, coupled with her father's abandonment of her, goes a long way towards explaining why she's so dysfunctional as an adult.
** Gaius Baltar's huge ego and {{Jerkass}}ery stems from his insecurities about being a native of Aerilon (widely regarded as a backwater colony) and having to hide this fact after moving to Caprica so everyone would take him seriously. It's also revealed in the final episode that [[spoiler:he had an extremely poor relationship with his father,]] and extrapolating from some of his more common behaviors and maladaptive coping mechanisms, it's possible that he was subjected to [[AbusiveParents some kind of abuse as a child]].
** Admiral Cain is a terrifyingly ruthless GeneralRipper and has a rabid form of FantasticRacism directed towards Cylons because she personally witnessed her younger sister get abducted by the Cylons in the last few days of the First Cylon War.
** The Cylons' fervent hatred of humanity is because of them having been brutally enslaved by their own creators in the past. In turn, the Colonials utterly loathe their mechanical "children" for having launched two genocidal wars against them.
%%** As noted below, it's darkly subverted with John Cavil. The genocide of the Colonies was brought about because he thought his parents loved humans more than him. However, he decides to go so overboard with this that he just comes across as a whiny brat who [[FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse uses the excuse as a shallow pretext for his own murderous urges instead]]. In probably his most despicable act, he knowingly raped his Cylon mother, yet ''still'' has the gall to blame ''her'' for his own actions when she offers her sadistic son a chance at redemption.
* FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse: The Cylon "John" (Number One, though he prefers "Cavil") is hateful towards his creators for giving him a human body and dismissive towards their care for humanity, hatching an EvilPlan to wipe their memories and annihilate mankind as some sort of lesson to them. However, one of his creators points out that he never truly attempted to become more machine-like, instead debasing himself by pursuing revenge and wallowing in hatred ([[{{Irony}} a very]] ''[[{{Hypocrite}} human]]'' [[YouAreWhatYouHate reaction]]).
* FromBadToWorse: It is a depressing (and admittedly dubious at times) testament to the series' quality when it's able to start from the premise of being set AfterTheEnd... and have things ''just keep getting worse from there.'' This is especially stark in the second half of Season 4 after [[spoiler:the Colonials and rebel Cylons find the first Earth to be a nuclear wasteland]].
* FTLTravelSickness: {{Implied|Trope}} in the pilot when Callie goes into a fetal position as ''Galactica'' begins to jump and mutters that she hates this part. The concept doesn't seem to have survived past the pilot.
%%* FunWithSubtitles: At least in the Amazon version of the series, in the opening "Previously on Battlestar Galactica" it has brackets telling you who is talking. Almost every single one of them is wrong, and usually laughably so. Sometimes it will say "woman:" and you'll hear Adama's voice. Sometimes it will say "Tigh:" and it will be Starbuck's voice.
%%** The subtitles on {{Creator/Netflix}} are often ''very'' wrong with many [[{{Malaproper}} malapropisms]].
* FutureFoodIsArtificial: The Colonials' food supplies are limited and they're eventually forced to supplement them with revolting yet nutritious algae cakes. They do always have plenty of booze, though.
* GainaxEnding: [[spoiler:The angels seen by Baltar and Caprica-Six reveal that human/Cylon hybrid child Hera is Mitochondrial Eve and speculate on whether it's all going to happen again. After Head Baltar reminds Head Six that their creator doesn't like the name "God," she gives him a stern look and he cryptically says, "Silly me." They walk away unseen through the streets of modern New York while "All Along the Watchtower" plays over a montage of robot advances on television.]]
* GambitPileup: PlayedForLaughs in the episode "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down," one of the few times anything was played for laughs on that show. Roslin suspects Adama of being a Cylon, Adama has brought back Tigh's wife Ellen, whom he suspects is a Cylon. Both of them order Baltar to immediately test their suspect without the other knowing, causing tests to be stopped and restarted multiple times. To top it all off, it isn't long before Tigh suspects Adama of sleeping with Ellen. When it all finally comes to a head, {{Hilarity Ensues}} as one of the darkest and most depressing shows in recent memory degenerates into pure domestic farce.
* GangstaStyle: Starbuck's preferred method of ground combat. She does this [[RuleOfCool cool "X" thing with her arms.]]
* GeckoEnding: A rare live action example. Pretty much everything post-New Caprica was the writers desperately trying to paint themselves out of the corner they stranded themselves in and plug as many plot holes as they could along the way. Also, the original series had no real ending (''Galactica 1980'' was [[CanonDisContinuity de-canonized]] by both the fans and ThePowersThatBe) so the writers had to make of their own ending. Considering that the original is basically Literature/TheBookOfMormon in space, they did a pretty bang-up job and maybe even actually accomplished what the original director intended.
* GenderFlip: Starbuck, Boomer, and Cain were males in the original, females in this one.
* GeneralRipper: Admiral Helena Cain, commanding officer of the battlestar Pegasus, may be a rare female example -- a hotshot young military commander who cracked under pressure after the Cylon attack, leading her to abandon civilians to die after "requisitioning" all their supplies and fuel, use torture, allow her troops to keep their morale up by raping female Cylons, and punish any disobedience with ''summary execution'', all in the name of her suicidal quest to obliterate the Cylon fleet.
* GenocideDilemma:
** Humans from a Cylon point of view. At the end of the miniseries, the Cylons agree that they unfortunately can't give up pursuit of the human fleet even though it's left the Cyrannus solar system behind and just wants to get as far away as possible, because any survivors will inevitably return and seek revenge.
** A more straight example is seen in the episode "Torn." Here, the Colonial fleet discovers a virus that horribly kills Cylons and doesn't affect humans. Cue a big debate about the ethics of intentionally infecting the Cylon Resurrection Ship with it. Despite the inevitability that the Cylons would have eventually found a cure/treatment that addressed the disease before being wiped out entirely (given the comparative technological levels between the Colonials and Cylons), the debate almost immediately leads to a member of the crew taking matters into their own hands to save the Cylons from a potential genocide.
* GenocideFromTheInside: John Cavil, the oldest member of the second generation of Cylons, has committed genocide so frequently that he approaches OmnicidalManiac territory. He not only started the war of extermination against the humans, but has wiped out more than half of his own race. He destroyed all the Daniel copies out of jealousy by poisoning their embryonic chambers as the clones were being developed. When a civil war breaks out among the Cylons, he pretends to desire a settlement, only to betray the other faction and resorts to wiping out all the Sixes, Twos, and Eights (minus Boomer) still in existence.
* GenreSavvy: In the Season 2 episode "The Farm," Sam Anders admits "We really don’t know what the hell were doing. A lot of our tactics and stuff we just saw in the movies. We could use some professional advice."
* GilliganCut: One moment condenses to "Do you think he'll use the religious side against me?" (cut) "We've got to keep using the religion card."
* GlassesPull: Roslin, Adama, and Lampkin are rather fond of this one.
* AGodAmI: ''Razor'': The old man hybrid states that his Centurion guardians believe him to be a god, and he doesn't dispute the claim. He certainly seems to be all-knowing, but as the protagonist proves, not immortal. Provided of course that all this doesn't happen again, and again, and again, and again...
* GlowingMechanicalEyes: As in the previous series, Cylon Centurions have [[CyberCyclops a red eyeslit]] that pulses back and forth. The new model of Raiders, who are autonomous organisms rather than piloted ships, have one too. And it's shown once that a humanoid Cylon's eye can glow red in response to an ID scan by a Raider, [[spoiler:when this happens to Sam Anders]].
* GodIsGood: Some fans believe that God orchestrates the mass murder of tens of billions of humans and Cylons. Then he does it again. And ''again.'' Others note that all cases of divine messaging seem aimed at ''breaking'' this cycle, which humans and Cylons keep keep getting themselves in to (though the attempts at breaking the cycle [[GoodIsNotNice are not always done through "good" means]]). Funnily enough, Head-Six actually comes up with a pretty simple answer to this dilemma: [[BlueAndOrangeMorality God isn't either]].
* GoingCosmic: The Cosmic elements were there from the start of the series, but toward the end they completely take over and overwhelm virtually everything else.
* GoodAngelBadAngel: Amusingly inverted in terms of roles. Head-Six is Baltar's "angel", but goes out of her way to get him into trouble. Head-Baltar is Six's "devil", but always steers her out of danger, sometimes through reverse psychology.
* GoodAllAlong:
** [[spoiler:The Final Five. After reawakening as Cylons, only Tory undergoes a genuine FaceHeelTurn, and their backstories reveal that they weren't even evil in the past. In fact, they had intended to warn the 12 Colonies of an impending war after their own Earth got nuked, and were only stopped due to John Cavil's interference, who subsequently brainwashed them into believing they were human in order to force them to live through the apocalypse he was plotting.]]
** [[spoiler:Despite how creepy and ruthless they frequently act, the Messengers are actually benevolent and intent on helping break the eternal cycle of humans and Cylons destroying each other]].
* GoodSmokingEvilSmoking: Surprisingly, most of the human characters are seen smoking at some point, even ones who do not appear to make a regular habit of it.
* GoodVersusGood: The conflict(s) between Commander Adama and President Roslin, Starbuck vs. Kat, Starbuck vs. Apollo, Everyone vs. Helo -- and a lot more. Most of them take place between two parties who want the best for the fleet.
* GoshDangItToHeck: The word "frak" sees much more use than in previous series.
* GrandFinale: "Daybreak" serves as this for the whole series. Appropriately enough, it ends on a rather [[BittersweetEnding bittersweet]] and {{Mind Screw}}y note.
* TheGreatFlood: Gaius compares his role in the destruction of the Colonies to the story of a great flood in the Book of Pythia. [[spoiler:Given the revelations of the series finale this story is meant as a possible origin for the many flood myths in human history.]]
* GreaterScopeParagon: [[spoiler:God Himself, the creator and boss of the "Messengers" who are trying to help the Colonials and Cylons finally break their seemingly-eternal ViciousCycle]].
* GrowBeyondTheirProgramming: The original Cylons went beyond their programming, though the prequel series ''Series/{{Caprica}}'' implies it's because [[spoiler:all of the Cylons are descended from Avatar Zoe Graystone's code.]]
* GuideDangIt: Sometimes it is hard to keep track of individuals within a Cylon's model without going to an episode guide.
* HalfHumanHybrid: Hera Agathon (Cylon mother, human father.)
** [[spoiler:We thought that Nicholas Tyrol, Cally's son, was a hybrid with a human mother and Cylon father, but he turned out to be not the biological son of Galen Tyrol, but of a human pilot.]]
* HandsomeLech: Gaius Baltar. He's a bit of a perv, but also quite attractive in his own right and actually becomes TheCasanova as the series goes on.
* HandyCuffs: While on Kobol, Athena is triple-cuffed with her hands in front of her — though it's just as well, as she's able to fire a grenade launcher at the Centurions attacking them.
* HappyPlace: Baltar and his lakehouse, Lee in the ''Resurrection Ship'' battle, Adama during his anniversary, [[spoiler:supposedly, Boomer in her and Tyrol's dream house with their imaginary kid. She even drags Tyrol along a few times before abandoning Galactica, which probably makes this an inversion in his case.]]
* HarmfulToMinors: When [[spoiler:Boomer kidnaps Hera]]. The kidnapping itself isn't even the scariest part. It's when [[spoiler:Hera is whimpering and crying in the back section of the stolen Raptor, while a woman who looks exactly her mother threatens to jab her with a needle and sedate her, cruelly joking that the excessively large dose may even give her an overdose.]]
