Agents Of SHIELD / Tropes A to E

Tropes A-E | Tropes F-H | Tropes I-M | Tropes N-R | Tropes S-Z

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. provides examples of the following tropes:

A

• Abnormal Ammo: The ICER guns, first called Night Night guns. The bullets break under the skin, releasing a toxin that temporarily paralyzes the target. The same toxin later shows up in grenades.
• Absurdly Youthful Mother:
  • Discussed in "T.R.A.C.K.S." when Coulson and Simmons go undercover as father and daughter, as Simmons claims that he's "much too young to have a daughter my age." (Though the official website gives the characters' ages at the time as 49 and 26, respectively, so she's probably just being polite, perhaps to try to make up for her Compliment Backfire about his age in "FZZT".)
  • Justified in season 2 with Skye/Daisy and Jiaying because of the latter's Healing Factor making her ageless.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Donnie Gill's parents didn't even realize how smart he was because they ignored him so much. When S.H.I.E.L.D. told his father that Donnie was gifted, his father replied "In what?"
  • Ward's mother was abusive towards her two elder sons, Christian and Grant, and Ward's father is said to have, at the very least, turned a blind eye. Only the youngest was ever treated well by their mother, though not by much. Christian in turn lashed out at Grant and their youngest brother, even throwing the youngest down the well. Grant is also said to have been properly screwed up as a child and ended up in juvie after trying to burn Christian alive. Then John Garrett got his hands on Grant and became an even more twisted father figure to the young man. In the third season, youngest brother Thomas confirmed that Christian was a monster, that Grant protected Thomas until the incident at the well (at which point he got twisted and dark), and that their mother was monstrous to both of his older brothers, and added that their father was abusive to their mother.
  • In the Framework, Alistair Fitz loved his son very much and didn't walk out on him, as the real Alistair Fitz did. Unfortunately for Leo Fitz, his father's love didn't do anything to mitigate the emotional and physical abuse he received from his father, turning him into the sociopathic Doctor, one of the heads of HYDRA in the Framework and the lover of Madame Hydra. When Fitz gets out of the Framework, he is horrified to realize that he became a murderer because he had an evil father figure, just like Ward.
  • Werner von Strucker mentions that his father treated him terribly, recalling a time when he beat him.
  • Hale to her daughter Ruby in season 5, in raising Ruby to be a ruthless child soldier and the Destroyer of Worlds. The trope is somewhat of a presence in HYDRA.
• Acting Unnatural:
  • Simmons makes a hilariously bad attempt to act casual (coached by Skye through an earpiece) when Agent Sitwell catches her attempting to access a computer terminal without authorization in "The Hub". After first claiming to be looking for the bathroom only to be told that she is staring at a wall panel, she then attempts to compliment his head. It gets so bad that Skye has to tell her to stop talking, and Simmons defaults to shooting Sitwell with an ICER when she realizes she's not going to be able to talk him down.
  • In "T.R.A.C.K.S.," Simmons claims that the problem is she's horrible at improv, so she made up a massive fake backstory for herself and Coulson, which would be able to cover any situation. As is probably expected, she went too far in the other direction but forgot to clue Coulson in beforehand.
    Coulson: Prostitutes? Plural?
  • Coulson himself sounds rather insincere when he's pretending to be under Lorelei's control to fool Fitz. Fitz being Fitz, however, falls for it.
  • In "Nothing Personal", despite her best efforts to conceal it, Skye can't quite keep her apprehension under the surface while she is with Ward. Ward of course notices, having been trained to recognize physical cues, but she plays it off as stress from the general situation rather than her knowing that he's HYDRA.
• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: Just about every episode or so. Some especially good ones are Fitz and Aida's conversation in the Containment Module in 4x21, at least before things take a severe turn for the worse, and Lincoln's conversation with Hive in the Season 3 Finale as they're both waiting to die.
• Action Girl:
  • Melinda May, so much so that her nickname is "The Cavalry," even if she claims to hate being called that. Initially, she joined the team on the condition that she was only there to pilot the plane and provide nominal support. But after a few close scrapes, she eventually volunteers for field combat duty. "Repairs" and "Melinda" reveal May's reluctance is because she once rescued a S.H.I.E.L.D. team single-handedly, hence "The Cavalry" nickname, but is haunted by having had to kill a young Inhuman girl mind-controlling the team.
  • Skye gradually became this over the course of season 1, including receiving her S.H.I.E.L.D. agent status. In season 2, she's officially become this thanks to training under May, including wearing a new uniform to cement it. Her action sequence in S2E19 "The Dirty Half Dozen" puts any doubts about her status to rest when she pulls off a May-level solo beatdown on a group of armed Hydra soldiers.
  • Maria Hill in "Nothing Personal". While Coulson gets into a straight fight with Talbot, Hill takes out most of his unit by herself. Coulson ends up stunning Talbot and the last two with an ICER.
  • Season 2 also introduces Bobbi Morse and Agent Isabelle Hartley. The former is a member of the Avengers in the comics and is a combatant on par with Black Widow, while the latter is played by Xena herself, Lucy Lawless. Both should be enough proof to their claims to this.
  • By the time of Season 3, Simmons also becomes an Action Girl - she's still the weakest of the women in the team, but that's only in relation to the One-Man Army trio that is Daisy, May, and Elena. When she gets into a fight, she holds her own admirably.
• Actor Allusion:
  • There are several episodes where Coulson said "law and order". Clark Gregg appeared for one episode in Law & Order.
  • Melinda May's mother states her agency hasn't fallen apart. She is portrayed by actress Tsai Chin, who played the undercover MI6 agent Ling in the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice (as well as meeting 007 again across a poker table as "Madame Wu" in Casino Royale (2006)). Also, they were both in The Joy Luck Club.
  • Adrianne Palicki as a butt-kicking Amazonian Beauty with an invisible airplane? Where have we seen THAT before? Plus, she travels in an invisible jet, and Dr. Randolph even refers to Bobbi as an "amazonian".
  • Fred Dryer, star of the cop show Hunter, plays a HYDRA leader who's killed by...Hunter.
  • Anderson Cooper's character was also killed by getting shot in the back on Bones.
  • In "One of Us" Kyle MacLachlan gets to have a cup of coffee in a diner.
  • Kirk Acevedo once again plays a Fantastic Racist Jerkass.
  • Also a Casting Gag: after Iron Chef, Mark Dacascos becomes an Inhuman with the powers of ferrokinesis. He also watches a sickly Ward/Hive eat a massive amount of meat.
  • Mallory Jansen is playing around with dark magic again.
  • John Pyper-Ferguson can blow himself up and put himself back together. He previously played a guy who kept surviving his apparent death in increasingly implausible ways in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr..
  • Zach McGowan was a famous pirate captain in Black Sails before he was hanged and reincarnated as the captain of a submarine on that show.
  • Patton Oswalt plays multiple identical-looking brothers. The only brother who isn't a SHIELD agent is a stand-up comedian.
  • David O'Hara portrayed Alistair Fitz, who in the Framework is a high-ranking agent of HYDRA, a Nazi off-shoot. He also portrayed Albert Runcorn, who is essentially a Wizard Nazi (he even dresses like a wizarding version of Gestapo), in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.
  • When Lance Hunter reappears in Season 5, he mentions that one reason he and Bobbi aren't physically together is because she's a great distance away. This is a reference to how the reason Bobbi didn't appear is because her actress was at the time starring in a space exploration series, The Orville.
  • This is not the first time Dove Cameron has played the child of a villain, trying to make her mother proud, except of course, she chooses evil.
  • The season 6 finale features May striking a pose with a sword based on a shot from Mulan, due to Ming-Na Wen having a little fun.
• Adapted Out
  • Talbot's history with the Hulk, notably being the Second Love to Betty Ross.
  • Kim Johnson is replaced with Canon Foreigner as the mother of Daisy Johnson
  • Tom Thumb, who was AIDA's creator in the comics.
  • Bobbi Morse's romance with Hawkeye in the comics, which was due to the latter appearing in the films. They were teammates at one point. Hawkeye's position is filled in by Lance Hunter.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • In the comics, Mack has gray hair. Here, he is bald.
  • Daisy has brown hair here, when it was originally black in the comics. Subsequent appearances of the character in the comics have redesigned her to have brown hair.
  • Agent 33: her hair is blonde in the comics, whereas here she is a brunette.
  • Vrellnexians had a light grayish purple skin and red eyes in the comics, but here have a blend of gray and blue for their skin and have darker, less striking eyes.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • With the revelation that Skye is Daisy Johnson, the show becomes this for her backstory. In the comics, Daisy was introduced as one of many members of Nick Fury's new squad, who became a Breakout Character and the most prominent member of that team, but all that's known about her backstory is that she was the long-lost daughter of Mister Hyde and the protogé of Nick Fury. In the show, though, we now have a season-and-a-half worth of details for her backstory leading up to how she got her powers.
  • Bobbi Morse is revealed to be Hunter's ex-wife with whom he still has a combative, flirtatious, on-again, off-again relationship. In the comics she had this relationship with Hawkeye. Presumably since there are no plans for Jeremy Renner to ever play the character on the show, they gave the back story to Hunter instead.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • Mark Scarlotti has his name changed to Marcus Scarlotti.
  • ExTechOp is the SHIELD program responsible for Garrett and Deathlok. In the MCU, it's renamed Cybertek and is its own organization.
  • Daisy Johnson was known as "Skye" for the first two seasons.
    • Her parents' names were also modified to accommodate the changes to her backstory, withe her mother's name going from Kim Johnson to Jiaying. Her father's comic book counterpart's name is Calvin Zabo, but the show changes it to Calvin Johnson. However, in "The Frenemy of My Enemy", he tells Skye that he changed it to "something more sinister" during his search for her, implying that he may have gone by Zabo at one point. This is presumably due to Skye's mother being completely different from Daisy Johnson's mother in the comics, meaning her last name had to come from her father instead. Some episodes of the second season do have his name given as "Zabo" at certain points in the subtitles.
  • Originally, Melinda May was known as Agent Althea Rice. When Ming-Na Wen was cast in the role, they changed the name to avoid naming an Asian character 'Rice'.
  • Slingshot has her real name changed from Yo-Yo Rodriguez to Elena Rodriguez, probably because the former would have sounded silly in live-action. The original name then becomes her new Code Name, although Slingshot was used for the title of her spinoff web mini-series.
  • Downplayed. "Hive" is used in both the show and comics, but the "Alveus" name was invented for the show.
  • Alphonso Mackenzie: He goes by "Al" rather than "Mack" in the comics. Ironically, rather than solving any naming issues, the new nickname violates the One-Steve Limit, since there was a minor character named Agent Mack in Season One.
  • In the comics, Eric Koenig's sister was named Ilsa Koenig. Then again, Ilsa Koenig was also a member of the German Resistance and Nick Fury's lover during World War II, so maybe it's not accurate to say that LT is based on Ilsa.
  • Daniel Whitehall: In this show, his real name is Werner Reinhardt, while Daniel Whitehall is a name he took when he came to America to work for Hydra.
  • Flint's real name in the comics is Jaycen. Here, his codename is his real name.
• Adaptation Species Change
  • Daisy Johnson was a human mutate in the comics. In the show, she is an Inhuman. Her subsequent appearances in the comics have since retconned her as being an Inhuman.
  • Donnie Gill is an enhanced individual, whereas he was an Inhuman in the comics. Ironically, the Inhumans would be introduced in the season following his debut.
  • In the comics, Hive was a human HYDRA agent subjected to an experiment involving bio-engineered parasites created by HYDRA that bonded with him. Here, he is an Inhuman worshiped by HYDRA.
  • The character Slingshot was a human mutate in the comics, whereas the show depicts as her being an Inhuman.
  • An unseen Inhuman character known as Eden Fesi is mentioned in Season 3. This character was a mutant in the comics.
  • In the comics, James/Hellfire is a human with supernatural abilities. Here, he's an Inhuman.
  • Jeffrey Mace's original comic counterpart was a normal human but this version is an Inhuman. Subverted: he's only pretending to be an Inhuman; his powers actually come from a serum. He's a genuine Inhuman in the Framework, though, thanks to his wish that he had "real superpowers I could use to kick your (the Superior's) ass."
  • Ivanov: His comic counterpart is a Life Model Decoy. Here, he's a human... Subverted Trope Who gets turned into an LMD.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Lorelei. She can zap the will of any man just by saying a pair of words. In comics, Lorelei is nowhere that powerful. In comics, she's just a Butt-Monkey with delusions of being better than her sister, who repeatedly fails to get Thor to drink her love potions and has the brilliant idea of challenging a dragon to a contest of wills.
  • Hive in the comics, was just one of several HYDRA leaders introduced in Secret Warriors who was a genetically engineered parasite monster whose only power, beyond turning a random host into a tentacle monster, was controlling and assimilating people with Puppeteer Parasite creatures it spawned (which needed special labs to grow) and bringing back a recently dead Viper as a Humanoid Abomination (which he only demonstrated once). Here, the people who genetically engineered Hive into what he is are the Kree, and he's the founder of HYDRA's original form, an immortal Inhuman, who can effortlessly devour humans, control Inhumans, and is very hard to kill. Not to mention, while in the comics Hive took years to completely control a host and couldn't speak in an understandable fashion, here, Hive gains control of his hosts pretty quickly and can speak perfectly fine using them.
  • AIDA: A.I.D.A. from the comics is the computer AI of Tom Thumb from the Squadron Supreme, and does not even have her own body. She certainly doesn't have the ability to take over HYDRA, and neither she nor Madame HYDRA have access to the incredible amount of power that her new organic body has.
  • Flint: in the comics, Flint's control over rock was proportional to how large it was, he could barely keep a grip on a pebble but could push himself to move Pluto out of orbit. Here, he can sense and reconstruct a Monolith on the molecular level from surrounding rock, and is strongly believed to have the potential to eventually reconstruct the shattered Earth.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • The show's version of Donnie Gill. He still ends up as a bad guy, but is given a sympathetic backstory. It's also made abundantly clear that he never intended for his actions to hurt anyone, at least at first, and he also never served HYDRA willingly. When he's acting of his own free will, it's against HYDRA. The only reason why S.H.I.E.L.D. put him down at the end of "Making Friends and Influencing People" is so HYDRA wouldn't be able to use him again.
  • The second season also has Cal, a.k.a. Calvin Zabo, better known as Mister Hyde. In the comics he was just a selfish crook, while in the show he's a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds who's on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to avenge his beloved wife's murder, and he regrets that the formula he developed to give himself super strength has also affected his mind. He's still a savage killer, but one with a very sympathetic backstory behind such. It also turns out that his wife is actually still alive and the true Big Bad of Season Two, who keeps her husband under her thumb until he pulls a last minute redemption by choosing to kill her to save their daughter, Skye/Daisy.
  • Glenn Talbot, who was just Thunderbolt Ross's right hand man an thereby an Obstructive Bureaucrat to the heroes, serves as an ally to Coulson by the middle of the second season. In the third season he acts as the Friend on the Force for S.H.I.E.L.D. to the US military after becoming the head of the ATCU and has a close working relationship with S.H.I.E.L.D., even being the first non-S.H.I.E.L.D. operative to set foot in the Playground. In the fourth season, he acts as the liasion to the government and works closely and occasionally for the newly reborn S.H.I.E.L.D. before getting getting brain damage at the hands of an LMD of Daisy, being separated from his family as a result of said brain damage, learning that Hale is HYDRA and subsequently being interrogated and brainwashed, then spending six months in captivity before Coulson was finally able to find and rescue him, then having his brainwashing activated to bring an alien invasion to the Lighthouse, leading to an inversion when he actually becomes significantly more villanous than in the comics after infusing himself with Gravitonium, promptly going insane, and attempting to assimilate Daisy which would have resulted in the Earth being destroyed and the Bad Future from the first half of the season coming to fruition.
  • Lash: He's still a villain, but comic book Lash was a complete asshole and a Social Darwinist with Fantastic Racism toward humans and weaker Inhumans. This version is more a Tragic Villain whose mind is being warped by his transformation, and has a more human and sympathetic alter-ego. He also targets Inhumans only, and does so because he sees them as a danger to humans rather than out racism. His real target, additionally, is Hive, and he dies protecting Daisy.
• Adaptational Nationality
  • Eric Koenig was German in the comics, but depicted as American here.
  • Yo-Yo Rodriguez is Puerto Rican in the comics, but Colombian here.
  • Daniel Whitehall is British in the comics, and German here. Later, he adopts American citizenship after he changed his identity into "Daniel Whitehall".
  • Prior to the series, Daisy Johnson had been depicted as a Caucasian in the comics. For the show, she is Chinese-American, like her actress. The comics have since designed the character with this ethnicity.
  • James/Hellfire: His comics counterpart is American. In the MCU, he's Australian.
  • Marcus Scarlotti is an American in the comics. Here, he's likely a German, since his actor is German. This is likely why his name is changed.
  • Werner von Strucker is German in the comics. In the MCU, he is German-American since his actor is American. His American heritage is most likely from his (unseen) mother. He also tells Ruby that he doesn't understand German language.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • As of "T.R.A.C.K.S.", Deathlok. Although since he's acting under duress he's more of an Anti-Villain.
  • And as of "Turn, Turn, Turn", The Clairvoyant is revealed to be John Garrett.
  • Neither Kim Johnson or Jiaying's later-introduced comics counterpart committed the same kinds of atrocities Jiaying attempts on the show.
• Affably Evil:
  • The Clairvoyant, revealed to be John Garrett, keeps the chummy, friendly attitude he had long before the reveal of who he was, and is shown to have a pretty fun Villainous Friendship with his dragon, and generally treats his subordinates with a lot of friendly respect, with the only exception of Quinn. Doesn't change the fact he's a murdering sociopath who'd gladly kill anyone to make himself immortal.
  • Raina always speaks in a friendly and polite tone of voice too everyone, including her allies and when she's manipulating someone.
  • The Mole: Grant Ward: Even at his worst, he never loses his friendly tone or charming personality. And contrary to Garrett, it's genuine. Well, only for the first two seasons.
  • Daniel Whitehall: He is practically cheerful in his introduction while explaining to his subordinate that HYDRA will continue in the wake of Red Skull's death and that the obelisk has immense potential. When he's captured by Agent Carter and the Howling Commandos, he simply says HYDRA's motto in a jaunty manner.
  • Cal: He's kinda... quirky when he's not being murderously psychotic. He refers to HYDRA's attempts to understand the Diviner as "monkeys scratching at it," mocks Whitehall's translation of an ancient legend concerning it, and scoffs at referring to it as a weapon as "small-minded... for such a large-minded person." However, he gets less affable as his obsession to get Skye to love him grows.
  • Gideon Malick: He starts off as Faux, but after his Heel Realization, his politeness towards Coulson appears to be genuine.
  • Hive: Hive's tone of voice is always polite, if unsettling, especially when addressing its fellow Inhumans. Whether this affability is genuine or not is ambiguous, due in no small part to Hive's complex mental state, emotionless demeanor, and fondness for psychological torture.
  • The Big Bad of the Ghost Rider arc. After he's revealed to be a power-hungry maniac, he warns Coulson to get away as quickly as possible as he prepares to begin the process of acquiring his god-like power, and later, after he suffocates a complaining underling by creating diamonds inside of his lungs, he tells the others that they might want to cut him open to get the rest of them.
  • Radcliffe: He is entirely friendly to pretty much everyone (unless he thinks that they're working for HYDRA) and gets on very well with fellow scientists Fitz and Simmons, especially Fitz — as of season 4, the two are frequently sharing beers and discussing science. Really, he's mostly harmless. His only problem is his occasional lack of a moral compass, which doesn't really help matters when he takes one brief glimpse of the text of the evil Darkhold.
  • AIDA: As an LMD, she is always very respectful and polite, even when her homicidal tendencies are showing. She often even expresses regret for her actions.
  • Despite her clear psychosis, Snowflake's butterfly speeches seem genuinely intended to comfort her victims, and she takes a sincere liking to May and Deke. In comparison, her teammate Jaco is the most level-headed and polite man in Sarge's team. Not that it makes him any less dangerous.
  • General Hale. In her later appearances, her politeness towards SHIELD appears to be genuine, however she started off as Faux Affably Evil.
  • As a head of HYDRA, Wilfred Malick is not without a certain sense of courtesy and honor, as shown when he spares Deke's life in 1955 after the latter spared him in 1931, citing his gratitude for Deke's role in his rise to power, although he tells Deke not to expect the same courtesy a second time.
  • Sibyl: When Coulson meets her in "Adapt or Die", she answers all his questions sincerely and calmly.
