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Agents Of SHIELD / Tropes N to R

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

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    N 
  • Namesake Institution: In the Framework arc of Season Four, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are sent to a virtual reality where HYDRA has taken over the world. Phil Coulson becomes a school teacher who works at the "Alexander Pierce High School", named in honor of HYDRA leader Alexander Pierce.
  • A Nazi by Any Other Name:
    • The group of Norse paganists from "The Well". Coulson describes them as a "hate group" and the group is comprised of angry young white people who want to harness the power of the Asgardians. They claim to be descendants of the Asgardians and thus rightful rulers of earth.
    • The new Hydra claims to not be Nazis like the old ones. Indeed, Ward is upset when Skye accuses of him of being a Nazi and she fires back on how "The Red Skull, founder of Hydra? Big fat Nazi!". Subverted in that HYDRA has been around for centuries before Red Skull even joined, albeit still quite evil and more of a predecessor of Nazis.
  • Nebulous Evil Organization:
    • The organization behind the Centipede project, revealed in "Turn, Turn, Turn" to be HYDRA.
    • The group that abducted Akela and put her on an Explosive Leash for their use, which may or may not be the same group as the above. "The Bridge" proves that they are one and the same.
  • Neck Snap: In "A Fractured House", Bobbi/Mockingbird snaps a weapon's dealer's neck using a sash. Technically, she hangs him long enough to break his neck.
    • Nathaniel uses his quaking vibrations on Jiaying until he twists her neck, killing her.
  • Never Found the Body:
    • It is unknown if Chan from "The Girl in the Flower Dress" was consumed by the Extremis explosion caused by an overdose administered by May as a last resort, but he's presumed dead.
    • Mike Peterson is also caught in an explosion... which happens to be unrelated to the Extremis within his system. Coulson is told he's dead in "A Magical Place" but the episode's stinger reveals he was captured instead.
    • Donnie is shot by Skye and falls into the harbor at the end of "Making Friends and Influencing People," with his body last seen icing over as it sinks. It's later explicitly mentioned that the local police were unable to find any signs of a corpse in the water.
    • As it turned out, Andrew wasn't killed by Werner and the following explosion; he wasn't even stabbed. He Lash'd out and blew it up himself.
  • Never Trust a Trailer:
    • The trailer for "Girl in the Flower Dress" made it look like Coulson had expelled Skye from the team for being a traitor. In the episode, The line "I'm done with you" is spoken to convince Skye to reveal her darkest secret, and the full line is, "You have a secret, Skye, and one chance to come out with it — that's now! — or I'm done with you."
    • The promos for "The Hub" showed Coulson handcuffed and hooded, and clearly implied that he would be the goal of a rescue mission in the main storyline. Coulson's rescue was completed during (roughly) the first minute of the episode, and it was Ward and Fitz who were stranded behind enemy lines.
    • Prior to airing, the bulk of the publicity for "The Well" focused on the episode tying into the aftermath of Thor: The Dark World. The tie-in lasts for all of the first scene of the episode, before moving into an unrelated plot about an Asgardian hate group and their attempt to claim the pieces of a hidden Asgardian weapon.
    • In a similar vein to the trailer for "Girl in the Flower Dress", the trailer for "The Bridge" makes May appear to be cold towards Mike, telling him, "You shouldn't be here." The line is in fact spoken to Skye and is at the tail end of a Brutal Honesty speech by May and a reprimand to not let her personal attachments get in the way if she wants to consider herself a true member of the team. The full line in question? "If you can't put aside your personal attachments, then you shouldn't be here."
    • The promos for "Making Friends & Influencing People" shows Simmons in a HYDRA uniform and Coulson in an apparent stand-off with her asking "Did you really think I wouldn't find out?" Turns out Simmons is Coulson's mole within HYDRA, something the audience is well aware of within a couple of scenes. Coulson's apparently loaded comment is a Bait-and-Switch; it's quickly established he's referring to the fact that the fridge in her apartment contains nothing but beer and hot sauce.
    • The promo for "Among Us Hide..." outright states Andrew was killed at the end of "Devils You Know". In fact, he survived the whole ordeal, albeit injured in an explosion intended to cover HYDRA's tracks.
    • The promo for "The Ghost" showed a shot of Mack and Coulson finding a grizzly crime scene in the back of a truck, with the implication that the victims had been murdered by Ghost Rider. In the actual episode, the men killed each other after being exposed to the supernatural MacGuffin they'd been transporting for their boss. Ghost Rider had nothing to do with their deaths whatsoever.
    • Season 5 promos prominently advertised the team being IN SPACE!, with the tagline being "They aren't on Earth anymore". Not only did this effectively hide a much larger spoiler of the team being sent into the future, with a heavy focus on Stable Time Loop Time Travel, but as it turned out, they have never even left Earth at all!
  • New Old Flame:
    • Comandante Camilla Reyes for Coulson in "0-8-4". They had an intimate several days at some point in the past.
    • Miles for Skye. Shortly after his introduction, they're in bed.
    • Bobbi is introduced on her own. It is not until Hunter sees her that the audience realizes that the "demonic hellbeast" he has been complaining about for several episodes and this S.H.I.E.L.D. agent that just saved Simmons are one-and-the-same.
    • Andrew Garner is introduced as May's ex.
    • In Season 4, Radcliffe had a female assistant named Agnes Kitsworth, who was also his lover and the basis for Aida.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Coulson's team are not immune to making bad calls; in fact, everyone screws up majorly at some point in the series:
    • The whole team are accidentally doing this throughout Season 1, every time they discuss sensitive information around Ward.
    • Skye gets one right off the bat by encouraging Mike to embrace his powers in the Pilot, only to narrowly avoid turning him into a super-villain. Later on in "Providence", she unknowingly feeds S.H.I.E.L.D. info directly to HYDRA when she tells Ward exactly where the secret base is located.
    • And in "0-8-4" Skye saves Ward from being sucked out of The Bus, thus keeping him alive to continue spying for HYDRA for the rest of the season.
    • Fitz has a tendency to help out the enemy by accident. In "Seeds" he helpfully gives Donnie the advice he needs to perfect his ice-making device on a larger scale, which not only helps out Ian Quinn but indirectly leads to Seth getting killed and Donnie becoming a super-villain. Then in "Ragtag", he uses the EMP joy buzzer to short out Garrett's Deathlok system, leaving Raina with no way to keep him alive but injecting him with her super-soldier serum; which works completely. So HYDRA Agent Garrett is also now Super-Soldier Garrett.
    • Coulson chews out May so often that she's prompted to leave the team in "The Only Light in the Darkness", removing the only obstacle that might have stopped Ward from killing Koenig and abducting Skye.
    • May sharing the location of Providence base with Maria Hill ultimately causes Hill to lead Talbot's team there, costing S.H.I.E.L.D. the best equipped and most easily defended of Fury's secret bases.
    • Simmons leaving S.H.I.E.L.D. prior to the Season 2 premiere, believing that her presence is impeding Fitz's recovery directly results in Fitz completely losing his grip on reality, including whatever engineering skills he managed to retain after suffering brain damage, and suffering under the constant delusion that she's still there helping his recovery.
