History Literature / Nos4a2

* ArtisticLicenseChemistry: [[spoiler:Vic kills Bing by igniting a tank of sevoflurane anesthetic he is carrying. That compound exists in real life, but is non-flammable.]]

* TheRenfield: Bing; he does Manx's wetwork, i.e. disposing of the parents of the children Manx "saves." This often involves raping them after drugging them with sevoflurane.

* SomeoneToRememberHimBy: [[spoiler: Just after losing her boyfriend in the effort to stop Manx, Vic learns that she's pregnant by him.]]

* LipstickLesbian: Maggie is revealed to be a lesbian (by abruptly having sex with a woman she's just met). She's got a faminine style, with long hair, wearing stylish blouses and skirts while using makeup. The woman she hooks up with in the scene is also quite feminine, with similar looks.

* LipstickLesbian: Maggie is revealed to be a lesbian (by abruptly having sex with a woman she's just met) with no hint beforehand since she acts and dresses much like the straight girls.

* PlayingGertrude: Vic's parents in the series are played by actors only eleven and fourteen years older than her actor, respectively (though of course, Vic's actor is significantly older than her character).

* AnnoyingLaugh: Manx has a distinctive braying guffaw that makes him sound like a CorruptHick, in contrast to his other mannerisms.

* NiceHat: Maggie sports a stylish fedora as part of her unusual outfit, which includes a necklace of beer can tabs and a pair of earrings made from Scrabble tiles. She still wears it as an adult, even though it's now battered and filthy. [[spoiler:Manx takes it as a trophy after killing her.]]

* {{Deconstruction}}: Of the Franchise/PeterPan story. Manx seems to be convinced he is fulfilling the Peter Pan role, taking children away to a magical land where they will never grow up. However, this shown to actually be a terrible thing, as the price of staying in Christmasland is the children's soul's, and Manx doesn't take them there to help them, as he claims, but actually to maintain his own youth. Vic, meanwhile is Wendy, who encounters Manx when she is a teenager, and later is forced to confront him in adulthood when he kidnaps her son.

* {{Deconstruction}}: Of the Peter Pan story. Manx seems to be convinced he is Peter Pan, taking children away to a magical land where they will never grow up. However, this shown to actually be a terrible thing, as the price of staying in Christmasland is the children's soul's, and Manx doesn't take them there to help them, as he claims, but actually to maintain his own youth.

* AdultFear: In the second season, Charlie Manx and Bing attempt to kidnap Vic's son Wayne. She knows very well that if successful he'll face a {{fate worse than death}}, turning into one of Manx's vampiric children.

* AdultFear: The abduction of one's child.

* InformedFlaw:
** We're repeatedly told that Vic is a terrible mother with serious mental problems, but we rarely see her be anything but a quite good mother who's just perpetually depressed. It's implied that all her real screwups happened in the years between chapters, but we never get to see them or even hear more than passing references to them. The one instance where Vic did act crazy was in burning her house down - which is, admittedly, a pretty ''big'' screwup, but it seems less like the result of an inherent flaw and more an effect of being driven to drunkenness and despair by years of Manx's children harrassing her.
** We are likewise told that Manx is stupid, but he seems if anything a dangerously crafty ManipulativeBastard who usually has a very good idea of how to achieve his twisted goals. He is of course ''insane'', and SanityHasAdvantages, but that's not the same thing as being stupid.

* AdaptationalAttractiveness: Manx is described as having weasel-like features and an overbite. For the television adaptation he's being played by Creator/ZacharyQuinto.

* InformedFlaw: We're repeatedly told that Vic is a terrible mother with serious mental problems, but we rarely see her be anything but a quite good mother who's just perpetually depressed. It's implied that all her real screwups happened in the years between chapters, but we never get to see them or even hear more than passing references to them. The one instance where Vic did act crazy was in burning her house down - which is, admittedly, a pretty ''big'' screwup, but it seems less like the result of an inherent flaw and more an effect of being driven to drunkenness and despair by years of Manx's children harrassing her.

* LoonyLibrarian: Maggie. She has a weird fashion sense and psychic powers, and also a stammer which she developed as a result of using these powers (and which gets worse the more she does).

A television adaptation was made for Creator/{{AMC}}, which began to air in June 2019 starring Creator/ZacharyQuinto as Manx. After two seasons, it was cancelled.

* VillainousParentalInstinct: Charlie Manx is ([[OurVampiresAreDifferent more or less]]) an almost 120 year old vampire who has spent most of that time abducting children and taking them to his SmallSecludedWorld where they, like him, become vampires [[LackOfEmpathy completely lacking in anything like empathy and morality]]. He still instinctively jumps in the way of danger to protect his daughter from harm when [[MamaBear Vic]] is executing her RoaringRampageOfRevenge to get her son back from Manx. Vic notices it happening but it earns no sympathy from her, she just think to herself that all sorts of monsters can [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes have people they care about]] or can believe that their horribleness is somehow good.

* CrapsaccharineWorld: Christmasland. It looks like a holiday paradise at first, but the kids inhabiting it have become sadistic little monsters due to their time with Manx.

* NiceHat: Maggie sports a stylish fedora as part of her unusual outfit, which include a necklace of beer can tabs and a pair of earrings made from Scrabble tiles. She still wears it as an adult, even though it's now battered and filthy. [[spoiler:Manx takes it as a trophy after killing her.]]