History YMMV / TheShield

* MoralEventHorizon: [[spoiler:Rollins threatening to cripple a retired {{Wrestling/Edge|Wrestler}} for life unless Wrestling/JohnCena reinstated Wrestling/TheAuthority... then attempting to carry out the threat anyway.]]

* FanNickname: [[Wrestling/BigBossman The Big Boss Men]] (due to their similar appearance to the Attitude Era Boss Man) and [[Wrestling/TheNexus Nexus 2]] (due to being former NXT wrestlers interfering with matches and causing mass beat downs.)
* FandomRivalry: Had this with Wrestling/{{TNA}}'s Wrestling/{{Aces And Eights|Wrestlers}} stable, due to the two groups being perfectly constructed as {{foil}}s to each other as well as both of their runs coinciding for about a year. Then it switched to the Wrestling/{{NJPW}}-originated Wrestling/BulletClub, yet another foil that is also considered the other contender for most influential pro wrestling stable forged in TheNewTens.

*** WWE is fully aware of this. WWE Network subscribers are able to see the heretofore unrevealed titles for each individual episode of Raw and Smackdown, once they are available for streaming 30 days after airing. Going through the listing reveals that the July 25, 2014, episode of Smackdown, which heavily featured Rollins, Ambrose, and Reigns, was titled "Former Agents of Shield."
** The storyline during the group's first few months surrounding the question of whether or not they were working for Wrestling/CMPunk was concluded with TheReveal being that Wrestling/PaulHeyman, unbeknownst to Punk, had been paying them to defend him. If Punk was telling the truth on Wrestling/ColtCabana's ''Art of Wrestling'' podcast, the original plan for the Shield stable did in fact have them working for Punk, and the use of three developmental stars for the stable (as well as the inclusion of Wrestling/DeanAmbrose) was in fact Punk's idea. To add to this, [[Wrestling/BryanDanielson Daniel Bryan]], one of the three men the Shield beat in their first match on PPV, and Wrestling/TheBigShow, one of the three men the Shield beat in their first Wrestling/WrestleMania match, were the two main roster guys creative initially had in mind for the stable. The one developmental call-up? Wrestling/SethRollins. Yes, the Architect and Traitorface himself was the only person tapped for the stable the entire time from the moment of its conception.

** Anytime during the first run of the SHIELD where the guys flirted with Renee Young. Fast-forward to 2017, and she's HappilyMarried to Wrestling/DeanAmbrose.

* HypeBacklash: Since it's become more obvious in the booking that WWE looks at Reigns as a potential successor to the top face throne, there's been a bit of this towards him from fans that are afraid of what this could mean for Rollins and Ambrose's post-Shield futures—namely a [[DemotedToExtra lack thereof]]. This is understandable, as WWE has been detrimentally addicted to the idea of manufacturing {{breakup breakout}}s ever since Wrestling/ShawnMichaels unintentionally left his Rockers tag team partner Marty Jannetty in the dust. The problem is, even if their futures do turn out dim it won't be because Roman did anything to get them held down. All three members of the Shield, Reigns included, are each other's biggest fans in the business and have routinely praised each other (and been praised by commentators) as future top stars. Furthermore, everything suggests that Dean and Seth have as good a chance as any in recent memory of averting the pattern, having been given enough character depth from their time in developmental all the way into the stretch of their run with the Shield that no one can objectively deny their importance. With the utter shock coming from Seth Rollins' betrayal of the team the very night after their biggest win to date, WWE's faith in all three men has become so blindingly apparent as to actually quell some of this backlash.

* MoralEventHorizon: [[spoiler:Rollins threatening to cripple a retired {{Wrestling/Edge}} for life unless Wrestling/JohnCena reinstated Wrestling/TheAuthority... then attempting to carry out the threat anyway.]]

** Their debut at ''Survivor Series 2012'', during the WWE Title match between then-champion Wrestling/CMPunk, Wrestling/JohnCena, and Wrestling/{{Ryback}}.

