Characters / NCIS: Main Characters

Main Characters

Senior Special Agent Timothy "Tim" McGee

Played By: Sean Murray (season 1-present)

Abby: I love it when you talk geek!

McGee: I love it that you love it.

A tech genius who graduated from college as a teenager. McGee was the MCRT's long-suffering probationary agent who eventually grew in confidence to become a seasoned investigator. He is also a fairly successful author who's written a series of novels based on his coworkers (to their intense displeasure). As an MIT alumni, he is often the one responsible for much of the technical work in solving cases at NCIS, but sometimes forgets others around him don't come from the same background and can't make heads or tails of technological lingo.

While a "Probie", he used to be the butt of Tony DiNozzo's every joke. Eventually, he became an official agent, then later took over Tony's status and desk as Senior Special Agent when he left to raise his daughter in Paris at the end of Season 13. McGee is currently married to Delilah Fielding, whom he met in Season 10 while in need of a good fellow computer hacker. In Season 15, he becomes the proud father of Johnny and Morgan McGee.

Following Gibbs' permanent retirement from NCIS, he became acting team leader of the MCRT until Agent Parker joined NCIS in early Season 19 and took over.

He is the longest serving fictional character on the show alongside Ducky (until his portrayer David McCallum’s death in late 2023) and Palmer, having appearing in every season since his first appearance in season 1 ^note  Although he didn't appear in every episode; he only appears in 8 episodes in season 1 and he didn't even get promoted to the main cast until season 2 , and he even appears in more episodes than Gibbs, Palmer and Ducky. ^note  McGee appears in 443 episodes so far as of the season 21 premiere (aired on February 12, 2024), while Gibbs appeared in 418 episodes before his departure in early season 19, Palmer is currently in 358 episodes as of the season 21 premiere, and Ducky in 372 before David McCallum’s death in September 2023.

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• 10-Minute Retirement: Between seasons 10 and 11 to get the case against Gibbs dismissed.
• Accidental Misnaming: Suffers from all of Tony's Mc-names and being called "Probie." The second name goes away when he becomes an official agent, unless someone reminds Tony to Poke the Poodle.
• Adrenaline Makeover: A rare, non-romantic male example. Give him some action and his hair becoming looser than its usual cut in the early seasons, and McGee barely even looks like himself as he goes from the dorky Probie Non-Action Guy to looking like an action movie star almost. This goes away as he eventually preens his hair enough to stop having it happen.
• Affectionate Nickname: He's originally addressed as "Probie" by Tony as an epithet, but it morphs into something friendlier and even somewhat affectionate as Tim gains more experience and starts standing up for himself. Tim learns to accept it when he learns that Gibbs is still called "Probie" by people who knew him from his Probie days 20 years ago, and that it eventually becomes a reminder of the mentor-mentee relationship some agents share.
• Bash Brothers: In Season 14, he and Torres were often teamed up.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He is the kindest and most polite special agent you will ever come across, but do something that pisses him off and you will regret it. He has the tech-savviness, book smarts, gun skill, and the combat skill to make the rest of your life miserable if he really wants to.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Don't let the husky size and geek-personality fool you, he is a skilled interrogator, hacker, and an excellent shot.
• Big Brother Instinct: Will do some irrational things to protect his college-age sister, some of which have jeopardized his career once.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Downplayed. He's rather normal compared to the rest of the team, but he's a still a hardcore nerd who will drop a reference or two at the drop of a hat if the situation allows for it. He's also a trained federal agent that knows when to throw down when necessary. The "bunny ears" part gradually gets more downplayed as his confidence and competence increases, but he's still plenty nerdy occasionally.
• Butt-Monkey: In early seasons, he is often made fun of by Tony.
• Calling the Old Man Out: In the episode where Tim reunites with his Glory Hound of a father, he rages at his dad for putting his job above the affections of his own family.
• Catchphrase: "On it, boss." He hates it when he ends up using this for Tony, knowing he will never let him live it down. However, with Tony's departure, it seems to be an affectionate keepsake of his friend as opposed to just another Borrowed Catchphrase.
• Character Development: Compare the sheepish, meek Stereotypical Nerd he was as a guest character in the first season, to his growth by Season 14. He may still be a proud nerd, but he earned all those levels in badass the hard way, and is much more on-the-point, effective at his job, and ascended to The Reliable One at minimum with so much more confidence.
• The Chains of Commanding: Why he chose not to become the permanent team lead after Gibbs retired, ceding the role to Parker. Ironically, this does not apply to becoming the next Director of NCIS, after he temporarily becomes Acting Director while Vance is away at a conference with Parker as his protection detail. McGee finds that he's actually very good at the job and admits that he wouldn't mind succeeding Vance one day, when the man finally retires.
• Clear My Name: In "Probie" he was charged with killing another cop.
• Cool Car: Had one in high school, much to the surprise of Tony. He shares in lamenting the car's demise when McGee told him of its fate.
• Deadpan Snarker: In later seasons. Being the butt of countless jokes from DiNozzo would do that to anyone.
• Disappeared Dad: His estranged and divorced father appears late in Season 10, then dies from cancer in season 12. He had not been a major part of Tim's life since before the show started.
• Elite School Means Elite Brain: He was educated at MIT and Johns Hopkins.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: His middle name is Farragut. This was first mentioned halfway through season 13.
• Embarrassing Nickname: He is particularly ashamed when his colleagues call him "Elf Lord" (his online gaming name). And then there are all the "McNicknames" that Tony keeps coming up with.
• Fair Cop: Sean Murray as Agent McGee would seem to be the only one to avert this, but then he lost a good amount of weight entering Season 7, and now we can include him.
• Fake Guest Star: In season 1, he has 2 real guest spots, before showing up for the last 6 episodes, he joins the main cast in season 2
• First-Name Basis: But ends up being called "Tim" a lot more as of Season 14.
• Formerly Fat: Before around Season 6, McGee is noticeably a bit rubbery in the face and slightly heavyset. Then he slims down dramatically and the excess blubber around his face goes away and the skin clings more closely to his facial musculature, making him look a lot older and wiser. This also marks his Character Development. Tony later remarks he preferred Tim more when he was fatter because he was easier to tease.
• Friend to All Children: An early mission involving The Team being bodyguards to a military woman and her family showed Kate and Tony struggling to get along with said client's children, while McGee just played ORPG with the son and things ran very smoothly (much to Tony's dismay). He also bonds fairly well with Henry, the 14-year-old who's being targeted for witnessing a drug-related stabbing in "Homefront" due to the two of them being Military Brats.
• Friends with Benefits: Surprisingly, for all the ribbing he takes from his coworkers and especially Tony that he has never gotten anybody in the sack, McGee has lost his virginity and has been seen to have had a girl sleep over at his place wearing his MIT t-shirt.
• Happily Married: Married Delilah Fielding at the end of Season 14.
• Hidden Depths: A tech head, hacker and best selling author. He also loves the outdoors and has various skills from the scouts, including tracking abilities. But the depth that highlights this best is his interrogation work; he'll flip the script from being a neurotic geek to suddenly being so precise, so stern, so cutthroat in getting the answers he wants that DiNozzo is actually incredibly eager to see it in motion.
• Honorary Uncle: To Tony's daughter, Tali. She even refers to him as "Uncle Tim" in a video recording.
• Idiot Ball:
  • When his sister showed up to his apartment obviously drugged, in a stupor saying she killed someone, and covered in blood, the seasoned investigator grabs this with a dose of Big Brother Instinct as he doesn't take her to NCIS or even the hospital. He lets her shower and by the time she does get her blood tested, the drugs had metabolized. The Director calls him out on this, hoping it would trick him into resigning.
  • Averted to some degree in that episode when in justifying his actions to Gibbs that he knows how it looks and because of that he couldn't trust anyone, even Gibbs. Gibbs accepts the apology even though he has a beef with people showing weakness by apologizing.
