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1This page covers tropes found in ''Series/{{Supernatural}}''.
2
3See also the [[Recap/{{Supernatural}} episode Recap page]] for more trope examples.
4
5Supernatural/TropesAToD | Supernatural/TropesEToL | '''Tropes M To P''' | Supernatural/TropesQToZ | [[YMMV/{{Supernatural}} YMMV]] | [[ShoutOut/{{Supernatural}} Shout Outs]]
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9[[foldercontrol]]
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11[[folder:M]]
12* MachineEmpathy: Dean seems to have this in regards to his Impala, to the point that it's a notable marker of how not-Dean he is when he doesn't seem to care for it.
13--> '''Sam:''' This thing is filthy.\
14'''Dean:''' It's just a car, Sam. \
15'''Sam:''' “It's just a...car”. Wow. You really have gone dark.
16* MadeOfIron:
17** Justified for demons, angels, et al. Sam and Dean, however, have sustained more head injuries between them than Muhammad Ali.
18** In "Lucifer Rising," Dean socks Castiel across the jaw, and it ''actually'' clangs like metal.
19* MagicalStarSymbols: Star symbols frequently show up in {{Protective Charm}}s against supernatural creatures:
20** A pentagram-and-flame [[PowerTattoo tattoo]] protects the bearer from DemonicPossession.
21** Star-and-circle "Devil's Traps" are frequently used to [[SupernaturalSealing confine demons who step into them]]. Their first appearance is as an elaborate heptagram design from the [[GeometricMagic Seal of Solomon]], but the main characters later make do with spray-painted pentagrams surrounded by a few symbols. One dormant {{Hellgate}} is sealed by a hundred-mile-wide trap [[MysticalCityPlanning made from churches and railway lines]].
22* AMagicContractComesWithAKiss:
23** This is how you make a [[DealWithTheDevil deal]] with a demon. And no, it's not always with an attractive woman.
24** Parodied mercilessly when it's discovered that Bobby [[NoYay made a deal with Crowley]], a demon who's been helping them. When Sam asks if they kissed, Bobby denies it, at which point Crowley clears his throat and shows the latest picture on his camera.
25--->'''Bobby:''' Why'd you have to take a picture!?\
26'''Crowley:''' Why'd you have to use tongue?
27* MakeAWish: The episode "Wishful Thinking" features a working wishing well.
28* MagicalNegro:
29** The black psychic Missouri who provides guidance, information, and lots of Sassiness, even smacking Dean on the back of his head and telling him to stop cursing her out in his thoughts.
30** Joshua, the angel and CaringGardener who talks to God and protects the Winchesters from Zachariah.
31* MajorInjuryUnderreaction: Lucifer, after being [[spoiler:shot in the ''head'' by the ''Colt'', the series until-then kill-everything weapon]], crumples to the ground... before taking a deep breath and staring back up at Dean.
32-->'''Lucifer:''' ''Ooooowwwwwww!''
33* MaleGaze[=/=]FemaleGaze: An odd one, this. There's a hot girl every episode and lots of attention gets paid to her cleavage, of course, but there's been slow, lingering shots panning up the boys' long legs and arses, half of their promo shots for Season 2 consisted of hooker poses and you just can't deny that they're wearing a bit of lip gloss and eyeliner in Season 1 episodes. When there's a sex scene, the camera generally spends more time looking at Sam or Dean than his partner.
34* MamaBear:
35** Mary Winchester dies in the very first episode, but in "Home" her ghost appears to defend both her boys from an angry poltergeist.
36*** Again when she's resurrected in Season 12. Castiel is trying to torture a man for information on Sam's whereabouts, and Mary agrees with his methods. The British Men of Letters exploit this in order to convince her to work for them, because she wants to create a world without monsters for her sons.
37** In episode 8x02, Mrs. Tran is willing to sell her soul to the god of greed to save her son Kevin.
38* ManlyMenCanHunt: Obviously Sam and Dean share a background, and they both "hunt" (demons) but manly Dean who accepts his blue-collar roots can not merely fix but ''rebuild'' cars, while Sam who went to college and wanted to be a lawyer (and whose masculinity Dean likes to make fun of) isn't allowed to drive anymore and does not know how to do anything similar.
39* ManlyTears:
40** You have to admit, they cry a hell of a lot for two, supposedly manly, blue-collar soldiers/warriors.
41** In "Fan Fiction," the episode where Sam and Dean [[ItMakesSenseInContext discover an all-girls high school staging a musical about their lives,]] "Sam" sings a song about "Dean" called "A Single Man Tear", referring to how Dean tends to cry dramatic single tears down the face (as opposed to Sam, who is more obvious about it).
42* ManOfWealthAndTaste:
43** Lucifer when [[spoiler:possessing Sam]], puts on a [[VillainInAWhiteSuit pristine white suit]].
44*** Happens again in Season 11 when [[spoiler:he possesses Castiel, changing out the iconic trenchcoat for a black suit]].
45** Crowley is rarely seen without a well tailored suit, as are most of his subordinates. When he isn't, it usually means things aren't going well for him.
46* ManyFacedDivinity: Although angels' [[AngelicAbomination multi-dimensional truest forms]] are never shown to the audience, partly on account of the show working around its budget constraints, [[Characters/SupernaturalAngels the angel Zachariah]] comments at one point that his true form has four faces including a lion's face.
47* MarriedInTheFuture:
48** In an alternate timeline in one episode, Bobby is married to the long-dead Ellen. They're cute together.
49** "The French Mistake" uses the "wedding photo" method to demonstrate that Jared Padalecki is married to Creator/GenevievePadalecki, the actress who played Ruby 2.0.
50* MarsWantsChocolate: Downplayed, where {{the Grim Reaper}} (who notes that he ''does'' visit alien planets) decides to ignore Lucifer's orders to wipe Chicago off the map and killing millions more during the Apocalypse. One of the reasons he gives for this is that he likes the city's pizza -- this Death is a fast food junkie.
51%%* MartyrWithoutACause: All three Winchesters.
52* {{Masquerade}}: Ghosts, monsters, demons, angels, pagan gods and pretty much every supernatural thing short of gray aliens and Bigfoot exist, and most of them hunt suburban humans for prey, whilst humans who [[BrokenMasquerade broke the Masquerade]] (often when a monster killed their loved one) take up hunting and killing them. More often than not however, hunters have no assistance from the government or other authorities who are as unaware of the Masquerade as the general population, and commit identity fraud routinely when investigating supernatural happenings and are regarded by the laws as criminals. The U.S. used to have the Men of Letters helping to maintain the Masquerade until the 1950s, but since then, the Masquerade in America has at times bordered on ExtraStrengthMasquerade. The British Men of Letters (who have authority in multiple other countries) still enforce the Masquerade and are no stranger at all to KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade.
53* MeaningfulName:
54** [[spoiler:[[Literature/ParadiseLost Anna Milton]]]], a fallen angel.
55** Harvelle means female warrior.
56** Ben means son.
57** Sam/Samuel means "name of God" or "God has heard" which is rather ironic considering that he was Lucifer's vessel.
58** Dean means leader.
59** Castiel means "shield of God."
60** Tessa/Theresa means harvest. She reaps the souls of the living.
61** In one episode, a girl called Lily is revealed to have the power to kill someone by touching them. The lily flower is often a symbol of death.
62** Lucifer takes a man named Nick for his host when he first escapes Hell. One of the many nicknames for the devil is "Old Nick."
63* MenDontCry: Completely and utterly averted. Both brothers cry often throughout the series. Dean cries so routinely, and beautifully, that the fandom created the term "single man tear" to describe his crying style.
64* MentalWorld:
65** Sam is stuck in one in the Season 6 finale of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' after [[spoiler:Castiel destroys the mental barrier that is keeping his traumatic memories from potentially turning him into a vegetable]].
66** Dean and Sam also enter Bobby's nightmare world in another episode, where he's hunted by the guilt of killing his wife when she was possessed by a demon.
67** In Season 14, [[spoiler:Michael puts Dean in one so he'll stop fighting against his possession. In this world, Dean and Pamela from Season 4 are running a bar together, while Sam and Castiel are eternally out hunting. The latter two have to take a JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind to free him.]]
68* MercyKill: While soulless, Sam encounters five men who are AllWebbedUp and infected with venom by a spider demon. Instead of taking them to a hospital, he arbitrarily decides to shoot them to spare their agony, then burn the bodies. [[spoiler:Unfortunately the spider demon was actually creating more of itself, and the result is ImmuneToBullets and fire. One of the victims, an ally Sam used as TheBait to find the demon, survives and wants revenge. He points out that rather than sparing him, Sam has actually created more monsters.]]
69* MergerOfSouls: Castiel became something far more powerful by absorbing the souls of Purgatory. [[spoiler:Unfortunately one set of them was too powerful for him and took over.]]
70* MetallicarSyndrome: The Impala, of course. This changes in Season 7, when the Leviathans soon learn how well they can use society's infrastructure against the Winchesters, and the Impala is hidden for most of the season, and the brothers rely on stolen cars for half the time. It comes back by Season 8 and remains for the rest of the show.
71* MilkyWhiteEyes: Upper level demons, like Lilith. Along with the unsettling effect of rolling their pupils up into their heads.
72* MindControl:
73** Two of the psychic kids early on in the show, Andy and Ansem, are twins who share the same power of having {{Compelling Voice}}s.
74** Heaven frequently uses brainwashing to "reset" angels who rebel, such as [[spoiler:Castiel]]. Naomi is a master of this, at one point attempting to use Castiel to [[spoiler:kill Dean before stealing the angel tablet.]]
75* MinionManipulatedIntoVillainy: In Season 5, Lucifer convinces Nick, a man overcome with despair after his wife and child were murdered, to become his earthborn vessel. This seems random until in Season 14, it's revealed that Lucifer ordered one of his demons, Abraxas, to target his family to get Nick in the right state of mind to agree to the archangel's offer. However, in spite of this revelation, by this point Nick is so fraught with StockholmSyndrome that he ''still'' continues to search for Lucifer and serve him.
76* MinionShipping: The two demons from "Sin City", Casey and the priest.
77* MirrorCharacter:
78** Michael and Lucifer lecture Dean and Sam about this, who [[spoiler:are their respective vessels]]. Michael tell Dean that he is dutifully obedient to his father (God), that he cast Lucifer down because he defied him, and that he [[PromotionToParent practically raised his younger brother]], taking care of him "in a way most people could never understand". Lucifer tells Sam that he loved and idolized his older brother and begged him to stand alongside him in refusing to bow down to humanity, but that Michael instead called him a "freak" and a "[[YouMonster monster]]", casting him down because he was different and had a mind of his own.
79** Eve gives this speech about herself and their mother in "Mommy Dearest", even taking on Mary's appearance during.
80* MirroringFactions: Heaven and Hell: while nominally on opposite sides, even Heaven has a torture chamber and they suffer similar power vacuums and the resultant effects through the ranks throughout the series. They even both rely on possessing human vessels to function.
81* MisfitLabRat: In one episode, Dean visits a BackAlleyDoctor who specializes in FlatlinePlotline AstralProjection (played by Creator/RobertEnglund, no less). His assistant is a silent Goth girl who seems a bit too excited about the whole thing.
82* MissingMom: She's killed by demons when Sam turns six months old, in the pilot.
83* MistakenForGay:
84** Being HeterosexualLifePartners who always travel and work together, the brothers are sometimes mistaken for a gay couple. Luckily for them, all they have to do is quickly mention they're brothers and not be bothered with any further questions (or delve into a NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat discussion). Sometimes they'll go along with it for kicks (Dean in "Bugs") or just give up on clarifying.
85** In "The French Mistake", this continues with Sam and Dean transported into the bodies of their actors Jared and Jensen. This despite the fact that both actors are married -- [[FandomNod wait a minute]].
86* MistakenForRomance:
87** In Season 7, the angels find Sam and Meg 2.0 together, and given Sam's history, assume they are a couple. Meg feels it necessary to correct them even after they assault her.
88** When Castiel and Hannah travel together, a woman thinks they are a couple.