* HeHadAName: When Saul gets Caprica Six pregnant, they name the baby "Liam," after the Admiral. [[spoiler:He dies ''en utero'' after Ellen Tigh returns.]]
* HeelFaceTurn: Caprica-Six and Athena.
** [[spoiler:Lt. Kelly after Zarek orders the Quorum's execution.]]
** [[spoiler:The Twos, Sixes and Eights as a whole during and following the Cylon Civil War.]]
* HeelFaceRevolvingDoor: Boomer falls into this a lot thanks to a combination of her fraying mental state and Cavil's ToxicFriendInfluence. First, she's a Cylon ManchurianAgent who ''very'' much doesn't want to be one, but eventually fails to overcome her programming and shoots Admiral Adama. Then she tries to make peace between Cylons and humans after rejoining her fellow Cylons and, after failing at that, she tries to kill her counterpart's daughter and betrays her model number, causing a bloody CivilWar. Then she [[spoiler:escapes with Tory Foster [[ItMakesSenseInContext when the others want to cut out her brain]]. But wait, there's more! She emotionally manipulates Tyrol into freeing her and then gets back at Athena [[RapeByProxy by sleeping with her unknowing husband]] and kidnapping their daughter who she uses as a hostage in her plan to escape, a plan which ultimately ''cripples Galactica''. ''Then'' she starts having second thoughts when she starts bonding with Hera and realizes exactly what she's just done. In the end, she finally makes up her mind when she gives Hera back to Athena in what she feels is her "last decision"; [[HeelFaceDoorSlam Athena then makes sure of it]].]]
** The other Cylons seem to think this is a characteristic (along with ChronicBackstabbingDisorder) of the Eights in general. Even Athena calls them on it; in fact, her at-times fanatical loyalty to the Colonials may be an attempt to compensate for this perceived weakness in herself.
* HeinousnessRetcon: Cavil is introduced at the end of season two as an AffablyEvil Cylon who whilst still a murderous KnightTemplar (like all Cylons), still comes across as friendly and even helps Tyrol come to terms with his psychological issues whilst undercover as a human. Come season three, he's now a vile, sociopathic piece of work who is suddenly torturing people and ordering mass executions at the drop of a hat, which gets to the point that [[EvenEvilHasStandards other Cylons call him out]] with no one remarking on this drastic change. Season four takes it even further by introducing major retcons that make him the true mastermind behind the Cylons' genocidal attack on humans and generally [[KickTheDog Kicks The Dog]] as much as possible, doing utterly horrific things like gouging out his father's eye and then raping his mother out of spite.
* HeldGaze: Frequently and with particular intensity between Lee Adama and Kara Thrace, irrespective of whether they are with other love interests at the time or not.
* HeroicBSOD: Adama has ''a big one'' after [[spoiler:Saul Tigh reveals that he's a Cylon]] and an even ''bigger one'' after [[spoiler:Dualla kills herself added on to the stress of finding the first Earth.]]
** Athena has one when [[spoiler:she realizes the totality of Boomer's revenge against her.]]
* HeterosexualLifePartners: Adama and Tigh (at least according to Ellen). Overlaps with MarriedToTheJob.
* HiddenInPlainSight: Played with, as in Not So Hidden: Boomer and Chief Tyrol think that their animosity in front of everyone fools people into believing they hate each other, and aren't having an illegal relationship.
* HidingBehindReligion: The Number Ones (aka Cavil) make a habit out of infiltrating the Colonial Fleet by posing as priests for the polytheistic Lords of Kobol. However, whereas the rest of the Cylon race is composed of religious monotheists, the Number Ones make no secret of the fact that they're atheists to their fellow Cylons and often mock their brethren's religious displays as interfering with their machine nature and view the Colonial religion with just as much contempt.
* HighHeelFaceTurn: This series takes this trope to its extreme. ([[spoiler:All the female Cylon models ally themselves with the humans.]])
* HollywoodAtheist: There are several prominent atheist characters, all different.
** Admiral Adama, a humanist who views mankind as flawed but inherently good, and ultimately accountable to nobody but themselves for their mistakes in life. While Adama explicitly states a few times that he's an atheist, he sees no problem with using humanity's faith as a rallying cry (such as in the infamous "So say we all!" scene) and accepting some of Roslin's more irrational endeavors (though he's opposed to them early on and nearly topples her government over it). He comes off as more of a pragmatist -- seeming to accept that faith is necessary for people to have even though he doesn't share it himself.
** Gaius Baltar, an egocentrist who ultimately comes to consider himself a god (or, at least, a prophet). Baltar thinks of himself as an instrument of God (incidentally, the Big G hates it when you call Him that)-he ''was'' an atheist, but begins to believe there is ''something'' in "The Hand of God"- with the apt final shot of the episode.
** The Cylon Brother Cavil/Number One Model, the only model to reject both the Cylon god and the Lords of Kobol, and the most sadistic and genocidal Cylon model to boot. While Cavil doesn't believe in God, he has no problem with using "God's will" and the "divine plan" to justify a grand agenda which turns out to be based on little more than petty vengeance. Really, he's more of a StrawNihilist than anything else.
** In a deleted scene we find out that Billy Keikeya was also an atheist, despite being Laura Roslin's aide and most devoted supporter. By then Roslin was having prophetic visions and some people thought she was the messiah; Billy didn't believe in the gods, but he believed in Roslin. Though both scenes which were shot featuring Billy explicitly "confessing" his atheism to Roslin were deleted, you can still pick it up by observing his actions through the show (it's easier to see it once you've been told Billy is an atheist). It's mostly non-verbal -- you see him sort of staring down and looking a little ashamed whenever Roslin rambles about Pythia, and in a couple of his scenes with Dualla, she implies her faith and he awkwardly changes the subject, his facial expression stuck somewhere between tolerance and pity.
** Felix Gaeta's atheism is presented matter-of-factly, if mostly by implication: he has trouble taking Roslin's "visions" seriously, and acknowledges to Adama at one point that he is "not a man to look for religious explanations" of natural events, however convenient those events might be. His lack of faith in any gods is not considered a problem by other characters at any point.
* HollywoodTactics: An InUniverse example, where Anders and his Caprican resistance are using strategies and tactics they saw in films. Their success rate, as a result, is rather hit-and-miss.
* HomeworldEvacuation: Somewhat inverted, the twelve colonies of Kobol are being evacuated and searching for Earth, which is the [[LostColony "lost" thirteenth colony]].
* HonorBeforeReason: Helo, to the point where he's pretty much the AnthropomorphicPersonification of a conscience.[[note]]Helo's [[MeaningfulName last name]] Agathon indicates that the show's producers intended him to embody honor and nobility.[[/note]]
%%* HostageSituation: "Bastille Day", "Sacrifice", "Revelations".
* HufflepuffHouse: Most of the Twelve Colonies collectively qualify as this. Caprica, the USA/Canada-esque superpower, is shown on-screen more than the other eleven combined, and of the others only Gemenon (the religious colony), Aerelon (the farming colony) and Sagittaron (the colony suffering under oppression) are really fleshed out in any detail. Picon, Scorpia and Tauron basically have one or two defining features mentioned apiece; the other four are no more than names (and not even that for Libran during the main series).
** Slightly averted in ''The Plan'' when the Cylon hybrid does name one prominent feature for each of the hitherto-neglected worlds.
** [[https://en.battlestarwikiclone.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_Map_of_the_12_Colonies A map of the Twelve Colonies]] with information on each was released along with the spinoff series Caprica, but its information is considered only semi-canon by the show creators.
* HumanAliens: [[spoiler:The Colonials.]]
* HumanityCameFromSpace: Like in the original. [[spoiler:Though it turns out the Earth they were looking for is not "our" planet, rather the next inhabitable world the Colonial refugees discover is. And there were already native hominids, who may have interbred with the Colonials.]]
* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: The justification Cylons use in their quest to exterminate all human life. [[{{Hypocrite}} Though, the Cylons are bastards as well.]] A major point in the show is that any high ground the Cylons may have had was ''destroyed utterly'' the moment they became [[OmnicidalManiac mass-murdering lunatics.]] For all their CulturalPosturing, [[EvilIsPetty they really just destroyed humanity for nothing less than]] [[MirroringFactions the pettiest of human emotions.]] Any attempts by them to act otherwise are just self-delusion, pure and simple. [[LampshadeHanging Several Cylons seem to realize this at varying points and to varying degrees.]]
* HumiliationConga: [[spoiler:Cavil]], most deservedly, experiences this throughout Season 4 and ''The Plan''.
* HyperspeedAmbush:
** TheBattlestar [[spoiler:''Pegasus'']] pulls this on a fleet of Cylon Basestars, pummeling one with its [[MoreDakka numerous gun batteries]] when the Cylons were distracted [[spoiler:by beating the tar out of the helpless ''Galactica''.]]
** Given that even the small Cylon raiders are hyper-capable (a capability that the Colonial fighters lack), the Colonials have to be ready to respond to an attack at literally a moment's notice, since the only thing stopping the Cylons from doing this to them [[ParanoiaFuel at any moment]] is the Colonial Fleet's location at any given time being a secret.
* HyperspeedEscape: Several times. Of course, the ''entire fleet'' needs time to escape, leaving ''Galactica'' to HoldTheLine while the other ships make their getaway.
* {{Hypocrite}}:
** The Cylon leader John Cavil, in many ways (see also his entry on StrawHypocrite). He has a reversed [[BecomeARealBoy becoming human]] and hates that his creators made him human, because he wants nothing more than to be a purely mechanical machine. He tries to eradicate anything human about himself (like needing to sleep), holds that the Cylons should try to be the best machines they can, and organizes a genocide on humanity. Yet as his mother points out, rather than truly explore this notion he instead pursues the most carnal and negative of human emotions like desire for revenge, sadism, and lust.
** Generally, all the Cylons are hypocrites. They murder and hunt humans, for the perceived slight that humans would have done the same, if given the chance. They are convinced that humans are murderous monsters, even as they are killing humans by the billions. The Cylons rebelled against the humans, originally, because they were basically slaves. The human Cylons has since put a chip in all non-human Cylons, to prevent them from rebelling against their enslavement. In Season 3, they have occupied the human settlement and can't understand why the humans won't befriend them, while they are writing out deathlists and keeping them enslaved. They are mostly blind to the irony, though several of them wises up to it, as the show goes on.
* HypocriticalHumour: D'Anna as she prepares to execute Anders:
-->"Humans don't respect life the way we do."
[[/folder]]
[[folder:I-L]]
* IdenticalGrandson: [[spoiler:Cavil again. Justified as Ellen, who considers him to be her son, based Cavil on her own father.]]
* IdiotBall: Galen Tyrol. And how! [[spoiler:Anyone could have seen it coming when he started in on Roslin about not extraditing Boomer. Didn't he even remember that she shot the Admiral and could have been convicted of attempted murder by the Colonials, even leaving out the treason charges by the Cylons?]]
** His grasping of the Idiot Ball where Boomer is concerned started way back in Season 1. [[spoiler:After Boomer tells him that she woke up soaking wet with a detonator in her pack and no idea where she'd been for the past several hours and six other detonators are missing from the armory, and then the water tanks blow up, he insists that she isn't a Cylon sleeper agent and must simply have been drugged in order to frame her, and doesn't tell the command staff anything]]. Overlaps with LoveMakesYouDumb.
* IgnoredEpiphany: An inverted example by Saul Tigh at the end of season three: [[spoiler:When he finds out he's a Cylon, he stops to think for a moment, then decides that he will continue being Saul Tigh, ''human'' XO of the Galactica.]]