• In-Series Nickname: Gets a new one nearly once-per episode, almost always recived as a variant of his last name, with 'gee' being replaced by an insult or something pertaining to his personality. However, the moniker 'Elf Lord' has stuck around quite consistently, and even Gibbs has used it. It pretty much phased out (along with McNicknames) after Tony's and Gibbs's departure. When one of his McNicknames did come up in a season 20 episode, McGee smiles fondly.
• Intimate Marks: In season 1 he gets a tattoo on his butt to impress Abby. Later it's revealed that it's the word "Mom".
• I Want My Jet Pack: In S7 Ep11, McGee outs himself as a jetpack, no, rocket belt expert nerd, to the point where he has made a short film detailing their history and credited it to his authorial pseudonym. He does get to sort-of fulfill his dream by remote-controlling a prototype jetpack being used by a killer to escape, although that, pretty much, amounts to him flying a drone with a person inside.
• Last-Name Basis: Almost always referred to as "McGee".
• The Lancer: Tony's departure means that McGee is now Gibbs' Number Two.
• Like Brother and Sister: With Ziva whom he treats like a barely older twin sister, also a Big Brother Mentor to Ellie. Also Abby after both received some Character Development. He also treats Tony like an annoying older brother.
• Long-Runner Cast Turnover: After Gibbs got Put on a Bus in season 19, McGee is now the longest-serving character on the show alongside Ducky and Palmer, and he and Palmer are the only characters to appear in every season so far, although as already mentioned before, McGee has more appearances than Palmer and Ducky, the latter due to David McCallum's limited presence in the recent seasons up until his passing in 2023.
• Loser Has Your Back: Plays this role once or twice in early seasons, but he's no longer enough of a loser to pull it off.
• Military Brat: His father was an Admiral in the Navy.
• Most Writers Are Writers: He's a successful author of novels inspired by his workplace and coworkers, which he writes under the Significant Anagram "Thom E. Gemcity."
• Mr. Fixit: "Special Agent Goodwrench," season two, episode four.
• Mystery Writer Detective: McGee is a special agent, who wrote a best selling novel... that he would have preferred his coworkers never found out about. Later on, he was able to use his fame to get into a club that other undercover agents couldn't get in to.
• Name McAdjective: Tony gives him a lot of Mc-nicknames to work with.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Well, his wife Delilah certainly thinks so. At one point they have an argument in a private code developed from binary shorthand!
• Not So Above It All: After years of protesting against Tony's treatment of him, McGee's just as eager to break in Ziva and Bishop when they join the team as probies. However, he continually insists that the way he treats probies is nowhere near as bad as how Tony treated him.
• Number Two: Ever since Tony left. Symbolized by Tony calling McGee "Very Special Agent."
• Official Couple: With Delilah Fielding, who's now his wife.
• Platonic Life-Partners: He and Abby dated once early in the series, and they've had a Will They or Won't They? that ended with "won't", but they still get along fairly well. Enough for her to be his Best Woman at his wedding.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: Starting season 2. As of Season 20, his actor is now the first one named in the opening titles, due to being the most senior member of the cast after Ducky/David McCallum.
• Properly Paranoid: McGee never tells anyone where he works. He'll give out cell numbers, pages, etc, but he never mentions NCIS. Which is how he knows, when his new girlfriend shows up to pick him up after work, that she's not who she says she is. Overlaps with I Never Said It Was Poison.
• Rank Up: Upon Tony's retirement from NCIS, he becomes a Senior Special Agent and succeeds Tony as Gibbs's (and later, Parker's) Number Two. By the time of Season 20, his seniority has increased to the point that when Vance is away at a conference with Parker in Berlin, he's made Acting Director of NCIS; as the only characters that have ever taken the title are either Deputy Directors or Gibbs (who could've been the Director had he ever actually wanted the job), that implies that McGee is in serious consideration to be the next Director of NCIS if Vance ever retires.
• Real Name as an Alias: His pseudonym as a writer is just an anagram of his full name.
• Recurring Character: In season 1.
• The Reliable One: McGee is often called on by the others to help out with technical or difficult favors outside of the job, such as helping Ducky create a collage for his mentor or getting clearance for a young boy to contact his mother through MTAC.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Not his own, but he assists in Ziva's against Bodnar.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Savvy Guy to Abby's Energetic Girl.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Sensitive Guy to Tony's Manly Man. He also plays the Sensitive Guy to Torres' Manly Man.
• Significant Anagram: His pseudonym as a novelist is Thom E. Gemcity, an anagram of his full name.
• The Smart Guy: He's the main tech guy of the group whenever Abby - and later Kasie - aren't available, offering up his knowledge and experience in technology whenever the situation calls for it.
• Techno Babble: He had a serious problem with this in the earlier seasons, much to Gibbs' exasperation. It gradually died down in later seasons, and is now non-existent.
• These Hands Have Killed: McGee makes his first kill as a probationary officer, only it turns out the man he shot was an undercover cop. McGee does not take it well.
• Time-Passage Beard: After being stuck in captivity by a terrorist group for two months between Season 14 and 15, Tim's clean-shaven face became unkempt. After escaping captivity, he got a few compliments on how dignified the beard made him and decided he was keeping it as a souvenir of his experience. It also marks the completion of his character evolution from timid probie to seasoned badass.
• Took a Level in Badass: He's taken many levels over the years.
  • In terms of character, in the first three seasons, he's the fat, wet-behind-the-ears put-upon probie who bumbles around and people treat like a gullible and clumsy child. This version of him gets a deathblow late in the third season, when he demonstrates enough skill in the interrogation room that even Tony is impressed.
  • Over seasons 4-6, he gets fitter and his probie status is lifted, so he becomes a full NCIS field agent and finally starts repaying most of the ribbing he got from Tony because now they are equals and Tony can't belittle him anymore. In the 4th-season episode "Twisted Sister" he even stands up to Gibbs when his sister is suspected of murdering a seaman. A few episodes later, investigating a murder in a rural Virginia town, the rest of the team casually dismisses the local sheriff and his people as useless incompetents. McGee doesn't - and cracks the case as a result, clearing an innocent man, pointing the way to the real killer, and not-incidentally giving the local forensics tech a major and well-deserved ego boost. There's no action scenes involved, but it's badass nonetheless. It shows he has the makings of a good Team Leader himself.
  • In the sixth season episode "Caged", McGee has to solve a murder case in a women's prison on his own. Compare the phone calls he has with a car mechanic at the start and at the end of the episode.
  • Between seasons six and seven. Big time. Most exemplified in the episode "Need To Know" when he was giving the young Special Agent Dorneget tips on how he could possibly join the Major Case Squad as well as some of Gibbs' rules.^note And then Dorneget reveals he forgot his service weapon.
  • By Season 14, McGee is now the senior special agent on the team and no longer the target of anyone's insults (because Kate, Tony, and Ziva, his teasers, are no longer present). His face has gone from looking all wide-eyed and flabby to sharpened and aged with some deep furrows in his forehead and cheeks. And, as mentioned above, the beard he starts sporting during Season 15 didn't hurt, either.
• Underestimating Badassery: Occasionally; in one Season Fourteen episode, he and Torres were interrogating a perp, doing the classic Good Cop/Bad Cop. The guy assumed Torres was the bad cop, but he wasn't — McGee was. Cue twisted arm and face slammed into the table.
• Undying Loyalty: McGee has a tendency to pick up the Idiot Ball and run with it when people he's loyal to are in trouble. He's risked his job for his sister's sake, and despite being newly married to Delilah with a child on the way, left the safety of the chopper at the end of Season 14 to help Gibbs, which got him stranded in Paraguay.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Tony, behaving much like a pair of squabbling brothers at times.
• Wham Episode: Ziva is not hunting Bodnar on her own. McGee has been helping her track Bodnar's movements. The scene in which Tony finds out what they're doing is played like he caught them sleeping together.
• Will They or Won't They?: As noted above with Abby, although McGee says outright in Season 12 that they never will because he failed to pass a Secret Test of Character Abby gives to all the men she dates. And because he later ends up marrying Delilah Fielding.

