Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes / Tropes L to P

Tropes A to E | Tropes F to K | Tropes L to P | Tropes Q to V | Tropes W to Z

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The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes provides examples of the following tropes:

L

• Lampshade Hanging:
  • In "Masters of Evil":
    Hawkeye: You know, I don't think I want to be part of a team that I have to end up saving every week.
  • He repeated this in "Hail, Hydra".
    Hawkeye: Don't worry, I'm here to save the world... again.
• Large Ham: Numerous characters, including Man-Ape, Graviton, Vector, and Thor, natch.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:The bonus interviews on the DVDs containing the first half of the first season consist of interviews revealing events from the second season. In the process, the interviewees also spoil events from the first season's episodes not included on those DVDs, such as Carol Danvers getting superpowers.
  • That event also becomes spoiled in the trailer included on the Thor Blu-Ray, which contained several scenes of Ms. Marvel fighting alongside the Avengers.
  • A group shot in the trailer for the second season revealed that Hank Pym left the team at the end of the first season.
• Left Hanging: The showrunners did the best they could with the time they had left to wrap up as many arcs as they could, but the fact remains that at the end of the series that the Surtur Arc was left unfinished, as was the Hank Pym situation.
• Leitmotif: Captain America has a heroic and patriotic sounding one whenever he does something awesome.
  • Black Panther has one, for when he's seen skulking about.
  • Black Widow and Wasp each have one as well.
• Legacy Character: Scott Lang becomes the new Ant-Man after Pym abandons the identity. Hank later returns under the new identity of Yellowjacket.
• Legion of Doom: The Masters of Evil.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Iron Fist and Luke Cage refuse to let anyone know about the time Scott Lang beat both of them in a fight.
• Lighter and Softer: The show is this compared to its predecessor Wolverine and the X-Men (2009) which, according to the producers, takes place in the same continuity, being far more optimistic and light-hearted (even when taking its darker moments into account).
• Lima Syndrome: Deliberately invoked by Mockingbird, who charms the HYDRA terrorists who have captured her by being friendly and cheerful. Eventually, she asks a sympathetic guard to loosen her chafing handcuffs just a little; after all, she's not going anywhere... It seems to work, but then they are interrupted by the Reaper, who succinctly instructs him to stay put, and her to shut up.
• Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard: Or in this case, trapping Tony Stark on a world inhabited by dwarves. They're your typical Norse-derived dwarves with all kinds of equipment for forging weapons and armor.
  • Defendable in that as far as the episode shows, the villains didn't intend to trap the heroes on other worlds (rather, it happened because of the Avengers attempts to interfere). That Stark ended up on Nidavellir wasn't the Masters of Evil's fault.
• Lower-Deck Episode: "To Steal an Ant-Man" doesn't feature any of the Avengers except for Wasp, who only gets about three minutes of screentime, and Hank Pym, who had quit the team by this point anyway. While Hank does get some more Character Development, the episode sometimes seems to skew the focus more on Iron Fist, Luke Cage, and/or Ant-Man II (who made their first appearances here).
  • "New Avengers" provides an even straighter example of this.
• Looks Like Orlok: A horror movie watched by The Wasp features a very Orlokian looking vampire.
• Luxury Prison Suite: While it appears every inmate at the Big House is afforded at least one small item to keep them occupied, the Grey Gargoyle's cell has a vanity mirror, a tea set, and wallpaper!
• Leeroy Jenkins: A Skrull disguised as Captain America falls into this category. As mentioned on multiple occasions through the course of this show, the Skrulls were at war with the Kree. On "Welcome to the Kree Empire", the earth was invaded by the Kree for the first time. The Avengers confront Ronan the Accuser, accompanied by Marvel. Marvel was trying to have the Avengers stand down, believing humanity had a better chance of surviving if they don’t resist. Without warning, the Skrull disguised as Captain America hurls his shield at Ronan shouting, "Avengers, attack!"