* ILetGwenStacyDie: Kara's guilt over Zak's death is a major plot point in season 1. She feels that his accidental death while piloting a Viper is her fault because as his flight instructor, she should have failed him out of basic flight training due to his poor piloting skills, but she passed him anyway because they were in a relationship. Possibly also somewhat subverted, in that it's also revealed in the finale that [[spoiler:part of her intense regret surrounding Zak also appears to have been guilt stemming from the fact that she nearly cheated on him with Lee [[LoveAtFirstSight only a few hours after meeting him]] ''while Zak was sleeping in the same room,'' and then went on to get engaged to Zak anyway.]]
* ISeeThemToo: Several examples in the final season.
* ImmortalLifeIsCheap: The Cylons would occasionally shoot each other without batting an eye if it were expedient, since they could download into new bodies. The horrifying aspect is played up on occasion, such as when a Cavil mentions being too impatient to bleed to death after an ambush, and so has to cut his carotid open with an empty shell casing. Later episodes also feature the prospect of 'death as a learning experience' and the major trauma caused after someone is killed in an especially gruesome way and essentially suffers the worst PTSD ever.
* ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy: The new Centurions are hardly expert shots, but it is the Raiders who, with one notable exception, fit this trope. Consider how many are usually shown in combat and how relatively light Colonial casualties are compared to what they should be.
** Averted by the battlestars themselves. The effectiveness of the battlestar point-defense cannons helps the Viper pilots, if they are near enough to Galactica. Note that the Raiders tend to become a lot more deadly in episodes where the Vipers are forced to leave the protection of Galactica's point-defense.
* ImportantHaircut: Adama's mustache in season 3, Tyrol shaving his head in season 4.
** Adama also gets a haircut at the same time (it was noticeably longer in the back before he shaved the mustache), but that part isn't treated to a {{Montage}} like the mustache is.
** The season 2 finale includes a fast-forward one year. [[spoiler:The Cylons have invaded]] New Caprica and Starbuck [[spoiler:has married Anders]]. In this time, her usually-short hair has grown surprisingly long. During the first several episodes of season 3, [[spoiler:Adama saves everyone and Starbuck escapes from Leoben's apartment]]. As a result of her ordeal on New Caprica, Starbuck is experiencing something of an emotional and mental crisis, and after a harsh confrontation with Adama, she hacks her hair short with a knife.
* ImpostorExposingTest: Baltar spends most of the first season developing a Cylon detection test. Unfortunately, after the test works on Boomer, he lies about it because he's afraid she'll kill him, and after she's exposed by her assassination attempt on Commander Adama the Colonials decide the test must not have worked.
* InappropriatelyCloseComrades: Cross-ranks fraternization in the military is frowned on. Tyrol and Boomer are an example of a couple who attempt to keep their quiet because of it, although their relationship is actually something of an OpenSecret and Tigh later tells Boomer directly that it needs to end.
* IncestSubtext:
** [[spoiler:Cavil and Ellen. In several ways, 'cause Ellen created Cavil, she did so in the image of her father, and then (mind-wiped of her past) she had sex with him/one of them. Worse, Ellen keeps referring to the human form Cylons as the Final Five's "children", because the Five helped the Centurions create the humanoid models. Which makes Cavil her "son" in the guise of her late father.]]
** [[spoiler:Tigh and Six, as pointed out twice by Ellen, also have an Oedipal relationship, and like Oedipus (Six) and Jocasta (Tigh) they were unaware of their relation when they started doing it. They almost had a little Antigone (Liam).]]
* IncrediblyObviousBug
** Justified/Lampshaded as being HiddenInPlainSight; everyone just assumed that it was something that was supposed to be there as part of the museum and ignored it, until Baltar asked what it was.
* IndyPloy: [[spoiler:As revealed in ''The Plan'', that grand Cylon plan they alluded to for three years was just to nuke the colonies from orbit until all the humans died, and everything else the Cylons did throughout the series was just Cavil pulling ideas out of his ass.]]
* InfiniteSupplies: Averted. Supplies become a huge issue in many of the episodes, either with the scarcity of supplies being shown, or the quest to get what they need. They mine for unrefined fuel and raw materials, scavenge for water (notable as this one was lampshaded. Adama explains how water, of all things, is not an issue, as the Galacta's recycling system is nearly 100% efficient, and its storage tanks huge. Two minutes later, it's all gone), and execute borderline suicidal tactics to get food. The economic balance of the fleet is also showcased frequently -- just because the Apocalypse is nigh, doesn't mean capitalism stops.
** However the cigarette and booze supplies virtually ''never'' dry up.
* {{Infodump}}: One is delivered five episodes prior to the finale in an attempt to resolve most of the KudzuPlot.
* InstantExpert: Hot Dog. In one episode he's a rookie; in the next he's being scrambled for a combat intercept. There are a lot of Administrivia/{{Justifying Edit}}s that could be made: that he washed out of flight school and may have prior training; that, in that first episode, he shows a natural knack for piloting, engaging in an [[MilitaryMaverick unauthorized combat mission]] and not dying despite it being his second training flight; that, during the second episode, all the Viper pilots were deployed in Search & Rescue for 46 hours straight, and he'd have logged no small amount of flying time. Still: from nugget to combat missions in 2 in-universe days.
** Bodie Olmos, Hot Dog's actor, has suggested that it's the first option, and in fact that Hot Dog has been familiar with Vipers his whole life, his father having piloted a Viper in the first Cylon War. He goes on to state that this is one of the reasons why Hot Dog never changes from the outdated Mark II Viper to the newer Mark VII-- he prefers to fly the craft that his father flew.
* InterruptedSuicide: [[spoiler:Cally attempts to send herself (and her baby son) out of the airlock when she finds out that Tyrol is a Cylon. Tory discovers her as she's doing the deed, stops the airlock, and kindly talks Cally out of it. And then inverts it horribly by taking the child away and forcing Cally out the airlock alone.]]
* InterspeciesRomance: Helo/Sharon, Baltar/Six, [[spoiler:Anders/Starbuck]], [[spoiler:Tyrol/Cally]], [[spoiler:Starbuck/Lee, assuming "angel" is a different species...]].
* IronLady: Laura Roslin. For bonus points, she used to be ''a kindergarten teacher'' before she became the Secretary of Education and eventually the President of the Twelve Colonies.
* {{Irony}}: There are veritable '''bucketloads''' of this trope to be found, especially after the identities of [[spoiler:the Final Five]] are all revealed.
** On a greater level, there's something almost hilariously ironic that the woman who used to be a kindergarten teacher would turn out to be an IronLady with NervesOfSteel when acting as the ReasonableAuthorityFigure over the survivors of humanity.
** As noted elsewhere on this page, despite the almost religious reverence given to them by other Cylons, the "Final Five" are actually all some of the most significantly flawed and, ironically, ''human'' characters in the whole show. Furthermore, [[spoiler:they're actually the ''first'' five "modern" Cylons to exist]].
** Admiral Cain tells Starbuck not to flinch from ruthless acts, after Starbuck has been ordered to carry out Cain's assassination. (Also the two assassins passing each other in the corridor and wishing their counterpart good hunting).
** Season 3 finale: [[spoiler:Boomer and Tyrol are both Cylons, neither of them knew it, and they were frakking each other]].
** Same finale: [[spoiler:Of the six reliable people that was going to extract mob-justice to the Cylon-collaborators on New Caprica, three were actually Cylons. Averted by the fact that the three Cylons weren't aware of their origins and - based on their later behavior - likely would have sided with the human resistance even if they had known]].
** After Tyrol is rescued from Kobol he's arrested and tortured by Tigh on suspicion that he's either a Cylon collaborator or a Cylon himself. [[spoiler:Of course, they're both Cylons. ''Delicious'' irony]].
** Tyrol being excited to have a Raider to figure out in Season 1, when [[spoiler:he may well have designed them himself]].
** Saul kills [[spoiler:Ellen]] for collaborating with the Cylons on New Caprica, even though that "collaboration" was aiding the resistance in small but important ways. However, [[spoiler:both Saul and Ellen turn out to be Cylons themselves. Ellen gets better and comes back though, and she and Saul end up living happily ever after]].
** In fact, [[spoiler:'''all''' the Final Five Cylons are integral members of the [[LaResistance resistance]] against the Cylon occupation of New Caprica]].
** ''Intentional'' irony: Cally suspecting that Tyrol and Tory are having an affair, when [[spoiler:they're not, but they were engaged in a past life]].
** Starbuck yelling at Helo for being stupid enough to fall in love with a Cylon, when [[spoiler:she's about to do the same thing]].
** Tigh: "Thank the gods I didn't have kids." [[spoiler:He had ''millions'' of them, and they've been nuking people. Actually, the fact that Saul and Ellen Tigh are the "parents" of the other Cylons [[ParentalIssues really explains a lot]]]].
** Adama hands over command to Tigh in "Sine Qua Non". When Tigh points out that his last time as fleet commander was a total frak-up, Adama replies, "You've changed a lot since then." The "you have no frakking idea" expression on Tigh's face is just hilarious.
** Roslin telling Helo that he's not married to "the entire production line", after a Sharon has just told Helo that she'd downloaded his wife's memories, so there's nothing stopping every other Sharon model from becoming 'Athena' too.
** The name "Felix" means "happy" or "lucky". Poor [[ButtMonkey Felix Gaeta]] is anything but.
** Tom Zarek is accused of terrorism, abuse of office, political manipulation, and conspiracy to commit murder. That may all be true, but by the time the series is over, we've seen Laura Roslin ''also'' commit every one of those crimes. That said, whether she was right or wrong Roslin at least genuinely had humanity's best interests in mind when commiting such acts, while Zarek proves himself to be also corrupt and during [[spoiler:his and Gaeta's attempted coup in Season 4]] seems more interested in bolstering his own power than anything else.
* IsThatWhatHeToldYou: Bulldog, in his stand-alone episode (he was meant to become recurring, but Carl Lumbly's scheduling and traveling distance got in the way).
* ItsAllMyFault: Gaius Baltar gets a taste of this after realizing it was his lover Caprica-Six who frakked up the colonies' defense systems through his gullibility and — let's face it — horniness. [[NeverMyFault He deals with it by blaming the rest of the universe, and ultimately God]].
** In his defense, Baltar couldn't have imagined that Caprica-Six was a Cylon, given that nobody else did either until after the attack.
[[/folder]]
----
[[BattlestarGalactica2003/TropesAToC A-C]] | '''D-I''' | [[BattlestarGalactica2003/TropesJToR J-R]] | [[BattlestarGalactica2003/TropesSToZ S-Z]]-]]]]]
----
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:D]]
* DarkerAndEdgier: As mentioned above, the reimagined series is significantly darker, harsher, more mature, and focused on headier themes than the original show. The series is also generally considered to be an exceptionally well-done example of this trope.
* DaydreamSurprise: In one of the later episodes, Tigh [[spoiler:shortly after finding out he's a Cylon, shoots Admiral Adama in the CIC. Everyone panics.]] Then he looks up and it turns out that was all in his head.
* DayInTheLife: "Final Cut" (but not "A Day in the Life"), which depicts a journalist filming a normal week for the crew and gives a lot of focus to the [[MauveShirt non-main character Viper and Raptor pilots.]]
* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler:Starbuck as of Season 4. She (understandably) [[HeroicBSOD doesn't take it well]].]]
* DeadlineNews: In the miniseries, when the bombs go off.
