History Series / LOST

An [[GenreBusting action/adventure/mystery/dramedy/all types of speculative fiction/crazy show]] (2004-2010) created by Jeffrey Lieber, Creator/JJAbrams and Damon Lindelof, and show-run by Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

'''Recaps and summation of the show [[Recap/{{Lost}} here.]]'''

Their backstories are revealed in flashbacks, with each episode tending to focus on a specific character. In general, AnachronicOrder is to be expected with this show particularly in the flashbacks, as are other MindScrew style tricks; if there is a method of skewing the audience's perception of events by rearranging the order of the scenes, [=LOST=] has used it.

Their backstories are revealed in flashbacks, with each episode tending to focus on a specific character. In general AnachronicOrder is also expected, both with the story of the island and anything before and ''after'' the island. If there is a method of skewing the audience's perception of events by rearranging the order of the scenes, [=LOST=] has used it.

As the show goes on, the characters are forced to [[CharacterDevelopment grow and change in response to their changed lives]], and more and more questions arise as [[MythArc the secrets of the island are slowly uncovered]]. The island seems to have supernatural properties as well as a unique abundance of super-powerful electromagnetism. Furthermore, flashbacks reveal more and more connections between the characters' pasts, beginning to suggest that it may be more than coincidence that this specific group of people was all on Flight 815 together with each other.

An [[GenreBusting action/adventure/all types of speculative fiction/mystery/dramedy/crazy show]] (2004-2010) created by Jeffrey Lieber, Creator/JJAbrams and Damon Lindelof, and show-run by Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

On September 22nd, 2004, Oceanic Flight 815 breaks up in midair and crashes on a tropical island. Only forty-eight passengers somehow survive. Unfortunately, this is no ordinary island they've crashed on. To start with, there's a polar bear roaming about somehow as well as something in the jungle which is capable of uprooting trees. This monster mutilates the pilot, but not before the pilot reveals that the plane was already a thousand miles off course when it crashed, which means the odds of rescue are pretty much nil.

The survivors must learn to work together if they want to survive in this strange and hostile environment. This isn't easy, mainly because the most prominent characters are [[DysfunctionJunction so utterly screwed up]]. All of them have [[DarkAndTroubledPast something they're hiding in their pasts]]. There's [[BewareTheNiceOnes the seemingly nice woman]] who's actually a fugitive who was being brought to trial. There's the [[OneHitWonder one-hit wonder]] [[CelebritySurvivor ex-rockstar junkie]]. There's the former Iraqi government torturer who's searching for the woman he loves. And so on.

As the show goes on, more and more questions arise as [[MythArc the secrets of the island are slowly uncovered]]. The island seems to have magical properties as well as a unique abundance of super-powerful electromagnetism. Furthermore, flashbacks reveal more and more connections between the characters' pasts as if to suggest that it may have been more than coincidence that this specific group of people was all on Flight 815 together with each other.

-->-- '''Kate''', summing up the series

Lost is an American television drama series that originally aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) from September 22, 2004, to May 23, 2010, over six seasons, comprising a total of 121 episodes. Lost is a drama series containing elements of science fiction and the supernatural. It follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet, flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean. The story is told in a heavily serialized manner. Episodes typically feature a primary storyline set on the island, augmented by flashback or flashforward sequences which provide additional insight into the involved character(s).

Lost was created by Jeffrey Lieber, J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, who share story-writing credits for the pilot episode, which Abrams directed. Throughout the show's run, Lindelof and Carlton Cuse served as showrunners and head writers, working together with a large number of other executive producers and writers. Due to its large ensemble cast and the cost of filming primarily on location in Oahu, Hawaii, the series was one of the most expensive on television, with the pilot alone costing over $14 million. The fictional universe and mythology of Lost are expanded upon by a number of related media, most importantly, a series of short mini-episodes called Missing Pieces, and a 12-minute epilogue titled "The New Man in Charge".

Having achieved both wide acclaim and commercial success throughout its original run, Lost has been consistently ranked by critics as one of the greatest television dramas of all time. The first season garnered an estimated average of 16 million viewers per episode on ABC. During its sixth and final season, the show averaged over 11 million U.S. viewers per episode. Lost was the recipient of hundreds of industry award nominations throughout its run and won numerous of these awards, including the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 2005, Best American Import at the British Academy Television Awards in 2005, the Golden Globe Award for Best Drama in 2006, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Drama Series. Users of IMDb.com Pro gave Lost the highest average ranking for any television series during the first ten years (2002–2012) of that website's operation.

Lost was created by Jeffrey Lieber, J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, who share story-writing credits for the pilot episode, which Abrams directed. Throughout the show's run, Lindelof and Carlton Cuse served as showrunners and head writers, working together with a large number of other executive producers and writers. Due to its large ensemble cast and the cost of filming primarily on location in Oahu, Hawaii, the series was one of the most expensive on television, with the pilot alone costing over $14 million.[1] The fictional universe and mythology of Lost are expanded upon by a number of related media, most importantly, a series of short mini-episodes called Missing Pieces, and a 12-minute epilogue titled "The New Man in Charge".

Having achieved both wide acclaim and commercial success throughout its original run, Lost has been consistently ranked by critics as one of the greatest television dramas of all time.[2] The first season garnered an estimated average of 16 million viewers per episode on ABC.[3] During its sixth and final season, the show averaged over 11 million U.S. viewers per episode. Lost was the recipient of hundreds of industry award nominations throughout its run and won numerous of these awards, including the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 2005,[4] Best American Import at the British Academy Television Awards in 2005, the Golden Globe Award for Best Drama in 2006, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Drama Series. Users of IMDb.com Pro gave Lost the highest average ranking for any television series during the first ten years (2002–2012) of that website's operation.

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lfound.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:The students of Lost and Found]]

->''"We are the lost and the found."''
-->-- '''Luke'''

A live action series about 16 students at Lost and Found Music Studios, an exclusive after school music program in Canada.
----
!!This series features examples of:

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lostlogoresize.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350: They're not the only ones.]]

->''"Welcome to the wonderful world of not knowing what the hell's going on."''
-->-- '''Kate''', summing up the series

An [[GenreBusting action/adventure/all types of speculative fiction/mystery/dramedy/crazy show]] (2004-2010) created by Jeffrey Lieber, Creator/JJAbrams and Damon Lindelof, and show-run by Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

On September 22nd, 2004, Oceanic Flight 815 breaks up in midair and crashes on a tropical island. Only forty-eight passengers somehow survive. Unfortunately, this is no ordinary island they've crashed on. To start with, there's a polar bear roaming about somehow as well as something in the jungle which is capable of uprooting trees. This monster mutilates the pilot, but not before the pilot reveals that the plane was already a thousand miles off course when it crashed, which means the odds of rescue are pretty much nil.

The survivors must learn to work together if they want to survive in this strange and hostile environment. This isn't easy, mainly because the most prominent characters are [[DysfunctionJunction so utterly screwed up]]. All of them have [[DarkAndTroubledPast something they're hiding in their pasts]]. There's [[BewareTheNiceOnes the seemingly nice woman]] who's actually a fugitive who was being brought to trial. There's the [[OneHitWonder one-hit wonder]] [[CelebritySurvivor ex-rockstar junkie]]. There's the former Iraqi government torturer who's searching for the woman he loves. And so on.

Their backstories are revealed in flashbacks, with each episode tending to focus on a specific character. In general AnachronicOrder is also expected, both with the story of the island and anything before and ''after'' the island. If there is a method of skewing the audience's perception of events by rearranging the order of the scenes, [=LOST=] has used it.

As the show goes on, more and more questions arise as [[MythArc the secrets of the island are slowly uncovered]]. The island seems to have magical properties as well as a unique abundance of super-powerful electromagnetism. Furthermore, flashbacks reveal more and more connections between the characters' pasts as if to suggest that it may have been more than coincidence that this specific group of people was all on Flight 815 together with each other.

The show was famous at the time for its high production values (the pilot alone cost $14 million and led to the firing of a ABC executive for greenlighting such an expensive endeavor), [[SlidingScaleOfContinuity inhumanly dense plotting]], [[KudzuPlot a tendency to raise more questions than it can answer]], and somehow remaining a smash hit despite all these "hurdles". The show also heavily involved its fandom in the storytelling process through the parallel Alternate Reality Game ''The LOST Experience''. The success of ''Lost'' inspired network TV to commission [[NoughtiesDramaSeries a slew of imitators]] (''Series/TheEvent'', ''Series/{{Jericho}}'', ''Surface'', ''Series/TerraNova'', ''Series/{{Invasion}}'', ''Series/FlashForward2009'', ''Series/{{Revolution}}'', and Creator/JJAbrams's follow up show ''Series/{{Alcatraz}}''), all serious and densely plotted serialized dramas based around a central mystery and tinged with a sci-fi edge. Unfortunately most of these shows have failed to recapture the lightning and almost all of them were cancelled after one or two seasons. Honorable mention goes to ''Series/PrisonBreak'', while not a sci-fi show, it was the first out of the gate to capitalize on TV audience's newfound love for serialized dramas, it was also arguably the most critically-acclaimed and successful of the ''Lost''-clones, running for four seasons.

[[http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page Lostpedia]] (which the producers themselves occasionally namecheck in [[DVDCommentary DVD commentaries]] for its expanse of knowledge) has exhaustively catalogued (''almost'') every aspect of ''Lost''. If you want insight into the show or just want to learn some random statistics, it's definitely worth checking out.

'''Recaps and summation of the show [[Recap/{{Lost}} here.]]'''