    • A big one with consequences spanning almost the entire series; flashbacks during season 2 reveal that Gonzalez and the other loyal SHIELD agents on board the Iliad aircraft carrier were ordered by Fury to destroy the carrier, in order to prevent the monolith it was carrying, which serves as the portal to Maveth and Hive, from falling into Hydra's hands. Gonzalez, Bobbie, and Mac end up deciding to disobey that order and retake the ship from Hydra instead, turning it into the mobile base of their new SHIELD faction. If they had obeyed this order and sunk the ship, monolith and all, to the bottom of the sea, probably the entire series from season 2 on would have been different.
    • In Season 3. Wanting revenge for Rosalind's death, Coulson ends up killing Ward when the two are on Maveth. This would lead the Inhuman known as Hive to take control of Ward's corpse and make the trip back to Earth, unleashing the monstrosity upon the Earth. It is later revealed that Hive can only possess bodies that are no longer living, so had Coulson just left Ward stranded on Maveth, Hive would not have had a body to possess and simply would died.
    • Robbie's actions in "Lockup", seeking revenge against a gangbanger who was part of the crew that tried to kill him (the man himself was locked up and reformed even before then) and his brother, have not only led to S.H.I.E.L.D. being associated with his former murder-spree and blackmailed, but allowed his uncle to be kidnapped when he was the only one capable of protecting him from the ghosts. The expression he makes at the end showcases that he knows it.
    • In the first half of Season 5, the heroes are transported to the future, where they learn that the Earth will be cracked apart and humanity will be enslaved by the Kree. When they go back to the present timeline, they begin to take the steps to prevent that Bad Future from happening. Unfortunately, a combination of distrust among the members, secret agendas, and blurring of morality, the team effectively lays the groundwork for that Bad Future to potentially happen. It is eventually revealed that the end of the world in the alternate timelne happened because Daisy ended up getting absorbed by Talbot, allowing him to gain her powers. He would then use Daisy's quaking abilities to dig into the Earth to get more gravitonium, an act that triggers the earthquake that cracks the Earth apart.
    • At the end of the 5th Season, by breaking the time loop and preventing Earth from being cracked apart, SHIELD allowed Thanos to finish collecting all the Infinity Stones and wipe out half the universe's population.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
    • In "The Asset," it appears for a few minutes that Skye might be lured in by Quinn's arguments. She resumes carrying out the mission right after he makes a remark that reminds her of a conversation from earlier in the episode with another S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.
    • "The Magical Place": Raina and Edison Po's interrogation of Coulson allows him to unlock his real memories of how he came Back from the Dead after Loki killed him.
    • Izel bringing Flint to the present turns out to be the reason the team is able to defeat the Chronicoms, since Flint reconstructs some of the Time Monolith to allow Fitz and Simmons to build the time drive and initiate the plan to save both S.H.I.E.L.D. and Earth. In a way, Sibyl and her Hunter team return the favor when they attack the Zephyr on the surface and destroy Izel's temple in the process, as the end result ensures that no one can ever use the Monoliths or open passage to Izel's realm again.
      • Nathaniel Malick preventing Kora's suicide is ultimately what allows the Chronicoms to be defeated once and for all in the end. Fitz says that Kora is the instrumental key to saving their timeline.
  • Nigh-Invulnerable:
    • Hive in season 3.
    • Graviton in season 5.
    • Sarge and Izel in season 6. This is stated to be a characteristic for any of the beings from their home dimension who manage to gain a physical form.
  • No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: Downplayed but still present in Season 7. It doesn't majorly hinder them (though Mack does get dirty looks for being a black guy im a nice suit in the 30's), except when they have to interrogate a guy from the 50's who's too racist to take Mack, Yo-Yo, or May seriously.
  • No Kill like Overkill:
    • The name of the device in "The Hub" roughly translates into "The Overkill Device" from Russian.
    • The varying descriptions of what Melinda May did to earn her "Cavalry" nickname.
  • No Party Given: Averted. Senator Christian Ward is identified as a Republican from Massachusetts.
  • No Power, No Color: The Coulson LMD robot is hit with an EMP that disables him and causes his irises to turn grey. Even after he is reactivated, nearly the entire episode is Deliberately Monochrome to show that his color vision has not yet returned (as well as being a Genre Throwback to Film Noir).
  • No Social Skills:
    • Ward, as is repeatedly pointed out by other characters. Maria Hill gave him the lowest rating in this department, even drawing a small porcupine (which Coulson mistook for a "little poop with knives sticking out of it") on his assessment sheet.
    • Donnie Gill is even worse, with Agent Weaver saying he's unable to converse with anyone who has an I.Q. under 175.
    • Simmons has her moments, though it's only really obvious when Fitz isn't there to cover for her. "The Hub" reveals that he's quite The Charmer in the right situation, and since they're usually presented as The Dividual it all balances out. Not so much when Simmons is left to fend for herself socially. Her attempts to flirt her way out of trouble with Agent Sitwell go so appallingly wrong that she has to shoot him (only with a tranq dart) to extract herself from the situation.
    • Enoch's interactions with the team are... awkward to say the least.
  • Nothing Is the Same Anymore:
    • After the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and its tie-in episode, "Turn, Turn, Turn", all bets are off. S.H.I.E.L.D. has been heavily infiltrated by HYDRA, leading to an internal war between loyalists and traitors to the cause. Among the HYDRA infiltrators is Garrett, who reveals himself to be the Clairvoyant. Many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents die in the process of his capture. Just when it seems like the main threat has been dealt with and Garrett is arrested and transported elsewhere, Grant turns out to be The Mole and breaks him out. To make matters worse, the government has to legally dissolve S.H.I.E.L.D. while they can't do anything about the remaining HYDRA outposts, and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that escape the eyes of the government have to work with much more limited resources against a sizable enemy.
    • In the time between seasons 2 & 3, Terrigen has gotten into the Pacific ecosystem, and is activating the powers of any Inhuman who eats the fish (or fish oil pills or get caught in a rainstorm ). Multiple characters point out that despite S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attempts to contain the outbreak, the rate at which new powered individuals appear is increasing, and most of the secondary plot of season 3 deals with the international community trying to figure out how to deal with Inhumans. Then the Sokovia Accords take affect....
    • Season 4: A new Director is appointed, which cause a lot of tension within the team, who are no longer assigned to work closely together as before. Daisy is on the run. Due to revealing their base to Talbot, SHIELD is now back in the spotlight, which makes it problematic for the team to go off book when dealing with the more unusual missions. The Sokovia Accords making Inhumans be registered, and preventing certain individuals like Daisy and Yo-Yo from acting.
  • Noble Bigot: A major problem for S.H.I.E.L.D. is their treatment of gifted people — putting them on an Index in case they ever went rogue and assigning them a handler. While some gifted people are dangergous the majority are just people who want to be left alone and resent being treated like a potential threat/ second class citizen. In addition, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s procedure for gifteds are physcologically demeaning for them. It's why the Inhumans have gone to great lengths to keep themselves hidden — and when S.H.I.E.L.D. finds their hidden sanctuary both sides over react in the worse possible way.
    • The same plot is repeated in season 3, with the ATCU taking the place of S.H.I.E.L.D. Rosalind compares the Inhuman transformation to cancer, and is committed to curing it.