** ''Money in the Bank 2016'': On this night, Rollins defeated Reigns semi-clean to win back the title he had to vacate in November of the previous year -- only for Ambrose, fresh off winning the titular match, to blindside him and cash in, pinning Rollins to win the title. Within ''three minutes'', all three members of the Shield were WWE World Heavyweight Champion. This single moment cemented them as both one of the greatest stables of all time, and the most successful stable of the modern era.

** Dutch Wagenbach is portrayed as one of the most moral officers in the Barn, never breaking the law or crossing many ethical boundaries. However, his Manipulative Bastard tendencies when interrogating suspects comes across as much more dangerous when taking in consideration the amount of false confessions that have happened in real life as a result of said tactics among detectives. While in fact encouraged by the police force, it still doesn’t look good on his end, even if he clearly had moral intentions.

** Danny Solfer is another example. Her defense of Vic early on is quite questionable, and she only turns against him because of something that arguably wasn’t even his fault. Not to mention, she has sex with him knowing he has a wife. However, the most uncomfortable aspect regarding Danny is her killing of Zayed Al-Thani. While her murder is portrayed as necessary self-defense and she’s meant to be seen as sympathetic when his wife starts harassing her afterwards, recent news regarding police brutality and unnecessary murders by police officers as a response to danger, it puts Danny in a much different light. While her actions were technically legal and she likely wouldn’t face any serious trouble even in the least corrupt police district, the fact that she immediately resorted to killing Zayed when he was obviously mentally distressed and was unlikely to actually harm anyone with his gun instead of resorting to other methods such as calming him down or restraining the guy is pretty inexcusable. It doesn’t help that she made Islamophobic remarks towards him, which she was never called out for in any way.

* CrossesTheLineTwice:
** Early in the series, Vic gets roped into helping Dutch find a serial killer who killed an underaged prostitute; he eventually tracks the victim down to a theater where live underage sex shows are put on. While Vic has to watch a young girl be brutally raped on stage in front of him, he finds himself sitting next to a pedophile who is masturbating right there in the open.
** An old man gets robbed by his grandson, whose accomplice ''nails'' the old guy's feet to the floor due to his constant walking back and forth. When the police arrive after the burglary and removes the nails from the guy's feet so he can move, the old guy grabs a nearby gun from a desk drawer and shoots himself in the head right in front of the cops.
** Vic's confession scene in the show's penultimate episode. After horrifying the ICE agent he's been working for with the laundry list of murders and crimes he's committed over the years - selling out his accomplice/last remaining MoralityPet Ronnie to get full immunity in the process - Vic is reminded that protocol dictates he can't tell Ronnie that he implicated him, or his immunity deal is shot and his confession can be used against him in court. Rather than suddenly panicking at the implications that he can not warn Ronnie to skip town as a means to have his immunity and protect his friend, Vic doesn't show a single sign of remorse. Instead, he tells the agent matter-of-factly that he'll outright lie to Ronnie in order to keep him in play until his arrest, then tells her that he's done much worse things before. However, when Vic finds out his wife betrayed him to Claudette and Dutch, he tried to tell Ronnie and get him to escape into hiding, but Claudette called him in to inform him of the deaths of Shane and his family, complete with the incomplete suicide note. And when Vic tries to prevent Ronnie's arrest afterwards, [[YouAreTooLate it's too late for him.]]

* SacredCow: This stable is one of the most beloved in Wrestling/{{WWE}} history; they carried the company on their backs both as a group and as individual performers for ''years''. As far as the modern era goes, the only other stable even remotely comparable to their popularity is Wrestling/TheNewDay. Hell, even when Wrestling/RomanReigns was at his most hated, all the company had to do was just hint at a possible Shield reunion for him to shake off most of the vitriol. When Wrestling/MichaelCole said that [[Wrestling/JonMoxley Dean Ambrose]]'s departure from the company (thus preventing any Shield reunions on WWE TV for the foreseeable future) was the EndOfAnAge, he wasn't lying.

