History Series / Sense8

* AdultFear:
** What happened to [[spoiler:Riley's baby Luna]] is terrifying. Born in a snow storm in a car wreck, and then froze to death in her mother's arms as she desperately tried to walk to safety.
** Riley's massive nosebleed in episode 10 must be one for her father as well. Imagine just having finished performing, hearing screams coming from the audience, and looking up in time to see your daughter topple off a balcony into the seats below.
** Will [[spoiler:being on the run from Whispers]] is a huge one for his father. [[spoiler:One day, out of the blue, your child leaves without a word and you don't hear anything from them for months. For all you know they could be dead. Then, when you finally get a phone call, it's evident that they're in some terrible trouble but they won't tell you where they are or what's happening]].

** If you aren't regularly engaging in fighting or hand-to-hand combat, your body just isn't going to have the strength and dexterity to pull off epic kick-boxing or WaifFu moves on the fly, even if a more experienced person happens to be put in the driving seat. There's not really any way to ''confirm'' this, but at the very least it should result in severe sprains and serious downtime - more than half of martial arts training is simply going through said sprains and downtime to increase flexibility. [[note]] As an [[TrainingFromHell extreme]] example, while training to film ''Film/TheForbiddenKingdom'', three men basically rack-stretched Michael Angarano until his muscles and ligaments tore, then forced him to practice while he was healing. Three weeks of limping later, he could do a full split.[[/note]] In addition, whoever happens to be controlling the body would likely be used to moving with a very different centre of gravity, and thus less able to effectively manage their temporary body. To put it another way; even if an Olympic gymnast took over your body for a stretch, it's not going to make ''you'' any more physically capable of taking part in a tournament.

* TheWorldIsJustAwesome: A running theme throughout the series is the sensates react with awe to seeing where their new friends live as many of them have never seen these places before. When Riley is flying home to Iceland, Capheus joyfully says that he's never seen clouds from above before as he's never been on a plane. The opening credits are a stunning montage of clips from each of the locations featured in the show.

* TheLoad: Riley. She's the only member of the cluster in season one without a useful skill to contribute, and she serves as the season's overall DamselInDistress. [[spoiler:Averted, however, come the finale, as she manages to get Will to safety away from Whispers, saving the whole cluster in the process, and will presumably protect him now that ''he's'' become TheLoad.]]

** As of season 2, Riley's musical contacts in Europe helped keep parts of the cluster off grid, accessing underground abandoned locations for housing, drug laboratories for research, not to mention food and supplies while she and Will were on the run. She also used her music to connect to other clusters and is basically functioning as the 08/08 cluster's ambassador.

** Riley is the only member of the cluster to not provide anyone with a useful skill. She's the DistressedDamsel of the first season - though it's [[SequelHook heavily implied]] she's destined to become [[spoiler:TheHeart and MissionControl, as she's TheOnlyOne currently capable of visiting the entire cluster simultaneously.]]

* NotSoDifferent: While the characters are seen to be very different from one another because of their personalities, backgrounds, and skills there small hints indicating that their psychic connection extends to little things. For example Will and Riley taking the same kind of coffee, Riley, Sun, and Nomi having some kind of drug, and in a FreezeFrameBonus moment Riley is seen having music in Hindi and Korean.

** Nomi: Indie movie, that includes various lesbian and {{Transgender}} themes and techno-thriller elements due to her [[HollywoodHacking hacking]] skills.

* HackerCollective: Nomi belonged to such a group in the past [[{{Transgender}} back when she was known as "Mike"]], and later reconnects with her friend Bug who knew her back then and provides her with equipment.

* ReverseMole: Invoked in-universe. [[spoiler:According to Jonas, there is at least one member of the BPO who is helping the sensates behind the scenes.]]

* YourCheatingHeart: From the very beginning, there's a high degree of sexual tension between Wolfgang and Kala. Unfortunately, Kala is about to get married. [[spoiler:Wolfgang inadvertently "visits" her wedding... naked. And then in season two, when she's married to Rajan, she not only has sex with Wolfgang but looks forward to the safe house in Paris that Rajan bids her to go to, as she'll be able to be with Wolfgang in private.]]

* HasAType: This can be inferred about Wolfgang, who shows an interest in three different woman throughout season one: a contestant in a singing competition, a customer of Felix's, and Kala. All three of them are women of color. [[spoiler:Averted in the Christmas special. The woman he hooks up with from a dating app is white.]]

* CreatorCameo: During the Christmas special Lana Wachowski appears as a passerby in Berlin during the New Year's celebrations. Thanks to Lana's vibrant pink dreadlocks, this might be the most conspicuous creator cameo out there, without even showing her face.

** The word Sense8--but as Sensate--shows up multiple times as that is what the main characters are.

[[caption-width-right:330:I Am We.]]

** Nomi: Indie movie, that includes various [[BadassGay Lesbian]] and {{Transgender}} themes and techno-thriller elements due to her [[HollywoodHacking hacking]] skills.