* Lost/TropesVToZ

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: A-D]]
* ABNegative:
** Jack struggles to find a donor for Boone and, failing to find a match among the other survivors, reveals himself to be O- and performs the transfusion using his own blood.
** Kate is later revealed to be a Universal Donor in Season 5.
* AbandonedHospital: The medical Dharma station "The Staff".
* AbandonedPlayground: The Barracks have a swingset, which was used happily by the Dharma kids (Ben, Charlotte) in the 70s. However, in present day it just serves as a reminder that the Others can't have children.
* AbortedArc:
** Anything and everything to do with Walt. WordOfGod has stated that he [[spoiler: has PsychicPowers]], but the full extent and how it related to the series has never been revealed. The only resolution that his plot gets is the epilogue "The New Man in Charge": [[spoiler: the poor kid goes nuts for a while, but it turns out he really is special and is implied to be Hurley's eventual successor. Alternatively, Hurley's wording (offering Walt a "position") mirrors Jacob's proposition to Richard Alpert, suggesting Walt is intended to be the new intermediary for a new iteration of Others.]] The simple explanation for this happening? The actor was just growing up too fast for the extremely slow progress of the plot back then.
** According to an interview with the actress portraying Zoe, this is the case with her too.
** WordOfGod stated that Ilana was originally supposed to be [[spoiler: Jacob's child]], but they realized they didn't have enough time for this so they [[DroppedABridgeOnHim dropped a bridge on her]].
** Mr. Eko, who was supposed to run until season 5, but was cut in early season 3 due to the fact that the actor hated living in Hawaii, which is on the far side of the world from his family.
** Nikki and Paulo were supposed to be on for a little longer as well, but because of the negative fan response they were written out of the show after they got their DayInTheLimelight.
** In Seasons 4 and 5, Charles Widmore was being established as ''the'' BigBad (which was confirmed by WordOfGod) and Ben's nemesis for the control of the Island. Their conflict was put aside and pretty much replaced by Jacob vs the Man in Black.
* AbsenteeActor: Happens quite a lot over the series, especially in later seasons. "Dead Is Dead," for instance, only features seven of the main cast: Ben, Locke, Sun, Desmond, Richard, Ilana and Frank (although the last three weren't series regulars at the time).
** "Across The Sea" takes this trope and runs away with it; the only main cast members who appear do so in archive footage.
* AbusiveParents: ''[[http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Parent_issues In spades.]]''
* AccidentalMurder: [[spoiler: After hearing whispers in the forest, Ana Lucia accidentally shoots Shannon. Later on, while Michael kills Ana in cold blood to let Benjamin Linus escape, Libby walks in and he shoots her in a panic.]]
* AcmeProducts: Every type of food and drink employed by the DHARMA Initiative is DHARMA-brand food.
** There's also the Widmore Corporation and its subsidiaries (Widmore Labs, Widmore Construction, Widmore Industries)
* ActionGirl: Juliet, Kate, Ana Lucia, Rousseau, Charlotte, and Ilana. Sun moved in this direction in S5.
* AdrenalineMakeover: Compare Juliet from before she came to the island: [[ExtremeDoormat meek, submissive, and wore her heart on her sleeve]]; to [[TheStoic after she]] [[BadAss joined the Others]].
* AdultFear: The season 1 finale has Michael's son Walt ''stolen right out of his hands'' and abducted by the Others for unknown purposes, before they torch the raft to ensure they can't be followed.
* AdvertisedExtra: A lot, depending on the season.
* AerosolFlamethrower: Used by Locke, prompting a ThisIsNoTimeForKnitting comment from Charlie.
* AffablyEvil:
** Ben, especially at the beginning of the third season. As the story progresses, he has to [[XanatosSpeedChess deal quickly]] with an increasingly dangerous situation (and he loses [[MoralityChain Alex]]), so he becomes more frantic and less affable.
** [[spoiler:Un-Locke]] is disturbingly charming for [[spoiler:a creature that spent the first five seasons killing people seemingly at random]].
** [[spoiler:Flash-sideways Keamy]] makes good eggs.
* AfricanTerrorists: The rebel army who forces Mr. Eko to become a child soldier.
* AfterActionPatchup: Jack and Kate's first interaction.
* TheAgeless: Richard Alpert.
* AirVentPassageway: Used by Kate at the beginning of the second season, as well as Ben (as "Henry") consensually later on.
* TheAlcoholic: Christian, and later Jack.
* AllGirlsWantBadBoys:
** Kate with Sawyer.
** Boone claims this about Shannon, and her choice of men that we see seems to support this.
** Averted with Libby, who falls for the chubby, socially awkward Hurley. Although considering both Hurley and her late husband were rich, it's possible she's just a gold digger.
* AllJustADream: Used only for relatively brief scenes. The entire series was NOT this trope.
* AlmostDeadGuy:
** Subverted with [[spoiler:Nikki]]'s "Paulo lies!", or rather: [[spoiler:paralysed]].
** [[spoiler:Not Penny's Boat]] in the season 3 finale.
* AlternateRealityGame: ''ARG/TheLostExperience'', played during the break between seasons two and three, Find 815, between seasons three and four, and the Dharma Initiative Recruiting Project, between four and five.
** Turns out a few ARG-ish things happened, most prominently the "Damon, Carlton, and a Polar Bear" website which resulted in a clue hunt for Lost posters.
* AlternateSelf: In season six's flash-sideways.
* AlternativeForeignThemeSong: The Japanese version uses [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VRlNXBmvcI "Here I Am]] by Chemistry for the first ending theme, [[http://jpopsuki.tv/video/Yuna-Ito---losin%2526%2523039%253B/70c7a4f28397d1cbd76501b7ac5de3a7 "Losin'"]] by Yuna Ito for the second ending theme, and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5Ve1kCwagk "Lonely Girl"]] by Crystal Kay for the third ending theme.
* AnachronicOrder:
** It happened twice: in the season one episodes "Solitary" and "Raised by Another" and the season five episodes "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" and "316". Apparently, there are more than enough storylines to change around the order of episodes without affecting anything.
** Happened with two early season 3 episodes, "The Glass Ballerina" and "Further Instructions". However, this apparent change in order was denied by the executive producers so it may have simply been a mistake in scheduling that was later corrected.
* AnimalMotifs:
** In an early episode, Locke tries to help Charlie kick his heroin habit by confiscating his drugs. However, he tells Charlie that if he asks for them back, he'll return them. Charlie wonders why Locke doesn't just get rid of them and remove all temptation, so Locke tells him that there has to be some personal choice in the matter, or it ultimately isn't worth anything. To illustrate his point, Locke shows Charlie a moth cocoon, with a moth inside struggling to get out. Locke says that he could easily help the moth by cutting open the cocoon, but if he did that, the moth would be too weak to survive; the struggle makes the moth stronger. In the end of the episode, Charlie throws his heroin into the fire, and at that moment the moth breaks out and flies away.
** Later, a misqualified job counselor [[spoiler:in the flash-sideways]] tries to place John in a job by asking him "what kind of animal are you?" He is understandably nonplussed, and asks for someone else to help him. [[spoiler: He gets Rose!]]
* AntagonistInMourning: Ben's eulogy for [[spoiler:Locke]].
--> '''Ben:''' [[spoiler:John Locke]] was a... a believer. He was a man of faith. He was a much better man than I will ever be... and I'm very sorry I murdered him.\\
'''Lapidus:''' [[MoodWhiplash Weirdest damn funeral I've ever been to]].
* AntiHero: Every character on the show is either this or an AntiVillain -- with the exception of PsychoForHire Keamy, there are no straight-up heroes and villains on ''Lost''. Our "good guys" are incredibly flawed and rarely stick to the scruples of heroism, while the "bad guys" often have a very good FreudianExcuse or else genuinely believe they ''are'' the good guys.
* AnyoneCanDie: Once [[spoiler:Boone]] died near the end of Season One, it was established that nobody was safe.
** The writers initially wanted to shock viewers by introducing Jack as the main character then having him killed by the end of the first episode. However, their bosses at ABC liked Jack so much that they insisted he stay.
** Damon and Carlton said that the deaths of [[spoiler:Jin, Sun and Sayid]] in season 6 were to firmly establish that all bets were off from there on out and absolutely nobody was safe in the final episodes.
** ABC liked to use this a lot in advertising, but they would normally end up being one of the non-lead supporting characters.
** Of the original 14 regular on-island characters, only [[spoiler: Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Claire and Walt]] survived, and one of them had been written out ages ago. From season 2, [[spoiler: Ben and Desmond]]. From season 3, only [[spoiler: Richard]]. From season 4, [[spoiler: Miles and Lapidus]]. From the last two seasons, [[spoiler: nobody of note whatsoever.]]
** At least one of the original 14 main characters died per season. [[spoiler: The final season took this [[UpToEleven Up To Eleven]] by having FOUR of the Season 1 originals die. SEVEN major characters die in total in the final season alone]].
* ArchnemesisDad: Locke's father abandoned him until well into his adult life, at which point he stole his kidney, re-abandoned him, used him as a courier, [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder abandoned him again]], and [[MoralEventHorizon pushed him out of an 8-story window]].
* {{Arc Number}}s: Also NumerologicalMotif. 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42
** When originally chosen by the writers, the numbers were meaningless. The writers of the first season episode "Numbers" went back through previous eps and picked out the four most commonly recurring numbers in the series so far, they being the first four in the sequence. The fifth was [[http://web.archive.org/web/20060718000520/http://www.eonline.com/Gossip/Kristin/Trans/Lindelof/index2.html a Shout Out]] to ''Literature/TheIlluminatusTrilogy'' and the sixth... well, [[Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy Darlton are fans]]. The show's final season revealed the numbers as degrees on a dial representing candidates to care for the Island (and, [[CosmicKeystone by extension]], all of existence.)
** These numbers come to the sum OneHundredAndEight, which ties into the Buddhist themes of the Dharma Initiative. It's also the number of days the Oceanic 6 spent on the island before their rescue, and the number of minutes the clock in The Swan station counts down from. (All of these facts, considered together (especially the Buddhist connection), make it incredibly unlikely that the numbers were merely selected at random, as does the numerological popularity of 23.)
** The flight's name was Oceanic Flight 815.
** The product of the numbers, 7418880, appears as part of an alert for the "Electromagnetic Anomaly". This product is supposed to represent the latitudinal-longitudinal location of the Island at the time Desmond activated the failsafe.
** ''ARG/TheLostExperience'' AlternateRealityGame revealed that the numbers are [[spoiler:the core products in the [[FormulaicMagic Valenzetti Equation]], which "predicts the exact number of years and months until humanity extinguishes itself."]]
* ArcWelding: Very often two or more plotlines are tied into one. A good example would be [[spoiler:Locke and Sawyer's backstories, when it's revealed that Anthony Cooper was the con man who killed Sawyer's parents]].
* ArcWords: There's dozens of phrases repeated throughout the show in addition to the {{Arc Number}}s.
** "Live together; die alone" is another very common one, appearing in episodes ranging from episode 5 to the Season 5 finale.
** "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" seems to be the straightest use of this trope.
** "I'll see you in another life."
** "I hope you find what you're looking for," especially after [[spoiler:Afterlife Bernard has said it to Afterlife Jack]].
** Also becoming a recognizable arc phrase as of "The Candidate" is "I wish you had believed me," which first showed up in episode "316."
** "You can let go now," or some variant on that phrase.
** "Whatever happened, happened."
** "Now you're like me," is whipped out a few times in the last few episodes whenever [[spoiler:someone becomes the new protector of the island]].
** "Don't tell me what I can't do" is frequently said by Locke, Jack, and others.
** "You don't write, you don't call" said to many characters when they return after disappearing for several days without notice.
* AscendedExtra: There's a few of these, but the best example would have to be either Ben or Richard: Ben was going to die after three episodes but instead became one of the primary villains of the series, while Richard was originally just another of Ben's higher-ranking people, and went from that to a recurring guest star starting at the end of season 4, to main cast starting in season 6.
* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: [[spoiler: One way to interpret the final outcome of the series's characters.]]
* AsTheGoodBookSays: Right before [[spoiler:he gets seized by the Man in Black]], Mr. Eko says "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want", which is Psalms 23:1.
* TheAtoner: Several characters. Notably subverted with Mr. Eko, who appears to be the most clear-cut example in the series but finally reveals himself to be [[IDidWhatIHadToDo utterly unrepentant of his amoral past]], which he willingly took upon himself to save his brother.
** [[WhoWantsToLiveForever Richard Alpert]] started as this and is his reason for [[spoiler:gaining immortality from Jacob. When he accidentally killed a doctor for not giving medicine for his dying wife, a priest told him during confession that he will never gain redemption for his sin. When meeting Jacob he was offered a job and a gift. When Jacob couldn't revive his wife or absolve him from all his sins, he chose immortality to attempt the latter]].
** [[spoiler:Ben finally becomes this at the end of the series, helping Hugo to watch over the island in life, and staying behind in the flash sideways as he feels he is not yet ready]].
** As far as those atoning for others, we can consider [[spoiler: Jack and Locke, who both, willingly or unwillingly, sacrifice their lives to save the world, and Daniel Faraday, who is knowingly sacrificed by his parents, perhaps to maintain temporal continuity, perhaps to give Jack the hydrogen bomb idea that will ultimately bring the Candidates back to 2007 to stop the Monster]].
* AudienceSurrogate: Anyone who says they want answers. Hurley almost always, and the guys at the DHARMA packing plant in "The New Man in Charge."
** Great example of this in "Whatever Happened, Happened," when Hurley presses Miles on the time travel rules in the Series/{{Lost}} universe, to the point of making MILES wonder how they work.
** Locke often filled this role in the early seasons. For example, after Jack's speech at the hatch in the first episode of season 2, he immediately let everyone know that no matter what they were going to do, he ''was'' [[{{Determinator}} going down into the hatch.]]
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: There's practically an AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther {{Montage}} at the end of "Tabula Rasa" - Jin checking on Sun, Boone giving Shannon sunglasses and arguably Jack telling Kate he doesn't care what she did and Sayid giving Sawyer an apple.
* AxCrazy: [[spoiler:Claire]] in Season 6. Literally.
* AnAxeToGrind: That's how [[AxeCrazy Claire]] deals with Justin.
* BackForTheDead: [[EnforcedTrope Enforced]] by the island for Michael. When he's asked what he's doing back:
--> ''"To die."''
** Played straight with [[spoiler:Daniel Faraday]], who returns after being absent for several episodes only to be killed off.
* BadassIsraeli: The traits most associated with this trope go, ironically, to a Badass Iraqi in Sayid. Possibly also Ilana Verdansky and Naomi Dorrit (see MonochromeCasting below).
* BankRobbery: The episode "Whatever the Case May Be" reveals Kate's participation as inside woman in a bank robbery.
* BatmanGambit: [[spoiler:Jacob does this through Hurley to get Jack to see the lighthouse mirrors in "The Lighthouse".]]
** [[spoiler:The Man in Black]] pulls one in "The Candidate". [[spoiler:End result is that the Losties all cram into a tiny space and then activate a bomb that otherwise wouldn't have gone off]].
** And the first quarter of season three (the fallout of the previous finale's epic kidnapping) is Ben's valiant attempt to convince Jack to operate on his ailing spine.
** At a certain point in Season 3, it becomes apparent to Ben that it doesn't matter whether or not the 815 passengers believe him, just so long as he's in control.
--> '''Ben:''' Your heart's not going to blow up, James. The only thing we put inside you was doubt. Oh, the watch is a heart rate monitor, but nothing more. [''He pulls a rabbit out of a satchel with a number 8 on its back''] Look. We gave him a sedative, not a pacemaker.\\
'''Sawyer:''' How do I know that's the same bunny? That you didn't just paint an 8 on another one?\\
'''Ben:''' [''With a derisive laugh''] You don't.
* BattleInTheRain: [[spoiler: Jack's final battle with Flocke. Complete with cliff-side setting]].
** Jack's fight with Ethan in the first series.
** In the third season, Pickett and Sawyer.
* BeardOfSorrow: Jack at the end of the third season. The beard was ''massive'', probably because it stood for alcohol and pills. It's shaved off in time for Ajira Flight 316, however.
* BecauseDestinySaysSo: In this case, Destiny goes by the name of "Desmond."
** Practically all of Ms. Hawking's appearances too.
** Locke in first two seasons, with claims such as "Boone was a sacrifice that the Island demanded."
* BecomingTheMask:
%%** Juliet.
** It appears that [[spoiler: The Lockeness Monster was also BecomingTheMask after spending so much time in Locke form (which just goes to show how special Locke really was, since the Monster doubtless has spent at least as much time in Christian form and others, and never became the mask when imitating personalities like theirs). This was foreshadowed more than once, perhaps for the first time when The Lockeness Monster shouts, "Don't tell me what I can't do! DON'T TELL ME WHAT I CAN'T DO!!" And it culminates, perhaps, during the final fight with Jack, in which he hesitates for a long moment with the knife to his throat--which would make this an extremely rare case of a KilledOffForReal character who is not returning in any literal fashion whatsoever still pulling off a sort of DeusExMachina from beyond the grave]].
* BedouinRescueService:
** Subverted when Ben teleports into the Tunisian desert and get harassed by two AK-47-wielding Bedouins who Ben promptly kills in a textbook definition of moment of awesome.
** It happens in SEASON 5 episode: "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham". Locke teleports to that same place, but his leg is broken and the pain immobilizes him. He's left there all day and the only at night do the AK-47-wielding Bedouins come and save the day, albeit [[spoiler:they seem to have been working for Mr. Widmore, who knew Locke had arrived by setting up surveillance at the "exit", as he called it]].
* BeenThereShapedHistory:
** In the flashbacks of the fifth season finale, the infamous [[spoiler:Jacob]] appears repeatedly in other peoples' flashbacks, always being responsible for something important in those characters' lives: he buys Kate the lunchbox she uses for her time capsule, gives Sawyer a pen with which to write his letter to the real Sawyer, preventing Sayid from being hit by the car that kills [[spoiler: Nadia]], saying hello to Sun and Jin at their wedding, asking Ilana for help with an unspecified task, speaking to--and possibly reviving--Locke after he is thrown out a window, giving Jack a candy bar after his first surgery, and convincing Hurley to return to the island.
** In a simply "stumbling through history" case, Nikki and Paulo's episode shows them discovering the Beechcraft and the Pearl station before the other castaways, and seeing major events of the show (the plane crash, the "live together, die alone" speech, and in a deleted scene, the discharge).
* BeforeMyTime:
** The "after my time" inversion was used in those exact words when Locke doesn't recognize Sawyer's reference to ''Literature/OfMiceAndMen''. Since Locke is actually [[spoiler:the Smoke Monster, who's been on the Island for centuries]] it kind of is.
** And then it's played straight in season 5 when Sun asks Ben where the rest of the mysterious statue went. Ben says "it was like that when I got here".
* BeleagueredChildhoodFriend: Things didn't end so well for Kate's childhood sweetheart.
* BerserkButton:
** Don't call Desmond a coward.
** Hurley's one of the nicest guys you could meet, but you're taking a chance if you ever call him "crazy."
** [[CatchPhrase Don't tell Locke what he can't do!]]
** Sayid doesn't react well when told he's a killer by nature. [[spoiler: Ben's 12-year old self can attest to this]].
** Michael had already taken a pretty brutal beating from Jin before. Still, when Jin gets a bit too rough with Sun in "...In Translation", he immediately runs over and threatens to beat Jin if he does it again.
* BestServedCold: Sawyer is constantly searching for the man he wants to serve revenge to. Coldly. And then [[spoiler: in season three he finally gets his chance]].
* BewareTheNiceOnes:
** [[spoiler:Claire]] in season six.
** [[MafiaPrincess Sun]] in general. Just ask her mother-in-law ([[spoiler:who she threatened to have killed if [[SonOfAWhore Jin]] were to find out she were alive)]], her [[CallingTheOldManOut father]], and Colleen ([[spoiler:who [[YouWouldntShootMe she actually shot and killed]]!]])
* BigBad: The Man in Black.
* BigDamnHeroes: Jack in every finale. Hurley in the third season finale, the Others in the fourth season finale, Kate in the series finale.
%%* BigFun: Hurley.
* BigGood: [[spoiler:Jacob]], later [[spoiler:Jack]], then finally [[spoiler:Hurley]], and during the epilogue it's hinted that even [[spoiler: Walt]] might become this eventually.
* BilingualBonus:
** Dr. Arzt translates as "[[WesternAnimation/SouthPark Dr. Doctor]]" in German. The literal translation is "Dr. Physician".
** Sun and Jin's Korean isn't always subtitled, and some of Dogen's dialogue can't be understood unless he has that hippie-looking guy around to translate for him... or you're fluent in Japanese.
* BinocularShot:
** Happens in "There's No Place Like Home, Part 1," when Ben communicates via mirror flashes with the other Others. We see the reply as Locke looks through binoculars.
** "Live Together, Die Alone, Part 1", has two. The first is Kate looking through binoculars at an incoming sailboat, and the second is Sayid looking at the now far-less-mysterious Four-Toed statue, both represented by a double-circular black frame.
* BirthDeathJuxtaposition: In "Do No Harm", [[spoiler:Boone dies as Aaron is born]].
* BittersweetEnding: It may also be looked at as a EarnYourHappyEnding. Lord knows they went through a ''lot'' to earn it. [[spoiler: The ending is them, in the ultimate sense of being TrueCompanions, together again in death and moving on together. It's sad that they're all dead, but [[DiedHappilyEverAfter it's happy that they're together]].]]
* {{Blipvert}}: Karl is strapped into a chair and forced to watch one of these when Kate, Sawyer and Alex rescue him.
* BloodstainedGlassWindows: Eko kills a bunch of gangsters in a church. This actually causes the parishioners to shut it down.
* ABloodyMess:
** In an episode, Desmond wakes up in a flashback covered in red paint after being in an implosion.
** PlayedForDrama in a different episode when Hurley is accused of murder due to police seeing burger ketchup on him.
* BlownAcrossTheRoom: Caesar.
* BolivianArmyCliffhanger: Season 5 ended with a hydrogen bomb detonating in proximity to at least eight of the main characters. That said, there was only one "kill": [[spoiler:Juliet]]. And even then it wasn't the explosion that killed her, [[spoiler:it was falling down a several-hundred foot deep shaft and being crushed by several tons of steel]].
* BolivianArmyEnding: [[spoiler:Technically, no one "survived" the finale, but in the actual continuity, out of the main characters only Kate, Sawyer, Claire, Hurley, Ben, Miles, Desmond, Richard and Frank made it out alive, with Ben and Hurley staying behind on the island for good and Rose, Bernard and Vincent remaining "in retirement" on the island. Desmond was also left behind on the island, but it's inferred that Hurley allowed him to go home eventually]].
* BookEnds: [[spoiler:First scene of the series: Jack opens his eyes in a bamboo thicket and stands up, sees a tennis shoe hanging from a nearby tree, after which Vincent runs to him. Final scene of the series: Jack lays down in the same bamboo thicket, with the tennis shoe now more disheveled, and closes his eyes with Vincent lying down beside him]].
* BorrowedCatchphrase: When Lapidus asks Sun why she knocked out Ben if she said she trusted him, her response is "ILied".
* BottleEpisode: Season 3 Hydra arc, with Jack, Kate and Sawyer stuck in cages for several episodes in a row resulted from the network's concerns about the show going over budget in season 2 finale.
* BountyHunter: Ilana.
* BrainsAndBondage: Straightforward in season six with Dr. Charlotte Lewis and Sawyer. Also in the previous season, as a subtle hint about Dr. Juliet Burke.
* BrandX:
** Would ''you'' like some Dharma Initiative cereal?
** Want something sweet? Try Apollo Candy Bar.
** Or perhaps you'd like to a glass of [=MacCutcheon=] whisky?
* BratsWithSlingshots: Alex.
* BreakHisHeartToSaveHim: Pierre Chang does this to his wife, because pretending to [[FaceHeelTurn turn into a total asshole]] to drive her away from the island is the only way to persuade her to leave in time before everyone's lives become endangered by [[spoiler: The Incident]].
* BreakTheCutie: The majority of the [[DysfunctionJunction main cast arrive pre-broken]]. They generally don't get much better.
** Sayid does this to young Ben purely out of spite, and isn't the least bit concerned that [[{{Irony}} that's what turns him into]] the villain he is to begin with.
** [[spoiler:Richard]]'s been slowly breaking down [[spoiler:for ''two hundred years'']].
** Sun [[spoiler:after she saw Jin [[NotQuiteDead "die."]]]]
** Rousseau, [[http://www.benbarren.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/3255710468_37efec4bdd_b.jpg 16 years]] [[http://z.about.com/d/lost/1/0/U/l/-/-/Young-Danielle.jpg before]] any of the [[http://blog.screenweek.it/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/mira-furlan-lost.jpg main cast arrived]]. [[spoiler:Her friends, including her boyfriend/father of her baby, were trying to kill her so she had to kill them first. Then Ben took her baby.]] Cue [[TheAloner being alone]] on the island for 16 years that turned her into the crazy mess we all know and love. Which brings us to
** [[http://www.derok.net/images/entertainment/emilie%20de%20ravin%20lost%203.jpg Claire]] as of [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100210051801/lostpedia/images/d/da/6x03_ClaiRousseau.jpg season 6]]. [[spoiler:Just like Rousseau she was alone (albeit just for 3 years) and had to fend off the Others all the while looking for her baby. When she found out Kate was the one raising her baby, her reaction wasn't pretty]].
* BreakUpMakeUpScenario: Between Charlie and Claire.
* BribeBackfire: A particularly amusing instance. When [[spoiler:Ilana is forcing Ben to dig his own grave because she intends to kill him herself]], he tries to weasel his way out of it by buying off Miles's help. Miles asks him why on earth he would need three million dollars from him when there are "a couple of jabronis named Nikki and Paulo (whom Miles knows about because of his ability to "talk to the dead") buried alive right over there with eight million dollars worth of diamonds sitting right on top of them". Sure enough, by the end of the episode he has the diamonds in hand.
* BrickJoke: Given the show's crazy attention to detail, a lot of seemingly one-off remarks and incidents tend to recur later on. Case in point: "Across the Sea", the third-to-last episode, picks up a thread that had been dangling from ''the first season,'' namely [[spoiler:"Adam and Eve", the skeletons in the cave]].
** Similarly, the first scene of the pilot had a white tennis shoe dangling from one of the trees in the bamboo thicket Jack woke up. Given "Christian" was seen wearing the same shoes in the island, some fans were ''sure'' those shoes meant something. They're later mentioned in the Season 5 episode "316" when Jack says that he put the white tennis shoes on his father's corpse because he didn't consider the old man to be worth a nicer pair of shoes. Then in the GrandFinale they show up again on the island, still dangling from the tree after three years.
** Also, we first encounter the ''Black Rock'' in the season one finale and the broken statue in the season two finale and generally see them as completely separate mysteries. Then in season six we discover [[spoiler:the ''Black Rock'' toppled the statue when a huge wave washed it ashore]].
** A literal one through Season 2. When Locke meets Desmond upon entering the hatch, the latter asks the code phrase "What did one snowman say to the other snowman?", to which Locke didn't have the answer. At the end of the season, when Desmond returns to the Island, Locke asks what ''did'' one snowman say to the other, to which Desmond replies with a grin "Smells like carrots."
** In the first season, Shannon experiences a problem breathing as she had lost her inhaler in the crash. [[spoiler:In season six, Jack and Hurley find it discarded in the jungle on their way to the lighthouse]].
** In the fifth season when they travel to the past, Hurley asks who's the President in case someone asks. [[spoiler: It's that question which gives up their ruse]].
* BuffySpeak: Hurley, frequently.
--> '''Sawyer:''' What's your problem, Jumbotron?\\
'''Hurley:''' Shut up, red... neck... man.\\
'''Sawyer:''' Touché.
* BuriedAlive: Nikki and Paulo.