M

• Magical Security Cam: Played straight on a number of occasions, such as the news report of the Avengers fighting the dough monster at the end of "Living Legend", but notably subverted in "Infiltration", where Nick Fury reviews footage of Hulk's capture by the Hulkbusters in Nightmare In Red, all the camera footage are from the perspective of the Hulkbusters soldiers present, and even camera angle changes are explained as footage from different soldiers.
• Magic Pants: Done obviously with the Hulk, however in the "Gamma World" two-parter episode when Wasp turns into a literal wasp, her outfit is torn and shredded, but the fabric covering her lady parts are still intact.
  • After Hulk changes back into Bruce Banner he has to adjust his pants because they no longer fit him.
  • Hulk re-enters the atmosphere after Ultron blasts him into space, and his pants survive.
  • Subverted in the second season when Iron Man gives him some new stretchy pants, but Hulk eventually switches them back for his old pants.
• MacGuffin Melee: "Hail Hydra" had this between The Avengers, Hydra, AIM, and SHIELD for the Cosmic Cube.
• Magic Versus Science: Tony and Thor butt heads a lot with neither being able to completely understand the side the other has. They do eventually develop a mutal respect for the other's abilities, to the point Thor starts to feel comfortable around and using technology. Likewise, Tony winds up working with dwarves to build a magical suit of armor at one point.
• Male Gaze: From Maria Hill, Black Widow, and Ms. Marvel. there is no shortage of shots of the female characters walking from behind and usually with a belt positioned to highlight the motion of their hips.
• Matrix Raining Code: The Skrulls use it at their Saturn space station.
• Mind Probe: Both MODOK and Ultron utilize this.
• Mind Rape: Malekith does this to Black Panther, and Ultron's aforementioned Mind Probe certainly has shades of this.
• Mind Screw: When the Avengers get pulled into Adam Warlock's Soul Gem, and wind up in recreations of different places. The background changes nearly every time the camera angle switches.
• Mood Whiplash: When Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm visit Avengers Mansion:
  Johnny: Time to settle this once and for all.
  Clint: Is it 7:00 already?
  Ben: I brought the chips! Let's play some cards, Avengers!
• Ms. Fanservice: The series has a lot of examples of this trope.
  • Wasp is an attractive female who often receives Clothing Damage and appears in a bikini in one scene solely to show her Most Common Superpower.
  • Black Widow is an extremely beautiful, red haired woman who wears a skintight catsuit that receives highly detailed animation.
  • Ms. Marvel is a tall, beautiful blonde haired woman who wears a costume that highlights her bust, muscular yet voluptuous body, toned broad shoulders, strong muscles, toned stomach, sizable backside, and long muscular legs.
  • Maria Hill is a very attractive, fairly tall tan-skinned woman who wears a very form-fitting dark-blue standard S.H.I.E.L.D. agent uniform that accentuates her backside and legs, ripped broad shoulders, and athletic body.
  • Amora the Enchantress is a tall, extremely beautiful blonde haired woman who wears an outfit that highlights her voluptuous yet athletic body and shows off her very large bust and toned broad shoulders.
  • Madame Viper is an extremely sexy, green haired woman who wears a very form-fitting green outfit that highlights her bust, voluptuous yet muscular body, toned broad shoulders, and long legs.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: Black Panther pulls off a fairly impressive one on Man Ape. As you might expect, it crosses over with You Killed My Father.
• Mythology Gag: The series has its own page.

