History Series / Quantico

* AbsenteeActor: Several cases, but subverted with Alex, Ryan and Shelby, the only three to stay main characters throughout the show's run and the only three to appear in every episode.

* NoBadgeNoProblem: {{Subverted}} in "America". Now-analyst trainee Caleb tries to follow his former agent classmates to a simulated bust, [[RealityEnsues but is sent back to his seat by the instructors because analysts stay in the office]].

* RealityEnsues: Alex is so well-known that FBI officials had no choice but to fire her. [[spoiler: It was only a ruse to throw suspicion off her when she infiltrates the CIA to investigate the threat of rogue agents trying to undermine the G20 summit.]]

* FamousLastWords:
** "Alex, ''RUN!!!''" [[spoiler: - [[VasquezAlwaysDies Natalie Vasquez]].]]
** "You..." [[spoiler: [[BigBad Liam]] just as Alex and Ryan kill him in "Yes."]]
** [[spoiler:Simon]] as he makes his HeroicSacrifice: "I'm always with you"

* BookEnds: [[spoiler:Of a sort. Both the pilot and the first winter finale have a character who seems to be propped for a major role reveal a DarkSecret and [[DrivenToSuicide killed themselves]]: Eric Packer in the pilot and Elias Harper in the winter finale]]. Both characters were played by actors whose [[Series/{{Sense8}} last]] [[Series/TheFlash2014 roles]] were actually heroic cops.

* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Each episode in the first season is named after the last word in its script (although not necessarily the last word ''spoken''). As the result, while there ''is'' an episode in season 1 called "Quantico," it is '''not''' the pilot (it's episode 10, the pilot episode is called "Run"). [[spoiler: The season finale is called "Yes," but that doesn't end up being the last word spoken in the episode]]. Every title of season 2 episodes is a CIA cryptonym.

* MrFanservice: Most of themale cast members are quite nice to look at...

* {{Hollywood Autism}}: Will.

* ForgottenFallenFriend: No one spends much time mourning over either [[spoiler:Natalie or Drew]].

* ModestyBedsheet: Alex has a bed sheet over her top when answering the phone after she has just had sex with Ryan, so the audience won't see her breasts.

* TwoLinesDifferentTimes: The first two seasons jump back and forth between Alex's time at the titular academy (or, in the second season, her time at The Farm), and the present.

When an attack on Grand Central Station in New York City is named the most devastating act of terrorism in the United States since [[TheWarOnTerror 9/11]], newly minted FBIAgent Alex Parrish (Chopra) finds herself in a precarious situation: [[FrameUp being framed for it]].

* {{Fanservice}}: Equal-opportunity fanservice, no less. Ryan and Caleb get {{Shirtless Scene}}s in the pilot, and episode 3 has an extended swimming pool/locker room scene for cadets of ''both'' sexes (with prominent shots of Alex getting out of the water and Ryan in a towel). The exception is Raina, who, in keeping with Islamic principles of modesty, wears a black wet suit in the pool instead of the open-back one-piece suits the other women wear, and she isn't seen undressed in the locker room. Yasmine Al Massri still gets in the action due to Nimah being less modest.

The show has aired two seasons and the third (final) season aired the first episode on April 26 with 13 episodes being announced.

* DownerEnding: The season two episode Odyoke. [[spoiler:Raina]] is framed for a terrorist attack; one of the people responsible who could also ID other collaborators [[spoiler:is shot, taking away the team's ability to prove Raina's innocence]]; and [[spoiler:Nimah pretends to be Raina to turn herself in and be sent to prison.]] To top it off, all of that was part of the plan to [[spoiler:get a Muslim registry bill that Claire would veto to pass through Congress, effectively pinning the blame on her for any possible future attack]]. This was a rare Quantico episode where ''nothing'' went right for the protagonists.
* DressingAsTheEnemy: Averted in the second season premiere as Alex finds a set of black uniforms and masks like those worn by the terrorists. However, she realizes none of them are in her size. She's then attacked by a terrorist and barely gets away.
* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler: After the team expose his long work of treason to get to the Presidency and then works with Russia to undermine the U.S., Roarke kills himself rather than be arrested and tried.]]
* EverybodyHasLotsOfSex: In the first episode Alex meets a guy on a plane and then, right after they land, has sex with him in a car in the airport parking lot. They don't even know each other's names at that point. The rest of the show... is basically the same.

* FalseFlagOperation: Cited by Alex when she realizes a group of supposed Pakistan terrorists trying to set off a dirty bomb in Manhattan are actually from India. Several have lost family members to Pakistan violence and a member of the Indian government is helping them, thinking his government is "too weak" to deal with their long-time enemies. They believe that by framing Pakistan for a nuclear blast in New York, it will get the U.S. on their side in a war to finally wipe Pakistan out.