  • Nonindicative Name: You would think that a place named "The fridge" would be located in Alaska, or some other very cold place. Its location is classified, but when we saw it, it did not appear to be in the arctic at all.
  • Noodle Incident:
    • The Miami Antimatter Meteor incident. It almost swallowed half a city.
    • How did Melinda May get the nickname "The Cavalry" and why does she hate it? (Unlike most noodle incidents, this one has now been explained.)
    • In "The Magical Place", Hand's comments make it clear that Skye was blamed for shooting Sitwell in "The Hub". It's never made clear how Skye ended up getting blamed, since Simmons was face-to-face with Sitwell when she shot him and was clearly the one responsible. Indeed, Skye is protesting her innocence when Hand interrupts her.
    • The replacement hand that Coulson breaks in "Laws of Nature" was his third one. We don't know what happened to the first two.
    • The group of scientists who found the Darkhold. They managed to find it when the Red Skull, Daniel Whitehall, and Nick Fury—very intelligent men with extensive resources and networks—could not. So how did they do it?
    • May references "the Glasgow assignment," after which she and Coulson vowed to open an expensive bottle of liquor if they ever had a worse assignment.
    • Something in Fitz's past has made him hate clowns. And clowns with knives. Not even Simmons knows the circumstances.
    • After Robbie and Eli are Dragged Off to Hell, Coulson (rather casually) tells Daisy that he saw Ghost Rider escape from Hell before.
    • In "Rewind", Hunter says that he and Bobbi almost got remarried, but the wedding was interrupted. By ninjas.
  • Not Distracted by the Sexy: In "0-8-4", Coulson instantly recognizes that his old flame Reyes is only coming on to him as part of a plot for her troops to seize the Bus.
  • Not in This for Your Revolution: Despite HYDRA being the primary villains, most of the people working with/for them don't seem to share their beliefs.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: There are several occasions of this happening.
    • Lady Sif pointed that Asgardians are bound by their codes and honor as much as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are by their own ones.
    • In "Beginning of the End", The Mole attempts this with Skye, alluding to the "darkness" Raina says is inside her, but Skye doesn't take any of his crap.
    • In "Lockup", May observes that Daisy's methods of coping were too close to her own:
      May: I know what you're doing. Trying to distance yourself from everyone else so they don't drown in your wake? I invented that move. It doesn't work... for one simple reason. Phil Coulson.
    • When Robbie captures Daisy, he says that they're not very different. They're both vigilantes going after the same groups; the difference is that she tries to avoid killing if she can, and Robbie doesn't need proof to kill people. She turns this around on him when she suggests they work together.
      Daisy: We want the same thing.
      Robbie: No, we don't.
      Daisy: You just said we're not that different.
      Robbie: [glares]
      Daisy: I'm sorry, but you did. Like, ten seconds ago.
  • Not Using the "Z" Word: The Inhumans in season 2 are never referred to by that name (the closest being when Fitz describes a heartbeat as "inhuman"). Simmons notes that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s current terminology is not sufficient, but doesn't have any better suggestions, and the Inhumans themselves refer to their people as "descendants." In "Scars," Skye finally reveals that "Inhumans" is the official term they use for themselves, and it starts being used regularly.
  • Not Wearing Tights:
    • Deathlok is really the only character who wears anything remotely resembling a costume.
    • Bobbi Morse (AKA Mockingbird) wears a tactical suit similar (just with dark grey/black instead of white) to the one she wears in the comics, technically fulfilling this trope.

    O 
  • Obstructive Bureaucrat:
    • Victoria Hand gets bonus points for simultaneously carrying the Conflict Ball and the Idiot Ball, one in each Hand, getting in the way of Coulson's team about as much as the Clairvoyant himself throughout the season under the guise of "following protocol," even though half the time she's doing anything but.
      • In "The Hub", she sends Ward and Fitz on a mission with no extraction plan, counting on the rest of Team Coulson somehow figuring this out (despite the fact that they would have to break S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol to find out) and going in themselves to rescue the two. Instead of, say, informing Coulson of this.
      • In "A Magical Place", she kicks Skye off the Bus, more-or-less because she doesn't like Skye and her methods, despite the fact that Skye proves herself able to find Coulson single-handedly without S.H.I.E.L.D.'s resources, meaning Skye would've probably been able to do so even faster if Hand just let Skye do her thing on the Bus.
      • In "Turn, Turn, Turn", she immediately attempts to kill Coulson's team on suspicions that Coulson is HYDRA. She makes no attempt to capture or interrogate, simply taking control of the Bus and having her team storm the plane with orders to kill. Her method of ensuring that surviving S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are not HYDRA sleepers is about as stupid - barging into a room with ten-odd other agents and holding the survivors at gunpoint, declaring herself to be a HYDRA mole and then telling them to pledge allegiance to HYDRA or be killed, counting on loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to make some attempt to fight back against the "HYDRA agents," which, if the scenario was real, would be about as smart as sticking a metal fork in an outlet, rather than joining HYDRA out of terror (instead of any genuine loyalty) or joining as sleeper agents themselves.
    • General Talbot takes on this role later, generally putting politics ahead of anything else.
      • In season 3, Talbot keeps secrets from Coulson that make it more difficult to respond to the threat of Hive, including that Hive had stolen a warhead.
      • This behavior continues into season 4, where he hides that the new director isn't actually an Inhuman, just temporarily enhanced. He and Coulson call a truce after the team gets caught trespassing in Senator Nadeer's office.
  • Offscreen Afterlife: According to Coulson, the other side is "beautiful". Although it is possible he was just saying this to reassure the doomed fire-fighter in "FZZT" because he knew he was about to die and there was nothing else he could do for him.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • The default reaction of anyone when they realize Melinda "The Cavalry" May is gunning for them. Ward has had this reaction so often that it practically become a Running Gag.
    • Come Season 4, this becomes the default reaction of anybody who sees Ghost Rider coming for them. It doesn't matter if they're racist thugs or ghosts or androids; the instant that flaming skull comes out, they're in need of their brown pants, and rightly so. Not even the Big Bad of the season is immune.
    • The big reveal at the end of the Season 5 premiere is this: the agents realizing that they are in a Bad Future where the Earth has been destroyed in three separate ways at the same time, with Deke Spotting the Thread in Coulson's story about eating pie in a diner before being sent through the White Monolith to the Lighthouse, Daisy, Mack and Yo-Yo reading a message from Fitz on an ancient, faded postcard, and May and Simmons seeing a Wham Shot of half a schoolbus floating through space in the debris field that is Earth's remains.
    • In the Season 6 finale, when Sarge proves himself essentially immune to Daisy quaking him at point-blank range, Daisy, Mack and Yo-Yo have this expression. Sarge's demonic appearance underneath his Coulson "shell" probably doesn't help either.
  • Ominous Cube: The Toolbox is a tiny cube-shaped database that contains the entirety of SHIELD's files.