89* TheMomVoice: In the episode "[[Recap/SupernaturalS07E12TimeAfterTime Time After Time]]", Sam is on guard duty after Dean is teleported to the past. Jodie Mills visits him and tells him to get some sleep, threatening to use her "mom voice". However, he notices [[WriteBackToTheFuture a message left behind by Dean]] and rushes back down to tell Jodie. Sure, enough, she goes "Ok, young man, that's it!" before Sam tells her about Dean.
90* MonochromeCasting: The vast majority of the cast is white, though there are some background characters of varying ethnicity. Almost all recurring characters are white, the few exceptions tend to die horribly (but then again, [[AnyoneCanDie who doesn't?]]).
91* MonsterClown: "Everybody Loves a Clown" and "Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie" both feature monsters of the week that appear as and exploit people's fear of clowns, although the former also exploits childrens' trust of clowns.
92* MonsterLord: Azazel, Crowley, Alistair and Lilith are powerful, high-ranking demons. Bobby refers to Death as the "Big Daddy Reaper". The Alphas and Mother of All also count, as well as Dick Roman, the leader of the Leviathans.
93* MonsterMunch: The ColdOpening usually involves a random civilian being killed in spectacular fashion (and often eaten) by the MonsterOfTheWeek.
94* MonsterOfTheAesop:
95** The Season 6 episode "You Can't Handle the Truth" featured the Roman goddess Veritas who was killing people by making people around them tell the truth about anything, just when Sam and Dean are dealing with trust issues of their own because Sam is barely acting like a normal human (because he [[TheSoulless lacked his soul]], it turns out).
96** The Season 12 episode "Somewhere Between Heaven And Hell" features the survivor of a hellhound attack, whose boyfriend was killed while they were out camping. She later laments to Sam that she'd been the one to suggest camping, even though she knew she was going to break up with him, and how he died specifically because she didn't want to tell him the truth. After this, Sam admits to Dean that he lied about where he's been getting cases from and that he's been working with the British Men of Letters.
97* MonsterOfTheWeek: Early seasons have a majority of episodes with the brothers hunting and defeating a monster of the week. In later seasons, MythArc stories take up more time, but monster of the week episodes are still frequent. In Season 12, however, most Monster of the Week episodes are played opposite a B-plot involving the seasonal plot, and by Season 13 and onwards a majority of episodes are exclusively dedicated to the seasonal plot, with only a handful of standalone episodes.
98* MonsterProgenitor: Season 6 introduces the concept of Alphas, the progenitors of various monster types such as shifters, vampires and skinwalkers, and then the Mother of All Monsters, who spawned the Alphas.
99* MonsterSlayerRomance: Sam and his brother Dean are both hunters, but the former has had relationships with a werewolf, a kitsune, and a demon, and the latter with an amazon who used him as a GlorifiedSpermDonor and an angel who later experienced a FaceHeelTurn and tried to kill both of them before they were born. However, this is subverted when Sam has a fling with a female doctor who is suspected to be a siren, but turns out to be a RedHerring.
100* MonsterThreatExpiration: The series has moments like this in some episodes. The {{wendigo}} in the same-titled episode is shown to be a lightning fast, shadowy death machine and an expert hunter. Yet when the main characters confront it in its lair it just lumbers along casually despite the fact it ''knows'' they have weapons that can hurt it. It's not really surprising when it dies in one shot.
101* MonstrousHumanoid: All the creatures are this, mostly due to the budget of the show never having been that high, regardless of what their "true" mythological counterparts have been described to look like, generally every monster tends to be simply a humanoid with a GameFace, however a good few of the creatures are implied to have "true" forms, case in point, Dragons, the Dragons we see look like ordinary humans, but can superheat their hands and are durable to the point only one weapon can hurt them, but when we see one kidnapping a woman, only their shadow is seen, and are described to look like reptilian bats.
102* MoodWhiplash:
103** In "Mystery Spot", Dean keeps dying, we laugh hysterically because they're showing the funny ones, and then Dean dies for real, which breaks Sam completely, and we feel guilty for ever laughing at all.
104** The fifth season episode "My Bloody Valentine" veers from BodyHorror to goofy comedy to heartbreaking drama and back again.
105** Notable in "Swan Song."
106--->'''Dean:''' Assbutt?\
107'''Castiel:''' He'll be back, and upset, but you got your five minutes.\
108'''Lucifer (as [[spoiler:Sam]]):''' Castiel... did you just Molotov my brother with holy fire?\
109'''Castiel:''' Um... [[BlatantLies no]].
110** The sixth season episode "Live Free or Twi-Hard" starts with a dead-on Twilight parody but switches to angsty after the first act.
111** "Ghostfacers" has a lot as well. Between the incompetence of the Ghostfacers crew, the depressing ghost's story, [[spoiler:Corbitt's death and Ed's tearjerker farewell]] and the Ghostfacers bumps before every commercial break, the episode is all over the mood map.
112* MoralDisambiguation: The show's BlackAndWhiteMorality [[GrayingMorality turned gray]] as the main characters started to fight demons, which requires them to murder innocent human hosts, the supernatural creatures stopped always being evil due to their race, and they started to make deals with demons in order to survive. Eventually, the brothers wouldn't bat an eye when forced to kill a room full human hosts, make moral decisions which trod the line between dangerously irresponsible and willfully evil, and constantly trade away the safety and wellbeing of huge numbers of people. By the end of the series, it tilted back towards black and white with the Winchesters balking at dancing so close to VillainProtagonist status, the introduction of Jack Kline on their side, and the final three [[ArcVillain Arc Villains]] after Amara being more evil and powerful than anything the Winchesters have faced before them.
113* MoralMyopia: Dean's attitude towards the possibility of Sam turning into a monster or otherwise being abnormal; he's perfectly willing to kill strangers who might go darkside, but simply refuses to do so with his brother even when presented with clear indications of this happening, because he couldn't bear to live without him.
114* MoralityChain: Generally speaking, [[LivingEmotionalCrutch killing either brother will send the other carreening off the slippery slope]], but a notable mention goes to Season 9 and 10, where [[spoiler:Dean is corrupted by the Mark of Cain, and Sam is pretty much the only one who can talk him out of violence, though Dean might still get a few murders (or for Sam in the finale, [[CurbStompBeatdown a few dozen punches]]) before Sam's words reach him.]] It's especially interesting since the threat of losing Dean causes Sam himself to go to extremely morally grey lengths to save him, risking the threat of another TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt just to get Dean back, making them a case of being mutual {{Morality Chain}}s.
115* MoreDespicableMinion: There's been a couple.
116** In Seasons 4-5, Zachariah is ultimately a pompous and egotistical upper-mid ranking angel who is only really invested in retaining his own position by doing whatever the bigwigs above him tell him to do, regardless of any puny humans getting hurt; and during the latter season, Zach develops an increasing malicious streak as his ego gets bruised by defeat after defeat costing him his respect and high standing in Heaven. The archangel Michael whom Zachariah reports to, though he's just as much a part of the plan to engineer the Apocalypse's beginning as Zachariah is and though he's very prideful and dismissive of human life in his own right, seems to believe more seriously than Zachariah does that [[HolierThanThou he's in the right]], and he has a FreudianExcuse for being such a cosmically-destructive and self-focused WellDoneSonGuy.
117** In Season 6, the vampire Boris who temporarily infects Dean is not only in on and is actively a part of the [[MonsterProgenitor Alpha Vampire]]'s plan to turn all humans into monsters, he's also a creep who's implied to be sexually abusive to the (teen/young adult) girls whom he lures in and turns as well as indirectly insulting the interests from their human lives that led them astray right in front of them. The Alpha Vampire, once he debuts later in the season, at least has some class as a Dracula expy by comparison and isn't needlessly belittling, and later appearances have further shown that the Alpha can even be paternal under the right circumstances (which Boris most certainly was not).
118* MoreHateableMinorVillain: In Season 10, the closest thing to {{Big Bad}}s are the Mark of Cain -- an impersonal and non-anthropomorphic curse, which therefore can't be hated -- and Rowena, who is at her worst for her seasonal debut as a scheming, smug, power-hungry witch and an AbusiveMom. Metatron and the Styne family, however, are much more loathsome. As heinous as Rowena is during Season 10, she still has some slight humanizing moments and is somewhat successful. Metatron on the other hand is at this point a smug DirtyCoward who falls apart under the threat of violence. Meanwhile, the Stynes are heartless monsters who won't hesitate to vivisect their own just for not measuring up to their standards, they evidently don't know quite as much as they seem to think they do, [[spoiler:and they're responsible for ''gutting'' Charlie to death]] -- finding someone who doesn't cheer when Dean is slaughtering the Stynes would be an incredible achievement.
119* MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily: The Leviathans, whenever they [[GameFace reveal their "true" face]]. Essentially their entire head is occupied by mouth.
120* MoreThanMindControl:
121** This is [[TheOnlyOne basically]] what [[EvilMentor Ruby]] did to [[UnwittingPawn Sam]] with the help of [[PsychoSerum demon blood]].
122** Lucifer used this to successfully gain permission to possess Nick.
123** Zachariah also attempts to do this [[spoiler:to Adam in "Point of No Return," in order to separate him from the Winchesters, before revealing that he was just using Adam as a pawn to draw Dean into the open.]]
124-->'''Zachariah (to [[spoiler:Adam]]):''' They're not your family. Understand? Now...you want to see your mom again or not?
125* TheMostWanted: In Season 5, Sam and Dean Winchester are wanted men from every angle. The angels are after them, wanting them to fulfill their destiny in the apocalypse. The demons and monsters want to kill them for being hunters. The FBI wants them for their suspected role in the death of an FBI agent and in connection with many crimes where their heroism looks like criminality. And their fellow hunters want to kill them for accidentally freeing the devil.
126* MotherOfAThousandYoung: The Mother of All, the BigBad of the second half of Season 6.
127* TheMultiverse: We have Earth, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, an alternate future, the Trickster's alternate realities, the universe where their lives are a TV show, the Fairy World (of which [[Literature/LandOfOz ''Oz'']] is a subset, as of Season 9), the Empty (afterlife for angels and demons) the Apocalypse World of Season 13, and several God-created alternate universes shown in Season 15, including one where Sam and Dean are stuck-up rich kids.
128* MultiversalConqueror: The finale of Season 12 introduces Apocalypse World, a run-down wasteland ruled by the ArchangelMichael in the aftermath of the war between heaven and hell. He's planning on invading the main universe that the heroes live in, which he refers to as Paradise World, since he wants to "trade up".
129* [[MundaneAfterlife Mundane Afterline]]: Once Crowley takes over hell, he dispenses with the lava, thunderstorms and chains and makes everyone [[RightOnQueue wait in line for eternity]]. When they get to the front, they go right back to the end again. "That's efficiency." Oh, and for some reason they're all dressed like Sam and Dean.
130* {{Mundanger}}: The series has featured a couple of these: a CannibalClan in "The Benders" (named after a real-life cannibal family nicknamed The Bloody Benders), feral children in "Family Remains", a pair of psycho social pariahs in "#thinman". Special note goes to Season 13's "A Most Holy Man", a GenreShift episode featuring Sam and Dean solving a murder mystery and going up against the Seattle mob, as it is the only episode where Sam and Dean go in knowing there's no supernatural influences at play and they're not proven wrong about it.
131* MundaneSolution:
132** Decapitation is only a minor setback to a Leviathan, but they can be burned by [[spoiler:Borax, which can be found in common household cleaners]]. They regenerate even from that, of course.
133** In "Like a Virgin", upon failing to pull a blade from a stone, Dean just blows it up instead.
134** In Season 12, Toni Bevell is using a spell to suffocate Mary, which Dean resolves by knocking Toni out.
135---> '''Dean:''' Hard to do [a spell] when you're unconscious.
136* MurderousMannequin: In "Mannequin 3: The Reckoning", the MonsterOfTheWeek possesses mannequins to kill its victims. It sure was lucky that all of its targets happened to work with mannequins or use sex dolls, though.