* {{Fanservice}}: Equal-opportunity fanservice, no less. Ryan and Caleb get {{Shirtless Scene}}s in the pilot, and episode 3 has an extended swimming pool/locker room scene for cadets of ''both'' sexes (with prominent shots of Alex getting out of the water and Ryan in a towel). The exception is Raina, who in keeping with her Islamic modesty wears a black wet suit in the pool instead of the open-back one-piece suits the other women wear, and isn't seen undressed in the locker room. Also Yasmine Al Massri still get in the action due to Nimah being less modest.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Simon [[spoiler: being the one who actiavely starts defusing the bomb]] in episode 7 turns out to be one for his [[spoiler: [[HeroicSacrifice dealing with the bomb]] that Liam built]] in the season 1 finale.

** Simon realizes [[spoiler: FBI profiler Susan Langdon]] framed a serial killer through making an unrelated murder appear like his work, because she couldn't pin any other on him. When he confronts her with this, she nearly kills him before Ryan intervenes. His other fellow trainees show no support after he reveals it either, angrily denouncing his action because a serial killer will now go free, although he counters that he's fulfilling his legal and moral duty.

* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Each episode in the first season is named after the last word in its script (although not necessarily the last word ''spoken''). As the result, while there ''is'' an episode in season 1 called "Quantico," it is '''not''' the pilot (it's episode 10, the pilot episode is called "Run"). [[spoiler: And the season finale is called "Yes," but that isn't how the episode ends]]. Every title of season 2 episodes is a CIA cryptonym.

* IntroductionByHookup: In the pilot Alex and Ryan meet on a plane to Washington and have sex in the front seat of his car. A few hours later, they run into each other while taking the oath at Quantico. He tries to pretend they're new to each other for everyone else's benefit but she {{troll}}s him by publicly explaining the reason for them being awkward around each other. [[spoiler:{{Justified}} as Ryan was assigned to watch her, though his handler tells him "Don't sleep with her again."]] In the present day they're apparently in a LoveTriangle with Vasquez.
* IOweYouMyLife: Liam when Drew killed the terrorist who was about to kill Liam.
* JerkassHasAPoint: Hannah point blank tells Alex how crazy it is to have kept her being used by the Voice quiet and putting her in danger by telling her about it.
* LogoJoke: The logo for creator Joshua Safran's Random Acts Productions changes on every episode so far.

* LoveTriangle: Alex/Ryan/Natalie. A slightly more perverse one with Simon/Nimah/Raina (he likes one, the other likes him, and for quite some time he's not even aware they're two people).
* ModestyBedsheet: Alex has a bed sheet over her breasts when answering the phone after she has just had sex with Ryan, so we the audience won't see anything.
* TheMole: [[spoiler: Someone in the FBI is apparently a terrorist who infiltrated them.]]
* MrFanservice: The male cast members in general are quite nice to look at, as a whole.
* MsFanservice: As indeed, are the female cast members.

* OhCrap: In "Mockingbird", Ryan sees Sasha on the streets after he was in an op to save a media mogul from being assassinated after he tries to deny that he's with the government.

* [[PostNineElevenTerrorismMovie Post 9/11 Terrorism Series]]: Liam claims the attack on Grand Central Station is the biggest act of terrorism on American soil since 9/11. The events of September 11th also fuel Shelby's motivations for joining the academy, since her parents were killed on one of the downed planes.
* PrisonersDilemma: In the episode "Cover", FBI Academy Deputy Director Miranda Shaw uses a variant as a SecretTestOfCharacter. After getting her FBI cadets pissed off at each other, she tells them that they are to vote for three candidates to be cut from the training program. Refuse to vote, and she cuts ten. Alex tries to get her classmates to abstain, but Simon chickens out. Truth is, Miranda wasn't planning to cut ''anyone'': the correct response was to stick with each other regardless of personal feelings, and she gives Simon and the candidates about to follow his lead a WhatTheHellHero speech and threatens him with expulsion if he makes another mistake like that.
* PonziScheme: One episode has the team targeting who they think is a terrorist group who caused a plane crash to short-change the stock. They go in for a major investigation at a party where Alex overhears the two partners in charge talking...and realize they had nothing to do with the crash, they're running a Ponzi scheme and picked that particular stock totally at random.

* RealityEnsues: Alex's too well-known that FBI officials had no choice but to fire her. [[spoiler: It was only a ruse to throw suspicion off her when she infiltrates the CIA to investigate the threat of rogue agents trying to undermine the G20 summit.]]

** After having the class make psych profiles of each other and then posting [[QuoteMine the worst bits]] for public viewing, Miranda lets the resentment fester for a day, then, in a variant on the Prisoners Dilemma, tells them that they are to vote on three candidates to be cut from the program, and if they refuse, she'll cut ten. Over Alex's objections, Simon votes and sets some of the others going to Miranda's office, and Miranda tells them they failed the test: [[WhatTheHellHero they're supposed to stick with each other, like every previous class did]]. No one is cut, but Simon's placed on probation and warned that if he screws up again, he's out.

