History Characters / Empire

* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: He has a late son who passed away from cancer. Bringing it up is still a sore spot for him. Which of course, [[KickTheSonOfABitch Lucious does during a Mexican standoff between them]].

-->'''Played by''': Leah Jeffries

* OedipusComplex: He very canonically has a mommy kink until his relationship with Cookie warms.

* ButNotTooBlack: While the Lyon family are all pretty fair-skinned themselves, Anika takes the cake and Cookie is quick to call her on it. Turns out she's mixed (white father, black mother).

* RatedMForManly: {{Deconstructed}}. Since both of his parents were gone by the time he was eight, he had to adopt a "hard" mentality to survive the streets. However, it also transformed him into a pure sociopath, and his image of "manliness" caused him to be an emotionally and physically abusive father to his sons should either deviate from said image.

** In Season 1, they form a VillainProtagonist team. Lucious, the patriarch and CEO, is the BigBad whose antagonism drives most of the plot. Anika, his fiancée, is DarkMistress and TheDragon as head of A&R. Andre, the CFO, is the EvilGenius and appropriately a NonActionGuy (in this case not a singer, rather than not a fighter). Hakeem is TheBrute and TagAlongKid, the least involved in the business but known as a great rapper, and constantly shown working out. Rhonda is the DarkChick seductress, and head of fashion. Jamal is the outlier as the TokenGoodTeammate who just wants Lucious' acknowledgement. Cookie is the SixthRanger, reasserting her dominance after being in jail for 17 years, and promotes herself to CoDragons sparking a rivalry with Anika as the co-founder and ex-wife.

*** At Empire, Lucious is still the BigBad, but Jamal has been corrupted and promoted to TheDragon as the heir to the Empire. The others split off and form Lyon Dynasty as a rebuttal. However, Lucious recruits Thirsty Rawlings, a new defense attorney as his EvilGenius, [[FaceHeelTurn steals]] Mimi from the hostile takeover as the new DarkChick, and gets Freda Gatz, a street rapper and daughter of an old enemy drug lord, to be his new [[TheBrute Brute]] to replace and challenge Hakeem. Andre eventually returns as a SixthRanger, trying to change the culture from the inside.

** In Season 1, they form a VillainProtagonist team that's roughly a FiveManBand. Lucious, the patriarch and CEO, is the BigBad whose antagonism drives most of the plot. Anika, his fiancée, is DarkMistress and TheDragon as head of A&R. Andre, the CFO, is the EvilGenius and appropriately a NonActionGuy (in this case not a singer, rather than not a fighter). Hakeem is TheBrute and TagAlongKid, the least involved in the business but known as a great rapper, and constantly shown working out. Rhonda is the DarkChick seductress, and head of fashion. Jamal is the outlier as the TokenGoodTeammate who just wants Lucious' acknowledgement. Cookie is the SixthRanger, reasserting her dominance after being in jail for 17 years, and promotes herself to CoDragons sparking a rivalry with Anika as the co-founder and ex-wife.

*** Meanwhile at Lyon Dynasty, Cookie is TheLeader, Anika is sometimes her {{Lancer}}, Hakeem retains his BigGuy role and is also something of a ChosenOne being trained to be Cookie's NumberTwo and seduced by Lucious to come back to Empire, and Andre and Rhonda retained TheSmartGuy and [[TheChick Chick]] roles until defecting back to Empire. Laura becomes the new Chick as Hakeem's love interest and budding demure superstar.

* DarkSkinnedBlonde: Wears a blonde weave.

* AwesomeMcCoolname: {{Invoked|Trope}}. His birth name is "Dwight Walker"; he changed it to "Lucious Lyon" after becoming an orphan to give himself a badass edge. Not even Cookie was aware of this until Jamal publicly revealed the truth.

* AbsoluteCleavage: As you can see.

* BigDamnHeroes: [[spoiler:Saves Cookie and the Lyon family sans Andre from Olivia's BastardBoyfriend when he took Cookie hostage.]]

* HairTriggerTemper: His biggest issue as he's shown to be quite the loose cannon when he gets angry. Season 6 takes this UpToEleven.

* BaldBlackLeaderGuy: [[spoiler:Lucious named him as his successor to run Empire near the end of Season 1.]]

* OutnumberedSibling: [[spoiler:It was initially stated that she was the Lyon brothers' half-sister. However, it was later revealed that this isn't the case.]]

* ChessmasterSidekik: To her husband. Their schemes brings conflicts in the Lyon family. She's often the one who finds the first solution.

*** Meanwhile at Lyon Dynasty, Cookie is TheLeader, Anika is sometimes her {{Lancer}}, Hakeem retains his BigGuy role and is also something of a ChosenOne being trained to be Cookie's NumberTwo and seduced by Lucious to come back to Empire, and Andre and Rhonda retained their SmartGuy and [[TheChick Chick]] roles until defecting back to Empire. Laura becomes the new Chick as Hakeem's love interest and budding demure superstar.