137* MurphysBullet: In [[Recap/SupernaturalS03E03BadDayAtBlackRock "Bad Day at Black Rock"]], Sam gets ahold of a rabbit's foot, a MacGuffin that gives you incredible luck as long as you hold it, but if you lose it, your luck gets progressively worse until it kills you. Sam has already lost it, and it is now in Dean's possession. Being GenreSavvy, the rival takes advantage of this trope, assured that any bullet she aims at Dean will instead hit Sam. [[RuleOfFunny It works.]]
138* MustMakeAmends: Season 5 is this for Sam after accidentally starting the Apocalypse [[spoiler:and freeing Lucifer]] and in response to his behavior in Season 4. The second half of Season 6 starts like this for him after he finds out what he did [[spoiler:while soulless]].
139* MustNotDieAVirgin: Just before an encounter with [[spoiler:an archangel]] that the characters believe will prove fatal, Dean, on hearing that Castiel "never had occasion" to lose his virginity, attempts to set him up with a hooker (called Chastity, no less). HilarityEnsues.
140* MyHorseIsAMotorbike: [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse The Horsemen]] don't ride horses. They ride in style, baby. Except Pestilence, naturally.
141* MysticalPlague: The Croatoan Virus, which turns people into [[HatePlague rage-filled zombies]], is demonic in origin. Specifically, it was developed by the [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse Horseman Pestilence]] on [[{{Satan}} Lucifer]]'s orders in order to herald the Apocalypse.
142* MysticalCityPlanning: A large system of train tracks in the US Midwest actually forms a huge demonic seal intended to keep a gate to Hell closed. The Winchester brothers break the circle.
143[[/folder]]
144
145[[folder:N]]
146* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast:
147-->'''Nick's "wife":''' I'm an angel. My name is Lucifer.
148* NaturalDisasterCascade:
149** After Lucifer's rising instigates the Apocalypse -- albeit behind an unbroken {{Masquerade}} -- natural disasters including a spike in earthquake frequency and freak storm systems (plus North Korean nuclear tests) occur throughout the fifth season; although the characters don't really encounter the disasters and instead they're exclusively related via the news. These disasters are merely a prelude to Lucifer and the archangel Michael's final battle which will decimate the planet.
150** In the penultimate episode, Lucifer sends [[GrimReaper Death]] to Chicago to wipe it off the map with a catastrophic storm which will in turn set off a "daisy chain" of more natural disasters. Fortunately for Chicago, Death likes the pizza.
151* NayTheist: Sam and Dean, after a certain point in Season 5. You would be too if the angels were, on the whole, [[LightIsNotGood dicks]] and [[spoiler:it looked like God didn't care about stopping the Apocalypse]].
152* ANaziByAnyOtherName:
153** The [[EvilBrit British Men of Letters]]. They attempt to commit nationwide genocide of all monsters regardless of whether or not they're causing harm to anyone, they have the likes of [[AxCrazy Ketch]] promoted as their ideal enforcers, there's emphasis in the first couple Season 12 episodes on their overt use of surveillance to make their territories "safe" from monsters, their leaders such as Dr. Hess (even her name makes you think of concentration camps!) have a very sterotypical-Nazi air of self-superiority and FauxAffablyEvil about them, they favor clinical, cold executions of and experiments on monsters compared to the American hunters' more guns-and-machete, kill-em-outright ways, and it's made clear in the season's last few episodes that they're disproportionate sticklers to KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade.
154** The angels also have moments of this.
155*** Naomi drilling into angels' eyeballs to mess with their minds at her whim feels chillingly like a concentration camp environment, not least helped by the cold, sterile and chrome environment of her office in Heaven.
156*** The angels in Apocalypse World take it a step further, taking humans to concentration camps to be exterminated, and holding cold-blooded executions of captured humans in remote areas, and ''successfully'' exterminating humans to near-extinction and seeking to finish the job. Their overt worship of their world's Michael (who's effectively their universe's ruling authority in Chuck's absence) also in this context seems subtly similar to how Hitler was regarded as the Führer.
157* NearDeathClairvoyance: Those who are coming close to on their deals with demons are able to see demons' true faces, as well as identify hellhounds, which are normally invisible.
158* NeckLift:
159** The demons are fond of this. Notably, Azazel to Dean in a drug-induced vision and Alastair lifting up Dean and placing him on his own torture rack while berating Dean on the sloppy job he did on Alastair.
160** In one of Chuck's ending drafts, [[spoiler:a demonic version of Dean under the influence of the Mark of Cain does this to Sam, holding him against a wall and stabbing him.]]
161* NeckSnap: Most bad guys prefer this method of killing someone, with demons usually doing it with {{Telekinesis}}. Since it's mostly supernatural beings, the ease with which the neck breaks is [[JustifiedTrope justified]]. Most notably, this is how [[spoiler:Lucifer eventually kills Dean in an alternate future,]] and in Season 15 [[spoiler:Chuck envisions Sam on demon blood killing ''Dean'' like this]].
162* {{Necromantic}}:
163** Shows up in a Season 2 episode, "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", by way of an ancient Greek resurrection spell.
164** In Season 14 "Optimism", [[spoiler:a witch's boyfriend wants to move out of their idyllic small town, so she kills him and resurrects him as a zombie puppet and sics him on any other guy who tries to date her.]]
165* NeurodiversityIsSupernatural:
166** Anna Milton hears the voices of angels and rambles on about The Apocalypse, and it's treated as schizophrenia.
167** Jimmy Novak's interactions with Castiel and his talk of angels and demons is seen as psychosis.
168** Sam's body living without a soul is treated like sociopathy.
169** Sam's Cage-induced hallucinations in Season 7 [[spoiler:and Castiel's, when he takes on Sam's memories]], end up getting him institutionalized, where he helps a girl who's haunted by her brother's ghost and was also thought to be this.
170* NeverMyFault:
171** Lucifer sees himself as a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds, and for the longest time in the show you believe him. He's constantly saying how wrong it is that he was a faithful servant of his father, and his only crime was to not bow down before humans, and with how imperfect they are, you can hardly blame him. Then in "Hammer of the Gods", his younger brother Gabriel reveals the truth: he wasn't forced to bow down before them, it was the fact that [[ParentalFavoritism God loved him most of all]] before transferring his affections to humans. In retaliation, Lucifer twisted a human soul into a demon, trying to get his father to admit they were horrible creations and destroy them, thus getting to be front and center again. [[TheGrimReaper Death]] even refers to him as a bratty child having a temper-tantrum. He gets called out on it again in the Season 5 finale, when Lucifer is about to have his climatic showdown with his older brother Michael. He tries to talk Michael out of it by saying that God controls everything, and thus he forced Lucifer to be the devil, so it's not his fault. Michael promptly says that he hasn't changed a bit and he's still blaming everyone but himself for what he did.
172** Dean shifts the blame off of himself and onto other people constantly, most often Sam and Cas. Lucifer being freed was just as much his fault, if not more, as Sam's, yet Dean blames Sam for it repeatedly, even after Sam repents. Oftentimes, trouble occurs because of Dean's refusal to listen to Sam and Cas's advice.
173** In Season 11, [[spoiler:{{God}} blames the failure of creation entirely on his creations refusing to acknowledge any of his own failings. When confronted with it he tries to make excuses or deflect blame It takes Metatron, Lucifer, The Winchesters and ultimately the necessity of Lucifer to fight Amara for God to take any responsibility at all for how things have turned out.]]
174** Downplayed in Season 13, where Castiel attributes Lucifer's escape from the Cage in Season 11 as his, Sam, and Dean's collective burden, despite it being entirely Castiel's own doing.
175%%* NeverSleepAgain: The M.O. of a MonsterOfTheWeek
176* NewEraSpeech: [[spoiler:Castiel]] gives one to what remains of the Host of Heaven after he's done killing most of them.
177-->[[spoiler:'''Castiel:''']] Understand... if you followed Raphael, if you stood against me... punishment ''is'' certain. There is nowhere to hide. The rest of you -- our Father left a long time ago. That was hard. I thought the answer was free will. But I understand now -- you ''need'' a firm hand, you ''need'' a Father. [[AGodAmI And I am your Father now]]. Be obedient, children... or this will be your fate. [motions to hundreds of angel corpses on the ground] It is a new day... on Earth and in Heaven. ''Rejoice''.
178* NiceJobBreakingItHero:
179** To an extent, Dean not only for [[spoiler:breaking the first seal]] between seasons three and four but also for [[spoiler:revealing to Azazel that his plans were going to work before he'd even put them in place. Okay, so Azazel was possessing his grandfather at the time and Dean thought he was going to save his mother, but it [[YouAlreadyChangedThePast caused]] the death of his grandparents and father and Mary's resulting deal: Mary gives Azazel permission to enter her house in 10 years in exchange for resurrecting John. This deal]] is what kick-starts the plot of the whole series.
180** At the end of season four, Sam has spent most of the season getting the power to kill Lilith so he can stop her from [[spoiler:breaking the final seal and freeing Lucifer. Turns out, Lilith ''was'' the final seal, and by killing her he opens Lucifer's Cage and begins the Apocalypse. Oops]].
181** Speaking further in the above, there's also the time where Sam and Dean, by killing the witch Don, only ended up providing his sister with the final blood sacrifice needed to break another one of the seals, specifically a seal the breaking of which briefly unleashes Samhain on an unsuspecting town; in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS04E07ItsTheGreatPumpkinSamWinchester It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester]]".
182** There's been a [[Recap/SupernaturalS05E09TheRealGhostbusters couple]] [[Recap/SupernaturalS07E07TheMentalists times]] when Sam and Dean have destroyed a ghost, only to realize afterward that the ghost they just neutralized was GoodAllAlong and was holding the true malevolent spirit in check.
183** It's revealed in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS06E20TheManWhoWouldBeKing The Man Who Would Be King]]" that Castiel [[spoiler:is responsible for Sam returning from Hell soulless, as it was actually him rather than Crowley who brought Sam back]].
184** At the end of season six, [[spoiler:Castiel absorbs all the souls of Purgatory to get the power]] to defeat ArchangelRaphael, who wanted to restart the Apocalypse. In doing so, he [[spoiler:goes insane and]] unleashes [[spoiler:[[EldritchAbomination the Leviathans]], creatures that God locked away to stop them from eating everything else]], who become season seven's {{Big Bad}}s.
185** In the last two episodes of Season 7, Bobby's ghost almost gets an innocent maid killed by trying to confront Dick Roman with no way of killing him when Bobby briefly flies off the rails.
186** In the [[Recap/SupernaturalS07E23SurvivalOfTheFittest Season 7 finale]], after Dean loses his temper at Castiel and the latter vanishes, Meg points out that Castiel is the only one who can identify the real Dick Roman.
187** In "[[Recap/SupernaturalS08E22ClipShow Clip Show]]", Sam and Dean stitching Abaddon back together with the intent of [[spoiler:[[HumanityEnsues turning her back into a human]]]] after they originally succeeded in originally neutralizing her only leads to Abaddon escaping and being on the rise again as a significant threat for most of Season 9. Oops.
188*** Futhermore, Crowley has a point in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS09E16BladeRunners Blade Runners]]" when he says Sam and Dean keeping him locked up for months has enabled the considerably-worse Abaddon to gain more power and followers in his absence.
189** It's revealed in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS09E17MothersLittleHelper Mother's Little Helper]]" that the Men of Letters sending two green initiates unsupervised to the Convent of Evil gave Abaddon Josie Sands' body and sealed the order's doom.
190** In "[[Recap/SupernaturalS10E22ThePrisoner The Prisoner]]", Sam betrays Crowley partly out of revenge and attempts to kill him. It provokes a ThenLetMeBeEvil reaction in Crowley. In the same episode, Dean blames Sam for [[spoiler:getting Charlie killed by the Stynes by bringing her onboard with the Mark of Cain situation and forcing her to go behind Dean's back]].
191** And again in Season 10. [[spoiler:Breaking the Mark of Cain may free Dean from becoming a demon, but it also allows [[AntiGod The Darkness]], an entity so powerful even God couldn't kill her, to escape. Though [[ProtagonistJourneyToVillain neither Sam nor Dean could plausibly be called a "hero" by that point.]]]]