* {{HSQ}}:
** Their first official 'match' in the WWE was a 6-man [[GimmickMatches Tables, Ladders, and Chairs]] match against Wrestling/{{Ryback}}, Wrestling/{{Kane}}, and Wrestling/DanielBryan - and '''boy, did it deliver.'''
** The Shield versus Evolution at Extreme Rules. ''Enough said.''
*** After Rollins jumped off a balcony to rescue Ambrose, the crowd was even chanting 'Holy shit! Holy shit!' over and over.
** The Shield vs. Wrestling/TheWyattFamily at Elimination Chamber 2014. Imagine that "Holy shit!" chant that starts up simply because ''The Wyatts had stepped through the ropes''. This was the battle everyone was waiting to see and it was definitely one for the ages.
** Rollins turning on the Shield.

* SeasonalRot: Though it has its share of fans, the third season is generally seen as markedly weaker than the first two due to the series focusing heavily on the Mara/Vic/Shane triangle while arbitrarily splitting up the other partners on the show (Julian/Danny and Claudette/Dutch) for the bulk of the season. The season's struggles are said to have caused the show to lose it's Golden Boy status within The FX Network, resulting in stunt casting for seasons four and five to save the show. Luckily just about all fans agree that it recovered from this immediately in season four, and avoided any more rot right through to the series finale.

* FandomRivalry: Had this with Wrestling/{{TNA}}'s Wrestling/AcesAndEights stable, due to the two groups being perfectly constructed as {{foil}}s to each other as well as both of their runs coinciding for about a year. Then it switched to the Wrestling/{{NJPW}}-originated Wrestling/BulletClub, yet another foil that is also considered the other contender for most influential pro wrestling stable forged in TheNewTens.

* DracoInLeatherPants: The Strike Team in general, but most notably Ronnie Gardocki and Curtis "Lem" Lemansky. While many fans of the show will agree with you that Vic and Shane are horrible people, a lot of the same fans will then turn around and argue in the defense of Lem and Ronnie being good people and not willing accomplices to Vic's crimes. Ronnie in particular typifies this notion, especially after the finale as far as fans who still think the character got screwed over as opposed to having received his just punishment for his crimes. Lem at least has an ArmedWithCanon PeerPressureMakesYouEvil excuse. Ronnie, on the other hand, mainly has the fact that the character was never truly fleshed out, left out of some of the team's worst deeds (though not as many as Lem), and had so many Woobie-related moments, not to to mention being cast opposite Shane in season seven, that it led to fans fanwanking Ronnie as a good guy caught up with bad people despite important facts such as, say, his reaction to finding out about the team's "original sin", Vic and Shane killing Terry Crowley, being to whine to Vic that he should've been in Shane's spot that day.

** As of April 11, 2016, [[Wrestling/JonMoxley the]] [[Wrestling/SethRollins three]] [[Wrestling/RomanReigns men]] who comprised The Shield would be employed by WWE at the same time as the [[Wrestling/FergalDevitt first]] [[Wrestling/AJStyles three]] [[Wrestling/KarlAnderson leaders]] and main tag team [[Wrestling/DrewHankinson enforcer]] of the notorious Wrestling/BulletClub, very frequently sharing the ring with them on an individual basis. Moreover, The Shield breakup feud would soon hit a conclusion very early into The Club's run and leave the door open for the three to inevitably reunite, especially when Roman Reigns needed a boost in fan reaction, and Vince could've laid claim to be the first to align The Club's two main singles stars together, as AJ Styles had officially entered BC on the same night Prince Devitt/Finn Bálor was forced to leave Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling. Yet WWE never pulled a trigger on having the four Bullet Club members all work together in one sitting, let alone use them as a proper antagonist for The Shield's reunions to play out naturally according to the stable's original motif and purpose. Instead they had The Hounds of Justice reconvene in response to haphazard makeshift alliances when they and their heel rivals all happened to intersect in the summer of 2017 and 2018, just so Ambrose could betray Rollins and restart their feud with switched roles after they were done getting Reigns over. Worse yet, the absolute mangling of that Ambrose and Rollins feud turned out to be the reason that Ambrose, one of The Shield members, would be the one to leave WWE. The door was closed when Ambrose's contract expired on April 30, 2019 -- over three years following Anderson and Gallows' WWE debut. ** During the buildup to their showdown against Wrestling/TheNewDay on ''Wrestling/SurvivorSeries 2017'', the history of some of their members (e.g. [[Wrestling/JonMoxley Dean]] beating Wrestling/KofiKingston to win his first ever singles title and Wrestling/{{Big E|Langston}} being the one to end Wrestling/{{Seth|Rollins}}'s inaugural NXT championship reign) were never brought up.