  • Omnidisciplinary Scientist:
    • Averted. Fitz, Simmons, and Skye all have different specialties within the role of "The Smart Guy": engineering, biochem, and computer science/hacking, respectively. This is taken even further in "Eye-Spy", where Simmons explicitly points out that she knows nothing about eye surgery and Fitz has to ask Ward about disarming a bomb. In "T.A.H.I.T.I.", the two of them come across an encrypted file and remark "Skye could handle this ..." but the reason they need access to the file is to treat Skye's critical injuries.
    • Increasingly played straight with Simmons, who after protesting her lack of surgical knowledge in "Eye-Spy" is nevertheless frequently shown acting as The Medic, despite the fact that her doctorates are supposed to be in obscure fields of biology and chemistry, not medicine. This is Justified by how she's capable enough to perform advanced first aid, which makes sense given the rest of her character and her general dedication to knowing everything about her field. However, events in "The Well", "Seeds" and "T.R.A.C.K.S." demonstrate that she can't do much more than attempt to stabilise a critically injured patient. The scene showing her crying in the supply room after Skye gets shot seems to indicate that the writers haven't forgotten that she lacks the formal training to cope with medical emergencies. By Season 2 and 3, though, she's shown acting as the medic and doing scientific research completely outside the field of biology or chemistry, though this could be explained as having to broaden her skills when she went undercover in HYDRA, as well as picking up skills from Fitz.
    • Lampshaded in regards to Bobbi. When she's forced to remain in the lab after her injury, Fitz points out that, despite being just a biochemist, she's demonstrated a lot of forensic know-how that doesn't involve biochemistry, something she just smirks out. This is, of course, after a season of her also demonstrating a lot of insight into psychology and profiling, indicating training in this field as well.
    • In Season 6, Marcus Benson does all the heavy lifting in the science/intellectual department back on Earth by himself while Fitz and Simmons are in deep space. He generally specializes in biology, but given that he's working with S.H.I.E.L.D., he quickly branches into xenobiology and biotechnology when dealing with the alien threats of Sarge's team and the Shrike, though he makes it clear just before attempting to dissect a living Agent Keller after he's possessed by a Shrike that he's completely out of his element and is going off of targeted guessing at best. He also ends up being the one to shoulder the load of scholarly research into Izel and the Di'Allas (read: ancient mythology) from "The Other Thing" up until "From the Ashes" before disappearing for the rest of the season.
  • Once a Season:
    • The series generally shifts between Story Arcs once if not twice in any given season, generally depending on the Arc Villain(s) for a given set of episodes.
      • The first season was fairly episodic for its first two-thirds, until the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier impacted the plotline and caused a Retool.
      • The second season starts off with Coulson's team rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D. in the face of opposition from Daniel Whitehall and HYDRA, before Whitehall is abruptly killed and the focus shifts to the rise of an extremist faction of Inhumans as well as tensions with the "real S.H.I.E.L.D.".
      • The third season begins with S.H.I.E.L.D. seeking out newly awakened Inhumans around the world, dealing with Lash and the ATCU, with Ward and HYDRA mostly in the background. Then, midway through the season, Coulson kills Ward and Hive arises to become the major threat for the later episodes.
      • The fourth season starts out with Ghost Rider and the struggle for the powers of the Darkhold, before shifting to focus on L.M.D.s, before changing again to focus on the virtual world of the Framework.
      • The fifth season sees Coulson and his team in space most of a century into a Bad Future where the Earth is destroyed and the Kree dominate the survivors, before the main characters return to the present to try and avert the Earth-Shattering Kaboom.
      • The sixth season starts off with Simmons searching for Fitz in space while Mack, May and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. dealing with the Big Bad Sarge back on Earth, before Sarge and his team get captured and/or killed off, and Izel, the creator of the Shrike, takes over for the rest of the season.
    • The same goes for the recurring plot element of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s reputation repeatedly being utterly trashed by various public humiliations.
      • In the first season, the HYDRA uprising from Captain America: The Winter Soldier wrecks S.H.I.E.L.D. and forces Coulson and his team on the run.
      • The second season sees HYDRA agents disguising themselves as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents while shooting up a United Nations conference and murdering several governmental representatives in public.
      • In the third season, Gideon Malick (with General Talbot's unwilling help) trashes Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D. as being HYDRA before an assembly of international delegates discussing the Inhumans. Daisy later severely damages The Playground with an earthquake, before Hive has a mutagenic agent released inside the complex to turn several agents into rampaging Primitives.
      • In the fourth season, Senator Nadeer launches a full Senate investigation into S.H.I.E.L.D., and later in the season, Anton Ivanov has an LMD duplicate of Daisy shoot up an international meeting to incriminate S.H.I.E.L.D. even further.
      • By the time the fifth season comes around and Coulson's team returns from the future, S.H.I.E.L.D. (or what's left of it) is being actively hunted by the American military under General Hale as a result of the events of the fourth season. It gets inverted when "The End" sees S.H.I.E.L.D. arrive to stop an attack/impending apocalypse, courtesy of Graviton!Talbot, and the public once again puts their trust in S.H.I.E.L.D..
      • The sixth season, is the only season thus far to not have S.H.I.E.L.D. publicly humiliated — in fact, none of the conflict in the season results from sociopolitical or military opponents, but instead revolves around Sarge, Izel and the Chronicoms. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s relations with the public seem to be completely mended as well after the Time Skip, possibly due to offscreen reparations with the governments of the world. But then the season ends with the Chronicoms invading the Lighthouse and massacring most of the agents present, critically endangering the organization yet again.
    • Generally, each season brings a new villainous Dark Action Girl, for whom Cute But Psycho is optional:
    • Most seasons involve an invasion of a supposedly-secret base. This is Lampshaded in "Broken Promises" when Fitz and Coulson say it seems to happen "at least once a year."
  • Once Done, Never Forgotten: As demonstrated in "Nothing Personal" and "One Door Closes", HYDRA is having a hard time living down its Nazi origins despite the fact that its original leader, the Red Skull, was never loyal to the Führer, and most of the modern HYDRA are just members of S.H.I.E.L.D. who had fascist leanings. It doesn't help that one of its leaders following the Red Skull's demise was also a member of the Nazi party prior to HYDRA's establishment and served in that position until 2014. Making matters weirder, it turns out HYDRA were never a Nazi off-shoot to begin with, and were instead a much older organisation that were using the Nazis for their own purposes.
  • One-Man Army:
    • Both Ward and May are elite agents that can defeat numerous opponents singlehandedly. They come to blows with each other in "Yes Men", and again in the season finale.
    • Bobbi shows off this ability in her first appearance by wiping out HYDRA's security team.
    • Even by the time she gets her powers, Daisy qualifies as this. Any doubts can be directed to the HYDRA team she wipes the floor with in "The Dirty Half Dozen". Justified, considering she was trained by May.
  • One-Steve Limit: In terms of nicknames, at least. Season 1 had a one-shot S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Mack, the trucker agent, while Season 2 introduces recurring character Alfonso 'Mack' Mackenzie. Mackenzie is from the comics, but he's generally called Al in them.
  • One-Word Title: "Pilot", "0-8-4", "FZZT", "Repairs", "Seeds", "T.R.A.C.K.S.", "T.A.H.I.T.I.", "Providence", "Ragtag", "Shadows", "Aftershocks", "Afterlife", "Melinda", "Scars", "SOS", "Closure", "Maveth", "Watchdogs", "Spacetime", "Emancipation", "Absolution", "Ascension", "Uprising", "Lockup", "BOOM", "Orientation", "Rewind", "Principia", "Inescapable", "Toldja", and "Leap".