192** In "[[Recap/SupernaturalS12E12StuckInTheMiddleWithYou Stuck in the Middle With You]]", Mary doesn't bother to look into what the Men of Letters are sending her into. It gets one hunter killed and ''almost'' kills Castiel. Sam and Dean call her out on this [[Recap/SupernaturalS12E14TheRaid two episodes later]].
193** In "[[Recap/SupernaturalS13E17TheThing The Thing]]", Sam and Dean in the process of [[spoiler:saving a seemingly-innocent victim]], are responsible for almost unleashing a ''galaxy-consuming'' EldritchAbomination upon the world. They more than make up for this at the episode's end by not only defeating said Abomination but sending it back to its native AlternateUniverse for good.
194** In "[[Recap/SupernaturalS13E22Exodus Exodus]]", Sam betraying Lucifer and leaving him marooned in Apocalypse World only gives Lucifer recourse to ally with the alternate Michael of Apocalypse World, [[spoiler:leading to ''both'' the world-threatening archangels crossing over to the Winchesters' reality]]. It's also implied Sam lying to Jack that Lucifer died in Apocalypse World gave Jack more reason to listen to Lucifer once the latter made it back to the main universe.
195** In "[[Recap/SupernaturalS15E09TheTrap The Trap]]", [[spoiler:Chuck]] claims that the Winchesters defeating him is what causes the BadFuture — without him, the world shifts to darkness, and the monsters overrun the hunters.
196** This seems to be a problem for hunters in general, as hunters' involvement in [[Recap/SupernaturalS04E04Metamorphosis "Metamorphosis" (4.04)]] and [[Recap/SupernaturalS08E09CitizenFang "Citizen Fang" (8.09)]] just lead to their deaths [[spoiler:and in the first case cause the [[MonsterOfTheWeek rugaru]] to have his first taste of [[ImAHumanitarian human flesh]] and transform completely]]. Oops.
197* NiceJobFixingItVillain:
198** Lucifer thinks raising TimeAbyss [[AnthropomorphicPersonification Death]] and [[DidYouJustScamCthulhu keeping him on a leash]] will ''help'' him. [[DoNotTauntCthulhu Mistake]].
199** Zachariah sends Dean into a bleak future to convince him he must say yes to Michael. The trip also convinces Dean he has to stick with his brother, which lets Sam talk Dean out of the Michael thing and lets Dean give Sam the strength to [[spoiler:[[FightingFromTheInside take control of his body]] from Lucifer long enough to [[HeroicWillpower throw him back into the Cage]].]]
200** Famine reawakens Sam's craving for Demon Blood and sends two of his men to be "snack" for him, knowing that unlike everyone else affected Sam ''can't'' die from having too much, and makes him powerful enough to kill demons. When Sam simply exorcises Famine's demonic bodyguards, Famine chooses to devour them. [[spoiler:while Sam's powers don't work on Horsemen, he can painfully kill the demons inside of Famine.]]
201** Could be construed as the case with Naomi's handling of Castiel. [[spoiler:Cas was able to easily beat Dean badly enough that he would not have been able to prevent Cas from simply taking the tablet and teleporting away. Indeed, he could have overpowered Dean and taken it as soon as Dean had it out of the box. But Naomi's insistence that Cas kill Dean led to him breaking free of her control. A classic case of a villain overplaying their hand]].
202* NighInvulnerability: A number of types of this trope appear in the show:
203** ''God'': Pagan gods can be killed by mere mortals, but the trope does apply to the Big G, since it seems like Death is the only entity that could kill him.
204*** The Pagan gods appear to pretty much just accept anyone of sufficient power to garner worship into their number without any requirements beyond that, so it's likely that them being mortal-slayable varies a lot from case to case, too.
205** ''Divine protection'' mixed with ''Resurrection'': In Season 5, Sam and Dean are functionally incapable of staying dead. If they do die then the angels (in Sam's case, specifically Satan) will just resurrect them because they can't be used as angelic vessels if they're dead.
206** ''External Repair'': Dr. Benton is a scientist who somehow gained immortality, but his body kept on decaying. In order to continue functioning he regularly harvests new organs.
207** ''Extreme Luck'': Whoever acquires the rabbit's foot, at least [[ArtifactOfDeath as long as they have it in their possession]].
208** ''Regeneration'': The Leviathans recover from almost anything. The only known means of immobilizing them so far is to chop off the head, and then keeping it absolutely out of reach of the body so it can't just reattach itself. [[spoiler:The only thing that can kill a leviathan is the bone of a righteous person dipped in the blood of the king of hell, an alpha monster, and a fallen angel. These ingredients are nigh impossible to obtain.]]
209* NoDeadBodyPoops:
210** Averted in the GroundhogDayLoop episode.
211--->'''Dean:''' Of course I peed myself. Man gets hit by a car, you think he has full control over his bladder? Come on!
212** Subverted in "Free to Be You and Me" when Dean prevents the angel Castiel from insta-transporting him somewhere: "The last time you did that I didn't poop for a week!"
213* NoOneGetsLeftBehind:
214** Subverted in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS11E17RedMeat Red Meat]]". Dean is totally willing to risk the entire group being captured or killed rather than leave his wounded brother behind. However, after Corbin kills Sam behind Dean's back, Corbin convinces Dean that saving the "innocent" survivors is what Sam would have wanted.
215** {{Subverted}} in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS13E08TheScorpionAndTheFrog The Scorpion and the Frog]]". Facing Shrike, who has a weapon, Smash kicks him and runs for her life, leaving Dean to face him alone.
216%%* NobleDemon: Possibly played straight with Casey in ''Sin City''.
217%%* NobleMaleRoguishMale: Sam(Noble) and Dean(Roguish) are very good examples of this trope
218* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed:
219** In "Sin City" a demon mentions that UsefulNotes/DickCheney has a "parking spot" in Hell reserved for him.
220** In "Criss Angel Is a Douche Bag," Criss Angel never shows up, but the show makes fun of him through a character named Jeb Dexter, an incredibly arrogant magician who bears an incredible resemblance to Criss Angel and does card tricks that are staged like fake demon possessions (which really upsets Dean). He dies horribly, of course. The show also makes fun of him, quietly, by ''naming the episode [[TakeThat Criss Angel Is A Douche Bag]]''
221** In Season 6, there's a vampire named "[[Creator/RobertPattinson Robert]]" and the teenage girl named "[[Creator/KristenStewart Kristen]]", as well as a series of totally-not-''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' books that Sam and Dean [[YourVampiresSuck rip the living bejeezus out of]]. The episode is (brilliantly) titled "Live Free or Twihard".
222** Supposedly, Ruby was a character that was written for Creator/KristenBell, but she denied the role, which is why the first Ruby looks VERY similar to her.
223* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown:
224** Castiel delivered one of these to [[spoiler:Dean Winchester]], when Castiel caught him attempting to [[spoiler:surrender to Michael, which the angel considered a betrayal.]]
225** In 4x16, when Alastair unexpectedly freed himself from the devils-trap. And having been tortured by Dean for a few hours, he was quite pissed.
226** In the Season 5 finale, Dean puts himself on the receiving end of such a beatdown when he refuses to leave his brother [[spoiler:while Lucifer is possessing Sam.]]
227** In 6x13, [[spoiler:a soulless-Sam]] gives one to a cop who's grown suspicious of his cover.
228** Also in Season 6, upon the realization that Sam isn't quite Sam, Dean beats the crap out of him and then ties him to a chair.
229** In 8x17, [[spoiler:Cas, under Naomi's control]], gives a serious one to Dean. [[spoiler:Fortunately, Cas breaks free of Naomi's control before killing Dean, and heals the injuries he inflicted.]]
230** In Season 10's finale, upon hearing that Dean's going to isolate himself forever in order to avoid releasing the Darkness or murdering people, Sam punches him, spurring a fight where Dean beats him into the floor until Sam surrenders and agrees to his plan.
231* NoodleIncident:
232** From "Yellow Fever":
233--->'''Dean:''' The truck stop waitress with the bizarre rash...
234** From "And Then There Were None", and possibly "When the Levee Breaks", there's the situation in Omaha between Bobby and Rufus.
235** ''Sam, Interrupted''
236--->'''Sam:''' Martin is a great hunter.\
237'''Dean:''' Was... until Albuquerque.
238** In "Out With The Old" Sam and Dean are tracking down a cache of cursed objects an antique store has unknowingly unearthed and sold off piece by piece. The objects compel people to kill themselves in a TurnedAgainstTheirMasters sort of way (with a dash of DeathByIrony). (For example, an antique tea kettle compels a woman to kill herself by pouring the boiling water down her own throat). Sam and Dean split up to get the last two, Sam going after a gramophone and Dean going after an antique "gentlemen's magazine".
239--->'''Dean:''' How does porn kill a guy?\
240'''Sam:''' You probably don't want to know.\
241''[later]''\
242'''Dean:''' Hey, got the porn. Just in time, too.\
243'''Sam:''' What was he doing?\
244'''Dean:''' Uh, like you said; you don't wanna know.
245* NoSell: This happens quite often. To name but a few:
246** Earlier in the series, Dean gets into an argument with the angel Castiel that ends with Dean punching him in the face. Cas' head moves a little from the impact, and Dean nearly breaks his hand. And he clearly didn't learn his lesson, as he does the same thing in a later episode with a Cupid, with the exact same result.
247** In "Hammer of the Gods", Lucifer gets immolated completely by the Hindu goddess Kali, but when the flames dissipate he's still standing in the same spot looking bored.
248** Lucifer gets another good one after being shot by the Colt. After a moment when it looks like it's all over he gets up and spits out the bullet.
249** A particularly amusing example was Sam's nonchalant immunity to Veritas' truth-inducing powers, and the epic fit she throws when she realizes he can lie to her with impunity.
250** Used rather terrifyingly with the Leviathans. For the first quarter of the season the only thing that worked was dropping a car on Edgar [[ImplacableMan to slow him down]] or cutting of their heads and separating them from their bodies. The only way to kill them is with a bone of a saint dipped in the blood of an Alpha monster, a fallen Angel and the king of Hell.
251** In Season 11, Amara, befitting the status of an entity who's sister to God Himself. Angel blades shatter when used against her, and even when Heaven brings down a holy smiting that obliterates the entire area, she reforms herself soon after.
252* NostalgiaHeaven: "Dark Side of the Moon" portrays Heaven as a LotusEaterMachine that allows people to experience their happiest memories. Except that, because they're ''projections'' of your friends/family, instead of actually getting to meet up with your loved ones, the characters who find out are decidedly unhappy.
253* TheNotLoveInterest:
254** Sam and Dean are the most apparent, with both of them going to [[AlwaysSaveTheGirl extreme lengths to save each other]] even at the cost of other lives or the ''entire universe''. Their break ups are treated with the severity of romantic break ups, even including an arc in Season 8 where Sam and Dean react to the other's relationship with Amelia and Benny respectively as though they've been cheating. They're very frequently paralleled to romantic couples, including their own parents (like Mary, Dean makes a demon deal to resurrect Sam, and like John, Dean agrees to possession by Michael in order to save Sam), and like Cain's wife, Sam is the person who can talk Dean out of the Mark of Cain's bloodlust due to how much they love each other. Dean notes in "The Chitters" that two hunting partners bicker in much the same way Sam and Dean do and gets flustered when he realizes they're also a couple.
255** If [[spoiler:you interpret the "Despair" confession as platonic]], Castiel also fills this role for Dean and vice versa, especially in Season 7 and 8 (after which point Castiel and Dean stop interacting as much). Dean spends almost a full year in Purgatory trying to save Castiel and praying for him every day, snaps Castiel out of insanity/brainwashing multiple times by telling him he needs him, mourns him like a lost lover whenever he dies to the point where Sam compares it to the way their father grieved over their mother, and Castiel has given up his life and the favor of Heaven to protect Dean too many times to count.