Chief Medical Examiner Dr. James "Jimmy" Palmer

Played By: Brian Dietzen (season 1–present)

"Is it just me or does anyone else wonder how they get IUDs in there? (Beat) That probably sounded a lot more inappropriate than I meant."

Ducky's protégé, taking the place of Gerald Jackson after he had been injured too severely to continue work at NCIS, who also acts as a Ducky-expy to Tony's Gibbs whenever Tony is in charge of a case. He is always eager to help the team any way he can, even if his skills are more or less exclusive to the morgue. However, Jimmy's also a gawky nimrod with a spectacular knack for saying the wrong thing. He was married to a woman named Breena, until she died from Covid, and they have a daughter named Victoria. In Season 16, he becomes the Chief Medical Examiner when Ducky retires from full-time work and passes on the position to him.

He's the third longest-serving character on the show, having appearing in every season alongside McGee and Ducky (up until his portrayer David McCallum's death in 2023).

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• Action Survivor: He works out in a gym but he isn't combat proficient. Even without the lack of proficiency, he was able to hold his own against a rogue CIA agent.
• Affectionate Nickname: Because of his Lurch-like presence and incredibly gawky demeanor, Tony likes to call him the "Autopsy Gremlin".
• Ascended Fanboy: To him, Gibbs and the team are superheroes and he never makes a secret of how much he enjoys watching them work, even openly applauding them in "So It Goes."
• Brainy Brunette: He has dark hair and is very knowledgeable about the human body.
• Butt-Monkey: If there's a chance for a character to be insulted or put-upon in any given episode, there's at least a 75% chance it'll be Palmer. McGee occupies another 20%, while the remaining 5% is a wildcard usually filled by Tony.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: The drinks served at his Stag Party are all watered down, but he still gets hammered.
• Character Development: Subtle thanks to not being one of the main agents, so it's mostly side scenes and a rare focus episode, but he goes from a nervous, Innocently Insensitive guy that seemingly no one can tolerate until his Nice Guy traits shine through, to a surprisingly competent medical examiner that Ducky fully gives his position to with his worst joke habits toned down. And after Breena died of COVID, he goes through a Heroic BSoD and comes out the other side as a much wiser, firmer individual that will still crack oddball humor here and there.
• The Consigliere: It's revealed in one episode that whenever Tony is left in charge of a case, he secretly has meetings with Palmer to help point him in the right direction whenever Tony feels that he's lost on what to do next.
• Creepy Mortician: Downplayed, but working with dead bodies has given him a rather macabre sense of humor. It's probably not a coincidence that he winds up married to an actual mortician — but Breena averts the trope completely by being a bubbly blonde sweetheart.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Is very intelligent and a good assistant to Ducky, but has problems with self-confidence.
• Deadpan Snarker: While his attempts at humor usually fall flat, even Palmer gets his moments. For example, when he's brought to the cold storage of a ship at sea to examine a murder victim:
  Chief Petty Officer: Jones's body, it's gone!
  Palmer: This'll complicate the autopsy.
• Disappeared Dad: "Bears and Cubs" reveals that Palmer's dad was an abusive jerk who died when he was ten years old.
• Doting Parent: He loves his daughter Victoria with all his heart. In fact, her birth was what finally helped Jimmy stop hating his own abusive father as he spends every day with her in a conscious effort to never be like him.
• Exact Words: He uses this on Gibbs when he stopped a suspect running away by charging him with a car, pointing out that he technically stayed in the car as he was ordered.
• Failed a Spot Check: In one episode he tries for seeing if he can get an assistant, and one of them happens to be a particularly posh, British individual that is like the spitting image of a younger Ducky, right down to the cultured and elaborate sense of humor to his autopsies. Somehow, Kasie can see it as soon as the first scene she shares with the assistant, but despite her claims Jimmy never realizes it until the very end of the episode.
• Fake Guest Star: Might as well be a Trope Codifier. Dietzen was credited as a recurring guest star for the first 5 seasons and as "Also Starring" from season 6 onwards. He was even on the cover art for the Season 8 DVD and was featured in articles alongside the main cast but he wasn't promoted to the opening titles until Season 10.
• Fetish: He apparently has a thing for footwear.
• The Glasses Come Off: In Season 5, he pulls his glasses off before charging a suspect in the car he was in while the suspect was trying to escape in another car. It was a good thing he did, too, since he got a bloody nose from the incident, so it's likely he would have broken his nose if he didn't pull his glasses off.
• Happily Married: To Breena as of Season 10 and until she dies in the COVID pandemic between "1mm" and "The First Day". They later have a daughter named Victoria.
• Heroic BSoD: He gets this after Diane, Gibbs' and Fornell's ex-wife, dies in Season 12.
  Ducky: Right, on three. One, two—
  Palmer: No.
  Ducky: I beg your pardon?
  Palmer: No. I don't want to.
  Ducky: You don't want to what, Mr. Palmer?
  Palmer: I don't want to know how much her liver weighs. I don't want to catalog her scars. [Gibbs enters autopsy] Most of all, I don't want to cut open another friend. I think I've had my limit. [walks away]
  Ducky: [to Gibbs] I don't remember the moment I reached my limit, but I do remember never being the same.
  • And he gets an even worse one after Breena dies of COVID.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He trained as a medical examiner and is presumably being groomed to replace Ducky in the future (which ends up happening in Season 16), but he also demonstrates significant knowledge of criminal activity when he acts as Tony's secret consigliere.
  • The episode "Keep Going" reveals that he took and failed the ME exam twice, and passed on the third try. This means that he could be an official ME on par with Ducky outside the Navy Yard— but since he respects Team Gibbs' dynamic so much, he chose to stay.
• I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship: Throughout Season 19, Palmer and Jessica Knight have a budding friendship, but are slowly hesitant about entering into a relationship with each other out of fear for ruining this. By the season's finale, they have a Relationship Upgrade.
• Innocently Insensitive: Has a bad habit of saying the first thing to come to his mind, and this tends to really make his colleagues uncomfortable. It doesn't stop at bad jokes, there's times where he might hammer down on a subject that is incredibly sensitive at the moment to whoever is in earshot, such as obliviously saying the exact things that Bishop didn't want to hear when she was suspected of murdering the man that ran over Torres. Once he finds a blonde hair, he seems to even point at her — only to clarify he was pointing at a picture of the victim's blonde girlfriend right behind her instead.
• In-Series Nickname: The numerous Memetic Mutation 'Autopsy Gremlin' that he received from DiNozzo. But much like McGee's McNicknames, it too got phased out after Tony's departure.
• Long-Runner Cast Turnover: Palmer is the third longest serving character on the show, having also appeared in every season and, after years of being a Fake Guest Star, got promoted to the main cast in season 10. As of the season 21 premiere, he appears in 358 episodes so far.
• Loose Lips: Coupled with his chronic foot-in-mouth syndrome, Palmer is often the person to blunder a secret the fastest, sometimes without even knowing it was a secret. For instance, Palmer inadvertently clued Tony in on a private detective's name that Ziva and McGee were desperately trying to withhold from him because they knew he'd find it to be a goldmine for wisecracks and they'd never hear the end of it. Cue Palmer catching him in the office late at night and accidentally spilling the beans...
• Loved I Not Honor More: He tells his love that while he loves her more than anything, his True Companions were in trouble and he needed to go and help them, even if it meant moving the wedding up to a sooner date (within the hour) and then come back for the honeymoon. She completely understands.
• My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: His story about spending time in France features a downplayed example: He was trying to tell some French friends of his how his mother used to hunt squirrels when he was a child, but he mixed up the French word for "squirrel" with the word for "shark ("écureuil" and "requin").
  Ducky: [chuckling] "How they must have imagined your strange homeland with your shark-hunting mother."
• Nerds Are Sexy: Agent Lee thought so, and so does his wife, Breena.
• Nice Guy: Unfathomably nice, to the point that him actually disliking someone is a rare joke in and of itself to highlight that someone's really that insufferable or crossed the line.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Every episode if not more than once per episode. See the character quote above. Clearly Jimmy has never heard the adage that "closed mouths gather no feet". It usually leads straight into Digging Himself Deeper. For example, Quinn was feeling very awkward after she had a sex dream about Gibbs so he tried to comfort her by revealing that he had pretty much the same dream ("He knocks on the desk and asks 'Do you know what kind of wood this is' and things get wild!") with a bit too much enthusiasm.
• Parent with New Paramour: After Breena died during the COVID-19 epidemic, Jimmy's left to raise his daughter Victoria alone starting in Season 18.. Over the course of the 19th Season, he and Jess Knight start a budding friendship that develops into a romantic one.
• Passing Judgment: Often on the receiving end. Jimmy's unbelievably terrible with his choice of words. He usually says just one thing that turns out to be highly irreverent and gets a really dirty stare from Gibbs or an appalled look from Ducky, sometimes both at the same time.
• Person as Verb: In a Call-Back, an NSA agent is mentioned as having "pulled a Palmer" in an 11th season episode.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: Introduced in season one, appeared in roughly half the episodes per season from then on, got an "Also Starring" credit as of season six, FINALLY into the opening credits in season ten.
• Rank Up: Passed the Medical Examiner's examination at some point in season 14 and didn't tell the others because he didn't want to leave the team. With Ducky on sabbatical, Palmer is (temporarily, at least) in charge of Autopsy. This becomes permanent after Ducky decides to retire from the Chief Medical Examiner role permanently in Season 16.
• Recurring Character: Starting after "Bete Noir", when Ducky is forced to hire a new assistant to replace Gerald as he goes through months of excruciating rehab. Eventually, Palmer sticks as a main cast member.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Palmer has no actual firearms training so it almost results in I Just Shot Marvin in the Face with Ducky in the season 10 episode "Detour". Ducky, whose military training may be decades old, is smart enough to carefully push the gun away from his face and avoid being accidentally shot.
• Retirony: Subverted. One moment, Jimmy's talking with Agent Barrett about his recent engagement. Seconds later, the Port-to-Port Killer is loose and violently kidnapping Jimmy and Barrett. However, Gibbs saves the day, and Jimmy ends up surviving the episode with only a few scratches.
• Relationship Upgrade: Palmer and Knight experience this during the Season 19 finale and stay steady from that point on.
• Second Love: His first real love is his wife Breena, who sadly dies of COVID during the time-skip. A year or two later he falls in love with Special Agent Jessica Knight.
• Stepford Smiler: As Kasie mentions in "The First Day", he kept a disturbingly cheerful outlook for the past two months to hide just how much he's hurting from Breena's death. Due to her dying from Covid, he wasn't able to say goodbye. Jimmy breaks down and is finally able to say goodbye after his friends arrange a memorial service for her.
• That Came Out Wrong: Happens to him a lot, and when he tries to explain, he just looks worse.
• Too Kinky to Torture:
  • When he helps Abby solve a problem, Gibbs gives Abby a peck on the cheek and Jimmy a Gibbs slap. He looks just as pleased at this as Abby. Though that might have been because the slap meant that Gibbs considered him part of the team.
  • In an earlier episode, Ducky mentions that his attempts to emulate the "Gibbs' Slap" on Palmer were ineffective, as he seemed to enjoy it.
  • Palmer himself lampshades this after Gibbs slaps him in "Scope".
  Palmer: "Every time he does that, I feel special."
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: He's hardly ugly, but Jimmy definitely falls on the "geeky cute" side of things, whereas his wife Breena is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous.
• The Watson: To Ducky's Holmes.
• Took a Level in Badass: For an unknown amount of time during Season 20, Jimmy has spent his free time working out at the gym and the end results took a notice from both Tim and Nick. Those workout sessions soon paid off in the NCIS Hawaii crossover episode Deep Fake, where Jimmy successfully knocks out a rogue CIA agent in hand-to-hand combat while being held captive alongside Jane Tennant and Sam Hanna, and the only injury Jimmy suffered was a broken thumb.
• The Workaholic: After Breena dies in the COVID-19 pandemic in the one-year time skip between "1mm" and "The First Day", Jimmy starts burying himself in his medical examiner work to distract himself from the loss.