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Skye is a name she gave herself, and she doesn't use her legal name. It's finally revealed in "The Only Light In The Darkness": Mary Sue Poots. No wonder she stopped using it. "What They Become" reveals that the name her parents gave her is Daisy. As of the start of the third season, she goes by "Daisy," which Coulson has trouble remembering sometimes.
    • Antonie Triplett is referred as Trip by his teammates.
    • Alphonso Mackenzie is referred as Mack by his teammmates. His nickname with his family is Alfie.
    • In Season 6, Sarge is only known as such. It's revealed later in the season that he actually doesn't know what his real name is, and he only has memory imprints of a time before his war on Izel but no concrete memories, which he attributes to Izel stealing them after killing his family. Izel reveals the next episode that Sarge's real name is "Pachakutiq" and that he is an incorporeal entity posessing a copy of Coulson's body created when Coulson was exposed to uncontained Monolith energy, which made him an in-universe Composite Character but he's still referred to as Sarge for the rest of the season. He's also called a few names along the lines of fake Coulson for the early episodes of the season before S.H.I.E.L.D. learns his real name.
  • Only Mostly Dead: Coulson explains that he (just barely) survived Loki's attack in The Avengers. At least, that's what he was told, instead of the traumatizing reality.
    • Sarge gets shot, several times, fatally, in The Stinger of "Collision Course (Part Two)." Not that this keeps him down for long, since he's actually immortal and invulnerable barring any wounds or bisections from his magic sword. Seems to be a recurring theme with the characters on this show that have Phil Coulson's face.
  • Only One Name: A number of major recurring characters are only known by a single name, including Raina, Gordon, and Jiaying. Interestingly, all three of these characters are killed in the season 2 finale.
    • This is especially the case with non-human characters such as Kasius, Sinara, Faulnak, Taryan, Qovas, AIDA, Hive.
  • Order Reborn: A work in progress, after the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Starting from the first season finale, Nick Fury charges Director Coulson and his team with rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D. from the ground up. By the time of season 4 it's on the verge of becoming an official legal entity again under the supervision of the U.N.
    • "The Real Deal" sends Deke out into the world to gather supplies for S.H.I.E.L.D., and along the way he picks up more than a couple surviving S.H.I.E.L.D. agents including Deathlok who went underground after the events of Season 4 effectively destroyed S.H.I.E.L.D.. It gets cemented in "The End" when S.H.I.E.L.D. saves the citizens of Chicago from Graviton!Talbot's rampage.
  • Out-Gambitted: Happens to Raina when she tries to blackmail Coulson by threatening to blow Simmons' cover as a mole within HYDRA if he didn't turn over Skye. What Raina didn't know is that Coulson had another agent within HYDRA, Bobbi Morse, whose explicit job was to protect Simmons should she need it.
  • Outside-Context Problem: While this is a version of the Marvel Universe and magic and the supernatural were bound to show up, members of SHIELD haven't really encountered anything truly supernatural (except for the Asgardians, who are more like Magitek). Season 4 introduces them to both the Hero and Villain sides of this trope.
    • Once Robbie Reyes shows up as Ghost Rider and reveals to Quake his flaming skull, the look on Daisy's face makes it clear that she knows she's not dealing with anything normal (even for the MCU). Word of God states that Robbie's abilities are supernatural and there is something inhabiting him as a host rather than him being Inhuman like her.
    • On the other hand, the first problem SHIELD encounters in Season 4 is a group of malevolent ghosts. While Fitz-Simmons don't outright reject the possibility of magic being involved, they are somewhat dismissive of it as their job is to focus on science. To a certain extent, they are correct in that they're not traditional rise-from-the-grave ghosts but were people who were phase-shifted to the point where they turn into ghostlike entities.
  • Overt Operative: For a top secret organization, our heroes sure have a lot of S.H.I.E.L.D. logos and big black eagle emblems on their vehicles. There is even a S.H.I.E.L.D. SUV decked out with police equipment (flashers and ram bar). In "The Asset", S.H.I.E.L.D. is described as an international agency along with the United States and Europe, so in the MCU, they may be the equivalent to Interpol. The logos disappear after the events of "Turn, Turn, Turn", as the agency goes underground again.
  • Over-the-Top Secret:
    • S.H.I.E.L.D. does this discretely, basically saying "This is classified Level X". The highest level clearance on the team is Level 8 (Coulson), though the classification levels as a whole appear to go up to 10 (Director Fury's Eye Only). Above that there are things like the Guest House and Fury's secret bases, which are so secret they simply don't have any official existence anywhere in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files.
    • By season 2, S.H.I.E.L.D. has transitioned to a more traditional "need to know" secrets structure. When explaining this, Coulson mutters that the levels were stupid anyway.
    • In season 4, under the new Director and on the cusp of becoming official again, classification levels have returned. But this time, the schema is based on colors and called the Spectrum of Security, so no one feels bad about someone having a higher number. The silliness of this is repeatedly lampshaded.

    P 
  • Parental Abandonment:
    • Skye's parents disappeared when she was a kid, and she's been searching for them ever since, dead-ending with a redacted S.H.I.E.L.D. file. The unredacted version of the file reveals that her parents, and everyone else in their community, was killed by an unknown group looking for her. Later in "Ragtag" it turns out that her parents were looking for her. Unfortunately the community that was wiped out and the S.H.I.E.L.D. team that investigated were protecting Skye from them, as it turns out they were the unknown group who went on a rampage searching for her.
    • Apparently Coulson's father died when he was a child (implied to be in front of him), and his mother died years later. Raina calls the former his "defining moment."
    • Fitz mentions a couple of times that his mum raised him alone.
    • Deke mentions that his mother was killed by the Kree, which forced his father to carry up the cause she was a part of. It wasn't long before the man disappeared as well.
  • Parental Substitute: Coulson is this to Skye; emotional support, guidance, discipline...no wonder she refers to an argument between him and May as "Mom and Dad fighting".
    • May also serves as this to Daisy.
    • Coulson and Radcliffe also serve as this to Fitz throughout the show, though the latter ends up becoming a Broken Pedestal to him later in the series.
    • John Garrett served as this to a young Grant Ward following the boy being placed in prison for arson Sadly, Garrett was the more Abusive Parent who molded Ward into a ruthless Hydra agent within SHIELD
  • The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The verbal pass phrase to disengage Skye's Walking Techbane bracelet is "disengage bracelet."
    Skye: Seriously?
    Coulson: I thought you'd like that.
    • And taken quite literally in Season 7, where the password to the speakeasy-turned-S.H.I.E.L.D safehouse, regardless of historical setting is, in fact, Swordfish.
  • Password Slot Machine: The HYDRA activation signal in "Turn, Turn, Turn".
  • Pet the Dog: Literally, during Ward's "origin story" flashback in "Ragtag". Ward can't bring himself to kill the dog who has been his hunting companion for five years, at Garrett's behest. However, he (or Garrett) then shoot the dog from farther away.