256* NotSoExtinct:
257** The attack pattern of the MonsterOfTheWeek points to a dragon, but dragons aren't real... This might sound like ArbitrarySkepticism given what the Winchesters do for a living, but enormous flying reptiles that breathe fire are a bit harder to miss than Wendigos, vampires and so on so maybe it's justified... However, it turns out that dragons are shapeshifters, and throughout the episode only appear in their human forms.
258** When they first appear, vampires are said to be all but extinct, but they have quite a few appearances throughout the series.
259** The Knights of Hell were thought to be extinct until Abaddon shows up. Still, she's the LastOfHerKind, all her fellow knights were destroyed by their ex-leader [[BiblicalBadGuy Cain]].
260* NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist:
261** Gordon Walker easily qualifies. Gordon has a black-and-white mentality when it comes to hunting, [[VanHelsingHateCrimes viewing ''all'' monsters as irredeemably evil no matter the circumstance, even if they aren't a danger to humans]]. This even extends to his own family, when he reveals that he killed ''his own sister'' without hesitation after she was turned into a vampire. Even Gordon himself was not spared from his own black-and-white views, as after he is turned into a vampire, he not only intends to commit suicide because he'd rather die than live as a vampire, but considers doing so to be his "last good deed". ''Seriously''.
262** In the Season 4 finale, as explained to Dean by Zachariah, it's revealed that Heaven has allowed the Apocalypse to unfold because they desperately want to defeat Lucifer and his demons and finally create paradise on Earth. However, while Zachariah's boss the ArchangelMichael is a genuine WellIntentionedExtremist who believes it is his destiny to slay his brother, Zachariah himself doesn't give a damn about any cosmic plans and is only going along with it to further his own advancement in the angel hierarchy while ''feigning'' good intentions.
263** The British Men of Letters in Season 12. Their original purpose was to simply research the paranormal and pass that knowledge on to hunters who would kill any threats to humanity. After the American chapter was wiped out by demons, the British Men of Letters was determined to avoid the same fate. So they made a [[DealWithTheDevil deal with the King of Hell]] that he could make demon deals for souls as long as demons never attacked the island and they began [[VanHelsingHateCrimes killing all monsters whether they were harming humans or not]]. 50 years later they got tired of watching the American hunters, who by now had never even heard of the Men of Letters, flounder on their own, so the British Men of Letters invaded, tried to force their system on the entire US hunter network, and when it was forcefully rebuked as far too brutal, they decide [[MurderIsTheBestSolution to eliminate the American hunters.]] Over the year the British chapter was in the US, they murdered as many, if not more, humans than the monsters, including murdering the very hunters they were meant to help!
264* TheNthDoctor:
265** Demons who come back later on take on new bodies (Ruby and [[spoiler:Meg.]])
266** Raphael coming back in a female vessel after his first vessel is killed. Alternate Michael later does this as well residing for a short time in the body of an unknown man, a female CEO, and then [[spoiler:Dean Winchester]], and Hannah's last on-screen appearance has her inhabiting a male vessel.
267[[/folder]]
268
269[[folder:O]]
270* OddCouple:
271** Sam and Dean, with Sam as the [[SensitiveGuyAndManlyMan sensitive guy to Dean's manly man]], health nut to Dean's preference for greasy fast food, and [[RedOniBlueOni Dean as the hotheaded driven extrovert to Sam's calm polite but detached introversion]]. [[CharacterizationMarchesOn At least in earlier seasons.]] Interestingly, they do tend to switch around the roles, such as when normally sympathetic-to-monsters Sam threatens to kill the vegan vampire Benny, while Dean (who in just the previous season, killed the kitsune Amelia Pond who was killing criminals in order to feed her ill son) is defensive of his friendship with him.
272** Dean and Castiel, The hedonistic, cynical and wily human and the earnest, socially awkward but powerful angel.
273** Castiel and Crowley, an earnest, well-intentioned angel and the scheming King of Hell.
274* OffTheRails: The angels. All of them. It seemingly started with Lucifer, but has only been getting worse over the ages as God has continued to refuse to speak to any of them except for Joshua (allegedly). At present, even devout angels who long resisted succumbing to despair over God's absence, such as Castiel, have all broken ranks to pursue their own agendas. God, [[spoiler:masquerading as the author Chuck Shurley]], appears to be finding this entertaining and is allowing everyone to do whatever they choose while making quiet adjustments from behind the scenes now and then to keep the game running, such as ensuring that none of the main characters stays dead for long.
275* OffingTheAnnoyance:
276** During Death's [[EstablishingCharacterMoment character-defining]] intro in "Two Minutes To Midnight", he takes a stroll in Chicago looking like a normal human and a rude guy too busy with his phone makes the mistake of bumping into him and scolding ''him''. Death barely glances back, slightly brushes his coat as if getting rid of a pesky fly, and the guy immediately drops dead right on the street. As is later seen, however, it's not used to villainize him; he just operates on such a larger scale that he actually is just getting rid of what to him is nothing more than a petty microbe.
277** In "Swap Meat" the Demon negotiating with a teenage satanist toys with him for a bit before killing him.
278* OffscreenTeleportation:
279** Primary mode of travel for angels. Though it's sometimes only offscreen for the audience; there've been a number of instances of Sam or Dean watching as an angel vanishes.
280** Crowley can do this, and quite possibly is better at it than Castiel. When Cas does it, you hear wings. When Crowley does it, you hear nothing. Considering that Crowley is a demon, this is quite possibly intentional ParanoiaFuel [[invoked]] on his part. [[spoiler:It's also a sign of upgraded-Cas' power that he can do it silently now.]]
281** It also seems that any demon that is summoned will also teleport, and it will also do it offscreen.
282** In Season 6, [[spoiler:Eve]], like the angels, is capable of doing this while Dean is ''looking directly at her''. She just appears behind him, and still somehow manages to surprise him.
283* OhCrap:
284** We get a pretty epic one at the end of Season 4, because it doesn't get much worse than [[spoiler:finding out that you've just accidentally unleashed Lucifer when you were trying to prevent exactly that.]]
285** OhCrap reactions all around, at the end of Season 6:
286--->'''[[spoiler:Castiel:]]'' I'm your new God, a better one. So you ''will'' bow down, and profess your love, unto me your Lord, or I shall destroy you.
287** Every season ends on a OhCrap (2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 13) or a Downer (1, 3, 5, 7 and 12)
288* OhCrapThereAreFanficsOfUs: This happens in-universe thanks to Chuck's books. Combined with a huge TakeThat at fans who write things like that in the form of Becky, a [[LoonyFan Loony]] YaoiFangirl who admits to Chuck and Sam that she writes a lot of the stuff out there. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wz2KWCixtE The guys aren't exactly thrilled when they realize what "SlashFic" means]].
289--> '''Dean''': There are Samgirls and Deangirls, and... what's a [[SlashFic slash]] fan?
290--> '''Sam''': As in... Sam-slash-Dean. Together.
291--> '''Dean''': Like, ''together''-together?
292--> '''Sam''': Yeah.
293--> '''Dean''': They do know we're brothers, right? ...That's just sick.
294--> '''Sam:''' Doesn't seem to matter.
295* OlderThanTheyLook:
296** Sam and Dean have both aged mentally several decades beyond their physical ages. Dean spent around 40 years in Hell, which means that he's mentally in his early 60s. Sam spent over a hundred years in Lucifer's Cage (it's not explicitly stated how long, though). This is not touched on much in the series.
297** Anyone who has been in Hell long enough to be a demon is incredibly old, and angels are unspeakably ancient -- but they tend to possess the bodies of young, fit people. Notable are the demon Lilith, who likes possessing little girls, the angel Samandriel, who picked a teenage cashier as his vessel, and [[spoiler:the main timeline's Michael, who's possessing a nineteen-year-old Adam Milligan.]]
298* TheOmniscient:
299** TheGrimReaper is functionally omniscient. Every time Dean tries to tell him something, the bored-looking Death notes that he's already aware. He does show surprise when the Winchesters summon him and ask him to [[KillTheGod kill an evil god for them]], so it seems he needs to focus his all-knowing powers for it to be effective.
300** {{God}}, naturally, also seems to possess this trait. When they try to ask for his help, he relays through an Angelic messenger that he already knows everything they want to tell him, [[JerkassGods he just doesn't care]]. [[spoiler:He ''did'' write their story, after all...]]
301* OneBadMother: The Mother of All is the progenitor of all monster races, and resides in Purgatory, the afterlife where all monster souls go to prey on each for eternity. She eventually returns to Earth to protect her young by making everyone on the planet one of her children. To make the point even more obvious to Sam and Dean, [[spoiler:she transforms into their deceased mother Mary Winchester to mess with them.]]
302* OneSteveLimit: Averted. Many of the minor characters, particularly those only appearing one episode, share a first and/or last name. (There are also multiple actual Steves.)
303* OnlyTheChosenMayWield:
304** Subverted. Dean has to pull a sword from a stone in "Like a Virgin". When it doesn't work, [[MundaneSolution he just blows it up]].
305** Only archangels can use an archangel blade to kill other archangels. That said, it still works perfectly fine as a weapon.
306* OneTrueLove:
307** Before [[spoiler:Jack fixes things in the series finale]], every human is relegated to their own individual Heaven, [[NostalgiaHeaven where they relive their happiest memories on loop]]. Only soulmates can share Heavens, which Sam and Dean do.
308---> '''Ash:''' Mm-hmm. Yeah. See you got Winchesterland. Ashland. A whole mess of everybody-else-lands. Put them all together: heaven. Right? At the center of it all? Is the Magic Kingdom. The Garden.\
309'''Dean:''' So everybody gets a little slice of paradise.\
310'''Ash:''' Pretty much. A few people share—special cases. What not.\
311'''Dean:''' What do you mean ‘special’?\
312'''Ash:''' Aw, you know. Like, uh, soul-mates. ''[Neither Sam or Dean say anything.]'' Anyway.
313* OohMeAccentsSlipping:
314** Inverted; Sam seems to become more and more Southern as the series goes on. While his actor is a Texan, Sam's ''earlier'' accent is closer to Jared's. While Jensen Ackles is also a Texan, his accent is nothing like Dean's. Dean's accent has ''also'' gotten more Southern, though a lot more overtly.
315** Crowley's accent is quite English, despite his Scottish heritage that he shares with [[spoiler:his mother, Rowena]]. When the two of them argue, his posh manner of speech starts to slip into something closer to her accent.
316* TheOphelia: [[spoiler:Sam and then Cas]] both deconstruct very prettily in Season 7. Although it's possible to interpret [[spoiler:Cas]]' behavior in terms of [[ZenSurvivor Zen attitude]] and his characteristic [[NoSocialSkills lack of people skills]].
317* OrderedToDie: Dick Roman, leader of the Leviathan monster race, orders a minion who failed him to ''[[{{Autocannibalism}} eat himself]]''. Since they have a built-in HealingFactor, this is a ridiculously cruel punishment even by the standards of other {{Bad Boss}}es featured in the show.
318* OtherMeAnnoysMe:
319** In "The End", ''both'' Deans are annoyed (or, in 2009 Dean's case, [[FutureMeScaresMe scared by]]) their other self.
320** In "The French Mistake", Jensen and Jared manage to be annoying to Dean and Sam without actually being ''present''.
321* OtherworldlyCommunicationFailure: After Dean [[spoiler:is released from Hell and pulls himself out of his own grave]], he soon hears a deafeningly high sound which shatters glass all around him. When he meets the angel Castiel at the end of the episode, Castiel admits that the sound was his attempt to speak to Dean while in his true form, believing that Dean would be able to understand him. From then on Castiel always speaks in a very low and gravelly voice, which [[WordOfGod Misha Collins has confirmed]] as being out of worry at harming Dean or anyone else like that again.
322* OurAngelsAreDifferent: As Dean puts it, they're more "dicks with wings" than [[Series/TouchedByAnAngel Roma Downey]]. Like demons, they possess (occasionally willing, [[GoodIsNotNice sometimes coerced]]) people in order to move about on Earth, and they can relinquish their grace and be reborn as humans.