* ButtMonkey: Everyone's put through hell on this show but Jack, Locke, and Ben seem to get the worst of it. Every major decision Jack has made has turned out to be the wrong one. Locke's pre-Island and post-Island lives were utterly miserable. And Ben has lost just about everything (power, status, friends, family, etc.) since his debut and gets beaten senseless at [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37Z0_ydUaGc&lc=Trw0_61fEmAdyrCMR8rKW1MzKBTneDh_yTwY4ukqLnQ&feature=inbox least twice a season]]. He's still one of the most dangerous characters on the show, though.
** Michael Emerson himself helped put Ben's ButtMonkey status into perspective during his appearance on the special episode of Jimmy Kimmel that came on right after the finale. When Kimmel actually asked Emerson how often his character got beat up, Emerson responded, "[[DeadpanSnarker How many episodes was I in?]]"
** Among the secondary characters, of particular note is Mikhail who gets his ass kicked in every episode he appears in [[spoiler:which includes [[SerialEscalation three onscreen deaths, not including one in the afterlife.]]]]
* CainAndAbel: As of "Across the Sea", the rivalry between [[spoiler:Jacob and the Man in Black]] is this, but with the condition that neither of them is capable of killing the other himself. [[spoiler:So Jacob just threw the Man in Black down a glowing hole instead and let the island kill him. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Way to create the smoke monster, dude.]]]]
* CallBack: The final season was rife with them. One example is the pan from the season 1 finale of Jack and Locke peering into the hatch being used again in the SeriesFinale when Jack and [[spoiler: the Man in Black as]] Locke looked into [[spoiler: the Heart of the Island]].
* CameBackWrong: [[spoiler:Sayid]] in Season 6.
** Anybody who The Man In Black impersonates has to be dead. [[spoiler:Including the Man in Black himself, according to "Across the Sea".]]
* CarFu: Hurley's ride to the rescue in a [[BrandX DHARMA]] minibus.
* CataclysmClimax: Played with. It appeared that ''Lost'' would end like that for some time: starting with a mention of a volcano being present on the Island, then the Island being shown submerged underwater in the FlashSideways and finally the Man In Black intending to destroy the Island near the end. The Finale appears to play this straight: [[spoiler:after the Island's Heart is disturbed, it is shaken by massive earthquakes and several cliffs collapse into the Ocean before the majority of the heroes make their escape. The trope is then subverted, however, when the Island's Cork is put back in place and the cataclysm is stopped]].
* CatchPhrase:
** Jack: "Live together, die alone." Which makes Rose's interruption the third time he tries saying this so hilarious: "If you say 'live together, die alone' one more time I'm gonna punch you in the face!"
** Hurley: "Dude..."
*** "I'm '''not''' crazy!"
** Desmond: "See you in another life, brother."
** Sawyer's "Son of a bitch!" and many nicknames for people, particularly Freckles (Kate).
** Locke: "Don't tell me what I can't do."
** Ben: "ILied."
** Kate: "I'm coming with you!"
** Sayid: "My name is Sayid Jarrah, and I am a torturer."
** Basically every faction in the series: "We're the good guys" (which gets [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in the season 6 premiere).
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcatQSyRK6c "What?"]]
* CannotSpitItOut: The only time Sawyer verbally admits his feelings for Kate is when he's deliriously sick. The only time Kate verbally admits her feelings for Sawyer is when he's being beaten to a bloody pulp. Even then, it takes her a while.
** Actually, Sawyer does fully admit his feelings for Kate multiple times, most notably in "I Do" when he asks her if she just said she loved him in order to stop Pickett from beating Sawyer into a bloody pulp. When Kate responds with a non-answer in the shape of a kiss Sawyer responds "I love you, too."
** Libby's [[AlmostDeadGuy last]] [[HisNameIs words]] claiming Michael betrayed the group. Reason being is that she's been shot in the stomach and pumped full of heroin.
* CastHerd: Largely lampshaded by the phrase(s) "my/your/their people." Certain characters have [[HeelFaceTurn switched]] [[FaceHeelTurn allegiances]] through the course of the series. There's the 815 fuselage survivors, the tail survivors, the Others, the people from the freighter; then [[spoiler: [[TimeTravel when everyone is in the 70]]'s]] there's the Dharma Initiative and the Hostiles [[spoiler: (the name Dharma had for the Others)]].
* CaughtInASnare: A frequent occurrence, as Rousseau has set these kinds of traps all over the island in the hopes of catching the Others.
* CelebrityResemblance: Perhaps intentionally invoked with the season 6 Others footsoldier Lennon. He wears granny glasses like [[Music/TheBeatles his namesake]] and translates for a Japanese character...
* CensorshipBySpelling: It doesn't work so well.
--> '''Hurley:''' [''Glances at Walt''] But what about the B-O-D-Y-S?\\
'''Michael:''' What are you trying to spell man, bodies?\\
'''Walt:''' B-O-D-I-E-S.
* TheChainsOfCommanding: Jack doesn't enjoy it.
** A proud/envious/betrayed-feeling Locke has even a bigger negative reaction to it at times.
* ChainedHeat: Subverted in "Left Behind".
* ChangelingFantasy:
** Alex discovering that she's Rousseau's daughter.
** [[spoiler:Jacob and his brother, who learn that the woman who they believed to be their mother isn't, and they actually come from a group of people who came to the island shortly before they were born]].
* AChatWithSatan: In his flashbacks, [[spoiler:Richard Alpert]] is tempted by [[spoiler:the Man in Black/Smoke Monster]], who tells him he must kill "the devil," [[spoiler:Jacob]], if he wants to see his dead wife again. He ultimately refuses and sides with [[spoiler:Jacob]].
%%* CharacterDevelopment: Everyone.
* CharacterFocus: The show's bread and butter.
* CharacteristicTrope: Revolutionized the use of the {{flashback}} (and conversely, the {{flashforward}}), which is now prevalent in all of Creator/JJAbrams' SpeculativeFiction works.
** And in season 6, the flashsideways [[spoiler: which, semantic "out" though it tried to pull on us about the purely Informed (or that is to say, ostensible) trait of its "timelessness" aside, turned out to be just more flashforwards]].
* ChekhovsArmoury: In this series, Chekhov's got more guns than a crazy paranoid conspiracy theorist preparing for the zombie apocalypse.
%%* ChekhovsBoomerang: Multiple.
* ChekhovsGun: Multiple times. The first ones being the white and black stones and the [[ArcNumber infamous numbers]].
%%* ChekhovsGunman: Many.
* TheChessmaster: Ben and also the Man in Black and [[spoiler:Jacob]].
** The Man in Black can lay strong claim to being the show's ultimate Grand Master of XanatosSpeedChess, both in terms of effectiveness and speed, after the events of "The Candidate" in which on extremely short notice he creates a situation that causes [[spoiler:six main characters to unknowingly place themselves in a death trap]], and also [[spoiler:keeps himself clear of his own trap and makes the six think they were double-crossing him when they locked him out]]. The end result: [[spoiler:''[[KilledOffForReal three main characters dead.]]'']] Not bad work, considering he only had minutes to plan this all out and [[spoiler:build the bomb his trap relied on]].
** In ''The End'', [[spoiler:Jack makes a daring BatmanGambit by which to kill the Man in Black, helping the [=MiB=] carry out his own plan the destroy the island, all on the assumption that this plan will backfire on the [=MiB=]. What makes it even ballsier is that Jack flat out tells the [=MiB=] that he's running this gambit]].
* TheChewToy: Bad things keep happening to Locke's right leg.
** Mikhail is severely hurt in every episode he appears in.
** Despite being a very powerful ManipulativeBastard who brings it on himself, Ben qualifies because he can't go more than two episodes without being dealt a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown (and he never fights back).
* ChildMarriageVeto: In the flashbacks, Sun is very reluctant when her father forces her into an arranged marriage with the son of one of the father's business partners. After a little while she opens up and falls in love in with the guy... but then HE vetoes the whole thing. It turns out that he already has a girlfriend, it's just that he hadn't dared to tell his family about it.
* ChildrenForcedToKill: One character got his start in murder by covering for his brother when forced to kill a chicken. Another did the same thing, but with a person.
* ChristianityIsCatholic: Except for the token Muslim, every character whose religion we know is Catholic: Charley, Desmond, Eko (of course), the Reyes family (by ethnic implication), Claire and Aaron (by baptism)... and the Christian Shepherd memorial is in a church with Catholic-looking statuary. There is not a single explicit Protestant (or Jew, or Buddhist).
** Rose's denomination is never named or discussed in much detail, but some of her character traits imply an Evangelical belief system rather than Catholicism.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: There are at least two rules on this show. The first rule is that [[spoiler:until his complete HeelFaceTurn in Season 6,]] nobody should trust Ben. The second rule is that everybody will disregard the first rule.
** Locke has a similar relationship with [[ArchnemesisDad his father]].
* ChronicHeroSyndrome: In large part due to his [[FreudianExcuse unresolved daddy issues]], Jack has an obsessive need to save ''all'' of his fellow 815ers. And whenever he's unable to do so, he tends to freak out. In a flashback, he gets brutally called out on it by his ex. "You will ''always'' need something to fix."
* CliffHanger: Pretty much every episode. One week never felt so long.
* ColonelBogeyMarch: Desmond, Jin, Charlie, and Hurley whistle this in the episode "Catch-22".
* ColorCodedCharacters: Jacob wears white (more like beige, since they don't have bleach). His nemesis wears black (more like grayish black, but that's not the point). When he converts someone, he gives a white stone. His nemesis uses a black stone. Okay, we get it already, they're yin and yang.
* CompletelyUnnecessaryTranslator: The leader of the people at the temple speaks English, he just doesn't like doing it, necessitating a translator.
* CompletelyMissingThePoint: Hurley's parents decide to celebrate his return home from 100 grueling days on island by throwing him... an island theme surprise party.
---> '''Sayid:''' Interesting choice of theme.\\
'''Hurley:''' Yeah, Mom... really doesn't get it, dude.
* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: Mikhail states that this is why he's never beaten his computer at chess. But he's lying.
* ConMan: James "Sawyer" Ford and also the "Original Recipe" Sawyer a.k.a. [[spoiler: Anthony Cooper]] do this for a living. Also the much hated Nikki and Paulo.
* ConspicuousCG: The infamous "submarine" from "Follow the Leader" in Season 5.
* ConspiracyTheorist: Frank Lapidus, the pilot who was supposed to be flying Flight 815, after seeing footage of the recovered aircraft and noticing that the body in the cockpit didn't match the man who was supposed to be flying it.
** Also, "The Lost Conspiracy" feature in the DVD set, a parody of "truthers" everywhere which starts with true premises (Kate did not "look" four months pregnant at the airport; no way did they stay in shape on a diet of fish and coconuts) to draw thoroughly far-out conclusions.
* TheConstant: The TropeNamer. Desmond had to find Penelope in his past and present to stop the side-effects caused by him leaving the island.
** Desmond is also Faraday's Constant.
* ConsummateLiar: Ben's CatchPhrase is "ILied".
** It proves to be a bit of a stumbling block [[spoiler:after his HeelFaceTurn]].
--> '''Ben:''' What? Oh, for the fourth time, I was gathering mangoes and she was already unconscious when I found her. Why won't you believe me?\\
'''Ilana:''' Because you're speaking.
** Hilariously, Ben seems unable to be sincere even in little throwaway moments when nothing is at stake - he even lies about his zodiac sign!
** In another throwaway line he mentions having learnt to read from his mother - who in fact died at giving birth to him.
* ConvenientlyInterruptedDocument: The Swan Orientation film noticeably had a snippet removed the first time Desmond and Locke watched it. The missing snippet - which clarified why the computer was not to be used for anything other than entering the Numbers every 108 minutes - was later explained as an edit made by Razdinsky and stored in a hollowed-out Bible in another station across the island, which was later found by Eko. The reasons why the film was edited were never clarified, but Michael's use of the computer to communicate with Walt set off the entire series of tragic events in the second half of Season 2.
* ContinuityLockout: Don't even ''think'' about trying to jump into the middle of this show. (Although, most fans believe the plot is better off for it.)
* ContrivedCoincidence: One of the shows themes is the concept of coincidence versus fate. Flashbacks with Jacob in the last episode of Season 5 have kind of ruined most of the debate.
* ConvenientCranny: Banyan trees are often used to hide from the Smoke Monster.
* ConversationalTroping: Locke and Boone's RedShirt discussion.
* TheConWithinACon: Done by Sawyer (naturally) in [[spoiler:"The Long Con"]]. In this case, Sawyer was himself a tool of revenge because someone else gave him the potential target and information he would need.
* CoolCar: The Hurleymobile. Which turned out to be the same car where Ben gassed his own father.
* CoolClearWater: Well, it's not like the lostaways have a better choice anyway.
* CoolGuns: Other than with Keamy and his mercenaries (who have some pretty sophisticated firearms), this trope is averted; guns are mainly scarce and not at all fancy (especially in the early seasons on the Island). Keamy & crew have such flashy toys because they do this for a living and they brought them for a specific mission. [[spoiler:Although Ben's piano-bench shotgun is pretty sweet.]]
* CoolOldGuy: Locke, in spades. Even if he was just another pawn the whole time, he still saved several lives and helped countless others.
** Bernard and Rose become this as well.
* CosmicChessGame: [[spoiler:Turns out that the show is basically this.]]
* CosmicDeadline: Begins with the flaming arrow on the crash survivor's camp in season 5. [[spoiler:From there on through the end of season 6 almost every single every newly-introduced character will snuff it before the final episode]].
* CosmicKeystone: The true nature of [[spoiler:the Island. It also has its ''own'' Cosmic Keystone]].
** As seen in the SeriesFinale, [[spoiler:the heart of the island contains ''another'' CosmicKeystone, which happens to be a literal keystone. Apparently, TheMagicGoesAway if you pull it out; this turns Smokey human, allowing him to be killed. And then TheMagicComesBack when it's put back in]].
* CosyCatastrophe: There's the odd soldier or convict (okay, maybe about a third of the passengers), but most of the other castaways are normal, middle class people, albeit with [[DysfunctionJunction an awful lot of trauma in their pasts]].
* CPRCleanPrettyReliable: Either after 10 seconds they cough up a mouthful of salt water and spring to life or "there's nothing else I can do". Or Jack punches the hell out of Charlie's chest for nearly a minute and miraculously revives him. There are a couple of aversions, though, such as Jack to Sayid in the first episode of Season 6.
* CrazyPrepared: Ben could make Batman green with envy.
** Keamy's elaborate [[spoiler:DeadManSwitch]] at the end of Season 4 should qualify him.
* CrazySurvivalist: Rousseau in the first season.
* CrossReferencedTitles: "One of Them" and "One of Us"; "The Constant", "The Variable" and "The Substitute"; "What Kate Did" and "What Kate Does"; "Everybody Hates Hugo" and "Everybody Loves Hugo".
** The episodes "...And Found" and "...In Translation" could be seen as a version of this are both are part of phrases that begin with the word "Lost"
** "The Beginning of the End" and "The End".
* CrucifiedHeroShot: Sayid in Season 6. The one Muslim character in a show with mostly Jewish writers. [[MindScrew Go figure]].
* CrypticConversation:
** "Are you him? What did one snowman say to the other snowman?"
** "What lies in the shadow of the statue?"
** Whenever Christian appears in a non-flashback. [[spoiler: Except in the finale, where he explains the truth of the "AlternateUniverse"]].
* CuckooNest: It's practically poor Hurley's second home.
* CuffsOffRubWrists: People get handcuffed or tied up a lot. Of special note is Jin, who went for ''over a season'' wearing one shackle of a pair of broken handcuffs.
* CutApart: Season 4 spends a whole episode's flashforward with Sun preparing to have a baby, and Jin buying a stuffed panda for a new baby. It isn't revealed until the final flashforward that the scenes with Jin were flashbacks, with the panda being for the newborn child of the Chinese ambassador and Sun left to have the baby alone in the future.
* ADayInTheLimelight: Everyone gets their day. Except Libby, Charlotte, Ilana, and Frank Lapidus, all of whom had at least one flashback (and a flash-sideways for all of the above except Frank), but not their own episode.
* DarkActionGirl: As of S6, [[spoiler:Claire]], apparently. We don't see too much onscreen.
* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler: Everyone in the flash-sideways world -- though it's clear that they didn't all die at once]].
* DeaderThanDead: [[spoiler: Jacob was stabbed by Ben and cremated by Man in Black]]. However it doesn't stop him from returning as a ghost.
** [[spoiler: And Man in Black himself was first shot by Kate and then kicked off the edge of the cliff by Jack]].
* DeadGuyJunior: Desmond and Penny's son is named Charlie.
* DeadManSwitch: Keamy sets up one of these before leaving to capture Ben Linus.
* DeadlyNosebleed:
** A symptom of time travel indicating that cumulative damage is being done. Poor Charlotte.
** Along with bleeding ears, this is the visible effect of the sonic fence on its victims.
* DeadpanSnarker: Miles.
--> '''Miles:''' What happened to him?\\
'''Horace:''' He fell in a ditch.\\
'''Miles:''' He's got a bullet in his head. The ditch have a gun?
** In [[LampshadeHanging commenting on Miles' use of this trope]], Hurley reveals his own qualifications for the position:
---> '''Miles:''' Where the hell did they go, Tubby?\\
'''Hurley:''' Oh, awesome. The ship sent us another Sawyer.
** Ben Linus also gets his fair share.
---> "No, John, we don't have a code for 'there's a man in my closet with a gun to my daughter's head'. Although obviously we should..."
** Edward Mars, the US Marshall who chases Kate, has gotten his fair share in in the few times his been onscreen.
---> '''Kate:''' I have to go.\\
'''Mars:''' Hold it.\\
'''Kate:''' I can't.\\
'''Mars:''' [''Dryly''] Sure you can, kiddo, I believe in you.
** And Richard can be this too:
---> '''Locke:''' [''After handing Locke a compass''] What does it do?\\
'''Richard:''' It points north, John.
** Lapidus, [[spoiler:after seeing Locke alive again]]:
--->"As long as the dead guy says there's reason, then I guess everything's gonna be just peachy. And forget about the fact that the rest of your people are supposedly 30 years ago. Now the only ones that are here to help us are a murderer and a guy who can't seem to remember how the hell he got out of a coffin."
** Don't forget about Sawyer himself.
---> '''Libby:''' How did you get shot?\\
'''Sawyer:''' With a gun.
* DealWithTheDevil: [[spoiler:Sayid]] makes one with [[spoiler:the Man in Black]].
* {{Determinator}}: Sun and Jin. Try and separate them. I dare you.
** Also Jack since the beginning. Season 1 examples: Edward Mars, Boone, and "Come on, Charlie. Come on. Come on, Charlie! Come on! Come on!! Come on!!!! COME ON, CHARLIE!!!" He just ''can't'' let stuff go.
* DeathByCameo: Zoey Bell.
* DeathByMaterialism: [[spoiler:Nikki and Paulo]].
* DeathBySex: [[spoiler:Shannon after sleeping with Sayid, and Ana Lucia after sleeping with Sawyer]].
** More like death by ''romance'' [[spoiler: Charlie, Libby, & Charlotte died when their relationships were finally starting to work out]].
* DeathIsNotPermanent: At least not with [[spoiler:[[CameBackWrong Sayid]]]].
** Also the case with [[spoiler: The Man in Black, who was killed by Jacob but immediately reincarnated as the smoke monster]].
** [[spoiler: Although Jacob died and stayed dead, that didn't stop him from coming back as a ghost and talking to the main cast]].
*** Same goes for [[spoiler: Michael]].
** Also seems to be the case with [[spoiler: Locke]] at first, but [[spoiler: It's later confirmed that Locke is 100% dead and the man we've been seeing is actually The Man in Black]].
* DeathSeeker: Many account for this, but especially Sawyer comes to mind.
--> '''Michael:''' Since the day you told me you wanted on this raft, I couldn't figure it out. Why does a guy who only cares about himself want to risk his life to save everyone else? Yeah... way I see it, there's only two choices. You're either a hero, or you want to die.\\
'''Sawyer:''' [''Gruffly''] Well... I ain't no hero, Mike.
* DesertedIsland: The entire show is the subversion.
* DespairEventHorizon: [[spoiler:Richard Alpert]] skirts damn close to this in season 6, but is eventually pulled back from the edge by Hurley.
** Heck, the entire latter half of season 6, especially from [[spoiler: the sub explosion]] to the last episode would probably count as this. It comes to a head when [[spoiler: Desmond puts out the light at the heart of the Island]]. Fortunately, it quickly turns around after that when [[spoiler: Jack discovers that without the light, he and the Man in Black are mortal again]].
* DestinationDefenestration: This is how [[spoiler: Locke became paralyzed]]. From the ''eighth floor'', no less.
* DidIMentionItsChristmas: During Season 4 episode "The Constant", Sayid and Desmond only find out it's Christmas Eve when they spot the date on a calendar, while being far too busy with much more important things.
* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: Ben to [[spoiler:Jacob]] in the season 5 finale.
** Ironically, [[spoiler:Richard]] tried this earlier and got an ass-kicking for his trouble.
* [[spoiler: DiedHappilyEverAfter: Technically]]...
* DiesWideOpen: Numerous times. One minor motif is someone closing a dead person's eyes out of respect, as Ben did to Horace Goodspeed.
** [[spoiler: Also consider the final image in the series finale - one could say the show, or perhaps the island, does this to Jack]].
* DisappearedDad: Hurley, Claire (which plays a role in the plot), Miles in Season 5. And Locke's entire storyline and character development was based on how his father abandoned him over and over again.
* DisposablePilot: In the pilot episode, the co-pilot dies on impact and the pilot is killed off soon after being found.
* [[spoiler:DistantFinale]]: Technically, the series finale. [[spoiler: There is no 'now' in the sideways-verse, but Hurley and Ben especially may have taken a particularly long time to get there]].
* DisneyDeath: Charlie pulls one in the middle of season one.
* DisneyVillainDeath: [[spoiler: Man in Black, who was pushed off a cliff by Jack, though he was already mortally wounded after being shot by Kate]].
* DoesNotLikeShoes: The Others go barefoot, in keeping with their "simple" lifestyle. Of course, this is merely a ruse to trick the survivors (Tom even goes as far as wearing a fake beard!). Played straight with the Others who reside at the island's Temple, like Dogen and Lennon. This tradition seems to stem from Jacob himself, who lives an extremely simple and humble existence. He's only seen wearing shoes when off the island.
* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: [[spoiler: [[{{God}} Jacob]]]], who believes that RousseauWasRight, doesn't interfere with the decisions of the people of the island and enables free will. While [[spoiler: [[SatanicArchetype the Man in Black]]]], who believes that HumansAreBastards, tries to tempt the same people with visions, apparitions of the dead, and impossible promises that appeal to their deepest desires.
* DoggedNiceGuy: Charlie to Claire.
* DoingInTheWizard: Many mystical elements gained scientific explanations after the first season, only for the show to return to mysticism in the final seasons. Check [[DoingInTheWizard the entry]] for details.
* DoorToBefore: After previously thinking that the only way into the hatch is through the door that the characters have to use dynamite on in order to open, it's revealed once they're inside that there's a back door.
* DoubleAesop: "[[YouWereTryingTooHard The best way to find something is to stop looking.]]"
* DownerEnding: Although the show doesn't usually have "happy" episodes (and when it does they're usually [[BittersweetEnding bittersweet]] or subverted at the last moment), but the "The Candidate" is just ''miserable''. [[spoiler: Three of the major characters (and candidates) explode or drown and the rest of the remaining cast cries on the beach. End episode]].
* DramaticDislocation: Happens at least three times: Charlie reluctantly helps Jack, Kate reluctantly helps Juliet, and Libby goes for the surprise version in "The Other 48 Days" while telling the injured RedShirt a story about skiing.
* TheDriver: Abaddon eventually turns into this.
* DrivingQuestion: A good summary would be "What the hell is going on?!"
** "Guys, where are we?"
* DrJerk: Jack (sometimes) has a terrible bed-side manner and often brutally honest with his patients about their chances, but otherwise is a miracle-worker. His father Christian, on the other hand, was a snarky, condescending drunk who got a patient killed.
* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Several examples, most notably [[spoiler:Ilana]].
* DuctTapeForEverything:
--> '''Miles:''' I don't believe in a lot of things -- but I believe in duct tape!
* DynamicEntry: The ''Black Rock'' was catapulted onto the island by a colossal tidal wave, knocking over the giant Taweret statue as it makes landfall.
* DyingAlone: "If we don't learn to live together, we're gonna die alone."
** [[spoiler: Eventually {{inverted}} in the best way -- though they might die alone, they ''move on'' together]].
* DysfunctionJunction: More like Dysfunction Scramble Crossing.
** And, as of 6x16 ("What They Died For") this was justified- [[spoiler:Turns out Jacob purposely picked screwed up people to bring to the island so that they'd have a reason to want to replace him, as opposed to someone who was torn from a happy life]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder: E-H]]
%%* EarnYourHappyEnding
* EasyAmnesia:
** The main character of the video game, though he got his in the plane crash.
%%** Claire
%%** Ben
* EasterEgg: On the 6th DVD of season one, if left too long on the first screen, the plane lodged in the cliff falls.
* EatTheDog: Locke serves Ben one of the cute fluffy bunnies left over from the DHARMA Initiative upon running out of chickens.
--> '''Ben:''' ...This didn't have [[ArcNumber a number on it]]?
%%* EducationMama: Eloise Hawking.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: After the plane crash, we see several in quick succession: Jack is running around trying to help as many people has possible, displaying ChronicHeroSyndrome. Boone is, too, but failing. Michael is crying hysterically for his son, a la PapaBear. In the aftermath, Jin quietly commands Sun to stay by him and away from the others. Hurley makes himself known as the NiceGuy when he goes passing around food to everyone, giving two to the pregnant Claire. Shannon is quickly established as a stubborn AlphaBitch when she refuses the food offered by her stepbrother.
* EstablishingSeriesMoment: The appearance of the polar bear and the smoke monster, our first indications that this is not an ordinary island.
** The series's many upcoming MindScrew's are best summed by Charlie's quote:
-->"Guys... ''where are we?''
** Also summed up by Hurley in season 5, during his famous "truth-moment" :
--> "See, we did crash, but it was on this '''crazy''' island.[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j68irZ97MuI&playnext=1&list=PLE77D0A6B111951F4&feature=results_video [...]]]"
* EternalRecurrance: [[spoiler: People coming to the island, as one can guess by what Jacob and the Man in Black's mother stated. People always seem to arrive by "accident." It's never by accident; it's because the island and/or Jacob want them to be there]].
** Also to a lesser extent [[spoiler: Jacob summoning people to the island in order to 1) prove that RousseauWasRight while the Man in Black's wager is that HumansAreBastards]] and [[spoiler: 2) to gather candidates for his role as protector of the island]].
* EuphemismBuster: Overlaps with CensorshipBySpelling. Hurley doesn't want to talk about the dead in front of a kid (Walt), so he spells it out:
-->'''Hurley''': But what about the B-O-D-Y-S?\\
'''Michael''': What are you trying to spell, man, "bodies"?\\
'''Walt''': B-O-D-I-E-S.
* EveryoneIsRelated: Although you may not know it for a few seasons.
** To a point where you ask who is ''not'' related.
%%* EvilBrit: Charles Widmore
* EvilMatriarch: [[spoiler:Jacob and MIB's "Mother," played by Allison Janney, who killed their real mother just after she gave birth to them]].
* EvilVersusEvil: Ben versus Charles Widmore in season three and four. Then in season five it was revealed that [[spoiler:it has been Jacob versus his enemy all along]], and now it is [[spoiler:Jacob's enemy versus Charles Widmore and his men who arrived to island on a submarine]].
** Depending on character interpretation, particularly after seeing the events in [[spoiler:Across the Sea]], [[spoiler:Jacob versus his nemesis]] still qualifies.
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The Dharma Initiative generic food products.
* ExactTimeToFailure: The countdown clock in the hatch.
* ExpandedUniverse: Consisting of a few books, two online games, and a computer/video game. The canonicity of all of them is questionable, however.
** Word from ThePowersThatBe is that the only true canon is the show itself. The mobisodes are ''kinda'' canon, same goes for the Orchid video from Comic Con 2007, but not for the Pierre Chang Video from Comic Con 2008. So yeah.
* ExpansionPackPast: Everyone.
** Not all characters employ this trope to its full definition, though. For instance, most of Hurley's flashbacks, rather than adding a new period to his otherwise-undefined past, flesh out a period in his life that was alluded to over a season prior.
%%* ExpositoryHairstyleChange: AKA Flashback Wig.
%%* EyepatchOfPower: Mikhail.
* EyeScream: In "The Package" [[spoiler:Jin shoots alternate universe Mikhail in the eye. For bonus irony points, it's the one he's missing in the main timeline]].
