History Series / Killjoys

** [[spoiler:Jaq]] demonstrates the ability to do this in "A Bout, A Girl" when he is able to remotely see the supermax prison the Killjoys are being held in while his physical body is elsewhere.

** At the end of "Johnny Be Good," the Killjoys leave Jelco on Lucy and return to find him missing, with Fancy claiming he let him go after "having some fun" with him. He returns briefly in the third season, but neither he nor Borna (now his wife) are seen or mentioned afterwards.

* RightWingMilitiaFanatic: The "True Leithians" may be the first example of this trope RecycledINSPACE. They are a group of extreme nationalists who resent the fact that seventh generation Westerlyns are going to be allowed to settle on Leith and be given land. On top of being deeply racist, paranoid and mistrustful of the government, they are stockpiling weapons and live in survivalist style farm compounds.

* ImprobableAge: "Wild, Wild Westerley" establishes that Pree is 38, which starts to look like a case of this when you consider that he's mentioned having been a warlord (who the Company still considers a terrorist) and a career criminal under separate identities. And that was ''before'' he caught a freighter to Westerley and came to own the Royale.

* DecadentCourt: It can be inferred that Dutch's homeworld had one of these, since the girls of the RoyalHarem are [[TykeBomb trained since infancy on how to kill people]].

* UnproblematicProstitution: Despite being a WretchedHive, prostitution in Westerley is not shown to be any worse than any profession there. John, one of the heroes, is even shown to be a regular patron and their pimp (who mentions having worked as a prostitute in the bar he now owns) is also the crew's bartender and friend. Sex work is also stated to be how many new immigrants to Westerley first make a living, and Pree offers this option to John and D'avin on separate occasions.
** Together with the above and the earlier given information that Pree did something worse than non-fatal stabbing to the previous owner of the bar to gain the establishment for himself, this implies that the previous bar owner / pimp was abusing the sex workers, and the then-recently arrived ex-mercenary Pree put an end to it and took over as their much more ethical manager. It's never actually stated that they work for him or that their customers pay him, only that the sex workers rent rooms in the upper level and that he can make announcements like "sexers are 20% off for the rest of the night", which he might just say to keep customers around to sell more drinks and then reimburse the sex workers later. If the latter is true, Pree is more like a manager / landlord than a conventional pimp; the bar's "sexors" might be so content because they have health care via Pawter and protection via Pree and the Killjoys, and aren't beaten to enforce obedience or forced to give up most of the money they make.

* MysteriousPast: Dutch has one that involves being trained in torture and assassination when she was just a child. D'avin deduces she has one because of her level of training and is the main reason he doesn't trust her initially.

* UnproblematicProstitution: Despite being a WretchedHive, prostitution in Westerley is not shown to be any worse than any profession there. John, one of the heroes, is even shown to be a regular patron and their pimp is also the crew's bartender and friend.
** In season 4, Pree off-handedly mentions that some time ago he worked as a "sexor" in that bar himself. Together with the earlier given information that sex work is how many new immigrants to Westerly first make a living (Pree offers this option to Johnny and D'avin on separate occasions), and that Pree did something awful (worse than non-fatal stabbing anyway) to the previous owner of the bar to gain the establishment for himself, this implies a backstory where the previous bar owner / pimp was abusing the sex workers, and the recently arrived ex-mercenary Pree put an end to it and then took over as the new, much more ethical manager of the sex workers. It's never actually stated that they work ''for'' him or shown that their customers pay ''him'', only that the sex workers rent rooms in the upper level and that he can make announcements like "sexers are 20% off for the rest of the night" - which he might just say to keep customers around to sell more drinks and then reimburse the sex workers later. Pree might not actually be a pimp in the conventional sense, more like a manager / landlord. The bar's "sexors" might well be so content because they have health care (Pawter) and protection (Pree keeps Dutch & Co. as bouncers and is very capable himself) but they aren't forced to give up most of the money they make and they aren't getting beaten to enforce obedience.

* WantedPoster: RAC warrants are a variation on this. Killjoys claim the jobs they want, which are rated on a scale from 1 to 5. The rating serves several purposes: it restricts warrants to agents cleared for them (Dutch is the only member of the crew qualified for level 5 warrants) and indicates the type of job. "Black" warrants are done derby-style, with multiple teams competing to collect the bounty by being the first to complete the warrant. From the website: Level 1 is item retrieval, 2 is escort/prisoner transfer, 3 is a live capture warrant, 4 is dead or alive (alive seems to be preferred), and 5 is an explicit kill order.