323* OurDemonsAreDifferent:
324** The souls of the damned who've had their humanity tortured out of them in {{Hell}}, they appear as black smoke unless they are possessing someone. Despite Lucifer's association with hell, and the number of demons who for some reason have Biblical names (including those of fallen angels), there are only ever demons created from humans. Lucifer himself is still, categorically, an angel.
325** Cain, who is one of the first demons, was transformed by the Mark of Cain, which was bestowed by Lucifer and isn't actually God's curse as in the Bible: the power that transformed him into a demon comes from [[spoiler:God's sister, who is roughly speaking the Gnostic demiurge.]] The Mark of Cain is also what corrupted Lucifer in the first place, as God gave it to Lucifer because he thought the latter could handle its power It then corrupted the archangel and he was originally going to give it to Abel (who thought he was talking to God, but wasn't) before Cain offered to trade places with Abel and let his brother go to heaven, which the Devil accepted on the terms that Cain was to be the one who killed his brother.
326* OurDragonsAreDifferent: Ancient beings from Purgatory who resemble "Giant Bats", have heat-hands, can shapeshift into human form, serve a being they only refer to as "Mother" and can only be killed by a weapon forged in their blood. They also have hoards of gold and collect virgins for their rituals.
327* OurGeniesAreDifferent: In "What Is and What Should Never Be", the Winchester brothers track down a djinn that appears to grant whatever its victim wishes for, [[RealityWarper altering the world around them]]. But Dean learns first hand that the djinn just [[LotusEaterMachine puts his victims in an acid-trip-like state]], hooks them up to an IV, and drinks their blood for a few days until they die (but it feels like years in the djinn-induced-acid-trip). The victims do occasionally get flashes of reality, though, which allows Dean to figure out what's happening and escape.
328* OurGhostsAreDifferent: Ghosts appear regularly on the show. Their appearances are heralded by a GhostlyChill. They can be repelled with salt and iron. Laying them to rest usually involves destroying their remains with fire, though one was simply persuaded to GoIntoTheLight. Hostile ghosts tend to be [[StringyHairedGhostGirl pale with stringy hair]]. Many attack the living through [[MindOverMatter telekinesis]], and some are capable of [[DemonicPossession possession]]. Benign spirits and those [[TomatoInTheMirror who don't know they are dead]] can be indistinguishable from the living. Eventually ''all'' ghost that haven't ascended to the afterlife end becoming vengeful spirits.
329* OurGhoulsAreCreepier: Ghouls are of the Arabian demon variety and take the appearance of the last person they have fed upon. Though to give an actual reason for why they have to be killed (saying that they desecrate human remains would be a bit weak when the Winchesters have to have burned a whole ''cemetery'' by this point) the ones they encounter have started eating living people. Funnily enough the second set of ghouls they encounter are ''also'' perfectly happy to eat the living. What, did a ghoul write an awesome new recipe book for fresh meat in the last few years?
330* OurGodsAreDifferent:
331** The series seems to be based on Henotheism -- there are multiple pagan gods (who are scarily powerful but can still be defeated and killed), with the Judeo-Christian Creator God as the one that is actually omnipotent but [[HaveYouSeenMyGod inaccessible]]. Appropriately enough "WordOfGod" confirms ''Literature/AmericanGods'' was a major influence on ''Supernatural'', so it likely works on similar rules. Therefore, Kali and Ganesh were simply versions of the gods brought over by settlers. In America, a largely Christian country, a Judeo-Christian angel is more powerful. Had the fight taken place in India, it would have been a different result.
332** The Judeo-Christian god is eventually shown to be not quite omnipotent or indestructible, either, it's just that nothing with the juice to harm him and the actual desire to do so shows up until later seasons. Death notes that he'll eventually reap god (though he has no intention of doing it before it's time to do so), it's somewhere between implied and stated outright that Lucifer's rebellion had a chance of actually succeeding, and eventually a being shows up that's sort of a mix of Death and the Demiurge that can simply take him on directly.
333* OurSirensAreDifferent: In "Sex and Violence," there was a gorgeous female siren who worked as a stripper and convinced her clients to kill the women closest to them, usually their wife or in one case, a man's elderly, sick mother. She was revealed to be a hideous, melting fish thing [[GlamourFailure whenever seen in a mirror]]. And, as part of the episode's PlotTwist [[spoiler:the siren's draw does not need to be a romantic or sexual partner, as he earns Dean's trust by mimicking an idealized version of Sam who liked all the things Dean liked and didn't question him, a blatant opposite to Season 4 Sam who's keeping secrets from Dean about Ruby.]]
334--> '''Siren:''' I gave him what he needed. And it wasn't some bitch in a G-string. It was you. A little brother that looked up to him, that he could trust.
335* OurSoulsAreDifferent: You can sell 'em to demons (or angels!), string 'em up in Hell, and torture them! And when you need to move 'em around, a briefcase is all you'll need (admittedly, this was the means of soul transportation employed by Horsemen of the Apocalypse, not that of a mortal human). Humans can apparently survive without them, and simply lack emotions, empathy, and the need to sleep when lacking one. Monsters have them too, while ghosts and demons are respectively trapped and corrupted souls. Angels don't have them. Nor do Leviathans, being far older than the creation of souls.
336* OurTitansAreDifferent: Chronos shows up in Season 7 as a time traveler [[spoiler:who needs to kill to control where he can time travel to, and is seeking to get back to his love.]] An amnesiac [[spoiler:Prometheus]] shows up in Season 8.
337* OurVampiresAreDifferent: They are. This is [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in ''Monster Movie'', where they encounter an apparently typical Bram Stoker Dracula and are completely baffled. The really funny part is that the witnesses immediately identify it as a vampire, whereas this would probably not be the case with an actual vampire. Also, in Season 13, the alternate earth's vampires have regressed into a more feral, bestial state and [[LooksLikeOrlok Look Like Orlok]] because [[spoiler:the angels]] have slaughtered most of humanity and the vampires are starved of prey as a result.
338* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: In addition to werewolves ([[TheVirus who infect humans with their bites]], eat hearts and look like humans with fangs and claws), there are also shifters (ShapeShifting {{Doppelganger}}s), rugaru (humans who transform into hideous, cannibalistic monsters), okami (who look like humans with wolf teeth, have [[LightningBruiser superhuman athletic ability]] and are [[NighInvulnerability nigh invulnerable]] to anything other than a [[KryptoniteFactor bamboo dagger blessed by a Shinto priest]] or a woodchipper) and skinwalkers (who can turn into wolves and are vulnerable to silver).
339* OurZombiesAreDifferent: The series has examples of most of the subtropes, with no consistent portrayal of zombies as a whole. There's a RevenantZombie in Season 2 who was brought back by a friend [[{{Necromantic}} because he was still in love with her after she died]]. As he used dark magic to resurrect her she naturally CameBackWrong and had to be nailed back into her grave. People infected by the Croatoan virus are {{Technically Living|Zombie}} {{Plague Zombie}}s who would [[ZombieApocalypse turn the planet into zombie land]] if Hell's plan succeeded. [[TheGrimReaper Death]] also resurrects a bunch of people from their graves in Season 5 on Lucifer's orders, who seem fine at first and like typical revenants until they turn, where at first they slowly lose their consciousness and then gain a taste for human flesh. One of them, [[spoiler:Bobby Singer's wife]], also states that [[spoiler:she]] cannot sleep.
340* OutOfTheClosetIntoTheFire: If interpreted as romantic, this is what happens in Season 15's "Despair" [[spoiler: to Castiel, whose DyingDeclarationOfLove to Dean allows him to experience true happiness and summons the Empty to claim his life [[TakingYouWithMe and Billie's]]]].
341* OverlyLongScream: In the second-season episode Hollywood Babylon the brothers investigate a possible haunting on a movie set. This trope is one of the signs of how terrible the [[ShowWithinAShow horror movie being filmed]] is.
342[[/folder]]
343
344[[folder:P]]
345* TheParalyzer: The angels have the ability to render people unconscious by touch, though they don't use this nearly as often as their [[TouchOfDeath killing touch]] because most of the show's angels are, well, [[LightIsNotGood fanatical pricks]]. Castiel demonstrates the non-lethal version on Bobby on his first appearance.
346* ParentalAbandonment: A reoccurring theme throughout the show.
347** John seems to have abandoned his young sons for weeks/months at a time when they were young, leaving Dean as Sam's primary caretaker. Once Dean is old enough to go on hunts, both of them end up leaving Sam alone too.
348** God vanished, leaving the soldierly angels without a father or direct orders.
349** In Season 10, Claire Novak is revealed to have been deeply traumatized by her parents' abandonment. We know Jimmy did it to spare her from becoming Castiel's vessel and later learn that Amelia was being held prisoner, but Claire is still messed up.
350* ParentalFavoritism:
351** Played with in the case of the Winchesters. Throughout Season 1, Sam thinks that John hates him (when he left for college, he told him to never come back) while Dean is the one [[TheDutifulSon who obsessively follows his Dad's orders]] and can't seem to comprehend not following an order. But it's also argued that Sam is the one who John cares the most about while Dean is the one who had to grow up too fast and was treated, well, more like a soldier than a son. Although John ''did'' try to make it up by doing a deal to save Dean's life, Dean's Daddy Issues (the fact that he still thinks he wasn't good enough for him and that he still thinks he's the one who should have died) continue to this very day. And the Yellow-Eyed Demon knows this. He even taunts Dean by saying that John arguing with Sam was 'more concern than he's ever shown you.'
352** Also exists among the angels, as Gabriel points out that they all know that "He loved you best. More than Michael, more than me", discrediting Lucifer's claim that he hates humans because God loved them more. Gabriel reveals that Lucifer hates humans because [[ItsAllAboutMe he thought that God preferred them over him]].
353* ParentalSavingsSplurge: John tells Sam a story about how when Sam was born, he decided to put aside some money for Sam and Dean to go to college, and that every month he added $100 to that fund (presumably until John's obsession to find the demon that killed Mary kicked in). Sam gets a scholarship and so doesn't need the money anyway. When Sam asks his dad out of curiosity what happened to the money, they both laugh as John admits that he "spent it on ammo".
354* ParentsAsPeople: Whether you think he's a useless bastard of a so-called father or a good guy just trying to raise two pretty difficult kids (if "Tall Tales" and "Hell House" were anything to go by) on his own under horrible circumstances, you have to admit that John is just as multi-layered and complex as Sam and Dean.
355* ParentalIssues: Forget "Supernatural: Scary Just Got Sexy", the show's real tagline should be "Supernatural: Where Even The Angels Have Daddy Issues." (But only because [[DontExplainTheJoke God's just another dead beat dad with a bunch of excuses]].)
356* ParodyEpisode: ''Supernatural'' likes to [[PlayingWithATrope play with]] this trope once a season (in its first half) -- while the Winchester brothers are still chasing a mystery, the format and/or subject matter of the episode (and their case) takes a comedic tone and it becomes obvious that it's parodying something:
357** In Season 1, they made fun of ''Franchise/{{Ghostbusters}}'' in "Hell House"
358** In Season 2, they did "Hollywood Babylon," which was an AffectionateParody of the show itself with some blink-and-you'll-miss-'em {{Take That}}s to the [[MeddlingExecutives WB/CW executives]].
359** Season 3 had "Ghostfacers," which was a parody of both the Ghost Hunters ''and'' ''Film/TheBlairWitchProject'', as well as reality shows in general.
360** in Season 4's aptly-named "Monster Movie", Universal Studio's classic monster movies were awesomely and [[AffectionateParody affectionately]] homaged.
361** Season 5 brought us the instant-classic "Changing Channels" which parodies ''Series/GreysAnatomy'', a typical three-camera laugh-track {{sitcom}}, ''Series/KnightRider'', a commercial for a genital herpes prescription medication, and absolutely skewers ''Series/{{CSI}}''.
362** Season 6 gives the ultimate SelfParody with "The French Mistake", in which the show mercilessly satirizes itself and everyone working on it.
363* ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish: Subverted, played straight, and both times lampshaded in "The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo".
364** While trying to hack into Frank's encrypted hard drive, Charlie thinks she found the password in the remarkably simple "Film/WarGames" when this yields results. Then Frank's hard drive opens a program revealing that it's a false lead and taunts her.