* ExpositionOfImmortality: The character Richard never ages, which we first see in a flashback when Ben meets him as a child and Richard looks exactly the same. Through time travel and more {{flashback}}s, we see Richard in various eras, still looking exactly the same as he does in the present.
* FaceHeelTurn: Michael, although he eventually [[RedemptionEqualsDeath redeems himself]] (to the island). [[spoiler:Claire]] does one offscreen sometime after the season 4 finale and [[spoiler:Sayid]] is wooed to the dark side by [[spoiler:the Man in Black]] in "Sundown" (6x06).
** It's been strongly hinted that [[spoiler:Claire and Sayid]]'s turns are the result of being infected by [[TheVirus the Sickness]].
* FacingTheBulletsOneLiner:
--> '''[[spoiler: Man in Black]]:''' You are too late. [[spoiler: He is wrong]].
* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: With the premise of "people stranded on a deserted island", it was pretty obvious to GenreSavvy viewers that any attempts to get off said island were doomed to fail. It was then famously subverted when some characters left the island and their goal became to get back there. [[spoiler:And then totally inverted in the final season: the goal of the main characters becomes to stop the BigBad from leaving the island - something they have attempted themselves for so long early in the series]].
** The other goal for ''Series/{{Lost}}'' is to figure out what the hell is going on. Characters and the viewers alike were fated to fail here.
** Even the writers [[CluelessMystery dropped it]] early. About almost ''everything and every character''.
* FakeDefector: Hurley pretends to get kicked out of Locke's group and join Jack's as part of Locke's ruse.
* FakeKillScare: Sayid, Jin, and Bernard have been captured by the Others, and Ben tells them over the phone to shoot all three of them while Jack listens. It turns out that they merely fired shots into the sand to scare Jack, but this causes Jack to deliver a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown on Ben later.
** Interestingly enough, these three characters are assumed dead at least on one other occasion. Sayid dies but then comes back to life in season 6, Bernard is presumed dead in season 1 while the freighter explosion is assumed to kill Jin but doesn't.
* FakeOutOpening: Every Season Premiere (except for the first, naturally).
* {{Fanservice}}: Nikki does a strip-tease and pole dance in season 3. Partly a parody - it turns out to be in a show-in-show featuring a whole troupe of bikini-clad crime-fighters.
* FatalFamilyPhoto: Early in "The Candidate," [[spoiler:Jin is talking to Sun about having finally seen their daughter in a photo. Cue the sinking of the sub]].
* AFateWorseThanDeath: [[spoiler:Anthony Cooper in the afterlife]], whom we discover is in a permanent vegetative state due to [[spoiler:a plane crash he suffered when trying to teach Locke how to fly. One can't help feeling sorry for him, even though he was a heartless monster in both life and death. It's more gruesome when we realise that due to this, he can never move on]].
** Explicitly said to apply to [[spoiler:Jacob's brother too]].
** Michael, particularly since the events of "The End" [[spoiler: so far as we can tell, did nothing to free his soul, which was trapped on the island, unable to "move on." The epilogue, however, suggests that by going back to the island Walt might be able to help him move on]].
* FauxDeath: Nikki and Paulo appear to be dead in "Exposé," but end up being buried alive because they have actually been bitten by spiders that put them in a death-like state.
* FauxFluency: Naveen Andrews is actually British, and doesn't speak Arabic (which is why all of his scenes with people who should be speaking Arabic [[TranslationConvention switch to English after one or two sentences]]).
** At Jin and Sun's wedding, [[spoiler:Jacob]] tells them their love is special. After he leaves, they comment that his Korean is excellent. It doesn't take a knowledge of Korean to notice that this is an InformedAbility.
** Inverted with Jin: * Creator/DanielDaeKim is a Korean-American and, in a dream sequence of the season 2 episode "Everybody Hates Hugo", demonstrates he actually speaks native English. In the show, however, he plays a Korean national who doesn't learn English for at least 2 seasons, and still speaks it with a moderate accent after having 3 years of experience (although the accent does slip on occasion).
* FingertipDrugAnalysis: As a drug lord, Eko knows how to do this, of course. Sayid in one episode too.
* FirstGrayHair: In the last episode, [[spoiler:Richard]] finds one. Though rather than being a source of angst, he considers this a very good thing since it means [[spoiler:he's no longer immortal]].
* {{Flashback}}: It is practically the CharacteristicTrope, after all.
* FlashbackEcho: OnceAnEpisode or so.
* FlashbackEffects: A distinctive sound effect notes the beginning and end of each flashback. This is almost reversed for the 'jumps'.
* FlashbackTwist: Possibly the TropeCodifier. Special mention goes to [[FlashForward the third season finale]].
* FlashForward: As of the end of the third season, we get these too.
* FlashSideways: TropeNamer and Trope Codifier (together with the movie Sliding Doors). Many of the characters do this a lot in season six.
** [[spoiler:And then {{subverted}}, despite being the TropeCodifier. The FlashSideways world turns out to be the afterlife.]]
* FlirtyStepsiblings: Shannon and Boone.
* FlorenceNightingaleEffect: How Jack and Sarah fell in love.
* FoeYay:[[invoked]] Ben and Locke. Lampshaded by Ben in the season 5 finale.
** The amount of [[invoked]]{{Foe Yay}}ishness between the two is actually rather amusing.
---> '''Ben:''' And then you came striding out of the jungle, John, to make my dream come true.
*** So much, in fact, that the [[spoiler:Season 5 finale with Ben and Un-Locke confronting Jacob almost feels like a love triangle, with Ben's angry reaction at being treated like the third wheel]].
* FoilerFootage: They shot multiple reveals of who was in the coffin at the end of the final episode. [[spoiler:Sawyer and Desmond]] were the other two filmed to be in the coffin, but obviously weren't in it when the episode aired. In the DVD bonus material for that season the writers said that they sweated a bit when that episode aired for fear the editor had spliced the wrong bit of footage onto the end of the episode because it would have been a bear to write their way out of.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Locke mentioning the battle between light and dark in the very first episode. However, it isn't until the season five finale we clearly know what the sides are.
** Boone, when tracking the footprints of Claire and Charlie in season 1, explains to Locke what a RedShirt is, with a full StarTrek reference. Boone is the one carrying the red shirt (which they strip pieces of for making a visible path through the forest). Of course, Boone is the first to die a few episodes later.
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxIUJgRsC9U This conversation]] is rife with foreshadowing, especially to some of the reveals in Season 6.
** At the end of "Tabula Rasa", which was about the second episode of the series, the sounds of The Monster are subtly played as the camera pans over to and zooms in on [[spoiler: the face of John Locke]].
** The [[spoiler: final battle]] is foreshadowed in the Season 1 finale.
--> '''Jack:''' There's something that you need to know...if we survive this, if we survive tonight...we're going to have a [[BigBad Locke]] problem. And I have to know that you've got my back. \\
'''Kate:''' [[BigDamnHeroes I've got your back.]]
** "See you in another life, brotha," is repeated several times, and then there are other things of the same sort like Nadia's assurance that she will see Sayid again in another life, if not this one--all of these things foreshadowing [[spoiler: the flash-sideways]].
** Locke being tricked and manipulated in a lot of his flashbacks, and his psychological profile claiming he is "amenable for coercion". [[spoiler: The poor guy turns out to be a pivotal UnwittingPawn in the scheme of the Man in Black]].
** There are some moments that qualify as foreshadowing but are ''extremely'' small details. Pay close attention to Kate the first time she's on-screen. She's rubbing her wrists, [[spoiler:from the handcuffs she had on her.]]
* ForScience: Stuart Radzinsky has been planning this station for ''six years'', and he doesn't care if you've come from the future to warn him he's about to unleash catastrophe, he's not stopping the damn drill now! [[spoiler:To be fair, now that we know what the sideways timeline really is, it's not clear that Radzinsky actually caused the entire Incident - the atomic bomb dropped down the well probably helped]].
* ForWantOfANail: [[spoiler:The flash-sideways timeline is initially presented as this; the characters' lives had there been no plane crash, no Island, and no interference from Jacob. The series finale, however, shows that it's actually the afterlife]].
* FourIsDeath: Four is one of the {{arc number}}s
** Boone wears multiple t-shirts in the first season containing fours or sets of four, and is the first regular character to die.
** In a season 5 flashback, Miles discovers his ability to speak to the dead by finding a dead man in Apt. #4.
** In Jacob's cave, [[spoiler:Locke]] is indicated by the number 4, and is the first of the six uncrossed names to be crossed out (as he is dead).
* FreudianExcuse: Ben and [[spoiler:The Man in Black]].
* FromACertainPointOfView:
%%** "The box was a metaphor."
** Un-Locke is fond of using this tactic. When he tells Ben that he can have the island all to himself if he helps him in his cause, he "leaves out the part about it being at the bottom of the ocean". He tells the candidates that he needs them to escape the island: and [[spoiler: he does need them...to die]].
** Christian's medical report on the patient he ended up killing in his drunkenness told "the truth": that two doctors tried to save her and failed. It seems to be carefully worded to avoid the issue of the cause of failure being that ''he ended up fatally lacerating her because his hands were shaking too badly from all the booze''.
%%* FromNobodyToNightmare: Ben Linus.
* FunWithForeignLanguages: Frequently occurs in earlier seasons when Jin's knowledge of English is very limited and none of the other survivors except for Sun speak Korean.
* FunnyAneurysmMoment: With a storyline this convoluted that stretches over such a long time period, there are naturally a few in-universe examples. By far, the most horrifying was when we learned exactly how that Dharma van Hurley found in the forest in a beloved BreatherEpisode got stranded out there...
** One out-universe example is in "Confidence Man" where Sawyer is describing the "Oil rigging off the Gulf".
* GambitPileup: Rose, Bernard, and Frank are about the only characters without some kind of ulterior motive.
* GambitRoulette: Sometimes you wonder just how Ben could have planned for some things. He could be [[XanatosSpeedChess good at improvising and adapting his plans]] or [[IMeantToDoThat claiming he is.]]
** Ben seems like a rookie compared to [[spoiler:Jacob's enemy]], whose {{plan}} included everything in Ben's plans, plus a couple of twists which ultimately gave him the upper hand and led to [[spoiler:un-Locke manipulating Ben into killing Jacob.]]
* GameChanger: The third season finale shows flashbacks of Jack at his alcoholic worst. [[spoiler: Except that it's actually the first flash-''forward,'' revealing that some of the flight 815 survivors escaped the island.]]
* GeniusLoci: The Island, maybe, according to Locke. It was never really resolved.
* GenreShift: The first season is a relatively grounded drama with ''some'' elements of supernatural {{horror}}. The next five seasons transition into [[ScienceFiction science-fiction]]/{{fantasy}} territory.
* GeodesicCast: Out of sheer necessity because of the show's LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters.
%%* GeographicFlexibility: The Island.
* GetItOverWith: Subverted. Keamy threatens to kill Alex if Ben wouldn't surrender. Ben answers that he doesn't care about her (that's a lie) and almost demands to kill Alex. Keamy shoots her immediately, even before Ben finishes his phrase.
* AGlitchInTheMatrix:
** An important aspect flashsideways [[spoiler:alternate timeline/afterlife]] is characters noticing something's up. Jack has a recurring cut on his neck and scar on his side that he can't place--both were suffered during [[spoiler:the final battle with Smokey; the latter wound ends up being fatal]]. Charlie has a flash of [[spoiler:Claire]] while choking on a heroin baggy. Kate gets deja vu when she sees Jack. The flashsideways as a whole serves this purpose for clever viewers who may notice minor characters, locations, or scenarios repeating themselves slightly differently.
** In the series finale, each character has a [[spoiler:revelatory montage where they remember their island life]]. When speaking to Locke, Jack has a brief flash of [[spoiler:the two looking down the hatch]] and freaks out. When he finds Kate, he has a couple flashes of [[spoiler:their romance]] and decides to go with her to learn the ultimate truth: [[spoiler:he's dead]].
* GoMadFromTheIsolation:
** Rousseau and (as of season 6) [[spoiler:Claire]].
** A promo implies that [[spoiler:the Man in Black]] turned from a misled young man just trying to get home into [[spoiler:''The'' Monster]] because he went insane after spending [[spoiler:2,000 years]] trapped on the island.
* GrandTheftMe: [[spoiler:While he's not exactly stealing other peoples' bodies, the [[BigBad Man in Black]]/Smoke Monster is able to assume the form of anyone who has previously died whose body is on the Island such as Alex, Yemi, Christian, and Locke. He can also seemingly project visions of other people from characters' pasts, including Richard's wife, Isabella.]]
%%* GrayingMorality
%%* TheGreatRepair: In the final episode.
* GreyAndGrayMorality: Played with in the repetition from all different sources about who is a "good person" (or people) or a "bad person" (or people). Naturally, there are contradicting opinions about and from just about everyone.
** Even the BigBad is given a FreudianExcuse and is a very sympathetic character in his [[ADayInTheLimelight Day in the Limelight]]
** And the BigGood messed around with peoples' lives, which got many people killed. However, The end of the show seems to vindicate these actions explicitly, by saying that [[spoiler: even though many died, their time on the Island was the most important part of their life, and they felt it was worth it in the end]]. The things his followers do in his name range from morally questionable to evil. Widmore, undoubtedly the man behind the "purge" of the Dharma Initiative, is unapologetically evil, and was the leader of the Island for many years before Ben staged a coup. It does remain unclear how many of these acts Jacob approved of, and which were the result of people being tempted by selfishness and their baser nature (or possibly under the influence of the MIB).
*** Jacob called Widmore a bad man. If he ever approved of his actions, it was before he was the monster he is now. But the entire idea behind The Others was for Jacob to be able to interfere without interfering, by having a group of people working to his end who (for the most part) were self-governing and self-sufficient. That way he can sort of influence things but without infringing on people's ability to choose for themselves. Nevertheless, Jacob admitted to being flawed. Knowingly tossing your own brother into a fate worse than death tends to qualify one for that label.
** The show started off as this, but leaned more towards BlackAndWhiteMorality towards the end of the series. Most of the main characters recognized their flaws and how their past actions had negative effects on them and wound up redeeming themselves, due to the RousseauWasRight theme, which is why [[spoiler:they were ultimately rewarded in the afterlife by reuniting and moving on]]. The irredeemable villains such as [[spoiler: [[BigBad Man in Black]]]] and Martin Keamy, who never wished to redeem themselves and just kept getting worse, simply got their brutal comeuppances, [[spoiler: even in the afterlife, as seen with the deaths of Keamy and his henchmen and Anthony Cooper being in a vegetative state and unable to move on]].
*** Overall the show's approach is probably best described as MoralityKitchenSink. The show certainly moves more towards BlackAndWhiteMorality by the final season, but there are still clearly different shades of heroic and villainous characters even towards the end: Jacob may be the BigGood of the series, but he remains a ManipulativeBastard who is a sterling example of GoodIsNotNice; the smoke monster may be the BigBad, but he still has a FreudianExcuse; [[spoiler:Sayid and Ben]] go through the HeelFaceRevolvingDoor so many times it begins to get difficult to keep track of whose side they're on; and so on. After the litany of events on the island, only a few of the LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, like Hurley and Keamy, can be said to be unambiguously good or unambiguously bad.
%%* GuileHero: Desmond [[spoiler:in the flash-sideways universe]].
* GuiltComplex: Hurley in seems to think that because he keeps finding his winning lottery numbers everywhere as the plot moves along, it means that the numbers are cursed, and somehow that means every other bad thing that happens on the island is his fault.
** Before coming to the island, he blamed himself for an accidental deck collapse that killed two people.
* GuineaPigFamily: Juliet practiced her fertility therapy on her sister.
* GutFeeling: Bernard was in the tail section of the plane which separated from the section the main characters were in before the crash. In spite of this, his wife Rose spends the entire first season calmly correcting anyone who refers to him as being deceased or past tense. She says she just knows he's alive. Early in season two she is proven correct and reunited with him.
* HairTriggerExplosive: Arzt dies when he waves a stick of TNT too roughly and it detonates in his hand. [[DeathByIrony Ironically enough]], he was in the middle of a lecture on how to handle dynamite safely.
* HandWave: When Abaddon asks if Walt [[spoiler:has to come back to the island too]], Locke replies that "he's been through enough."
* HappilyMarried: Rose and Bernard. Jin and Sun as well, although [[spoiler:Sun was just about to leave Jin before the plane crashed]]. Desmond and Penny are definitely this too, once they FINALLY get back to each other.
* HasTwoMommies: A heterosexual example, after the end [[spoiler:Aaron he ends up with both Kate and Claire raising him]]. It's implied neither loved again due to their true loves dying years before they did.
* HaveYouToldAnyoneElse: {{Inverted}}. When Mother asks the Man in Black if he has revealed the Light beneath the island to the villagers. He says yes, and you can almost see the gears turning as she calculates how many people she must now kill then she kills everyone in the village '''except''' the Man in Black.
* HearingVoices: The whispers in the jungle, revealed in season six to be [[spoiler: the dead people on the island who haven't "moved on."]]
* HeartInTheWrongPlace: Averted early in the series. The US Marshall that was on the plane was critically wounded in the crash, so Sawyer shoots him in the upper left part of his chest to put him out of his misery. Only for Jack to tell him that he missed the heart and hit his lung.
%%* HeelFaceRevolvingDoor: [[spoiler:Sayid and Benjamin Linus.]]
%%* HeelFaceTurn:
%%** [[spoiler:Juliet and Ben]].
%%** [[spoiler:Sayid in his final act of heroism]].
%%** Kate pulls one at the beginning of the show.
* HelpingWouldBeKillstealing: [[spoiler:Jacob. Played straight on the island: He doesn't interfere, because he want everyone to figure out the right thing to do on their own. Subverted in the outside world, as Jacob seek out Kate in her childhood and save her from a problem that would likely have been a important life lesson.]]
* [[spoiler:TheHeroDies: The very last shot of the show.]]
* HeroicSacrifice: Desmond at the end of Season Two (although he survives), Charlie at the end of Season Three, [[spoiler:Sayid and Jin in "The Candidate."]], and [[spoiler: Jack in "The End.]]
* HeWhoFightsMonsters: [[spoiler:With the events of Season 6, this can be inferred as the reason for much of the Others' villainous behavior.]]
* HeWhoMustNotBeSeen: The Monster and the Others during season one. And Jacob, [[spoiler:until "The Incident"]]
** As regards the Monster the show certainly did play with the trope in a nifty way: we saw it as far back as the first episode or two but didn't know it because we didn't yet know that it was the same thing taking those other forms like Christian Shephard's. Although it wasn't until the season one finale that we even got a glimpse of its default, wispy form.
* HiddenVillain: The revelation of the BigBad and all {{Disc One Final Boss}}es previous are pretty big twists.
%% The flash sideways verse is the afterlife, not technically an Alternate Universe. Besides, none of the main cast are of high school age. Not even Walt.
%%%
* HijackedByGanon: [[spoiler: The first antagonist introduced in the series is the Smoke Monster, making its presence known in the first episode. After several seasons of making us guess who the true BigBad was, we are introduced to an unnamed character referred to as "The Man in Black", who was the enemy of Jacob and was manipulating everyone (even Ben) the whole time. At the very start of the final season, he reveals himself to be the Smoke Monster, thus it was the BigBad the whole time.]]
* HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct: In play in some way. What with Sayid shooting, and trying to kill Ben Linus back in 1977.
** [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in the following episode by Hurley and Miles - and even better, it's implied that [[spoiler:Jack's refusal to save Ben's life as a child - and Sawyer and Juliet's subsequent plea to Richard Alpert - turned him into the MagnificentBastard he would become in the future]].
** It's even more or less referred to by name in dialogue from the first episode of season 5:
---> '''Dr. Chang:''' It will allow us to manipulate time.\\
'''Foreman:''' And then what, you're going to go back in time and kill Hitler?\\
'''Dr. Chang:''' Don't be absurd. There are rules. Rules that can't be broken.
* HisNameIs: Pretty much every character with valuable information to impart on the main characters seems to suffer from this trope. Every time someone has a chance to really expose an important plot point or enigmatic mystery, they dance around the issue with vague words and nonsense until they are forced away/leave/die.
* TheHomewardJourney: The focus of the first half of the series. Once some of the characters return home, however, they realize that they have reasons for returning to the island.
%%* HookersAndBlow
* HopeSpot: Locke banging on the Hatch door at his weakest moment only for it to miraculously turn on. Which is actually a double-whammy as it turns out that by doing so, he saved Desmond from a suicide attempt.
* HourglassPlot: Jack starts as a [[AgentScully Man of Science]], focused on getting the survivors off the Island, while Locke is a [[AgentMulder Man of Faith]], believing that people aren't supposed to leave the Island BecauseDestinySaysSo. It goes on like this for four Seasons, until the first reversal happens in Season 5: Jack gets off the Island but becomes increasingly depressed and is looking for a way to come back, while Locke is now desperately searching for a way off the Island, believing it to be a necessary step to save everyone. After Jack gets back and Locke is killed, his face assumed by the Man In Black, things get even better: Jack is now a strong believer in Faith determined to stay on the Island, while Fake-Locke is a cynical pragmatist desperately trying to leave it. By the final episodes, the Survivors led by Jack are now trying to stop the BigBad from doing the very same thing they tried to do for most of the series.
* HowWeGotHere: Season 4 and the first half of season 5. On a smaller scale, the episode "316", which starts with a brief {{flashforward}} and then spends the rest of the episode explaining how the characters ended up there.
* HurricaneOfPuns: The names of the tracks on the [=OSTs=] are almost all puns on the characters' names.
* HumansAreBastards: [[spoiler:As it turns out, this is the nature of the conflict between the Man in Black and Jacob. The Man in Black believes the former, while Jacob believes the latter.]]
* HyperventilationBag: Hurley is seen doing this in a parking lot during one of the flashbacks.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: I-L]]
* ICannotSelfTerminate: [[spoiler:Richard due to Jacob's touch. He (Richard, not Jacob) even asks Jack to kill him. Guess what? Jack has something else in mind.]]
** Candidates are incapable of committing suicide. In fact, if Tom is to be believed, ''no one'' who has been to the island can do it, at least until the island is "finished with" them.
* IChooseToStay: Quite a few of them, some of which span [[spoiler:universes]]. Rose and Bernard choose to make a life on the island [[spoiler:because it cured Rose's cancer]]. This is the whole point to Locke's arc, [[CantStayNormal Jack's too in a sense]]. In the finale alone there's three of them: [[spoiler:Hurley and Ben choose to stay on the island to help Jack. After he dies, Hurley and Ben choose to stay behind to be the new Jacob and Richard. Ben also chooses to stay behind in the "in between" Flash-sideways universe rather than move on with everyone else]].
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Such episode titles as [[LostInTranslation "...In Translation"]] and "...And Found."
* IdiotBall: A ''massive'' handling by the remaining A-Team and Boaties, who spent the last few episodes of season 5 formulating and executing a plan that hinged on the small probability that [[spoiler:setting off a nuke would prevent the mysterious "Incident" that happened to the Swan station]]. It wasn't until five minutes before they were to do it that [[DeadpanSnarker Miles]] asked "what if it didn't prevent it; what if it ''caused'' it?" The silent response warranted an exasperated "[[DidntThinkThisThrough I'm glad you all thought this through]]".
* IgnoredConfession: When the Dharma Initiative is interrogating Sayid, he confesses that he is from the future. They don't believe him, however, and only think that they gave him too high a dosage of LSD.
* IJustWantToBeSpecial: Locke's backstory. Ben has a little of this as well.
* ILetGwenStacyDie: Libby in Season Two, and Charlotte in Season Five.
* ILied: Ben Linus's CatchPhrase.
* IllGirl: Shannon is asthmatic, which leads to Sawyer stealing her inhaler or at least letting everyone think he did.
* ImaginaryFriend: Hurley's hallucinatory friend from the mental institute, "Dave", shows up on the Island in one episode. He tries to convince Hurley that the island, not him, is the hallucination, and tries to prove it by [[LampshadeHanging pointing out all the unlikely things that have happened to Hurley since he left the institution]]. He says that if Hurley makes a literal leap of faith by jumping of a cliff, he'll have let go and will be back in reality, the island having disappeared. He is eerily persuasive. However, it gets more complicated when it turns out that Hurley can see and interact with the spirits of the dead, meaning that Institution Dave could very well have been real. Also, the BigBad of the series turned out to be capable of taking on the form of those who had died and trying to lure them to their deaths or otherwise indirectly cause them to die (since he cannot kill candidates himself), thus creating another possibility for the identity of Island Dave.
** Although since candidates cannot kill themselves, one must wonder what would have happened if Hurley had jumped. probably would have washed up on shore barely alive or something...
* ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy: Played straight and subverted at different times. The only time someone from the DHARMA initiative actually managed to shoot someone was when [[spoiler: Roger Linus caught Jack and Sayid by surprise]]. Widmore's team in season 6 doesn't get a chance to shoot at much [[spoiler: that isn't the Man in Black]], but they prove themselves to be decent shots in "The Package". In "The Candidate", [[spoiler: they even manage to shoot Kate in the shoulder.]]
* ImprobableAge: Daniel Faraday may be a super-genius, but it's a bit extreme for him to be ''teaching'' at ''Oxford'' at '''''nineteen years old'''''.
** It's hinted that this is due to extreme meddling from his mother to the point he's pretty much only done physics in his life...
** While still incredibly improbable, this is not ''completely'' impossible. [[RealityIsUnrealistic Erik Demaine, for example, got his PhD in mathematics and joined the MIT faculty at 20 as its youngest member ever.]]
* ImprovisedWeapon : Sayid's dishwasher and Hurley's hot pocket, in season 5.
* InconvenientHippocraticOath: Jack has to save Ben. When pressed for a reason, however, he neglects to mention the oath.
* INeverGotAnyLetters: Walt's anger at Michael is mitigated when he realizes that Michael had, in fact, tried to contact him during his childhood; Walt's mother had hidden Michael's letters.
** In "Live Together, Die Alone," Penny is upset that Desmond never wrote to her when he was in prison, when in reality he did; Charles Widmore had been intercepting all of his letters to make Penny think that Desmond had given up on her.
* InfantImmortality:
** [[WordOfGod Damon Lindelof]] stated that by the end of the series, [[TeamPet Vincent the dog]] will still be alive. Chances are Aaron, Ji Yeon, and little [[spoiler:[[DeadGuyJunior Charlie]]]] will live to the end as well. [[spoiler:It turned out to be true.]]
** Kate seemed to [[EnforcedTrope enforce]] this before heading back to the island. She told Claire's mother the truth about Aaron and left him with her to keep him safe.
* InferredSurvival: As of season 3, this is the game people play with the characters left on the island.
* InfiniteSupplies: Every time the castaways are about to run out of supplies, they find more. Down to eating peanuts? There's boar on the island. Only down to eighteen bottles of water? Jack finds some caves with a waterfall. At one point, food even drops out of the sky.
* InformedJudaism: Sayid is obviously meant to be a Muslim -- he is ''once'' shown praying and recites the shahada at one point when he's been caught in Rousseau's trap -- but he also gets liquored up and fornicates with non-believers.