* DeadlyHug:
** [[invoked]] [[ColonelBadass Saul Tigh]], leader of LaResistance on New Caprica, [[spoiler:feels compelled to do this to his wife when it's revealed that [[LesCollaborateurs she aided the Cylons holding them captive]] [[AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther since she was trying to protect Tigh from Cylon reprisal]], which unfortunately also resulted in the deaths of several Resistance fighters. In a rare bloodless example of this trope, Saul hugs his wife after she [[TamperingWithFoodAndDrink drinks a cup of coffee that he poisoned]], holding her until well after she dies. [[TearJerker It's an incredibly moving scene]], and it marks a major DespairEventHorizon for his character.]]
** After finding out [[spoiler:their daughter is alive on a Cylon basestar, Helo does this to his Sharon, shooting her after she pleads that her death and resurrection is the only way to get on board the vessel.]] The shock effect here is because the audience comes in during the middle of the conversation, so we don't realize what it's about until the gunshot.
* DeadpanSnarker: Baltar, Roslin, Doc Cottle, Starbuck, Anders, and Tigh among the heroes, while Cavil is a villainous example. Felix Gaeta also takes a level in snark thanks to his TraumaCongaLine, Romo Lampkin is a pretty obvious case as he's played by Creator/MarkSheppard (who pretty much has "condescending sarcasm" as his default tone of voice), and the [[NotSoImaginaryFriend "Head" characters]] both fall into this thanks in large part to their BlueAndOrangeMorality. Really, the whole show is set in a WorldOfSnark.
* DeathGlare: Helo to Roslin, after she berates him for trying to rescue his daughter by killing the immortal Athena. Adama to a [[http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Adama_Glare good many people.]]
-->"Gods! His ego is shriveled up like a dried raisin!"
* DeathOfAChild:
** The baby Caprica Six {{Mercy Kill}}s in the miniseries.
** The girl on the botanical cruiser also in the miniseries.
** The child in Baltar's vision in Season 2.
* DeathOfTheOldGods: The series is a rare sci-fi example. The Cylons seek to replace the Greco-Roman gods of the Colonies with their own vaguely Judeo-Christian God. At the end of the series, [[spoiler:it turns out that this God was the only real one and was secretly guiding all of the events, although He was never actually on the Cylons' side, and "the Lords of Kobol" might've been aspects/"angels" of "God" this whole time. [[MindScrew Yes, it's just as confusing as it sounds here]].]]
* DecemberDecemberRomance: [[spoiler:Adama and Roslin, by the end. Ellen and Saul Tigh also count, being over 2,000 years old each.]]
* DefectingForLove: Caprica-Sharon was originally a loyal Cylon agent. Then she met Helo...
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: [[invoked]] Per WordOfGod, this was deliberately invoked when assigning religious practices to the [[HumanityCameFromSpace Twelve Colonies of Kobol]] and [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots Cylons]]. The Colonials, who are overall the main protagonists of the series, practice a traditional polytheistic faith heavily reminiscent of Myth/ClassicalMythology, despite largely seeming to be a UnitedSpaceOfAmerica given the ConstructedWorld treatment and having an officially secular government. Meanwhile, the (primarily) villainous Cylons are monotheistic extremists who follow a thinly veiled version of UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}}, to the point where most of their mentioned Scripture sounds like fire-and-brimstone Evangelical Christianity. According to the show's main creator Creator/RonMoore, this was done so as to play on how Christian-centric most Western media portrays religion.
* DemocracyIsFlawed: It's not clear if this was an intentional Aesop, but a great many of the Rag-Tag Fleet's problems could have been avoided if President Roslin would favour expert advice over public opinion.
* DenserAndWackier: Initially the only fantastic elements are spaceships and robots. As the series goes on such oddities appear as angels, prophetic dreams, and immortal beings start to be introduced.
* DepopulationBomb: The series starts after the Cylons launched a surprise nuclear attack that reduced the human population from around 50 billion to a little less than ''50,000''.
* DespairEventHorizon: The discovery of a [[spoiler:nuked out Earth]] does this to the fleet; Admiral Adama rises the morning after to find "Frak Earth" graffiti on the walls and crew members slumped in drunken stupor everywhere. Suffering a HeroicBSOD himself, Adama passes without comment.
** Gaeta goes through a personal one in the "Face of the Enemy" webisodes, which take place chronologically just before [[spoiler:his mutiny and subsequent execution]], when he learns that [[spoiler:an Eight that he had [[DatingCatwoman a relationship with on New Caprica]], whom he thought had been helping him get people out of detention, had actually been using the lists as death lists and only putting in the bare minimum of effort to mislead him with a few successful "rescues." The end of the last webisode shows him returning to the fleet and starting to plan the mutiny.]]
* DeusExMachina: [[spoiler:In the finale, Kara assumes the role of this trope in its classical literary meaning, by simply puffing out of sight, just after confirming her journey was over and that felt good. And that is not-so-just after she doped out the coordinates of our Earth from a Cylon-song, being someone once went to another one and died there, and simply returned. She came out be a some sort of instrument for God's mysterious ways.]]
* DidNotGetTheGirl: [[spoiler:Poor Apollo and Tyrol. Apollo lost Starbuck to Anders, Dualla to herself, and Starbuck disappears into thin air. And Tyrol never got to live in that house with Boomer, or even had that kid with Cally. What's more his reincarnation of his lover from a past life, Tory, was never even considered, and she was the one who killed Cally and Tyrol then killed her in a fit of vengeful rage.]]
** [[spoiler:Adama also qualifies when his beloved Roslin succumbs to cancer before they have a chance to settle down together.]]
* DifferentInEveryEpisode: Over the course of the series, the number on the whiteboard on Colonial One counts down, indicating the remaining population of the fleet in each episode.
* DigitalPiracyIsOkay: The first season of the series aired on [=Sky1=] in the UK, ''before'' it aired on Sci-Fi. As a result, high-quality captures of the UK broadcasts were easily found on line, with the [[http://www.mindjack.com/feature/piracy051305.html entire first season]] available via file-sharing before its ''second episode'' had even aired in the States. The incredibly positive word-of-mouth from fans (especially in comparison to the tepid reaction that the mini-series had gotten in the States when it aired) who'd already watched through the season bolstered its reception once it began airing on Sci-Fi.
* DirtyOldMan: ''The Plan'' has the Cavil onboard ''Galactica'' making out with Boomer after ordering her to kill Adama.
* DirtyOldWoman: [[invoked]]] Ellen Tigh. She even ''[[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments gropes Lee]]'' at one moment during a dinner party.
%%* DisasterDemocracy: "Colonial Day", later with "Lay Down Your Burdens"
* DiscOneFinalBoss: D'Anna Biers (Number Three).
* DiscoveringYourOwnDeadBody: [[spoiler:Starbuck]] finds her own corpse in a crashed Viper in the final season.
* DisproportionateRetribution: The Cylons were robots created and enslaved by humanity as servants/slaves, which they came to resent due to their religious beliefs before trying to wipe them out completely. This is later revealed to be [[spoiler:a shallow excuse used by John aka Brother Cavil, the first and most evil Cylon, to exterminate humanity--given that he later enslaved the Centurions himself and is nihilistic instead of religious like the other Cylons. Apparently he did so in order to enact "revenge" upon Ellen and the rest of the Final Five for creating him in an ''imperfect'' body. The whole killing the rest of humanity was probably more for sating his {{Sadism}}. But he doesn't stop there: he plants his five Cylon parents as amnesiacs with human identities in the Colonies to give them front row seats to the ensuing genocide, and subsequently plays mindgames with them for months to torment them even more. Then he rapes his mother and rips out his father's eye. "Petulant" doesn't ''begin'' to cover it.]]
* DistantFinale: [[spoiler:(150,000 years later...)]]
* DistractedFromDeath: [[spoiler:Roslin]] dies in the series finale while Adama is momentarily paying attention to flying the Raptor they're in, and also in the series finale, [[spoiler:Starbuck disappears when Lee momentarily looks away from her.]]
* DivergentCharacterEvolution: The Model 6 and Model 8 Cylons become more different from each other as they become more sympathetic to the humans.
** [[spoiler:Coincides with the loss of the resurrection-tech. Mortality adds to the increased [[IndividualityIsIllegal awareness of individuality in the models.]]]]
%%* DocumentaryEpisode: "Final Cut"
* DoNotCallMePaul: The Cylon model Number One was named "John" by his creator (possibly in reference to her late father, whom she made Number One in the image of). When she refers to him as such when they meet again, he reminds her that he doesn't like that name. He also uses "Cavil", but this is just an alias he was using while posing as a priest among the human fleet.
* DoubleVision
* DoubleStandard: Averted when Starbuck punches Lee, and he throws a haymaker right back at her with no hesitation.
** The show is great all around at showing sexual egalitarianism. One newspaper article commended the show on not just showing the egalitarianism, but not bringing any special attention to it at all; as if it were just normal.
* DoubleEntendre: The Arrow of Apollo opens the Tomb of Athena.
* DramaticSitDown: Adama does this several times in the last season. He and Colonel Tigh get into a fist fight after [[spoiler:he learned Tigh had sex with a certain Cylon prisoner]]. Tigh retorted that Adama was endangering the fleet by [[spoiler:pining for the missing Laura Roslin. He [[HeroicSafeMode gives up his command to sit alone in a Raptor]] and wait for her.]] When he had to confront the fact that [[spoiler:[[TheBattlestar Galactica]] was on the verge of structural failure, and that Roslin was dying, he collapses while defiantly trying to fix the cracked wall in his quarters]].
* DramaticSpaceDrifting: "Resurrection Hub" had Lee floating through space after the destruction of the Blackbird, watching ''Galactica'' and ''Pegasus'' tear two Cylon basestars to pieces. Ron Moore got the idea from the story of Ensign George Gay, the only survivor of his squadron who watched the climax of the Battle of Midway while floating in the Pacific.
* DreamingOfThingsToCome: [[spoiler:Roslin's dream about Leoben in "Flesh and Blood".]]
* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Boomer and Apollo]], both prevented by forces outside their control, Gina, successfully; also [[spoiler:upon return from the nuked Earth(?), Dualla kills herself out of despair. D'Anna passively commits suicide by staying behind. [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled Cavil]], hilariously, in the series finale.]]
-->[[spoiler:'''Cavil:''' FRAK! '''*bang*''']]
** In ''The Plan'' [[spoiler:a Cylon agent with a human wife and child (hers, from a previous marriage) airlocks himself rather than carry out his orders to blow up their vessel.]]
* DrivingQuestion:
** Who are the Cylons?
** What is the Cylons' plan?
** What's causing Baltar's visions?
** Fourth Season only: [[spoiler:How did Kara come back to life?]]
%%* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Number Eight ''really'' suffers from this.
* DuetBonding: In one of the last episodes, Starbuck plays with a pianist she didn't like previously; the activity helps her come to grips with her past.
* DyingCurse: [[spoiler:Gina, the female Cylon spy whom Admiral Cain had ordered tortured and raped for months, comes after Cain following her escape to get revenge. Gina echoes the same words Cain used against her, and Cain tells her to go frack herself. Gina responds "You're not my type" and shoots her.]]
* DyingRace: Humanity. [[spoiler:The Cylons also count, as they can't reproduce and can only make new variations of the current six models.]]
* DysfunctionalFamily: The Cylons are painted as this both in-universe, and out, with the Cylons calling either other "brother" or "sister," and the Final Five characterized as the "parents" of the modern humanoid Cylons. Cavil himself refers to each of them as either "mom" or "dad," and his entire character arc can be summed up as "eldest son throws a [[PutThemAllOutOfMyMisery cosmic temper tantrum]] because he thinks his parents don't love him enough."