• Age-Gap Romance: A mild example in the seventh season, between the 38ish year old Daniel Sousa and the mid-to-late-twenties Daisy Johnson.
• Age Lift:
  • The show's version of Donnie Gill is an 18-year old student rather than an adult criminal-for-hire.
  • Daisy Johnson's age is generally given as 19 in the comics (which is why it was so impressive that she became Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. after Steve Rogers stepped down), but with the revelation that Skye is Daisy Johnson, it becomes a case of this since, even though the actress is only a few years older than Daisy's comic book age, it's established that she's actually older than that, making it an example of this.
  • Lance Hunter: The comic version of Hunter is an older man who serves as the head of S.T.R.I.K.E.
  • Alphonso Mackenzie: His comics counterpart is a veteran S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Here, he looks younger.
  • Yo-Yo Rodriguez is in her late twenties here, while her comic self was only 15 when she was a member of the team; given Daisy's own Age Lift and the moral implications of S.H.I.E.L.D. working with a young teen, the lift makes sense.
  • Jeffrey Mace: The comics Mace was one of the replacement Captain Americas to replace Steve after he disappeared. This Mace is a present day character.
  • Hive: In the show, he is one of the first Inhumans that was created by the Kree thousands of years ago, whereas in the comics he was one of Hydra's most recent experiments.
  • Robbie Reyes was in his late teens in the comics. Here, he is depicted being in his late twenties to early thirties.
• Agony of the Feet: In "Beginning of the End", May nailguns The Mole's foot to the floor to end their fight. Several times.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Despite some characters feeling that the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron prove this trope true, it's generally averted. While it's likely that the Aida LMD who read the Darkhold might have been altered in some way, other LMD units simply behave exactly as they were programmed to.
• Almost Kiss: For a moment after Ward comes to Skye's rescue during "The Asset", she really looks like she wants to kiss him. Thus cranking up the Unresolved Sexual Tension.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us:
  • In "0-8-4", Reyes and her group briefly hijack the Bus and take the team hostage until they manage to retake the plane.
  • In "Yes Men", Lorelei uses the brainwashed Ward and Fitz to take control of the Bus, which lasts until Sif manages to capture her and nullify her powers.
  • In "Turn, Turn, Turn", as a result of events in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, HYDRA takes control of multiple S.H.I.E.L.D. facilities. Meanwhile, due to each side thinking the other is the enemy, Victoria Hand's forces assault and forcibly board the Bus.
  • Building on this in "Providence", HYDRA attacks the Fridge, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s combination maximum security prison/storage facility, releasing all the prisoners as a distraction, while they steal every piece of advanced tech they can grab.
  • In "Nothing Personal", the team is forced to abandon the Providence base when it's raided by Colonel Talbot's forces.
  • From the end of "The Only Light in the Darkness" to the end of "Beginning of the End", the team loses control of the Bus altogether due to Centipede hijacking it.
  • In "Face My Enemy", Agent 33 disguised as May sneaks on board the Bus and plants a device that will make all its systems overload and explode, with the team just barely stopping it in time.
  • "One Door Closes", "Real S.H.I.E.L.D." blows a hole in the wall of the Playground and takes over the base for the next few episodes until Coulson works out a truce.
  • In "S.O.S.", the Inhumans invade the Iliad to seize the Monolith and begin wiping out S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • In "Absolution", Hive's forces manage to turn a number of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents into Primitives using a bomb, leading to the former agents taking over the base while Hive takes a number of Primitives onto the Zephyr cause a high-altitude detonation capable of spreading the Absolution virus across the globe.
  • In "Broken Promises", Aida invades the Playground by taking over its computer network. Coulson and Fitz lampshade that it seems to happen at least once a year.
  • In "Self-Control", LMDs of Coulson, Mace, Mack and Fitz infiltrate the Playground and are able to convince the agents that Daisy and Simmons are the LMDs as they take over the base.
  • In "Collision Course", Sarge, Jaco and Pax take over the Zephyr until Sarge kills Pax, leading to Jaco turning on Sarge.
  • In "New Life", the Chronicoms invade and take over the Lighthouse.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • When Grant Ward's older brother Christian is introduced in season 2, he claims that all of Grant's stories are made-up and paints Grant as a psychopath. It's left open to interpretation which of them is lying, as Grant is saying much the same thing in this very scene to Skye. In "The Things We Bury", Christian is revealed to be the abusive bully Grant claimed him to be, though Grant himself is hardly well-adjusted.
  • Mack and Bobbi have some secret 'other thing' they're working on that they're keeping to themselves, despite Hunter's best attempts to figure it out. "One of Us" reveals that they're working for a secret, rival branch of S.H.I.E.L.D. that wants Fury's Toolkit for themselves.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • Following the events of "The Bridge", Mike Peterson loses his right leg. It is later replaced with high tech leg.
  • Mack lops Coulson's left hand off in "S.O.S." after Coulson grabs a lethal Terrigen crystal.
  • Elena loses both of her arms at Ruby's hands in "All the Comforts of Home."
• Ancestral Weapon: Gonzales has in his possession a pistol which used to belong to his grandfather and was used in combat in the Second World War. He uses it in a Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand ploy with Agent May, prior to offering her a seat on "real" S.H.I.E.L.D.'s board.
• Ancient Astronauts: As established in the rest of the MCU, Earth has been visited many times by aliens in ancient times, with two cases being relevant to the plot of the show:
  • The Asgardians, who were considered gods and left some of their technology lying around.
  • The Kree visited the planet and carried out experiments to genetically engineer humans into weapons for their war.
  • Enoch states that he's been observing humanity for 32,000 years.
• Ancient Conspiracy: HYDRA. Supposedly started in WWII under Red Skull, Gideon Malick claims in the third season that it goes back hundreds, maybe thousands of years, dedicated to rescuing Hive from the planet where he was exiled, worshiping him like a god. As a religious devotee, Malick may be stretching the truth or misinformed. Hive's true appearance does a good job of matching HYDRA's symbol, but the group sending people through the portal centuries ago used a different symbol, a ram's head. They might have merged, some members might have lost faith and branched out... who knows?
• And I Must Scream:
  • At the end of "The Asset", Dr. Franklin Hall is revealed to still be alive, trapped inside the gravitonium device.
  • "A Magical Place" reveals that Coulson was in this situation after his death: the experimental procedures Fury ordered to revive him caused him so much pain he begged to be allowed to die, and caused complications that were the reason for altering his memories.
• Anti-Villain:
  • The Hooded Hero in the first episode, Mike Peterson, was just a struggling single father who took part in an experiment after he got laid off of work following an injury. He later uses his abilities to help the team and seems to honestly want to be a hero, but Project Centipede instead transforms him into Deathlok and forces him to act as their muscle while using his son to keep him in line.
  • It's unclear what Raina's ultimate goal is, but it's clear she's a Wide-Eyed Idealist who just believes these are the necessary steps for the future. "What They Become" reveals that she's an Inhuman who wants to unlock her powers, though she immediately regrets the result.
• Apologetic Attacker:
  • Simmons when she shoots Agent Sitwell with the Night-Night gun.
  • May of all people gets to do this when she is about to knock out a bank manager, although she doesn't mange to sound very sincere.
• Appeal to Obscurity: Coulson uses this when Skye asks why they can't warn the Peruvian locals about the 0-8-4:
  Coulson: Remember the panic when that anti-matter meteorite splashed down just off the coast of Miami and nearly devoured the city?
  Skye: No.
  Coulson: Precisely. Because we kept it quiet and contained.
• Arbitrary Skepticism:
  • Psychics are routinely dismissed as a myth, on the basis that S.H.I.E.L.D has never encountered a genuine psychic (but have interviewed plenty of fakes). Skye has lampshaded this more than once.
    Skye: Not long ago, I would have dumped ESP in the aliens-and-portals-are-for-crazy-people pile, but now...
    Coulson: Psychic powers are a myth.
    Skye: So was Thor.
  • The Inhumans are guilty of this, too. Jiaying has her doubts that Raina is precognitive, despite living in an entire community of superhumans and being ageless herself. She justifies this by citing the fact that no Inhuman prior has demonstrated such a skill, only for the teleporter Gordon to counter that his gift is also unique.
  • Likewise, Lincoln is dismissive of the hypothesis that Lash could switch forms, solely on basis that "no Inhuman has ever done that before," seemingly forgetting that he knew at least two Inhumans with unique gifts a year ago.
  • Discussed after Jeffrey sees Robbie transform into Ghost Rider in the "The Good Samaritan"
  Jeffrey: Is he Inhuman?
  Coulson: Claims he made a Deal with the Devil.
  Fitz: Which is nonsense.
  Coulson: You know, the rationalist in me wants to agree, but... the skull on fire presents a pretty compelling argument for "Hail Satan."
  • Hale's group is guilty of this. They refuse to believe Fitz's theory that the missing SHIELD team could have been aducted by aliens, despite the fact an alien invasion literally happened only a few years prior. Hale refuses to believe that Team Coulson was in the future, despite the fact she regularly uses a device that transports her across the galaxy to talk to aliens. Ruby is more open-minded.
• Arc Symbol: These symbols◊, which Ward photographed for Centipede, reappear briefly in a montage of Coulson's surgery, are scrawled by Garrett on the glass door after he's injected with GH-325 and are etched by Coulson onto his wall in The Stinger of "Beginning of the End". In Season 2, it is revealed that the symbols are a top-down representation of an ancient Kree city on Earth, the purpose of which is to release Terrigen mists to activate latent Inhuman powers.
• Arc Welding:
  • In "The Bridge," it comes to light that Centipede was the mysterious party behind the Akela Amador case, and are continuing to use the now even more advanced eye implant technology to control their agents. Furthermore, the mystery of Coulson's resurrection is one that Centipede is also eager to solve....
  • The end of "Seeds" reveals that recurring villain Ian Quinn is also working for the Clairvoyant.
  • In "Turn, Turn, Turn," it becomes clear that everything related to Centipede and the Clairvoyant has been orchestrated by HYDRA. Or at the very least, the Clairvoyant acting in HYDRA's interests. This also ties the series more directly into the narrative of the films, specifically Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
  • In Season 2, Daniel Whitehall, the Big Bad of the first half of the season, is introduced as the new head of HYDRA for S.H.I.E.L.D. to cut off, but it's revealed later in the season that he was responsible for vivisecting Skye's mother, leading Skye's father to murder a village of people to fuel his wife's Healing Factor, the incident about Skye's "monster parents" that had been referred to late in the first season. Skye's mother goes on to become the Big Bad at the end of the season, though her reasons for doing so are directly caused by a subliminal hatred that resulted from Whitehall's vivisection, making the man responsible for most of the conflict throughout the season. By this token, he was also responsible for Skye being separated from her parents.
  • In Season 3, Malick reveals that HYDRA started out as a cult of worshippers of an ancient Inhuman who was banished to the planet Maveth through the Kree Monolith with the ultimate goal of returning the Inhuman to Earth, tying the war against HYDRA in with both the Inhuman Outbreak and the Kree Monolith that took Simmons to an alien planet at the end of the second season.
  • In Season 4, the Darkhold serves as the connecting thread between the three story arcs (Ghost Rider, LMD, and the Framework), and it's revealed in the finale that the Darkhold is made of the same interdimensional material as Aida's new body and the Ghost Rider himself. It's also implied that Aida's new body was created in the same manner as how Eli Morrow's powers functioned.
• Arc Words:
  • "Tahiti. It's a magical place." Coulson uses the exact same words every time he describes his unknown visit to Tahiti after the events of The Avengers, suggesting the phrase may be a cover for some more mysterious truth about Coulson's rebirth (Hill says "he must never know" what really happened). Coulson catches onto this in "The Hub" when he automatically responds when it's not appropriate, and realizes that the truth is being kept from him. Later, at the end of "The Well", Coulson has a dream where he is relaxing in Tahiti. When his masseuse utters the words he awakes in a panic. Eventually subverted: In "Yes Men", Coulson says, "It sucked."
    • In the Season 5 finale, knowing he's dying and won't have much time left, Coulson and May leave S.H.I.E.L.D. to spend their last few days together on Tahiti — the real one. After walking off the Zephyr for what is seemingly the last time, Phil tells May, "It is pretty magical."
  • Promotional materials for the show that have aired since episode 10 have used the term "It's all connected".
  • "Closure", spoken by Ward several times late in season 2.
  • The multi-season Inhumans storyline has variants of "what they become."
    • Raina breathlessly asks the Clairvoyant "What will I become?"
    • The episode where Raina finally gets into the temple with Daisy is titled "What They Become," and Raina puts her spin on the line near the end.
      Raina: Now we finally get to find out what we become!
    • In the episode immediately after, when Raina gets a chance to see her reflection.
      Raina: What have I become!?
    • When some of the original Kree of the Inhumans experiments are summoned back to Earth, right before one kills Alisha's duplicate.
      Alisha: You should be proud of what we've become.
  • "Wake up" during the Framework storyline.
  • "A life spent, a life earned," is said quite a few times at various points in the Lighthouse during season 5, as is "vacancy."
  • The phrase "I worked myself to the bone" is notably spoken by different villains in both Seasons 4 and 5.
  • The title "Destroyer of Worlds" is passed around in reference to several main characters throughout Season 5, first being given to Daisy and then to Ruby before finally settling on the real culprit, Talbot.
  • "As I have always been" is a phrase that is used often by Enoch and occasionally other Chronicoms as well.
• Argentina Is Nazi-Land: The 0-8-4 turns out to be a piece of technology made by HYDRA agents who fled to Peru after World War II.
• Artifact Title: Defied; Phil Coulson and his team are working to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. after its destruction in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • Cal's formula includes several drugs, steroids as well as such oddities as gorilla testosterone and peppermint
  • HYDRA, now in control, persecutes Inhumans, uses the school system to brainwash all of the students, arrests anyone who speaks out against their organization, and strips the Cubs of their 2016 World Series win.
  • After the agents bring up a series of Continuity Nods to worse situations they were in during the past few seasons (jumping out of a plane, trapped at the bottom of the ocean, fighting Calvin Zabo, fighting Aida, stuck in a dystopian future, being trapped in the Framework), May suggests another worse situation... dancing.
• Artifact of Doom:
  • Season 2 has the Obelisk, a containment for Terrigen crystals. If touched by a non-potential Inhuman, it will petrify any non-Inhuman holder that picks it up them, with the only way to stop the process by cutting off the body part that touched before it spreads.
  • Season 2: Also introduces the Monolith. Jiaying and Gordon were shown to be quite concerned that it was in SHIELD's possession. It is revealed to actually be a portal to another world, which contained an ancient Inhuman that sought to return after being banished for thousands of years.
    • Three Monoliths appear in Season 5 and 6, where they are used by Izel to open a portal to the Fear Dimension.
  • The Darkhold: Its seemingly infinite knowledge tends to drive people to villainy. Everything created through the Darkhold also turns out to cause some sort of unintended disaster, resulting in whoever uses it meeting an unfortunate fate: The Bauers and their science team end up as demonic, ethereal ghosts for their attempt at synthesizing matter, Eli Morrow ends up getting Dragged Off to Hell and nearly destroys half of Los Angeles, the LMDs become destructive, manipulative kill machines that feel no remorse (except for May's, who pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to blow the S.H.I.E.L.D. base to bits), the Framework creates an alternate universe in a Bad Present where HYDRA reigns supreme, and Ivanov and AIDA meet painful ends without accomplishing their goals. Notably, Radcliffe (the only user of the Darkhold who realized he had been corrupted), is the only one who gets to die peacefully, being deleted painlessly from the Framework while watching a beautiful sunset.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • After escaping from a room underwater, Agents Fitz and Simmons are put in decompression chambers to protect them from the bends. But the sequence made clear that the room they were in was at a much lower pressure than the water outside (hence why weakening the window let the water blow it in). As they weren't taking any significant number of breathes while under increased pressure, they weren't absorbing extra gas into their blood stream, and were not under any threat of developing the bends.
• Artistic Licence – Geography:
  • Episode 3 is set partly in Malta; several characters mention the "stunning beaches", and Coulson and Ward are later shown mooring a boat on a large, deserted sandy beach. In reality, Malta's beaches are almost all rocky and far from conventionally stunning, and the few that are sandy are very small, set at the back of busy bays, and permanently crowded with tourists.
  • There is no University of Ohio. There's an Ohio University, but Cleveland is much more recognizable than Athens, Ohio. Granted, the Cleveland scenes in the show were filmed in LA.
  • 'Milton Keynes Prison, United Kingdom' (actually called HMP Woodhill) looks nothing like its show incarnation, being made of the same building materials as most of the rest of Milton Keynes; namely, red brick and terracotta tiles.
  • Trip refers to Casablanca as the "Middle East" in "Making Friends And Influencing People". Casablanca is in north Africa, and is further west than Madrid.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Played straight by Skye, who apparently has trouble telling the safety release from the magazine release. Studiously averted by Coulson, who even when he is forced to sweep a team member with his muzzle, holds it high or low to keep them safe.
• Artistic License – History:
  • The archaeologist in episode 2 says the temple is "at least 500 years old" and "filled with pre-Inca artifacts". 500 years old send us back to the 16th century, which is the fall of the Inca empire at the hands of the Spanish. So any Inca temple is automatically "at least 500 years old", there is no big deal about that, and only 500 years old would actually be unusually recent for an Inca temple. For the same reasons, there is no reason such a temple would be filled with pre-inca artifacts, except if the Inca or somebody else somehow used it to store pre-Inca artifacts they had scavenged. So although nothing in those two statement is technically impossible, it is just pseudo-historic rubbish and in the mouth of a senior archaeologist it sounds completely ridiculous.
  • Played for laughs in "Yes Men". A Hell's Angels biker believes that Ben Franklin was president and "ruled the entire country".
  • Hive is reimagined as an Inhuman created by the Kree to control their slave-army of Inhumans. They say it was created tens of thousands of years ago... and given the Latin name "Alveus" ("Hive"). Latin wasn't spoken tens of thousands of years ago.
• Artistic License – Linguistics: As weird as it may appear, the official language of Belarus is... Russian. That makes signs in "Eye Spy" look out of place — yes, they are written in mostly correct Belarussian language, which is used mostly by Belarussian dissidents, not the government.
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • Well into the range of character error, Simmons claims "radiocarbon 14 dates some of these trees at 9000 years old." There's a perfectly good way to determine how old a tree is, but carbon dating isn't it. Carbon dating only works if you're looking for the answer to "How long ago did that die?" But being a biochemist, she definitely should know better. In addition, the other proposed method, dendrochronology, is equally inadequate for the situation. On a freshly cut tree, you can just count the rings, simple as that.
  • In the third season, Coulson is repeatedly shown to have Super-Strength with his robotic hand. While the grip of his hand might be unnaturally strong, his lifting strength would be based on his arm, which isn't robotic.
• Artistic License – Religion: Eliot Randolf claimed that he was canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. In actual sense, to be canonized, one must be seen dead and then a long series of investigation is then done in order for him to be acknowledged if he is worthy or not. A detailed explanation can be seen here.
• Ascended Extra: Both Piper and Davis started as some of the dozens upon dozens of background S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, who were given names and some lines and joined the main cast on the missions only to be immediately killed a few episodes after their introduction. Piper and Davis however stuck through multiple seasons each and by Season 6 became prominent players in one of that season's storylines, receiving more character focus and even a few scenes dedicated solely to themselves.
• Ascended Meme: The Twitter hashtag #CoulsonLives was initially used by fans to beg Marvel to bring back their favorite character. It was later featured by Marvel in a trailer with a promise that tweeting it more would unlock a special extended trailer.
• Ashes to Crashes: Invoked as a distraction and a tracking mechanism when Simmons and Coulson are undercover.
• The Atoner:
  • Mike is this in "The Bridge" for his actions in the pilot. In "Beginning of the End", after being freed from Garrett's control, he becomes this for everything HYDRA made him do.
  • Subverted with Ward in Season 2 as he thinks he's on the way to becoming this, oblivious to the fact no one on the team is going to forgive him for his actions.
  • Piper becomes this after "All the Comforts of Home" when she inadvertently brings the agents into a death trap resulting in Yo-Yo losing her arms after being tricked by Hale.