N

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Abomination, Kang the Conqueror, Grim Reaper, Death Adder, The Executioner, Madame Viper, Doctor Doom.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: Since the power goes out during Hawkeye's practice session in the beginning of "Hail HYDRA!", his firing an arrow at an apple through some electric discs is either this, or an Offscreen Moment of Awesome.
• Never Say "Die": Mostly averted, as death is referenced a LOT. Mooks and S.H.I.E.L.D. troops can and do die, there may occasionally be the odd cut if someone uses firearms though. Played a little straighter with MODOC but it makes sense because his operating method is different. There have been some pretty brutal deaths all the same, one of the most recent examples being MODOC forcing some AIM pilots to fly in front of a HYDRA missile to save his own hide. That same episode also included quite a few mook bodies on the streets of New York as well, so...
  • It's also pretty blatantly implied that Skrull!Madame Viper is dead. Although some characters simply reference as being "locked up"(Fury probably didn't tell them she was a Skrull), the last we see of her she's lying motionless on a slab having reverted back to her natural Skrull form (as they so often do when shuffling off this mortal coil).
• Never Trust Disney XD's Website: The auditory quotes for the bios come from the episode "Some Assembly Required". Captain America didn't appear in that episode, so one of Ant-Man's snarkier quotes (the one where he asks Tony if he considers the Avengers a "pet project" he started out of boredom) gets attributed to him instead. As a result, Cap might come off as a bigger jerk compare to how he actually is.
• No Endor Holocaust: Thor is shown vaporizing a very large part of urban New York in "Breakout, Part 2" in order to give his power a sense of scale, however the size and location the crater change in the immediately following scene so that he doesn't kill tens of thousands of people. This is most likely the animator's fault.
  • Kang's attack on the entire planet causes seemingly no lasting damage. If that's not enough, Kang's invasion is immediately followed by Malekith unleashing the Casket of Ancient Winters on Midgard, which screws up the climate on a global scale, engulfing the whole world in winter. Once again, no harm done at all.
  • A rather silly example in "Living Legend": After the Avengers defeat Doughdoy, an absolutely massive crowd appear out of nowhere to cheer for them on the Statue of Liberty... Even though just a moment ago Doughboy engulfed the entire Liberty Island, which logically would have suffocated them.
• No Gravity for You: Graviton's gimmick.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Captain America delivers a very satisfying one to his Skrull double.
  • In "This Hostage Earth", Giant Man pounds Abomination right before the villain can crush Wasp, and keeps on pounding him until Abomination is buried deep into the ground.
  • Abomination himself delivers one to Thor in "Gamma World Part 2", with help from Absorbing Man.
• No Ontological Inertia: Baron Strucker's life-sucking is instantly and completely undone if either you knock him out, or break his demonic hand right afterward.
• No Swastikas: In "Meet Captain America", we learn that World War II, in this continuity, took place between the Allies and... HYDRA.
  • Red Skull does have an Iron Cross on his uniform, however. And for that matter, he clearly wears an SS uniform.
  • Word of God says S&P gave them a stark choice: keep the guns and remove the Nazis, or keep the Nazis and have everyone firing lasers. The staff chose to keep the guns. This episode was set during World War II. Guns were involved.
  • This interview with Christopher Yost says he intended for HYDRA to serve as merely a branch of the Nazis.
  • The episode was never shown in Germany (pay and free-tv) regardless.
• Non-Indicative Name: Some episodes have the same names as comics, but not exactly the same plots. This seems most obvious for "Iron Man is Born!" (which does not retell the origin of Iron Man) and "The Man in the Ant Hill" (in which Hank Pym never goes inside an ant hill).
• Nothing Is Scarier: The Skrull ship where they torture their prisoners. Captain America was their prisoner for two months and never broke, much to his captor's shock. With the prisoners' screams being heard throughout the ship and the Skrulls having no trouble holding back, it makes you wonder what they did to Captain America.
• Not His Sled
  • Captain Mar-vell did not die of cancer. In fact, he became the new ruler of the Kree empire.
  • The Damocles base did not had a spectacular destruction as in The Kang Dynasty, it was captured and used by the good guys.
  • This must be the first time Galactus appears for the first time in a given franchise, and the Silver Surfer is completely absent.
    • This last one's probably because the assembled heroes kill the heralds they fight, and it's not murder because they're just energy constructs. The Silver Surfer is too well-known a character in his own right for that explanation to fly if he'd been present.
• Not So Above It All: After Captain America spends all of "Along Came A Spider" insisting that what people say about you doesn't matter, that the truth will eventually come clear, and that it's what you do that's important:
  Spider-Man: What I'm gonna do right now is find J. Jonah Jameson and web his mouth shut.
  Captain America: I'm okay with that.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Hulk gives the rest of the Avengers this when he quits, comparing them to Ross and SHIELD, with the difference being that the latter are honest about their fear of him.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: The show's pretty clear on not calling Thor and his people "gods," instead insisting on calling them "Asgardians" even when "god" fits in better with the dialogue (admittedly, probably demanded by the censors).
• Nuclear Mutant: Gamma Radiation here is portrayed as an instant-monster creating energy, many of the villains the Avengers face having gained their powers by exposure to it with the Cube in particular a Tailor-Made Prison made by SHEILD to contain them.