** At the end of "Johnny Be Good," the Killjoys leave Jelco on Lucy and return to find him missing, with Fancy claiming he let him go after "having some fun" with him. He returns briefly in the third season, but neither he nor his new wife Borna are seen or mentioned afterwards. [[spoiler:It's unknown whether either of them survived the Lady's attempts to terraform Westerley in the fifth season.]]

* InstantSedation: Downplayed. In "Shaft", Pawter gives Jelco a sedative while treating his heart condition, and also uses it to subdue his guard. It takes at least a few seconds for the sedative to affect either of them (combined with Pawter nicking a vein in Jelco's heart) and the guard is able to briefly fight Pawter before collapsing.

** Pip sacrifices himself to trigger the RAC's self-destruct sequence.

** D'avin can control the green plasma inside of Sixes and cause their eyeballs (and presumably brains) to explode. Unfortunately, he discovers this while being strangled by a Six [[{{Squick}} whose eyeballs then explode all over his face]].

** D'avin can control the green plasma inside of Sixes and cause their eyeballs (and presumably brains) to explode. Unfortunately, he discovers this while being strangled by a Six [[whose {{Squick}} eyeballs then explode all over his face]].

'''Spoilers for seasons 1, 2 and 3 are unmarked.'''

** Dutch suggests doing this to infiltrate The RAC in 'Enemy Khlyen', but John points out that it would just expose her to enough radiation to melt her face off.
** Zeph is using them to get food at the start of “Johnny Dangerously.”

* AlternativeCalendar: The year is apparently "1062", without any explanation as yet of what the starting point was.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Pretty much everything in the show that's connected to biochemistry / genetics / microbiology is utter nonsense. Like all the alien-microorganism- or nanobot-caused instant healing of even major injuries without any of the necessary additional energy / nutrient intake. (Plus, it's biochemically impossible for human cells to reproduce and grow that fast, even if you could stimulate them to do so through artificial means.) Or the "virus" that almost instantly freezes people solid starting at the point of exposure[[note]] Aside from the fact that the freezing thing makes no sense at all in terms of thermodynamics, viruses - no matter how alien or specially designed - are defined by their need to use the human cells' own metabolism to reproduce in large numbers before they have any noticable effect on the human body, which takes time that cannot be sped up. This is why the symptom-less incubation period for even the most deadly viral diseases is at least half a day, by which point the virus has spread throughout the body evenly. This plot point would have been a lot less stupid if they'd just said that it was some sort of toxin or a cloud of nanobots.[[/note]]. Or Dutch turning out to be Aneela's "chiral" mirror image even on a molecular level, with her DNA helix supposedly turning the other way around[[note]] That's chemically impossible no matter the order of ATCG nucleotids.[[/note]] and the two strands supposedly being switched.[[note]]Since only one of those strands is "read out" by the human cells and since the genetic code that translates the "ATCG" chain of DNA into the chain of aminoacids in a protein is fixed for all life on earth and doesn't mirror (i.e. "TGC" calls for a completely different aminoacid than the mirror version "ACG", and even just one aminoacid switch can make the resulting protein take on a different shape and have different chemical properties, thus making it unusable for its function as e.g. an enzyme), this would mean Dutch has a completely different genome than Aneela and should look very different. Or actually, it would mean her genome wouldn't be viable for a living organism at all, as all the genes necessary for basic biochemistry would be wrong, too. (I.e. all the stuff that we humans share with, say, cauliflower, which is about half of all protein-coding genes in the human genome.)[[/note]]
** In a season 4 episode, Dutch decides to fly in close circles around a sun to create a higher g-force after her lab centrifuge wasn't strong enough to separate the cells from the suspension medium in some AppliedPhlebotinum. This means that Dutch supposedly survived more than the 5000 to 15000 g[[note]]or rather Relative Centrifugal Force equivalents[[/note]] that even a small, low-speed desktop centrifuge can easily reach. Even if human tissue/bone could actually survive more than about 25 g for more than a second, at thousands of g, her blood cells should have clotted at the bottom of her heart and all her blood vessels, killing her through heart attack / brain embolism. So the nonsense in this episode isn't even internally consistent: Separating suspended cells from liquids is literally what this kind of low-power centrifuge is for, and what she was trying to do with their spore sample by pulling this stunt. But somehow it only happens to the sample, not her blood. Also, if it was actually acchievable the way she was planning, higher power (higher rotation speed) centrifugation than what the small desk centrifuge could do would have destroyed the spore cells in her sample, because separating the parts of cells (organelles, DNA strands, proteins, etc.) is what higher power centrifuges are for.[[note]] These are about the size of a desk, due to needing a bigger diameter, a bigger motor, bigger anchoring mass and sometimes even having to be bolted to the floor. If you don't roughly balance out the load of a small desktop centrifuge, you might damage the machine. If you don't ''very carefully'' balance out the load of a high-power centrifuge, the machine will likely fling itself out to break the next wall. Also, you just cost the lab several hundred thousand Dollars.[[/note]]