365** Played straight while she's hacking into Dick Roman personal computer, which is locked by the password "[[Creator/CharlieSheen W1nn1ng]]".
366* PastExperienceNightmare: The main characters get hit by these a few times.
367** In Season 7, Dean is having nightmares about [[spoiler:Castiel's death and Sam's hallucinations of Lucifer. Well, mostly about killing Sam's monster friend and keeping it a secret.]]
368** Sam had nightmares throughout Season 1. While some were visions, the ones where he watched his girlfriend die over and over again still affected him like this.
369* {{Patricide}}: [[TheSoulless Soulless Sam]] asks the rogue angel Balthazar for a spell that will allow him to keep on being soul-free. Balthazar tells him he has to taint the vessel with a spell that requires him to commit an abominable act: spilling the blood of one's father. When Sam points out that his father (John Winchester) is already dead, Balthazar clarifies: you need the blood of the father, but the father needn't be blood ([[TeamDad Bobby Singer]]).
370* PeopleFarms: It is ultimately revealed that this is the plan that the Leviathans were working on all through Season 7 -- they create a food additive drug that, upon ingestion, makes humans slothful and complacent, causing them to fatten up and dull up, so that they can be marched into the slaughterhouses the Leviathans are building under the guise of agricultural factories. Oh, and the drug is lethal to any other monsters that feed on humans, since the Leviathans don't want any competition for their food.
371* PermaStubble: Dean and Castiel, as well as Sam in later seasons, all sport stubble that accentuates their badass natures.
372* PersonOfMassDestruction:
373** [[spoiler:Castiel]] briefly becomes one at the end of Season 6. While he was already quite a powerful supernatural being to start with, he upgraded himself with what essentially amounts to a supernatural nuclear reactor: 40,000,000 souls from a transdimensional monster afterlife. He goes mad with power and goes around killing hundreds if not thousands of people around the globe and showing his godly 'benevolence' by performing miracles. It's repeatedly mentioned that he's unstable and might take a large part of the planet with him when he reaches critical point. He's eventually compelled to give up his powers because he's housing far meaner beasties inside him.
374** Dean agrees to become this in a last-ditch attempt to stop Amara in Season 11, absorbing human souls that will kill both himself and Amara when detonated.
375* PhoneCallFromTheDead: In the episode "Long Distance Call" several people, including Dean, seem to get this kind of call from deceased loved ones.
376* PhonyPsychic: Sam and Dean run into an entire ''town'' of these in "The Mentalists". Lampshaded to no end, but particularly when Dean mentions that Pamela was one of the few genuine psychics they have encountered. There are actually some real ones as well, including [[spoiler:the villain, who has summoned the ghost of a dead psychic to kill the impostors, while her equally psychic and ghostly sister tries to warn people about her]].
377* PhotoIdentificationDenial: In the episode [[Recap/SupernaturalS15E07LastCall Last Call]], Dean is looking for a missing girl. He's at a bar run by his ex-hunter buddy Lee. He shows Lee her photograph, and Lee denies knowing her. He's lying. It turns out that Lee got tired of hunting and made a deal with the MonsterOfTheWeek where he provides it with victims in return for health and money. Dean does not take this well, and Lee doesn't live through the episode...
378** In the first season episode [[Recap/SupernaturalS01E11Scarecrow Scarecrow]], Sam and Dean are investigating a small town where young couples routinely go missing at the same time every year. Dean is showing a picture of the most recent couple to vanish to the townspeople, all of whom deny seeing them. Except for one young girl who isn't aware that the townspeople made a deal with a pagan god to sacrifice a man and a woman once a year in return for good fortune for the town. She tells Dean the couple did stop there, and it doesn't take long for Dean to start throwing monkey wrenches into things.
379* PhysicalGod:
380** The various Pagan and other non-Abrahamic gods seen in the series are all physical beings with tremendous powers, but can be killed with the right weapons.
381** The Trickster. Here, a Trickster is a pagan god. He can reshape reality and mess with time. Dropped a guy into a wormhole ForTheEvulz. Good times. A few other Pagan gods have also featured in the series. In Season 5, it's revealed that [[spoiler:the Trickster is actually not a pagan god at all, but an Archangel, specifically Gabriel, who's hiding from his brothers.]]
382** The demons revere Lucifer as a god because he created their race. Lucifer himself recognizes the usefulness of such blind obedience, but despite his own immense power regards himself as simply God's son. After he gets released, Meg directly describes the archangel in these terms to Castiel.
383--->'''Meg:''' Lucifer is the Father of our race. Our Creator. Your God may be a deadbeat, but mine... mine walks the Earth.
384** At the end of Season 6, [[spoiler:Castiel]] becomes one. [[AGodAmI Or at least that's what he claims.]] He proceeds to take a very active role in managing his new kingdom, [[spoiler:roasting half of Heaven]], killing people all over the world who displease him, and presenting himself as a wrathful but just deity.
385* PitifulWorms: The Angels that adhere more openly to FantasticRacism deride humans as either monkeys or maggots. Zachariah, a higher-tier and particularly [[SmugSnake smug]] Angel topped it by describing Dean as "nothing but a maggot inside a worm's ass". Death, who's even higher in the cosmic food chain than them, barring maybe the Archangels, goes even further by calling Dean a bacterium.
386* PlaguedByNightmares:
387** Sam experiences psychic visions, usually of premonitions of people in danger or people who are going to die in the future. These dreams occurred during the first and second seasons. Although these dreams would often help Sam and Dean during a hunt, they would also be incredibly scary and traumatic for Sam as quite a few of them would occur at night when Sam was sleeping. It's also incredibly disturbing for Sam as Sam continuously sees morbid thoughts and visions of people constantly dying and there is nothing that Sam can do to prevent it or stop it from happening. However, there were some cases in which Sam and Dean were able to prevent or stop the premonitions from coming true.
388** In Season 4, Dean spends many nights tossing over his nightmares of [[spoiler:hell]]. In Season 7, Dean is once again having nightmares, this time about [[spoiler:Castiel's death, Sam's hallucinations, killing Amy Pond and keeping it a secret.]]
389** In Season 10, Dean suffers nightmares of killing people while under the influence of the Mark of Cain, alarming Sam with his shouts only for the latter to find out he's dreaming.
390** The same thing happens again in Season 14, while Dean has nightmares of [[spoiler:his plan to lock himself in a coffin and sink himself to the bottom of the ocean in order to stop Michael.]]
391* PlagueZombie:
392** There's the Croatoan virus, a demonic virus that turned humans into ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater''-type zombies, and was [[spoiler:especially created by [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse Pestilence]] to wipe out most of humanity as part of [[{{Satan}} Lucifer's]] apocalypse]].
393** The black smoke released by the Darkness at the start of Season 11 infects people and turns them into zombies trying to infect others through blood transmission. They have a short shelf-life and die in about a day after infection, but Sam manages to find the cure in holy oil.
394* PlatonicDeclarationOfLove:
395** To say that the [[BrokenBase fandom is split]] on whether or not the confession in "Despair" was platonic or romantic would be a severe understatement. [[WordOfSaintPaul Even the actors themselves have differing views of it]], with Misha Collins saying it was a romantic confession (explicitly calling it a "homosexual declaration of love", whereas [[https://youtu.be/pFzXsFbPPAc?t=1967 Jensen Ackles interprets Castiel's love as something "heavenly" that is beyond the human comprehension of romance or sexuality]].
396** In the series finale, [[spoiler:Dean gives a one to Sam as part of his FinalSpeech]].
397--> '''[[spoiler:Dean]]:''' I love you so much, [[spoiler:my baby brother]].
398* PlayingTheVictimCard: Lucifer loves to whine and moan about how HumansAreBastards, that he was TheUnfavorite in God's eyes and unjustly became the fall guy for every ill in the world. His own brother Gabriel calls him out on this being nothing more than a shallow excuse to justify his own malicious actions against humanity, pointing out that Lucifer was actually their father's ''favorite'', not him or Michael.
399* PlotArmor: An incredibly rare {{invoked}} example; the reason why the Winchesters always survive their adventures yet those around them [[AnyoneCanDie die in droves]] is because [[spoiler:God Himself was controlling the story and was too interested in their lives and development to let them die.]]
400* PlotCoupon: 66 Seals (out of 600) need to be broken in order to free Lucifer from Hell and start the Apocalypse. The First Seal breaks at the start of Season 4, and much of the rest of the season is spent with angels "trying" to stop Hell from succeeding. [[spoiler:It's eventually revealed that the First Seal broke when Dean agreed to torture souls in Hell, and the final Seal is Lilith herself, which breaks when she goads Sam into killing her.]]
401* PokingDeadThingsWithAStick: {{Discussed|Trope}} in "[[Recap/SupernaturalS02E11Playthings Playthings]]". Sam asks Dean, who wants to check whether Rose really had a stroke, "What do you want to do, poke her with a stick?" Dean half-nods, obviously thinking it's a good idea. Sam responds, "Dude, you're not gonna poke her with a stick!"
402* PoorCommunicationKills: Half the time, lives could have been saved if the brothers just came out and said they were paranormal investigators from the start, without trying to pass themselves off as cops -- at least assuming they were believed, since most people [[SunnydaleSyndrome don't believe in the supernatural]].
403* PortmanteauCoupleName: [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] in "Fan Fiction", where Sam actively wonders what his and Cas's ship name would be.
404--->'''Sam''': What about...Sastiel? Samstiel?
405* PossessingADeadBody:
406** In Season 4, the demon Ruby took to possessing a human body that was technically dead after Sam objected to her using a living person's. The woman in question was comatose and had just been removed from life support before she moved in.
407** In the final episode of Season 4, it's also shown that decades earlier the demon Azazel murdered a convent of nuns so that Lucifer could use one of their dead bodies to talk to him from his prison.
408** Castiel was initially using the human Jimmy Novak as his angelic host. However, Jimmy's fate is left ambiguous after Castiel is killed off and brought BackFromTheDead several times, but it's eventually confirmed that Jimmy's soul was sent to Heaven after Castiel's first death at the Archangel Raphael's hands. This means that for most of the series, Castiel has been occupying an otherwise lifeless body.
409** In the opening of Season 15, a rift torn open between Earth and Hell causes every hellbound soul to flee and grabbing every host they can get their hands on. This results in a localized ZombieApocalypse when everybody in the cemetery starts rising up and attacking the Winchesters. The usual method of dispatching a ghost is to [[FireKeepsItDead burn their bones]], but since they aren't even in their original bodies, all it would really do is slow them down and continue attacking in ghost form.
410* PossessionBurnout: What happens to whatever body Satan is possessing, due to being so powerful there's only one person he can possess without causing them harm. He drinks demon blood in order to slow the process, but Nick's body begins falling apart with sores on his face and his skin cracking apart.
411* PostApocalypticDog: After [[spoiler: Chuck makes everyone disappear except the Winchester Brothers, Dean finds an adorable, shaggy dog and names him Miracle.]]
412* PosthumousVillainVictory: In "[[Recap/SupernaturalS04E22LuciferRising Lucifer Rising]]", after Lilith has broken 65 of the 66 seals to free Lucifer, she's killed by Sam, but [[spoiler:this is actually a ThanatosGambit since Lilith is herself the last seal]]. Mere minutes after Lilith perishes, her goal of jump-starting the Apocalypse is realized as Lucifer emerges onto the Earth.
413* PostModernism:
414** In "The Monster at the End of This Book," the Winchesters discover they are the lead characters in a series of horror novels with a small but fervent fandom. Online research turns up fan criticism, Sam!girls, Dean!girls... and slash fiction. When the boys track down the author (who at first believes they are his fictional characters brought to life), he apologizes for all the emotional torment and bad writing they've been subjected to.
415** [[invoked]]When they meet a fangirl who writes Sam/Dean slash fics... well, you can imagine. The boys are understandably [[{{Squick}} squicked]].
416--->'''Dean:''' They do realize we're brothers, right?
417** There's an episode where they end up at a Supernatural convention and get mistaken for Sam and Dean cosplayers.