B

• Back from the Dead:
  • Coulson, obviously. Though he was supposedly killed by Loki in The Avengers, he claims that it was only for 40 seconds (Hill says he likes to inflate the number). Over the course of the first season, it's revealed that it's rather more complicated than that. He was dead for days, and a serum derived from a deceased Kree was used to bring him back. On top of that, he was originally in charge of the project, and tested it on numerous other agents, only to shelve it when the psychological side effects drove them all mad.
  • Coulson actually does die for a short period of time multiple times during the second half of season 5, requiring a defibrillator twice. This is a consequence of a deal with Ghost Rider's spirit of vengeance that leaves him Killed Off for Real at the end of the season.
  • As of "Uprising", May qualifies, after Simmons and Radcliffe induce minimum brain activity before reviving her to "reboot" her brain to stop a certain hyperactivity caused by a ghost. Coulson says that they should start a club.
  • In "The Good Samaritan", Robbie explains that he died just before he became the Ghost Rider in a shootout, and the Ghost Rider inhabiting his body brought him back to life.
  • Fitz and Enoch both die during the course of Season 5, but due to the agents' changing time, temporal duplicates of the two are out in space that come into play during Season 6 and onwards.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Coulson and Reyes fighting their way from the temple to the plane.
• Badass Boast:
  • Two back-to-back from different characters in "Face My Enemy":
    Agent 33: I won't go down easy.
    Agent May: That makes two of us.
  • And from "S.O.S.":
    Mack: It's Gordon, right?
    Gordon: And you are...?
    Mack: I'm the guy who kills Gordon.
• Badass Bookworm:
  • Both Fitz and Simmons eventually grow into this in the second season, with Simmons becoming a Guile Hero who takes down foes while pretending to be a naive ditz, and Fitz charges into battles without hesitation.
  • Fitz gets bonus points for taking out a dangerous Inhuman enemy with a cloaked handgun.
• Badass Bureaucrat: Jeffrey Mace is quite adept when it comes to dealing with the officials and paperwork that is part of S.H.I.E.L.D. He also happens to be super strong and super tough. Of course, that's all just for show, as his super strength and toughness are derived from a serum based off of Cal's serum. Without said serum, Mace is essentially ineffective.
• Badass Family: The Koenig Siblings are all S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (except for Thurston) and presumably pretty high up if Fury trusts them with secret bases.
• Badass in a Nice Suit:
  • Coulson fits this to perfection. He even goes into combat wearing his suit (and he has a closet full of identical suits on the Bus).
  • Ward usually averts this trope, but the few times he dresses up, he looks every bit as good as Coulson.
• Badass Normal:
  • Much of S.H.I.E.L.D., especially Ward, Melinda May, and to a lesser extent Coulson. Although, Coulson arguably no longer qualifies after getting a prosthetic hand after Season 2 that gradually incorporates more gadgets as time goes on. The first episode has them bring down a Super-Soldier and later episodes involve a guy with fire powers and a cyborg.
  • Skye has become one as of Season 2 after getting a crash course from May in the hiatus between seasons before becoming an Empowered Badass Normal in the midseason finale of the same season.
  • Bobbi is introduced in the fifth episode of Season 2, who immediately establishes herself as one. In Season 3, she proves herself able to beat May before she was medically considered to be back at full capacity.
  • Ruby: Has no powers, but is skilled enough to cut off Elena's arms while she is moving at Super Speed and is even able to briefly go to-to-toe with Daisy.
• Bad Boss:
  • Centipede, as an organization, is not very good to its own people — they usually manage to sacrifice one an episode as soon as they're no longer immediately useful or have failed in some manner. This essentially turns everyone who works for Centipede into a Mauve Shirt: even Raina, the villain we've come to know most, tells the heroes in no uncertain terms that her superiors don't give a crap about her well being and would gladly let her die rather than expend any effort saving her.
  • The Clairvoyant: he kills Edison Po when the latter is unable or his failure in retrieving Coulson's secrets. He was also not above letting Deathlok use Ward's life as a leverage to force Skye to cooperate with unlocking her hard drive.
  • Cal: He treats Raina like dirt, even though she helped him reunite him with Skye. He then throws her to the curb after he's done with her.
  • Gideon Malick: He subjects his own people, both HYDRA and unwitting dupes, to the Terrigen fish oil pills without them knowing. If they were Inhuman (and not HYDRA to begin with) he has them silently abducted and locked away to be used as soldier-slaves later.
  • Hive tries to completely drain Daisy of blood in an attempt to recreate the gene-altering experiment that created him, when Daisy is going through with because she is completely submissive due to Hive's sway. He also seems to care little for the fact that the Primitives seem mostly incapable of thought or any type of free will.
  • Kasius unhesitantly executes a Kree doctor simply because he informs Kasius that Sinara's death is irreversible. Immediately after, he force-feeds Tye some Odium, which is lethal.
  • General Hale: She breaks multiple laws regarding human rights, and kills two subordinates for failing her. Oh, and she has her teenage daughter working as a black ops assassin.
  • Sarge kills Pax to "avoid distractions" and leaves Snowflake behind to be vaporized in a nuclear explosion because he didn't want to bother fighting Daisy and May. Jaco turns on him for this reason.
  • Wilfred Malick shot one of his own minions for kidnapping the wrong target.
  • Nathaniel Malick: After chastising an underling for calling him "sir", lecturing him on how such power structures will have no place in his new world order, he later killed the same underling on the spot when he called him "sir" again, visibly terrifying his other underlings and showing that he doesn't even understand the power structure he's building around himself. He does not even consider the deformities that could come with transfusing Inhuman powers into his underlings, and even when it is brought up, he refuses to let said underling back out of the process. In the penultimate episode, he was content with leaving Garrett to die in the Lighthouse explosions, as it would go against his plan, and lashing out at Kora for saying that she didn't think Daisy was as bad as he claimed.
• Bad Powers, Bad People:
  • Jiaying has seemingly good powers, at the same time as her darker motives are revealed, the source of her powers is also revealed to be achieved by sucking the life out of other humans.
  • Hive's powers include possession of humans, brainwashing inhumans, nigh-invulnerability, and a Healing Factor fueled by "feeding" on healthy humans. It's explained that Hive is composed of innumerable microscopic parasites which kill humans and induce the pleasure centers of the brain in Inhumans.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The ending of "The End of the Beginning" makes it appear that Victoria Hand is the Clairvoyant and is planning on killing Coulson and his team for finding out. The next episode, "Turn, Turn, Turn", reveals that she isn't the Clairvoyant or even a member of HYDRA, but she thinks he's HYDRA.
  • In "What If", Daisy wakes up in the Framework world where she's in a relationship with Ward, who apparently an openly loyal HYDRA agent. Turns out Ward is still a traitor...it's just that in this reality, he's [a traitor to HYDRA.
  • The denouement of "The End" has a scene of the crew gathering together for a solemn memorial ceremony, with Leopold notably absent. Coulson gets choked up while talking about how he "never got to say goodbye", and we realize the memorial is actually for himself, and not Fitz, whose past self is still out in space somewhere with Enoch.
  • In "The New Deal" the team believe that the Chronicoms are going to try to assassinate FDR, thus preventing the SSR forming, which would lead to SHIELD's creation. This is revealed to be false, as they were actually targeting Koenig's employee Freddie, who turns out to be the father of Gideon Malick. Killing him would prevent him from delivering the final ingredient that would transform Johann Schmidt into the Red Skull, thus preventing the modern Hydra from forming, which would leave no reason for FDR to form SSR.
• Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: Skye Later going by Daisy/Quake is introduced as an intimidating hacker in her Hacker Cave, who passionately boasts about how she can't be stopped! Then the rest of the cast break into the beat up van she's broadcasting from, and she's quickly re-characterised as the New Meat Audience Surrogate.
• Ban on A.I.: In season 4, it's revealed that in the aftermath of the events from Avengers: Age of Ultron, Artificial Intelligence has been declared illegal. The same season resolves around Radcliffe and his creation Aida, who naturally rebels against her creator, again proving why this law exists.
• Batman Gambit:
  • In "The Hub", Victoria Hand intentionally make no extraction plan for Ward and Fitz's mission to disable a terrorist superweapon, knowing full well that upon discovering this, the rest of Coulson's team will go in and save them themselves. Hand even makes sure that everything happened according to plan before fully attending to their assault on the terrorist base. The baffling part is why she kept it a secret at all, when she could have just told Coulson and his team they needed to be the ones to perform the extraction because she didn't have the manpower available, instead she invoked this trope and relied on someone on their team to defy her authority and successfully breach SHIELD's security to uncovered the truth.
  • May pulls one on everybody in "The Magical Place". She encourages Hand in kicking Skye off the plane, knowing that Hand's by-the-book command style would prevent Skye from being effective in any case. May also knows that the rest of the team will go behind her back to assist Skye, and that Skye herself will refuse to abandon the mission. Skye goes off the grid and tracks down Coulson's location, just as May expected her to do.
  • In "Providence", The Mole casually explains everything they did in order to get each member of Coulson's team to trust them.
• Battle Discretion Shot: We see the beginning of the fight between Ward and a large enemy group in "The Well", but then the scene becomes a flashback from his childhood; when the flashback ends, Ward is standing surrounded by fallen foes.
• Beard of Evil:
  • Soon after Ward is revealed to be a HYDRA agent, he decides to start letting his beard grow out. However, he doesn't get a real one until season 2.
• Beard of Sorrow:
  • The reason Ward has such a full beard in season 2. Tortured by grief and regret, Ward attempted suicide at least three times while incarcerated, and isn't allowed near anything even remotely sharp. Fitz has developed quite bit of stubble himself, possibly due to the brain damage he suffered causing him to forget things like shaving.
  • Talbot grows one after spending six months being tortured by General Hale for information.
  • Mack gets one when he goes through a Heroic BSoD in the Season 7.
• Beat Them at Their Own Element: J. T. James is a recurring villain with fire powers. In Season Four, he gets into a fight against Ghost Rider, who easily manages to overpower him thanks to his much stronger Hellfire powers.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • The reason Skye has a fixation on SHIELD and their secrets? They are linked to a unredacted file concerning her parents. Coulson knowing that SHIELD has dealt with some pretty bad people, warns Skye if they find the file, she might not like what she finds, to which Skye says nothing in the file could be worse than things that she has imagined. In season 2, both of her parents appear, her first impression of her father is seeing two dead men in his office, who were violently killed and her mother is even more twisted than he is.
  • Raina: She exposed herself to the Terrigen Mists, believing she had a great power hidden within her. She was right, but she paid for it dearly in her physical transformation.
  • Gideon Malick and his ancestors have dedicated their lives to bringing Hive back to the Earth, not even considering the fact that Hive's goals might not be what they believe it to be. This ends up leading to his own downfall.
  • James: He wanted Terrigenesis, he got it. Come Season 4, he hates it after his experience with Hive.
  • The Framework was designed to remove a person's greatest regret in life, and then alter history accordingly. This leads to everything in the Framework world going straight to Hell.
    • Coulson: His biggest regret was that joining S.H.I.E.L.D. prevented him from having an ordinary life. In the Framework, he turned down Nick Fury's offer and is now a high school teacher who doesn't even care that HYDRA is taking one of his students. He even tells the kid not to forget his bag, since he's not coming back.
    • May: Her biggest regret was killing Katya in Bahrain. In the Framework, she didn't kill her. As a result, Katya was sent to the US where she caused an incident that killed over 100 people, mostly students. This allowed HYDRA to easily take over by stoking people's Fantastic Racism against Inhumans and presenting themselves as the best solution to the problem. Meanwhile, May now has an even bigger regret in not killing Katya since she could have prevented those 100 deaths by doing so and is now an Inhuman-hunting Knight Templar loyally serving HYDRA.
    • Fitz: His greatest regret was having a lousy relationship with his father, though he acknowledges that this is a good thing since his father was a gigantic dick. In the Framework, he was raised solely by his father, and grew up to be just as big of a dick. He is now the Number Two in HYDRA, and a sadistic Mad Scientist who performs cruel experiments on Inhumans.
    • Mace: The only aversion to the trope whose regret was truly corrected. His greatest regret was that he was never the hero that he pretended to be. In the Framework, he leads La Résistance against HYDRA, is a real Inhuman, and really does save people (albeit at the cost of his own life).
  • Upon becoming human, Aida is unable to process human emotions properly, as she does not have the emotional maturity to deal with emotional pain, like heartbreak. The only thing that seems to give her even momentary comfort is making others feel that pain if she must.
  • When Ruby achieves her life's purpose and absorbs Gravitonium, she can neither control the power merely 8% of the element gives her, nor cope with having Hall and Quinn's duelling consciousnesses in her head. The result causes her to unintentionally kill Werner when her powers causes his head to cave on itself, and leaves her vulnerable enough for Yo-Yo to kill her.
  • Ian Quinn sought out Gravitonium for his own intentions. At the end of Season 1, he is given his Gravitonium back and escapes without the heroes being able to find him. Season 5 reveals that the Gravitonium consumed his body, transferring his couciousness into the substance, where he would be trapped in a never ending argument with the couciousness of Franklin Hall, who had been absorbed into the Gravitonium earlier in the series.
  • Nathaniel says that none of Hydra's main branches interested him, not sacrificing members for a squid alien or taking over the world, but seeing Daisy's powers made him research Inhumans, eventually wanting to gain powers of his own. He decides to take one of the most dangerous powers in existence, and has no idea how to control them, much as Daisy did when they first manifested. This culminates in him demolishing his hideout, apparently killing himself in the process (after he broke almost every bone in his body from the constant vibrations).
• Becoming the Mask: The Mole shows signs of this, something both The Clairvoyant and Raina comment on. In "Ragtag", he admits he cares about the team, but isn't willing to make a Heel–Face Turn for them.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Heavily implied to be some between Ward and Skye when he admits he finds Skye attractive after getting jammed with truth serum. She describes him as "firm" and starts going out of her way to show cleavage after he admits he finds her beautiful. A couple episodes later, Ward insists that S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't have truth serum and he was only pretending to be under the influence. The training scenes in "The Asset" arguably turn it into Unresolved Sexual Tension.
• The Bermuda Triangle: When finding out the Kree city is located in Puerto Rico, Triplett wonders if that is in the Bermuda Triangle and it would explain a lot of things. Turns out S.H.I.E.L.D. already took care of the Bermuda mystery in the 80s.
• Beware the Nice Ones
  • Good-natured hacker Skye. By the end of Season 2 not only does she gain arguably the most dangerous set of superpowers SHIELD has so far encountered — enough to concern Asgardians and Kree — but she also becomes a walking embodiment of It Gets Easier as she cold-bloodedly kills a dozen HYDRA mooks. Indeed, as of the end of Season 2, she has one of the largest confirmed on-screen body counts of any character in the series, rivaling even May.
    • As of Season 5, she is suspected of having destroyed Earth itself with her powers.
  • Meek and mild Simmons, who crosses the line when she attempts to murder Ward after spending most of the season considering ways to kill inhumans.
  • Bobbi and Lance seem to be good-natured people. Unless you're HYDRA. Then you're dead. And they'll do so without so much as losing a beat in an argument with each other.
• Big Bad: The show typically uses a big bad shuffle throughout the season, often correlating with a particular Myth Arc at the time, and every season but the first has had more than one singular big bad. However, the antagonist organization for most of the show is HYDRA, and the only season where HYDRA isn't directly related to the Big Bad of the season or responsible for the conflict is Season 6.
• The Big Bad Shuffle: The show loves to play with this. Sometimes it throws a Big Bad Ensemble at us, sometimes it moves from A to B to C, sometimes it's one Big Bad the whole time but we're confused about who it is...
  • Season 1: The Clairvoyant is the head of the Centipede organization. It's revealed that the Clairvoyant is actually a mole within S.H.I.E.L.D. with a high-level security clearance, rather than being a psychic. He's finally revealed to be Agent John Garrett, and Centipede is a faction of HYDRA.
  • Season 2 uses a Big Bad Ensemble of rotating Arc Villains. The first half of Season 2 starts with Daniel Whitehall, a HYDRA leader who wants to weaponize the Obelisk and destroy S.H.I.E.L.D. The second half of season 2 not only replaces Whitehall with Dr. List as the major HYDRA threat, it introduces Robert Gonzales as the leader of a second branch of S.H.I.E.L.D. The other S.H.I.E.L.D. is trying to take control away from Coulson, who they distrust for his secretive leadership and exposure to alien influence. Throughout all this, Grant Ward and Cal aka "the Doctor" complicate the situation as Wild Cards. The final 3 episodes turn Jiaying, the leader of the Inhumans in Afterlife, into one by starting a war with Coulson's and Gonzales's unified S.H.I.E.L.D. after killing Gonzales and pulling a Wounded Gazelle Gambit.
  • Season 3's initial Big Bad Ensemble is Lash, Grant Ward, and Rosalind Price. It eventually becomes Gideon Malick and Ward as a Big Bad Duumvirate of HYDRA leaders aiming to bring the mysterious Inhuman known as "It" back to earth. Following Ward's death, "It" (later revealed to be the MCU version of "Hive"), who is the inspiration for the founding of HYDRA, possesses his corpse and returns to Earth, thus properly stepping into the Big Bad role for the rest of the season ^*Rosalind is well-intentioned but manipulated by Malick while Lash is just a killer, not a mastermind.
  • Season 4 once again uses the Big Bad Ensemble Arc Villain approach.
    • The Ghost Rider pod appears to have Dr. Lucy Bauer as its primary antagonist, but she gets killed off and Eli Morrow is revealed to have orchestrated most of the arc's events in order to get the Darkhold and gain godhood.
    • Meanwhile, the Watchdogs' new mysterious benefactor — The Superior — has become the leader of the organization, and Aida has become The Dragon to her creator Dr. Holden Radcliffe for the LMD pod. The Watchdogs and Radcliffe form a Big Bad Duumvirate, but Aida kills Radcliffe and makes the Superior her personal cybernetic assistant at the end of the arc.
    • Aida naturally becomes the Big Bad of the Agents of HYDRA pod through her Madame Hydra persona, leading the Framework version of HYDRA alongside her Brainwashed and Crazy Dragon Fitz before directly becoming the Big Bad in the real world for the final two episodes.
  • Season 5 starts with Kasius as the Arc Villain controlling the remnants of the human race in the Bad Future (His brother Faulnak tries to make a name for himself too, but ultimately doesn't get very far). After returning to the present, there is a Big Bad Shuffle between General Hale (one of the last remaining heads of HYDRA), her daughter Ruby (who betrays her mother and attempts to turn herself into the “Destroyer of Worlds”), the Confederacy (an alien empire Hale worked for and was motivated to scare off) represented mainly by Qovas, and then finally Talbot (absorbs Gravitonium in an attempt to stop the Confederacy, but goes insane, becomes Graviton, and almost destroys the world, actually succeeding in doing so in the aforementioned Bad Future). Taryan serves as a Greater-Scope Villain for the season, as Kasius' father and one of the leaders of the Confederacy.