** Played with for Pawter. She makes questionable medical decisions, but she's also a drug addict who was banished to Westerley by her family in order to cover up the fact that she killed a patient when operating while high. As such, it's unclear whether her actions are supposed to be considered reasonable in-universe, or if she's just a BackAlleyDoctor.
** In "The Harvest", Pawter diagnoses D'avin's PTSD by deliberately putting him in a triggering situation--she asks him to stay and watch the Leithians pop off fireworks to celebrate, which causes him to have a flashback because [[TruthInTelevision they sound like guns]]. Suffice it to say that it is ''not'' accepted medical practice to force a patient into a bad episode to make sure you're right about what they have--especially if they're not even actually your patient yet.
** Pawter also decides to have sex with D'avin, which is prohibited under medical ethics (and has been going back thousands of years, to Hippocrates). Even D'avin points out that her actions are pretty dang unethical.
* ArtisticLicensePhysics: When D'avin detonates an EMP inside the RAC headquarters, it disables internal comms, security, and primary lighting, but not life support, ArtificialGravity or emergency lighting (though this might be justified, as it's not physically impossible to shield against an EMP attack-via Farraday cages-and it would make sense to put those essential survival systems in separate computers shielded against possible attacks. On the other hand, not shielding the security systems as well would be a clear case of IdiotBall on part of the RAC engineers).
** Also, the planet and moons in the Quad all have very different sizes, and yet all of them have the same gravity. Realistically, even with terraforming, either the planet would have far too high gravity for humans to survive, or the moons shouldn't even be able to hold any atmosphere or water they imported there during the terraforming process. While the setting clearly has artificial gravity on the ships, it's never established how they managed to increase the gravity on the moons' surfaces (if they buried a massive infrastructure system of "gravity generators" of some sort, they should already be finished with mining the ground as well).
** The planet and moons are also almost [[SingleBiomePlanet Single Biome Planets]], with Leith for example being covered in lush vegetation and apparently (sub)tropical temperatures all over (there aren't even any major bodies of water to be seen from space - how the hell does the water cycle on that moon work and generate enough rain for all that vegetation?!), except for a small area at the poles that's covered in snow and pine forests. Meanwhile, Arkyn is apparently constantly frozen over, despite getting basically the same amount of energy due to being at the same distance from the sun (though that ''might'' be possible if there's almost no carbondioxide in the atmosphere due to a lack of volcanism or much inhabitation by people. They did establish that there's no plant life viable there for some unexplained reason, so the atmosphere, and especially the oxygen, must be completely imported).

* AteHisGun: One of the prison escapees in "Wild, Wild Westerley" chooses to go out this way rather than return, then be tortured into giving the others up.

* BadBadActing: In 'Reckoning Ball', D'avin and Dutch are trying to implant a memory in an imprisoned Hullen, and the plan to do so requires them to convincingly act out a scenario where Dutch has decided to leave the team. Their performances are not convincing in the slightest (at least initially).

* BatmanGambit: In the penultimate episode of season 1, it turns out that Khlyen set one up. He trained Dutch as an assassin, then allowed her to escape and become a Killjoy, while getting into RAC's command himself. He's been keeping Dutch's RAC records clean, waiting until she took a Level 5 warrant, proving she's ready to kill again. Only then did he reveal himself. Unfortunately for him, John and D'avin threw a bit of a wrench into that plan when John picked up D'avin's kill warrant in her name, causing Khlyen to play his hand too soon.
* BavarianFireDrill: John's favorite method of infiltration is to show up at a place he's not supposed to be and fast talk his way in, often to fix a mechanical issue that he actually caused. If that fails, he'll gas or tase the guard instead.
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Dutch always comes out of fights with her hair, makeup, and clothes intact. There are a few exceptions -- her fight with D'avin in 'Kiss, Kiss, Bye Bye' left her with some heavy bruising on her face -- but they are rare.
** The Jaqobis brothers are also offenders, as they frequently take blows to the face that leave little more than a minor cut that disappears shortly after (John's beating near the end of Season 2 being an exception).
* BigCreepyCrawlies: "Shaft" has cat-sized centipedes, called mossipedes, which hunt humans and can release a toxin that causes hallucinations. They also contain the green plasma used in the Red 17 SuperSoldier program, which causes them to be repulsed by D'avin.