  • Placebo Eureka Moment: Coulson walks in on May doing Tai-Chi in "The Hub" to discuss whether he should keep trusting the system, or question it like Skye does. He eventually decides to agree with her and keep trusting the system, even though May doesn't say a single word during the scene.
  • Planet Baron: The planet Kitson is ruled by the Kitson family. The first Mister Kitson discovered the planet and named it after himself, while his son and later his grandson succeeded him as the rulers of the planet.
  • Platonic Life-Partners: A good number of characters have this dynamic to different effects.
    • Fitz-Simmons are introduced as this; two best friends so close they are referred to as Fitz-Simmons but are just friends. Then Fitz gradually becomes romantically attracted to Simmons over the course of Season 1. It culminates in the stinger for season 2's finale where he asks her out on a date. By the end of season 3 they are a couple and no longer qualify for this trope.
    • Coulson and May had hints of some kind of history and seem to regularly play couples when going on ops together, but going by Coulson's Bluff the Imposter moment, it appears they've never been anything but close friends.
    • Mack and Bobbi also seem to have a really close friendship, coming off as Like Brother and Sister, which she even lampshades.
  • Plot Archaeology: Gravitonium, a gravity-manipulating plot device first set up in the first season, doesn't appear again until Season 5, after which it becomes pivotal to the main conflict of that season.
  • Poisoned Drink Drop: When Octavian Bloom arranges the assassination of the other HYDRA leaders in "Aftershocks", he has one of his henchmen put a poison based on the Obelisk in the Baroness's drink at the restaurant. After drinking it, she starts coughing and drops her glass, which can be heard breaking on the floor, and then her face turns to stone.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Both Phil Coulson and Victoria Hand thought that the other was a traitor to S.H.I.E.L.D., and acted in consequence. Although there were traitors among them, neither of them was one.
    • Season 2 with the Real SHIELD. Instead of just meeting with Coulson to discuss their concerns about how he was running SHIELD, they planted sleeper agents in his ranks to spy on him. Eventually, their inability to communicate properly leads into a war between the Inhumans.
    • Season 5: The team are so focused on their own agendas, it ends up setting up situations that are pushing them closer to the Bad Future they witnessed in the first half of the season.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name: Used as a gag in the pilot; we only learn the name "Fitz-Simmons" actually refers to two people after it's been used a few times. Used consistently since, since they're The Dividual. invoked
  • Power at a Price: There are many examples in the series of characters trying to acquire power and finding out that they got more than they bargained for.
    • For the Inhumans, there is usually a cost for going through the Terrigen Mist and getting their powers.
      • Raina has the most drastic change after going through the mist. Her Inhuman body sprouts thorns everywhere, leaving her in constant pain From her description of her insides feeling "like gravel", it's possible she has quills on the inside. After treatment from the Inhumans in Afterlife, she discovers that she now has the ability to see into the future.
      • Daisy gains the ability to manipulate the vibrations of the frequencies all around her, creating shockwaves. Unfortunately, using these powers too much or without the proper equipment will cause her bones to fracture from the stress. This was also the case for Nathaniel when he harvested her powers for himself.
      • Jiaying initially appeared to have the Inhuman ability to remain the same age, which is why Whitehall was eager to discover the secret of her abilities. Cal later reveals that rather than being a biological Fountain of Youth, Jiaying's Inhuman ability is Life Energy-type Vampiric Draining. Because of this, the elders willingly allowed her to take their life energy to allow her to live longer and continue the traditions of the Inhumans in Afterlife. Cal told Coulson that Jiaying would cry and beg everytime for the elders not make such a sacrifice for her, but followed through it for the good of her people.
      • Gordon gained the ability to teleport anywhere he wanted, but his Inhuman transformation caused the loss of his eyes, which was replaced with smoothed out skin. This would cause him to become extremely disoriented after the change, constantly teleporting in and out due to being unable to see where he is going. Somewhat averted when he meets the SHIELD team, which he states that he can indeed see, just not the way normal people do.
      • Yo-Yo has super speed, but has a restriction of only having to snap back to where she runs from, making her vulnerable in certain instances.
    • It's clear that Cal's unstable mental state is a result of the formula that gave him super strength.
    • Robbie Reyes, the new Ghost Rider, wanted to save his brother and have to power to punish his attackers. Needless to say, he got what he wanted.
    • The Darkhold, one of the MCU's book's of eldritch lore, is an interesting take on this trope. While the book doesn't demand anything from the reader, there is no limit to how much information can be gained. Suffice it to say, it's pretty obvious that Go Mad from the Revelation is one of the usual consiquences of reading a book with all of the universe's secrets. Radcliffe even says that "if the internet is a garden hose, this book is Niagara falls" about how much knowledge comes out of the Darkhold.
    • Gravitonium, if infused with a human being, will grant that person gravitational powers and the ability to absorb both more Gravitonium and people. However, it will also cause a marked, immediate deterioration in their mental state, especially when it has already absorbed people and if the person infused with it was mentally unstable to begin with.
      • After being infused with 7% of it, Hydra agent Ruby Hale could not handle the voices of Quinn and Hall arguing in the Gravitonium, causing her to go mad with grief and accidentally killing Werner von Strucker.
      • Carl Creel, easily the most stable of the three known to have been infused, eventually managed to resist the voices after his partial infusion; however, this was after attempting to kill Phil Coulson at Hall's urging, and he ended up hospitalized from attempting to smash his own head in to free Hall and Quinn.
      • Glenn Talbot, though seeming to gain control of the voices due to his military background, quickly developed a messiah complex that turned him into an unhinged narcissist and led him to nearly destroy the Earth he believed he was protecting.
  • Power Perversion Potential: Skye points out that Creel's absorption abilities could be pretty kinky in the bedroom.
  • Preserve Your Gays: Twofer Token Minority (gay latinx) Joey "Melty Joe" Gutierrez, whose death has been teased on at least two occasions but has been avoided both times.
  • Prosthetic Limb Reveal: Used in-universe when Coulson and Hunter are captured by Rosalind and ATCU agents. Coulson is handcuffed to the seat in the subway and when he decides it's time to leave, he pops off his artificial hand to get out of the handcuff, catching his captors by surprise.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: In the episode "T.A.H.I.T.I", two guards are killed and a facility housing a potential source of a Healing Potion is destroyed in the team's effort to save Skye. The loss is considered unfortunate by Team Coulson, but the fact that they broke into a secure facility they had no jurisdiction over, prepared to do whatever it took to save their teammate, is washed over. The narrative treats it as them doing what had to be done to save a teammate. Arc Villain Garrett kills one without remorse and after a gun fight Big Good Coulson finds the other mortally wounded and tells him he'll get medical assistance.
  • Punny Name: In the third episode we meet Agent Mack, who drives a semi-trailer for S.H.I.E.L.D..
    • General Hale being a Hydra agent. Daisy even lampshades on it.
      Daisy: Hale is Hydra. "Hale Hydra."
  • Pure Energy: The 0-8-4 in the second episode fires a beam of it that can blast through 50 tons of solid steel.
  • Purple Is Powerful: In "Ragtag", Raina combines the Centipede serum with the reverse-engineered sample of GH-325. The resulting fluid glows a vivid purple colour.