  • Season 6 starts out with Sarge as the Big Bad for the agents on Earth before devolving into the lesser of two evils in the Evil Versus Evil conflict with Izel, eventually teaming up with the agents to stop Izel. Atarah and the Chronicoms become the antagonist of the "Search for Fitz" arc and then remain a background presence for the rest of the season before Atarah is murdered and Malachi and the rest return in full force in the finale. Sarge ultimately ends up teaming up with Izel in the finale as well after he is revealed to be a malevolent entity named Pachakutiq in a copy of Coulson's body, ultimately making the antagonist of the season a Big Bad Ensemble with the Chronicoms, first led by Atarah and later by Malachi, on one side and the Big Bad Duumvirate of Sarge and Izel on the other, though Sarge and Izel are the source of most of the conflict during the season while the Chronicoms are set up to take center stage for Season 7.
  • Season 7 starts off with the Chronicom Luke leading an elite team of Chronicoms to eliminate S.H.I.E.L.D. in the past, but he is just The Heavy for the Chronicom Predictor, Sibyl (Malachi, when he shows up in the finale, has been Demoted to Dragon). Luke eventually teams up with Wilfred Malick, Gideon Malick's father and predecessor within HYDRA, but both are quickly killed soon after. Sibyl proceeds to take direct action and forms a Big Bad Duumvirate with with Gideon's brother Nathaniel Malick, who, while a more active threat than Sibyl and a much more personal enemy, as well as the Final Boss, is ultimately nothing more than a pawn for the Chronicoms so deluded he somehow believes they work for him.
• Big Bad Friend:
  • The Clairvoyant's identity, as revealed in "Turn, Turn, Turn": The Clairvoyant turns out to be Agent John Garrett, Coulson's best friend, who's also an agent of HYDRA. Worse, Ward is working for him.
  • In season 3, Lash is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s on-call therapist Andrew Garner.
  • Radcliffe and AIDA become this in the second half of Season 4 after being corrupted by the Darkhold.
  • Talbot upon absorbing Gravitonium and developing a God-complex, becomes the final Big Bad of Season 5.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Ian Quinn believes this of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Skye does too (initially) but later says they're the "Nice Big Brother". In the following episode Coulson states that social media makes his job easier every year. "People surveil themselves."
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • The Team going to extract Ward and Fitz in "The Hub." The rescue scene itself is reminiscent of the Trope Namer moment from ''Firefly''.
  • "The Magical Place" has the rest of the team coming out of nowhere to save Skye from a Centipede super-soldier, then the whole team, all in black, looking badass and coming to Coulson's rescue.
  • Nick Fury gets two of these in "Beginning of the End", first by rescuing Fitz-Simmons, then joining Coulson for the confrontation with The Clairvoyant.
  • Ghost Rider gets one of these when he saved Daisy and Simmons from James. He also has an even bigger one in the season finale when he returns from hell and proceeds to fight Aida and her LMDs, causing the former to escape in terror and the latter to be destroyed. He wasn't actually saving anyone at that point, but his return provided Coulson's team with the only way they could defeat Aida.
• The Big Damn Kiss:
  • Fitz and Simmons finally kiss after three seasons of UST, after Simmons yells at him for being too nice about the Will situation, and he admits he is jealous.
  • Mack and Yo-Yo finally kiss in "The Laws of Inferno Dynamics" where Mack finally admits that he has real feelings for Yo-Yo.
    • They have another one in Mack and Elena share one in "Collison Course Part 2", as they begin to take the first step towards reconciling their relationships following the events of Season 5.
  • "The Force of Gravity" between Coulson and May, in the middle of a fight.
  • In "As I Have Always Been", Daisy kisses Sousa one loop after he admits that he's looking out for her because he likes people like her who never give up and wants to be there for her. Since things aren't sorted out in that loop, Sousa has no memory of it by the end.
• The Big Guy:
  • Ward was trained to be "the whole solution" in a combat situation, be it eliminating hostiles or disarming bombs. He is Team Coulson's heavy hitter. Triplett also serves in this capacity after Ward is outed as a mole.
  • In Season 6, Jaco is in this chair for Sarge's team, though he's a bit of a Gentle Giant for the role.
• Big "NO!":
  • In the season 1 finale, Simmons does one just before Fitz blows the window out. A variation on the usual trope as the "big no" happens before someone dies (or is expected to).
  • In the season 2 mid-season finale, Triplett does one when he sees Skye turned to stone by the Diviner in the Kree City and thinks she's died. He doesn't know, however that she's actually undergoing Terragenesis.
  • Daisy in "Ascension" when Lincoln launches the Quinjet into the atmosphere with him and Hive inside, thus sacrificing himself to save her.
  • In Season 4, Jemma lets out a heart wrenching one after Fitz shoots Agnes.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Ward family. Grant and his brother, Christian, were physically abused by their mom, while their dad turned a blind eye to it. Her third son, Thomas, was treated well because she liked him. Christian wanted to hurt him to get back at his mom, but he didn't have the stomach for it, so he made Grant do it for him. Eventually Grant snapped and tried to burn down the family home with his brother inside (driving 1000 miles back from the military school he was at) and nearly got tried as an adult, until Garrett took him under his wing and corrupted him. Christian went on to be a respected senator. Grant kills all three of them in Season 2, though Thomas goes unmentioned. Season 3 finally brings in Thomas, who actually grew up to be a well-adjusted adult and helps S.H.I.E.L.D. lure Grant into a trap.
• Birds of a Feather:
  • Coulson and Skye, which is part of why he invites her onto Team Coulson and a part of why she accepts.
  • Fitz and Simmons.
  • Daisy and Robbie throughout the Ghost Rider arc. Mack shows some signs of this with Robbie as well after the two become Fire-Forged Friends as a result of fighting alongside one another and Mack being posessed by the Ghost Rider.
  • Mack and Yo-Yo are both Genre Savvy agents who frequently lampshade the weird situations the agents find themselves in. In the first episode of the LMD arc, they both talk about the 'robot apocalypse' and state their intentions to force Radcliffe to watch the entire Terminator franchise. Yo-Yo quizzes Mack at the end of the episode about obscure robot apocalypse movies, to his bemusement.
    Mack: Even Salvation?
    Yo-Yo: [completely serious] He brought this on himself.
    • Flint gets in on this with the two during the first half of Season 5 and when he is brought back to the present by the Monoliths at the end of Season 6.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Debbie, the doctor dealing with Centipede, initially playing the part of a victim.
  • Raina, the girl in the flower dress, who pretends to help the people she screws over when it comes to completing her mission.
  • Agent Garrett comes off as a genuinely nice and charming guy... then he turns out to be the Clairvoyant.
  • Ward, who in the same episode is revealed to be The Mole.
  • From Season 2, Jiaying, whose supportive demeanor hides a bloodthirsty Determinator with a touch of Fantastic Racism.
• Bittersweet Ending: Featured in many of the first-season episodes, particular as the story arc gets more serious and the Big Bad gets more dangerous. See the individual episode recaps for details.
• Bizarre Alien Biology:
  • The Chitauri virus that was brought to Earth after the Battle of New York transfers through electrostatic shock, rather than touch, air, or fluid exchange like terrestrial viruses.
  • Discussed when Simmons doesn't know how to perform first aid on an Asgardian.
  • In "T.A.H.I.T.I.", the GH serum, which was used to revive Coulson and Skye, is derived from the corpse of a long-dead Kree.
  • In "Aftershocks," when analyzing Raina's new Inhuman DNA, Simmons makes note of a substantial amount of extra macromolecules within it.
  • Hive, one of the original Inhumans, has a humanoid form and appears human from the outside, but internally it is comprised of many tightly-wound tentacles, which apparently replace the internal biology and physiology of whatever host he is using at the time. He is also Nigh-Invulnerable and has a Healing Factor to go with this.
  • Discussed in "Past Life," when Kasius orders a doctor to resurrect Sinara, who establishes that Kree biology is only able to resurrect humans because human biology is simple compared to Kree biology and can't be used to resurrect the Kree themselves (or presumably any other aliens).
  • In Season 6, Sarge's DNA is shown to be a perfect match for Coulson's aside from a variety of extra macromolecules and otherwise alien components.
  • It's not even known what he (or the rest of Sarge's men) really are, but Jaco's biology seems to differ slightly from the others. He's seen huffing cleaning fluid while Sarge remarks he hasn't breathed his own atmosphere in ages. It would seem wherever Jaco is from, the atmosphere is thick with ammonia - quite toxic to regular humans.
• Black-and-Gray Morality:
  • Season 2 can be like this, particularly in the second half. There are many different factions running around, and most of them are neither fully good nor fully evil, including Team Coulson. Individual characters may vary widely across the hero/villain spectrum within the span of only a few episodes. No faction is "purely good", and the only purely evil faction is HYDRA.
  • Season 5 leans into this again, with the main cast split over how far they should be willing to go to break the time loop and save the Earth, with people like Daisy, Yo-Yo and Fitz suggesting taking more drastic measures and making substantial sacrifices to do so, making them the Grey to the Black that is Hale, the Confederacy, and ultimately Talbot.
  • Season 6's main conflict is something of an Evil Versus Evil conflict with Sarge playing the Grey to Izel's Black, since Sarge is by no means a hero but Izel is indisputedly evil, destroying planets with the Shrike hordes and with the ultimate goal of finding the Monoliths and allowing the other incorporeal beings from her home dimension to be unleashed into the universe. Sarge ultimately teams up with her anyway, making the two into a proper Big Bad Duumvirate for the finale.
• Black-Tie Infiltration:
  • The third episode has Skye infiltrating a party to which she managed to wrangle her own invitation (with the intention of dropping a bug that'll disarm the security system momentarily and allow some more combat orientated agents in).
  • In "Face My Enemy", Coulson and May pose as husband and wife to infiltrate a black-tie fundraiser where the star item is a painting with alien writing on the back.
• Blade on a Rope: In the episode "Fractured House", the HYDRA member Marcus Scarlotti uses a knife attached to a chain as his main weapon.
• Bland-Name Product: The logo seen on a delivery truck in the background of the first few minutes of the pilot says "World Parcel Service".
• Blindfolded Trip: In the pilot, Skye is broadcasting an Internet transmission when Coulson and Ward find her and put a black sack over her head and bring her to their base for interrogation.
• Bloodier and Gorier:
  • In "The Things We Bury" the vivisection of Skye's mother by Whitehall is shown in abundant and gory detail.
  • Season 5 has really pushed the show's level of violence to a new level, and the Lighthouse pod has some of the most gruesome violence in the MCU outside of the Netflix shows like Daredevil and The Punisher. We get heads chopped off by Razor Floss, throats slit, faces torn open by the Roaches, numerous blood sprays when people get shot, and eyes ripped out, just to name a few. Although a lot of these are less sickening than you might expect thanks to the unspoken sci-fi "blood and gore is less impactful when it's not red or human" rule, the mid-season finale has Kasius slit Future Elena's throat completely on screen, and it's bloody as you would expect.
• Bloodless Carnage:
  • While the show isn't shy about showing violence and the resulting aftermath in season 1, the Night-Night guns and ICERs allow the characters to engage in gunplay while keeping the body count low since targets are knocked out, rather than outright killed.
  • In season 2 and 3, it's averted such as in "Aftershocks" where there's real guns used and even a headshot.
  • It's fully gone by the start of season 4 with the introduction of Ghost Rider; what he does to the Aryan Brotherhood thugs is nasty.
• Body Horror:
  • Centipede likes to force their agents to do their bidding by replacing their eyes with cameras that double as self-destruct buttons through which they can also issue orders.
  • Coulson recalling the procedure that brought him back to life: a procedure where his head was cut open and lasers being fired into his exposed brain while he was still conscious.
  • In "T.A.H.I.T.I", the blue humanoid that Coulson finds in the Guest House, who is visibly decaying in a tube of liquid and whose body is being used to produce all of the GH drugs.
  • "What They Become". Being exposed to the Terrigen mists causes Raina to sprout quills all over her body, in addition to giving her a generally reptillian appearance. She later says that she cuts herself every time she moves and her insides feel like gravel, possibly meaning she even has quills on the inside. Ouch.
  • The Shrike turn their hosts into a crystalline mass of spears (Sarge describes it as "pure destruction.").
• Book Ends:
  • In the season 2 premiere, Hunter was forced to amputate Hartley's arm after she touched the Diviner and it began turning her to stone. In the season 2 finale, after Coulson catches one of the synthesized Terrigen crystals to keep it from shattering and killing everyone in the room, Mack cuts off his hand with a fire axe to save his life.
  • The series also starts off with Skye's hacker group known as The Rising Tide being a very minor problem. Some of the last lines in the Season 2 finale have Skye and Coulson joke about how their new problems are... rising like a tide, though this time it's referring to far more dangerous things.
  • Coulson's death in Season 5 mirrors his previous death in The Avengers (2012), the event responsible for kicking off the show - in both instances, he effectively gives up his own life to properly set the stage for a climactic battle, respectively giving the Avengers the cohesion needed to defeat the Chitauri and giving Daisy the Centipede serum so that she would be able to defeat Graviton. In both cases, he also spends some time in Tahiti after, though only the second instance actually involves him physically going to Tahiti.
  • With the Season 5 finale being written as a Series Fauxnale, the series was set up to end the series as it started, with Centipede Serum and the science behind Coulson's resurrection.
  • Deke first meets Team Coulson in a now-aborted alternate timeline at the beginning of Season 5, and attempts to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to send them back through time. At the end of Season 7, he elects to stay behind in the alternate timeline in order to bring the Chronicom fleet back to 2019 with the Zephyr One, performing a non-lethal Heroic Sacrifice to do so.
  • Skye/Daisy's first on-screen use of her quake powers is an omnidirectional quake blast as she breaks out of her Terrigenesis cocoon. The last time she uses her powers in the series, she does the exact same thing to kill Nathaniel Malick and destroy the Chronicom fleet above Earth.
  • In the series finale, Coulson gets a new car to replace his old one and just like the previous one it can transform into a flying vehicle. Coulson then flies away in the car just like at the end of the first episode of the series.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: After Fitz plays with spy gadgets from decades ago and burns the curtains, May sarcastically says, "Watch out HYDRA, here we come." This is a minor variation of the Battle Cry of The Invaders.
• Born After the End: In season 5, we learn of Deke Shaw, a man born a few decades after the destruction of Earth in an alternate timeline, who would be either first or second generation of "earthless human" so to speak.
• Brains Versus Brawn: The team is roughly split between "brawny" field-experienced agents and the "brainy" techies. Team leader Coulson is arguably the one with equal amounts of both, while Skye is a tech training to become an agent. Season 2 introduces Mack, who's a brain but with the physique and capabilities of being brawn, and Bobbi, who's a brawn but is smart enough to cross into brain.
• Break the Badass: Melinda May doesn't just get knocked down a peg or two, she ends up on the floor in "Turn, Turn, Turn" after Coulson discovers that she's been spying on him.
• Break the Cutie:
  • Coulson learning about his death and return.
  • To a lesser extent, Skye and the ongoing revelations about her parents.
  • To a huge extent, this applies to the entire team when they learn that S.H.I.E.L.D. is infiltrated by HYDRA, andWard is The Mole.
  • Fitz, as a result of oxygen deprivation caused by Ward. While he's still brilliant, he has trouble organizing his thoughts and articulating them. Happened again mentally in Season 4 after he came out of the Framework.
• Breaking the Fellowship:
  • The events of the Uprising Arc has destroyed the 'family' atmosphere of The Hub. They don't trust each other anymore, and the Cast Herds are breaking up.
  • Season 4 has it happen again in the time between it and Season 3 on orders of the new Director.
  • In Season 5's Bad Future, this happens what's left of the team - Coulson, Daisy and Mack are dead, leaving May, Fitz and Simmons in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the remains of humanity, with Yo-Yo crossing the Despair Event Horizon after Mack's death and eventually going to fight the Kree on a suicide mission. Fitz eventually crosses the horizon himself after Robin describes Jemma's death to him and is implied to have distanced himself from Robin and May from then on after firmly and loudly stating his belief that the agents are stuck firmly in Stable Time Loop and tearing down his designs for the machine to control the Monolith.
  • In Season 7, it is addressed that while the team will survive their battle with the Chronicoms, they will no longer be together, as it will be their final mission together. This is first cemented when Deke agrees to stay behind so as to power the device to get them back to their original timeline. Following the defeat of the Chronicoms, the team have gone their separate ways, but are still involved in different factions of SHIELD and are staying in contact with each other.
• Brick Joke:
  • Fitz comes up with an idea to prank Skye in the first act of "Repairs". The prank itself doesn't show up until near the end of the episode, going off in front of everybody in scaring all of them — including Fitz.
  • Mack spends all of Season 3 repeatedly wishing for a Shotgun-Axe. He finally gets and uses one during the season finalé.
• Broken Aesop: Early in Season 7 Deke's decision not to kill Wilfred Malick before he had commited any crimes is presented as a right and noble decision. Subsequent events of the Season show the dire consequences that followed from it, causing both Deke himself and the audience to wish that he had pulled the trigger when he had the chance.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • The Clairvoyant's true identity has this effect on his heroic subordinates. Inversely, Raina is disappointed to find out he's not really psychic.
  • Several members of the team get hit hard when they discover the identity of The Mole.
• Buffy Speak:
  • Miles talking to Skye in Episode 5:
    Miles: I'll get us a suite... at... the fancy place that has suites.
  • Later in "The Well":
    Skye: My SO volunteered to take the super-creepy hallway instead of the... slightly less creepy dungeon-room...
  • And from "Beginning of the End":
    Coulson: ...stupid stupid stupid! And cruel! And very stupid!
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When Coulson meets the big villain of season 4, he learns the man's obsession with him is partly fueled due to the events of a mission Coulson went on early in his career. While Coulson does have some memories of the mission, he has no idea who the guy himself is, or even what the object was they went there for, which his comrades were tortured and executed for failing to protect.
  Coulson: As far as I'm concerned, you're just another Red Shirt, like so many others who tried to stop me from saving the world. So, cool original story, bro. But this means nothing to me.
• Butterfly of Doom: The reason the Framework is a Crapsack World — each of the five prisoners was calmed enough to accept it with a Cosmic Retcon of "their greatest regret" — which had world-shattering consequences;
  • Melinda May's assignment in Bahrain ended with her killing an Inhuman child who was mind-controlling everyone around her. In the Framework, she succeeded in rescuing the child, who went on to kill over a hundred people in the US, permanently souring humanity's view of Inhumans and leaving her a cold, professional shell.
  • Phil Coulson has become weary of his life as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and subconsciously desired a normal life. In the Framework, he thus rejected an offer of S.H.I.E.L.D. membership; without him, the Avengers never formed, and HYDRA completed its coup d'état and rose to power, killing most of the world's superhumans and subversives.
  • Alphonso Mackenzie mourns his daughter, Hope, who died just days after birth. In the Framework, she survived, and he never joined S.H.I.E.L.D., instead living a quiet life as a single father.
  • Jeffrey Mace has always regretted not being a true Inhuman, instead being dependent on a chemical cocktail for hour-long boosts of superhuman strength and resilience. In the Framework, he is Inhuman, and the heroic director of the S.H.I.E.L.D. resistance.
  • Leo Fitz has always desired his father's acceptance, a thuggish drunk who bemoans his son's love of science. In the Framework, his teetotaler father dotes on him... while still being thuggish and authoritarian, raising Fitz as a Mengele-like Morally Ambiguous Doctorate who proudly builds weapons for HYDRA.