* ToughActToFollow: The second (and third?) runs of The Shield as a faction were blatant nostalgia runs and everyone (even the crowd who popped for them to some degree nonetheless) knew it. They were never going to recapture the magic of the original run, particularly the original run for the trio post- their first HeelFaceTurn.

** [[TheDreaded Margos Dezerian]], debuting in season 1's "Blowback", is a [[PsychoForHire hitman]] working for the [[RuthlessForeignGangsters Armenian Mafia]]. Overseeing the organization's heroin shipments, Margos keeps the syndicate in line by threatening and/or murdering anyone who proves to be a liability for even the slightest of reasons. In his debut, he murders a young man for consuming his sample of heroin and later [[NeckSnap snaps an inmate's neck]] after said inmate insulted him. After escaping police custody, Margos returns in season 3 to track down and kill everyone who stole from the syndicate's money train operation. Margos ends up slaughtering nearly a dozen people during his quest, torturing them and chopping off their feet after killing them. When the Strike Team tries to rescue a teenage girl whom Margos has been holding hostage to [[IHaveYourWife force her older sister to work for the Armenians]], Margos stabs the girl in the back of the neck, leaving her to die as punishment for the Strike Team's interference.

** Season 2: [[RuthlessForeignGangsters Armando "Armadillo" Quintero]] is a vicious Mexican drug lord who compensates for his youth with his cruelty. Armadillo is introduced by uniting several gangs under his control by having their leaders "[[ManOnFire necklaced]]"--imprisoned in tires and burned alive. A SerialRapist, Armadillo [[CallingCard tattooed the symbol of a dove onto the faces of each victim]], and even did this to the [[WouldHurtAChild 12-year-old]] sister of one victim. When he returns later, Armadillo uses children as drug mules for his tainted heroin, leading to the death of a toddler who consumes the drug under the belief it is candy. When he discovers his brother Navaro may be "greenlit" in prison to testify against him, Armadillo has Navaro murdered with no remorse before "greenlighting" Vic Mackey, his team, and their entire families for death.

** Rollins turning heel & betraying his partners has elicited this reaction from the IWC. Some believe this is a logical booking decision that keeps the Evolution/Shield angle fresh, given that the Shield has already prevailed over the rivals twice and have no other stable to match them, as well as an opportunity for Rollins to go over as a singles star. Others consider it an illogical ShockingSwerve right out of Vince Russo's playbook that broke up one of the most popular stables in WWE way too soon. Others believe that the angle was done right, but that Ambrose should've been the one to turn on the group and not Rollins.

*** This even extends to the Shield's breakup: many during the group's run thought Ambrose would be the one to betray the Shield with his insanity taking hold, and WWE even teased going in that direction prior to their HeelFaceTurn in 2014 by having him slowly lose control of his mannerisms and butt heads with Reigns a lot out of ego. A few even believed that Reigns would be the traitor in a "Corporate Champion" role similar to [[Wrestling/DwayneJohnson The Rock]]'s push as a main eventer. After a change in course, however, it would be Seth Rollins chosen to become the Traitorface, selling out to the Authority in a ShockingSwerve that ultimately panned out as part of a master plan to become the top guy in WWE.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: Pretty much the bulk of seasons six and seven are spent with various saving throws being tossed to bring Shane away from the abyss of fan hatred after [[spoiler: he killed Lem]]. Also, when they redubbed dialogue into one episode clarifying that Shane's black mistress was of legal age, after network executives freaked out over the notion of one of the show's main characters having sex with an underaged girl. Also, Dutch's killing a stray cat is semi-balanced out by him adopting a stray kitten, which is never mentioned again. Averted with the murder of Terry Crowley, as the show was able to resist retroactively making Terry a monster of some kind to make his death at Vic's hands justifiable.

