History Series / TheStrainTVSeries

-->'''Fet''': ''What happens when you wake up one morning with a stinger in your neck?''
-->'''Setrakian''': ''If I do, your "I told you so" will be a source of great comfort before you dispatch me.''
-->'''Fet''': ''Don't be so sentimental.''

-->'''Quinlan''': ''Still agonizing?''
-->'''Eph''': ''Am I fool?''
-->'''Quinlan''': ''Well, you are a human.''

* IgnoredExpert: Abraham. He shows up to Ephraim and Nora with obviously privileged and classified knowledge. He warns them to destroy the passengers, survivors, and coffin, but he warned them he'd sound crazy. He does, so they ignore him.

* ThePowerOfLove: Subverted. Setrakian states that love is an unstoppable force, but a ''negative'' one, a parasitic impulse that leads the vampires straight to their loved ones to spread the virus.
-->'''Setrakian''': ''It feeds on us, and we feed on it. Love is our grace. Love is our downfall.''

-->'''Fet''': ''The Master used the bonds of human love as a conduit for the Strain. He tried to destroy us. But he never understood it - love. And in the end, it was love that saved us all and gave us the world, our world, back.''

* QuitYourWhining: In Episode 7, when Eph expresses skepticism that killing the Master will kill off all the other strigoi, Setrakian tells Eph quite bluntly that he knows what he's talking about, and Eph doesn't. Setrakian also points out that so far, he (Setrakian) has always been proven right, while Eph... not so much.
-->'''Setrakian''': ''If you wish to defeat this evil, you must trust me. I understand this! You do not! At every turn, everything I have said has proven to be correct. Is that not true?''
-->'''Eph''': ''Yes, but -''
-->'''Setrakian''': ''This is no different. Logic is not the issue here. It's your desire to always be in control.''

-->'''Eichhorst''': ''Why not go down fighting? Right here, right now? Don't you want to try? It's much easier to do nothing, isn't it? Safer. If that God you believe in really existed, what do you suppose he would think of you?''

* TitleDrop: In the sixth episode of the first season ("Occultation"), there's this:
-->'''Vasily''': ''Something evil has taken root, some disease. A horrible, horrible '''strain'''.''

--->'''Eichhorst''': ''I give you another day of life, Jew. For services rendered.''

** In the [[ColdOpening Cold Opening]] of the seventh episode in the first season, a man comes home to find much of his neighborhood has become vampires. Doing the [[GenreSavvy sensible thing]], he races back to his taxi in an effort to escape and orders the driver to go. Instead the driver continually asks what's going on instead of driving, and when vampires begin banging on the windows, the driver takes out a gun and gets out of the car. He is immediately killed.

-->'''Vasily''': ''You look like a bunch of looters to me.''
-->'''Eph''': ''We're from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Who are you?''
-->'''Vasily''': ''[[BoomerangBigot ...I'm a looter]].''

* {{Masquerade}}: For the most part, the recently turned vampires in New York City are practically feral and look like Count Orlok: their hair falls out, their eyes go bloodshot, their skin turns pasty-white, , their teeth become ratlike, etc. They're also so mindless that they can't coherently talk (more than choking out a word or two), even given their use of telepathy - the stinger destroys their vocal cords as it develops. After several weeks their nose even withers away. The Master grants some of his favored servants their own free will again, however (though they are still compelled to serve him), i.e. Eichhorst - who manages to blend in quite successfully with normal humans with an extensive masquerade, involving ''heavy'' prosthetic appliances, makeup, false contacts, and wigs. He's been doing this for decades so he also moves like a human, without the muscle spasms of recently turned vamps, and has mastered the timing of his telepathy and mouth movements to simulate normal talking. Bolivar, meanwhile, one of the initial infectees from the airplane, just wears a long black wig to frame his otherwise bald head (he wears goth face paint so much in his shock rock performances that people just assume it's makeup). In Season 2, Eichhorst helps the turned Kelly with her own human disguise to get through military checkpoints, helping her out with her own wig, contacts, makeup, etc. She's still new at it, though, so she is visibly resisting muscle spasms (she needs to use two hands to take her sunglasses off), she has to make a concerted effort to speak clearly and her telepathy and mouth movements are slightly off. It fools the checkpoint because they don't think vampires can talk at all.