C

• Call-Back:
  • In "The Magical Place", Simmons' Bad "Bad Acting" makes another appearance (first seen in "The Hub"), and we see Skye demonstrate both her disarming moves and her unwillingness to shoot from "The Asset".
  • When Fitz shows off the new ICERs to Ward and May, Ward picks one up, and appreciatively notes that Fitz has lost the ounce that was off.
  • When the villains raid the Fridge in "Providence", we see the HYDRA laser beam from "0-8-4", the Berserker Staff from "The Well", and the Gravitonium from "The Asset".
  • Coulson knows what the Destroyer gun does.
  • Eric Koenig's brother.
• The Cameo:
  • The first episode contains brief flashes of members of the Avengers during the opening voiceover, plus Maria Hill shows up.
  • At the end of the second episode, Nick Fury appears. He returns in the first season finale.
  • Episode 13 featured the inevitable Stan Lee cameo.
  • William Sadler has a brief cameo in "Laws of Nature", reprising his role as President Matthew Ellis from Iron Man 3.
• Came Back Wrong: It's hinted as the first season progresses that Coulson's resurrection is a little more complicated than it appears. It's revealed that a healing serum derived from an alien was used to revive him, but as a consequence he was driven mad by compulsions to reproduce memories of markings transferred genetically through the serum. His memories were wiped to fix the problem, but being exposed to the symbols causes a relapse. Thankfully, figuring out what they mean takes care of that problem.
• Canon Character All Along:
  • Skye. Throughout the first season, she's a hacker with a mysterious background. At the beginning of the second season, the team starts suspecting she may have alien origin. It isn't until the tenth episode that it's revealed that she is actually Daisy Johnson/Quake, a well known S.H.I.E.L.D. agent from the comics.
  • Andrew Garner, May's husband, is nothing more that a regular psychoanalyst and professor — until at some point between seasons 2 and 3 he became an Inhuman, a canon supervillain named Lash.
• Canon Foreigner: Most of the main cast are this, at least at first. Averted by Skye, who turns out to be Quake.
• Canon Immigrant: Coulson made his first appearance in Earth-616 (the mainstream Marvel Universe of the original comics, as opposed to the Marvel Cinematic Universe) in the 2012 series Battle Scars. The S.H.I.E.L.D. comic book series introduced 616 versions of May, Simmons and Fitz — there's no mention of Ward, and Skye is technically is already in 616, even before the show started. Ward eventually did make the jump to the comics, but since this happened long after he was revealed to be a HYDRA agent on the show, he was introduced as a baddie right from the start.
• Cartwright Curse: The team sure goes through a lot of love interests, with the most common cause of turnover being Ward and/or Hive. As of the end of season 3:
  • Skye/Daisy: Miles (Dumped when she learned that he compromised a classified data stream to a HYDRA subsidiary for money, getting innocent people killed), Ward (Rejected when she learned he was Evil All Along, later killed and possessed by Hive), and Lincoln (Heroic Sacrifice stopping Hive). Season 4 hints she may have started having a thing with Robbie Reyes, the Ghost Rider himself, so hers may be coming to an end...if they do become an Official Couple.
  • May: Ward (See above) and Andrew (Turned into Lash, later killed by follower of Hive).
  • Coulson: Audrey (Had to leave her after his death in the movies), Rosalind (Murdered by Ward).
  • Simmons: Will (Killed by Hive), Fitz (In surprisingly good condition considering everyone else on this list).
• Casting Gag:
  • This isn't Jamie Harris' first time playing a teleporter.
  • In Season 4's "Identity and Change", Amy mentioning her dad is a reference to the fact that the actress, Stella Frances Gregg, is the daughter of Clark Gregg.
  • Patrick Warburton plays the video host for the Lighthouse, instructing visitors on how to proceed. This is not the first time he has provided proper video instructions.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Lots of it, apropos for both a Joss Whedon production and the highly-trained S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives themselves.
  • In the pilot, Skye's sending a message about how S.H.I.E.L.D. won't be able to find and silence the Rising Tide. When Coulson promptly appears outside the door of her van, she greets him with a breezy "Hey. What up?" Subverted in that it's clearly false bravado. There's a very visible Oh, Crap! look on Skye's face when the door opens.
  • Played straight in the Season One finale when Fury and Coulson are under heavy fire by Centipede-enhanced soldiers and John Garrett AKA Deathlok Mark I, and simply snark at the events around them.
• Catching Up on History: After returning from his imprisonment on another world, Hive is taken in by Gideon Malick. While he does know about modern society through the memories of his hosts, Hive still decides to research humanity on his own through multiple screens playing news broadcasts.
• Cavalry Betrayal: Variant. Ward figures that he and Fitz are on the wrong side of this in "The Hub", after realising that there's no extraction team and that S.H.I.E.L.D. will level the camp once the MacGuffin is disarmed. They both decide to go out fighting. Then Agent May (who is known within S.H.I.E.L.D. as 'The Cavalry') shows up in the Bus with the rest of the team.
• Ceiling Corpse: This is how Skye discovers Eric Koenig's body and realizes that Ward is a traitor; the latter stashed the body on the ceiling and it dripped on her.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • The Big Lebowski is mentioned in "FZZT". Jeff Bridges, who stars in that, is Obadiah Stane/Iron Monger in Iron Man.
  • Fitz-Simmons referencing Doctor Who creates several more: Christopher Eccleston (the Ninth Doctor) is Malekith in Thor: The Dark World, Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) is Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy, Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald) was Bucky's date Connie in Captain America: The First Avenger, Toby Jones (the Dream Doctor) is Dr. Arnim Zola in the Captain America movies, and David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor) plays Kilgrave in the Netflix series Jessica Jones. Perhaps best of all, if the most obscure, is that their mentor at S.H.I.E.L.D. academy, Agent Weaver, is played by Christine Adams (Cathica from "The Long Game").
  • In the Season 2 episode "A Hen in the Wolf House", Skye mockingly calls Lance Ron Burgundy. Paul Rudd, who played Brian Fantana in the Anchorman films, plays Scott Lang a.k.a. Ant-Man.
  • In the Season 2 episode "Afterlife", Hunter references Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Sundance Kid was played by Robert Redford, who also played Alexander Pierce in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
  • Harry Potter novels/films is mentioned several times. Ian Hart from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone film portrayed Dr. Franklin Hall in this series.
  • Lucy Lawless briefly showing up as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent retroactively created one for Thor, in which one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents sees Sif and jokingly identifies her as "Xena".
  • The Terminator movies are referenced, Terminator Salvation in particular. One of the main stars of that movie, Christian Bale, would go on to play Gorr the God Butcher in Thor: Love and Thunder.
• Cerebus Syndrome:
  • While the show was always a serious spy-thriller, at first it was episodic and had a few lighthearted, even laugh-out-loud moments. The events of Winter Soldier, however, definitely caused a darker shift in tone as S.H.I.E.L.D. falls apart around them and they don't know who to trust.
  • The episode "T.R.A.C.K.S." starts off as a lighter fare, with Team Coulson going on a train heist and Simmons coming up with a ridiculously complex cover story due to the Running Gag of her being a terrible improviser (and gains sympathy from Stan Lee himself), and the episode creatively repeats the same scene multiple times from the different agents' perspectives. Then they get to the villains' destination, which results in Skye getting shot and the multi-episode arc where the team scrambles to save her life, which ends with Coulson learning the truth about his resurrection. Which was precisely what The Clairvoyant wanted so that he could learn too.
  • "Aftershocks" lampshades this with Skye remarking that "We'll laugh a lot less" in the future.
• Cerebus Retcon: Towards the end of the first season, it's a Running Gag the way everyone quickly realizes that The Clairvoyant had gone insane from the alien blood used to restore his dying body. Come the second second, this is played dead serious since Coulson had also been given the blood and his biggest fear is that he too will lose his mind.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • Whenever Coulson is questioned about his injury, he refers to recovering in Tahiti, always describing it as "It's a magical place", suggesting that his memories of the place might not be real. He's fully dropped it by "Yes Men" where he says "It sucked" when asked by Agent Sitwell.
  • Daniel Whitehall often says the phrase, "Discovery requires experimentation."
• Chekhov's Boomerang:
  • The Night Night gun will not go away, though they do give it a less-silly name as time goes on.
  • Skye's Walking Tech Bane bracelet haunts her throughout "The Magical Place", six episodes after it was first snapped on. She later uses it to her advantage when posing as Agent May to interrogate a businessman about his alleged dealings with Centipede.
  • The "Overkill Device" shockwave-pulse launcher captured by Fitz and Ward in "The Hub" returns in "Turn, Turn, Turn". Agent Hand's men use it to take out the guns on The Bus. It shows up yet again in "Heavy is the Head" where it's used to destabilize Creel's abilities long enough for the Obelisk's effects to petrify him.
  • The HYDRA-tech plasma particle beam weapon from "0-8-4" returns as Garrett's "gold card" when they raid The Fridge in "Providence", and in "Beginning of the End" it's used by Coulson to finish off Garrett.
  • May gets to take another swing with the Berserker Staff in "Beginning of the End", using it to even the odds against Cybertek's soldiers.
• Chekhov's Gag: In "Eye-Spy", Ward mentions to Coulson that Skye is having trouble telling a gun's safety from the magazine release. Later in the episode, Skye goes to ready her pistol... and promptly ejects the magazine instead.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Used in the pilot with the Night-Night Gun.
  • The airplane safety pamphlet for the Bus. It's introduced in "0-8-4" as a quick joke about the plane's uniqueness and Ward's unfriendliness towards the new girl Skye. By the end of the episode, Skye uses one of the safety rafts marked on the pamphlet to block a hole in the plane and save Ward's life.
  • In the same episode, the team activates the 0-8-4 with electro-magnetic radiation, which Fitz pointed out could have accidentally happened earlier.
  • In "Eye Spy," a gun which fires a knock-out substance is introduced matter-of-factly as a prototype currently being worked on, and turns up again to incapacitate Akela. Effectively, a Chekhov's Gun that's actually a gun.
  • During the pilot, Skye takes a moment in her van to tuck a memory card down her shirt. In "Girl in the Flower Dress," we find out that it contains all the information she's been able to find about her missing parents.
  • The mini-EMP device in "The Hub".
  • Akela's implant in "The Bridge" later shows up in Centipede soldiers and Deathlok.
  • The shockwave gadget from "0-8-4" returns when Coulson uses it to knock the Clairvoyant out in "Turn, Turn, Turn".
  • The Hulk action figure Mike's son wanted in the pilot returns in the first-season finale, carried to him by Skye as assurance that his dad's OK.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • In "The Asset", Ward teaches Skye how to disarm someone holding her at gunpoint in close range, something Skye admits she has trouble performing. It comes in handy in the final act of the episode.
  • In "The Magical Place", Skye uses the disarming technique again to 'prove' she's a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.
  • In the pilot, Skye reveals that she uses coordinate-based keys to encrypt the files on her laptop. She later uses the same encryption on a hard drive containing all of the team's research data.
• Civil War:
  • With the events of Winter Soldier, the last six episodes of this season deal with the conflict between loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and the HYDRA moles.
  • Midway through in Season Two, it's revealed that Bobbi and Mack are part of a secret branch of S.H.I.E.L.D. that consider themselves to be the real S.H.I.E.L.D. They want the Toolbox Fury gave Coulson, presumably since it has all the hidden S.H.I.E.L.D. assets that survived the collapse. Their justification is that Coulson's exposure to the GH serum has compromised his judgement, in addition to the fact that his leadership style is too similar to Fury's, who they blame for allowing the conditions which enabled HYDRA to fester.
• Classified Information: It's S.H.I.E.L.D.. Dealing with classified information is just their thing. This is somewhat relaxed on the Bus which means that Skye becomes very frustrated at the levels of security in the Hub. She also makes a joke about it with Miles. But we can't tell it to you unless you are a Troper Level 8. How do you become a level 8? Sorry, that's classified.
• Code Name: This is discussed between Raina and Chan in "Girl in the Flower Dress". Raina argues that it's important for Chan to use a superhero alias ("Scorch"), since nobody knows who Steve Rogers is, but everyone knows Captain America.
• Co-Dragons: The Mole and Deathlok are this to the Clairvoyant because they are his personal enforcers instead of grunts like the mass produced super soldiers.
• Coffin Contraband: Director Fury hid the data from Project T.A.H.I.T.I. in Phil Coulson's unoccupied grave.
• Collapsible Helmet: Lorelei's collapsible Asgardian restraint.
• Color Motif: A few, particularly later in the series.
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. is typically represented by gray/black and blue, though the blue is darkened a bit after S.H.I.E.L.D. collapses and goes underground near the end of Season 1.
  • The Framework arc in Season 4 has a digital green, with all the scenes within the Framework given a green hue and the show's logo changed to a black HYDRA sigil with a green background rather than the usual S.H.I.E.L.D. symbol with blue background lighting.
  • The S.H.I.E.L.D. in Space arc in Season 5 has typically muted colors to represent the dark and serious nature of the Bad Future, where only a tiny remnant of humanity remains, enslaved by the Kree, after Daisy supposedly destroyed the world with her powers.
  • Season 6, particularly in the first half, has a lot of yellow and purple, chief examples being Sarge's truck, the inside of which is bathed in yellow lighting, and Daisy's new purple highlights on her suit and in her hair. The yellow typically represents the Earth-bound/Who is Sarge? story, while the purple typically represents the space-bound/Search for Fitz story. The season's character posters for both Sarge and Daisy also have the two in yellow lighting.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • Ward in particular has shown a willingness to use anything and everything (including a drawer full of kitchen utensils) as a weapon. Coulson also qualifies.
  • Fitz may count as this now that we have seen him employing his drones as remote combat vehicles.
  • Melinda May deserves her own entry now that she has employed a nail gun as a hand-to-hand weapon.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: With most of the major characters, this trope doesn't apply: they are either adaptions of comic book characters with no Secret Identity (Hill, Hand, Talbot, Fury), or complete Canon Foreigners (the main cast, Coulson included). With characters who do have a codename in the comics, this trope is usually played straight, but sometimes also averted.
  • Franklin Hall, Donnie Gill and Marcus Daniels have not been called Graviton, Blizzard or Blackout.
    • It takes a hell of a long time, but the Graviton name is eventually used in Season 5. By Talbot, who is part of a Mind Hive including Franklin Hall and others.
  • Averted with Deathlok. Even though it's just the name of the super-soldier project that created him, everyone calls him by it.
  • Big names from the Cinematic Universe at large who are just mentioned may vary: sometimes they are "Red Skull", "Captain America", and other times they are "Romanoff", "Blonsky", etc.
  • Averted with the hidden Big Bad called "The Clairvoyant": before his reveal they call him that because they have no other name to use.
  • Season 2 continues this trend, with Carl Creel never being referred to as Absorbing Man and Marcus Scarlotti not being called Whiplash (likely to avoid confusion with the MCU's other Whiplash). However, Hartley does refer to Creel as an absorbing man as a one-off gag.
    • As with Franklin Hall, Creel technically gets a codename in Season 5...as part of the entity that forms Graviton.
  • Justified with Bobbi Morse: unlike her comic book counterpart, she's not a superhero nor a member of the Avengers, just a regular agent, so there's no reason for her to have a codename. Ultimately played with though as advertisements do refer to her as Mockingbird, but it's not used in-universe yet.
  • In the second season it's revealed that The Doctor/Cal is not in fact a canon foreigner, but his codename in the comics (Mister Hyde) hasn't been used yet.
  • Daisy Johnson isn't called "Quake" for 1.5 seasons. Then she becomes quite well known for that name indeed.
  • Averted with Ghost Rider, who was actually called as such several times in season 4 by people who only know him as an urban legend.
• Commuting on a Bus: The season 4 finale hints that this will be Ghost Rider's role if he returns in season 5, as he clearly does not fit into S.H.I.E.L.D's organizational structure, what with being a vigilante and having to fight hell's battles and all, but will likely lend a hand when necessary.
• Complexity Addiction: The Kree and their temple and their Diviner and the complicated sliding doors... Really all completely unnecessary. Judging by Ronan and Korath, though, they're a people given to drama.
• Compliment Backfire:
  • In "FZZT", Simmons ends Coulson's medical by commenting that he's in excellent physical condition, "especially for a man of your age!" It does not go down well.
  • In "Making Friends and Influencing People", Ward tells Fitz that he elected to drop him and Simmons into the ocean rather than shooting them at the end of Season 1 because he had confidence that they'd find way to save themselves. Assuming he's even telling the truth, it still leaves Fitz (justifiably) even angrier than before, to the point where he briefly seems about to kill or maim Ward in retribution.
• Composite Character:
  • Donnie Gill is named after the second Blizzard, but his status as an engineering genius comes from Gregor Shapanka, the original Silver Age Blizzard.
  • In "Ragtag", John Garrett is revealed to be the original Deathlok.
  • Aida, who was an artificial intelligence in the Squadron Supreme comics, develops many of Alkhema's traits in the second half of season four. Most notably her desire to wipe out humanity, upgrade herself occasionally and create robotic duplicates of various protagonists. She also becomes the Framework's version of Madame Hydra.
  • The show's version of Graviton, by virtue of being a Hive Mind, is a combination of his comic book self, Franklin Hall, fellow comics characters Glenn Talbot and Carl Creel, and Canon Foreigner Ian Quinn.
• Conflict Ball:
  • In both "The Hub" and "The Magical Place", Victoria Hand forces Coulson's team to go out of their way to do things in the most difficult manner possible: denying them information, disrupting their usual working process, and showing as little regard for their lives that she can manage, in complete contradiction to the way that the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. is shown to operate. Then the Civil War breaks out within S.H.I.E.L.D. and she orders her troops to attack the crew of the Bus with automatic weapons, believing they have been infiltrated by HYDRA.
  • Agents Morse and Mack pick it up halfway through Season 2, when they are revealed to be spying on Coulson and scheming to take Fury's "toolbox" to another branch of S.H.I.E.L.D. Mack even chokes Hunter into unconsciousness when the latter starts asking too many questions. Hunter mocks the situation by asking the "Real S.H.I.E.L.D." never bothered to talk to Coulson.
  • Mack and Simmons developing Fantastic Racism for gifted people right as Skye is transformed into an Inhuman. Despite (or perhaps because of) the reasons for their change in attitude being mostly unrelated, it still comes across as the writers trying to manufacture conflict. Simmons in particular inspires of a lot of debate as to whether the change was a logical progression of her character or not.
  • Coulson's "Theta Protocol" a secret project he'd been working on without any of his team's knowledge which turns out to be a Helicarrier he was repairing for use in the event of a world-threatening emergency. It's the source of much suspicion about Coulson from Gonzales' faction, but as soon as they find out what it is most of them are immediately okay with it. Presumably he kept it a secret from his own team because Theta Protocol was a project for Nick Fury, who they thought was dead.
• Consulting a Convicted Killer: As the Season 2 premiere shows, Ward is being kept in a secure cell in the playground, and Skye consults him on HYDRA-related intel.
• Contamination Situation: In "FZZT", Simmons is infected with a virus carried by Loki's soldiers that will eventually cause her to explode, taking the entire plane (and all the other characters) down with her. After apparently failing to develop an anti-serum, she jumps from the plane, in what is intended to be a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Continuity Nod: Has its own page.
• Continuity Snarl: Season 6 is set after Avengers: Infinity War, but the story proceeds as if the Snap never happened, in spite of the massive societal upheaval it brought. No explanation is given in that season, although the writers of the series have suggested that there is one that they may or may not reveal in Season 7. (The out-of-story reasoning for not acknowledging the ending of the film is because Avengers: Endgame had not yet been released, and the writers and producers decided that it was more important to tell a story that serviced the characters rather than shooting in the dark in the hopes that they'd line up with the movies.)
• Conveniently Interrupted Document: Skye's search for her birth parents turned up a heavily redacted document that indicates that the person who turned her over to the child welfare system when she was an infant was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Skye joins S.H.I.E.L.D. in an effort to get access to the unredacted document.
• Cool Car: Lola, Coulson's 1962 C1 series Corvette convertible. She's outfitted with Stark hover tech and is weaponized.
• Cool Plane:
  • The S.H.I.E.L.D. Mobile Command Unit, the precursor to the Helicarrier. Its codename is the Bus. It's cool both in how it can fly — the engines can rotate so that it can hover — and in the interior, which includes a garage, bunks, training rooms, and a mini-bar. Unusually, the fact it's a cool plane is regularly referenced by the characters (most other shows just take such things for granted), and lampshaded in the second episode when Nick Fury vetoes Coulson's plan to install a fish tank. One character even quips that the brig must be between the jacuzzi and the squash court.
  • The appearance of Zephyr One. Coulson gushes about "how much I love my new toy".
• CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Simultaneously played with, played straight, and averted in "The Well", when Coulson performs open-heart massage on a fallen Asgardian. Played with; given the faster healing rate of the Asgardian heart, all he has to do is keep it pumping for a few moments until it can repair itself. Played straight; the patient is walking around by the end of the episode. Averted; Coulson ended up bloody to the wrists—it wasn't pretty.
• Crapsack World: The Framework, as a result of Aida being Literal-Minded. She was told to erase one regret for each person that entered it. Instead of removing the circumstances that caused that regret, they made different decisions in the same exact scenarios. May not killing the Inhuman girl in Bahrain resulted in her using her powers to kill even more people. This caused even more widespread hatred of Inhumans and allowed HYDRA to seize control.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Coulson, as acting Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. (he's the highest agent left), enacts the Odyssey Protocol, effectively sending the entire organization underground.
  • Fury has secret bases that Level 8 agents are unaware of. Not even Coulson, his "one good eye", knew about Providence. He created them in case S.H.I.E.L.D. fell.
• Creator Cameo: Stan Lee in "T.R.A.C.K.S."
  • Maurissa Tanchareon in "Code Yellow"
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Rip the General's rib out, then stab him to death with it as a demonstration of your super-soldier powers? Nice one, Garrett.
  • In "The Ghost", Mack's cut-off description of one of Ghost Rider's kills implies that the Rider ripped out a Neo-Nazi's spine in a reverse Ass Shove.
• Crying Wolf: Happens to Raina in "Scars". She's granted a vision of Afterlife being destroyed by S.H.I.E.L.D. following a disastrous meeting between Jiaying and a S.H.I.E.L.D. representative. When she attempts to warn Gordon, she suggests she attend the meeting in Jiaying's place in an attempt to subvert the vision, but after both Skye and Cal vouch for Raina's Manipulative Bitch tendencies he assumes she's trying to usurp power from Jiaying and has her imprisoned. Unfortunately Raina was actually telling the truth this time. Jiaying goes to the meeting and single-handedly starts a war between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Inhumans by murdering Gonzales and then shooting herself to pretend it was in self defense.
• Curb-Stomp Cushion:
  • Ruby vs. Carl Creel in "Inside Voices". She dodges almost every single one of his blows while getting off some pretty strong hits of her own...and does almost no damage to him whatsoever because a fully grown man who's built like a tank is going to take very little injury from a 90-pound teenage girl, no matter how skilled she is, and that's without him literally being Made of Iron.
  • Daisy and Mack vs Sarge in "New Life" - Sarge, having unlocked his godlike potential as Pachakutiq, has just proven completely immune to Daisy's powers and swiftly incapacitates her with a headbutt that sent her flying back ten feet. Mack decides to try to take on Sarge by himself, and only lasts in the fight because Sarge makes literally no attempt to fight back while Mack unloads a clip of anti-Shrike bullets into him and starts whaling on him, to no effect. When Sarge does finally decide to actually go on the offensive, he does so with obvious minimal effort and gives Mack a solid beatdown pretty quickly. It takes a distraction from May and a Combination Attack between the two involving a magic sword to put Sarge down.

