History ComicBook / Hellblazer

* AlternatePersonalityPunishment: In order to escape Hell, John Constantine creates a kind of EvilTwin by removing all his more unsavory aspects (baser urges, demonic blood, clinginess over an ex-girlfriend...) and leaving it in his place. This screws him over later when Demon Constantine is on Earth and ends up [[spoiler:raping John's niece Gemma (during John's wedding)]]. Believing it was the real John, Gemma summons a vengeance demon and sics it on her uncle. While the misunderstanding is cleared up, their relationship is irreparably broken (and John considers her right to hate him).

** The Order of St Oran in "Empathy is the Enemy" (also a {{Cult}}).
* AnonymousRinger: In "Royal Blood", various members of the royal family are portrayed as braying, cocaine-addled, incestuous perverts - but to appease DC's lawyers, they go unnamed.

** John's thwarted him a few times. If it comes to it, he'll take an axe to a newly-born devil spawn (which just so happens to resemble a human baby) if it gets the job done.

** John encounters the embodiment of rape in "Son of Man."

** The First, in "Critical Mass", also Nergal.

** One story has John exorcize a little girl by threatening to kill her (specifically, by setting fire to a strand of her hair which would consume her body via SympatheticMagic). The demon leaves and John is punched for his methods, before revealing it was a bluff- he'd gotten the hair from a wig, as even he wouldn't knowingly sacrifice a little girl.

** John later becomes part of the TrenchcoatBrigade to fight the Cult of Cold Flame and save Timothy Hunter.

* TheMagicVersusTechnologyWar: John once defeated the god-demon Nergal by trapping him inside a computer, before the computer opened a gateway to Heaven where angels ripped Nergal apart.

* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: Sir. Francis Drakewood and Aleister Crowley was portrayed as a powerful sorcerer.

** And then there's the mobster who gave birth to Antichrist. [[spoiler: The poor man got himself pregnant, and his womb was twice bigger than his old body. Not to mention his limbs being thin, and blood was coming out from every hole in his body.]]

* DiabolusExMachina: John's getting married, all his friends are and ex-lovers are coming, there's no DealWithTheDevil waiting to backfire on him... [[spoiler:and then his demon half shows and rapes Gemma (who doesn't know he has an EvilTwin. She ends up thinking her own uncle raped her]] until it's explained to her, by which point it's too late to recall the vengeance demon she sicced on him.

* DownerEnding: Many stories. Especially [[spoiler: #300, the last issue of the original Hellblazer series]].
** [[spoiler:Much of this are caused by John trying to save the day. Like that time John attempts to save his dying sister but ends up sending her soul to Hell, or when he tries to save a little girl from an elemental demon but ends up with the girl in pieces, or that time in ''Rake at the Gates of Hell'' arc when one-by-one John's closest friends either sacrifice themselves or get killed trying to save John.]]

* EvilSorcerer: Many antagonists in the series are villainous magic users. Most notable is Mako and Stanley Manor.

** The Archangel Gabriel is no stranger to this. Among those he bedded and raped are the Virgin Mary (resulting in you know ''who'') and a disguised succubus (although that one was consensual, and it's implied that was the first time he'd done so).

%% ** Neo-Nazis in ''Highwater''.

* GagPenis: The demon Fuckpig, who is also the total embodiment of rape.

* {{Gasshole}}: Blathoxi, the aptly named Lord of Flatulence.

** ComicBook/JusticeLeagueDark

* PayEvilUntoEvil: A gang of neo-Nazis kills their gun supplier when he makes the mistake of noting the irony of neo-Nazis using Israeli-made weapons. The gunrunner's boss Stanley Manor (himself a serious nutcase) ends up offering a SadisticChoice to the Nazis' boss: either Manor jizzes in his mouth... or his daughter's. [[spoiler:The old man spares his daughter from being raped... who all but spits on him, since he taught her that homosexuality is a sin.]]

* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Minor antagonist Charlie Patterson is a racist who has his underlings beat up and kill black people.
* PostModernMagik: In the ''Hellblazer'' mythos, magic exists even in the modern world, albeit mixed in with its culture. There are even sorcerers who can blend magic and technology as technomancers such as Ritchie Simpson who can open portals to different realms using computers.