Director Leon Vance

Played By: Rocky Carroll (season 5–present)

"Wow. I heard about your techy mojo."

Formerly NCIS' assistant director who oversaw operations on the west coast. He was promoted to agency director in the wake of Jenny Shepard's death. He was initially recruited to the Naval Investigative Service^note NCIS' predecessor as an expendable deep cover operative who did wet work. He has a rather tough managerial style (shaped by his being a boxer when younger) and often butts heads with Gibbs. He's unusual among the cast for having a happy family life, although that's brought to a tragic end by a drive-by shooting at his house.

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• Assassin Outclassin': When McCallister tries to assassinate Vance in hopes of taking his place as Director, Vance stabs him to death despite being in a hospital bed on a ventilator due to injuries he sustained in an earlier assassination attempt. Similarly, a much later season has a trio of supposed burglars that were actually there to kill him pull a gun in the middle of the night; they miss the shot and he proceeded to beat one of them to death with his bare hands, injure the others and force them to run like hell.
• Bad Boss\Benevolent Boss: He has a gruff demeanor and can be absolutely tyrannical at times, especially if the situation is critical, but he truly respects his team and would lay his life down for them.
• Bait-and-Switch Tyrant: He starts out as a very gruff director who will absolutely take no BS, even from Gibbs, but it's revealed that underneath it all; he truly respects the team and will do everything and anything to make sure that they are safe.
• Crusading Widower: Starting season 10, as of "Shabbat Shalom".
• Da Chief: He's been the Director of NCIS ever since the end of Season 5.
• Dead Person Impersonation: It's heavily implied in one episode that he is not the real Leon Vance, but an old boxing acquaintance thereof, and that the two switched identities at some point in the past.
• Death Glare: Is one of the few people not intimidated by Gibbs', due to having a pretty epic one of his own. When the two of them get into a Glare Down, everyone else hauls ass out of the room.
• Genius Bruiser: He was once a boxer, but can compete with McGee in knowledge of cryptology.
• Happily Married: Until his wife is murdered in Season 10.
• Hidden Depths: On the subject of Star Trek in All Hands, he mentions to McGee that he's partial to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Does not appear in the show until Season 5.
• It's Personal: Twice he has caused an interrogation to get out of hand because someone close to him was murdered and a suspect was in the hot seat.
• Long-Runner Cast Turnover; Been on the show since season 5 (and later got upped to main regular starting season 6), making him the fourth longest serving NCIS character. As of season 21 premiere, he appears in 350 episodes so far.
• Mysterious Past: Not all of it has been explained...yet. We do know he's quite happy to be out of the field.
• Not So Above It All: He can be quite jovial in the right situations, especially if something is Actually Pretty Funny — and he can be just as much on a raging warpath as Gibbs, if not more so. One particular case had him so focused on proving a teen really had killed his Marine father, that Vance went in with a fire axe and buried it in the interrogation table trying to force a terrified confession out of the kid. There's a reason why the cast strongly prefer Vance stays in his director's seat, away from a case.
• "Not So Different" Remark: For most of the series, he's a Reasonable Authority Figure, but can't quite understand how Gibbs felt about the loss of his wife and child, and this does create a complication between the two of them whenever Gibbs gets a bit Cowboy Cop. Then the season 10 opener happens, and after the loss of his wife Jackie, Vance is so utterly consumed with rage and grief that he finally realizes what drove Gibbs to Revenge, openly stating as much directly to him. For his part, Gibbs solemnly acknowledges this and goes out of his way to help Vance with his future issues over it where Gibbs had no support for his own.
• Oral Fixation: Chewing on toothpicks.
• Papa Wolf: When his daughter, fresh out of FLETC, is kidnapped on her first assignment, he stops at nothing to get her back.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He won't tolerate his agents breaking the rules outright, but he will actively bend the rules to make sure things go their own way.
• Scary Black Man: He can be absolutely terrifying when he wants to be, which is probably one of the reasons he gets to boss Gibbs around. Taken to severe extremes when he put a fire safety axe through a metal table in the interrogation room to intimidate a teenage suspect who was suspected of killing one of Vance's friends.
• The Uriah Gambit: Vance is revealed to have been originally recruited to NIS in 1991 almost specifically for his expendability. Obviously, it didn't go as planned.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Has this vibe with Gibbs. Despite their animosity, there is a sincere mutual respect—and mutual tragedy of having their wife murdered. Indeed, their friendship develops because of this—Vance seeks his advice, knowing that Gibbs knows exactly what he's going through.

Special Agent Nicholas "Nick" Torres

Played by: Wilmer Valderrama (season 14-present)

Nick Torres is a Latino-American NCIS Agent who has been doing deep undercover work for the agency prior to his introduction in Season 14's premiere. His undercover assignment during his introduction was to investigate Leo Silva, an Argentine businessmen who has allegedly built a criminal empire in Argentina, as a Buenos Aries police captain, while also befriending Silva's son David and having a relationship with Silva's daughter Elena. However, Silva discovered Nick's true identity, and put out a hit on his sister, Lucia, and her family, resulting in his brother-in-law's death. Nick returns to the United States as a result to help avenge him and work with Team Gibbs to defeat Silva. After Silva is arrested, Nick decides to stay in DC to help his sister and niece out while giving up deep undercover work, which prompts Gibbs to offer him a place on his team.

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• The Alcoholic: A functional as it turns out so it comes as a shock to viewers when this is revealed, using drinking as a coping mechanism to deal with his time undercover, his own past, and the lost of Reeves, Bishop, and Gibbs in his life. Late in Season 19, Dr. Grace manages to convince him to go on the wagon which he does though in early Season 20 he hasn't joined a program or found a sponsor.
• Badass Biker: Went undercover in a bike gang. He's still awesome on a bike.
• Berserk Button: He doesn't like anybody who endangers children in any way. According to Palmer, this comes from how he had to go undercover in a child sex-trafficking ring to help take it down during his undercover days.
• The Big Guy: He's the main muscle of the team, making the first drop on the suspects. He's also the least nerdy of the group (sans Gibbs) preferring to leave the analyzing to McGee, Bishop, or Kasie.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Along with Disappeared Dad, Nick's father Miguel was a former Panamanian police officer and rebelled against Manuel Noriega. Because of this, Miguel was forced to abandon his entire family at a nearby church just to ensure their safety and became a Deep Cover CIA agent in the process. Nick does not learn the truth until crossing paths with him in the Season 18 episode "Sangre."
• Dark and Troubled Past: Along with the Disappeared Dad thing, he came to America with his mother and sister, where they were abused by a criminal named Reva.
• Disappeared Dad: Season 16 "Crossing a Line" – During a heart-to-heart with Max, the son of an agent killed in the Navy yard bombing, he reveals that his father abandoned him when he was young. Season 18's "Sangre" later reveals the truth behind his father's disappearance: Miguel rebelled against Manuel Noriega and abandoned his entire family to ensure their safety.
• Dislikes the New Guy: Averted with Knight, who he actually pushes to use Bishop's desk, but played straight with Parker. He does not take kindly to Parker taking over Gibbs' desk, especially so soon after the latter's retirement.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Reeves' death has left him in a deep funk.
  "I miss my buddy."
  • The combination of Bishop leaving and Gibbs retiring puts him in another one, which causes him to lash out at Parker.
• In the Blood: Nick took undercover assignments for NCIS while his father is currently an undercover CIA agent.
• It Runs in the Family: Nick (An NCIS agent), his sister (a JAG lawyer), and their father (a CIA agent) work for the U.S. government.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Is deeply reluctant to go out of his way to help a witness (a former sailor who will be deported to Mexico as soon as he's turned over to FBI) see his mother in Ohio one last time until the witness and Bishop threaten to torture him by singing in the car all the way back to DC. At the house he covers for him ("He's being redeployed" "Where?" "It's... classified"), stays long enough for mom to make dinner and for her son to tell the truth, and even gives him his cellphone back and lets him go make a call by himself without fear he'll run away. Torres explains that meeting the witness' mom "made it personal" — he knows people like him and his mom — and he couldn't not help him.
• Kick the Dog: Unwittingly does this in "Gut Punch" after the team's been demoted to COVID preparations in the wake of illegally trying to cover up for Gibbs the episode prior, when he says to Jimmy's face that case work is far more interesting than COVID stuff. Jimmy enters Tranquil Fury in reminding him that COVID is very serious business as Torres remembers Breena died to COVID, causing him to quickly move to apologize.
• The Lost Lenore: He and a childhood friend Sophia were inseparable, and he was convinced that she'd be his wife one day. Then in their senior year of high school, she was diagnosed with cancer.
• Macho Latino: Downplayed. While Nick likes to workout, is a pretty big jock (especially compared to his nerdier coworkers), and would often compete in manliness contests with Reeves before his death, he's also caring about his coworkers and is known to be gentle around children.
• Mr. Fanservice: It's even lampshaded at one point. A young Salvadorean girl that doesn't speak English very well is being targeted, so Torres asks her some questions in Spanish. Her response is to ask him in Spanish, "Why is your shirt so tight?"
• Nerves of Steel: In his introductory episode, he's extremely calm while sitting in a chair with a bomb that will go off if he stands up.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Although Torres managed to pin Silva for a bunch of crimes, he sabotaged Silva's family. Additionally, Torres broke up his romance with an arms dealer's cousin by ghosting her, which takes an entire episode for them to reconcile.
  Silva: (to Torres through the interrogation glass) You got me, Torres! Now you ruined my family. You happy now?
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Downplayed. He's quite a bit shorter than the other guys on the team, but he's The Big Guy for a damn good reason.
• Rogue Agent: Deep cover for 8 years in Argentina.
• Walking Techbane: Not to extreme levels, but his distaste for office work and complicated technology in general put him in conflict with the printers.