* InformedAbility: Sayid, the torturer. The only time we are even *informed* that he succesfully tortured someone is in a flashback, and it is almost all offscreen. This among numerous failed attempts.
* InstantBirthJustAddWater: Claire on both the island ''and'' in [[AlternateReality sideways]]. The latter is particularly egregious since Claire goes from contractions to birth [[YouFailBiologyForever within the space of time it takes Charlie to get a towel]]. Partially justified in that [[spoiler:sideways is actually purgatory, so it doesn't need to follow the rules of reality]].
** Not totally impossible. We don't really know how long it took Charlie to get a towel, and it could have been rather hard to locate one. Even if it only took half an hour or so, this troper's birth took just [[RealityIsUnrealistic twenty minutes.]]
* InstantDeathBullet: Sawyer tries to apply this trope in the first season to put a dying man out of his misery. At first it looks like he succeeded but rasping coming from the tent minutes later confirms that Sawyer has sentenced him to hours of an even more painful death.
** Later subverted in a similar fashion with Libby who lives just long enough to be assured that her killer is going to be just fine (and she dies unable to warn Jack.)
** [[spoiler: Later it becomes clear that this subversion happens because of the healing properties of the island.]]
* InterClassRomance: Desmond and Penny, and also Jin and Sun.
* InvoluntaryGroupSplit: Happens when they discover the cave.
* IslandOfMystery: Oh baby. Caves, ancient ruins, castaways, physical anomalies, weird creatures, angry natives, secret research stations, doomsday devices. It's got the lot.
* ItWillNeverCatchOn: Even the showrunners thought this. When Damon Lindelof was pitching the show to ABC in 2004, he was asked where the show would go in the long run. His reply?
--> '''Lindelof:''' We're probably not going to get past episode thirteen. Let's all be honest about that up front.
* IronicEcho:
** In "Dr. Linus"(6x07) after Ben reveals that [[spoiler:Sayid killed Dogen and his interpreter]]:
--> '''Ilana:''' Are you sure?\\
'''Ben: '''He was standing over their dead bodies holding a bloody dagger, so yeah, I'm pretty sure.
** then a few minutes later after Miles reveals that [[spoiler:Ben killed Jacob]]:
--> '''Ilana:''' Are you sure?\\
'''Miles: '''He was standing over [[spoiler:Jacob]]'s dead body with a bloody dagger, so yeah, I'm pretty sure.
* ISeeDeadPeople: Miles (who can only communicate with them) and Hugo.
* ISeeThemToo: Kate and Sawyer go through this in "What Kate Did".
** Also Jack and friends during [[spoiler:Jacob's final talk with them]]. Until then, only Hurley could see him.
** A particularly brutal example, given what immediately follows, is Sayid finally seeing for himself the apparition Shannon had seen.
* IslandHelpMessage: Bernard begins to build one in the episode "S.O.S.," as the title would seem to indicate. [[spoiler:He gives up, because nobody really wants to leave.]]
* IsThatWhatTheyreCallingItNow: Sawyer's reaction to Jack telling him that he and Kate got caught in a net.
** Later:
---> '''Sawyer:''' I screwed her.\\
'''Jack:''' What?\\
'''Sawyer:''' Ana Lucia... we got caught in a net.
* ItCanThink: The Smoke Monster turns out to be one pretty intelligent entity.
* ItsAllMyFault: Exactly what Locke says after Boone dies. Although he is at least partially right, and no one rebuts him save the "Boone" he sees in the sweat lodge vision.
* ItsBeenDone: ''AshesToAshes'' beat ''Lost'' to an [[StrangeMindsThinkAlike eerily similar ending]] by just ''two days''.
** Also arguably [[spoiler: ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'']], which has a much bigger head start. Both shows end with [[spoiler: most major mysteries being disregarded in favor of character analysis in purgatory.]]
* IvyLeagueForEveryone: Jack attended Columbia University.
* {{Jerkass}}:
** Sawyer in season one. Justified a few episodes in, where we learn that he is intentionally playing the part of a JerkAss so people can hate him as part of a deep self-hatred impersonation complex.
** Radzinsky and Phil of the Dharma Initiative.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Sawyer ''after'' season 1. Thank you CharacterDevelopment! By S4, the Jerk may as well be completely removed.
** Though he's still a grand DeadpanSnarker.
* JigsawPuzzlePlot: We still haven't been given half the pieces.
** There's a ''literal'' jigsaw puzzle you can buy that assists in revealing the plot.
* JustEatGilligan: Averted when it comes to the main plot. Things really are a little more complicated than they seem.
** However there would probably be some merit to actually killing Ben in expediting the process a little.
* KarmaHoudini:
** Ben for some. There's the idea that Alex's death more or less absolves him and moves him towards redemption. However, when you think hard about how many people the guy is responsible for killing, including ordering the death of Charlie, being indirectly responsible for Michael's death and almost Jin's and being directly responsible for Locke's murder amongst countless others, its feels like the writers just let him off the hook. Not to mention that he was responsible for those last three ''after'' Alex was killed.
*** And the ending implies that he is more deserving of a happy ending than Michael, despite being ''directly responsible'' for all the bad things Michael did.
** Brian Porter. When confronted by Michael, he basically admits to offering Susan a cushy promotion in order to seduce her, helped her win custody of Walt and turned Michael's life into hell for several years; only to reveal after she died that he ''never'' wanted Walt in the first place and doesn't like being in the same room as him! He then refuses any contact with Walt, even though as Michael angrily points out, he's been the only father Walt's ever known! Sure, Brian has just lost the love of his life, but so did Michael, [[TraumaCongaLine in addition to]] losing his son and getting hit by a freaking ''car!''
* KickTheDog:
** In one interview Damon and Carlton said [[spoiler: killing Sayid, Jin and Sun]] was meant to make fans angry at the Man in Black and remove all suspicions of him not being evil.
** Keamy killing [[spoiler: Alex]] in season 4 also counts.
* KillEmAll: [[spoiler:The beginning of season 5]] saw to it that [[spoiler:any survivor of Oceanic 815 who wasn't in the least bit important]] was killed [[spoiler:by fiery arrows]]. AnyOneCanDie indeed.
** Also happened to [[spoiler:the Dharma Initiative]] in "The Man Behind the Curtain".
** And to [[spoiler:The Others]] in "Sundown".
** "The Candidate" includes the deaths of [[spoiler:Sayid, Sun, Jin, and a large number of Widmore's employees.]]
** The series ends with [[spoiler: most major characters united in the afterlife]].
* KilledMidSentence: Boone, [[RedShirt Arzt]], [[NeckSnap Nathan]], Frogurt and [[spoiler:Ilana]].
%%* KilledOffForReal: Many, ''many'' people.
* KillHimAlready: In early season four, when Locke's group has Ben captive, Sawyer thinks they should do this to him.
* KillItWithFire: Kate did it to [[spoiler: her own father]].
** The Man in Black dealt a finishing blow to [[spoiler: Jacob]] by kicking him into a fire pit.
%%* KnifeNut: Locke
* KnightTemplarParent: Parodied with Ben in "Through the Looking Glass", when Alex refers to Ben locking up Karl and trying to brainwash him:
-->''"I didn't want him to get you pregnant. I guess I overreacted."''
** Keep in mind that women who get pregnant on the island and don't get off after a few months ''die''.
* KudzuPlot: The whole show, inside and out. There may be no better example. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by Mother with the most infuriating line in the whole show: "Every question I answer will simply lead to another question. You should rest. Just be grateful you're alive."
* LampshadeHanging:
** In "the New Man in Charge," Ben tells the guys at the DHARMA packing plant that he's there "to tie up a few loose ends," which is exactly what the epilogue did.
** In "Exodus Part 2", Artz says: "You know, you people think you're the only ones on this island doing anything of value. I got news for you -- there are 40 other survivors of this planecrash" seems to lampshade the fact despite the large number of survivors in the first season, only about a quarter are given any development.
* LandDownUnder: The show's portrayal of Australia is laughably inaccurate, mainly appealing to stereotypes.
** Claire's mum. You'd swear she's on the verge of saying "Dingoes stole moi baybee" every other word.
* LandMineGoesClick: Happens every time someone activates one of Rousseau's traps.
* LaserGuidedKarma: Ben in the season 3 finale. ''Every single one'' of his plans end up failing because of his previous evil deeds. [[spoiler:His mistreat of Juliet and Alex give them the motivation to betray him and tell the survivors of the incoming attack, which allows them to properly defend. Ben's murder of his father and his posterior refusal to allow Richard to give his father a proper sepulture provide Hurley with the van that ends up crucial to kill the last attackers. Ordering Mikhail [[BadBoss to kill the Looking Glass guards]] gives Desmond the chance to free Charlie, and the dying guards the motivation to give Charlie the code. Finally, Ben's [[ConsummateLiar tendency to lie]] means nobody believes his warning about the freighter, even though it's later revealed he was [[CryingWolf actually telling the truth for once]].]]
* LastKiss / NowOrNeverKiss: [[spoiler: Jack and Kate have this in "The End".]]
* LastMinuteBabyNaming: Clare doesn't name her baby "Aaron" until after he's born, resulting in a "whodat" reaction from Charlie after she uses the name for the first time.
* LastSupperSteal: [[http://cache.io9.com/assets/images/8/2012/01/ccfc440e9c0fc08e95e83264be9f7117.jpg The promotional image from season 6]], [[IncrediblyLamePun The Lost Supper]]. With two symbolic positions: like Thomas, Jack doubted Locke many times [[spoiler:and continued to doubt the guy who Terry O'Quinn is playing there]], and Sayid is on the same spot as Judas [[spoiler:when after joining the Man in Black he gives up on him.]]
* LetsYouAndHimFight: One of the big reveals near the end of the series was that the Smoke Monster, being prevented from killing Jacob's candidates himself, was manipulating them into killing each other all along: Survivors, the Others, DHARMA folk and everyone else - and while many attempts failed, enough have succeeded.
* LettingHerHairDown: Ana-Lucia goes back and forth in the second season.
* LeyLine: The island moves along ley lines. Interestingly, there is in fact a ley node in Tunisia. Ley node number [[ArcNumber 4]] actually corresponds with one of the possible locations of the Island.
* LighthousePoint: One on the island contains a clock that can spy on people.
* LivingProp: Show made a great effort of keeping the background cast consistent throughout the years. While some faces inevitably came and went, many people kept appearing among the crash survivors for 5 or 6 seasons without any impact on the plot whatsoever. In addition, background cast of more seldom appearing groups (The Others, The Tailies, The Ajira folk) remained consistent as well, people were called over season-long gaps to reprise their brief non-speaking roles.
* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: It helps fuel AnyoneCanDie.
%%* LoanShark: [[spoiler:Flash-sideways Keamy.]]
* LoveMakesYouDumb: Ofter occurs in the Jack/Kate/Sawyer LoveTriangle.
%%* LoveMakesYouEvil: [[spoiler:Sayid in "Sundown".]]
* LoveTriangle: The one involving Jack, Kate and Sawyer has been played throughout all seasons with an insufferable, obnoxious insistence.
** The addition of Juliet to the mix makes things [[LoveDodecahedron slightly more interesting]].
* LoveTranscendsSpacetime: Trope Codifier (together with the movie Sliding Doors). Several of the characters do this a lot in season six.
* LukeIAmYourFather: We eventually learn that [[spoiler:Claire]] is Jack's half-sister.
** In season five, Faraday's parents are revealed to be [[spoiler: Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore]].
** [[spoiler:Pierre Chang (the orientation video guy)]] is Miles's father.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: M-P]]
%%* MadeOfEvil: [[spoiler:The Man In Black.]]
* MafiaPrincess: Sun, though she does not really approve of it. Her [[CorruptCorporateExecutive father]] believed that she [[ObfuscatingStupidity was unaware]] of her status as this trope until she [[spoiler:threatened to stop pretending unless he helped out Jin]]. But in the long run, [[spoiler:Sun's threat doesn't actually help either of them]].
* MamaBear: Claire, Kate, Rousseau, Sun, and Eloise. Eloise Hawking was so gung-ho into this trope that [[spoiler:she shot and killed her own son, while she was pregnant with him]], and yes it makes perfect sense in context.
** Actually quite subverted in the case of Eloise Hawking. While she did love her son she [[spoiler:remained distant from him for his whole life since she knew his destiny was to be killed by her]].
* TheManBehindTheMan: Jacob to the Others and Charles Widmore to the people on the freighter.
* MatryoshkaObject: Howard L. Zukerman keeps diamonds a nested doll in the episode "Exposé".
* MauveShirt: Rose and Bernard. [[spoiler: They actually make it through the whole series]].
** Similarly, flight attendent Cindy Chandler [[spoiler: whose fate is unknown after the mortar attack on the Others following the Man in Black. It is implied she and other Others survived and scattered into the jungle]].
* MeanCharacterNiceActor: Michael Emerson (Ben Linus) is [[http://io9.com/5246218/emerson-explains-why-ben-is-such-a-punching-bag an affable, intelligent and mild-mannered fellow]] who couldn't be nicer to ''Series/{{Lost}}'' fans and generally provides good hints and insights that help answer [[JigsawPuzzlePlot the show's mysteries.]] [[ManipulativeBastard His character,]] on the other hand...
** He once described how if people see him in public, conversation will sometimes drop off suddenly. He'll then do something non-threatening, like a small wave, which people will possibly read as even more threatening. Because he's [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder Ben Linus.]]
* MeaningfulName: Apart from those characters named after historical figures and philosophers, we have Ethan Rom, which is an anagram for "Other man."
** Applied strangely in the case of the spiritual, faith-obsessed John Locke, who seems like the polar opposite of his empiricist namesake.
** A boon is a blessing, a favor or a gift. Locke tells Jack that Boon(e) was a sacrifice that the Island demanded.
** Sawyer is a con-man, not unlike a certain [[Literature/TheAdventuresOfTomSawyer lovable scamp]]. Lampshaded in that Sawyer took that name from [[spoiler:Anthony Cooper, who himself took it from the fictional Tom Sawyer.]]
** Religious: Also Jack Shephard and his father Christian. Benjamin was the youngest son of Jacob. Aaron's name means "light bringer". Christian's name was lampshaded in "The End".
---> '''Kate:''' Who died?\\
'''Desmond:''' A man named Christian Shephard.\\
'''Kate:''' [''Chuckling''] Christian Shephard? Seriously?\\
'''Desmond:''' Seriously.
*** Another religious reference: the biblical Jacob had long-lasting rivalry with his twin brother, Esau - who he screwed out of basically everything...
*** More on Jacob and Esau: Esau was born first, and Jacob was born holding Esau's ankle. [[spoiler: Where does Jacob reside? In the (literal) foot of the statue...]] Also, Jacob and Esau's mother was told that her children would "fight all their lives."
*** Not to mention when Locke's mother goes into labor while shouting "His name is John!" (Luke 1:59-63)
** Penelope is [[IWillWaitForYou the faithful wife of Odysseus]]. Also the proverb: A (bad) penny is sure to return (with "bad" not really being applicable).
* MeanwhileInTheFuture: Done when Desmond (and, by Season 5, the whole island) gets unstuck in time. Averted in name with title cards stating "Thirty years later" (and earlier).
* MentalTimeTravel: Happens if you encounter a large blast of radiation or electromagnetism on or near the island.
* MessageInABottle: Attempted and failed... or was it?
* MessianicArchetype: Locke seems to definitely fit this role. A whole race of people awaiting his arrival? Suffering a lot and eventually dying to save everyone? Having a resurrection?
** Very obvious in the apartment scene in "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham", when Locke has his right hand extended in a christlike gesture of benediction, and Ben kneels down before him.
** Cruelly subverted in season five when [[spoiler:it is revealed Locke was never brought back to life at all.]]
%%* MetaTwist: The season 3 final episode.
* MindScrew: Lots of it.
** Probably the first hint of serious MindScrew in the series turns up in season 1 episode 17, in a flashback sequence featuring Jin. He is supposed to work as a hit man for Sun`s father, and while visiting the Korean minister of environmental issues, we see the minister`s daughter watching TV. In a short sequence, we see that the man on the TV show is ''Hurley'', wearing the same T-shirt he frequently wears on the island. So are this girl watching ''Lost'' [[MindScrew in a flashback before the series` actual time frame began]]?
** And personified by Eloise Hawking. She's like [[Film/TheMatrix The Architect.]] If that woman shows up on screen, go for the Panadol, 'cause you're gonna need it.
* MisplacedWildlife: Season 3 reveals that most of these are escaped DHARMA experiments from 12 years before the crash.
* MonochromeCasting: Notably averted; characters are of various continents and various races. There, is however, a noticeable lack of Jews throughout the series, which is especially {{egregious}} considering that most of the Island's mythology seems to be based on stories from the Old Testament.
** Ilana Verdansky's name strongly suggests that she's an Ashkenazi Jew or Israeli (possibly Russian-Israeli), also displaying some BadassIsraeli characteristics.
** Frank Lapidus has a Hebrew last name, and Naomi Dorrit's name is made of two Hebrew first names.
* MonsterMunch: The Pilot gets killed by The Monster right after he is seen. The only other thing he does that's important is always wear a ring, and that only briefly comes up in Season 4.
* MonumentalView: Boone had a hotel room impressively built in the middle of Sydney Harbor, judging from his view.
* MoralDissonance: Kate (a fugitive murderer, [[spoiler:she had a good reason]]) lecturing Locke about love, while at the same time refusing to go and help one guy who ''does'' love her (Sawyer) and the real mother of her adoptive son (Claire) - plus all the other survivors, of course.
%%* MoralityKitchenSink
%%* MorningRoutine: The first episode of the second season starts with one.
* MortalityEnsues: The final episode implies that Richard Alpert has lost his immortality, [[WhoWantsToLiveForever which he considers a very good thing]].
* MrFanservice: Sawyer, Jack, Sayid, Desmond, Jin, Locke for the older set. Ben, if only for his voice.
* MsFanservice: Bikini-clad Shannon in season 1. Kate was often in her underwear and averaged one bathing scene a season. Also Sun in season 1.
* MultilayerFacade: Ben pretends to be the victim of a group of savages. He's actually the leader of this group of savages, which doesn't exist except as a front for an AncientConspiracy. [[spoiler:However, Ben is not in control: Indeed he is the leader of this AncientConspiracy, but the conspiracy itself is ''also'' a front for something else, something which Ben cannot even reach, much less control.]]
%%* MurderByCremation: Burn, [[spoiler:Jacob]], burn.
* MyEyesAreUpHere: Kate in "Catch-22" when Sawyer walks in on her getting dressed in her tent.
* MysteriousPast: All the characters, at first. Some of them still have unanswered questions.
* MyGreatestFailure: [[spoiler:Jacob admits that his biggest mistake was turning the Man in Black into a great honkin' smoke monster. He's literally spent hundreds (possibly thousands) of years trying to fix this mistake.]]
* MyLifeFlashedBeforeMyEyes: interesting variation - not only do the flashes triggered by a near-death experience ''continue'' after the event is over, they actually are a combination of premonitions and MentalTimeTravel. This trope is used by Desmond to describe the weird things happening to him.
-->'''Desmond:''' "When I turned that key my life flashed before my eyes. And then I was back in the jungle and still on this bloody island. But those flashes, Charlie - those flashes - they didn't stop."
* MysteryCult: The Others.
* NeverFoundTheBody: The justification for the return of Jin after the boat explodes is that he was thrown clear of the blast.
** The fate of [[spoiler:Frank Lapidus, who was presumed dead after "The Candidate" although his body wasn't shown, and Richard Alpert, who is thrown into the jungle by the Man in Black and not seen again for the rest of the episode. They later turn up in the finale.]]
* NeverWasThisUniverse: The FlashSideways to the show's main timeline. It was first shown to the viewers following The Incident in 1977 which was implied to be the reason for timeline divergence. Later episodes however revealed that small differences between two timelines existed even before that date. [[spoiler:In the end, the mainstream world was revealed to be a StableTimeLoop and the FlashSideways was in fact the Nextlife/Afterlife all along.]]
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: [[spoiler:Turns out Jacob turned his brother into the invincible killing machine that is the Smoke Monster. Sure would have been easier to keep him on the island as a human.]]
* TheNicknamer: Sawyer, of course.
* NitroExpress: The protagonists find dynamite in the wreck of an old ship and need to transport it through the jungle to blast their way through an obstacle. It is very old and sweating nitroglycerin. They use it on multiple occasions throughout the series and [[spoiler: two times one them is accidentally killed when it blows up]]
* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: Ben's ''brutal'' savaging of Keamy, not to mention his unbridled rage at the man for killing his daughter, and also being one of the few times where Ben shows genuine emotion, possibly from watching Jack in season 3's finale. And after [[spoiler:Shannon's death]], the scene where an enraged Sayid shows off that Republican Guard hand-to-hand training and just ''mows'' through several Tailies trying to get to (and from the look on his face, kill) Ana-Lucia. Then there was Locke beating the snot out of ButtMonkey Mikhail. And Jack and Sawyer in the Season 5 finale. It was pretty even until the GroinAttack.
** No one delivers beatdowns harsher than ol' Smokey himself. Specific example is [[spoiler:Mr. Eko]]'s death via tree-smashing, or when he responds to Richard attempting to talk to him by [[spoiler:flinging him into the jungle so hard that if he wasn't immortal at the time, he'd probably be dead]].
** Ben gets beat up so often and so savagely and by such a varied group of people that they hang lampshades on it. In "What They Died For", it's even [[spoiler: what's used to trigger his memories of the real world.]]
* NoMrBondIExpectYouToDine: Ben treats Kate to a pleasant breakfast on the beach, explaining that he wanted to give her something nice to remember, as "the next few weeks are going to be very unpleasant".
* NoNameGiven: [[spoiler:Jacob's nemesis. He may in fact be ''literally'' nameless -- his birth mother died before she was able to name him.]]
* NoodleIncident: The "Incident" at the Swan. [[spoiler:Until the end of Season 5.]]
** Others include Sayid's "Basra Incident" and Sawyer's "Tampa Job".
** And the story, which Hurley is so very reluctant to tell, of how he acquired his nickname. One can guess as to what it obviously might have involved, but not at the unglimpsed hilarious particulars.
* NoPeriodsPeriod: For the most part ''Lost'' adheres to this trope, rather than even attempt to deal with the inconvenience of twenty or so women of childbearing age trapped on a desert island with no feminine supplies. However, in Season 4's "Eggtown", Kate, who's been worried that she might be pregnant is suddenly ''certain'' she isn't, ''and'' it's mentioned that she and Sawyer abstained the night before.
** When Claire finds out she is pregnant, she mentions that she is "late".
* NostalgiaHeaven: When Eko dies; also [[spoiler: the end of the entire series.]]
* TheNotableNumeral: The Oceanic Six.
* NotBloodSiblings: Boone and Shannon.
* NotSoSmallRole: For their first appearance, Mark Pellegrino and Titus Welliver were credited as playing "Man #1" and "Man #2". Turned out, they in fact portrayed Jacob and his nemesis, aka "The Smoke Monster" - two cornerstone mythology figures of the show.
* NotSoStoic: Juliet multiple times, but particularly in the webisode "The Envelope" after [[spoiler: finding out Ben has cancer and that her sister may still be dying; as in if Jacob can't sure Ben's cancer, then he can't cure her sister]]'s.
--> '''Juliet:''' It's just... complicated.\\
'''Amelia:''' Complicated doesn't make you cry.\\
'''Juliet:''' I burned my hand.\\
'''Amelia:''' That doesn't make you cry either.
* NoTimeToExplain: Multiple key players who may or may not know some or all of the answers to the mysteries (Rousseau, Ben, Eloise Hawking, Dogen, Jacob, Man in Black)
* NotQuiteDead: Charlie's DisneyDeath in season one, Locke in season three. Both stretched credibility, Charlie moreso. Jin's probably now outdone both. However, as far as credibility goes, it's most likely the Island's healing properties.
* NotHimself: Every single "dead person" who's been seen on the island, including [[spoiler:Locke]] has actually been [[BigBad The Monster/Man in Black]] assuming their form, with the exception of the ghosts that only Hurley can see.
** Finally subverted near the end of the series when [[spoiler:the remaining candidates see Jacob's ghost]]
* NotSoOmniscientAfterAll: Ben, in later seasons.
* OceanicAirlines: An Oceanic plane crash kicks the story off.
* OedipusComplex: [[http://www.lostpedia.com/wiki/Parent_issues Every. Single. Friggin'. One of 'em]]! Lampshaded with the season one episode title, "All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues".
** Mother issues also begin to emerge in season five. In the season 6 episode "Recon," [[spoiler:even ''the smoke monster'']] admits that he got some mommy issues on his own because she was crazy. Later in the season we learn that [[spoiler: problems with his adoptive mother ultimately led to him and his twin brother Jacob drifting apart, and the latter throwing him into the Island's heart, transforming him into the Smoke Monster.]]
* OffscreenTeleportation: There are a lot of scenes were characters wake up in a different location without it really addressed how they got there. It's vaguely insinuated that the Island's energy is teleporting them around the place.
* OhCrap: Kate's face after seeing the Resurrected "Locke" for the first time, after seeing the Temple massacre.
** Jack's face when Ben shows him that the Red Sox did indeed win the World Series.
** Ben Linus' reaction when Locke tells him about the "Code 14J" alert in "The Shape of Things to Come".
* OlderThanTheyLook: Richard Alpert. Part of why he's so damn creepy. Likewise with [[spoiler:Jacob and his rival.]]
** As of the SeriesFinale, "The End", he has [[spoiler:his first gray hair. Guess now that Jacob's dead, he's aging again.]]
* TheOmniscient: Jacob and his rival. In earlier seasons, Ben seems to be this.
* OnceASeason: Every season finale features StuffBlowingUp and/or a HeroicSacrifice.
** In the first season [[spoiler:poor Doc Arzt blows himself up while "heroically" lecturing the A-Team on dynamite safety. Later in the episode, Jack, Locke, Kate, and Hurley use the dynamite to blow open the hatch door]].
** In Season 2 [[spoiler:Desmond turns the failsafe key, releasing a large amount of electromagnetic energy and causing the Swan station to implode. He believed that he was making a HeroicSacrifice but survived.]]
** In Season 3 [[spoiler:Charlie almost manages to subvert his prophesied heroic sacrifice in the Looking Glass, only for Mikhail to show up and grenade his ass. But not before he gets to reveal to Desmond that it's NOT PENNY'S BOAT.]]
** In Season 4 [[spoiler:we have the long-suicidal Michael stay behind on the freighter to delay Keamy's DeadManTrigger. When Michael runs out of liquid nitrogen, Christian Shephard appears and says "You can go now, Michael." KABOOM. Jin was okay though. Earlier in the episode, there's another non-explosive HeroicSacrifice when Sawyer jumps out of the helicopter, giving up a chance to get off the island in order to ensure that everyone else on the helicopter can]].
** In Season 5 [[spoiler:the very last shot we see is of Juliet repeatedly BANGING A HYDROGEN BOMB WITH A ROCK in order to prevent "The Incident", and by extension, the plane crash that kicked the whole series off. She appears to successfully detonate it, and the screen goes bright white, only for her to be alive and in the present in the Season 6 premiere and then die later that same episode from injuries unrelated to hydrogen bombs.]]
** Season 6's seems to come early when [[spoiler:Sayid pulls a HeroicSacrifice and takes the bomb that Flocke put in Jack's bag away from the others before it explodes, saving everyone in the submarine... for the moment]].
** Not to be outdone, the SeriesFinale "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin The End]]" ends with an Heroic Sacrific of epic proportions, which manages to BookEnd the entire series. [[spoiler:After Desmond pulls out [[CosmicKeystone the island]]'s CosmicKeystone (and yes, the island's a CosmicKeystone with its own CosmicKeystone), the island begins to sink. Jack, after preventing un-Locke from getting on his boat, goes to put it back in. Down in the heart of the island, Desmond tells him that he (Jack) should let him (Desmond) put the keystone back in, since he's the only one that can survive the EM radiation. Jack tells Desmond to go home, to his wife and son, and then carries him to the mouth of the cave. Jack puts the keystone back in, saving the island, but taking a fatal dose of radiation in the process. The series ends with Jack walking through the jungle, until he finally collapses in the bamboo forest, with the final shot being [[BookEnds a close-up of his eye closing]].]]
* OnceMoreWithClarity: At the end of "Flashes Before Your Eyes."
* OneDegreeOfSeparation: Pretty much everyone has encountered everyone else [[http://www.lostpedia.com/wiki/Connections in some way before the crash]].
** Practically ''invoked'' in season 6's flash-sideways universe [[spoiler:given that it was the afterlife]].
* OneEyedShot: Many episodes often begin with a closeup shot of one of the cast member's eye opening, which usually belongs to the central character of that said episode.