** If you aren't regularly engaging in fighting or hand-to-hand combat, your body just isn't going to have the strength and dexterity to pull off epic kick-boxing or WaifFu moves on the fly, even if a more experienced person happens to be put in the driving seat. There's not really any way to ''confirm'' this, but at the very least it should result in severe sprains and serious downtime - more than half of martial arts training is simply going through said sprains and downtime to increase flexibility. [[note]] As an [[TrainingFromHell extreme]] example, while training to film ''Film/TheForbiddenKingdom'', three men basically rack-stretched Michael Angarano until his muscles and ligaments tore, then forced him to practice while he was healing. Three weeks of limping later, he could do a full split.[[/note]] In addition, whoever's controlling the body would likely be used to moving with a very different centre of gravity, leaving them less able to control their temporary body. To put it another way; even if an Olympic gymnast takes over your body for a stretch, it's not going to make ''you'' any more physically capable of taking part in a tournament.

** Lito at first doesn't seem to be conflicted about his sexuality at all, sharing a happy, if secret, relationship with his boyfriend and only being in the closet to be able to have an action movie lead career in conservative, Catholic Mexico. But when [[spoiler: plot reasons force him to either let a friend suffer or let a blackmailer out publicly out him,]] it turns out that he does have some internalized homophobia, claiming "I'm not a fag!" when a man ever so gently tries hitting on him in semi-public. He needs a serious talk from a trans woman about "the violence we do to ourselves" to finally accept himself fully (and go kiss the guy who'd come on to him to prove it). Also, one gets the impression that [[spoiler: his boyfriend broke up with him not so much because he was going to let their friend marry an abusive man rather than risk getting outed, but because said boyfriend had been quietly suffering being hidden from the public like a dirty secret for years, and the incident finally made him realize that he couldn't bear that any longer.]] In the second season, after getting outed, the couple suffers public disapproval and negative consequences to their professional careers.

* TheWarOnTerror: Name-dropped as the reason BPO went full-on PlayingWithSyringes - when people could randomly be assimilated into clusters, national loyalty becomes somewhat fluid. There's no evidence such a thing ever actually ''happened'', but the funding behind BPO went into full PATRIOT-act mode, assuming that educated and trained Westerners were being connected to illiterate third-world peasants, resulting in instant trained terrorist groups. Some might say [[VillainHasAPoint they have a point]], as the cluster has gone from a RagtagBunchOfMisfits to [[FromNobodyToNightmare a team of skilled operatives]] capable of penetrating their computers, conning their security, and single-handedly evading and even neutralizing entire groups of experienced commandos.

See also: ''Film/InYourEyes''.

* WomanInWhite: Angelica, Daryl Hannah's character, first appears wearing a white dress, and is usually wearing the same outfit when she appears to the sensates she birthed.

* CreatorCameo: During the Christmas special Lana Wachowski appears as a passerby in Berlin during the New Year's celebrations.

* FailedASpotCheck: Whispers arrogantly assumes that Riley and Will in Iceland are stuck in a ClosedCircle, even when Will suggests that they could have left on a boat. For someone from Western Europe, particularly the UK, Whispers must either descend to CluelessDetectice or be really blinded by the assumption that the cluster is stupid if he doesn't consider the fact that Iceland is ''right next to'' the UK and Scandinavia in a subcontinent ''without border controls'' - there is absolutely nothing stopping them from hitching a boat to Scotland/Norway and then driving to anywhere in Western Europe, then potentially getting a boat across any central European body of water to get even further, completely undocumented (so the BPO wouldn't have any travel flags on them). They only bother going as far as Amsterdam, but they do actually do this. Riley's DJ connections across Europe keep them stocked with new squats and drugs, something Whispers should have been able to predict, too.

* GratuitousEnglish: Subverted. Episode 4 reveals everyone is speaking their native language when in contact with each other and strangers (English, German, Hindi, Korean, Spanish, and Swahili), but to the viewer, [[TranslationConvention everyone is speaking English]].

** [[Creator/SylvesterMcCoy Hoy]] avoids detection by meeting other Sensates while [[Series/DoctorWho sitting in a small wooden box. He also carries a cane with an eye-catching handle.]]

* AllStereotypeCast: Due to having to introduce eight storylines all at once, the global cast comprises {{national stereotypes}} so the audience doesn't have to fill in the blanks as much. The protagonists are a serious, possibly sociopathic German; a queer San Franciscan intellectual; a quiet, stoic Korean who is a champion kickboxer; a macho Telenovela actor from Mexico; a cool Nordic DJ; a nice all-American cop; a woman from India nervous about her upcoming wedding (complete with a Bollywood dance number early in the first season); and a poor Kenyan man with a mother who is dying of AIDS. The characters are fleshed out and allowed to be more than these stereotypes, however, even playing with some of them (e.g., the macho Mexican actor is a closeted gay man, and the Indian woman is a religious scientist).