418** The episode where Sam and Dean end up in an alternate dimension where their life is a TV show called "Supernatural". They have to act. It isn't pretty.
419** And then the 200th episode, "Fan Fiction", featured a girls' school ''doing a musical'' about their lives, courtesy of Chuck's books. The terms "Samulet" and "Destiel" were used, and the girls sang "Carry On My Wayward Son". The FourthWall has basically been salted and burned at this point.
420* PostRapeTaunt:
421** An unintentional example in a town where a deity is causing everyone to speak nothing but the absolute truth. A man who is being treated by a dentist friend suddenly starts gloating about having molested his friend's daughter one night, which of course is immediately followed by the enraged dentist [[VigilanteExecution getting "creative" with his tools]].
422** Sam's Hallucination of Lucifer in Season 7 taunts Sam about their time in the cage that makes it clear that rape was part of Lucifer's torment of Sam.
423* PowerDegeneration:
424** Happens to Castiel when he's Godstiel, with the souls of Purgatory breaking down his vessel and causing him to go mad. Death remarks that he's not God but rather a mutated angel.
425** Happens to Dean when he takes on the Mark of Cain. He's got enough power to kill Abbadon but it comes at the price of his sanity and eventually, he becomes a demon.
426* PowerIncontinence: Chronos, the Greek God of Time, is the only deity shown who had next to no control over his powers. He's like a DarkerAndEdgier [[Series/QuantumLeap Sam Beckett]]: warping through different time periods seemingly at random after spending some length of time in one. The only way he can manipulate the coordinates is through human sacrifice. So when he wants to keep himself anchored to a specific period because it's home to the mortal woman that he fell in love with, [[LoveMakesYouEvil a lot of people end up dying]].
427* ThePowerOfFamily: The fifteen year run of the show could basically be summarized as "Family and Free Will above all". The power of family has helped the Winchester brothers defeat humans, monsters, demons, angels, [[DeathIsCheap death]], [[TheGrimReaper Death]], the Apocalypse, and a whole host of other seemingly insurmountable odds. In one such case, Sam's fond memories of the life he's spent with Dean is what allows him to retake control of his body from possession by the Devil himself.
428* ThePowerOfLove:
429** Discussed in "Point of No Return."
430--->'''Sam:''' There's another way.\
431[[spoiler:'''Adam:''']] Great. What is it?\
432'''Dean:''' ''[sarcastically]'' Well, we're working on the Power of Love.\
433[[spoiler:'''Adam:''']] How's that going?\
434'''Dean:''' Not good.
435*** And in the end? ThePowerOfLove is pretty much what does the trick. Which makes the above conversation {{foreshadowing}}.
436* PowerOfTrust: In Season 5, Sam's ([[HorribleJudgeOfCharacter basically misplaced]]) [[ThickerThanWater trust in him]] is all that keeps Dean from going through with it after saying yes to Michael.
437* PowerTrio: Sam, Dean, and Castiel (circa Season 5). They even have the in-canon team name "Team Free Will".
438-->'''Dean:''' Well, this is it.\
439'''Sam:''' This is what?\
440'''Dean:''' Team Free Will. One ex-blood junkie, one dropout with six bucks to his name, and Mr. Comatose over there. Awesome.
441* PowerUpFood: When angels' (or a Nephilim's) Grace is depleted or outright stolen, consuming Grace from other angels will temporarily restore some of their angelic powers, or (if not all of their native Grace was taken) will speed up their Grace's replenishment. Castiel reluctantly does this twice after his Grace is completely drained until he gets it back, and Lucifer does it to speed up his own recovery after being partially drained. It's tried on Jack but it doesn't work out well.
442* PragmaticVillainy: Every time a DealWithTheDevil is made, the victim is supposed to get to live for 10 more years before the demons come for him. Crowley is outraged when a lesser demon comes for his victims early:
443-->'''Crowley:''' There's a reason we don't call our chits in early: consumer confidence. This isn't Wall Street, this is Hell! [[TakeThat We have a little something called integrity]]. If this gets out, who'll deal with us? Nobody! Then, where are we?
444* PrecautionaryCorpseDisposal: Hunters must burn a body and anything associated to it in order to either destroy an existing ghost causing problems or, as a precaution, to keep one from forming. When done for fallen comrades, this is called a Hunter's Funeral.
445* PreClimaxClimax:
446** Done in "Heaven and Hell", except the girl (actually, an [[OurAngelsAreDifferent angel]] who has lost her "grace") suggests it to Dean, who is a little put off by the fact that it's usually ''him'' who uses that line. It doesn't stop him, though.
447** Subverted in "Abandon All Hope...", where Dean tries it with Jo, only for Jo to say that [[{{foreshadowing}} if this is really her last night on Earth]], she'll spend it with dignity.
448* PredatoryBigPharma: Sort-of in Season 5. It's revealed during the last few episodes that demons in Lucifer and Pestilence's employ have infiltrated a pharmaceutical company called Niveus, and they're using the company to test out a new, hyper-virulent strain of the [[TheVirus Croatoan virus]], before they plan to cause a spontaneous U.S.-wide ZombieApocalypse via distributing the virus inside swine flu vaccines across the country all at once. That being said, the company's human staff aren't depicted as evil, but as victims whom have been infiltrated by inhuman monsters without realizing it, and several scenes show their staff from warehouse workers to lab scientists to a board member all being mercilessly cut down by the demons and the virus.
449* PretenderDiss:
450** The monster hunters dislike wannabe-hunters, since they tend to derive their knowledge of monsters from popular fiction -- which can get them and others killed. When Dean meets Samuel, Samuel tests him with a question about vampires that [[OurVampiresAreDifferent a wannabe would fail]].
451** Sam and Dean are also very derisive of [[VampireWannabe Vampire Wannabes]] and vampire fandom in general. ''Supernatural'''s vampires are, with very few exceptions, brutal killers who will use their fans for food without second thought. And the exceptions don't act anything like [[YourVampiresSuck Pattinson.]]
452** [[TheGrimReaper Death]] himself delivers one to a power-tripping [[spoiler:Castiel]] in the Season 7 premiere. "I know God, and you, sir, are no God."
453* PrisonDimension: Purgatory mainly functions as the afterlife for all the monster souls in the universe. However, the Grim Reaper later reveals that it was originally built by God as a prison to prevent the primordial Leviathans, God's first beasts, from eating the rest of creation.
454* TheProblemWithFightingDeath:
455** Discussed. To stop Lucifer, Dean tries to kill Death, unaware that he could've gotten what he wanted without killing him, as they both had a common interest in stopping the "bratty child". Dean assumes that Death would be angry at this, but it turns out the problem with a human fighting Death is that the human just ''doesn't matter''.
456--->'''Death:''' You have an inflated sense of your importance. To a thing like me, a thing like you, well...Think how you'd feel if a bacterium sat at your table and started to get snarky. [[InsignificantLittleBluePlanet This is one little planet in one tiny solar system in a galaxy that's barely out of its diapers.]] I'm old, Dean. [[TimeAbyss Very old]]. So I invite you to contemplate how insignificant I find you.
457** He later gambles with him and buys him a hotdog, but continues to impress upon him the depths of his insignificance at every opportunity. It's here that Death also clarifies that he himself cannot, in fact, die. Which makes the end of [[spoiler:Season 10]] a little... murky.
458* PromotionToParent:
459** Bobby for the boys, although considering Dean's daddy issues, fans would have preferred him to remain a friend-type. Explicitly stated in "It's a Terrible Life" and most of Season 4.
460** Deconstructed with Dean for Sam: it left him with a whole ton of issues -- not the least of which is his [[ExtremeDoormat lack of a spine when it comes to family]] -- and an unhealthy need to keep Sam alive and safe.
461** [[ArchangelMichael Michael]] also claims that he was this to his younger brother [[ArchangelLucifer Lucifer]], though it is never demonstrated and neither Raphael or Gabriel say anything about it either.
462* ProneToSunburn: Vampires can survive sun exposure but get extreme sunburns, hence why they tend to operate at night.
463* ProperlyParanoid: Frank. [[spoiler:Even dying messily doesn't stop him from being effective.]]
464* ProsceniumReveal: "Hollywood Babylon" opens with two terrified 20-somethings, Wendy and Brody, in the woods. Brody runs away; Wendy calls for her friends, hears a noise, turns toward the camera and screams — unconvincingly, at a tennis ball stuck on top of a movie camera. "Cut!" calls the director. "Wendy" is actually Tara Benchley, the lead actress of Hell Hazers 2.
465* PsychicDreamsForEveryone: Averted averted averted. Sam's psychic powers begin as harmless visions that help them save people in peril, but still cause all main characters to completely freak out because they must be evil. Turns out, they are.
466* PsychicNosebleed: Sam, when he uses his psychic exorcism powers against particularly difficult demons.
467* PsychicPowers: Sam and the Special Children. Pamela Barnes and Missouri Mosely are more garden variety clairvoyants.
468* PsychoSerum: Sam Winchester spent half the season break between three and four, and all of Season 4, using demon blood to enhance psychic powers conferred upon him by feeding him demon blood as a baby. This allows him to kill demons without necessarily killing their hosts, a power no one else in the setting except ''angels'' ever demonstrates, and angels rarely bother. Unfortunately, demon blood turns out to be dangerously addictive for him, nearly killing him when he detoxes from it, and appears to have some sort of destructive effect on his morality and sanity, as despite having pragmatic well-intentioned reasons for using his powers and killing Lilith, the addiction also turns him into something distinctly not human, as he briefly gains black demon eyes while using his powers in the Season 4 finale.
469%%* PstandardPsychicPstance: See above.
470* PullingThemselvesTogether: The Leviathans have a regular HealingFactor, but when their heads get cut off, it instead reattaches itself to the body if left alone for too long. [[spoiler:The Winchesters and Bobby use this to figure out a semi-permanent way of dispatching them by storing the body parts far away from each other.]]
471* PuppyDogEyes:
472** Mostly Sam and Castiel, although Dean can also manage to look like a stomped-on puppy at times.
473** {{Lampshaded}} by Dean, completely unprompted to a couple of strangers, after the brothers suffer their first BreakUpMakeUpScenario in Season 1.
474---> '''Dean:''' You know, my brother could give you this puppy dog look, and you’d just buy right into it.
475** And again in Season 10, when Sam tries to convince a demonic Dean to come back.
476---> '''Sam:''' Because you are my brother. And I'm here to take you home.\
477'''Dean:''' [laughs] Ah! [[CopycatMockery “You're my brother, and I'm here to take you home.”]] Yeah, what is this, a Lifetime movie? Huh? With your puppy-dog eyes?
478* PurgatoryAndLimbo: Purgatory is AnotherDimension which serves as an afterlife for all the setting's monsters and a prison for SealedEvilInACan such as the [[HumanoidAbomination Leviathans]] and Eve, the [[MonsterProgenitor Mother of All]]. It's an endless, mistbound forest where all souls are fated to perpetually prey on one another. It's "vast, underutilized, and hell-adjacent", according to Crowley.
479* PyrrhicVictory:
480** The end of Season 5: Sam and Dean manage to defeat [[spoiler:Lucifer, but at the cost of Sam having to [[FateWorseThanDeath jump into Lucifer's cage]]. Particularly heartbreaking because all Dean was trying to do was [[BigBrotherInstinct save his brother]] for most of the series.]]
481** Season 6 ends with [[spoiler:WellIntentionedExtremist Castiel]] preventing ArchangelRaphael from restarting the Apocalypse. To do so, [[spoiler:he only [[DealWithTheDevil allies with a demon]] he then betrays, [[JumpedOffTheSlipperySlope kills his closest angel allies]], [[KickTheDog breaks Sam's mind]], then absorbs all the monster souls from Purgatory for the [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity power]] to [[AGodAmI declare himself the new God]].]]
482** And Season 7 opens with [[spoiler:Castiel [[DisproportionateRetribution smiting]] like crazy and [[PhlebotinumOverload losing control]] of this power so it releases [[EldritchAbomination voracious, unkillable monsters]] from Purgatory on the world]].
483[[/folder]]
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