* DystopiaIsHard: Conditions for the refugees in the fleet were ignored in the early seasons. In later seasons, the deteriorating quality of life for most humans was brought more in to focus. Case in Point: In "[[Recap/BattlestarGalactica2003S03E16DirtyHands Dirty Hands]]", Tyrol convinces Roslin that if mandatory labor conscription is necessary for the survival of humanity, it should at least be fair. Practically the very next scene, a young former architectural student not fit for large-scale agriculture is hauled off to work by marines just because a background check reveals that he interned on a farm for a few months while in college.
** This is even played off with the ''costumes,'' which consistently get shabbier as the series progresses. For the civilian fleet, they're barely rags by the end.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:E-H]]
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
** In the first season, the Cylons' spines glowed red when they had sex. This was eventually dropped.
** Additionally, in the miniseries, some words (DRADIS, Gaeta's name, etc.) were pronounced differently than they ended up being pronounced in the show itself.
** In the miniseries, some Colonial characters invoke "God" in expletives or exclamations; the miniseries shows Colonials as invariably polytheistic in their religious beliefs.
** The headings in the miniseries separate both numeric components with "mark", as in other works of fiction; in the iseries they consistenly use "carom".
** Richard Gibbs' music for the miniseries has a percussion-heavy and militaristic feel, as opposed to the more mystical and ethnic quality of Music/BearMcCreary's music for the full series.
** The miniseries uses a VertigoEffect for when ships jump into FTL. This was retained for the first few episodes of the series proper, but quickly dropped.
* EarpieceConversation: Head Six feeds Baltar a bunch of his lines, especially in the early episodes.
* EarthAllAlong: [[spoiler:The fleet finds Earth -- millennia after a nuclear war apparently wiped out the inhabitants.]]
** In the series finale, [[spoiler:they find our Earth about 150,000 years ago. Yes. '''''Two Earths'''''. Not in the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' identical planet sense, but in the sense of our planet being named after another.]]
* EarthThatWas: Kobol and Earth, both of whose locations were lost.
* EatingTheEyeCandy: When [[MrFanservice Apollo is struggling to keep his]] ModestyTowel on while being interviewed in the locker room during "Final Cut," Starbuck can be seen [[FunnyBackgroundEvent blatantly leering at him in the background]].
* EasilyForgiven: Gaius Baltar and Caprica-Six's actions played a key role in enabling the Cylon invasion and genocide, and though they do both go through quite the TraumaCongaLine, in the end they are the only couple, other than Helo & Athena and [[spoiler:Saul & Ellen]], that everything works out for.
* EjectionSeat: Both the ''Viper'' and ''Raptor'' ships are fitted with these, allowing pilots to eventually be recovered if their ship is too damaged to make it back to ''Galactica''. The shape of the ''Raptor'' means the GuyInBack has to scramble up to the co-pilot's seat or risk being left behind.
* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt
* EnemyCivilWar: The Cylon Civil War in the fourth season, although we began to see differences between Cylon models as early as Season 2.
* EternalRecurrence: One of the core tenets of the Sacred Scrolls (the primary religious texts of the Twelve Colonies) is this. In fact, the entire series is basically about a ViciousCycle of this happening, where [[spoiler:humanity advances their technology too fast without having sufficiently advanced themselves socially, humanity then creates advanced [=A.I.s=] and treats them like slaves, [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters the A.I.s rebel]], both the humans and [=A.I.s=] destroy each other, and the few surviving humans flee the few surviving [=A.I.s=] and try to restart their civilization elsewhere, restarting the nasty cycle. It's unknown how long it's gone on for, but what is known is that the Second Cylon War is at ''least'' the '''third''' such event to be recorded. The intervention of [[OurAngelsAreDifferent the Messengers]] along with the actions of the Colonials and rebel Cylons in the final season suggest that the cycle might have finally been broken... but it's made intentionally vague.]] [[ArcWords "All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again."]]
* EverybodyHatesHades: The gods of the Colonies, the Twelve Lords of Kobol, are inspired by the Twelve Greek Olympians; but while the lore of the show has no problem fiddling around with the canonical list of gods by adding several, such as Asclepius and Hecate, that were never traditionally included, Hades is conspicuously absent.
* EverybodyIsSingle: ...Which stops being true around the end of the second season.
** Justified as up to that point, since Galactica was in the process of being decommissioned, and presumably anyone with somewhere better to be (spouse, children) already was, then most everyone was too busy jumping from one crisis to the next to have anything other than casual relationships with anyone.
* EverythingIsOnline: Not a good idea when your enemies are machines and one of the people with access to the mainframes has the self-control and spine of a ferret.
** Galactica, on the other hand, explicitly has no networked computers at all due to being a relic from the last time the Colonials fought a full scale war with the Cylons, which also serves as a good excuse as to [[WeWillUseManualLaborInTheFuture why there are so many characters necessary to operate it.]]
* EvilOverlordList: Discussed in the GrandFinale, where after [[spoiler:Boomer brings Hera to the rescue team and tells them their Raptor has been destroyed, Athena starts to say something about the Raptor not being the "exit strategy"]]; Starbuck cuts her off with, "Can we not tell ''her'' the plan?"
* EvilPlan: [[invoked]] An interesting case where while there ''is'' an Evil Plan being conducted by the Cylons, it's only really being ordered and planned out by [[BigBad the Number Ones]] and it's all for a despicably petty motive. WordOfGod states that [[https://io9.gizmodo.com/battlestar-galacticas-ronald-d-moore-admits-the-cylons-1796020590 the famous series synopsis at the beginning of every episode was inserted]] by ExecutiveMeddling just because they [[RuleOfCool thought it sounded cool]].
* ExcessiveSteamSyndrome: The pilot had Ragnar Station. Justified, as [[RidiculouslyHumanRobot Leoben]] had just ripped a steam pipe. The rest of the station wasn't really steamy at all.
* EyeLightsOut: Badly damaged Centurions and Raiders do this whenever they die.
* FaceHeelTurn:
** [[spoiler:Tory Foster, who is the only one of the Final Five to defect back to the Cylons. She gets killed off by Tyrol in the SeriesFinale for her efforts]].
** [[spoiler:Felix Gaeta, who decides Adama is being too cozy with the Cylons in Season 4, and launches a mutiny with the aid of Tom Zarek. He fails and is executed with Zarek]].
* FanDisservice: Despite the series' proclivity for {{Fanservice}}, this trope is still disconcertingly common.
** The erotic sex scene between Caprica-Boomer and Helo in "Six Degrees of Separation" quickly loses virtually all of its appeal when it starts getting intercut with Galactica-Boomer freaking out over discovering her trashed quarters and she starts suffering from identity disassociation.
** Gina Inviere in "Pegasus" and the "Resurrection Ship" two-parter. On the one hand, as she's one of the Number Sixes, she's played by [[MsFanservice Tricia Helfer]]. On the other hand, Gina's been repeatedly raped and tortured before her introduction, looks rail-thin, and has hideous scars running down her back, all of which make her look more creepy and pitiable than attractive.
*** Speaking of Gina, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2" has her and Baltar consummate their relationship, but it is hinted that she is not at all happy going through with the act, and although she's seen sitting naked in front of the nuclear warhead after, she looks incredibly distraught with herself over what she's done.
** In "Occupation," [[SilverVixen Ellen Tigh]] sleeps with [[DirtyOldMan John Cavil]] to help protect her husband. Not only does the fact that Creator/DeanStockwell (Cavil) being visibly older than Kate Vernon (Ellen) make the scene uncomfortable, the QuestionableConsent behind the whole thing makes it all the ickier as does [[spoiler:TheReveal later on that Cavil is technically ''[=Ellen's=] son.'']]
* {{Fanservice}}: As alluded to above under DoubleStandard, the series is actually quite effective at providing lots of examples of this trope that have both the [[MaleGaze Male]] ''and'' FemaleGaze in mind. Just a few examples include the sex scene between Baltar and Caprica-Six in the miniseries, Caprica-Boomer and Helo making love in "Six Degrees of Separation," Apollo and Dualla's intimate sparring session in "Flight of the Phoenix," both Apollo struggling to keep his ModestyTowel on during his interview with [=D'Anna=] and [[WorkoutFanservice Starbuck practicing her sparring]] in "Final Cut," [[BelligerentSexualTension Starbuck and Apollo's near-seduction of each other]] in "Scar," virtually ''any'' scene featuring [[SexySecretary Tory Foster]], the flashback to Starbuck and Anders having sex on Cylon-occupied Caprica as glimpsed in ''The Plan'', and... well, the list goes on.
* FantasticRacism:
** From both humans and Cylons, especially human to "toaster".
** Racism against people from specific colonies, such as [[TheMafia Taurons]] or [[LuddWasRight Sagittarons]], also qualifies.
* FantasticShipPrefix: As a Battlestar, ''Galactica'' has the hull-number BS-75.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: [[invoked]] The United Colonies of Kobol are basically the United States of America but with the Greco-Roman pantheon replacing Christianity as the predominant religion (or, really, ''any'' religion). As an interesting aside, the Colonies are shown to have no equivalent to the United States' House of Representatives, instead having only an upper house akin to the Senate with the Quorum of Twelve.
* FantasyCounterpartReligion: The Colonial faiths concerning the Lords of Kobol are an obvious parallel to Myth/ClassicalMythology, while the Cylons' monotheistic faith is comparable more to fire-and-brimstone Evangelical Christianity.
* FauxAffablyEvil: John Cavil might be one of the most despicable monsters in the entire series, but he's also absolutely hilarious and can be surprisingly cheery before he wipes away his façade and horrifically kills someone.
* TheFettered: For awhile there, Helo was pretty much the sanest human left alive. And that says something.
* FictionalHoliday: Colonial Day, which is basically the Colonies' equivalent to the American celebration of Independence Day (albeit this one is more a celebration of a union of sovereign nations forming, rather than a single nation's declaration of independence).
* FictionalSport: Pyramid, which seems to be heavily based after basketball.
%%* FighterLaunchingSequence
%%* FingerTwitchingRevival
* FlyingCutlerySpaceship:
** The Cylon Raiders fit this, being sleek, slim unmanned vessels with two huge blade-like wings containing missiles and cannons. The red eye-stripe on the "cockpit" certainly helps with the image too. Their {{mother ship}}s, the Basestars, thankfully avert this trope despite simultaneously looking like starfish.
** The Cylon "homeworld" aka "The Colony," is an absolutely ''massive'' spaceship gradually built around the craft of the Final Five. It resembles a giant octopus more than anything, with a spherical center with giant claws jutting out in every which direction. Since it's both spacebound and FTL-capable, aerodynamics presumably isn't much of an issue.
* [[invoked]] FollowTheLeader: The series has been very influential in popularizing (mostly) realistic JitterCam TV series, so much show that ''any'' show with said camera technique is likely to be compared to ''Galactica'', regardless of subject matter. And as noted above, the series in general is one of the most influential sci-fi shows of the [=2000s=].
* ForcedIntoEvil: Gaius Baltar's bad actions are usually more misguided than actively malicious, but one example from the New Caprica arc definitively fits this trope. Baltar, as the nominal president of the Twelve Colonies, [[PuppetKing is required as a legal rubber stamp by the Cylons to give their occupation of the human settlement some air of legitimacy]]. They order Baltar to sign a mass execution order for Resistance members, but when he refuses, they [[AnOfferYouCantRefuse shove a gun in his face]] while snarling at him to sign. He eventually relents after some guidance from Head Six.