%% ** In "Confessional", "Son of Man" and "Hard Time".

* RageAgainstTheHeavens: In "Original Sins", John fought off an attempt to create a new messiah.

** One arc involved the summoning of a giant dragon. It was neutralized by summoning its counterpart... via threesome.

** And the usual British comic jabs at UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher. One of John's punishments by demons is left hanging upside down in front of a TV covering an election, ending with Thatcher winning, while the First of the Fallen mentions how hard it is to get an Adolf or Maggie up to speed.

%% * WhateverMancy

* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Minor antagonist Charlie Patterson is a racist who has his underling beat up and kill black people.

%% * ViolentGlaswegian: Header.

%% * WomanScorned: Ellie, and pretty much every girl John met.

* InsaneTrollLogic: A racist justifies that Adam was white because his names means "to blush".

%% * IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming

For the tropes specific to John himself, regardless of his incarnation, see the Characters/HellblazerJohnConstantine page.

* AdventuresInComaland: in Hellblazer #100. It might have been AllJustADream, but this is left ambiguous; [[spoiler: while John is comatose in the hospital, did the First of the Fallen ''really'' spirit him away to have some fun watching John confront his damned father, or did John just dream the whole thing?]]

* AlternateContinuity: The John Constantine who appears in the DCU's ''Justice League Dark'' is apparently the young thirty-something who first helped Swamp Thing come to terms with his identity, rather than the one in Vertigo's ''Hellblazer'' who's possibly pushing 60. The ComicBook/New52 book continuity also has a number of differences with the classic. In the traditonal Hellblazer, John cast roughly less than one spell per book, and those were typically low-level scrying or hypnotism. He used wits and deals instead of wands. New 52 Constantine has some of the same characteristics, but while he still doesn't blast toe to toe in wizard duels, there are a lot more glowing lines and magic tricks spurting around.

* AuthorTract: This is a major theme in ''Hellblazer''. Since the beginning of its publication, writers have been putting their own political and philosophical British ideals in it, and since it follows real time than ComicBookTime, a lot of those ideals are come from what was happening in contemporary UK. Examples of this include Jamie Delano's negative views of Thatcher's regime and by 2005, includes the War on Terror. When Garth Ennis took writing, he included racism, drugs, and religious fanaticism which was popular at that time. The most controversial writer, Brian Azzarello, tackled issues such as Neo-Nazism, prison rape, and homosexuality. During Warren Ellis' run, he included American school shootings in a one-shot issue which led to a major controversy. As such, much of Hellblazer's horror often comes in the crisis and controversies of its time.

* DemonSlaying: John Constantine isn't called the "Hellblazer" for nothing. He's so good at this profession, that he can kill a demon with just a one sharp glance in ''Hellblazer #50''.

* ImperfectRitual: ''Hellblazer'' 108 - "Day of Wine and Roses": John is hired to do some fertility magic to spice up an orgy. He fully intends to con his employer by doing a bogus ritual with the added bonus of gaining {{blackmail}} material on the rich participants. His secret "[[MagicalIncantation magical chant]]" is the list of ingredients off a packet of muesli. The ritual still manages to summon spirits called the Mendw that possess the participants and wreak havoc.

* RememberTheNewGuy: In the first story arc of Hellblazer, Chas Chandler is shown to have no knowledge of who Gary Lester is, but by the time of Brian Azarello's run, it was retconned that Chas and Gary have been bandmates together with John Constantine back the.

** A bit more complicated than usual: the actual Lucifer, the former Devil, quit his job in Sandman... a plot point which was eventually carried over to Hellblazer, but then it had to be explained who the current Devil was. Turns out the First was God's first creation, and predates even angels. In the Hellblazer mythos, Lucifer and Satan are different.

* ShoutOut: Issue 214 had the screen names of various Hellblazer fans as graffiti on a wall; issue 229 featured one of the fans as a character; issue 230 featured two fans as ghostly apparitions.

%% * OldFriend: Loads, usually doomed.