* OneSteveLimit: There will always be only one Jack, one John, and one Kate.
** There are some technical exceptions, such as Charlie Pace and Charles Widmore, but when Charles Widmore is not on a FullNameBasis he is on a LastNameBasis, and he wasn't a player on the island until ''right'' after Charlie's death. As for Charlie Hume, Desmond and Penny's son, [[DeadGuyJunior he wasn't born until after Charlie Pace died]].
** And some other exceptions, but of the same sort. For instance, there are two seemingly unrelated characters named Lennon but one of them appears in one scene in an earlier season and the other is a much more major character from season six.
** Probably the biggest one in the series is the two Charlottes: Charlotte Malkin (a one-episode character from the flashbacks) and Charlotte Lewis (a series regular from season 4-early season 5)
** Emily Locke and Emily Linus, too.
** There are two background characters named Steve - Steve Jenkins (of "Scott and Steve") and an engaged man who died with his fiancee in the crash.
** There are several Davids or Daves. Hurley friend from the asylum, Hurley's father, Jack's 'son', Sawyer's con target and Libby's husband.
** There are several characters called Tom or Thomas: Tom Friendly, one of the Others; Tom Brennan, Kate's childhood sweetheart who owned the toy plane; and Thomas, Claire's ex-boyfriend and Aaron's father. Tom was also the fake name Ana Lucia gave to Christian Shepherd when they met in Two For The Road.
* OntologicalMystery
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Sawyer and Hurley for a while.
---> '''Sawyer:''' Who the hell is Hugo Reyes and why has he got 160 million dollars?
** It took a while for people to stop calling Ben "Henry", as well.
* OnlyOneName: Eko and Yemi.
* OoCIsSeriousBusiness: Whenever Sawyer calls someone by their real name rather than one of his trademark nicknames.
* OohMeAccentsSlipping: Evangeline Lily betrays her Canadian upbringing whenever she says something that rhymes with "out." And every time she says "sorey." Naveen Andrews occasionally slips into his native British accent as well, particularly during more emotional scenes.
* OpenHeartDentistry: Averted, for the most part. Juliet's a doctor, but she's a fertility doctor; she can't [[spoiler:perform Ben's spinal surgery, and she can't save Colleen from a gunshot wound]]. She does manage to take out Jack's appendix though, with Bernard (an actual dentist) assisting.
* OperationGameOfDoom: The Black Rock dynamite qualifies. And a guy gets blown up to show it's really serious. Not that that stops Locke fooling about and lampshading the trope.
%%* OracularUrchin: Walt, maybe.
* OutOfFocus: '''So, so much.'''
** Henry Ian Cusick is listed as a main cast member for season 6. At the ten-episode mark, how much screen time did he have, collectively? Approximately one minute. It was apparently done to make his return an actual surprise by making viewers wonder when Desmond would finally return.
*** This is probably because in season four, the first eight episodes (the only ones completed before the Writer's Strike caused hiatus) credited [[spoiler: Harold Perrineau Jr.]] So when "Meet Kevin Johnson', the last episode before the hiatus, aired, no one was the least bit surprised that [[spoiler:Michael was Kevin Johnson]].
** Did you know that Jeff Fahey (Frank Lapidus) is a main cast member in Season 6? Neither did the writers, apparently.
* OutOfGenreExperience: very prominent. The show's use of flashbacks, flashforwards [[spoiler: and FlashSideways]] allowed the writers to dabble in other genres regularly:
** Jack's flashbacks are full-blown medical drama.
** Ana Lucia's flashbacks become a cop/crime drama.
** Kate's flashbacks feature a fugitive drama.
** Nikki and Paulo became a one-time relationship comedy. Or rather, tragicomedy.
** Ben and Sayid had a ''Film/JamesBond''/''Franchise/DieHard'' episode.
** Desmond's episodes had him involved in a MentalTimeTravel back when other characters would dismiss the thought of that nonsense outright.
** And some consider the Sun/Jin flashbacks to be a full-fledged SoapOpera.
** The FlashSideways frequently switch genre. Flash-sideways Locke appears to be in some sort of dramedy about coping with his disability, Ben's are a drama set in a high school (yes, a ''canon'' HighSchoolAU), Sawyer and Miles are in a buddy cop movie...
* {{Oxbridge}}: Oxford University is where Daniel does his research whilst a professor of Queens College ("The Constant").
** Charlotte also received her doctorate there ("Confirmed Dead").
* OurTimeMachineIsDifferent: [[spoiler:The whole freaking island...]]
* PacManFever: Literal example. In one episode Walt is playing a modern overhead shooter on a modern handheld system like a DS or PSP and you hear the sounds of the original Pac-Man on it.
** It's a GameBoy Advance SP.
*** Which the writers clearly knew nothing about because Walt mentions needing new batteries when the SP is, in fact, a chargeable device, not one where you replace the batteries.
* PairTheSpares: [[spoiler:Sawyer and Juliet]] in season 5, after [[spoiler:Jack and Kate leave the Island]]. It's a testament to [[spoiler:Josh Holloway and Elizabeth Mitchell]]'s acting ability that they're able to make their ship rather more appealing than the OfficialCouple's.
** [[spoiler: Their relationship also had much more depth, and from their POV, much longer to develop. We might have seen Sawyer and Kate off and on together for 3 years, but that was only a few months to them. With Juliet he had over 3 years. Also, the finale gives them OTP status by showing them together in the afterlife, and Kate with Jack.]]
* PapaWolf: Given the ubiquity of "[[FreudianExcuse daddy issues]]" on this show, very few fathers on ''Lost'' would go out of their way to protect their children. That said, Ben Linus would like to have a few words with you on the matter. Michael also goes all-out for the sake of '''''WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALT!''''' Speaking of Ben, why don't you ask him how Desmond reacts when his wife and child are threatened?
** A variation with Charlie for Aaron. He's not Aaron's father, but he's the only father figure he's ever had, and Charlie is very protective over Aaron and Claire.
* ParentalSubstitute: After [[spoiler:Claire fails to escape the island with them]], Kate ends up adopting her son.
* PercussivePrevention:
** Charlie prevents Desmond from taking his place drowning at The Looking Glass by smashing him in the face with an oar.
** In season 5, [[spoiler:Richard Alpert]] does this to [[spoiler:Eloise Hawking]] when she tries to follow Jack and Sayid on their way to [[spoiler:nuke The Swan]].
** Locke to Boone in season one to help him get over Shannon.
** Sun to Ben (with an oar) in season five.
** Locke to Sayid while he was trying to triangulate the distress signal in season 1.
* PermaShave: Locke's baldness.
* PermaStubble: Almost all the guys. They used salvaged razors to keep from growing full beards.
* PersonAsVerb:
--> '''Hurley:''' ...You just totally ScoobyDoo-ed me, didn't you?
* PhraseCatcher: ''[[http://www.lostpedia.com/wiki/Phrases Tons]]'' of phrases repeated by various characters. Each phrase is a motif all its own.
* PhysicsGoof: The completely impossible behavior of the water in the season three finale.
** Also, the completely impossible idea that when an entire island is removed from water (as in the season four finale), it would leave a few small ripples instead of a giant void, most likely resulting in huge numbers of tidal waves, etc.
** How did a wooden ship crash into a massive stone statue, causing the statue to break almost entirely apart but the boat to suffer only minimal damage?
%%* PlaceBeyondTime: The FlashSideways.
* ThePlan: Ben pulls out many different Gambits.
-->'''Ben''': How many times do I have to tell you, John ?! I ''always'' have a plan.
* PleaseShootTheMessenger: Jin and Sun travel to the United States to deliver a large sum of cash to a business associate of Sun's father. The associate, Keamy, reveals that the money is Keamy's fee for killing Jin.
* PlotArmor: Actually exists in-universe: [[spoiler:anyone chosen/touched by Jacob seems to be unable to die until Jacob gives the OK.]] This applies to a number of the main characters.
* PlotSensitiveLatch:
** Sawyer uses one repeatedly and deliberately, to the point of lampshading when we encounter an alternate universe where he's a cop.
** Hurley's suitcase bursts open as he runs to his flight along with many other mishaps, only to miss it and be forced to rebook... on flight 815.
%%* PolarOppositeTwins: [[spoiler:Jacob and the Smoke Monster]].
* PoorCommunicationKills: Oh, if only people learned to mention some of those regularly-occurring {{BLAM}}s...
* PosthumousCharacter: A lot of people show up after death, whether by flashback, some {{Mind Screw}}y vision or time travel. Special mention of course goes to Jack's dad who was already dead before the show started, and to the whole Dharma crew, who were [[spoiler:almost]] ALL dead ''twelve years'' before the beginning.
** The most straightforward type are those characters who were dead before the series even began but have since turned up in Flashbacks. Then there's Jack's [[spoiler: and Claire]]'s dad, Christian, whose dead body Jack was bringing home on Flight 815, but who turned up in numerous episodes throughout all six seasons, whether in flashbacks, in dreams, as a ghost, or a DeadPersonImpersonation.
*** Other such characters would include: [[spoiler: Susan Lloyd, Frank Duckett, Essam Tasir, Tom Brennan, Jae Lee, Yemi, Angelo Busoni, Kelvin, Emeka, Edward Burke, Tricia Tanaka, Howard L. Zuckerman, Roger Linus, Horace Goodspeed, Emily Linus, Jonas Whitfield, Isabella, [[NoNameGiven "Mother"]], and Claudia.]]
*** Subverted in the case of [[spoiler: Kate's mom, Diane.]] In [[spoiler: her]] first flashback [[spoiler: she already has a terminal disease. She]] then appears in several other flashbacks that all clearly take place sometime before the first one. But in a FlashForward we discover [[spoiler: she's still alive. "The doctors have given me a year to live for the past 4 years."]]
** Another unique type are among the Tailies. They would've been alive at the start of the series, but are dead by the time any MainCharacter meets the Tailies, such as Goodwin, who debuted as a corpse, then went on to guest star in 4 episodes after that, each one in a flashback taking place earlier than the one before it. The only other dead Tailies named are Donald and [[spoiler: Nathan]].
** Then there are those characters who died soon after their debuts only to appear in more episodes ''after'' they died than they ever did while they were alive. The most famous example is Ethan Rom, killed in his fourth episode, then appeared in eight more episodes after that. Other examples include:
*** U.S. marshall Edward Mars (killed in his third episode, appeared in six more after that).
*** Leslie Arzt (killed in his third episode, appeared in four more later).
*** Jacob, killed in the very first episode he was played by a professional actor. The actor went on to play Jacob in five more episodes.
** Beginning with the first FlashForward in the thrid SeasonFinale, we had plenty of characters who were still alive in the main timeline, but were dead by the time of the flashforwards. And since the first flashforward shown is actually one of the last in chronology, this would also include people who were killed in the flashforwardss. The first is [[spoiler: John Locke]], whose body is in a closed coffin in that third season finale. It's not till the fourth season finale that the coffin is opened, revealing it's [[spoiler: Locke]], and not till midway through the fifth season are we shown how he ended up there.
*** Other characters who died during this period include: [[spoiler: [[OneSteveLimit Diane of the Others,]] Greta, Bonnie, Ryan Price, [[OneSteveLimit Tom Friendly]], Mikhail, Charlie, Naomi, George Minktowski, Regina, Karl, Rousseau, Alex, Ray, Captain Gault, Omar, Keamy, Michael, Neil, [[RedShirtArmy apparently every single remaining survivor of Flight 815 who was neither a]] MainCharacter nor [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse an abducted Tailie]], Charlotte, Nadia, Ishmail Bakir, Mr. Avellino, Elsa, and Abaddon.]] So yeah, a few people died during this period.]] [[BlatantLies Just a few.]]
** During the fifth season, the Losties [[TimeTravel traveled back in time]], meeting characters we already knew were dead by the present. Examples include Stuart Radzinsky, a character we had heard about as having [[DrivenToSuicide committed sucide]] but whom we'd never seen till now, Rousseau and her entire expedition, and members of the Dharma Initiative, many of whom will be killed in the Purge, and [[spoiler: Phil]], a DI member who ends up dying [[spoiler: long before the Purge, as a direct result of the Losties' actions.]]
** And finally, there's the flash-sideways where is [[spoiler: [[EverybodysDeadDave everyone.]] The flash-sideways is the afterlife and "takes place" after everyone shown in it has died.]]
* PowderTrail: Used to open the hatch.
* PreemptiveApology:
--> '''Michael:''' I'm sorry.
--> '''Ana Lucia:''' For what?
-->[''Michael shoots Ana Lucia'']
* PreMortemOneLiner: "I saved you a bullet!"
** Averted with [[spoiler: Man In Black himself]]: "I want you to know,[[spoiler: Jack]]...You died for nothing." ([[spoiler: He actually died but much later and [[HeroicSacrifice with purpose]]]].)
* PrisonerExchange: This is Jack's plan for getting Walt back after he is kidnapped by the Others, lampshaded by Sawyer as "the old PrisonerExchange". Unfortunately, it doesn't go according to plan.
* ProsceniumReveal: Nikki's first flashback features a proscenium reveal. Nikki is shown pole dancing in a club, then having a confrontation with her boss. The boss shoots her, and the director yells, "Cut!", revealing that Nikki an actress working on a show about strippers who fight crime. The original plan was to have the entire ''episode'' revolve around this ShowWithinAShow, with the proscenium reveal coming at the end. This plan was scrapped when Nikki and Paulo proved wildly unpopular.
* PromotionToOpeningTitles: The show's cup runneth over with Ben Linus, Desmond Hume, Richard Alpert, Ilana Verdansky and Frank Lapidus.
** The opening credits coming back from the first commercial break usually don't end until 10 minutes past the hour thanks to the [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters cast of relevant thousands.]]
** Played to infinity in the series finale, as every returning cast member and nearly every guest star who ever mattered got bumped to starring status.
* PsychicNosebleed: Appears in one episode of season four, and repeatedly during the first half of season five, all related to the effects of time travel.
* PsychoForHire: The mercenaries in season four, especially their leader, Keamy.
* PsychosomaticSuperpowerOutage: Locke loses his Island-restored ability to walk after an incident of self-doubt.
* PsychoticSmirk: Keamy's creepy grin/mouth twitch. For a good guy, John Locke does flash a lot of those. [[spoiler:Even moreso once he's replaced by [[BigBad the Man in Black]].]]
* ThePublicDomainChannel: While a prisoner of the Others, Jack watches Heckle and Jeckle cartoons on a TV set they provide.
* ThePurge: The name given to the toxic gas attack that effectively wiped out the DHARMA Initiative's presence on the Island. Certain members, such as Ben, were allowed to join the Others and survive the attack.
* PutOnABus: Walt, the one kid on the show, had to be written out to hide his clear progression through puberty, while only months pass in-show.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Q-T]]
* TheQuietOne: Eko, during his introduction. [[spoiler: They do eventually tie up his storyline in the epilogue.]]
* RageAgainstTheReflection: [[spoiler:Sawyer shattered a mirror in frustration in his flashsideways in "Recon."]]
** Also in "Lighthouse": [[spoiler: Upon seeing that Jacob has been watching the Losties for quite a long time, Jack goes batshit and smashes every mirror in the place.]]
* RasputinianDeath:
** Mikhail "Patchy" Bakunin, from the third season, is zapped by the sonar fence, only to come back a few episodes later. In the season finale, he is shot in the chest with a harpoon gun, then comes back to life minutes later, only to die while blowing open an underwater window with a grenade.
** Martin Keamy, the main villain of season four, as well. He is shot in the back four times, stabbed in the back once, and only dies after being stabbed repeatedly in the heart.
** Juliet is trapped by heavy chains, falls hundreds of feet down a shaft, detonates (or not) a nuclear bomb right next to her... and only dies in the next episode.
* RealLifeWritesThePlot: A fun example: the show premiered in September 2004, and the next few seasons took place over the 108 days after that. Jack is a big Red Sox fan, and there was a recurring line about the famous Curse. So naturally, when Ben wanted to prove that he had a way of getting off the island, he showed Jack the Sox winning the 2004 World Series ([[YearInsideHourOutside which in reality had been the year before, but in-show only a couple of weeks]]). Jack's response? "If you wanted me to believe you, [[RealityIsUnrealistic you should have picked a different team]]."
* RealityHasNoSubtitles: Zig-zagged. In the first season, Korean couple Sun and Jin would speak among themselves, and the show would provide English subtitles. But when they spoke in front of others who did not understand Korean, no subtitles appeared.
* RealityIsUnrealistic:
** At the start of the show, some viewers complained that Claire's accent was too over the top. The actress is a real Australian. Similar complaints have been made with Sawyer's southern accent (it's Josh Holloway's own accent).
** Following "Maternity Leave", there were complaints about the actress playing Alex looking "as old as the actress playing her mother". The actress and the character were the same age at the time.
** The amount of prop-C4 on the ''Kahana'' was thought to appear to be too little and was doubled. The original amount still would have been able to blow up the freighter, though.
** An in-universe example is when Jack refuses to believe Ben that the Red Sox could have won the World Series.
** During Season 2, there were some complaints about Eko's flashbacks, which show Nigerians speaking English. In reality, English ''is'' the official language of Nigeria.
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Richard Alpert. And, of course, [[spoiler:Jacob and his enemy.]]
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Locke gets an alarming number of these, mostly by Ben, Jack, and even [[spoiler:posthumous ones by The Man in Black, while ''[[GrandTheftMe he's wearing Locke's skin like a suit]]'']].
** Of course, the part about Locke in that speech by the Man in Black is just a tangent in him delivering a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to Ben. The [=MiB=] concedes that even though Locke was pathetic, there was something inherently decent about him, unlike Ben.
* ReassignedToAntarctica: In Season 5, Dr. Chang threatens to reassign Hurley to shoveling polar bear turds if he mentions the corpse he saw.
* RecapEpisode: ABC, Sky1, and RTE 2 liked to throw together recap specials to air before premieres, finales, or after a hiatus.
* RecurringExtra: the show went to a great deal of trouble to keep its extra pool consistent over years: Main Camp, Tailies Camp, Ajira Survivors, The Others (both modern and during the 70-s), Kahana crew etc. all spotted mostly the same share of background faces who contributed absolutely nothing to the plot except when being suddenly killed as a RedShirt deserves. In some cases extras were even asked to reprise their roles years after their original appearance, simply because events of a scene would happen at the same time and place.
* RedemptionEqualsDeath:
** Cause-Effect flipped with Michael, who is ''unable to die'' until he redeems himself.
** Averted with [[spoiler:Benjamin Linus]], who is redeemed and survives to the end of the series.
%%** [[spoiler:Sayid]].
* RedemptionInTheRain: Played with in Locke's case. We see him in the rain, but we don't see how he was redeemed until later.
* RedHerring: Neil "Frogurt" a character often mentioned by the producers as far back as Season Two who was said to play an important role in the plot. His debut kept being "postponed" until he shows up in Season Five... and is riddled with flaming arrows for being such a whiny little bastard.
** A not-so-straight version, but the main rumour during the airing of the later part of season 5 said that either Sawyer, Daniel, or Ben would die. A lot people thought it would be Sawyer, due to his CharacterDevelopment, finally making something of his life, and of course, having fallen in love with [[spoiler: Juliet]]. In the end, it was [[spoiler: Daniel]] who died, but almost nobody guessed that [[spoiler: Juliet]] would kick the bucket too, thus in a sense killing off the happy version of Sawyer.
* RedShirt: Done with an appreciable amount of LampshadeHanging. The show has actually shown a lot of restraint in killing off unnamed/minor survivors. At least until season four, and then the {{Red Shirt}}s start dropping like flies over the rest of the series..
* RememberTheNewGuy: Subverted.
--> '''Hurley:''' Dude... Nikki's dead.\\
'''Sawyer:''' Who the hell's Nikki?
* ReplacementGoldfish: Ben tries to make this out of Juliet twice, once for Sarah Shephard and again for Annie, and both times it fails.
* ResearchInc: the Hanso Foundation, suberted by [[spoiler:Mittelos Bioscience which is a front for the Others]].
* ResetButton: Played with. At first, the plot of season 6 seems to take place in two separate timelines: one where the detonation of the hydrogen bomb did this and sent everyone back to a somewhat altered version of the Oceanic flight, and another timeline where everyone is still stuck on the Island. The series finale, however, reveals that [[spoiler: what was believed to be the alternate timeline was actually the afterlife.]]
* {{Retcon}}:
** Paulo and Nikki were evidently written off the show or something.
** In the pilot, Shannon is quite clearly just screaming nonsense syllables after the crash - in subsequent flashblacks, she is just as clearly saying "Boone."
** Claire talks with both Thomas and her friend about her mother in "Raised By Another" in ways that would be extremely odd if her mother were [[spoiler: in a coma.]]
* RetroactivePrecognition: Season 5 did this a lot once the Time-Travel started.
* TheReveal: Plenty, which are usually reserved for season finales.
** The general rule for ''Series/{{Lost}}'' is that no matter how huge the Reveal (contrary to popular belief, the show has answered a ''lot'' of long-standing questions), it will mostly just raise new questions. The other general rule is that the audience is expected to solve many of the mysteries themselves. For every big reveal, there were a dozen or more clues and many fans who'd already figured things out themselves. This is why so many casual fans and detractors say the show "doesn't answer all the questions": a lot of the answers are inferred and not given to you at face value.
* RhetoricalRequestBlunder: Juliet is being recruited by "Mittelos Laboratories", but says she couldn't possibly join unless her ex-husband "gets hit by a bus". She meant it rhetorically. They, on the other hand, hit him with a bus.
* RiddleForTheAges: Some would argue that this is part of the show's overall point. Others... [[InternetBackdraft disagree]].
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Sayid, under Ben's instruction, upon [[spoiler:Nadia's death]].
* SaharanShipwreck: The ''Black Rock''. It was foisted onto the island by a massive tidal wave.
* SassyBlackWoman: Rose is an example.
-->"If you say [[SurvivalMantra 'Live together, die alone']] to me, Jack, I'm gonna punch you in your face."
* SatanicArchetype: The two deitylike figures on the island, [[spoiler:Jacob]] and the "Man in Black," both share numerous traits with the devil as a way of making it unclear who is good and who is evil:
** [[spoiler:Jacob]] has blonde hair, likes wine (and uses it as a metaphor for evil "corked" by the island), interferes with the lives of the characters in subtle ways, and is explicitly called "the devil" by the Man in Black, though he was presumably saying this metaphorically to [[BeliefMakesYouStupid exploit]] [[spoiler:Richard]]'s Catholic faith. He's also played by Mark Pellegrino -- Lucifer in ''Series/{{Supernatural}}''.
** The Man in Black is a shapeshifter and manipulator, known for taking the forms of the dead and deceiving mortals. He cannot kill [[spoiler:Jacob]] himself and must use someone else to do it. He takes the form of a [[spoiler:giant cloud of black smoke]] that sometimes looks like a slithering snake. He has been called "evil incarnate" and a personification of hell by various characters.
* SayMyName: '''"WAAAAAALLLLLLLLTTTTTT!!!"'''
%%* ScaryBlackMan: Mr. Eko, at first; also Abaddon
* ScottyTime: During TheGreatRepair of the Ajira plane in the GrandFinale:
--> '''Miles''': Hey, how much longer 'til we get this thing in the air?\\
'''Frank''': I still have to check the electrical and the hydraulics. Five hours, maybe six.\\
'''Richard''': You've got ''maybe'' one.
* ScreamingBirth: Aaron's birth ([[spoiler:in both universes]]), as well as Ben's.
* ScreamingWoman:
** One iconic image of the show is Shannon doing this in the pilot.
** Claire's got quite a set of lungs in her as well.
** But none can dream of competing with Sun's spine-chilling scream in the Season 4 finale.
* SealedEvilInACan: Almost literally. [[spoiler:According to Jacob, the Man in Black is evil itself, with the Island as the cork of the bottle containing MIB.]]
* SecretTestOfCharacter: [[spoiler:Implied to be the point of the entire show in the season 5 finale. Jacob expected Ben to fail, and sure enough...]]
** [[spoiler:Miles thinks that he failed.]]
* SeinfeldianConversation: Charlie and Hurley debate the old "Who would win in a race between TheFlash and {{Superman}}" question in the beginning of the episode "Catch-22".
** (For the record: [[http://i49.tinypic.com/2cg0kgl.jpg It's The Flash]].)
* SenselessSacrifice: Most of the death scenes in the show tend to be rather bleak and nihilistic more than heroic (Shannon, Ana Lucia, Libby, debatably Charlie, Daniel, Alex, Rousseau) - even fan favourites like Locke and Eko have died in a rather miserable way.
* SexForSolace: After seeing Jack flirting with Juliet, Kate goes straight to Sawyer and jumps him at his tent. He sees her subtly crying and puts two and two together, but goes with it anyway.
* ShakyPOVCam:
** Used occasionally with the Monster.
** And at least once with a boar.
* ShapeShifting: This was [[spoiler:the Man in Black]]'s MO until [[spoiler:killing Jacob]] [[ShapeshifterModeLock locked]] him as [[spoiler:Locke]].
%%%
%% Please no stupid puns or Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk potholes. Locked sounds like Locke-d. Wow. Haha.
%%%
* ShapeshifterGuiltTrip: The Smoke Monster [[spoiler:aka The Man in Black]] used this a lot on the main characters: [[spoiler:he appears to Jack as his late father, to Eko as his late brother, to Ben as his late daughter, to Richard as his late wife...]] you get the idea.
* ShapeshifterModeLock: [[spoiler:The Man in Black, after killing Jacob, can only change into John Locke when not in smoke form.]] And in the SeriesFinale, [[spoiler:he's {{Shapeshifter Mode Lock}}ed into a human being when the island's keystone is pulled out by Desmond, allowing him to be killed.]]
* ShipSinking: [[spoiler:Sawyer and Kate]] and [[spoiler:Nadia and Sayid]] in the finale.
* ShooOutTheNewGuy: Ana Lucia was introduced and shortly after being incorporated to the main cast started showing up very prominently and was getting more screen time than established characters. The fanbase generally hated her and saw her as intrusive and an unlikeable bully. She didn't last out the season. WordOfGod, however, is that her death was written in from the beginning as Michelle Rodriguez only agreed to appear in a single season.
** Nikki and Paulo were introduced in season three. Everyone hated them. The only episode they ever got ended with them being unceremoniously [[spoiler: buried alive.]]
* ShoutOut: [[http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Cultural_references Lostpedia]] is doing a better job at pointing these out than we should ever hope to do.
** In season 5, Hurley is seen in the airport reading a trade paperback of ''ComicBook/YTheLastMan'', written by current ''Lost'' producer, co-writer, and story editor Brian K. Vaughan.
** The numerous books that Sawyer and others read, which often are the inspiration for the current plotlines.
** Juliet's flashback shows her ex-husband being abruptly run over by a bus. ''FinalDestination'' much?
** The Man in Black is very similar to Creator/StephenKing's world-hopping villain Randall Flagg, especially his incarnation from ''Literature/TheStand.'' In Ab Aeterno, the scene where he makes a deal with a chained and starved [[spoiler:Richard]] (who at this point has been chained in the ship for several days) parallels the one between Flagg and a starved and imprisoned Lloyd very closely. Then again Lost seems to have quite a few similarities with ''Literature/TheStand'', which makes sense considering Team Darlton says the book was influential on the creation of Lost.
** Incidentally, Randall Flagg is mainly known, among a few other names, as The Man in Black throughout ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' series. This makes sense, seeing as at one point Team Darlton were gearing up to adapt the books into a movie series before giving it a pass.
** A preview for one of the later episodes of Season Six has the [[Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory nightmare-inducing Gene Wilder song]] playing.
** The last scene of the finale is a ShoutOut to the ending of ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' with everyone [[spoiler:actually being dead, but happily reunited and ready to [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence move on together]]]].
** A few shots, namely the first appearances of Christian Shephard, seem to reference ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'', and the game itself appears in "The Greater Good." The game developers returned the favor in ''VideoGame/HalfLife2: Episode 2'' with a couple of Easter Eggs referencing the Dharma Initiative.
** Season 1 has Charlie's date mention [[TheOffice a paper company up in Slough]].
** A number of episodes are directly named after works of classic literature - ''Literature/TheShapeOfThingsToCome'', ''Literature/OfMiceAndMen'', ''[[Literature/AliceInWonderland Through the Looking Glass]]'', ''Literature/TheLittlePrince'', ''Literature/ATaleOfTwoCities'', ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'', ''Literature/CatchTwentyTwo'', etc. Some of these books are directly referenced in the episodes as well. Other episode titles are less direct - for instance, "The Man Behind the Curtain" and "There's No Place Like Home" are both references to ''Film/TheWizardOfOz''. The episodes [[Music/JeffersonAirplane "White Rabbit"]], [[Music/BruceSpringsteen "Born to Run"]], and [[Music/TheAnimals "House of the Rising Sun"]] are named after popular songs.
** The blast door map shows [[Series/ThePrisoner "possible location of Number Six."]]
** Most of the Numbers probably don't have any deeper meaning beyond the fact that they add up to 108, but Lindelof has [[http://web.archive.org/web/20060718000520/http://www.eonline.com/Gossip/Kristin/Trans/Lindelof/index2.html confirmed]] that 23 is a reference to the writings of Creator/RobertAntonWilson (and probably ''Literature/TheIlluminatusTrilogy'' in particular), and 42 is pretty obviously a reference to ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''.
** Also one to Karl Marx:"Religion is opium for the people". In season one, the Beechcraft has lots of small inconic statues of St.Mary, with a lot of heroin inside.
** A subtle one at the beginning of season two: Locke and Hume meet in [[PlatonicCave a cave]]...
** In ''Lighthouse'', as a counterpart to ''Franchise/StarWars'' tributes in the show :
--> '''Dogen''': What are you doing ?