* BigDamnKiss: "I Love Lucy" has ''three'' examples. John kisses Lucy (in a {{fembot}}), Dutch kisses Alvis and D'avin kisses Sabine (the latter two having sex as well).

** In order to access a voice-locked computer controlled by Kyhlen, John copies his voice by having Dutch get him to speak over an open comm.
** Jelco's computer is controlled by a DNA lock. When Pawter needs access to it, he provides an opportunity by asking her to help with his heart condition. A little blood plus some sedative to keep him out provides her with everything she needs.

* BountyHunter: Our heroes' job. As a matter of fact there's an entire organization of them called the '''R'''eclamation '''A'''pprehension '''C'''oalition, commonly known as The Rack.

** In 'Attack the Rack', John is tortured with a device that will cause him to slowly lose memories and words, leading to this exchange with Dutch after she rescues him.

* BulletproofVest: One of these saves John's life when Dutch shoots him -- ''again'' -- in 'The Wolf You Feed', which he was counting on. Since she was stuck reliving a flashback to the day they met, he knew she was likely going to shoot him and planned accordingly.
** Body armor saves D'avin's life when [[spoiler: John]] shoots him in the back at point blank range, although it clearly hurt a lot and appeared to knock him out briefly.

** Not shown in the first season, but heavily implied. While all the action takes place in a single star system, in the pilot episode D'avin arrives there from somewhere else on a ship making the rounds in the local star cluster, and implies he is a veteran of wars across the galaxy. Though given that he's working off his passage in the ring it's clearly expensive and takes a long time.
** In the second season Khlyen and Fancy Lee travel to Telen (the Jaqobis' home-world that is described as being in the "ass-end of the galaxy") in a matter of days, although they have access to technology far more advanced than the rest of the J.

* TheChurch: The Scarbacks are a monastic order, and the only religious organization seen, whose monks seek enlightenment through pain. They get their name from verses of scripture that they carve into their backs.
* CombatPragmatist: Dutch was trained to be able to kill anyone with anything, and will not hesitate to fight dirty if necessary to win. Since she's usually going up against men who are larger and stronger than her, it's necessary and justified.

* CompanyTown: On a truly gigantic scale, since they are in effect Company ''Moons''.

* DecadentCourt: It can be inferred that Dutch’s homeworld had one of these, since the girls of the RoyalHarem are [[TykeBomb trained since infancy on how to kill people]].
* DeadlyGas: One is released to kill the prisoners during a breakout from a corporate prison, but falls into the hands of one escapee instead. Finally it winds up with scarback priest Alvis, who nearly releases it into the air duct to Spring Hill before he has a change of heart and reverses the flow, which almost kills him.

* DoNotCallMePaul: Dutch doesn't usually answer to her birth name, Yalena, or the nickname 'Yala'. Although she doesn't object when Johnny calls her Yalena, which suggests she may only object to Khlyen using it.
* DopeSlap: Dutch has a tendency to smack John between the eyes whenever he's being ridiculous.
** Bellus does the same thing to Dutch in the first episode after learning that she has D'avin hiding out on her ship instead of killing him like she was supposed to.
* DoubleStandardRapeMaleOnMale: In the season 3 episode "The Lion, the Witch and the Warlock", Pree is captured by his old mercenary gang and their leader (his ex-lover). They plan to execute him for running away from the gang / the ex, and the last we see of him in one late scene is him surrounded by drawn guns and asking to be forgiven for leaving the ex. Then he shows up to rescue Dutch and Johnny, explaining that the mercenaries decided not to kill him after all, and in return, he "had to put out. A lot." This implies the previous scene ended in a gang bang - but, even though Pree and the leader clearly still have feelings for each other and even if Pree maybe wouldn't mind having sex with the rest of the mercenaries under normal circumstances. Double standard because, this wouldn't have gotten past the radar with a woman.

* EvilMentor: Khlyen, if only because he was making Dutch into an assassin, and through TrainingFromHell at that.

** Jelco fits Pawter with an explosive ankle bracelet while she's at the Spring Hill complex, preventing her from leaving. When he needs her assistance dealing with a heart condition, she sedates him, uses his DNA to unlock it, then fits it to him so she can leave while he can't stop her. He is able to get it removed, and in "Full Metal Monk" he asks her if she would like it back.

* {{Fanservice}}: Dutch's clothes during undercover missions qualify, particularly in "Bangarang" and "The Harvest".
** In an example of [[MrFanservice male fanservice]], D'avin is pretty much a WalkingShirtlessScene.