Special Agent Jessica Knight

Played By: Katrina Law (season 18–present)

First seen in Season 18 where she assisted Gibbs’ team in apprehending a corrupt defense contractor and fellow REACT operator for getting their team killed in a REACT op. As of Season 19, she transferred to work in the MCRT.

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• Action Girl: Ex-REACT operator turned MCRT special agent.
• Actor Allusion: She's an expert martial artist and very skilled with melee weapons, such as a staff. Almost like she retains her knowledge from another life...
• I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship: Throughout Season 19, Knight and Palmer have a budding friendship, but are slowly hesitant about entering into a relationship with each other out of fear for ruining this. By the season's finale, they have a Relationship Upgrade.
• Relationship Upgrade: Knight and Palmer at the end of Season 19. Early in Season 20 it's established that they don't have a "label" for it yet its clear they greatly enjoy each other's company, but slowly commit after some Everyone Can See It moments from Knight's colleagues and two of rival suitors: An ex-boyfriend, and Ernie.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Her teammates are stunned to see her in a long dress that she wears to a wedding.
• The Social Expert: Her specialty. She's a trained negotiator, whose talked herself and her allies out of all sorts of bad situations.
  • Averted with kids. She has no idea how to act around them in-person such as when she meeting Jimmy's daughter and talks to her like she's younger than she is. She gets better over the course of the episode.

Special Agent In Charge Alden Parker

Played by: Gary Cole (season 19–present)

"You had me at Bandium"

First seen in Season 19, he worked with NCIS to nail what seemed to be a serial killer, but was the work of an assassin targeting certain people connected to Native American territory in Alaska due to environmental concerns. After Gibbs leaves NCIS, he's recruited to serve as his replacement in the MCRT.

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• Clueless Chick-Magnet: Much to his awkward surprise, Parker has unexpectedly found himself the object of amorous interest from other middle-aged women, most notably in The Brat Pack and Butterfly Effect.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Is this to Gibbs. Whereas Gibbs is stoic, quiet, hates technology, prefers the old ways, and in general prefers to be alone, Parker is much more willing to joke around, embrace technology and new methods of investigating, and is quite eager to be seen as equal to his teammates rather than a team leader. But, like Gibbs, he's willing to go to great lengths and put himself in danger to close a case — such as stowing away unarmed on a helicopter full of terrorists and threatening to blow up them and himself unless they surrender.
• Cool Old Guy: Tries to be this to the group, wanting to get to know his teammates and hang out after work.
• Delinquent: The opening flashback of "Thick as Thieves" shows that he was one in The '70s. He and his friend Billy Doyle were caught stealing a hub cap from a car shop in Philadelphia. In the 19th season finale, while visiting his dad at a retirement home, the elder Parker asks Jessica if she knew that his son "is an ex-con." That record is why he never joined the Navy.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He occasionally would lose his cool. Even his former FBI partner said he used to be quite a hothead back in his FBI days.
• Hidden Depths: He's a fan of Star Trek: The Original Series and uses the original theme as a distress signal on a frequency when he's stowed away in the bad guy's warehouse.
• My Greatest Failure: The Wills case is the one case that got to him, in which his partner, Jeremy Brighton, got paralyzed due to friendly fire, courtesy of Parker. While Jeremy has long forgiven him, he doesn't forgive himself until the end of the episode, where he reads the letter that Jeremy wrote to him. They shake hands.
• Noodle Incident: In "First Steps", when sharing their first cases, he mentions his involved killer zebras. As he tries to further elaborate, he gets interrupted by a phone call.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: "Old Wounds" has him behave as the bird-loving, pastry-offering we know and love. When he sees the opioids from the case, that soft smile turns to a frown and he drives off. He then lashes out at everyone, including Jimmy, behaving like a mean boss rather than an equal. It's the FBI case where he paralyzed his partner in friendly fire, and he has never forgiven himself. At the end of the episode, while receiving medical attention from Jimmy, Parker apologizes to him.
• Remember the New Guy?: He's friends with Fornell, but Fornell never mentioned Parker prior to his appearance.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: How he lost his FBI job. He was sent to arrest Gibbs on flimsy charges just so the FBI can finally put Gibbs away for good. Realizing what his bosses were up to, and getting to know Gibbs in Alaska, he releases Gibbs and is fired right after. Of course, this results in Vance scooping up Parker for the team immediately afterwards.
  • This is also a general character trait of Parker's. Whereas Gibbs would play ball until It's Personal and then bend them to whatever he needed and deal with the fallout afterwards, Parker is a stricter stickler for rules and actually tries to call out Gibbs for his work. When push comes to shove, however, he'll still do some outlandish actions to solve a case.
• Silver Fox: Lampshaded a few times by several characters, especially by other middle-aged women who find him attractive.
  Claudia: "Did anyone ever tell you that you have fantastic hair, Alden?"
• Sweet Tooth: Appears to know the location of every ethnic bakery in the DC Metro area, and routinely brings pastries into the office.
• Technologically Blind Elders: Averted. Unlike Gibbs, Parker is very into the latest tech. While he doesn't always know what's he doing, and isn't as knowledgable as Tim, Parker does know his way around computers and does know about various encryption and hacking methods.

Forensic Specialist Kasie Hines

Played by: Diona Reasonover (season 15-present)

Introduced in Season 15, Kasie Hines is a forensic science graduate student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where Ducky is guest teaching. She stands out as a protege, which is one of the reasons why Ducky hired her as his graduate assistant for compiling and authoring his forensic medicine book. This budding friendship lets her make her way to the NCIS headquarters, where Kasie proves herself highly valuable and easily becomes friends with Team Gibbs. Later on, she takes up the arduous task of becoming Abby Sciuto's successor.

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• Ascended Fanboy: In-universe. Kasie has always been on the up-and-up of the NCIS HQ agents, but especially of Abby. Becoming their next forensic specialist is her dream job.
• Black and Nerdy: Fits this to a "T". One could even claim she's like a female version of Urkel.
• Chekhov's Gunman: She was introduced early in Season 15 for the sake of easing viewers into her character for the eventual departure of Abby, so the transition would not be abrupt and complaints about who took her place would not erupt from the fans. In fact, her introduction serves to set her apart from Abby in that she's not just some xerox of the person she admires most, but a person with her own likable personality and quirks.
• Disappeared Dad: Her father died from a fatal heart attack a couple of months before her debut episode.
• Establishing Character Moment: She has two of them in her debut episode, "One Man's Trash". In the Cold Open of that episode, Kasie turns down an offer of a sandwich Ducky gives her in favor of finishing up that night's work, showing that she has a major work ethic. Secondly, when she meets McGee, Torres, and Bishop, she easily figures out who's who before they can properly introduce themselves from the details Ducky gave her beforehand, and when Gibbs comes into the bullpen she gives him a hug out of excitement at finally meeting him. This demonstrates she's detail-oriented and friendly.
• Genki Girl: She exudes a lot of energy and presence just like Abby. In fact, she hugs Gibbs when she met him in person for the first time because she's so happy that she finally gets to meet him.
• Irony: Several seasons before her introduction, as past agents left the scene and nerdier ones arrived like McGee and Bishop, Tony joked "the geeks are taking over" and that himself and Gibbs are the only people left who aren't that mold (the original cast). Now NCIS has one of its geekiest staff members yet.
• Shrinking Violet: To Abby, initially, because she's too shy to admit a massive girl crush on her and feels very intimidated around her idol.

Former Main Characters

Special Agent in Charge Leroy Jethro Gibbs

Played By: Mark Harmon (seasons 1–19), Sean Harmon (young Gibbs)

"What have you heard? That suspects would rather confess than be interrogated by him? That his steely gaze can cool a room by five degrees? That he can only be killed by a silver bullet, like a werewolf? Well, it's all true, except the silver bullet part. Might give him indigestion or heartburn, but I don't think it'd kill him. Any other questions?" — Tony

Not to be confused with Ludicrous Gibbs, though he does pull some pretty crazy stunts to get the bad guys.