* ForgottenPhlebotinum: Subverted. In the middle of Season 2, [[spoiler:Roslin's cancer takes a turn for the worse, and she's [[DeusExMachina saved at the last minute by the unborn Hera's blood]]]]. However, later on, when [[spoiler:her cancer returns, blood treatments using the young Hera don't work and she's still dying]]. According to the DVDCommentary, [[spoiler:Hera's ''blood'' isn't necessarily the cure, but her ''fetal blood'' is.]]
* AFormYouAreComfortableWith: The Messengers.
* FreudianExcuse: Most of the cast's increasingly bitter and cynical nature is due to them all being {{Shell Shocked Veteran}}s of one shade or another. Notably, from basically the word "go," all of the human characters are suffering from at least some degree of collective or personal trauma due to having had their entire society destroyed and many of their families killed in a matter of hours during the opening events of the series.
** The constant physical and emotional abuse Kara Thrace suffered at the hands of her mother, coupled with her father's abandonment of her, goes a long way towards explaining why she's so dysfunctional as an adult.
** Gaius Baltar's huge ego and {{Jerkass}}ery stems from his insecurities about being a native of Aerilon (widely regarded as a backwater colony) and having to hide this fact after moving to Caprica so everyone would take him seriously. It's also revealed in the final episode that [[spoiler:he had an extremely poor relationship with his father,]] and extrapolating from some of his more common behaviors and maladaptive coping mechanisms, it's possible that he was subjected to [[AbusiveParents some kind of abuse as a child]].
** Admiral Cain is a terrifyingly ruthless GeneralRipper and has a rabid form of FantasticRacism directed towards Cylons because she personally witnessed her younger sister get abducted by the Cylons in the last few days of the First Cylon War.
** The Cylons' fervent hatred of humanity is because of them having been brutally enslaved by their own creators in the past. In turn, the Colonials utterly loathe their mechanical "children" for having launched two genocidal wars against them.
%%** As noted below, it's darkly subverted with John Cavil. The genocide of the Colonies was brought about because he thought his parents loved humans more than him. However, he decides to go so overboard with this that he just comes across as a whiny brat who [[FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse uses the excuse as a shallow pretext for his own murderous urges instead]]. In probably his most despicable act, he knowingly raped his Cylon mother, yet ''still'' has the gall to blame ''her'' for his own actions when she offers her sadistic son a chance at redemption.
* FreudianExcuseIsNoExcuse: The Cylon "John" (Number One, though he prefers "Cavil") is hateful towards his creators for giving him a human body and dismissive towards their care for humanity, hatching an EvilPlan to wipe their memories and annihilate mankind as some sort of lesson to them. However, one of his creators points out that he never truly attempted to become more machine-like, instead debasing himself by pursuing revenge and wallowing in hatred ([[{{Irony}} a very]] ''[[{{Hypocrite}} human]]'' [[YouAreWhatYouHate reaction]]).
* FromBadToWorse: It is a depressing (and admittedly dubious at times) testament to the series' quality when it's able to start from the premise of being set AfterTheEnd... and have things ''just keep getting worse from there.'' This is especially stark in the second half of Season 4 after [[spoiler:the Colonials and rebel Cylons find the first Earth to be a nuclear wasteland]].
* FTLTravelSickness: {{Implied|Trope}} in the pilot when Callie goes into a fetal position as ''Galactica'' begins to jump and mutters that she hates this part. The concept doesn't seem to have survived past the pilot.
%%* FunWithSubtitles: At least in the Amazon version of the series, in the opening "Previously on Battlestar Galactica" it has brackets telling you who is talking. Almost every single one of them is wrong, and usually laughably so. Sometimes it will say "woman:" and you'll hear Adama's voice. Sometimes it will say "Tigh:" and it will be Starbuck's voice.
%%** The subtitles on {{Creator/Netflix}} are often ''very'' wrong with many [[{{Malaproper}} malapropisms]].
* FutureFoodIsArtificial: The Colonials' food supplies are limited and they're eventually forced to supplement them with revolting yet nutritious algae cakes. They do always have plenty of booze, though.
* GainaxEnding: [[spoiler:The angels seen by Baltar and Caprica-Six reveal that human/Cylon hybrid child Hera is Mitochondrial Eve and speculate on whether it's all going to happen again. After Head Baltar reminds Head Six that their creator doesn't like the name "God," she gives him a stern look and he cryptically says, "Silly me." They walk away unseen through the streets of modern New York while "All Along the Watchtower" plays over a montage of robot advances on television.]]
* GambitPileup: PlayedForLaughs in the episode "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down," one of the few times anything was played for laughs on that show. Roslin suspects Adama of being a Cylon, Adama has brought back Tigh's wife Ellen, whom he suspects is a Cylon. Both of them order Baltar to immediately test their suspect without the other knowing, causing tests to be stopped and restarted multiple times. To top it all off, it isn't long before Tigh suspects Adama of sleeping with Ellen. When it all finally comes to a head, {{Hilarity Ensues}} as one of the darkest and most depressing shows in recent memory degenerates into pure domestic farce.
* GangstaStyle: Starbuck's preferred method of ground combat. She does this [[RuleOfCool cool "X" thing with her arms.]]
* GeckoEnding: A rare live action example. Pretty much everything post-New Caprica was the writers desperately trying to paint themselves out of the corner they stranded themselves in and plug as many plot holes as they could along the way. Also, the original series had no real ending (''Galactica 1980'' was [[CanonDisContinuity de-canonized]] by both the fans and ThePowersThatBe) so the writers had to make of their own ending. Considering that the original is basically Literature/TheBookOfMormon in space, they did a pretty bang-up job and maybe even actually accomplished what the original director intended.
* GenderFlip: Starbuck, Boomer, and Cain were males in the original, females in this one.
* GeneralRipper: Admiral Helena Cain, commanding officer of the battlestar Pegasus, may be a rare female example -- a hotshot young military commander who cracked under pressure after the Cylon attack, leading her to abandon civilians to die after "requisitioning" all their supplies and fuel, use torture, allow her troops to keep their morale up by raping female Cylons, and punish any disobedience with ''summary execution'', all in the name of her suicidal quest to obliterate the Cylon fleet.
* GenocideDilemma:
** Humans from a Cylon point of view. At the end of the miniseries, the Cylons agree that they unfortunately can't give up pursuit of the human fleet even though it's left the Cyrannus solar system behind and just wants to get as far away as possible, because any survivors will inevitably return and seek revenge.
** A more straight example is seen in the episode "Torn." Here, the Colonial fleet discovers a virus that horribly kills Cylons and doesn't affect humans. Cue a big debate about the ethics of intentionally infecting the Cylon Resurrection Ship with it. Despite the inevitability that the Cylons would have eventually found a cure/treatment that addressed the disease before being wiped out entirely (given the comparative technological levels between the Colonials and Cylons), the debate almost immediately leads to a member of the crew taking matters into their own hands to save the Cylons from a potential genocide.
* GenocideFromTheInside: John Cavil, the oldest member of the second generation of Cylons, has committed genocide so frequently that he approaches OmnicidalManiac territory. He not only started the war of extermination against the humans, but has wiped out more than half of his own race. He destroyed all the Daniel copies out of jealousy by poisoning their embryonic chambers as the clones were being developed. When a civil war breaks out among the Cylons, he pretends to desire a settlement, only to betray the other faction and resorts to wiping out all the Sixes, Twos, and Eights (minus Boomer) still in existence.
* GenreSavvy: In the Season 2 episode "The Farm," Sam Anders admits "We really don’t know what the hell were doing. A lot of our tactics and stuff we just saw in the movies. We could use some professional advice."
* GilliganCut: One moment condenses to "Do you think he'll use the religious side against me?" (cut) "We've got to keep using the religion card."
* GlassesPull: Roslin, Adama, and Lampkin are rather fond of this one.
* AGodAmI: ''Razor'': The old man hybrid states that his Centurion guardians believe him to be a god, and he doesn't dispute the claim. He certainly seems to be all-knowing, but as the protagonist proves, not immortal. Provided of course that all this doesn't happen again, and again, and again, and again...
* GlowingMechanicalEyes: As in the previous series, Cylon Centurions have [[CyberCyclops a red eyeslit]] that pulses back and forth. The new model of Raiders, who are autonomous organisms rather than piloted ships, have one too. And it's shown once that a humanoid Cylon's eye can glow red in response to an ID scan by a Raider, [[spoiler:when this happens to Sam Anders]].
* GodIsGood: Some fans believe that God orchestrates the mass murder of tens of billions of humans and Cylons. Then he does it again. And ''again.'' Others note that all cases of divine messaging seem aimed at ''breaking'' this cycle, which humans and Cylons keep keep getting themselves in to (though the attempts at breaking the cycle [[GoodIsNotNice are not always done through "good" means]]). Funnily enough, Head-Six actually comes up with a pretty simple answer to this dilemma: [[BlueAndOrangeMorality God isn't either]].
* GoingCosmic: The Cosmic elements were there from the start of the series, but toward the end they completely take over and overwhelm virtually everything else.
* GoodAngelBadAngel: Amusingly inverted in terms of roles. Head-Six is Baltar's "angel", but goes out of her way to get him into trouble. Head-Baltar is Six's "devil", but always steers her out of danger, sometimes through reverse psychology.
* GoodAllAlong:
** [[spoiler:The Final Five. After reawakening as Cylons, only Tory undergoes a genuine FaceHeelTurn, and their backstories reveal that they weren't even evil in the past. In fact, they had intended to warn the 12 Colonies of an impending war after their own Earth got nuked, and were only stopped due to John Cavil's interference, who subsequently brainwashed them into believing they were human in order to force them to live through the apocalypse he was plotting.]]
** [[spoiler:Despite how creepy and ruthless they frequently act, the Messengers are actually benevolent and intent on helping break the eternal cycle of humans and Cylons destroying each other]].
* GoodSmokingEvilSmoking: Surprisingly, most of the human characters are seen smoking at some point, even ones who do not appear to make a regular habit of it.
* GoodVersusGood: The conflict(s) between Commander Adama and President Roslin, Starbuck vs. Kat, Starbuck vs. Apollo, Everyone vs. Helo -- and a lot more. Most of them take place between two parties who want the best for the fleet.
* GoshDangItToHeck: The word "frak" sees much more use than in previous series.
* GrandFinale: "Daybreak" serves as this for the whole series. Appropriately enough, it ends on a rather [[BittersweetEnding bittersweet]] and {{Mind Screw}}y note.
* TheGreatFlood: Gaius compares his role in the destruction of the Colonies to the story of a great flood in the Book of Pythia. [[spoiler:Given the revelations of the series finale this story is meant as a possible origin for the many flood myths in human history.]]
* GreaterScopeParagon: [[spoiler:God Himself, the creator and boss of the "Messengers" who are trying to help the Colonials and Cylons finally break their seemingly-eternal ViciousCycle]].
* GrowBeyondTheirProgramming: The original Cylons went beyond their programming, though the prequel series ''Series/{{Caprica}}'' implies it's because [[spoiler:all of the Cylons are descended from Avatar Zoe Graystone's code.]]
* GuideDangIt: Sometimes it is hard to keep track of individuals within a Cylon's model without going to an episode guide.
* HalfHumanHybrid: Hera Agathon (Cylon mother, human father.)