* FantasticRankSystem: Female members of the Nine use the title "Seyah" between their first and last names while males use "Seyoh", such as Delle Seyah Kendry and Illenore Seyah Simms, and are addressed as "Seyah[=/=]Seyoh [FAMILY NAME]".

* FauxAffablyEvil: Jelco. He has perfect Qreshi manners, and perfect aim as he casually shoots Hills in the head.

*** In the same episode with the military spaceship, on the Wall of Crazy that the guard had assembled in the infirmary there was the term "AKKIN" scrawled between a bunch of proper words like "LIES" and "FAIL". Apparently, at least one person on that torture blacksite ship did know a bit more about what they were supposed to interrogate their prisoners about (possibly the captain?) - it's just that the guard who heard that confession wasn't from the Quad and thus didn't know how to spell "Arkyn".

** In "Escape Velocity" Seyah Kendry jokes about shiving a member of Land Hyponia, as she does not like them. Fast forward to the next season and in "Full Metal Monk" Arune Hyponia has become the leader of the family and is Pawter's main ally among the Nine to go after Land Kendry. He gets killed in the same episode by Jelco, who's acting on orders from Kendry.
* FreakyFridayFlip: In "Meet the Parents", D'avin and Khlyen end up swapping minds thanks to Khlyen linking to D'avin through the green plasma and D'avin trying to turn the link on Khlyen. It has to be reversed since the link wasn't meant to be used as such and is killing D'avin.

** [[spoiler: Pip]] sacrifices himself to trigger the RAC's self-destruct sequence.

* HostileTerraforming: In season 5, [[spoiler:the Lady is terraforming Westerly to make a new home for her species. The team has a little under a month to stop it before the entire planet can no longer support human life]].

** Westerly is occasionally beset by magneto-active acid rainstorms, a result of all the pollution from strip-mining the planet.

** In 'The Harvest', N'oa's husband just laughs and says "she should have made better choices" when Johnny tells him how much trouble N'oa will be in if he doesn't get home immediately. When Johnny takes the guy in for illegal immigration at the end of the episode, he tells him "you should have made better choices".
** In ‘Shaft’, Jelco fits Pawter with an explosive ankle bracelet so that she can’t leave Spring Hill, and reminds her of it by telling her if she goes too far outside the compound’s perimeters, “pretty princess goes boom.” Later, when Jelco discovers Pawter put the bracelet around his heart, she tells him “I wouldn’t push that too far if I were you...or the little prick goes boom.”
* ItCanThink: In the second season finale Khlyen reveals that the Plasma has a degree of sentience and it's controlling the Sixes.
* JackBauerInterrogationTechnique: Dutch uses physical torture on Sabine when she's trying to get information from her, and is apparently an expert from her days under Khlyen. It doesn't do much good, as Sabine was already open to giving away secrets thanks to the serum in her brain having been depleted.
** Turin also has a dedicated blacksite specifically to "interrogate" Sixes. Though at least he plans to extract information on other moles by technological means (basically a sci-fi lie detector combined with face recognition software), not simply brute force. He says he developed this interrogation technique because Sixes don't break because of pain - implying that he did try that first on other off-screen captured Sixes.