  • Put on a Bus:
    • The Rising Tide hacker/activist group (and Skye's connections to it) looks like an important plot element at the beginning of the story, but it is gradually phased out. After a few episodes it is occasionally mentioned when relevant.
    • Simmons is more complicated. Fitz believes she's still around because he's hallucinating her.
    • Hunter and Bobbi willingly leave SHIELD after a mission to stop a Russian coup put the confidential of SHIELD at risk.
    • Robbie/Ghost Rider was literally sent to hell after his arc ended. The Bus Came Back, however, in the season finale.
  • Putting on the Reich: The HYDRA salute makes its return... and is promptly mocked as making the user look like a West Texas cheerleader.
  • Psychic Powers: A running gag is that psychic powers don't exist. note  In Episode 16, Coulson finally says that meeting an Asgardian obviously gifted with psychic powers opened up his mind on the topic.
    • Someone can fight crowds and detect hidden objects with their eyes closed? Telepathy! X-ray vision.
    • Objects move on their own around this particular person? Telekinesis! A teleporting stalker is responsible.
    • Only Skye considers the possibility that "The Clairvoyant" might indeed be clairvoyant. He's a high-level S.H.I.E.L.D. agent with access to psych evaluations.
    • Jiayang, despite living in a community with all kinds of super powers, is skeptical when Gordon tells her that Raina is a precog. Yes, even the Inhuman don't readily believe in psychic powers.

    R 
  • Race Lift: Alphonso "Al" MacKenzie, a white Texan in the comics, joins the cast in Season Two played by Henry Simmons note .
    • Agent 33, a white blonde in the comics, is played by the half-Sri Lankan, half-Czech Maya Stojan.
    • The biggest example comes in Season 2 when we find out that Skye, who is half-Chinese, is the show's version of Daisy Johnson.
  • Radar Is Useless: During the last five episodes of Season One, the characters are still able to travel around in the 'Bus' and the Jump-Jet, including, in the former's case, touching down at an LA airport, despite the fact that HYDRA's schemes have been revealed, with the U.S. military and its allies hunting down any remnants of SHIELD. What's more bizarre is that this explicitly becomes a plot point in Season Two, with Team Coulson having to steal a Quinjet as they can't use the Bus or other non-cloaked aircraft without detection.
  • Radiation-Induced Superpowers: It's suggested that Scorch gained his pyrokinetic abilities thanks to a nuclear plant that caught fire near his house.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Ward is an excellent operative but has No Social Skills (and Coulson comments that he's surprised he's not worse with his background), May has issues that make her dead-set against going back into field work with very likely a case of PTSD thrown in, Skye's a conspiracy theorist who doesn't trust S.H.I.E.L.D. at all, Fitz and Simmons are both brilliant, but are also quirky and have no field experience and Coulson himself is a previously fake-dead (later revealed to be dead-dead and revived with false memories) field agent. Though it's never the subject of a Title Drop, Episode 21 is entitled "Ragtag", presumably an allusion to this phrase.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot:
    • Ian Quinn was confirmed captured by the Gravitonium in “Inside Voices” thanks to his actor retiring.
    • Bobbi and Hunter leaving SHIELD to prevent the organization's presence from being known to the world was due to the actors having to get ready to film the pilot for their potential spin-off series that never came to be.
    • Fitz not being with the team for a majority of Season 7 is due to his actor being busy with other projects at the time.
  • A Real Man Is a Killer: Deconstructed and ultimately subverted with Ward. He embodies a lot of popular ideas of how a "real man" looks and behaves: he's conventionally attractive, has exceptional fighting skills, and doesn't let emotions get in the way of his mission. He can also kill without hesitation or remorse, but this is never presented as a positive thing and earns him a What the Hell, Hero? when he shoots the decoy Clairvoyant. As the series goes on, it becomes clear that Ward has spent so much time following Garret's orders that he has no idea how to think for himself. Skye contrasts him against Fitz, whose compassion and willingness to believe in the good of others makes him more of a man than Ward could ever be.
  • Reality Has No Subtitles: Initially, whenever there's a dialogue in a foreign language — usually when Ward is undercover — there aren't subtitles. This isn't always the case, and sometimes said aversions are Played for Laughs, such as Coulson's rusty Russian being accurately subtitled to demonstrate just how bad it is, and Hunter's estuary dialect being so thick that subtitles are required.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic:
    • Some fans have questioned the authenticity of Fitz and/or Simmons's accents, despite their accents (Scottish and English respectively) being the actors' own natural accents.
    • Skye got a lot of criticism in the first few episodes for the fact she was recruited off the street after trying to cyber attack S.H.I.E.L.D.; in real life, it's not uncommon for intelligence and/or law enforcement agencies to recruit rogue assets to their own side if they prove to be useful, particularly computer hackers.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure:
    • Coulson and May, the team leaders, have yet to give an arbitrary or unneccesary order (although some have come off that way before all the facts were known). Ward, Skye's training officer, generally went of his way to be reasonable despite her deliberate provocations. All three looked even better when we had Obstructive Bureaucrat Victoria Hand for comparison purposes.
    • General Talbot. When first introduced, he seemed like a General Ross type of character, but became less and less antagonistic and even went as far as to ask for S.H.I.E.L.D's help. Basically, once he is convinced that there is a difference between S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra he is a lot more reasonable. Near the end of season 4, he actively tried to persuade Coulson to come to a top-level meeting to plead his case for S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • Reassigned to Antarctica: "T.R.A.C.K.S." has Coulson threatening Ward with duty in Alaska, guarding The Abomination's holding cell.
  • Reckless Gun Usage:
    • In "Eye-Spy". Skye accidentally ejects the magazine on her Smith and Wesson 910 while looking for the safety catch.
    • In "Yes Men", Fitz when showing the improved Night-Night Gunsnote  to May and Ward, he inadvertently points one at May, who quickly grabs it out of his hands. May be a gray area between this trope and Artistic License – Gun Safety, as though Fitz is a formally trained member of S.H.I.E.L.D., he is not a field agent.
  • Recruited from the Gutter: One of the Clairvoyant's agents grew up in an abusive family and was facing prison time when the Clairvoyant recruited him and gave him purpose. The result is that he has strong personal loyalty to the Clairvoyant, saying at one point that he owes the Clairvoyant "everything".
  • Red Skies Crossover:
    • "The Well" was hyped as a tie-in to the then-recently released Thor: The Dark World. While it does deal with Norse Mythology and Asgardians extensively, and the team does participate in a cleanup effort after the results of the previous film's climactic battle, most of the action takes place in Spain and Ireland, and the events of the movie itself are barely mentioned in passing after the opening scenes.
    • Ironically inverted in the next episode, "Repairs", where a direct connection is made between that episode's plot and Dark World, yet received no advertising as such.
    • "Yes Men" is a direct result of Dark World, as it was the Dark Elf attack that facilitated Lorelei's escape. It was mainly advertised as "Guest Starring Lady Sif!"
    • "Turn, Turn, Turn" turned out to be much more closely associated with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, to the point where the cast and producers strongly recommended going to see the movie before watching the episode.