O

• Oblivious Astronomers: Justified in "Assault on 42". If nothing actually lives in the Negative Zone, why have any sensors at all monitoring the outside?
• Odd Friendship: The Hulk and the Wasp. Also, Hulk and Hawkeye. And Hawkeye and Black Panther.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • Hulk getting hurled into the realm of the frost giants only serves to piss him off.
  • Ant-Man and Wasp appear near the beginning of "The Man Who Stole Tomorrow" while dragging Blizzard to Prison 42. Wasp boasts that it was "really easy" to capture him.
  • The Hulk's and Black Panther's capture of the Red Ghost occurs offscreen during "Ultron-5".
  • Ms. Marvel beating the Griffin in "Who Do You Trust?"
  • Susan Storm getting the Baxter Building and its inhabitants back from an alternate dimension in "Secret Invasion."
  • In "Ultron Unlimited", only Captain America holds back getting captured by his robot counterpart.
  • Black Panther defeats all of Kang's ships attacking Wakanda (before the Avengers manage to hack the systems and erase all the ships from the timeline). We only know it because of a status report at The Bridge of the Damocles base.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Absorbing Man's reaction when Hulk shatters his arm.
    Hulk: Hulk smash rock, Einstein!
  • Grim Reaper's reaction when he sees the "present" Fury left on his scythe.
    • He does it again at a later date when Black Panther cuts through his scythe.
  • Mandrill wasn't very impressed when Wasp threatened him, probably because his power is mesmerizing women... cue Iron Man, and he still thinks he can come out on top with his simian strength and ingenuity. But with Thor, Ant-Man and Hulk appearing one after another, Mandrill had a whole rainbow of Oh, Crap! expressions appear on his face.
  • Wasp has a similar one to Mandrill when the Masters of Evil confront her one by one. Enchantress gets an Oh, Crap! herself when Hulk comes back from fighting Frost Giants.
  • Not to mention the look on Abomination's face right before Giant Man punts him like a football.
  • Madame Viper's a Skrull
  • Loki's face when Odin wakes up in "A Day Unlike Any Other"
  • Tony Stark after discovering Technovore wants his arc reactor.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Which makes sense, since the dwarves of Nidavellir are based on the same myths that inspired the dwarves that inspired all other dwarves in modern fantasy, and there's some carry-over as well.

