History Series / PersonsUnknown

* KickTheSonOfABitch: Erika [[spoiler: beating the shit out of Bill for his clothes]].

* ManOnFire: [[spoiler: Tom ends up this way. It is not pretty.]]

* AngryBlackMan:
** Sergeant Graham may seem to be this at first, but he ultimately averts it.
** Erika, on the other hand, is a ''psycho'' who acts like a barely coherent animal. [[BrokenBird At least, at first.]]

* IllGirl: Charlie's wife. [[spoiler:If what Charlie later told Bill can be taken at face value, however, she may never have been sick in the first place.]]

* ButchLesbian: Erika is a short-haired (she has cornrows), man-hating aggressive woman who quickly shows she's attracted to Janet. Her very first scene has her mug a guy for different clothes after she was unwillingly put into a dress. Thereafter she always wears a tank top and tight jeans. She's also got prison tattoos.

* Janet Cooper (Daisy Betts): A day-care owner and single mother, whose husband left her with no explanation.
* Joe Tucker (Jason Wiles): A mysterious man who seems to be taking the role of the leader of the captives. Little is known about his past as he evades the others' questions. [[spoiler: He's also TheMole]].

* Moira Doherty (Tina Holmes): A rather skittish school counselor who has a knowledge of medications. [[spoiler:Or so she claims. It's later revealed she's a psychiatric patient with "truth issues."]]

* Tori Fairchild (Kate Lang Johnson): An entitled young woman who is the daughter of an American ambassador. [[spoiler: First of the group to be "eliminated", she takes a taxi in the middle of the night and turns up dead in a fountain in Italy]].
* Bill Blackham (Sean O'Bryan): A car dealer who proves to be suspicious of the others as well as being rather self-absorbed.

* BeeAfraid: Especially when you're deadly allergic to them and you wake up in a house ''fucking filled with the things!''

* ActionMom: Janet. Erika too, sort of.
* AlliterativeName: Bill Blackham.

* BackFromTheDead / PosthumousCharacter: Erika is an interesting variation of these tropes, as she only wakes up in the town after she's ''died'' by way of lethal injection. Of course, [[{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}} this just raises more questions]] about where, exactly, the captives are.

* TheBadGuyWins: Yeah, they didn't succeed in the fight against their kidnappers.

* ButchLesbian: Erika is a short-haired (she has cornrows), man-hating aggressive woman who quickly shows attraction to Janet. Her very first scene has her mug a guy for different clothes after she was willing put in a dress. Thereafter she always wears a tank top and tight jeans. She's also got prison tattoos.

%%* DisappearedDad: Janet's husband. [[spoiler: Or not.]]

* {{Blooper}}:
** Janet's "Kill your neighbor and you'll go free" fortune is first shown as one straight line, then two. Later [[spoiler: when it's changed to "Kill Joe and you'll go free", the y in you is alternately capitalized, uncapitalized, then capitalized again]].
** Joe's stubble seems to change back and forth between episodes. Sometimes he looks like a mountain man, sometimes it will be more closer to a trimmed goatee.
** [[spoiler:Moira lets the peacock scarf blow away at the end of episode 10, but in the next cut you can clearly see it by her knee.]]

* FridayNightDeathSlot: Moved there from Monday nights after ''Last Comic Standing'' began airing.

* ViralMarketing: Done rather lazily. Every episode gave an ad about a blog run by a rather unimportant character. The blog was only updated about three times, and most of it short two or three sentence posts in Italian.

* AbusiveParents: Janet says that her mother was this. However, upon being interviewed by a reporter, her mother denies this. Though, there was one time where she hit her daughter with a hairbrush until it broke.
** She also seems to be passive-aggressive toward her granddaughter.

* AngryBlackMan: Sergeant Graham may seem to be this at first, but he ultimately averts it.

* AxCrazy: Erika, with a shovel, a very large knife, and her bare hands. [[spoiler: And anti-freeze.]]

* BerserkButton: Reference Megan or her grandmother in front of Janet, and she WILL go [[LifetimeMovieOfTheWeek Lifetime]] on your sorry ass.

* BlatantLies: At the end of every episode they would have a message saying "All your questions will be answered at the end of this season." ... Yeah, the last episode not only left several things unanswered, but only caused ''more'' questions.

* {{Blooper}}: Janet's "Kill your neighbor and you'll go free" fortune is first shown as one straight line, then two. Later [[spoiler: when it's changed to "Kill Joe and you'll go free", the y in you is alternately capitalized, uncapitalized, then capitalized again]].

* ColdOpening
* DaEditor: Kat, a rare female example of the trope.

* DisappearedDad: Janet's husband. [[spoiler: Or not.]]

* {{Flashback}}

* HateSink: Bill Blackham.

* AHouseDivided: Well duh... This show hits this trope.

* InvisibleWall: Whenever the captives reach the boundaries of the ghost town, small implants on the back of their legs are activated, releasing a drug that knocks them unconscious.

*** [[spoiler:Beyond that, there's a mysterious ball of blinding light that plops you right back into town.]]
* {{Jerkass}}: Bill.
** Especially after he [[spoiler:tries to rape Tori.]]

* TheMole: [[spoiler:Joe is revealed as this at the end of ep 4.]]

* MsFanservice: Tori.

* TheReveal: [[spoiler: Renbe]] is Janet's disappeared husband.