** In the [[ColdOpening Cold Opening]] of the seventh episode in the first season, a man comes home to find much of his neighborhood has become vampires. Doing the [[GenreSavvy sensible thing]], he races back to his taxi in an effort to escape and orders the driver to go. Instead the driver continually asks what's going on instead of driving, and when vampires begin banging on the windows, the driver takes out a gun and gets out of the car. [[WhatAnIdiot He is immediately killed]].

* TheVirus: The vampires, or strigoi, operate much closer to a viral infection than anything supernatural.

* OurVampiresAreDifferent: This time around they spread their disease via worm-like creatures that crawl from their body, their organs seem to have individual sapience (or at least sentience) of their own, they have no genitalia and their excretory organs have fused together to create a cloaca, and they suck blood via a giant tongue stinger.

-->'''Setrakian: Listen very carefully, son. I know your little friend has a gun and the hammer is cocked, but I don't care. I can control your entire body weight from this pressure point, and this knife is pointing straight at your radial artery. By the time he clears his coat pocket, your artery will be punctured and sliced wide open from top to bottom. You fall down bleeding, I go under the counter and your friend starts shooting at an empty space. I can guarantee you this: you will bleed out before the 911 operator answers the phone. That is Option One. Option Two is you release the bills, your friend gives me the gun - he can keep the bullets, I don't care - and you leave this store. Now, son... you have a choice.

** Trip Taylor, the Barbours neighbour. Not only does he verbally abuse the emotionally fragile Anne Marie for her dog growling in the shed(really Ansel chained up to try to protect his wife from his transformation)and tells her to train her dog while it's locked up. He unnecessarily complains about how the media used his tree to pee on and slyly says(while admitting nothing)that he beat the Barbours dog for entering his property without permission, all the while being a SmugSnake about it. Soon after threatening to call the police for the noises coming from the shed. For someone with about a minute of screentime, the audience sheds absolutely no tears as Anne Marie quickly suggests he discipline her dog because she doesn't know how to. [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals With him removing his belt to do so]] , she quickly locks him in the shed with Ansel, who we hear proceeds to tear Trip a new neckhole. He's found later halfway through his transformation into a Strigoi, withered and weak, with Setrakian promptly removes his head.

** In order to defeat Eichhorst, [[spoiler:Setrakian takes a massive amount of blood-thinners and then tricks the vampire into feeding on him, thus poisoning him. However, taking that much blood-thinner probably would have killed or incapacitated Setrakian via internal bleeding long before Eichhorst got to him.]]

** Trip Taylor, the Barbours neighbour. Not only does he verbally abuse the emotionally fragile Anne Marie for her dog growling in the shed(really Ansel chained up to try to protect his wife from his transformation)and tells her to train her dog while it's locked up. He also complains about how the media used his tree to pee on and slyly admits(while admitting nothing)that he beat the Barbours dog for entering his property without permission, all the while being a SmugSnake about it and threatening to call the police for the noises coming from the shed. For someone with about a minute of screentime, the audience sheds absolutely no tears when Anne Marie quickly suggests he discipline her dog because she doesn't know how to,[[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals with him removing his belt to do so]] , and quickly locks him in the shed with Ansel, who we hear proceeds to tear Trip a new neckhole. He's found later halfway through his transformation, withered and weak, with Setrakian promptly removes his head.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Considering how close Setrakian's team is to [[spoiler:the nuclear explosion at the end of Season 3, there's simply no way they're walking away with their ability to see, any semblance of hearing, or a radiation level below dangerous levels]]. Quinlan may be excepted due to his unique physiology, but Setrakian, Dutch, and Fet should be [[spoiler:blind, deaf, and incredibly sick]].