** An unspecified governmental army (not from the Quad) maintains an entire spaceship as a dedicated blacksite to torture people with nanobots (which also quickly heal the victims again, so there has to be no limit to the brutality and length of the torture). This is presented as not particularly unusual for professional military institutions in this setting.
** The Company cops in Old Town (led by Officer Hills, who is not meant to be a bad guy) beat Alvis bloody after arresting him for a false flag terror attack on Leith that others of his Scarback order have supposedly committed, with the goal of the torture being to force a false confession.
** Jelco has a reputation for using this.
** A mining union boss (who is also not supposed to be a bad guy, only looking out for the oppressed people of Old Town) tortures Dutch with "micro-leeches" that make her bleed internally and vomit up the blood whenever she lies, in order to get information on the whereabouts of the guy who oppressed Old Town, whom Dutch just helped escape from the uprising.
** In the season 3 episode "The Lion, the Witch and the Warlord", D'avin, of all people[[note]] He'd been the one horrified by the military torture ship and who demanded that Dutch treat Sabine like a Prisoner of War and refrain from torturing her.[[/note]] takes a Killjoy colleague (who had a perfectly legitimate warrant for hunting Johnny and who was also not characterized as a bad person) and holds him upside down, dropping him on his head a few times[[note]] Which could realistically have led to a skull fracture, lasting brain damage or at least a severe concussion.[[/note]], so the guy will tell him who took out the warrant on Johnny. This example is especially awful because it's played as a [[ComedicSociopathy comedy scene]], instead of serving to show how ruthless the interrogating character is. It's like the writer thought beating up the equivalent of an internal affairs officer who's going after a cop who broke the rules and shot someone without it being self-defense somehow doesn't count as torture / police brutality.
** By the time of "Attack the Rack", Fancy has invented a new, creative way to torture information out of a captive Hullen: a device that dials up their perception of their own internal noises (blood pumping, eyeball movement, etc.) up to 9000, which apparently is both painful and will drive them insane very quickly. (It works to a degree, but the Hullen is tough enough to last a few rounds and good enough at psychological manipulation to turn the tables on Fancy - partly because they didn't think [[IdiotBall to tie her to the chair]].) Also, some Hullen (Black Root?) specialists torture the Jacobi brothers by putting Johnny in a MindRape chair that slowly strips his memories from him (which also physically hurts him), while simultaneously making D'avin (who is tougher and doesn't cheerish his mental faculties so much) [[ForcedToWatch watch]] his brother suffer. (Though the torturer gives up after just a few rounds because D'avin shows off his special powers and thus makes abducting him a higher priority.) Meanwhile, Aneela [[spoiler: thinks she]] keeps her Hullen servants in line by manipulating the plasma in their bodies to perform [[PsychicStrangle something similar to Darth Vader's force choke]] - she uses this to force her right hand man to thank [[spoiler: Kendry]], whom he despises for usurping his position.
** And a couple of episodes after that, when the Aneela's Hullen "servants" (really her handlers / prison guards) kidnap Kendry for medical experimentation, Aneela desperately tries to find her, putting the previously mentioned guy through a truly impressive amount of gory (though mostly off-screen) torture. Constant drowning and regenerating for days, several rounds of blinding him with spikes, literally wearing his guts for garters, etc. Though, as Turin had predicted, all this pain fails to break a Hullen. So eventually she just links him up with the Green to read his mind - which is what he wanted, because that way, he can also share what he knows with the Lady.
** And in season 4, even though it had previously been established that it's pointless to try to torture a Hullen through conventional means of pain infliction, an elite Black Root SuperSoldier immediately spills all the info he knows after D'avin tasers him just ''once''. The Hullen's superiors were even expecting this and put a kill switch on him to stop him talking. It's not at all presented as if this case was unusual or surprising, and D'avin (who had just again criticized Dutch for her torture-happy attitude a couple episodes before, and specifically took his son away from her because she was trying to teach him how to torture people) wasn't even trying a different approach to extracting information from their prisoner first.

* LockedRoomMystery: In 'Necropolis Now', Dutch and D'avin are stuck in an elevator with members of the Nine families, who are being killed off one at a time. Subverted when it turns out the killer wasn't in the elevator with them at all, but was killing them from afar with robotech they had all swallowed earlier in the episode.

** After Old Town is bombed and sealed off, the man in charge explains that he intends to wait until Old Town is so desperate that they'll sing the Company's praises just to be released.

* MegaCorp: Known only as The Company, it runs everything in the Quad System with the exception of The Rack.
* MercyKill: Dutch kills an old scarback monk who'd been tortured and imprisoned for centuries at his request to end his pain, despite Alvis's objections.

* MindRape: The biggest hurdle to turn a person into a Level 6 is not finding a candidate that can survive the physical aspects of the procedure, it's the fact that the severing of the individual's emotions and everything else that makes them human in the process is so traumatic that it utterly destroys most people's minds. Those who are already antisocial or no longer have any family or friends are more likely to survive.
* ModestyBedsheet: D'avin and Sabine's sex scene is a particularly JustForFun/{{egregious}} example, with her pulling up a sheet over her breasts as she falls back ''while hemorrhaging green plasma'', whereas previously the camera was simply panned below to conceal them.
* MortonsFork: In an example of this used positively, Dutch delivers a baby to the leader of one of the nine families on Qresh, said baby being the only living heir to another of the families. Despite the fact that said leader either intentionally tried to murder the child or was forced to play politics, Dutch is sure the child will be safe. Either she's a good person and will keep the child safe, or she's opportunistic and will have to keep the child safe so his land holdings can be controlled by her.

** The CollectorOfTheStrange Romwell is immortal thanks to some healing nanites which worked a little too well.

* NWordPrivileges: Killjoys get pissed when somebody else (usually Company personnel) calls them that, but they have no problem using the word among themselves.