* RuleOfSymbolism: The "painted lady" butterfly that appears in Tori's room. She {{lampshades}} it by speculating that it's a metaphor from her father that "couldn't be any more obvious". [[spoiler:It's a reference to how her father used to essentially pimp her out to his clients.]]

* SelfMadeOrphan: [[spoiler:Moira]]

** The actress who plays Erika, Kandyse {{McClure}}, is mixed-race, too.
* UniversalPoison: Averted.

* VomitIndiscretionShot

* YourHeadAsplode: [[spoiler: Ulrich in "And Then There Were None"]]
* YouWakeUpInARoom

* PsychoLesbian: Erika: "Stay away from Janet. I got dibs."

** Even moreso episode 12. [[spoiler:The new night manager, Liam Ulrich, attempts to help the abductees escapes- and gets his head blown off for it. Later, the 7 discover 6 body bags in the bank, meaning they have to kill each other until only one survivor is left. Though they all agree not to murder each other, Bill and Charlie are mysteriously killed. While trying to comfort Moira, Erika ends up being killed by said BrokenBird. Moira then almost kills herself, before instead killing Graham, who'd talked her out of suicide. Janet kills Moira, and only Janet and Joe are left. As they share a quiet scene, it's revealed that Joe poisoned Janet and she collapses. He puts her in the last body bag and places her in a van loaded with the other bodies. The director shows up seemingly out of nowhere to congratulate him for proving himself before having the old night manager, Neal, taser him. As the episode ends, we cut to the van and find the other 6 abductees waking up and learn that they had each cooperated to fake their deaths.]]

* Janet Cooper: A day-care owner and single mother, whose husband left her with no explanation.
* Joe Tucker: A mysterious man who seems to be taking the role of the leader of the captives. Little is known about his past as he evades the others' questions. [[spoiler: He's also TheMole]].
* Sergeant Graham [=McNair=]: A fairly levelheaded Marine soldier who is Muslim. [[spoiler: He took payment to go and kill someone whom he thought was an insurgent bomb-maker who killed three of his squadmates. As it turns out, the person he was paid to kill was just an accountant who was going to expose some corrupt dealing involving PrivateMilitaryContractors.]]
* Moira Doherty: A rather skittish school counselor who has a knowledge of medications. [[spoiler:Or so she claims. It's later revealed she's a psychiatric patient with "truth issues."]]
* Charlie Morse: The CFO of an investment firm who has a wife he describes as emotionally unstable. [[spoiler: Well, ''had'' - he killed her though it is unclear yet whether it was a mercy killing or just murder. May or may not also have embezzled money from his father-in-law's company.]]
* Tori Fairchild: An entitled young woman who is the daughter of an American ambassador. [[spoiler: First of the group to be "eliminated", she takes a taxi in the middle of the night and turns up dead in a fountain in Italy]].
* Bill Blackham: A car dealer who proves to be suspicious of the others as well as being rather self-absorbed.
* Erika Taylor: A mysterious woman who wakes up in the town ([[spoiler: apparently as a "replacement" for Tori, whose dress she's wearing when she first arrives in the town]]). A former prisoner with multiple tattoos, she has a son in foster care, and was [[spoiler: actually on Death Row for un-named crimes, and woke up after being thinking she had been executed. Erika is in fact not her real name; it is the name of her cell mate. Her true name was revealed in "Identity" to be Theresa Randolph]].

* Mark Renbe: A journalist from San Francisco, he's your intrepid reporter trying to uncover the truth behind, initially, Janet's disappearance.
* Kat Damatto: Renbe's boss.
* "The Night Manager": Not as creepy as his NoNameGiven name sounds, he presents himself as... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the night manager]] of the hotel they wake up in. He seems to be in a similar situation as the others, not finding being told he has received a job in a hotel and suddenly waking up there very strange as he has "gotten used to it."

* Sam Edick: A private eye hired by Janet Cooper to find her missing husband.
* Tom: [[spoiler: Part of the conspiracy along with Joe, he poses as the host of the Chinese restaurant the captives eat at. Speaks pretty horrible Engrish in his role as host.]]
* Liam Ulrich: Middle-management at the conspiracy, and [[spoiler: Joe and Tom's boss. Replaces the first night manager after Joe kills him. Has a thing for Janet.]]
* [[spoiler: "Madame Director": the director of the conspiracy, and Liam's boss. Quite the IronLady.]]

** [[spoiler:Moira lets the peacock scarf blow away (an [[ConspicuousCG obvious CG effect]]) at the end of episode 10, but in the next cut you can clearly see it by her knee.]]

* ConspicuousCG

* AudibleSharpness: An especially {{egregious}} instance-- when Erika steals a knife from the Chinese restaurant, the sharpness noise is heard while she's still reaching for it.

* HotScoop: Kat.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Persons_unknown_2591.jpg

* AHouseDivided: Well duh...This show hits this trope ''HARD''.

''Persons Unknown'' was a mystery-drama [[MiniSeries miniseries]] airing on NBC between June 7, 2010 and August 28th, 2010.

* ThePresidentsDaughter: Tori. Well, Ambassador's Daughter.

* EverythingsWorseWithBees: Especially when you're deadly allergic to them and you wake up in a house ''fucking filled with the things!''

* DepravedHomosexual: Erika is a psychotic knife-wielding man hater who must have done something bad enough to land her getting the death penalty, and her methods of seduction are not unlike that of a wolverine circling its prey.