A former US Marine Scout Sniper, he joined what was then called the Naval Investigative Service shortly after the First Gulf War in the wake of his first wife and daughter's murders. He rose up the ranks to become the Special Agent in Charge of the Major Case Response Team, responsible for investigating Navy and Marine Corps-related crimes in and around Washington DC, and has a rather hands-on approach when it comes to maintaining discipline amongst his subordinates.

He is a master interrogator and there are very few people who are brave/stupid enough to try and resist his death glare.

Also, he is a functional mute.

In season 19, Gibbs retired from NCIS, preferring to stay in Alaska for an indefinite time. He made his final appearance in S19 E4 after 19 seasons.

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See his page.

NCIS Historian (and former Medical Examiner) Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard

Played By: David McCallum † (seasons 1-20), Adam Campbell (young Ducky)

"I look forward to weighing your liver."

A proud Scotsman with an expansion pack past. He is Gibbs' long time friend and confidant and has a habit of conducting one-sided conversations with the bodies he's examining.

Up until David McCallum's passing in September 2023 (although he's credited posthumously for the first two episodes of Season 21) and "Lifeline" (season 21, episode 3)^note This is the first episode to not feature McCallum in the opening credits, he's the only character to appear in every opening credits since the inception and he's the longest serving character on the show alongside McGee and Palmer, although McGee appears in more episodes than Ducky and Palmer.

Due to McCallum's death, Ducky sadly died in his sleep in "S21 E2 The Stories We Leave Behind".

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• Berserk Button:
  • In "Seadog", Ducky goes ballistic on a local LEO who contaminates a crime scene so he can get in good with the news reporter on the scene. His merely getting angry means he's mellowed, however, as Gibbs has a story where Ducky pushed a French policeman off a cliff^note there was water at the bottom for the same reason. Later in "Conspiracy Theory" we see him going at a psychiatrist whose poor standards led to one of his patients being murdered. And never forget to show Due to the Dead.
  • He also doesn't like it when people are on their phones at the wrong times, or won't put them down long enough to focus on the task at hand.
  • Medical examiners who don't do their jobs properly. He was once so outraged by the workmanship of another M.E before the body reached him that he decided to go to their morgue to chew them out in person, at least until he got there and proceeded to find that the M.E in question was a rather attractive woman.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He's probably the most forgiving character on the show and most bad guys dismiss him because of his advanced age. But he knows exactly where to hit someone to knock them out and possesses the expertise to cut a major blood vessel with a single, seemingly innocuous, cut. Watching him calmly use such a cut as a Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique is simply chilling.
• Broken Bird: This was name of the episode when we see just a glimpse of his past, where we see that a Torture Technician repeatedly tortured the same innocent man, not for information but to see how many times Ducky would treat the man before Ducky would break in order to get rid of his good influence on the other prisoners.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: His tendency to go on long speeches during work is lampshaded by Palmer when he does his first solo dissection.
  Palmer: I'm suddenly overcome with the desire to share a story of only a peripherally relevant nature.
  Ducky: It's a hazard of the profession, Mr. Palmer.
• Clear My Name: Ducky didn't want to clear it, but Gibbs did.
• Combat Medic: He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was stationed in Afghanistan and Bosnia.
• Commuting on a Bus: Spends a good part of Season 15 on sabbatical to teach forensic medicine and write a book on the subject. Then he spends half of Season 16 on vacation, after which he decides to retire. Then Director Vance gives him a new job as the part-time Agency Historian, so he doesn't necessarily need to appear in every episode even though he's officially back and still part of the team.
  • Bus Crash / The Character Died with Him: ...but sadly, David McCallum died on September 2023, five months before season 21 premiered, eventually resulting Ducky dying in his sleep in S21 E2 "The Stories We Leave Behind", closing his story for good after 20 seasons. Rest in peace, David.
• Casting Gag: In his final (posthumous) episode, it is revealed that the man portrayed by the actor who once played Illya Kuryakin on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has a dog named Solo.
• Combat Pragmatist: In S11E01, Ducky took down a random mook with a random bowl, saving Palmer in the process.
  Palmer: (being manhandled) CALL SECURITY!!
  (CLANG!)
  Ducky: Who needs security?
• Cool Old Guy: Ducky has several stories and trivia to share, and everybody on Team Gibbs admires him as a grandfather-figure.
• Cool Train: Occasionally visible in the background, displayed on a small shelf is a scale model of LNER #4468 "Mallard"
  • Ducky is carefully maintaining it in one episode and comments on the relationship between his name and its name.
  • Tragic Keepsake: That train was the last Christmas present he ever gave to his half-brother Nicholas, who dropped it when his mother, who had just divorced Ducky's father, took the boy away from his childhood home and moved to Albania.
• The Coroner: The chief medical examiner for NCIS, before passing on the position to Jimmy in Season 16 due to his age.
• Creepy Mortician: A very lovable kind of creepy, but still damn creepy. Gibbs finds it a useful way to break some suspects by showing them what will happen to their bodies if they refuse to cooperate and end up dead as a result. It works too.
• Deadly Doctor: His medical expertise allows him to kick your ass if you push him too far.
• Deadpan Snarker: Like most of the cast, he has his moments. For example, when Gibbs presses him about the cause of death of a diver killed inside a pressure chamber, without access to the body for an examination.
  Ducky: Oh, Jethro, please. You can't expect me to determine a cause of death from an instant replay.
  Gibbs: Come on, Duck, you got to give me something.
  Ducky: All right... I can confidently rule out quicksand.
• Expansion Pack Past: The sheer number of stories he has to tell clearly implies that he's lived a very full life.
• Gentleman and a Scholar: Rarely has he ever raised his voice in anger or struck someone. He uses non-physical forms of intimidation.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: He and Gibbs are longtime best friends.
• Honorary Uncle: Honorary Grandfather (or "Grandducky") to Victoria Palmer given how close he is to the elder Palmer.
• Labcoat of Science and Medicine: He is often shown wearing one, complete with a bowtie. He wears blue-green scrubs when performing autopsies and blue coveralls on crime scenes.
• Like a Son to Me: He doesn't say it outright, but is very paternal towards Palmer.
• Long-Lost Relative: His half-brother Nicholas Mallard, whom Ducky thought to have been killed in an accident decades ago, turns out to be alive in the episode "Spinning Wheel" (13x11).
• Long Runner: Up until David McCallum's death in 2023, Ducky is the second longest serving character on the show, and with Gibbs's departure in season 19, he is the last original character from both the JAG backdoor pilots and the show's first season. He appeared in each season all the way up to Season 20, even after his screentime is drastically reduced. McCallum’s final appearance in the show as well as his final performance overall is the season 20 finale "Black Sky".
• Major Injury Underreaction: In "Broken Bird", Ducky is suddenly attacked by a knife-wielding woman while examining a body at a crime scene. He dismisses it as "just a defensive wound." His right hand still has the knife impaled in it.
• The Medic: In addition to being the Medical Examiner.
• The Mentor: To Palmer. Officially too.
• The Münchausen: Averted, as it seems to be generally accepted by those who know him that his stories are true.
• My Beloved Smother: His mother had Alzheimer's and drove him crazy in early seasons; she was put in a home shortly after the death of her actress Nina Foch in late 2008 and died a year later during Season 7.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: Originally started out as the team's ME. Then in Season 4 he earned a master's degree in psychology and started getting called-upon to profile suspects. Or to go undercover as an arms dealer, because they needed an older British man on very short notice. After deciding to retire from medical examination, Director Vance arranges for him to get a new part-time position as the agency historian.
• Nice Guy: Probably the nicest guy on the show, or at least tied with Abby.
• Non-Action Guy: Naturally as a medical examiner, he doesn't actively participate in the action. That does not mean that he can't be incredibly terrifying if he needs to be.
• No Sense of Direction: He blames his assistants but he's always the one giving directions.
• Odd Friendship: his friendship with Abby, rare to see a young perky goth woman, and an old British guy getting along so well.
• The One That Got Away: Ducky has had a number of love interests over the years, but the only woman he ever really loved was his childhood friend Maggie, who ended up marrying his best friend Angus instead. The tragedy in all this is that Maggie actually loved Ducky more and followed him upon his departure, but he had already gone by then; she then married Angus, and while they cared for each other, the marriage eventually lost all spark. When Maggie and Ducky meet again years later after Angus' death, they both accept what's happened and move on.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Few people call him "Donald". Inverted in the way he calls everyone else by their full names — "Anthony", "Timothy", "Caitlin", etc.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Ducky wears a four-in-hand tie to work one day and the other characters immediately wonder what's wrong (granted, he was also acting strangely, but the tie was the major cause for concern). Turns out Ducky has found himself a girlfriend named Sophie and she is much younger than him and made him feel self-conscious about his age, and he's tried to find ways to make himself appear younger and reinvent his image. We never get a chance to meet her, however, because come next episode, the romance has fizzled out and Ducky is back to his old self again, deciding that he shouldn't have to change for someone for them to love him.
• Out of Focus: Due to David McCallum voluntarily reducing his role on the show, Ducky starts constantly traveling to attend lectures and the like, then moves into a side office in the NCIS basement to be their historian. Starting from Season 17 to Season 20, he stops being a main character and becomes recurring, going multiple episodes with no appearances until S20 finale "Black Sky", McCallum's final episode as Ducky, although he still remains in the opening credits, even in the first two S21 episodes that aired five months after McCallum’s death.
• Passed in Their Sleep: Dies this way, with Jimmy finding his body when he swung by his house the following morning to discuss an old case Ducky wanted to talk about.
• Passing the Torch: In "Bears and Cubs", Ducky decides it's time for him to retire and permanently hand the reigns of the Chief Medical Examiner over to Jimmy. While Ducky decides to still stay at NCIS in the next episode, Jimmy still becomes the Chief Medical Examiner while Ducky becomes the part-time Agency Historian until the day he dies.
• Parental Substitute: In "Bears and Cubs", Palmer calls Ducky one of his two father-figures, with the other one being Gibbs.
• The Profiler: Ducky can fish up an enormous amount of information from a victim just by looking at the nature of their wounds and the things found on (or sometimes in) their person.
• Punny Name: With a name like that, what did you think he'd be called, Mousey? Ari first thinks of the locomotive, mildly surprising Ducky. (Ducky actually has a model of the locomotive on display back at his home)
• Quintessential British Gentleman: He is unfailingly polite and charms ladies of all ages.
• Rhymes on a Dime: "Witch Hunt" has this one:
  The sky is blue, the grass is green,
  May we have our Halloween?
• Shout-Out: Gibbs mentions that when Ducky was younger, he looked like Illya Kuryakin from The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. David McCallum played Illya in the original TV series.
• Shown Their Work: A meta-version. To prepare for the role, David McCallum went to coroner and medical examiner's conferences to learn the trade. He became so good the producers were tempted to pay him a consulting fee.
• So Proud of You: This is Ducky's reaction to finding out that Jimmy passed the ME Exam during the events of "Keep Going".
  Jimmy: Dr. Mallard, what are you doing here?
  Ducky: Where else would I be? I'm not going to leave you out there all alone... Dr. Palmer.
• Talking to the Dead: He routinely does this with his "patients." Truth in Television: Real Life medical examiners have been known to do this.