--> '''Hurley''': Nothing. I'm just...you know, looking...'cause I'm a big fan of temples and like, history... IndianaJones stuff.
** Tricia Tanaka, the asian reporter killed in Hurley's flashback, is very similar to WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy's "Asian Reporter Trisha Takanawa".
** ShoutOutToShakespeare: Juliet is named after the titular character in ''RomeoAndJuliet''. Another obvious one: A number of people, separated on different parts of a mysterious island, experiences some strange MindScrew events, all while some guy, "keeper of the island" roams around. Theatre/TheTempest springs to mind.
* ShowWithinAShow: ''Exposé'', starring Billy Dee Williams. [[StylisticSuck It's pretty cheesy.]] Locke is shown watching it in the episode before it is featured.
-->[[CatchPhrase "Razzle dazzle!"]]
* SigilSpam: Dharma Initiative logos are found everywhere on the Island. Playing cards, ping-pong balls, chocolate cookies - '''everything''' inside their stations has a Dharma logo. It is even stamped on the fin of a live ''shark'' for crying out loud! And on random doors embedded in rocks that don't lead anywhere. And on ''all'' of the supplies.
** In another variation of this trope, they also had multiple variations of their logo for everything one could possibly think of.
* SlasherSmile: This is the only type of smile Ben is capable of making.
* SlidingScaleOfContinuity: The series is a frequently cited example of ContinuityLockout because of this.
* SmallSecludedWorld: The Island.
* SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay: Jack realizes he's met Desmond before from Desmond's calling him "brother". Then Desmond recognizes him when he asks "what he's running from".
** [[spoiler:The Man-in-Black to Richard]]: "Good to see you out of those chains." An unusual example in that we the viewers don't know its been said before when we first hear it.
* SongsInTheKeyOfLock: Yes, that's a Beach Boys tune that Charlie is entering on the keypad in the Looking Glass.
* SoundingItOut: When Sawyer shows Kate the letter "a little boy" wrote to "Sawyer", prodding her to read the whole thing out loud. When she stops reading, he says "Oh don't stop now!" implying the most dramatic part of the letter is yet to come. It partially happens again in a season three episode, when Sawyer hands the letter to [[spoiler: Anthony Cooper, the person it's intended for]], ordering him to read it. But this time the letter isn't read in its entirety, so presumably, the audience is expected to know what it contains. (Also, in the second setting, the reading-out-loud is a bit more natural.)
* SoundtrackDissonance: "Make Your Own Kind Of Music" is played by Desmond in the first scene of Season 2 from inside a hatch built to contain a cold, frightening secret.
** "Downtown" playing during Juliet's near-breakdown and as Flight 815 crashes in "One Of Us".
** "Better Every Day" playing as Michael revs his car into a wall.
** "Catch A Falling Star" plays while [[spoiler:Claire, Sayid, and Kate walk through the destroyed temple at the end of "Sundown."]]
* SoWasX:
--> '''Hurley:''' Do not open that! There's dynamite and it's mega-unstable. \\
'''Richard:''' I know that.\\
'''Hurley:''' Well, so did Dr. Arzt. And I was wiping him out of my shirt two days later.
* SpannerInTheWorks: Juliet in Season 3, Hurley, early Season 5. Purposefully, just to piss Ben off. Desmond in the season 3 finale, mainly because he is the ''only'' person Ben didn`t know anything about.
* SpoilerOpening: Happened all the time with recurring characters like Christian Sheppard, Charles Widmore or Jacob, whose actors were only credited for their appearances. Averted with François Chau as Pierre Chang, who was never credited for his appearances except for the very final episode. Also, subverted almost all the time with the main cast: on the show with non-linear story-telling and dead people frequently appearing as ghost, remaining in the main credits after your character was just shot does '''not''' guarantee your survival^
*** Boone is the first main character to die, yet Ian Somerhalder remains in the credits for three more episodes until the end of the season, appearing as Boone's corpse and in flashbacks.
*** After Shannon is shot, Maggie Grace remains in the credits for two more episodes, appearing as her corpse.
*** When Ana Lucia and Libby get shot, both Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros remain in credits for three more episodes until the end of the season, appearing as corpses, hallucinations and in flashbacks.
*** After Eko is killed, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje remains in credits for one more episode as his corpse.
*** Notably, after Charlie's very prominent and very emotional death Dominic Monaghan stays in credits all the way through the premiere of the next season. He is still dead and only appears as a ghost though.
*** The above example are why the creators were able to get away with Jin's NoOneCouldSurviveThat moment in Season 4 finale. Daniel Dae Kim remained among the main cast, but it was perfectly logical for him to only play Jin through flashback (or, given the nature of Season 5, the TimeTravel). He has in fact made a flashback appearance before being revealed as NotQuiteDead.
*** Similarly, while Juliet was in absolutely no position to survive the end of Season 5 (she manually detonated a freaking ''hydrogen bomb''), Elizabeth Mitchell is still listed in the credits of the Season 6 premiere, though as a guest star instead of a regular. Turns out Juliet's wounds were fatal after all and she finally passes away after saying her FinalWords.
*** Following Daniel Faraday's death Jeremy Davies remained in the credits for the remainder of the season, again as his character's corpse.
*** The biggest subversion though comes with John Locke, who continued to make appearances after his death, being seemingly resurrected. It was eventually revealed that he was in fact dead, and his likeness was used by the Man in Black. For almost two season straight, Terry O'Quinn primarily portrayed the MIB, only showing up as Locke in Flashbacks, FlashSideways and as a corpse.
*** Finally, in Season 6 Naveen Andrews, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim and Zuleikha Robinson all remain in the credits until the end of the series even after their characters are killed, appearing in the FlashSideways.
* StableTimeLoop: Sayid attempts to kill [[spoiler:Ben as a child, forcing Kate and Sawyer to turn over the mortally wounded child to the Others, with the implication that these events will unalterably set the kid on the path to being the cold hard bastard he is in the present]].
* StarTrekShake: The crash of Flight 815 and the earthquakes in the finale.
* StealthPun: In the PilotEpisode, the [[spoiler: pilot himself]] meets a nasty end.
* SterilityPlague: Women who conceive on the island cannot give birth there. Those who try all die. It turns out that the island's electromagnetism sets off an immune response that attacks the fetus, killing both mother and child.
* StockBeehive: As a rare non-cartoonish example, the first season's sixth episode, "House of the Rising Sun", has a few key characters dealing with a MASSIVE, paper-made underground beehive. It looks more like a dome-shaped, hollow mushroom rather than your stereotypical beehive, but it's clearly different from real world beehives nonetheless.
%%* TheStoic: Dr. Juliet Burke.
* SuddenlyAlwaysKnewThat: Kate suddenly has tracking skills; they weren't revealed before because YouDidntAsk.
* SuperCellReception: In the season 4 finale, [[spoiler:Keamy is wearing a heart rate monitor set to transmit a signal to detonate C4 back on his ship should he die. When he dies far undrground at the Orchid station, somehow the transmitter is capable of transmitting through dozens of feet of earth and out to sea to trigger the detonator.]]
* SurvivalMantra: ''"1... 2... 3... 4... 5..."''
** "Live together, die alone" also qualifies.
** Time Travel Survival Mantra: "Whatever happened, happened."
** An unspoken mantra seems to be "Don't trust Ben."
%%* SurvivalistStash: The Dharma bases.
* TactfulTranslation: Sayid pulls this one while interrogating one of his countrymen in "One of Them."
* TakeANumber: In "The Lie", Ben arrives at an empty butcher shop, not intending to buy anything, and takes a number. This number (342) has thus been heavily scrutinized by fans.
* TakeMyHand: Sawyer to [[spoiler:Juliet]] in the season 5 finale.
* TakeUpMySword: [[spoiler:Jack replaced Jacob as the guardian of the island, and then Hugo replaces Jack.]]
* TapOnTheHead: So many times, without anyone ever developing any noticeable longterm effects.
** At last subverted in season six, when Sun suddenly gets neurological side effects from bumping into a tree.
* TemporalParadox: The magical compass bouncing between the time-travelling Locke and Richard seems to exist in a loop: Present-Locke gives it to Past-Richard in 1954, then Present-Richard gives it to Locke in 2008 before Locke leaps into the past to give it to Richard.
** Also, Jack's theory was that [[spoiler:detonating an H-bomb on the Island]] would stop the plane from crashing in 2004, thereby somehow magically whisking all the main characters to their pre-crash lives once again. But how would [[spoiler:the bomb have been detonated]] if they never crashed on the Island in the first place, [[spoiler:since the crash survivors are the ones who go back in time to do it]]?
* ThanatosGambit: [[spoiler:Locke]]'s death is the key to convincing Jack that everybody has to go back.
** Also, [[spoiler:Jacob]] did this, as he [[spoiler:brought most of the characters to the island so he could find his replacement when the Man in Black found the loophole he needed to kill him]].
* ThatsWhatIWouldDo: Sawyer, after being stabbed by Sayid, tells Jack that he should just let him die, saying that he knows it's what Jack wants to do and that he would do the same to Jack if he were in his shoes. Of course, Jack saves him anyway.
* ThemedAliases: When Kate is on the run, all of the names she uses are saints' names.
* ThemeNaming: Many characters are named after philosophers, scientists, or literary figures. Most of the names can grant insight into their characters.
** Lampshaded in season 5, episode 7, by Charles Widmore when he gives Locke a fake ID with the name "Jeremy Bentham", comparing his sense of naming humor to Locke's parents.
** The pseudonyms Dr. Pierre Chang uses in the orientation films all have last names related to candlemaking. It's worth noting that Chang's actual name seems to be based upon the name of his actor, Francois Chau: French first name, Chinese last name.
** Most of the DHARMA Stations (The Swan, The Flame, The Arrow, The Staff, The Hydra, and The Pearl) are related to the mythology of the Greek god Apollo.
** Ben has a ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' theme front and back. When he was [[SpotTheImposter first introduced]] he gave the fake name of "Henry Gale," (same name as Dorothy's uncle) someone who actually died on the island after arriving by hot air balloon (like how the Wizard arrived in Oz). Also the first Ben-centric episode was called "The Man Behind the Curtain."
* ThereCanBeOnlyOne: [[spoiler:With the revelation of Jacob's "candidates", the fact that almost every character's name is written on the cave roof and all but six having being crossed out. In the finale, the ultimate successor to Jacob was Hurley]]
* TheyFightCrime: [[spoiler:Sawyer (or "Jim") and Miles]] in "Recon". [[spoiler:He's a snarky conman in an alternate universe! He's... also a snarky conman in an alternate universe!]] They fight crime!
** [[spoiler:More like a snarky conman and a snarky conman who is also a Ghostbuster.]]
* ThisIsNoTimeForKnitting: Charlie's reaction to Locke pulling out the equipment for an AerosolFlamethrower:
--> '''Charlie:''' Hairspray? Uh, I hate to be [[BaldOfAwesome the one to break this to you...]]
* TimeTravel: The main plot point of Season 5.
* TimeTravelRomance: Desmond and Penny. Also [[spoiler: Sun and Jin]] throughout season five and most of six.
* TogetherInDeath:[[spoiler:Rest in peace, Sun and Jin Kwon]]
** Completly averted with the bones in the cave because [[spoiler:they belong to Jacob's brother and a woman he killed, who pretended to be their mother]]
** Ultimately, [[spoiler:[[TrueCompanions everyone]] at the very end, when they all meet up at the church]].
* TokenEvilTeammate: Ben, starting around season 4. Made hilariously obvious when he's part of [[FiveManBand Ilana's Group.]]
* TonightSomeoneDies: Done gratingly with Shannon, Eko and Charlotte. Fortunately, not since.
** They also made mention that by the end of season 5 they were going to kill off someone important. By the end of the last episode, [[spoiler:Faraday had been killed by his own mother]], [[spoiler:Sayid was shot by Roger Linus; though he got better, sort of]], [[spoiler:Jacob had been knifed to death by Ben]], [[spoiler:Juliet fell down a pit on the island with everybody else and repeatedly hit an armed H-bomb with a rock,]] and [[spoiler:Locke was [[TheReveal revealed]] to have been dead the whole time]].
** Averted in Dr. Linus, where [[NeverTrustATrailer the previews stated that Ben would "face his demise"]]. He does wind up starring down the barrel of a gun but is instead spared by Ilana after he tearfully confesses his reason for why he killed Jacob.
** Completely averted with Ilana.
* TookALevelInBadass: After getting back from the Island, Sun uses her Oceanic settlement money to buy a controlling share in her CorruptCorporateExecutive father's company, effectively making her in charge. And then she knocks out Ben with an oar.
** While Sawyer was always a badass, something has to be said for the fact that during the time-skip, he turned into a truly capable leader as well, and actually managed to do so without becoming boring, not to mention finally getting over Kate. Former leader Jack, on the other hand...
** Hurley behind the wheel of a DHARMA bus in the Season 3 finale. Season 6 then has him level up in terms of leadership.
** It seems like making people badass is one of the island's powers. Locke certainly kicked more ass after the crash than before. And the cute blonde pregnant girl Claire? Yeah, well, the final season seems to show that she followed Rousseau's steps.
* ToplessnessFromTheBack: Kate in "Every Man For Himself" and Juliet in "One of Us" and "The Other Woman."
* TortureIsIneffective: The series featured many torture scenes, most of which featured ex-torturer Sayid as [[LaserGuidedKarma the victim]]. In a few cases, the victim knew nothing. In others, the victim simply didn't break down. In one, Sayid eventually broke down, but he responded to the interrogator's attempts to attract sympathy rather than the torture.
* TranslationConvention: Scenes in Korea are subtitled, but Sayid's flashbacks to Iraq are generally not (apart from in "One of Them", whose flashbacks had English and Arabic speakers) -- since Naveen Andrews doesn't speak Arabic.
** Similarly, Allison Janney's character and Claudia exchange a few words in Latin, then switch to English, seeming to confuse some viewers who thought (or at least pretended to think) they were actually speaking English.
* TranquillizerDart: Subverted in an episode where Sayid is shot twice with tranquilizing darts. He pulls one dart out and we're led to believe that the trope is playing straight until he surprises the shooter, who approached him to confirm unconsciousness. Pretty much played straight in a lot of other episodes, featuring darts, gas and chloroform. Namely, some episodes in this respective order are: "Live Together, Die Alone", "Left Behind" and "Something Nice Back Home".
* TreacherousSpiritChase: The show is replete with examples, starting in the pilot with visions of Jack's father. While the apparitions always require the character to do incredibly ill-considered and dangerous things (such as climbing treacherous rock faces, stealing babies or attacking each other), doing what the spirit says is often beneficial in the long run.
* TrojanPrisoner: "Don't get mad at me just because you were dumb enough to fall for the old Wookiee prisoner gag."
** Also, this is how Ana Lucia determines that the raft passengers are telling the truth.
* TroubledBackstoryFlashback: Once an episode at least.
* TrueCompanions: The castaways. Ultimately, [[spoiler:"The most important time of your life was the time you spent with them", to paraphrase Christian Shephard]].
* TrustPassword: When Desmond starts flashing between the past and present, Daniel actually [[InvokedTrope invokes this trope]] telling Desmond what to say to the past version of Daniel in order to get Past-Daniel to help him.
** Later on, the same characters reverse it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: U-Z]]
* UnderwaterBase: The Looking Glass and part of The Hydra.
* UnexplainedRecovery: The show is usually very good about keeping characters' wounds consistent from episode to episode, or strongly suggesting that the island was involved when a character heals faster than expected or has a sudden, miraculous full recovery. Which makes it incredibly glaring when Ben gets pinned beneath a tree in the series finale, and this is played for drama as other characters frantically trying to dig him loose, then a few scenes later he catches up to the rest of the heroes like nothing had even happened.
* UnfazedEveryman: Most of the characters with no history in the MythArc, but it's most noticeable with Frank Lapidus, especially in Season Five. [[spoiler:Yet he's also the one who gets everyone off the island; ''both times'']].
* UnreliableExpositor: Anytime we get any exposition, it comes with a side order of this.
* UnreliableNarrator: It turns out that Jack omitted something fairly important from his surgery story in the pilot. It says in the enhanced version of the episode on abc.go.com as the reason for the unreliable narrating: "but Jack was angry with his father and had a complicated relationship with him."
* TheUnreveal: For every major reveal of the series, there's one of these as well.
%%* TheUnsolvedMystery: Several.
* UnstoppableRage: Hurley after Sawyer jokes about [[spoiler: being able to see Hurley's imaginary friend, giving him hope about not being crazy for half a second and then taking it away]].
** Also [[spoiler: Jacob after his brother killed the Mother. That's how we got our Monster]]
** Ben, after [[spoiler:Keamy taunts him about his murder of Alex. He beats him to the ground, and then proceeds to repeatedly stab him. Made even more awesome / terrifying by the fact that Keamy is a muscled mercenary, and Ben is much shorter and slimmer, and you'd usually expect Keamy to overpower Ben.]]
* UnstuckInTime: Several characters, and throughout the first half of season 5 the ''entire Island''.
* UnusualEuphemism: Sayid's former job title in the Revolutionary Guard? "Communications Officer". Because, see, his specialty was "communicating" with prisoners. Regardless of whether or not they ''wanted'' to communicate.
* ViewersAreGeniuses: You remember that cheeky shot of Ben reading {{Ulysses}}? Well, ''Lost'' might as well be called ''Intertextuality: The TV Show''. It '''does''' make sense, but if you want to understand it fully you better be prepared to do some Wikipedia legwork, because you're going to need a working knowledge of Hellenic and Buddhist philosophy, Jungian psychology, the principles of cultural clash and the process of "Othering", theories about the subjective nature of reality and the lack of absolute truth, et cetera, et cetera.
* VillainDecay: As of the end of Season 5, [[TheChessmaster Ben]] has been reduced to just another pawn in The Man in Black's extended chess match against Jacob. He knows it too, and isn't the least bit happy about it. It should be noted that only a few episodes after we learned Ben led the Others we found out Jacob gave the orders (the list for instance), so we should have seen this one coming.\\
\\
Though it's implied that Ben's mere existence and free will is the "loophole" that Jacob's nemesis needed to kill Jacob, making him the most important character in the show... let's just say this: Ben in early seasons: Leader of the Others and MagnificentBastard. Ben at the end of the series:[[spoiler: Hurley's sidekick]]
* VillainousBSOD: Ben gets one of these for about ten seconds after Keamy kills Alex.
* TheVirus: [[spoiler:The Sickness, as revealed in Season 6.]]
* VomitIndiscretionShot: Used at least a couple of times. Sawyer, after he [[spoiler:kills Anthony Cooper]] and Locke, when he [[spoiler:teleports to Africa and breaks that poor, poor leg]].
%%* WastelandElder: Jack
* {{Webisode}}: 13 "Missing Pieces", which were released for mobile phones and later online between Seasons 3 and 4. Also available on Season 4 Bonus DVD.
* WeJustNeedToWaitForRescue: Season 1 has a sub-plot where Jack insists that the survivors don't need to make a life on the island, they just need to wait for rescue. Measures such as keeping a signal fire going, trying to give a radio signal, and staying on the beach are implemented. In the end, of course, no one ever rescues them and weirdness ensues.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: The Others, who's main priority is to protect The Island at all costs. [[spoiler:If they had a bit more direct contact with Jacob, their war with the survivors may not have gotten so bad.]]
** [[spoiler:Michael, who killed two fellow survivors and led four more into an ambush, to save his son.]]
** Jack and Locke have shown shades of this at times, too.
** Season 6 implies that [[spoiler:Charles Widmore]] may be this.
%%* WhamEpisode:
%%** The {{Season Finale}}s, with several in between.
%%** "The Candidate" is probably the biggest non-finale wham episode of the series.
* WhamLine: "Because I want it to crash, Kate."
** In the season six premiere: "Sorry you had to see me like that."
** The following exchange from the SeriesFinale:
---> '''Jack:''' But...[[spoiler: you're dead]]. How are you here?\\
[[spoiler:'''Christian''']]: [[spoiler:[[DeadAllAlong How are YOU here]]]]?
** "My name is Sayid Jarrah, and I am a torturer."
** "This time... you have to die."
** "They're coming tonight... they're coming RIGHT NOW!"
** "Always nice talking to you [[spoiler:Jacob]]."
** We're gonna have to take the boy."
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse:
** Cindy Chandler and the kids she was kidnapped by the Others to protect, disappeared after the mortar attack on the Others by Charles Widmore. Apparently, they "scattered into the jungle" along with the few surviving Others.
** What happened to Annie, Ben's only childhood friend? We were told in Series 3 and 4, she'd be very important to the finale, and Ben's fascination with Juliet was hinted at because she "looks just like her". But she was never mentioned again after Series 4. Did she survive the Purge? Was she merely just his girlfriend, who'd gotten pregnant and died, explaining his over the top reaction to Alex and Carl? She seemed to have been "Eaten by the Cat" to coin a phrase.
** Walt. The Epilogue thankfully gave his character arc some much needed closure.
* WhoWantsToLiveForever: Richard. [[spoiler:After Jacob's death, he desperately wants to die himself because he thinks his work for Jacob was all for nothing, but he can't.]]
** But subverted in the very last episode. When Richard learns that he [[spoiler:finally ages, he tells Miles that he now realizes he wants to live after all.]]
* WholeEpisodeFlashback: "The Other 48 Days", telling season one from The Tailies' perspective.
** "Ab Aeterno", almost--it took six extra minutes to fit in the present-day part of the plot.
** "Across The Sea", [[spoiler:the Jacob/MIB origin story, which has one minute of non-flashback material-- which is ''also'' a flashback to a scene from season one.]]
%%* WistfulAmnesia: The flash sideways.
* WithMyHandsTied: Sayid once killed an armed man ''with his ankles''.
* WindowLove: Kate and Jack through a glass barrier, in season 3.
* AWizardDidIt: Kind of ends up [[spoiler: being the explanation for the entire show]]. Everytime something happens that obviously relies on too much heavy ContrivedCoincidence or just plainly [[MindScrew doesn't seem to make any sense]], just [[MST3KMantra relax]] and repeat "The Island did it".
* WomanScorned: Kate goes through this Jack after he gets addicted to pills and abandons her and Aaron. [[OfficialCouple She eventually forgives him, though.]]
** Sawyer's old girlfriend Cassidy after he runs a long con on her and dumps her.
* WorldOfBadass: The Island, and flash-sideways LA.
* XanatosSpeedChess:
** Michael Emerson pretty much said himself (in layman's terms) that Ben is doing this throughout Season Five:
-->"I think Ben has a lot of layers of plans, but I think we're way off the main stem of anything that works for him. I mean, Ben's doing like moment-to-moment scrambling now."
** The Man in Black can now lay a good claim to being the ''master'' of Xanatos Speed Chess after the events of "The Candidate"; see The Chessmaster above.
* YearZero: Season 2 Finale established that Oceanic 815 crashed and started the whole thing on September 22, 2004, the same day that ''The Pilot, Part 1'' episode was first aired and, you know, started the whole thing. Since then, fans were able to give all events of Seasons 1-4 an exact date based on the clues within the series. However, a TimeSkip followed and events on Seasons 5-6 can only be put down to the year they happen in, with no precise dating except in relation to each other.
* YouAlreadyChangedThePast: Whatever happened, happened. Maybe.
** In a sense, this is double subverted. It appears to be the rule until the finale of season 5, when [[spoiler: the bomb creates an alternate reality. However, in the series finale, it is revealed that the "alternate reality" is really the afterlife and it wasn't actually caused by the bomb.]] So, in the end, the trope is used consistently.
* YouALLShareMyStory: Many of the characters have knowingly or unknowingly encountered each other before coming to the island.
* YouCalledMeXItMustBeSerious: At the end of season 3 of, Sawyer's in a funk after finally killing Cooper. Sawyer repeatedly addresses Kate by her name instead of "Freckles" or another nickname when she confronts him about what's wrong:
-->'''Kate:''' Ever since you got that tape from Locke it's like you've been sleepwalking. You don't care about our friends, fine, but it's like you don't care about anything anymore. And since when did you start calling me Kate?
** It's a sign that things are getting really serious when almost ''everyone'' begins referring to Sawyer and Hurley by their given names (James and Hugo, respectively) instead of their nicknames.
* YouCantFightFate: The debate of free will vs. fate is a recurring theme in the series, with Eloise explicitly telling Desmond that one's destiny cannot be avoided.
* YouCantGoHomeAgain: Once some of the survivors make it off the island, at least Jack and Hurley end up convinced they shouldn't have left in the first place.
** Also happens, from the other side, to Ben at the end of season four after he moves the island, meaning he can never return to it.
** Until he does. He admits that he broke the rules by doing so, and that there would be consequences (which he was ultimately spared from).
* YouFailLogicForever: Miles' in-universe response to Hurley's attempts to understand time travel paradoxes. Nevertheless, they talk about it long enough that Hurley brings up what Miles concedes is a valid point: [[spoiler: why didn't Ben remember Sayid as the guy who shot him when he was a kid when they 'met' for the first time in Season 2?]]
** Which is explained later that episode when [[spoiler: Richard tells Kate and Sawyer that Ben will have no memory of what happened.]]
** Not even though, because Ben [[spoiler: lived with Sawyer, Juliet, Jin and Miles for three whole years in the 70s]], and yet he does not remember any of them. There weren't THAT many people in the Initiative.
* YoureNotMyFather:
** Claire's response to her father.
** Walt's exact words to Michael when they're in the hotel.
* YouKilledMyFather: Averted. [[spoiler:Jacob]] isn't Ilana's biological father, but "the closest thing (she had) to a father." Nevertheless she didn't kill [[spoiler:Ben.]]
* YouWouldntShootMe:
** Subverted when Sawyer has [[spoiler: Tom at his mercy. After he surrenders, Sawyer (remembering his capture and threatening of Kate, as well as his involvement in kidnapping Walt, shooting Sawyer, and attempted murder of everybody on the raft)]] takes deliberate aim and kills him.
--> '''Hurley:''' Dude... he'd surrendered.\\
'''Sawyer:''' I didn't believe him.
** Also, Colleen and Sun in The Glass Ballerina.
** And Locke pulls an interesting subversion or twist on Sawyer: "If there were any bullets in that gun, why would you have held a knife to my throat?"
** Also subverted by Jack in the Season 4 premiere.
---> '''Locke:''' You're not gonna shoot me, Jack, any more than I was gonna shoot...\\
'''Jack:''' [''Click'']\\
'''Locke:''' It's not loaded, Jack.
** However, it works for the undercover cop when he tries it on Locke.
[[/folder]]