This series is notable for formally introducing UsefulNotes/{{Bollywood}} star Chopra to American audiences, as well as boasting a fairly diverse cast of characters led by Chopra's Alex, the only Indian character headlining a series on American network television at the time of the show.[[note]]Creator/MindyKaling formerly held this honor with ''Series/TheMindyProject'', before it moved to internet-based Creator/{{Hulu}} for the 2015–2016 season. Chopra is also the first South Asian actress to star in an American TV series.[[/note]] [[http://n.pr/1TDDB5x Alex's character had originally been written with a white actress in mind]] but Chopra resisted efforts to change the character to incorporate more stereotypically Indian qualities, which included keeping her original surname.

An interesting aspect of the series in its early weeks is that, while its first episode was rated TV-14 in the US and included a slightly graphic, if very brief, sex scene, succeeding episodes carried a much more mild TV-PG rating, unusual for a series airing in the 10PM timeslot in prime time that is usually reserved for racier series.

* AfricanTerrorists: The Citizens Liberation Front, whose members speak Swahili. [[spoiler:It's a ruse to cover their identities as a rogue CIA agent.]]

** This continues in Season 2, with flips back and forth between Alex's induction into The Farm, and the "present day" of a terrorist attack on an international conference.

* ArtifactTitle: As of season 2.

* BookEnds: [[spoiler:Of a sort. Both the pilot and the winter finale have a character who seems to be propped for a major role reveal a DarkSecret and [[DrivenToSuicide killed themselves]]: Eric Packer in the pilot and Elias Harper in the winter finale]]. Both characters were played by actors whose [[Series/{{Sense8}} last]] [[Series/TheFlash2014 roles]] were actually heroic cops.

* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Trainee uniforms are light blue long-sleeve shirts for agent trainees ("nats") and dark blue polo shirts for analyst trainees. The agents also carry bright red plastic guns at the hip instead of real firearms, except on the shooting range.

* DarkAndTroubledPast: Every cadet has one of these to some degree, apparently. As their first pass/fail test assignment, each one is assigned to find out a secret that was left out of assigned dossiers.

-->--'''Alex Parrish''' in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRnFFinkCFA Official Trailer]]

* ConArtist: [[spoiler: Samara, who has spent fifteen years pretending to be Shelby's half-sister to bilk her out of millions of dollars. Caleb finally forces Shelby to face the truth by exposing Samara in a web talk.]]

* TwinSwitch: The entire point of Raiana and Nimah joining the FBI is to train them to pose as one person in the field. As such, the two are constantly swapping places for training (with Raina annoyed she has to "tone down" her skills so folks don't wonder why Nimah is suddenly so much better.) Evenutally, the truth is revealed to the rest of the class and afterward, the two continue to pull the stunt, both for training missions and later helping Alex in the future.

* DeceptiveLegacy: Poor Shelby gets this a lot. Shortly after 9/11, she found Samar, her half-sister, the product of an affair Shelby's father had twenty years earlier. For fifteen years, Shelby gave millions of dollars to Samar to help her out and buy a house, wanting to be close to her only family. In "Quantico," Caleb [[spoiler: proves to Shelby that Samar is a con artist bilking her this entire time.]]
** Then it turns out that [[spoiler: Shelby's parents didn't die on 9/11 at all but faked their deaths.]]

* CallBack: Before she leaves Quantico in the past, Natalie tells Alex that she would always be better than her. Then, in the present, [[spoiler: right before she dies]], Natalie tells her the same thing.

* CrazyPrepared: [[spoiler: Susan Langdon]] apparently carries around a syringe in her purse with a poison which causes pulmonary embolisms so she can kill someone surreptitiously if need be. Framing a guilty man is one thing--this makes you think she is quite possibly a killer herself, as she seemed completely ready to use this on Simon, and we are given no reason to believe she was bluffing.
** It could just as easily have been an empty syringe. Injecting air into the blood is likely to cause an embolism.

* FramingTheGuiltyParty: Simon realizes [[spoiler: FBI profiler Susan Langdon]] framed a serial killer through making an unrelated murder appear like his work, because she couldn't pin any other on him. When he confronts her with this, she nearly kills him before Ryan intervenes. His other fellow trainees show no support after he reveals it either, angrily denouncing his action because a serial killer will now go free, although he counters that he's fulfilling his legal and moral duty.

* FalseFlagOperation: Cited by Alex when she realizes a group of supposed Palestinians trying to set off a dirty bomb in Manhattan are actually from India. Several have lost family members to Palestine violence and a member of the Indian government is helping them, thinking his government is "too weak" to deal with thier long-time enemies. They believe that by framing Palestine for a nuclear blast in New York, it will get the U.S. on their side in a war to finally wipe Palestine out.

The show has aired two seasons and the third season aired the first episode on April 26 with 13 episodes being announced.

* FamousLastWords: "Alex, ''RUN!!!''" [[spoiler: - [[VasquezAlwaysDies Natalie Vasquez]].]]
"You..." [[spoiler: [[BigBad Liam]] just as Alex and Ryan kill him in "Yes."]]

* Retool: In Season 3, the series jettisons season-long arcs in favor of a very tight focus on a VillainOfTheWeek format.