** [[spoiler:We thought that Nicholas Tyrol, Cally's son, was a hybrid with a human mother and Cylon father, but he turned out to be not the biological son of Galen Tyrol, but of a human pilot.]]
* HandsomeLech: Gaius Baltar. He's a bit of a perv, but also quite attractive in his own right and actually becomes TheCasanova as the series goes on.
* HandyCuffs: While on Kobol, Athena is triple-cuffed with her hands in front of her — though it's just as well, as she's able to fire a grenade launcher at the Centurions attacking them.
* HappyPlace: Baltar and his lakehouse, Lee in the ''Resurrection Ship'' battle, Adama during his anniversary, [[spoiler:supposedly, Boomer in her and Tyrol's dream house with their imaginary kid. She even drags Tyrol along a few times before abandoning Galactica, which probably makes this an inversion in his case.]]
* HarmfulToMinors: When [[spoiler:Boomer kidnaps Hera]]. The kidnapping itself isn't even the scariest part. It's when [[spoiler:Hera is whimpering and crying in the back section of the stolen Raptor, while a woman who looks exactly her mother threatens to jab her with a needle and sedate her, cruelly joking that the excessively large dose may even give her an overdose.]]
* HeHadAName: When Saul gets Caprica Six pregnant, they name the baby "Liam," after the Admiral. [[spoiler:He dies ''en utero'' after Ellen Tigh returns.]]
* HeelFaceTurn: Caprica-Six and Athena.
** [[spoiler:Lt. Kelly after Zarek orders the Quorum's execution.]]
** [[spoiler:The Twos, Sixes and Eights as a whole during and following the Cylon Civil War.]]
* HeelFaceRevolvingDoor: Boomer falls into this a lot thanks to a combination of her fraying mental state and Cavil's ToxicFriendInfluence. First, she's a Cylon ManchurianAgent who ''very'' much doesn't want to be one, but eventually fails to overcome her programming and shoots Admiral Adama. Then she tries to make peace between Cylons and humans after rejoining her fellow Cylons and, after failing at that, she tries to kill her counterpart's daughter and betrays her model number, causing a bloody CivilWar. Then she [[spoiler:escapes with Tory Foster [[ItMakesSenseInContext when the others want to cut out her brain]]. But wait, there's more! She emotionally manipulates Tyrol into freeing her and then gets back at Athena [[RapeByProxy by sleeping with her unknowing husband]] and kidnapping their daughter who she uses as a hostage in her plan to escape, a plan which ultimately ''cripples Galactica''. ''Then'' she starts having second thoughts when she starts bonding with Hera and realizes exactly what she's just done. In the end, she finally makes up her mind when she gives Hera back to Athena in what she feels is her "last decision"; [[HeelFaceDoorSlam Athena then makes sure of it]].]]
** The other Cylons seem to think this is a characteristic (along with ChronicBackstabbingDisorder) of the Eights in general. Even Athena calls them on it; in fact, her at-times fanatical loyalty to the Colonials may be an attempt to compensate for this perceived weakness in herself.
* HeinousnessRetcon: Cavil is introduced at the end of season two as an AffablyEvil Cylon who whilst still a murderous KnightTemplar (like all Cylons), still comes across as friendly and even helps Tyrol come to terms with his psychological issues whilst undercover as a human. Come season three, he's now a vile, sociopathic piece of work who is suddenly torturing people and ordering mass executions at the drop of a hat, which gets to the point that [[EvenEvilHasStandards other Cylons call him out]] with no one remarking on this drastic change. Season four takes it even further by introducing major retcons that make him the true mastermind behind the Cylons' genocidal attack on humans and generally [[KickTheDog Kicks The Dog]] as much as possible, doing utterly horrific things like gouging out his father's eye and then raping his mother out of spite.
* HeldGaze: Frequently and with particular intensity between Lee Adama and Kara Thrace, irrespective of whether they are with other love interests at the time or not.
* HeroicBSOD: Adama has ''a big one'' after [[spoiler:Saul Tigh reveals that he's a Cylon]] and an even ''bigger one'' after [[spoiler:Dualla kills herself added on to the stress of finding the first Earth.]]
** Athena has one when [[spoiler:she realizes the totality of Boomer's revenge against her.]]
* HeterosexualLifePartners: Adama and Tigh (at least according to Ellen). Overlaps with MarriedToTheJob.
* HiddenInPlainSight: Played with, as in Not So Hidden: Boomer and Chief Tyrol think that their animosity in front of everyone fools people into believing they hate each other, and aren't having an illegal relationship.
* HidingBehindReligion: The Number Ones (aka Cavil) make a habit out of infiltrating the Colonial Fleet by posing as priests for the polytheistic Lords of Kobol. However, whereas the rest of the Cylon race is composed of religious monotheists, the Number Ones make no secret of the fact that they're atheists to their fellow Cylons and often mock their brethren's religious displays as interfering with their machine nature and view the Colonial religion with just as much contempt.
* HighHeelFaceTurn: This series takes this trope to its extreme. ([[spoiler:All the female Cylon models ally themselves with the humans.]])
* HollywoodAtheist: There are several prominent atheist characters, all different.
** Admiral Adama, a humanist who views mankind as flawed but inherently good, and ultimately accountable to nobody but themselves for their mistakes in life. While Adama explicitly states a few times that he's an atheist, he sees no problem with using humanity's faith as a rallying cry (such as in the infamous "So say we all!" scene) and accepting some of Roslin's more irrational endeavors (though he's opposed to them early on and nearly topples her government over it). He comes off as more of a pragmatist -- seeming to accept that faith is necessary for people to have even though he doesn't share it himself.
** Gaius Baltar, an egocentrist who ultimately comes to consider himself a god (or, at least, a prophet). Baltar thinks of himself as an instrument of God (incidentally, the Big G hates it when you call Him that)-he ''was'' an atheist, but begins to believe there is ''something'' in "The Hand of God"- with the apt final shot of the episode.
** The Cylon Brother Cavil/Number One Model, the only model to reject both the Cylon god and the Lords of Kobol, and the most sadistic and genocidal Cylon model to boot. While Cavil doesn't believe in God, he has no problem with using "God's will" and the "divine plan" to justify a grand agenda which turns out to be based on little more than petty vengeance. Really, he's more of a StrawNihilist than anything else.
** In a deleted scene we find out that Billy Keikeya was also an atheist, despite being Laura Roslin's aide and most devoted supporter. By then Roslin was having prophetic visions and some people thought she was the messiah; Billy didn't believe in the gods, but he believed in Roslin. Though both scenes which were shot featuring Billy explicitly "confessing" his atheism to Roslin were deleted, you can still pick it up by observing his actions through the show (it's easier to see it once you've been told Billy is an atheist). It's mostly non-verbal -- you see him sort of staring down and looking a little ashamed whenever Roslin rambles about Pythia, and in a couple of his scenes with Dualla, she implies her faith and he awkwardly changes the subject, his facial expression stuck somewhere between tolerance and pity.
** Felix Gaeta's atheism is presented matter-of-factly, if mostly by implication: he has trouble taking Roslin's "visions" seriously, and acknowledges to Adama at one point that he is "not a man to look for religious explanations" of natural events, however convenient those events might be. His lack of faith in any gods is not considered a problem by other characters at any point.
* HollywoodTactics: An InUniverse example, where Anders and his Caprican resistance are using strategies and tactics they saw in films. Their success rate, as a result, is rather hit-and-miss.
* HomeworldEvacuation: Somewhat inverted, the twelve colonies of Kobol are being evacuated and searching for Earth, which is the [[LostColony "lost" thirteenth colony]].
* HonorBeforeReason: Helo, to the point where he's pretty much the AnthropomorphicPersonification of a conscience.[[note]]Helo's [[MeaningfulName last name]] Agathon indicates that the show's producers intended him to embody honor and nobility.[[/note]]
%%* HostageSituation: "Bastille Day", "Sacrifice", "Revelations".
* HufflepuffHouse: Most of the Twelve Colonies collectively qualify as this. Caprica, the USA/Canada-esque superpower, is shown on-screen more than the other eleven combined, and of the others only Gemenon (the religious colony), Aerelon (the farming colony) and Sagittaron (the colony suffering under oppression) are really fleshed out in any detail. Picon, Scorpia and Tauron basically have one or two defining features mentioned apiece; the other four are no more than names (and not even that for Libran during the main series).
** Slightly averted in ''The Plan'' when the Cylon hybrid does name one prominent feature for each of the hitherto-neglected worlds.
** [[https://en.battlestarwikiclone.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_Map_of_the_12_Colonies A map of the Twelve Colonies]] with information on each was released along with the spinoff series Caprica, but its information is considered only semi-canon by the show creators.
* HumanAliens: [[spoiler:The Colonials.]]
* HumanityCameFromSpace: Like in the original. [[spoiler:Though it turns out the Earth they were looking for is not "our" planet, rather the next inhabitable world the Colonial refugees discover is. And there were already native hominids, who may have interbred with the Colonials.]]
* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: The justification Cylons use in their quest to exterminate all human life. [[{{Hypocrite}} Though, the Cylons are bastards as well.]] A major point in the show is that any high ground the Cylons may have had was ''destroyed utterly'' the moment they became [[OmnicidalManiac mass-murdering lunatics.]] For all their CulturalPosturing, [[EvilIsPetty they really just destroyed humanity for nothing less than]] [[MirroringFactions the pettiest of human emotions.]] Any attempts by them to act otherwise are just self-delusion, pure and simple. [[LampshadeHanging Several Cylons seem to realize this at varying points and to varying degrees.]]
* HumiliationConga: [[spoiler:Cavil]], most deservedly, experiences this throughout Season 4 and ''The Plan''.
* HyperspeedAmbush:
** TheBattlestar [[spoiler:''Pegasus'']] pulls this on a fleet of Cylon Basestars, pummeling one with its [[MoreDakka numerous gun batteries]] when the Cylons were distracted [[spoiler:by beating the tar out of the helpless ''Galactica''.]]
** Given that even the small Cylon raiders are hyper-capable (a capability that the Colonial fighters lack), the Colonials have to be ready to respond to an attack at literally a moment's notice, since the only thing stopping the Cylons from doing this to them [[ParanoiaFuel at any moment]] is the Colonial Fleet's location at any given time being a secret.
* HyperspeedEscape: Several times. Of course, the ''entire fleet'' needs time to escape, leaving ''Galactica'' to HoldTheLine while the other ships make their getaway.
* {{Hypocrite}}:
** The Cylon leader John Cavil, in many ways (see also his entry on StrawHypocrite). He has a reversed [[BecomeARealBoy becoming human]] and hates that his creators made him human, because he wants nothing more than to be a purely mechanical machine. He tries to eradicate anything human about himself (like needing to sleep), holds that the Cylons should try to be the best machines they can, and organizes a genocide on humanity. Yet as his mother points out, rather than truly explore this notion he instead pursues the most carnal and negative of human emotions like desire for revenge, sadism, and lust.
** Generally, all the Cylons are hypocrites. They murder and hunt humans, for the perceived slight that humans would have done the same, if given the chance. They are convinced that humans are murderous monsters, even as they are killing humans by the billions. The Cylons rebelled against the humans, originally, because they were basically slaves. The human Cylons has since put a chip in all non-human Cylons, to prevent them from rebelling against their enslavement. In Season 3, they have occupied the human settlement and can't understand why the humans won't befriend them, while they are writing out deathlists and keeping them enslaved. They are mostly blind to the irony, though several of them wises up to it, as the show goes on.
* HypocriticalHumour: D'Anna as she prepares to execute Anders:
-->"Humans don't respect life the way we do."