D

• Danger Takes A Back Seat: Coulson with the doctor in The Stinger of "The Magical Place". Given the circumstances, the doctor looks like he expects to be killed, and is quite relieved when Coulson has gone and he is still alive.
  • Whitehall pops up in the backseat of Raina's car in The Stinger, where he threatens her to bring back the Diviner that she had stolen.
• Dare to Be Badass: Coulson gives Daisy one of these when she's reluctant to face Graviton!Talbot alone.
  Coulson: Now you find the strength in your heart to appeal to his good nature. And if you can't, then you find the strength in your arms to beat his ass senseless.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Most of the team.
  • Ward's lack of social skill is not a surprise "considering his family history." He later reveals that he had an abusive older brother. He learned to fight in order to protect himself and his second, younger brother, which eventually led to him becoming a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. We have seen that he tried to set fire to his family home, and kill the abusive brother by extension. His parents were going to have him prosecuted before Garrett recruited him, direct from the juvenile holding facility. When the Berserker staff unlocks his worst memory, it causes him to become incredibly angry and fragile for some time even after putting the staff down.
  • Skye is implied to have unpersoned herself at some point; one doesn't do that on a whim. She is also the child of two people who were unpersoned by S.H.I.E.L.D. for some reason. Also, she was dropped off at an orphanage by an unidentified S.H.I.E.L.D. agent — and Coulson hints that there's things in her past he won't tell her, because some secrets cannot be revealed. When he does, she finds out she herself is an 0-8-4 and that her family, village, and team sent to protect her were slaughtered in the attempt to abduct her. It's also strongly suggested that her parents are "monsters" of some sort.
    • In Season 2, it's revealed that her mother was killed by Daniel Whitehall shortly after she was born, and in order to heal her, her father went on a killing spree throughout a Chinese village, which is why she was taken by S.H.I.E.L.D. and left at the orphanage, with orders for her to be moved around every few months. Her father has been trying to find her ever since, while her mother was left with an unquenchable bloodlust and eventually goes on to be the Big Bad of Season 2.
  • May is a legendary S.H.I.E.L.D. agent known as "The Cavalry" but she hates that name and hates field work, which was why she volunteered to become a paper pusher. Turns out she had to kill a deranged child who was psychically controlling others to inflict pain on her behalf. The experience resulted in her divorce and traumatized her from ever wanting to have children of her own, and is reminded of the event each time her nickname is spoken.
  • Coulson died at the hands of Loki before an alien invasion, and his continued existence isn't as simple as "he went to Tahiti to recuperate", like he believes. Unlike most versions, we saw the Dark and Troubled Past before the series started. He's implied to have done a lot before the MCU films started too.
  • Although Fitz's life still wasn't a cakewalk despite not being outright traumatic. He feels alienated from his parents despite them meaning well, because they can't understand him or what he does, and had few to no friends even at the Academy up until he met Simmons because no one else could relate to him either. (And she may well still be his only real friend.) Really, only Simmons seems completely well-adjusted out of the main cast, which leads to a bad case of Break the Cutie after the "Uprising" arc.
  • Deke grew up in a time where the Kree ruled over humanity. His life got a whole lot worse when he witness his mother getting murdered which happened when he was only nine years old. Years later, he also lost his father to the Kree after she was gone.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Episode 11 ("The Magical Place"), compared with what went before. Fitz loses most of his adorably awkward traits; the entire team is a lot angrier than we've ever seen them. Even the team's costumes are in line with this: Fitz-Simmons abandon their usual bright colors and dress in black; Ward wears a combat jumpsuit versus his normal leather jacket. The episodes that follow are also considerably darker than the first 10.
  • Season 2 itself as a whole kicks Cerebus Syndrome into high gear because it lacks the more lighthearted and episodic plots of season 1 and thus more more room for drama.
  • Season 4 kicks it up several notches. On the content alone, just the first episode approaches levels of violence only previously seen on the Netflix shows. That's nothing to say of the overall story and atmosphere, feeling much darker and grim; this is most noticeable around halfway through the season when the heroes are placed in seemingly impossible-to-break-free nightmarish scenarios that feel far more oppressive than anything they've faced on the series up until that point. Clark Gregg and the writers have said the new, later time slot for Season 4 means that they'll be able to get away with darker stories that they couldn't have done in the first three seasons.
  • Season 5 is even darker than Season 4. Within the first twenty minutes of the episode, a character is killed in an incredibly gruesome way with the rest of the episode coming off akin to a horror movie. The first half of the season deals with a dystopian Bad Future where the Earth has been destroyed, and the second half deals with trying to prevent this apocalypse, seemingly caused by Daisy, from ever taking place in the present, while seemingly failing at every turn to stop the unfolding events at hand, thus seemingly confirming Fitz's belief that You Can't Fight Fate. It goes From Bad to Worse when they realize Coulson is dying and that it's unlikely this can be prevented as he doesn't want to earn a "third chance", and if that still weren't grimdark enough, by the end of the season the show makes explicit references to Avengers: Infinity War, which as many viewers know will ultimately result in half of the universe's population spontaneously fading into ash. By this season, Agents Of SHIELD may just be the darkest entry in the entire MCU.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: Played with:
  • "End of the Beginning" has Garrett and Coulson track down Thomas Nash, who they believe to be the Clairvoyant. They discover that he's in a wheelchair and requires breathing tubes, and can only communicate through a speech synthesizer. He's a subversion; the real Clairvoyant set him up as a fall guy and had someone else running the synthesizer before having Ward shoot him.
  • "Ragtag" reveals that Garrett, the real Clairvoyant, really is one. He has a cybernetic implant feeding him Centipede serum, yet he has no super strength because he's so far gone that the serum only brings him up to "normal", and he's going to die without the GH serum even with it.
• A Day in the Limelight: Although the series is an ensemble theme, every character has had at least one episode devoted to letting them stand out in some way.
  • 4722 Hours is a stellar example, where the entire episode is Jemma explaining to Fitz what happened to her after she was swallowed by the monolith. She was stranded in a "blue planet" for six months and found companionship with another stranded human, a NASA astronaut named Will. He's also the reason why Jemma wanted to go back to the portal.
  • Rewind follows Fitz after the rest of The Team was taken to the Bad Future over the course of his six months in prison and subsequent search to find the team. He finds Enoch, who informs him that he sent the rest of the team through the White Monolith to the future since he was informed that they needed to be sent there by Robin Hinton, a young Inhuman with a fractured mind due to her inability to distinguish the present from the past or the future, constantly seeing the Stable Time Loop of the end of the world. Fitz himself goes to the future via cryostasis, and Enoch resolves to help him after Robin informs Enoch that Fitz is needed in the future.
  • Inescapable gives one to both Fitz and Simmons in a cerebral fusion machine, as they have to face one another's inner demons for the duration of episode until Enoch takes bold action and breaks the two out.
  • "The Totally Excellent Adventures of Mack and the D" with Mack and Deke stuck together for 20 months.
  • "After, Before" episode focuses a good deal on Yo-Yo's character, even featuring flashbacks into her childhood.