Special Agent Caitlin "Kate" Todd

Played By: Sasha Alexander (seasons 1–3)

"Hack into the servers. I can't believe I just said that. I would have never suggested that before I started working here."

• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Can be cold, especially towards Tony.
• The Baby of the Bunch: The youngest of four children among an older sister and two older brothers.
• Badass in Distress: Everytime Ari's on-screen, expect her to be in trouble.
• Boom, Headshot!: How she meets her end mid-sentence by a sniper.
• Brainy Brunette: The intelligent and sassy red-head on the team.
• Blatant Lies: When she claims she and her friends conducted themselves with dignity on spring break and states that college fraternities are bizarre while critizing that Tony's Male Gaze habit is sick and wrong. Despite this when they walk in on a photo shoot for the US men's water polo team and she gets Distracted by the Sexy about as easily as Tony does.
• Catholic School Girls Rule: Tony imagines her dressed as such. As well as nude, causing her to squeal in horror.
  • Also an homage as she was dressed as Gogo.
• Character Death: The first and most jarring instance of a major character on the show suddenly dying horribly.
• Decoy Protagonist: The first two seasons heavily portrayed her as the Deuteragonist and The Lancer (her actress was even billed second before Michael Weatherly) until she was killed off.
• Dropped a Bridge on Her: She dies very abruptly. Right before she dies she even gets shot but it's blocked by her Bulletproof Vest, which makes her actual mid-sentence death right after all the more shocking.
• Embarrassing Old Photo: Tony digs up one during her college years where she's in a Sexy Soaked Shirt.
• Emotionless Girl: You can feel a breath of cold air when she talks, especially to Tony.
• Foreshadowing: In the fake-out dream sequence Gibbs has in the Season 1 finale, "Reverie", she's shown in autopsy with a bullet hole in her forehead, with a pallid complexion and her eyes coagulated over from death. The person who dies in that episode is an entirely different woman, but Gibbs's dream turns out to be providential come next season...
• Former Teen Rebel: DiNozzo finds out that when she was a university student, she once engaged in (and won) a wet T-shirt contest. This also falls under Blatant Lies since she lied to Tony about what she did during Spring Break.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Subverted in her last episode where she jumps in the way of a bullet meant for Gibbs... only to be saved by her bulletproof vest. When she does die, she gets unceremoniously sniped in the head.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Her Fatal Flaw, literally; she thinks she is a good one but has helped more than one murderous psychopath because they looked sympathetic. One almost kills her, then Ari actually does.
  • She's right more often than wrong, so this is a played with trope.
• I'm Going to Hell for This: In the episode where the victim and attacker were on the same "dating" site.
  Abby: Care to guess what their fetish was, Kate?
  Kate: Oh, no. I'm going to hell just listening to all this.
• Intimate Marks: Never seen or described but apparently Abby talked her into getting a tattoo on her butt.
• Mood Whiplash: Causes two cases back to back in the Season 2 finale when she takes a bullet for Gibbs only to reveal she was wearing a bullet-proof vest but then immediately gets shot in the head.
• Ms. Fanservice: A major subplot in "Conspiracy Theory" revolved around Tony finding a (real) picture of her in a wet T-shirt contest and using it as blackmail material.
• Only Sane Woman: She felt like this at times with Gibbs and Tony at the beginning.
• Out of Job, into the Plot: Was recruited by Gibbs after having to quit Secret Service for defying orders.
• Posthumous Character: As Ducky is autopsying her, he has an actual internalized conversation with her with her joking about being dead.
• Really Gets Around: In the pilot episode, she "got to know" people on the job by sleeping with them. It took a dark turn when two of those people died of poisoning. She believed it was the only time on the job you could get to know someone, asking Gibbs if he knew any other way. Gibbs's answer was a very curt "Church". She was actually forced to resign from Secret Service due to breaking the rules by shagging the agents (no fraternization policy). She kept everyone in the dark about it and no one tattled on her. The truth came to light when NCIS investigated the murders on Air Force One.
• Sacrificial Lion: The very first main character to be killed off, and her sudden death firmly establishes the Anyone Can Die aspect of the series.
• Tempting Fate: Her downfall; "I thought I'd die. . ." was the poorest and last choice of words she ever made.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Tomboy to Abby's Girly Girl.
• Two First Names: Applies to her actress too.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Gibbs. It was never resolved after her death, but they had extreme chemistry throughout the first two seasons of the show.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Posthumously, her "spirit" torments Gibbs, who is guilt-ridden over the kill shot.
  "I already took one bullet, Gibbs... why'd I have to go and take two!?!"

Special Agent Ziva David

Played By: Cote de Pablo (seasons 3–11 and 16-17)

Eli David: Use her well, Leon. Ziva is the sharp end of the spear.

"Have you ever been tied up by a woman before? Did you like it? Then today's not your lucky day."

