History Characters / LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnitCurrentMainCharacters

* BadassGrandpa: Tough cop, savior of lives, grandfather via his son and his husband in later seasons.

* PlatonicLifePartners: With Stabler, until his departure. They are partners and very good friends. The closeness of their relationship sometimes causes friction with their colleagues, but never threatens Stabler's relationship with his wife and four [[spoiler:(later five)]] children. Their relationship does occasionally cause some marital friction. Kathy sometimes finds it difficult to deal with the fact that Elliot confides in Liv instead of her. There are also the unfortunate times when Liv has to be the go-between (when Elliot is undercover and unreachable, for example) and Kathy clearly objects to being kept out of the loop of her own husband's life. Still, it doesn't come up nearly as often as you'd expect and Elliott and Liv really are just friends. Kathy does seem to have accepted the relationship after [[spoiler:she gets back together with Elliott]], at one point referring to Liv jokingly as Elliott's "work wife."
** Episode 9 of season 24 has her outright admitting to Amanda that Stabler is the love of her life. Liv refused to pursue it further because he was married.

* PapaWolf: First appears in the seventh season episode "Strain", when Ken is under investigation. While Fin is more stable in his methods than Elliot, he could still give him a good run for his money. After some initial strain, he extended this to his future son-in-law.

* HonoraryUncle: He's "Uncle Sonny" to Olivia's son Noah and Amanda's daughters Jesse and Billie.

* OutOfFocus: Pre-season 12, very few episodes focused on him and even then they were more about his family's problems than Fin himself. Post Season 12, Fin's son Ken is nowhere to be seen, and Fin himself has only had a couple of episodes of any focus.

* BreakoutCharacter: Was originally supposed to be a four episode character. However, because he was well received by fans, he was kept on the show for good.

* BreakThemByTalking: She's no slouch in a physical fight, but her greatest skill is verbally taking down criminals and forcing them to admit their crimes. When ''she's' can't break a criminal, it's usually a big deal.

** Barba represented the man who killed Stabler's wife, because he knew any other defense attorney would have destroyed Benson on the stand. Benson (who always had trouble respecting the concept of a defendant's right to counsel) didn't care that he did her a favor, he represented someone who hurt Stabler, so he's dead to her.

* AlcoholicParent: Her mother was one. [[spoiler:Season 17 seems to have Olivia on the verge of becoming one herself.]]

* BoundAndGagged: [[spoiler: Season 15 premiere, 'Surrender Benson'.]]

* GoodParents: To [[spoiler:her son, Noah.]]

* MamaBear: Acts this way toward many victims. [[AMotherToHerMen And now everyone at the 16th]], now that she's the squad leader, and a more traditional one towards [[spoiler:her son, Noah. This especially applies when Noah contracts Measles as the result of unvaccinated children at the doctor's office. As a result, she goes after the parents.]]

* NatureVsNurture: Since Olivia is a ChildByRape, she gets incredibly defensive over the notion that her biological father being a rapist might have bearing on her own personal nature. While she maintains it's ridiculous, she also at times seeks reassurance that it isn't the case. While overtime she has largely outgrown this, the topic still gets revisited every several seasons, [[spoiler: though more recently the attention has been put on her adopted son Noah, who like her was fathered by a rapist]].

* ParentalSubstitute: Briefly, to Calvin, the young son of a drug addict. And then again in season 15, when she is awarded foster custody of Noah, a dead victim's infant son who had been kidnapped by pornographers earlier in the season; however this one becomes permanent [[spoiler: after she adopts Noah at the end of season 16]].

* {{Workaholic}}: Olivia works tirelessly and has to be forced to take time off. She even admits early on that she rarely goes home to her apartment. While she comes to value her free time more after [[spoiler: adopting Noah]], she still practically begs her therapist to greenlight her returning to work after she's given mandatory leave following a hostage situation.

* BigScrewedUpFamily: Let's see, a gay son who resents him, [[spoiler:an ex-wife who was raped by her own father, producing a son who committed murder and got away scot free…]], and a brother in law who gets out of jail only to be falsely arrested on Christmas Eve… yep, definitely a nice family.

* AFriendInNeed: To Rollins, both when she's getting screwed over by her sister and when she later appears to be in over her head with [[TrappedByGamblingDebts gambling debts]], and Fin is the one Rollins calls for a ride when [[spoiler: she goes into labour in Season 17]]. Also to Olivia in subtle ways, pre-Season 12 - he's the only one that knows she's going to therapy post-"Undercover".

When Detective Nick Amaro is briefly reassigned to Queens, Carisi is transferred to the Manhattan Special Victims Unit on a temporary basis. He eventually becomes a permanent member of the squad. Boasting experience in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, he takes a while to grasp the complex sensitivity required for SVU cases, as he'd previously been involved with Homicide. He attends law classes at Fordham Law night school until season 17, when [[spoiler: he passes the bar exam]]. In the Season 21 premiere, he leaves the NYPD and joins the District Attorney's office, becoming the A.D.A. in charge of prosecuting the squad's cases.

* AncestralName: He's "Sonny" because he's a junior, the "son" to his dad's Dominick Carisi, Sr.

* FriendToAllChildren: While not exactly highlighted, he's very good with children, including babies, and helps Rollins when she is initially struggling with [[spoiler: how to raise a child on her own]]. In "Patrimonial Burden", he is shown entertaining all the rape victim's siblings at the station, and they seem to like him, despite the situation. He's also very good with interviewing young children -- for instance, in "Collateral Damage". This is probably because he grew up with three younger sisters.

* ShipTease: With Rollins, starting in season 17 after she has her child and he [[ParentalSubstitute steps up as a father figure]] in place of Declan, who's deep undercover in Eastern Europe. [[spoiler:It's eventually confirmed that he's in love with her in Season 19, when he ''almost'' admits it while drunk and is heartbroken when he finds out that Rollins hooked up with a guy the next morning. They eventually ''do'' finally admit it at the end of Season 22.]]

* BerserkButton: She despises people who are willing to defend rapists. However she doesn't get angry at those who do not know they are defending one but it's the matter someone has the gull to protect a sadistic criminal when they know they've done wrong. Unfortunately this also extends to defense attorneys who at worst are just doing their job.
* BigGood: In season 15, after Cragen's retirement places her in lead of the squad.

** In a later season after hearing the story of how a young girl became pregnant, the DA is hesitant to file charges due to the girl maintaining the father is her boyfriend. Olivia immediately asserts that they have to charge him with rape since the girl is 13 before its pointed out statutory can't apply since the father is the same age.

%%* FairCop:

* RightForTheWrongReasons: In "Behave" she says her gut tells her that a man with an alibi is the rapist they're looking for. She does a background check and finds that the suspect is an upstanding citizen who is forty years old, has never been married, and has no children, to which Olivia says "What do you think, problems with women?" Of course the alibi was fake and the suspect was the rapist. But Olivia's gut is not magic and being single and childless at the age of forty is not evidence of a problem with the opposite sex.