• Deadly Euphemism: "Crossing off" is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s favored terminology. This term is used in "The Team" and the same episode also averts the trope by having Mack directly use the word "kill" to describe what S.H.I.E.L.D. agents occasionally have to do.
• Deadpan Snarker: This being a Joss Whedon production, it's more like World of Snark, but special mention goes to Coulson because he snarks at the team just like he did with the Avengers.
• Death by Irony:
  • Almost: in "FZZT", Simmons says that it's sad a man was killed by the unexplained phenomena of the week, yet still very interesting. It's a virus, and she gets infected with it. She doesn't die, but it's very close.
  • In the Season 5 finale, the team manages to break the Stable Time Loop where Graviton!Talbot assimilates Daisy and uses her quake powers in conjunction with his own Gravity Master powers to accidentally destroy the world. A major part of breaking the loop is Fitz realizing that according to the chronology of the loop, Mack and Polly were about to die, resulting in May and Fitz rescuing the two from the Remorath and then Fitz subsequently dying as the four escaped the Remorath warship, though luckily, that Fitz was now a timeline remnant of the original, now-averted timeline and the current timeline's Fitz was still cryogenically frozen in deep space with Enoch, allowing the team to rescue him in Season 6. The irony comes from the fact that Fitz, in a mid-Season 3 episode and throughout all of Season 5, has been by far the strongest advocate for the implication that time was fixed and there is no way to break a time loop, manages to break the Season 5 time loop and dies as a direct result of him making the exact choice that breaks the loop.
• Death Is Cheap: Phil Coulson simply will not stay dead. The series even kicks off by revealing S.H.I.E.L.D. found a way to bring him back after the events of The Avengers, and while at first it's played with grave seriousness as they brought him back using a Dangerous Forbidden Technique that had lasting negative consequences, it becomes easier and easier for him to come back with each death as the series goes on, be it as a sort-of-but-not-really alternate universe clone or as an advanced cyborg. He outright taunts a villain at one point, claiming that "dying is kind of [his] superpower" before blowing himself and their ship up with a bomb (and yes, he comes back), and in the Series Finale he brags about how many times he cheated death:
  Coulson: Look, if this is a contest, I died like seven times.
• Death World: The planet the Kree Monolith sends people to once supported an advance civilization, but by the time of the series it's a barren wasteland of a desert, with the strong implication that Hive himself is responsible for this. The planet is eventually named "Maveth", which is Hebrew for "Death".
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: This article makes a case for Grant Ward serving as a deconstruction of a particular type of Anti-Hero, by showing that the pain of his past life does not justify him taking it out on others and making it clear that everything is not about him. Since the end of season two, he's also a deconstruction of both Yandere (his revenge for Agent 33's death is really more about him) and Stalker with a Crush.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: May seems to be becoming one, based on the ending of "Repairs" when she plays a prank on Fitz. She used to do that kind of thing much more, until being traumatized by field work.
• Determinator: Never tell Coulson "there's no way."
• Deuteragonist: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is considered Couslon's show, but Daisy's story is important and drove the plot and Driving Question for a season and a half. A case could be made for May and Ward splitting tritagonist duties.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Fitz, of all people, in Season 3, Episode 10, "Maveth." He kills the Hive-possessed Will with a flare gun. In Hive's defense, Worf Had the Flu.
• Differently Powered Individual: The series uses the term "Gifted" to refer to those with powers, presumably because FOX has the rights to nearly all of the mutants and the word "mutant". It's used as a blanket term for any form of enhanced human, regardless of the source. In "One of Us", Simmons suggests expanding the definition to differentiate between those with artificial enhancements and those whose powers are genetic. By season three, "inhuman" is also used and for all intents and purposes means the same as "mutant".
• Disc-One Final Boss: The series has a habit of doing this Once a Season.
  • In the first season, the Centipede Group serve as recurring villains until Agent Garrett, Agent Ward and HYDRA are revealed as the true antagonists in the aftermath of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
  • The second season begins with Daniel Whitehall, HYDRA and Calvin Zabo as the prime adversaries of Coulson and his team, before they are subsumed by Jiaying and her Inhuman allies.
  • The third season starts with Ward and HYDRA on one side and Rosalind Price and the ATCU on the other, before the ATCU is subordinated to S.H.I.E.L.D. and first Malick and then Hive take over the leadership of HYDRA.
  • The fourth season has two, as it kicks off with a plot where Lucy and her ghostly cohorts are driving a nefarious plot over the Darkhold, Jeffrey Mace is an overly micromanaging new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Robbie Reyes rampages as Ghost Rider. Partway into the season, Reyes' uncle Eli Morrow is revealed as the true seeker (and now the wielder) of the Darkhold's power, but he dies two episodes later.. Going into the LMD arc, it appears that Senator Nadeer is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s newest foe as the Watchdog's patron and leader of the Inhuman hunt. Then she dies unceremoniously in an explosion and the focus shifts to Anton Invanov, The Superior, and true leader of the Watchdogs. Then he is Demoted to Dragon by Aida who has also (kinda-sorta)killed her creator, Holden Radcliffe.
  • In the fifth season, Ruby is built up as the Destroyer of Worlds who will crack the world apart. Unfortunately, she proves unable to control her gravitonium powers once she receives them, and quickly gets killed. This would lead to Hale giving the location of the SHIELD base to the Confederacy, allowing the aliens to invade the Lighthouse. This would eventually lead to Talbot infusing the remaining Gravitonium into himself, effectively turning him into the Graviton, the true Destroyer of Worlds.
  • Once the team returns to the present in mid-Season 5, General Hale takes center stage as the antagonist for several episodes, though it's subverted when she is shown to answer to the Confederacy and then double subverted when she reveals that she has no intention of honoring her agreement with the Confederacy and is her own party. Then triple subverted when Ruby dies and she throws her lot in with the Confederacy, giving them the location of the Lighthouse so the Confederacy can acquire the gravitonium, resulting in Talbot infusing himself with the gravitonium and becoming Graviton before killing her the next episode. Zigzagged, however, in that a lot of the conflict in the second half of the season (and the first half of the season, indirectly) does stem from Hale regardless, and she is heavily responsible for the Stable Time Loop of the end of the world, but Talbot and the Confederacy ultimately hold the most responsibility for the chain of events in the final episodes of the season that directly lead to the end of the world.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Simmons can't seem to keep her eyes, or hands, off Mike in "The Bridge". He's been working out and she likes it.
• The Dividual: Fitz and Simmons spend so much time together that they're referred to as "Fitz-Simmons" and it's joked that not everyone knows which is which.
• Doctor von Turncoat: After being captured by Peggy Carter and the S.S.R., Dr. Wener Reinhardt tries to make a deal for his freedom in exchange for his research and assistance, noting that many Nazi scientists (including Hydra members) were offered the same. However, his vivisection experiments are so horrifying that it's too much for the S.S.R. to overlook, so he remains sentenced to life imprisonment.
• Does Not Like Guns: Discussed with May and Ward when Fitz introduces the ICERs. When May picks one up, Ward remarks that he thought she didn't like guns; May says she only uses them when she needs them, and they seemed like a perfect fit for that particular mission.
  • The character Snowflake is also shown to have a dislike for guns.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?
  • The plot of "FZZT", which involves firefighters contracting a Chitauri virus after helping out at the Battle of New York is eerily similar to the real life instances of rescuers who developed fatal illnesses after helping search for victims of 9/11.
  • The last episodes of the third season mention many times that the powers of the Inhumans are not random, that they are designed with a purpose, even if that purpose is never clear. Did anyone say "Intelligent design"?
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male:
  • Subverted/played with concerning Grant Ward. His mother was extremely abusive towards him and his brother Christian, which apparently motivated Christian's own abusive tendencies. Despite that, Grant himself doesn't mention it much and instead focuses more on his brother's abuse, but given he tried to kill his whole family as it were, and the possibility that Christian's abuse was fabricated, it's entirely possible he didn't bring it up much because he knows he'd get more sympathy if the 'bad guy' was his brother. Saying that, it's still treated as horrible and she still gets vilified.
  • Averted, played with, and possibly inverted by Bobbi and Lance. Bobbi has tendencies towards emotional abuse towards Lance as a result of her spy work, frequently lying to him, and is implied to have done some horrible things, least of apparently setting all his belongings on fire. However, this is given a negative view and Lance is treated sympathetically for it. It's played with in that his complaints about it are sometimes played for comedy, such as him calling her "a demonic hellbeast". It's inverted with how he himself isn't too much better given he's very verbally abusive, slightly emotionally abusive (in his case, frequently guilt-tripping her), and is implied to have done some pretty shitty stuff himself, yet he's not treated as negatively. In general, they're both incredibly dysfunctional and self-destructive as a couple, but Bobbi isn't treated like a saint and is given quite a lot of blame for the relationship.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male:
  • Played straight when Ward is raped on-screen by Lorelei, a female Asgardian who can take control of men with her voice. Ward is forced to have sex with her against his will, and afterwards the show treats it as infidelity on his part. Topped with victim-shaming when another character afterwards remarks, "all men are weak" ^note  Although that one was specifically a poorly thoughtout way to assure the man she was speaking to didn't think she meant "you specifically are weak" whilst the women beside her nod in agreement. Doubles as Double Standard: Rape, Sci-Fi due to Lorelei's mind-control powers.
  • Inverted, somewhat, with his making rape threats towards Skye/Daisy when she rejects him. Though Ward is treated as a villain, it is for reasons other than/in addition to this. He's never called on his sexual abuse towards these women.
  • Averted with AIDA/Madame Hydra and Fitz. While inside, Radcliffe angrily accosts her for brainwashing Fitz into being her lover/attack dog, and once out of the Framework, Fitz is noticeably uncomfortable every time she talks about their romantic entanglements in the Framework, and while he struggles with the fact he did feel love for her in the Framework and empathises with her belief that she only did these things because of Radcliffe, the second he makes it clear he'd pick Jemma over her she snaps and tries to force herself on him. The scene is treated seriously and after he's saved, he's clearly disturbed by it.
• Downer Beginning: The Season 5 premiere sends the entire time (except for Fitz) to a Bad Future where humanity is nearly extinct after some cataclysm destroyed the planet multiple generations prior. Deke even goes as far as to say Daisy is responsible for the cataclysm, which everyone initially refutes until Voss confirms several episodes later that during the event, Daisy was in Chicago, the epicenter of the cataclysm - a 12.8 earthquake on the Richter scale, to be exact.
• Downer Ending:
  • "The Bridge" — Coulson's been betrayed and kidnapped, Skye's trust in Coulson took a turn for the worse with May telling her that Coulson isn't really looking into her parents, Mike is most likely dead (and Ace watched him die), and Ward at best is seriously injured.
  • "T.R.A.C.K.S." — Skye has been gut-shot and is near death. Exacerbated by the series taking a month-long hiatus, in part in order to avoid having to compete with the Sochi Olympics.
  • "Turn, Turn, Turn" — S.H.I.E.L.D. has been infiltrated by HYDRA, Agent Garrett turns out to be the Clairvoyant, and Grant Ward reveals himself as The Mole by murdering Victoria Hand and freeing Garrett.
  • "The Team" — Daisy is revealed as Hive's mole when she quakes the place to keep anyone from following her after stealing all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s terrigen crystals and the Kree Orb that is in some way connected to Hive. Joey also quits S.H.I.E.L.D. as of this episode, having become quite uncomfortable with the fact that he's taken a human life.
• Dragon with an Agenda: The entire Centipede faction could be considered one to HYDRA, as its primary purpose is to save Garrett's life. Once that finally happens, Garrett states his desire to overthrow HYDRA and rule the world on his own. By contrast, the HYDRA faction in season 2 seems far closer to the interpretation seen in the Captain America films, though it is possible this could change.
  • Anton Ivanov: Although he follows Aida's orders, it's pretty clear he does it for his own gains, namely killing Coulson. When she gains a conscience and tries to make him stop his murderous attempts, he shows that she is no longer in control of him. They later seem to form more of a Big Bad Duumvirate. After framing S.H.I.E.L.D., he vanishes, not coming to AIDA's help later.
  • Season 5: Due to her mother's maltreatment, Ruby has plans of her own that do not match her mother's.
• The Dreaded
  • The first season's Big Bad, the Clairvoyant is A Hidden Villain, who also seems to be omniscient, and is able to see everything he wants, allowing him to be two steps ahead of the heroes. He is revealed to be a high ranking SHIELD agent that underwent a Face–Heel Turn, using his clearance level to commit crimes.
  • Skye's father is feared by Raina, due to a combination of his unstable and violent behavior, and being one of the few people she cannot manipulate. Coulson even mentions how Raina doesn't get scared that easily.
  • Daniel Whitehall: his subordinates are terrified of failing him, and rightly so, given his penchant for Cold-Blooded Torture and utter lack of anything resembling a conscience. Even the usually unflappable Raina is scared of him. Daisy is terrified when Nathaniel mentions the man's name in Season 7.
  • Gideon Malick: he has such an influence over so much wealth and control on the global level, that even the President is afraid to go up against him, which is why he wants Coulson to continue what he is doing at SHIELD in stopping him.
  • The Avengers had this reputation. In fact, "Real" SHIELD just give Coulson the command of SHIELD, because his ties with them. ^note Justified, they likely think that harming Coulson will anger the Avengers, and the last thing anyone wanted is pissing off Dr. Banner
  • Hive: Everyone who isn't a HYDRA secret society true believer is scared shitless of this thing. Simmons honestly preferred death rather than letting Hive on Earth. It is stated that Jiaying was fully aware of his existence and did everything she could to keep him sealed up, and both she and Gordon freaked out upon hearing that S.H.I.E.L.D. had the Monolith. Bobbi even speculates that the reason Nick Fury ordered the Illiad destroyed was because he didn't want to take the risk of HYDRA getting the Monolith and bringing Hive back.
  • Lash: Most people take one look at him and run the other way, and for good reason. Even Hive freaks out when he sees him, possibly because he instinctively understands that Lash is his natural enemy.
  • Robbie Reyes/Ghost Rider: Everyone is deathly afraid of him, from a combination of the fact that he's powerful as all hell (literally), a cold-blooded and merciless killer, and that virtually nothing is known about him, especially concerning his seemingly inexplicable powers. Coulson's team puts on a brave and commanding front, but even they know he's a time bomb best not set off. Coulson sells his continued participation to Director Mace as, more or less, "nothing we have can stop him."
    • This includes the Big Bad of the season 4 Aida who, even after winning a Superpower Lottery that gave her pretty much all the abilities of every Inhuman S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever faced, simply cannot stand up to him, and learned after their first altercation to teleport and run away whenever he shows up.
  • By Season 6, Daisy has actively been cultivating a reputation across the galaxy as someone to fear.
  • Izel is hyped up as the malevolent creator of the Shrike who have been laying waste. Sarge's team extreme methods to eliminate the Shrike before she arrives just shows how dangerous she is.
• Driving Question:
  • Who is in charge and what is the purpose of the Centipede project? The Clairvoyant is in charge of it, and is revealed to be Garrett. The Centipede project is a subdivision of HYDRA.
  • What really happened to Coulson after Loki stabbed him? As of "The Magical Place", this is finally answered: he was dead for days until S.H.I.E.L.D. managed to resurrect him, and then rewrote his memories. But there is more to this story...
  • Who is Skye? By halfway through season two, we know that she's an Inhuman who was found by S.H.I.E.L.D. after HYDRA killed her mother and everyone else in their community that they could find. The S.H.I.E.L.D. team was then pursued and wiped out by her psychotically bipolar father until the survivors arranged for her to be continuously shuffled through the foster system to hide her. She's also the MCU counterpart of Daisy Johnson.
  • Who is the alien whose corpse provided the miracle drug that revived Coulson and saved Skye? How did it end up in such a situation? If its function is to heal, why was it under such heavy guard that only Director Fury, level 10 clearance, could freely access the place it was held?
  • Who else is going to turn out to be working for HYDRA? Who will survive the coming Civil War?
  • Who was in charge of the T.A.H.I.T.I. project if it wasn't Nick Fury? The closing scene of "Nothing Personal" reveals that it was Coulson himself.
  • Season 2 gives us questions regarding Reinhardt/Daniel Whitehall, the supposed new leader of HYDRA. How does he look the same 70 years later? How did he escape S.H.I.E.L.D. custody? And why is he so obsessed with the Obelisk? He escaped S.H.I.E.L.D. custody thanks to Alexander Pierce. His restored youth is due to a serum he developed by vivisecting Skye's mother, who was an Inhuman who aged very slowly. He knew about her because he had seen her touch the Obelisk in the 40s with no ill effects, which is also why he is obsessed with the Obelisk — he wants to know what else it can do.
  • In Season 5, the overarching objective for the season is stopping the cataclysm that will end the world in 2018 and lead to the Bad Future seen in the first half of the season. The only problem is, the team has no idea what causes it, and they spend a lot of their time in the latter half of the season trying to figure out what the exact chain of events is that leads to the end of the world, and taking steps to attempt to explicitly change the timeline. The question is somewhat of a double header: What causes the cataclysm, and is it even possible to change time?
  • Season 6 presents a new one: Why does Sarge look exactly like Phil Coulson and have an identical genetic structure? Even he doesn't know. He's revealed to be over 100 years old, and thus actually believes that Phil Coulson was his doppelganger.
  • Season 7: Where is Fitz? Simmons has a brain implant in her neck to supress her memories in order to hide the location from the Chronicoms. the final episode reveals that he is actually been hiding in the Quantum Realm, plotting out the perfect plan for the survival of the team and the entire human race.
• Drunk on the Dark Side:
  • This seems to be a side-effect of the Centipede serum. Both characters shown exposed to it ended up falling victim to this.
  • This is explicitly stated to be the result of contact with the Berserker Staff from "The Well". By its very design, it gives you super strength, then makes you feel angry and unstoppable.
• Dull Surprise:
  • In "Ragtag," when Coulson finds out he himself was involved in the T.A.H.I.T.I. project before his death, he looks shocked, but his reaction is simply: "huh."
  • In "The Dirty Half Dozen," knowing what he knows, Ward's reaction to seeing Skye use her powers for the first time on a HYDRA agent during battle is this too.
  • When he sees the giant HYDRA shrine on Maveth, Ward offers a dryly casual "Hail HYDRA." Despite this, he does later tell Coulson that the sight gave him a sense of higher purpose that he had never felt while chasing revenge or redemption.
  • When Robbie goes toe-to-toe with James in "Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire", he catches James's flaming chain out of midair and holds it up to his face, more curious than anything, and gives a flat "huh." He then proceeds to mock James's accent, wipe the floor with him, and take the chain as his own weapon of choice in short order.
  • Coulson is relatively unfazed when [[spoiler:Virgil, while explaining the team's situation to them, gets his head split open in front of the group by a Vrellnexian in "Orientation", and simply mades a snarky comment about Virgil being unable to finish a complete sentence.^note After Mack had knocked him out earlier, also mid-sentence, when he mistook Virgil for a threat.
  • Sarge isn't all too surprised when he learns that he looks exactly like Phil Coulson, mostly brushing it off (although he is shown to be curious about Coulson), though it's averted when Izel drops the bomb on him that Coulson wasn't a doppelganger, android or just some lookalike and that he is actually inhabiting a direct copy of Coulson created by Monolith energy in Season 5 when Coulson went to seal the Fear Dimension rift, and that his true identity is Pachakutiq, an malevolent incorporeal entity from a higher dimension where beings have no physical form. He goes through an identity crisis throughout the next episode upon learning this.