* NonIndicativeName: As of season 2, the Nine have been reduced to Three as a result of Seyah Kendry's coup and Jelco killing the head of Land Hyponia on orders from Kendry. Louella Simms attempting to kill the remaining families out of grief over her sister’s death reduces them even further, but they're still collectively referred to as "the Nine".
* NoodleIncident: Apparently something caused a great deal of landmass on Qresh to be lost underwater, which dispossessed a lot of rich people of their shares in the Company being based on land ownership there. Reclamation efforts are a high priority since it affects the balance of wealth and power in the Quad.

** Dutch is short and slim, yet highly trained in combat, beating up people far larger (including many men).

* PoorCommunicationKills: A literal example in "Attack the Rack." In a pitched fight, Dutch fights Banyon, who she's convinced is a Hullen thanks to her high ranking and the fact she's been against the Killjoys all this time. Dutch stabs Banyon and when the woman staggers from it, scoffs "drop the act, we know it heals." At which point, she sees the wound ''isn't'' healing. Too late, Dutch realizes Banyon is human and doesn't know a thing about the Hullens. She only took the job because she wanted to know why agents were going AWOL and assumed Dutch was somehow involved and that's why she was hostile. Both women realize they were too busy being suspicious of each other to realize they were on the same side, something Banyon [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] before she dies.
* PowerTrio: The main team. Fancy claims it's a bad setup, citing statistics of past trios that also failed, usually because two of the three end up having sex and wrecking the dynamic. John actually tries to nip that in the bud by asking D'avin not to sleep with Dutch. He does anyway.

** In 'Vessel', the heavily pregnant surrogate Constance leads the charge against the assassins with a rifle and kicks copious amounts of ass. Justified in that she's just had an adrenaline injection, before which she was fragile enough to be seen as needing bed rest - though even in that state, she was still badass enough to stab someone trying to hold her hostage.
** Delle Seyah Kendry shows no sign of her pregnancy slowing her throughout season 4.

* PsychicStrangle: Aneela exhibits the power to do this, while levitating her victim no less, to a fellow Hullen (by controlling their Green) in the end of "Necropolis Now" when she emerges from bathing in Green and learns Kendry was taken. Possibly just for torture since it is preceded by causing two to drop dead upon her simply uttering "die". This was to a pair of lower-ranking soldiers though, so she might lack the strength to do an insta-kill on a high-ranker. She had plenty juice left over to cause subsequent mooks to bleed from the ears.
* PublicExecution: One of the Company's methods of keeping it's people in check is by publicly exposing criminals to Black Rain, acid rain so corrosive that it dissolves organic matter in minutes.

** Potentially any Level 6, as the Plasma halts their aging at the point of the procedure. Specific examples are Sabine, who is actually 89 and Khlyen, who is several hundred years old.
* RemovingTheHeadOrDestroyingTheBrain: Level Six agents and others infected with the SuperSerum can heal from pretty much any injury, but massive brain trauma is instantly fatal. This can be accomplished either by decapitation or a special knife used by the Black Root which is designed to cause as much brain damage as possible when stabbed into the head.

** When John first met Dutch, he broke into Lucy and was shot by Dutch while she was wearing a blood-soaked wedding dress. It seems like a weird NoodleIncident at first, until we learn that Khlyen "lost" Dutch six years ago when he killed her husband.
* RiddleForTheAges: In episode 5, we never do find out what the "Red 17" that the interrogation program was looking for was. The guard didn't know, and the program was so glitched out that it might not have even known. It's eventually revealed in the season finale, and one can see why the military took an interest.

* SecretPolice: Black Root, an organization within the RAC's Level Six, serves as one for them.
* SecretTestofCharacter: When Sabine decapitates Turin's interrogator, secretly a Six mole, he congratulates her for passing his test. Sabine [[SubvertedTrope calls him on lying]], so he just blithely says it would have been cool if it were one.

* ShaggyDogStory: Dutch and D'avin spend all of 'Reckoning Ball' trying to implant a false memory into Kitaan, an imprisoned Hullen, and then using her connection to the green plasma in order to lure Aneela into a trap. Kitaan figures out what is going on, escapes, and then is able to gain access to some plasma and reveal the truth before Dutch can stop her, rendering the entire plot-line pointless.

* SherlockScan: [[spoiler:Hullen]] Johnny pulls off a textbook example in ''Johnny Dangerously''. He looks around the room at tiny details of the people with guns in the room, combines them with a few earlier insignificant comments, and then with a comical *DING!* noise figures out that they're being conned. And then he [[ImprobableAimingSkills dispatches them all within seconds]].

** The Company's way of dealing with a labor strike involves ''carpet-bombing''.
** Also its response to a disease outbreak in Oldtown in season 4.