* WhamLine: In the season six premiere: "Sorry you had to see me like that."

** "We're gonna have to take the boy."

* AccidentalMurder: Poor [[spoiler:Shannon]] and [[spoiler: Libby]].

** DarkActionGirl: As of S6, [[spoiler:Claire]], apparently. We don't see too much onscreen.

* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Sawyer

* BecomingTheMask: Juliet.

* BestServedCold: Sawyer is constantly searching for the man he wants to serve revenge to. Coldly.
** And then [[spoiler: in season three he finally gets his chance]].

** Also, [[MafiaPrincess Sun]] in general. Just ask her mother-in-law ([[spoiler:who she threatened to have killed if [[SonOfAWhore Jin]] were to find out she were alive)]], her [[CallingTheOldManOut father]], and Colleen ([[spoiler:who [[YouWouldntShootMe she actually shot and killed]]!]])

* BrandX: Would ''you'' like some Dharma Initiative cereal?

* ChangelingFantasy: Alex discovering that she's Rousseau's daughter.

** Pity the people who watched only the last episode out of curiosity...

* CrypticConversation: "Are you him? What did one snowman say to the other snowman?"

* GoMadFromTheIsolation: Rousseau and (as of season 6) [[spoiler:Claire]].

** The last scene of the finale is a ShoutOut to the ending of the ''ChroniclesOfNarnia'' with everyone [[spoiler:actually being dead, but happily reunited and ready to [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence move on together]]]].

%%* TheAgeless: Richard Alpert.

%%* TheAlcoholic: Christian, and later Jack.
%%* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Sawyer

** When Charles Widmore's mercenary Martin Keamy [[spoiler: executes Ben's daughter Alex in front of him]], Ben responds by ''summoning the smoke monster to fry his team.'' One of Keamy's men is thrown 50 feet into the air and torn apart, while the rest of them barely escape in time. And on top of that, the episode's flashforwards show Ben teaming up with Sayid for a RoaringRampageOfRevenge against Widmore.
** Keamy hits it again in the Season 4 finale. [[spoiler: He does not survive this time]].

* BewareTheNiceOnes: [[spoiler:Claire]] in season six.

* CaliforniaDoubling: Nearly the entire series was filmed on Oahu, with urban areas (mixed with CGI) doubling for anywhere from London to Baghdad to Seoul to Sydney.
** Averted for two scenes shot in London (granted, only one was on location) featuring [[spoiler: Charles Widmore, as actor Alan Dale was doing ''Spamalot'' on the West End]] and unavailable to fly to Honolulu. Also averted in the season 3 finale, which had scenes shot on location in Los Angeles [[spoiler: (notably Jack's aborted suicide attempt on the Sixth Street Viaduct bridge)]] and on sets from Grey's Anatomy.

%%%
%% All the "Crowning" tropes are YMMVs; leave them to the pages.
%%%

%%%
%% Most "Fan X" tropes are YMMVs, leave them to the page.
%%%

%%%
%% Fetish Fuel is a YMMV; leave it to the page.
%%%

%%%
%% Leave the Fridge Logic tropes to Headscratchers/Lost and Fridge/Lost.
%%%

%%%
%% Good Troi Episode is a YMMV; leave it to the page.
%%%

%% High Octane Nightmare Fuel is a YMMV; leave it to the page.
%%%
%% The flash sideways verse is the afterlife, not technically an Alternate Universe. Besides, none of the main cast are of high school age. Not even Walt.
%%%

* {{Badass}}: [[WorldOfBadAss Everyone]] has their moments.
** Jack: Cuts Ben's dural sac on purpose to help Kate and Sawyer escape; fights Flocke in the rain
** Locke: Knife-throwing makes you a badass by default.
** Eko: Killed three gun-wielding drug lords with a machete without flinching.
** Sayid: Killed someone by stabbing them. ''With a dishwasher.'' ''After being shot with a tranquilizer.''
*** Also: Snaps someone's neck with his ankles while his hands are tied behind his back.
*** Also again: Chokes a man to death (nearly?) with an ''IV.''
** Desmond: Beats Ben to a bloody pulp and tosses him into the ocean. ''After'' Ben shoots him.
** Ben Linus: Took out two gun-wielding horseback Bedouins with nothing but a telescoping baton and the element of surprise.
** Kate: [[spoiler:Saved one bullet for the Man in Black]].
** Sun: [[spoiler: CallingTheOldManOut when she reveals that she's bought a controlling interest in his highly corrupt company using her settlement from Oceanic, she knows exactly what sort of operation he's running and there ''will'' be changes made. Unfortunately this is just before she goes back to LA and ends up back on the island never to return]].
** Lapidus: [[spoiler:Took a 3-inch thick steel door to the face '''and survived''', then pulled off a short take-off with a 737 as the island fell out from underneath it ''Film/TwoThousandTwelve''-style]]. "Amen, Frank" indeed.
** Both fights with Mikhail show us just how skilled Jin is in a fight.
** Rousseau is also a badass purely for being able to survive on the island for 16 years alone, despite the threat of the Others, Smokey, polar bears, indigenous species, lack of supplies, and whatever hostile things the island houses. Even if all that did leave her a little crazy.

** In season 5, Hurley is seen in the airport reading a trade paperback of ''YTheLastMan'', written by current ''Lost'' producer, co-writer, and story editor Brian K. Vaughan.

The show was famous at the time for its high production values (the pilot alone cost $14 million and led to the firing of a ABC executive for greenlighting such an expensive endeavor), [[SlidingScaleOfContinuity inhumanly dense plotting]], [[KudzuPlot a tendency to raise more questions than it can answer]], and somehow remaining a smash hit despite all these "hurdles". The show also heavily involved its fandom in the storytelling process through the parallel Alternate Reality Game ''The LOST Experience''. The success of ''Lost'' inspired network TV to commission [[NoughtiesDramaSeries a slew of imitators]] (''Series/TheEvent'', ''Series/{{Jericho}}'', ''Series/{{Surface}}'', ''Series/TerraNova'', ''Series/{{Invasion}}'', ''Series/FlashForward2009'', ''Series/{{Revolution}}'', and Creator/JJAbrams's follow up show ''Series/{{Alcatraz}}''), all serious and densely plotted serialized dramas based around a central mystery and tinged with a sci-fi edge. Unfortunately most of these shows have failed to recapture the lightning and almost all of them were cancelled after one or two seasons. Honorable mention goes to ''Series/PrisonBreak'', while not a sci-fi show, it was the first out of the gate to capitalize on TV audience's newfound love for serialized dramas, it was also arguably the most critically-acclaimed and successful of the ''Lost''-clones, running for four seasons.

* KarmaHoudini: Ben for some. There's the idea that Alex's death more or less absolves him and moves him towards redemption. However, when you think hard about how many people the guy is responsible for killing, including ordering the death of Charlie, being indirectly responsible for Michael's death and almost Jin's and being directly responsible for Locke's murder amongst countless others, its feels like the writers just let him off the hook.
** Not to mention that he was responsible for those last three ''after'' Alex was killed.
** And the ending implies that he is more deserving of a happy ending than Michael, despite being ''directly responsible'' for all the bad things Michael did.

%%%
%% Love It Or Hate It is a YMMV, leave it to the page.
%%%

%%%
%% Moral Event Horizon and Mostly Narmless are YMMVs; leave them to the pages.
%%%

%%%
%% Narm and related tropes are YMMVs; leave them to the pages.
%%%

* PercussivePrevention: Charlie prevents Desmond from taking his place drowning at The Looking Glass by smashing him in the face with an oar.

%%* RasputinianDeath: Mikhail

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Locke gets an alarming number of these, mostly by [[FoeYay Ben]], Jack, and even [[spoiler:posthumous ones by The Man in Black, while ''[[GrandTheftMe he's wearing Locke's skin like a suit]]'']].

%%%
%% As The Scrappy is a YMMV, so is Rescued From The Scrappy Heap.
%%%

%%%
%% The Scrappy is a YMMV; leave it to the page.
%%%

%%%
%% Seasonal Rot is a YMMV; leave it to that page.
%%%

%%%
%% Tear Jerker is a YMMV; leave it to the page.
%%%

%%%
%% Unfortunate Implications is a YMMV; leave it to the page.
%%%

%%%
%% Wall Banger is a Darth Wiki trope and is not permitted off of there.
%%%

%%%
%% The Wesley is a YMMV; leave it to the page.
%%%

%%%
%% You Fail Logic Forever is listed as a YMMV; leave it to the page.
%%%

* YoureNotMyFather: Claire's response to her father.
** Also Walt's exact words to Michael when they're in the hotel.
%%%
%% Your Mileage May Vary applies to everything, guys.
%%%

* YouWouldntShootMe: Subverted when Sawyer has [[spoiler:Tom at his mercy. After he surrenders, Sawyer (remembering his capture and threatening of Kate, as well as his involvement in kidnapping Walt, shooting Sawyer, and attempted murder of everybody on the raft)]] takes deliberate aim and kills him.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: The Others go barefoot, in keeping with their "simple" lifestyle. Of course, this is merely a ruse to trick the survivors (Tom even goes as far as weaking a FakeBeard!). Played straight with the Others who reside at the island's Temple, like Dogen and Lennon. This tradition seems to stem from Jacob himself, who lives an extremely simple and humble existence. He's only seen wearing shoes when off the island.

* BottleEpisode: Season 3 Hydra arc, with Jack, Kate and Sawyer stuck in cages for several episodes in a tow resulted from the network's concerns about the show going over budget in season 2 finale.

* HourglassPlot: Jack starts as a [[AgentScully Man of Science]], focused on getting the survivors off the Island, while Locke is a [[AgentMulder Man of Faith]], believing that people aren't supposed to leave the Island BecauseDestinySaysSo. It goes on like this for four Seasons, until the first reversal happens in Season 5: Jack gets off the Island but becomes increasingly depresing and is looking for a way to come back, while Locke is now desperately searching for a way off the Island, believing it to be a necessary step to save everyone. After Jack gets back and Locke is killed, his face assumed by the Man In Black, things get even better: Jack is now a strong believer in Faith determined to stay on the Island, while Fake-Locke is a cynical pragmatist desperately trying to leave it. By the final episodes, the Survivors led by Jack are now trying to stop the BigBad from doing the very same thing they tried to do for most of the series.

** Brian Porter. When confronted by Michael, he basically admits to offering Susan a cushy promotion in order to seduce her, helped her win custody of Walt and turned Michael's life into hell for several years; only to reveal after she died that he ''never'' wanted Lloyd in the first place and doesn't like being in the same room as him! He then refuses any contact with Walt, even though as Michael angrily points out, he's been the only father Walt's ever known! Sure, Brian has just lost the love of his life, but so did Michael, [[TraumaCongaLine in addition to]] losing his son and getting hit by a freaking ''car!''

** ShoutOutToShakespeare: Juliet is named after the titular character in ''RomeoAndJuliet''. Another obvious one: A number of people, separated on different parts of a mysterious island, experiences some strange MindScrew events, all while some guy, "keeper of the island" roams around. Theatre/TheTempest springs to mind.
** Also one to Karl Marx:"Religion is opium for the people". In season one, the Beechcraft has lots of small inconic statues of st.Mary, with a lot of heroin inside.

[[color:white:''God loves you as He loved Jacob.'']]