E

• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The show as a whole appeared to be another Half-Arc Season series, with a mission of the week taking the team out to snag another 0-8-4 while building the mystery of Centipede and the Clairvoyant. Then the second half of the season kicked in and threw all that under the bus by tying it into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, particularly Captain America: The Winter Soldier. As of the second season, it's far more arc-driven, with very little of the episodic nature. It's also quite a bit darker.
  • Season 1 had the most overall connection with the MCU as a whole, having numerous cameos and being directly affected by the events from the movies. The shows gradually detached itself from the events of the films since then, only mentioning them in passing at best.
  • In its first appearance in the season 2 premiere "Shadows", the Obelisk takes a considerable amount of time to petrify Hartley, enough that her team is able to engage in a fairly lengthy escape sequence yet still have time to amputate the affected limb in time to save her. In subsequent appearances, the Obelisk is shown to petrify its victims in under a minute.
• Emerging from the Shadows: Wait a minute, Coulson is dead, it's in the report, he died before the battle of New York. Cue for Coulson to step out of the dark and clarify that the Reports of His Death Were Greatly Exaggerated.
  Coulson: Sorry, that corner was really dark, and I couldn't help myself. [Beat] I think there's a bulb out.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Ward and May each get their turn swinging the Berserker staff in "The Well".
  • This happens to Mack and Coulson when they are possessed by the Spirit of Vengeance in Season 4.
• Enfant Terrible: The episode "Melinda" has a "gifted" who turns out to be a young girl who "leeches" emotions, and can Mind Rape anyone she touches, turning them into thralls. She is also completely insane.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • Ivanov explains why he's been so dedicated to taking SHIELD down: He's convinced that Coulson has been giving out super-powers and hunting alien beings as part of his plot to weaken Earth for a full-scale alien invasion. Mace openly scoffs at the idea but Ivanov defends himself on his "logic" of how else could Coulson be connected to so many super-powered events unless he was somehow behind them all?
  • In Season 6, Sarge is completely adamant that the late Phil Coulson was his doppelganger in some way, and even initially dismisses Coulson as an android or synth. Naturally, the team calls him out on this, but he brushes it off repeatedly as a coincidence at most, despite the fact that he holds himself in the same way, says a lot of the same phrases as Coulson did, and even has the exact same genetic structure as Coulson. He also believes that he was the original of the two in part because he's over one hundred years old and thus has been around for longer than Coulson. In "Leap", as the rest of the team figures it out on their own, Izel drops the bomb on Sarge that Sarge is a malevolent entity that possessed a copy of Phil Coulson's body when he was exposed to uncontained Monolith entity, so not only is Sarge not the original, he is a direct copy of Phil Coulson and the memories that he associates with the loss of his family at Izel's hand are actually Coulson's memories mixed with his inborn connection to Izel. He has a Loss of Identity for the following episode as a result of the revelation.
• Episode on a Plane: "Repairs" is Demons on a Plane.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The modern-day version of HYDRA is shown to be multiracial and its members generally do not consider themselves Nazis.
• "Eureka!" Moment:
  • Skye has one in "End of the Beginning":
    Coulson: I feel like he's still out there... in our heads.
    Skye: Or in our files.
  • Also, FitzSimmons in "FZZT":
    Simmons: The antibodies from the three firefighters aren't strong enough to fight this virus. It's born from alien DNA. There's no one to create an antiserum from, because no one's actually survived this, except...
    Fitzsimmons: ...the Chitauri.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones
  • The Mole: Grant Ward:
    • He tries to convince Skye that, despite being a HYDRA plant and lying "to everyone about everything", his feelings for her are genuine. She doesn't buy it.
    • He genuinely seems to have developed a loving relationship with Kara, given that he walked right into Coulson's hands when Deathlok napped her. Coulson even names this as a reason why he thinks that he isn't completely beyond redemption. He leaves Kara with S.H.I.E.L.D., recognizing that's he's not a good influence on her and wanting her to recover her past. Which turns out to be a foul play, but the trope is still played straight, as him accidentally killing her emotionally shatters him.
    • In spite of everything, he still cares about his younger brother Thomas all along. Too bad Thomas is still afraid of him and has no problem with letting Team Coulson take him down. Especially when he found out that Ward had brutally murdered their older brother and parents in a fire.
    • When Garrett ordered him to kill Fitz Simmons, he did so with reluctance. Fitz screamed that he knew Ward cared about them, and Ward said he did, admitting it was a weakness.
  • Raina was apparently very close to her grandmother, who was the one who told her about the blue angels and how their family were descended from a group of powerful people.
  • Calvin Zabo: his daughter and wife.
  • Gideon Malick: While a a ruthless leader in Hydra, he has a strong tie to his family. He loved his father, and was distraught to learn of his true cowardly nature. Malick did love his younger brother Nathaniel, just not enough to sacrifice himself. Him lying to his brother and having him chosen to be sacrificed has haunted him his entire life. This trope is played straightest with his daughter, Stephanie. Her death at the hands of Hive destroys him.
  • Arc Villain of the first half of Season 4 Eli Morrow is the one who raised his nephews Robbie and Gabe, and it is clear that he genuinely loved them. When he learns that the drive-by which crippled Gabe was a hit attempt meant for him, he's legitimately horrified, though he insists that it's the Bauers' fault. He also offers Robbie the chance to join him, but when he doesn't, Eli doesn't hesitate to start making carbon pop out of Robbie, showing that as much as he loves Robbie, he wants power more.
  • Ellen Nadeer: She genuinely loved her mother and was devastated by her death. Unfortunately, the experience made her develop a hatred towards anything alien, which she proceeds to take that hatred out on Inhumans. She almost has her own brother killed by the Watchdogs for becoming an Inhuman, but after he begs for his life, she decides not to go through with it. She finally follows through with it personally at the end, but if they were in each other's shoes he would've done the same to her—after all, they had made a promise to each other.
  • even Fitz's Framework persona, The Doctor, was deeply in love with Ophelia, and was quite affected when she got critically injured by Daisy. He likewise had the same reaction when discovering his father's corpse after Simmons shot him in self-defense.
  • Kasius: It's all but stated that he has romantic feelings for Sinara, and after she is killed, he snaps from grief. Furthermore, he still seeks his father's approval, even after believing that his father tried to have him killed.
  • General Hale: Despite her abusive treatment of her daughter Ruby, she's still utterly heartbroken when Yo-yo kills her daughter...to the point of selling S.H.I.E.L.D., and by extension the entire Earth, out to the Confederacy just so she can make them pay.
  • Ruby on the other hand, develops genuine affection for Werner, who becomes her boyfriend. After being infused with Gravitonium, she's horrified when her new powers accidentally kill him.
  • Even after slipping into Big Bad status, Talbot still loves his son very much.
  • Wilfred Malick: ​After he and the Chronicoms sprung a trap decades in the making on S.H.I.E.L.D. in 1973, he was ultimately forced to let them go after they took his son Nathaniel hostage, pissing off the Chronicoms who simply could not understand his reasoning.
  • Kora is genuinely interested in being on the same side as Daisy (who doesn't return the sentiment), is heartbroken over Jiaying's death, and ultimately refuses to turn on Nathaniel out of loyalty to and affection for him.
  • Like his father and older brother, Nathaniel is shown to genuninely love them both, and like Gideon, was distraught to learn that their father was a coward, who cheated out his way from bening sacrificed. In the penulitmate episode, he abuses Deke for shooting his father. That said, his brother never reappears in the remainder of Season 7, and if his life went the same way it happened in the original timeline, Gideon would have been among the SHIELD officials that were killed along with the rest of the SHIELD bases, suggesting that Nathaniel never truly cared about his family.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The Clairyvoyant John Garrett didn't want any unnecessary blood to be shed in finding out how the secret to Coulson's resurrection, considering that he viewed him as a friend, and despite being a member of Hydra he doesn't really buy into the organizations' views, siding with them because he viewed them as the winning side.
  • The Mole Grant Ward was rather disgusted when he saw Garrett murder a Marine Corps general by using his broken rib to stab him in the neck. He's also clearly upset that he had no choice but to lock up the other officers, saying that [[Garrett's]] actions weren't necessary.
    • He also was upset over how the Clairvoyant had arranged for Skye to be shot by Quinn, saying that it was not part of the plan.
    • He keeps his promise to not shoot down the Bus when Skye agrees to go with him in "... Ye Who Enter Here". Too bad Whitehall pulls rank on him.
  • Raina:
    • She looks somewhat appalled that Po is resorting to potentially lethal torture to get the truth behind Coulson's resurrection.
    • Upon discoverying Ward was a Mole on the SHIELD team, Raina questions the individual on being able to betray the heroes so easily, going as far as to say that even she knows that Coulson is a good man who would stick out his neck if meant saving his teammates.
    • World domination is "too 1945" for her tastes. This is why she's working for Skye's father instead of HYDRA in season 2.
    • Even though she was the one who put Simmons' cover at risk in order to cut a deal with Coulson, she was legitimately disturbed when she realized he wasn't buying what she was selling and that Simmons would likely be killed as a result.
  • Whitehall ends up on the receiving end, as no less than two villains have opened up about how they really feel about him following his death. [[spoiler: That said, Whitehall wants nothing to do with the "ancient cult" facet of HYDRA, viewing it as barbaric, religious nonsense, preferring the scientific aspects established by the Red Skull. He even tried to convince a young Gideon Malick and his brother Nathaniel to abandon the cult in favour of his side of HYDRA. He also views their father, Wilfred, a coward for cheating his way out of being selected to be sent through the Monolith as a sacrifice to Hive.

s vision for HYDRA. He also considers the brother's father to be a coward for cheating his way out of being selected to go through the Monolith.]]

• Cal: Is shown to dislike Whitehall, referring to him as "a butcher." Understandable, considering what the man did to his wife. He has nothing but contempt for Raina, mainly because she's concerned about herself and nobody else.
• Gideon Malick
  • He isn't pleased that Ward recruited Werner von Strucker before he was ready, and only sells Werner out because it's the pragmatic thing to do.
  • He does not want to involve himself with Ward's quest for revenge against SHIELD, viewing such things as insiginifcant, preferring to stay focused on moving forward with Hydra's true mission without ever looking back.
  • Before Ward, Malick considered bringing in other Hydra leaders to stand by him on his plan to bring Hive back to the planet, but eventually passed on a few candidates for pragmatic reasons (Alexander Pierce was too bloodthirsty and Garrett was too arrogant). That said he gives the latter praise for bringing Ward into Hydra, saying it was the best thing he has ever done for the organization's cause.
• Eli Morrow wanted godlike power, but still does care who he hurts to get it. Killing his coworkers is one thing, but he objects to endangering thousands of innocent lives and warns Coulson to run as he starts up the experiment that will give him powers.
• While working for Hive, Radcliffe makes it pretty clear that he is uncomfortable working on non-volunteers and that his only interest is in advancing the human race. His accidental creation of the Alpha Primitives horrifies him. He also makes it absolutely clear to Aida that he does not approve of her killing Agent Nathanson and attempting to kill Agent May.
• Ruby, who is ruthless and cruel in her own right, considers her mother to be a tyrant in comparison, and calls her out for treating her more like a weapon than her daughter.
• Jaco doesn't go out of his way to hurt people, and even warns a child away from what was going to a blast radius.
• Wilfred Malick: He lets Deke leave with his life after learning that the latter had saved his life years ago, though promises that he shouldn't expect the same pardon if they cross each other again.
• Kora is disgusted that May killed Katya Belyakov, seeing the girl as an innocent who couldn't control her powers. She's fine with killing future villains like Grant Ward while they're still children, though.

• Every Car Is a Pinto: In "0-8-4," the cars are extremely combustible once the rebels attack; shooting a Chevrolet pickup through the rear window will cause it to detonate.
• Everything Is Online: In "Girl in the Flower Dress", Miles can use his computer to control traffic lights and all the doors in a building. Globally the trope is played straight, but in a less unrealistic way than usual. Skye can hack absolutely anything, from NSA satellite systems to security doors in a building, but in some cases (The Extremis lab in episode 5, Quinn's estate, the Hub communication panel) she has to physically get into the facility to access the local network. So everything is online, but at least not everything is directly accessible through the Internet.
• Everyone Can See It:
  • Fitz-Simmons are the only ones who seem remotely surprised when they start developing romantic feelings towards one another. Other characters can practically be felt rolling their eyes in the background during their awkward Cannot Spit It Out moments. The fact that nearly every other character in the show has been referring to the two of them collectively by their Portmanteau Couple Name since the first episode should be another dead giveaway.
  • In "Wake Up Call", Yo-Yo says this of Coulson and May. Radcliffe is of a similar opinion, which is why he replaced May with an LMD, so she would get close to Coulson and learn the location of the Darkhold.
  • In Season 7, it becomes pretty obvious to everyone that Daisy and Sousa have feelings to each other. When Daisy finally admits this, Mack states that Yo-Yo owes him twenty bucks. In fact, Deke decided to stay behind because he could see how happy Sousa made Daisy.
• Everyone's Baby Sister: Fitz and Simmons both qualify as this trope. The other characters' reactions to their lives being endangered in "FZZT" and "Beginning of the End" exceed what we've learned to expect when Coulson, May, Ward, and Skye risk their lives. Fitz and Simmons are the non-field agents on the team, and two of the youngest next to Daisy. In "FZZT":
  May: [about Simmons] She's only a kid.
• Evil All Along: As of "Turn, Turn, Turn", the large number of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who were actually members of HYDRA, including Garrett and Ward.
• Evil Cripple: "The End of the Beginning" introduces Thomas Nash, who Coulson and Garrett believe to be The Clairvoyant. When they raid his headquarters, he never moves and only communicates through a speech synthesizer. In the end, he is a subversion. He was really catatonic and not controlling the synthesizer at all, and the real Clairvoyant goaded Ward into shooting Nash in the hopes that people would believe the Clairvoyant to be dead.
• Evil Evolves: The Centipede organization is constantly improving their technology, most of which appears to be originally stolen from other sources. The Centipede device itself is an excellent example.
• Evil Power Vacuum: HYDRA is like this.
  • Midway through the second season, Coulson manages to kill a prominent HYDRA leader. The other members of his regional council are well aware of this trope, however, and set up a peaceful transfer of power to avert it. Then Coulson exploits their backstabbing tendencies to get them to play it straight and take one another out before sweeping in to mop up whoever's left; leaving the void empty for at least the time being.
  • Another void is made when Baron von Strucker, having previously decided to sacrifice HYDRA cells in order to distract from his own activities, ends up being wiped out as a result of the actions of the Avengers, Coulson, and Ultron. Grant Ward is the only one left standing and sets out to rebuild HYDRA for revenge on SHIELD.
  • Once he goes down, former members of HYDRA fill out to other groups, like The Watchdogs, who suddenly have more members and technology.
  • The true reason why when you "Cut off one head, two more shall take its place" is revealed; it was "founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom", and without HYDRA to guide those efforts secretly, they are being pursued openly by elected governments via the Sokovia Accords, which not only legislates control over superhumans, but advanced technology such as artificial intelligence. Holden Radcliffe's experiments would almost certainly have been less destructive if he hadn't been forced to pursue them in secret — if only because SHIELD would have known about them well before he developed true Life Model Decoys.
• Eviler than Thou: Raina is one of the primary villains of Season 1, and always keeps a calm demeanor, even when things are collapsing around her. Then comes Season 2, whose main antagonists — Daniel Whitehall and Cal — both absolutely terrify her.
• Exact Words:
  • In "The Magical Place", May gives Agent Hand her "professional opinion" that Skye "will be of no use on the plane". Which is precisely true, since she knows Hand will never let Skye do what needs to be done to locate Coulson and Skye is of better use out in the field.
  • In "Ragtag", Coulson tells Skye to get ready to receive a "large file transfer". Which involves throwing an entire file cabinet full of paper files out of a window.
  • In "The Only Light in the Darkness", The Mole uses this to evade detection.
  • In "Beginning of the End", an angry and confused Coulson confronts Nick Fury over why the T.A.H.I.T.I. resurrection process was enacted on him if it was specifically intended for the resurrection of an Avenger. Fury makes it clear that as far as he is concerned, Coulson is an Avenger.
  • In "Heavy is the Head", Fitz, while looking for a way to neutralise Creel's powers, insistently repeats the phrase "I didn't solve this today!" Skye and Trip write it off as his frustration at being unable to solve the problem, but Mack works out that Fitz is trying to tell them that one of his old designs can be modified for the job.
  • As of "Making Friends and Influencing People", this is how Simmons managed to keep her cover intact in HYDRA, because she sucks at flat-out lying.
  • In "The Things We Bury", Cal says, "I've lost everything important to me. And I want to kill those who took it, and finally be reunited with my family in the afterlife." At the time, it looks like he's talking about killing Coulson for turning Skye against him. By the end of the episode, it's clear that he means he's planning to kill Whitehall for what he did to Jiaying. By the end of the season, it's clear that when he said "in the afterlife," he wasn't talking about dying...
  • On a meta level, Brett Dalton mentioning that he'd be the Big Bad of Season 3. He just didn't specify which of his characters would fill that role.
  • In "Ascension", when Giyera appears to have Fitz and Daisy at his mercy, Fitz warns Giyera that there is a weapon on the plane designed to kill him. He repeatedly tells Giyera "You'll never see it coming." He then shoots Giyera dead with a gun rendered invisible by a cloaking field.
    "I did tell you, a few times."
  • Also from "Ascension", when Coulson confronts Hive aboard the Zephyr, he invokes this trope twice in rapid succession when he tells Hive, "I gave the order for the others to stay behind," and that he was "prepared" to die. He later informs Hive, "When I gave my team the order to stay behind, they just wouldn't listen." Then when Hive attacks Coulson only to discover he was a hologram all along, Coulson adds, "I said I was willing to die, sure, but I certainly don't want to."
  • Aida's two primary programmings were to protect the Framework and Radcliffe, but there is a slight paradox in the two in that Radcliffe could threaten the Framework, so she uses this to solve a paradox in "Self-Control" when Radcliffe tells her that life is simply the experience and perception of reality and therefore living in the Framework after dying in the real world counts as living, allowing her to kill him after uploading him into the Framework, where his consciousness will live on in the virtual reality but he is dead in the real world and can no longer threaten the Framework. Radcliffe later states that he would be impressed with this if it didn't involve him dying.
  • Enoch, at the beginning of Season 5, does exactly as Robin tells him he will do simply because she's prophetic. He doesn't take Fitz through the Monolith since Robin never told him that Fitz was supposed to go through the Monolith, and when Robin later reveals that Fitz does in fact make it to the Bad Future, he takes Fitz there because "it's prophecy now."
  • Kora claims that every future Sybil saw had Daisy not leaving her sister to fight alone. She is right... but Daisy sees Jemma as her true sister.
• Explosive Leash: Several characters are fitted with bionic eyes that provide x-ray vision and HUD instructions — and explode to instantly kill the subject if they disobey.
• Expy:
  • The Norse Paganists group in "The Well" seem to be pretty much the MCU version of the Wrecking Crew, a group of criminals from the comics who were similarly granted superhuman strength by a metal bar imbued with Asgardian magic, but lack real fighting skills.
  • Tobias Ford's teleporting ability by means of traveling through a hell dimension in a puff of smoke is unique to Nightcrawler from the X-Men.
    • Gordon's teleportation is similar to Nightcrawler's, even including the smoke effect.
  • Alisha's power of duplication is exactly the same as Jamie Madrox's.
  • Jiaying has shades of several characters from the X-Men. Her backstory of suffering under Nazis and leading a war of (perceived) self-defense against non-powered humans calls to mind Magneto, while her role as a leader and mentor within the Inhuman society and her pre-vivisection personality resemble those of Professor X. Her powers echo those of Wolverine, who can regenerate from any wound as long as he's not beheaded (though they are powered through a Vampiric Draining Touch of Death like Rogue. This ability to keep her young is also similar to X-Men villain Selene).
  • Granted, Shock and Awe is a fairly generic superpower, but nevertheless Lincoln could be compared to the young X-Man Bolt.
  • Joey Gutierrez eems to be one for Sebastian Druid of the comic book version of the Secret Warriors, being a dorky Audience Surrogate who's introduced with no control of his powers but comes back some time later having gained competence and confidence. He even somewhat looks like Druid.
  • Hive is more or less a stand-in for Apocalypse; his backstory, immortality, goals, and overall personality have far more in common with that character than the comics Hive.
  • US Senator Ellen Nadeer's anti-Inhuman demagoguery and extremist attitude make her a very close Distaff Counterpart for Senator Robert Kelly from the X-Men film series (although Kelly was much more sympathetic than her and eventually changed his views about superpowered people).
  • Anton Ivanov His status as a human whose brain commands a near-inexhaustible supply of LMD bodies while kept on life support puts him in the same boat as the comics' Dum Dum Dugan.
  • Tucker Shockley seems to be the MCU version of Nitro, the alter ego of Robert Hunter. Both can transform into a volatile gaseous state and explode, and then reform their body. Hunter is a normal human who acquired his powers from Kree experimentation. Shockley gains his powers from being an Inhuman. Shockley still gains his powers from Kree experimentation, but here it's the same kind that created many of the show's other superhumans.
  • Ruby shares some similarities to the Sin, the daughter of Red Skull. Both were raised by a woman with ties to HYDRA (Hale for Ruby and Susan Scarbo a.k.a. Mother Night for Sin) and indoctrinated in its fascist ideology since childhood. In additon to be psychotic and expert fighters, the two are the daughters of prominent members of HYDRA (though Ruby's says she was "engineered" and her actual parentage is never revealed). Ruby's combat outfit also looks similar to that of Sin's.
  • Sarge's transformed state has a few similarities with X-Men villain Ord.
  • Izel's backstory as a destructive monster from another dimension who hates all living things, combined with the legion of alien minions at her disposal, bring comic villain Annihilus to mind.
  • Nathaniel Malick seems to be the MCU version of the X-Men villain of Mister Sinister. They both believe in cultivating and redistributing powers from superhuman individuals to those they deemed worthy. They coinicidentally share the first name.
    • He also shares similarities to the Clone of Red Skull in the main Marvel Comics universe. Like the clone, Malick was affiliated with HYDRA, was a different version of his main counterpart, stole the powers of another by taking their body parts, and assembled a team of other enhanced villains. His outfit is even quite similar to the character.
• Eyeless Face: A man like this appears in The Tag of "What They Become". Judging by him possessing a Diviner, he's likely an Inhuman. He doesn't even have sockets!
• Eye Scream:
  • Akela Amador gets pointy things to the eye twice in "Eye-Spy" and by the end of the episode, is one less. Then again, the alternative was to have said eye implant explode, taking her out with it.
  • Robbie Reyes' first on-screen transformation very clearly shows one of his eyes popping from the heat of his aflame skull. His second transformation also shows that the fire that burns away his flesh starts from the eyes.