* ThrowTheDogABone: As much as the Company exploits and abuses the Westerlyns, if a family works for them hard and stays out of trouble, the 7th generation will be allowed to emigrate to Leith permanently and be given land there. Subverted as the Company had no idea any would actually stick it out and break their contract.
* TooKinkyToTorture: The Scarbacks, a monastic order, seek enlightenment through pain. Alvis says that his getting scarred by the Black Rain (see PublicExecution above) will make him the envy of the other members of his order.
** Ultimately averted, though, when Alvis is arrested by Company cops and roughed up some (blood on his face and rope burns on his wrists, but no major injuries) to get more information on his revolutionary compatriots out of him and to make him 'confess' his involvement in the false flag terror attack of Leith. He caved, but he claims the confession was because they also threatened the rest of the Scarback order.

* TruthSerum: Dutch is interrogated with something called micro-leeches, which can sense when you're telling a lie and cause you to vomit blood.

* {{Tykebomb}}: Dutch was one, and signed up with the RAC and refuses to take kill warrants (despite being fully authorized to at her level). Her former controller is not so willing to let her go, unfortunately...

** In season 4, Pree off-handedly mentions that some time ago he worked as a "sexor" in that bar himself. Together with the earlier given information that sex work is how many new immigrants to Westerly first make a living (Pree offers this option to Johnny and D'avin on separate occasions), and that Pree did something awful (worse than non-fatal stabbing anyway) to the previous owner of the bar to gain the establishment for himself, this implies a backstory where the previous bar owner / pimp was abusing the sex workers, and the recently arrived ex-mercenary Pree put an end to it and then took over as the new, much more ethical manager of the sex workers. It's never actually stated that they work ''for'' him or shown that their customers pay ''him'', only that the sex workers rent rooms in the upper level and that he can make announcements like "sexors are 20% off for the rest of the night" - which he might just say to keep customers around to sell more drinks and then reimburse the sex workers later. So Pree might not actually be a pimp in the conventional sense, more like a manager / landlord. The bar's "sexors" might well be so content because they have health care (Pawter) and protection (Pree keeps Dutch & Co. as bouncers and is himself very capable as well) but they aren't forced to give up most of the money they make and they aren't getting beaten to enforce obedience.

* WilhelmScream: One of the scavengers lets one out after being shocked by Lucy's defense system in 'The Sugar Point Run'.
* WorldOfBadass: Nearly everyone in the Quad System is either a skilled fighter, a strong-willed {{Determinator}}, or a [[TheChessmaster Chessmaster]] to make Machiavelli proud. And that's not even counting the BadassNormal RAC agents, or [[SuperSoldier Khlyen's faction]].

** The moon Westerley is a ''hellhole'' and the rest of the Quad treats its people like crap. Every company town is half IndustrialGhetto, half WretchedHive, the only exception being Sugar Point, a walled up bombed out ruin being fought over by DisasterScavengers and a psychotic crime lord. And then there's the Badlands, a toxic desert infested with {{Outlaws}}, the very air of which can cause a ship to explode.

** D'avin can control the green plasma inside of Sixes and cause their eyeballs (and presumably brains) to explode. Unfortunately, he discovers this while being strangled by a Six whose [[{{Squick}} eyeballs then explode all over his face]].

* ContinuityNod: In "Johnny Be Good," D'avin references the fact that he tried to kill Dutch.

* AlternateUniverse: Season 5 opens in one [[spoiler:later revealed to be a delusion created by the Lady]].

** Dutch is this in the AlternateUniverse [[spoiler:created by the Lady]] in season 5.

* TheAlcatraz: In Season 5 Dutch, Johnny and D'avin were put into a supermax prison by the Lady. Escape is made even more difficult as it's a space station, rather than on a planet or moon.

The series concluded in 2019 with it's fifth season.

* RoyalInbreeding: Jelco, who is not exactly royalty but is from a family wealthy/influential enough to live on Qresh instead of on Leith or Westerley, has a heart condition that requires daily surgery on account of several generations of inbreeding. Pawter also lampshades this, saying, "All the Nine grow up together. We're an incestuous little dynasty."

** In 'The Wolf You Feed', Zeph stymies John's backdoor hack into Lucy with a hologram that wags its finger and begins its message with "Ah ah ah!", an obvious reference to Film/JurassicPark.

''Killjoys'' is a Canadian-American science fiction series; a co-production between Creator/SpaceChannel in Canada and Creator/{{Syfy}} in the U.S. It ran for five seasons from 2015 to 2019 and starred Creator/HannahJohnKamen, Aaron Ashmore, and Luke Macfarlane.