P

• Parental Bonus: In "The Coming of the Hulk", a Las Vegas cop runs into a man giving out cards which sends the cards flying. Adults will recognize this as a common feature of Vegas, where men handout cards with the numbers of call girls. This is further driven home by one of the cards flying past the camera and showing a girl who seems to be topless but the naughty bits are tastefully covered by playing cards.
• Party Scattering: The first season finale begins with the Avengers each venturing to a different corner of the world to stop the Masters of Evil from opening portals to the realms of Norse mythology. After each Avenger defeats a Master of Evil, he or she closes the respective portal, but per Loki's plans, gets sent to one of seven realms in the process.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Subverted when Hawkeye tries to connect to Black Widow's remote computer to access her files. When prompted for a password, he tries everything even tangentially connected to spiders (and in a moment of wishful thinking, his own first name) but nothing works. He does guess the password eventually: "red room".
• Perma-Stubble: Bruce Banner.
• Physical God: The Asgardians.
• Pin-Pulling Teeth: Madame Viper pulls the pin out with her tongue, then the rest of her teeth. Because shut up.
• Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Nick Fury, after getting a face full of Strucker's life-draining hand.
• Poor Communication Kills: "Everything Is Wonderful" fits this trope to a T. All Tony Stark had to do was inform Simon that the latter's company was going under and Stark himself was only purchasing it to save it. Instead of doing this flat-out, he remained aloof, inattentive, unfeeling, and cold as Simon was practically weeping at his feet. Pym called him out on it, and even though Stark knew what he was doing, it still didn't drive him to run after Simon as he stormed out in a huff. And then Simon gets transformed into a being of pure energy, driven only to destroy Stark for his perceived callousness.
  • Also, from "Welcome to the Kree Empire". If only Sword was more up to date on the Kree work, and if only Ms. Marvel wasn't so aggressive. If only they had more time to talk, then all these problems might have been less difficult. The bit with Cap as a Skrull though can't be compensated for though. Once he attacked Ronan, there was really no hope of a peaceful solution.
    • Exceptthere really isn't much that could have been done for peace anyway. S.W.O.R.D. and Carol didn't really do anything wrong, the Kree showed up, threatened them, started attacking the S.W.O.R.D. HQ and then assaulted a S.H.I.E.L.D. crew on Earth. When Carol DID try to talk with Mar-Vell, Ronan attacked her. This was less a case of Poor Communication Kills and more a case of 'The Kree are assholes use to getting their way by throwing their military weight around and who have almost no concept of diplomacy'. It's doubtful things would have gone smoothly even if the Skrull Cap hadn't gotten involved.
• Post-Modern Magik:
  • While battling the Enchantress and the Executioner, Iron Man's suit is damaged, Giant Man is out, and Wasp is caught by the Enchantress. When Hulk arrives and breaks the Enchantress' concentration. Thor powers up Mjolnir's thunder magic.
    Enchantress: Your magic is nothing against mine.
    Thor: You are not my target, witch!
    Previously crippled Iron Man stands up surrounded by electricity.
    Jarvis: Armor energy reserves at 214%.
  • They continue to do this in later episodes to the extent that Tony yelling to Thor, "hit me with everything ya got!" is becoming their mutual catchphrase.
• Power Floats: When Carol Danvers wakes up from her coma, she's floating as well as glowing.
• Power-Up Letdown: Going into the final battle for the first season, almost half the team (Hawkeye, Wasp, Antman, and Iron Man) get cool new costumes, with inferred power. Of these, only Wasp's seems to change her performance at all (she goes from useless attacks to one-shotting giants, everyone else... gets this trope).
• Pragmatic Adaptation: "Operation: Galactic Storm" (and its next episode, "Live Kree or Die") features a pair of details from Operation: Galactic Storm: the wormholes next to the sun that risks its stability, the concerns of the Supreme Intelligence about the Kree being in an evolutionary dead end, unlike humanity, and its final deactivation. But the main plot of the comic book storyline was left aside: an alien holocaust is just too much for a kids show (and worse, an holocaust which is not downplayed nor inferred). And the killing of the Supreme Intelligence is only done with lasers, not with a gory execution of someone doing it a "lobotomy" from the upper side.
  • Including a butler would have been complicated: with the periodic number of villains that break their way into Avengers mansion, he would become a Distress Ball hated by fans in no time. So, Jarvis was included in the series, but turned into an AI serving Iron Man in both his armour, the mansion and Stark International. And an AI with the snarky attitude of good ol' Edwin Jarvis: only Stark could have programmed THAT kind of AI.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang: Present and accounted for along with Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics. Captain America's shield can make all kinds of different scientists cry.
• Previously on…: Each episode from the second season begins with a recap. Disney XD also shows episodes 20-26 with recaps attached, since they aired several months after episode #18^note #19 aired before #17. Strangely, these recaps often show clips out of order, and also sometimes repeat information reviewed in the actual episode (such as which Avenger got replaced by a Skrull before the second season began).
• Prolonged Prologue: The Avengers don't officially form until the end of the seventh episode. Furthermore, Captain America doesn't join until the ninth episode, Black Panther doesn't join until the eleventh, and Hawkeye doesn't join until two episodes after that, meaning that the core team of eight Avengers that make up the first (26 episode) season doesn't assemble until the end of the thirteenth episode. However, the first seven episodes feature plenty of action by the heroes working solo and do set up the season nicely, so this is a case where Tropes Are Not Bad.
• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: A Giant Mook picks a fight with Luke Cage in "To Steal an Ant-Man". Bad idea.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Baron Zemo: "DESTROY! THEM! ALL!!!"

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