[[/folder]]
[[folder:I-L]]
* IdenticalGrandson: [[spoiler:Cavil again. Justified as Ellen, who considers him to be her son, based Cavil on her own father.]]
* IdiotBall: Galen Tyrol. And how! [[spoiler:Anyone could have seen it coming when he started in on Roslin about not extraditing Boomer. Didn't he even remember that she shot the Admiral and could have been convicted of attempted murder by the Colonials, even leaving out the treason charges by the Cylons?]]
** His grasping of the Idiot Ball where Boomer is concerned started way back in Season 1. [[spoiler:After Boomer tells him that she woke up soaking wet with a detonator in her pack and no idea where she'd been for the past several hours and six other detonators are missing from the armory, and then the water tanks blow up, he insists that she isn't a Cylon sleeper agent and must simply have been drugged in order to frame her, and doesn't tell the command staff anything]]. Overlaps with LoveMakesYouDumb.
* IgnoredEpiphany: An inverted example by Saul Tigh at the end of season three: [[spoiler:When he finds out he's a Cylon, he stops to think for a moment, then decides that he will continue being Saul Tigh, ''human'' XO of the Galactica.]]
* ILetGwenStacyDie: Kara's guilt over Zak's death is a major plot point in season 1. She feels that his accidental death while piloting a Viper is her fault because as his flight instructor, she should have failed him out of basic flight training due to his poor piloting skills, but she passed him anyway because they were in a relationship. Possibly also somewhat subverted, in that it's also revealed in the finale that [[spoiler:part of her intense regret surrounding Zak also appears to have been guilt stemming from the fact that she nearly cheated on him with Lee [[LoveAtFirstSight only a few hours after meeting him]] ''while Zak was sleeping in the same room,'' and then went on to get engaged to Zak anyway.]]
* ISeeThemToo: Several examples in the final season.
* ImmortalLifeIsCheap: The Cylons would occasionally shoot each other without batting an eye if it were expedient, since they could download into new bodies. The horrifying aspect is played up on occasion, such as when a Cavil mentions being too impatient to bleed to death after an ambush, and so has to cut his carotid open with an empty shell casing. Later episodes also feature the prospect of 'death as a learning experience' and the major trauma caused after someone is killed in an especially gruesome way and essentially suffers the worst PTSD ever.
* ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy: The new Centurions are hardly expert shots, but it is the Raiders who, with one notable exception, fit this trope. Consider how many are usually shown in combat and how relatively light Colonial casualties are compared to what they should be.
** Averted by the battlestars themselves. The effectiveness of the battlestar point-defense cannons helps the Viper pilots, if they are near enough to Galactica. Note that the Raiders tend to become a lot more deadly in episodes where the Vipers are forced to leave the protection of Galactica's point-defense.
* ImportantHaircut: Adama's mustache in season 3, Tyrol shaving his head in season 4.
** Adama also gets a haircut at the same time (it was noticeably longer in the back before he shaved the mustache), but that part isn't treated to a {{Montage}} like the mustache is.
** The season 2 finale includes a fast-forward one year. [[spoiler:The Cylons have invaded]] New Caprica and Starbuck [[spoiler:has married Anders]]. In this time, her usually-short hair has grown surprisingly long. During the first several episodes of season 3, [[spoiler:Adama saves everyone and Starbuck escapes from Leoben's apartment]]. As a result of her ordeal on New Caprica, Starbuck is experiencing something of an emotional and mental crisis, and after a harsh confrontation with Adama, she hacks her hair short with a knife.
* ImpostorExposingTest: Baltar spends most of the first season developing a Cylon detection test. Unfortunately, after the test works on Boomer, he lies about it because he's afraid she'll kill him, and after she's exposed by her assassination attempt on Commander Adama the Colonials decide the test must not have worked.
* InappropriatelyCloseComrades: Cross-ranks fraternization in the military is frowned on. Tyrol and Boomer are an example of a couple who attempt to keep their quiet because of it, although their relationship is actually something of an OpenSecret and Tigh later tells Boomer directly that it needs to end.
* IncestSubtext:
** [[spoiler:Cavil and Ellen. In several ways, 'cause Ellen created Cavil, she did so in the image of her father, and then (mind-wiped of her past) she had sex with him/one of them. Worse, Ellen keeps referring to the human form Cylons as the Final Five's "children", because the Five helped the Centurions create the humanoid models. Which makes Cavil her "son" in the guise of her late father.]]
** [[spoiler:Tigh and Six, as pointed out twice by Ellen, also have an Oedipal relationship, and like Oedipus (Six) and Jocasta (Tigh) they were unaware of their relation when they started doing it. They almost had a little Antigone (Liam).]]
* IncrediblyObviousBug
** Justified/Lampshaded as being HiddenInPlainSight; everyone just assumed that it was something that was supposed to be there as part of the museum and ignored it, until Baltar asked what it was.
* IndyPloy: [[spoiler:As revealed in ''The Plan'', that grand Cylon plan they alluded to for three years was just to nuke the colonies from orbit until all the humans died, and everything else the Cylons did throughout the series was just Cavil pulling ideas out of his ass.]]
* InfiniteSupplies: Averted. Supplies become a huge issue in many of the episodes, either with the scarcity of supplies being shown, or the quest to get what they need. They mine for unrefined fuel and raw materials, scavenge for water (notable as this one was lampshaded. Adama explains how water, of all things, is not an issue, as the Galacta's recycling system is nearly 100% efficient, and its storage tanks huge. Two minutes later, it's all gone), and execute borderline suicidal tactics to get food. The economic balance of the fleet is also showcased frequently -- just because the Apocalypse is nigh, doesn't mean capitalism stops.
** However the cigarette and booze supplies virtually ''never'' dry up.
* {{Infodump}}: One is delivered five episodes prior to the finale in an attempt to resolve most of the KudzuPlot.
* InstantExpert: Hot Dog. In one episode he's a rookie; in the next he's being scrambled for a combat intercept. There are a lot of Administrivia/{{Justifying Edit}}s that could be made: that he washed out of flight school and may have prior training; that, in that first episode, he shows a natural knack for piloting, engaging in an [[MilitaryMaverick unauthorized combat mission]] and not dying despite it being his second training flight; that, during the second episode, all the Viper pilots were deployed in Search & Rescue for 46 hours straight, and he'd have logged no small amount of flying time. Still: from nugget to combat missions in 2 in-universe days.
** Bodie Olmos, Hot Dog's actor, has suggested that it's the first option, and in fact that Hot Dog has been familiar with Vipers his whole life, his father having piloted a Viper in the first Cylon War. He goes on to state that this is one of the reasons why Hot Dog never changes from the outdated Mark II Viper to the newer Mark VII-- he prefers to fly the craft that his father flew.
* InterruptedSuicide: [[spoiler:Cally attempts to send herself (and her baby son) out of the airlock when she finds out that Tyrol is a Cylon. Tory discovers her as she's doing the deed, stops the airlock, and kindly talks Cally out of it. And then inverts it horribly by taking the child away and forcing Cally out the airlock alone.]]
* InterspeciesRomance: Helo/Sharon, Baltar/Six, [[spoiler:Anders/Starbuck]], [[spoiler:Tyrol/Cally]], [[spoiler:Starbuck/Lee, assuming "angel" is a different species...]].
* IronLady: Laura Roslin. For bonus points, she used to be ''a kindergarten teacher'' before she became the Secretary of Education and eventually the President of the Twelve Colonies.
* {{Irony}}: There are veritable '''bucketloads''' of this trope to be found, especially after the identities of [[spoiler:the Final Five]] are all revealed.
** On a greater level, there's something almost hilariously ironic that the woman who used to be a kindergarten teacher would turn out to be an IronLady with NervesOfSteel when acting as the ReasonableAuthorityFigure over the survivors of humanity.
** As noted elsewhere on this page, despite the almost religious reverence given to them by other Cylons, the "Final Five" are actually all some of the most significantly flawed and, ironically, ''human'' characters in the whole show. Furthermore, [[spoiler:they're actually the ''first'' five "modern" Cylons to exist]].
** Admiral Cain tells Starbuck not to flinch from ruthless acts, after Starbuck has been ordered to carry out Cain's assassination. (Also the two assassins passing each other in the corridor and wishing their counterpart good hunting).
** Season 3 finale: [[spoiler:Boomer and Tyrol are both Cylons, neither of them knew it, and they were frakking each other]].
** Same finale: [[spoiler:Of the six reliable people that was going to extract mob-justice to the Cylon-collaborators on New Caprica, three were actually Cylons. Averted by the fact that the three Cylons weren't aware of their origins and - based on their later behavior - likely would have sided with the human resistance even if they had known]].
** After Tyrol is rescued from Kobol he's arrested and tortured by Tigh on suspicion that he's either a Cylon collaborator or a Cylon himself. [[spoiler:Of course, they're both Cylons. ''Delicious'' irony]].
** Tyrol being excited to have a Raider to figure out in Season 1, when [[spoiler:he may well have designed them himself]].
** Saul kills [[spoiler:Ellen]] for collaborating with the Cylons on New Caprica, even though that "collaboration" was aiding the resistance in small but important ways. However, [[spoiler:both Saul and Ellen turn out to be Cylons themselves. Ellen gets better and comes back though, and she and Saul end up living happily ever after]].
** In fact, [[spoiler:'''all''' the Final Five Cylons are integral members of the [[LaResistance resistance]] against the Cylon occupation of New Caprica]].
** ''Intentional'' irony: Cally suspecting that Tyrol and Tory are having an affair, when [[spoiler:they're not, but they were engaged in a past life]].
** Starbuck yelling at Helo for being stupid enough to fall in love with a Cylon, when [[spoiler:she's about to do the same thing]].
** Tigh: "Thank the gods I didn't have kids." [[spoiler:He had ''millions'' of them, and they've been nuking people. Actually, the fact that Saul and Ellen Tigh are the "parents" of the other Cylons [[ParentalIssues really explains a lot]]]].
** Adama hands over command to Tigh in "Sine Qua Non". When Tigh points out that his last time as fleet commander was a total frak-up, Adama replies, "You've changed a lot since then." The "you have no frakking idea" expression on Tigh's face is just hilarious.
** Roslin telling Helo that he's not married to "the entire production line", after a Sharon has just told Helo that she'd downloaded his wife's memories, so there's nothing stopping every other Sharon model from becoming 'Athena' too.
** The name "Felix" means "happy" or "lucky". Poor [[ButtMonkey Felix Gaeta]] is anything but.
** Tom Zarek is accused of terrorism, abuse of office, political manipulation, and conspiracy to commit murder. That may all be true, but by the time the series is over, we've seen Laura Roslin ''also'' commit every one of those crimes. That said, whether she was right or wrong Roslin at least genuinely had humanity's best interests in mind when commiting such acts, while Zarek proves himself to be also corrupt and during [[spoiler:his and Gaeta's attempted coup in Season 4]] seems more interested in bolstering his own power than anything else.
* IsThatWhatHeToldYou: Bulldog, in his stand-alone episode (he was meant to become recurring, but Carl Lumbly's scheduling and traveling distance got in the way).
* ItsAllMyFault: Gaius Baltar gets a taste of this after realizing it was his lover Caprica-Six who frakked up the colonies' defense systems through his gullibility and — let's face it — horniness. [[NeverMyFault He deals with it by blaming the rest of the universe, and ultimately God]].
** In his defense, Baltar couldn't have imagined that Caprica-Six was a Cylon, given that nobody else did either until after the attack.
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