    • The Dirty Half Dozen and Scars take place immediately before and after the film Avengers: Age of Ultron. The former has Coulson retrieve data from Hydra and ends with him saying it's time to call in The Avengers. The latter discusses how Coulson's secret project made its debut in that film and the actions of Tony Stark in the film leads to decisions made in how to handle the Inhumans
  • Relative Button:
    • Raina uses threats against Mike Peterson's son to get to him. After being captured by the Centipede group, Mike is forced to work for the evil organization when his son is captured by the Clairvoyant.
    • Jiaying: She was greatly concerned that her daughter was with SHIELD, who she believed to have been the ones who subjected her to unspeakable torture. She likewise is terrified when Nathaniel manipulates Kora to turn against her and the comments from Li about putting Kora down.
  • Reluctant Warrior: The Norse Mythology expert in "The Well". He's an Asgardian who grew tired of his life as a warrior and settled into becoming a pacifist professor.
  • Rescue Equipment Attack: During the Remoraths' attack on the Lighthouse in the episode "Option Two", Deke Shaw uses a fire extinguisher to spray a Remorath that was chasing Fitz at one point.
  • Restraining Bolt: Miles and Skye are fitted with special bracelets that will allow S.H.I.E.L.D. to keep tabs on them, impair their ability to use electronic devices, and inflict other punishments as needed.
  • Ret-Canon: This series decided to make Donnie Gill (known as "Blizzard" in the comics) a genuine superhuman with cryokinesis), as opposed to his comic book counterpart, whom used a suit he wears. In Infinity and Inhumanity, he was revealed to be an Inhuman. Due to production time, the change actually happened in the comics before Donnie even debuted on TV.
  • Retool:
    • The "Uprising" Arc near the end of the first season could be seen as this. The show dives more involved into the Centipede Group as a whole, but the show itself was given a "game changing" slogan for "Turn, Turn, Turn" upon the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. News reports even use the word retool to describe the show after the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, cementing the fact the show went from standard cases of the week with some Myth Arc about Coulson's death and rebirth to full on action movie style episodes.
    • Since season 2 is dealing with rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D., they appear to be building a larger Ensemble Cast as opposed to the small close knit team of season 1.
    • Season 4 seems to be going with a new format for the show—having a season of 3 multi-episode story arcs with overarching plot threads connecting the individual arcs together.
    • Season 5, is the biggest one so far. The entire team (minus Fitz) are sent into a Bad Future where the Earth is destroyed and the remains of humanity eke out a miserable existence on a dystopian space-station where they are slaves to the Kree.
  • Retcon:
    • Regarding the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization itself. In Iron Man, Coulson talks about the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division as a fairly new and mostly unknown organization, even stating that they were "working on" finding a better name. It isn't until the end of the movie that they suddenly realize their initials spelt "shield" and could be referred to as such. In the series, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been around since just after World War II, and Ward even implies the only reason for the cumbersome name was that "someone really wanted our initials to spell 'Shield'."
    • A minor one: in a deleted scene from "Seeds", Simmons says that Fitz is twenty-three days older than her; but glimpses of their ID badges show their actors' birthdays, making Simmons three months older than Fitz, something that's later confirmed in the tie-in comics. note 
  • Retractable Weapon: Lady Sif's sword can shrink when she doesn't need it. It is later accidentally Bifurcated.
  • Reusable Lighter Toss: In season 3 episode 4 one is left behind in a pool of gas to blow up a building.
  • Reverse Relationship Reveal: the parents of Skye. Her father seems to be a monster, and her mother seems to be lovely. As it turns out, she is a genocidial leader, willing to kill humans just to keep the inhumans secret, and he's just doing what she tells him to protect Skye).
  • Riddle for the Ages: Two regarding the Chronicons. First, they are an entire race of robots that are incredibly long lived and originally act as expies of the Watchers. They are entirely synthetic and seem to have always been. So, who built them? Relately, they are not merely "Chronicons" but insist they are "Sentient Chronicons". We are never told or hinted at what this really means. For example, what is a "Non-Sentient Chronicon"?
  • Right Behind Me: Happens to Ward when talking about Mike.
  • Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Given the show largely focuses on fleshing out the Marvel Cinematic Universe outside of the films, they make use of villains from the comics who wouldn't stand a chance making it to film.
    • Season 1 used Franklin Hall/Graviton (an Avengers villain), Donnie Gill/Blizzard (an Iron Man villain), and Glenn Talbot (a Hulk villain) as enemies of the agents.
    • Season 2 also introduces the Absorbing Man (A Hulk and Thor villain) and Marcus Scarlotti, who in the comics was the original Whiplash (and a Justified Example, given that the MCU focuses on a Tony Stark's modern power setnote ). The season also introduces Calvin Johnson/Mister Hyde. Despite being the father of Quake in the comics, he started out as a villain to Thor and the Hulk before becoming a villain of the week to multiple heroes.
    • Season 3 introduced Lash, who was a villain for the Inhuman Royal Family in the comics.
    • Season 4 introduces the character Eli Morrow, though this is due to the show bringing in the Robbie Reyes iteration of Ghost Rider.
  • Room Full of Crazy: Coulson, Garret and all the people that received the alien serum have an insane compulsion to carve weird symbols anywhere, such as in walls.
    • Subverted in "Rewind". By the end of Fitz's six-month stay in government blacksite Blue Raven Ridge, the walls of his cell are covered with writing, but all of it is neat, legible, and well-organized, reflecting his methodical and scientific mind as he works to piece together what happened to the rest of the team during his two-minute blackout.
  • Running Gag:
    • Fitz's awkwardness and apparent gift for everything he says that isn't scientific being heavily flavored with That Came Out Wrong. There's also his obsession with trained monkeys.
    • There's no such thing as psychic powers... or is there?
    • Fitz being hit in the head and knocked out. Acknowledged in "Yes Men", when after he gets knocked out for the fourth time, Simmons feels sorry for him and says that he's always getting hit in the head. Of course, this is a long-running Joss Whedon gag, and the people from the UK suffer from it the most.
    • Simmons's bad acting and inability to lie, and her unerring ability to unnerve or insult people when she's trying to be reassuring, or even just pay them a compliment.
    • Fitz frequently complains of being hungry, but almost never gets to eat, even if the food's right there.
    • Simmons is obviously attracted to well-built black men, which leaves Fitz annoyed but also occasionally intrigued.
    • Skye's attempts to imitate Fitz-Simmons' accents are always stunningly bad, sounding more like drunken attempts at sounding Australian and Cockney, respectively. Though she has yet to try to imitate Hunter, she mistakenly tries to insult him by comparing him to a character from Trainspotting, suggesting she can't even hear the differences between UK and Commonwealth accents.
    • Hunter spends a lot of time talking about his disdain for his ex-wife, and when said ex-wife shows up, spends just as much time bickering with her as he does ranting about her (much to the amusement, and annoyance, of the other characters).
    • What is it with the many Koenig identical brothers and their obsession with lanyards?
    • Everyone thinking that Robbie is an Inhuman.
    • Deke's obsession with lemons.
    • Mack's hatred towards robots.
    • Everyone calling Daisy "Quake", to which she says she never came up with the name.

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