** Topping all of these however, was the night of of October 22, 2018: [[spoiler:Dean turning on Seth the same night as Roman's leukemia announcement]].* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:

* SacredCow: This stable is one of the most beloved in Wrestling/{{WWE}} history; they carried the company on their backs both as a group and as individual performers for ''years''. As far as the modern era goes, the only other stable even remotely comparable to their popularity is Wrestling/TheNewDay. Hell, even when Wrestling/RomanReigns was at his most hated, all the company had to do was just hint at a possible Shield reunion for him to shake off most of the vitriol. When Wrestling/MichaelCole said that [[Wrestling/JonMoxley Dean Ambrose]]'s departure from the company (thus preventing any Shield reunions on WWE TV for the foreseeable future) was the EndOfAnAge, he wasn't lying.
* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:

* AndYouThoughtItWouldFail: Initial predictions for the show were not good. Catherine Dent's agent begged her not to join the show because of the low pay and FX's reputation, and Creator/MichaelChiklis' agent was not convinced that the show would be successful. People were skeptical of FX, since at the time they had done only reruns of movies, and they were skeptical that the show would be high quality. Even the pilot episode was thrown together by Shawn Ryan just to get it out of his system after being tasked to write a comedy show pilot. Not only would the show become one of the quintessential TV drama series ever made, but it would also establish FX as a major creator for dark AntiHero focused shows.

* {{Fanon}}: Ronnie Gardocki's personality as a nerdy but good-hearted person corrupted by Vic Mackey is the standard fanon backstory for the character. Fanon was made canon with the issue of what nickname the writers used for Curtis Lemansky; season one had characters refer to him as "Lemonhead", which was shortened by fans of the show to just "Lem". By the start of season two, characters started referring to the character exclusively by "Lem".

* GrowingTheBeard: Season 1 was great and all but season 2 became more realistic, took out the humor, not that it was sinking the show, but by focusing more on the drama the show got viewers on the edge of their seats quicker.

** [[spoiler: Vic's ultimate fate. Fan's either think he'll claw his way up into a good position with the FBI, snap and go full vigilante, or end up broke and pathetic like Carl Weathers.]]

* FanNickname: [[Wrestling/BigBossman The Big Boss Men]] (due to their similar appearance to the Attitude Era Boss Man) and [[Wrestling/TheNexus Nexus 2]] (due to being former NXT wrestlers interfering with matches and causing mass beat downs.)

* FairForItsDay: While some elements of the show's portrayal of the police have not aged well in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and increased scrutiny of the police and their portrayal in popular media (in particular an all-white special task force engaging in brutality against primarily minority neighborhoods), the series' frank portrayal of police corruption, brutality, and lack of accountability was rare in mainstream television in the early to mid-2000s, and still uncommon even today. Vic Mackey depicted as a cop protagonist who commits unambiguously heinous acts was ''very'' atypical compared to [[Franchise/LawAndOrder other, more popular police procedurals]] at the time, and [[Series/BlueBloods even today]], that portrays its police characters in a more heroic and uncritical light. One could argue that the series' accurate portrayal of certain issues, like the complete ineffectiveness of specialized police units like the Strike Team (itself based upon the LAPD's real-life and infamously corrupt Rampart Division's CRASH unit), and season four's addressing of civil forfeiture in ''2006'', have only [[ValuesResonance aged better]] when these issues started drawing public attention in the decades after the show's airing.

*** Creator/KateySagal (Nancy Gilroy) is Gemma Teller Morrow

** The show had an arc in season four about a lawyer getting together a class-action lawsuit for mercury poisoning originating from vaccines. The Mackeys were involved, as it could explain Matthew and Megan's autism. Vic snaps back against a doctor advising them to get out of the suit and save their money by saying they're covering for each other like cops cover cops. With today's climate of Anti-Vaxxers and the evidence showing vaccines don't cause autism, watching this arc unfold can be a little grating. Thankfully, they [[AbortedArc don't really go anywhere with it]].