• Accidental Misnaming: As a trainee NCIS agent, Tony had started calling her "Probie". Gibbs had called her "Probie" on at least 2 occasions.
• Action Girl: Ziva is (ex-)Mossad. Early on in her tenure at NCIS, she is not allowed to participate in taking down suspects. Another woman comments on the presumed chauvinism of this. Ziva replies that Gibbs is actually afraid she'll kill the suspect by mistake. Then it happened. Several times. ^First Once when chasing an overweight suspect who has a heart attack when climbing some stairs. She's chastised despite it not being her fault, but mostly out of frustration at losing a lead and it doesn't last the scene. ^Second And again, much more serious, when she punches an obnoxious suspect in the neck, causing him to drop dead despite her insisting that she does know her own strength and couldn't have killed him. Ducky finds a blood clot in his brain that could have been released and gotten lodged there by the punch, but ultimately rules Natural Causes. ^Third Ilan Bodnar, but whether that was accidental is debatable.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Ziva is a tall, beautiful woman who is a definite Ice Queen to her teammates. McGee's novel even describer her (well, her Expy anyway) as "emotionally distant". She mellowed down considerably to the rest of the team by Season 7.
• Ambiguously Bi: Ziva enjoys dropping casual hints to Tony that she likes girls as well. So far she's only been seen with male lovers though. Mostly played for laughs or titillation.
• Anti-Hero Substitute: For Kate. Compared to her, Ziva has a harsh upbringing and is more willing to get her hands dirty.
• Assassin Outclassin': Her ability to effectively and efficiently deal with attackers means that she will probably live to a ripe old age. Or at least that seemed to be the case...
• Badass Israeli: Former Mossad operative. 'Nuff said.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Routinely averted. Many viewers were surprised, however, when she was seen in a back-less dress a few seasons after her months-long captivity and torture in Somalia, with no overt scarring on her back. This is to an extent Truth in Television, as most forms of torture do not leave extensive, obvious scars.
• Becoming the Mask: It is suspected by Leon Vance at the end of season 6 and confirmed by Ziva in early season 7 that she was ordered by her father to kill Ari in order to gain Gibbs' trust and spy on the team. By the end of season 3, her crying over Gibbs' life threatening condition shows she has become closer to her targets than a cold assassin ought to be.
  • From "Broken Arrow"
    Chase: Does Agent David carry a weapon?
    Gibbs: She is a weapon.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Tony.
• Berserk Button: A couple, but God help you if you hurt Tony.
• The Big Guy: Neither big nor a guy, but unquestionably the best fighter in the main cast.
• Book Ends: In Ziva's debut episode, the first character she meets is Tony. In Ziva's final episode, the last character she interacts with is Tony.
• Broken Bird: Considering she was held captive in Somalia and tortured for months, she covered it extremely well. In the season 11 opener, she finds that she no longer can, and this leads to her leaving NCIS for good.
  • In season 16, it's implied that covering her past trauma and the events from season 11 to then took a toll on her— she's suffering from and taking pills for chronic anxiety, and much more closed off from even NCIS.
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma: A Running Gag is her regularly messing up American figures of speech.
  "American idioms are driving me up the hall."
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: In her own, unique way, just like the rest of the team.
• The Bus Came Back: Makes a surprise return in the Season 16 finale to tell Gibbs he's in danger.
• Clear My Name: The first episode of season 4 dealt with this issue.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: Her reappearance in the Season 16 finale has her telling Gibbs he's in danger and there are no time for pleasantries. Sure enough, the Season 17 premiere shows Gibbs' basement getting riddled with bullets less than a minute later.
• The Comically Serious: Her sternness and her lack of grasp on western pop culture has been used as a Running Gag in the series.
• Conflicting Loyalty: As of the end of season 6, she is torn between her loyalty to Mossad and her father, and Gibbs and NCIS. She picked Mossad and ended up caught by a terrorist and tortured to be saved by Gibbs and the team. In retrospect, she realizes she made the wrong choice, and decides to stay in the United States from then on and becomes a US Citizen so she can become a bonafide NCIS agent.
• Cool Big Sis: Plays this role towards McGee.
• Dead Guy Junior: Names her daughter after her late sister, Tali.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has her moments.
• Does Not Know Her Own Strength: She's not allowed to interrogate suspects because Gibbs thinks she might kill them by mistake.
• Drives Like Crazy:
  • Director Shepard once said of her, "I think she was an Eastern European cab driver in a past life."
  Vance: Most fathers teach their daughters to drive. I have you to blame for this?
  Eli David: This she learned from her mother.
  • In "Secrets", she wound up with a speeding ticket on the way to work and complains about it:
  Ziva: I was barely going over the limit!
  McGee: (Reads the ticket) It says you were doing 80 in a 40.
  Ziva: Not the entire time.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Three seasons after she left the show, she's killed off screen and the team finds out about through a breaking news bulletin. Subverted as of "She" which reveals that she survived.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: How Ilan Bodnar bites it.
• Fake Guest Star: In season 3, she appeared in all episodes except "Mind Games"; de Pablo was credited as a guest star in her first two episodes.
• Faking the Dead: Season 16 reveals that her supposed death in Season 13 is just staged.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Averted. While very much the manly Action Hero, she can cook quite well. According to Abby in the episode "Caged", "Her cooking rocks!"
• Fire-Forged Friends: With the exception of Abby, Ziva truly became close to the team after enduring some difficult investigations.
• Funny Foreigner: Downplayed. She's serious except for her tendency to butcher English-language quotes or figures of speech.
• Good Is Not Soft: While she's compassionate and honorable towards her friends and crime victims, she has no mercy towards terrorists, murderers and other such people, and has implied she is not above using a Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique to get information or revenge.
• Heroic BSoD: The final straw is an attempt on her life by a terrorist cell that drives her off the grid. This leads to her departure from NCIS in the Season 11 opener.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Does not appear in the show until Season 3, but is significantly more well-known and popular than her predecessor, Kate.
• I Have No Son!: I have no father in this case. It gets to the point of changing nations just to give him a Take That!.
• Informed Judaism: Always wears a Star of David pendant, but her Judaism usually only comes up in times of crisis (such as when she visits a synagogue in distress or performs Jewish death rites after a death).
  • Though considering her former profession as a Mossad operative, strict adherence to almost any religion would be tough. Pointedly, she has on occasion turned down food allegedly because it's not kosher, but she has no problem with pepperoni pizza.
• Improbable Age: Ziva David is less Improbable Age and more Impossible Age. She joins the show in her early twenties, supposedly after she's graduated high school, served her two years in the IDF, attended college, applied for Mossad, become immediately tapped for inclusion into an elite and highly competitive special operations unit with a training period of several years, and still have enough time to become "an experienced agent" with multiple missions under her belt. And this is at a age the youngest CIA intelligence officers would be beginning training. (It's worth pointing out, however, that she is the daughter of the Director of Mossad, and it is heavily implied that she was all but raised from the cradle to be a Mossad operative.)
  • Notably, her age is never stated within the series, and the idea that she joined the show in her early twenties is derived from a prop paper in one episode that, when zoomed in upon, shows that she was born on November 12, 1982 (same birthday as her portrayer Cote de Pablo). So the actual timeline of her life is a bit more murky.
• Ironic Death: She lost her sister to a suicide bombing. She herself got murdered in an explosion. Supposedly. Season 16 reveals she's alive.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Ziva is forced to do this to her half-brother Ari.
• Last-Minute Hookup: Last Minute Kiss with Tony in her final episode.
• Like Brother and Sister: With McGee whom she treats like a younger brother. Also Zigzagged with Tony Depending on the Writer. She also treats Abby like a younger sister.
• Locked in a Freezer: Locked In A Shipping Crate with Tony in "Boxed In".
• Ma'am Shock: Another Berserk Button.
• Malaproper: Her messing up quotes, again; this is the main reason she qualified as a Funny Foreigner.
• Military Brat
• My Nayme Is: "David" has the earlier pronunciation (just as it appears, and as an iamb), rather than the Anglicized, trochaic "Dei-vid."
• Never Found the Body: Inverted in that they did find a body, and it was identified as her, but other characters, Tony included, make it clear they're not completely convinced and there's a few hints that it isn't her body. When Tony leaves to take care of his and Ziva's daughter, it is strongly implied his departure is also for the purpose of independently investigating her death. Season 16 reveals she's alive and well, meaning the body found really wasn't hers. And then she shows up in the flesh in the Season Finale.
• New Meat: Although she was attached to NCIS for several years and was essentially an equal to Tony, she had to start at the bottom when she formally joined the agency as a probie. Tony and McGee gleefully give her all the paperwork and Gibbs adds to the pile. From then on, she's seen being occasionally frustrated because she goes from being somewhat senior to being the most junior member of the team (even becoming subordinate to McGee, whom she used to boss around) and has to go through the hazing process all probies go through.
• One of the Boys: She likes to hang around men in a nonromantic wolf-in-the-pack sort of way and she takes great pride in her skill at manly things.
• Omniglot: She speaks at least nine languages, including the language of love.
• Photographic Memory: Very useful in her line of work as agents who don't develop this tend not to last long in Mossad.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: Immediately after joining The Team.
• Pronouncing My Name for You: As she has pointed out, her last name is pronounced "Dah-VEED," not "David."
• Put on a Bus: Cote de Pablo left the series after season 10, unable to come to terms with her contract. Ziva, emotionally torn up by the attempt on her life, decided to leave NCIS and stay in Israel off the grid. Her life comes to an end, offscreen, in "Family First". Supposedly. Season 16 reveals she survived and used the attempt on her life as a way to go further off the grid. After appearing in four episodes of Season 17, she again departed in "In The Wind" (S17, EP 11).
• A Real Man Is a Killer: Woman in this case, thanks to her upbringing.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Against Ilan Bodnar, and unsubtly enough to draw attention from the CIA. And roped McGee into helping, behind Tony's and Gibbs' backs. But in the end, she gets him in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Scrabble Babble: Averted one time she played McGee in Scrabble. With the last Q at a corner of two Is, she makes Qi twice, read 'Chi'.
• Someone to Remember Him By: The Season 13 finale reveals that Ziva became pregnant by Tony at the beginning of Season 11 (when she was written out) and subsequently gave birth to a daughter. This bombshell is dropped after Ziva's supposed death.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: In season 3.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Tomboy to Abby's Girly Girl.
• Tragic Keepsake: Ziva's orange cap; it's a reminder of the victim from "Dead Man Walking".
• Two First Names: "Ziva" and "David".
• Uncertain Doom: Seems like they found her body after the bombing, but it was never shown, just implied that they were convinced it was hers. Season 16 confirmed that it wasn't.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: The writers seemed to enjoy dropping hints that in fact she and Tony had, something confirmed in the Season 13 finale. ^note Michael Weatherly has stated that a kiss was filmed quite a while ago, and was never aired.
• Verbal Tic: Has a slight habit of forming questions as statements with "yes?" tacked on the end; which is probably a carry over from her native Hebrew (a language in which asking a question by means of inflection is perfectly common.
• Wham Shot / Wham Line: In the Season 16 episode "She", she is revealed to still be alive after Bishop successfully completes the cold case that Ziva had started investigating a decade before. Bishop goes back to Ziva's secret office to find her coat gone, her favorite scarf on the desk, and a note saying not to tell anyone so that Tony, Tali and the other NCIS agents aren't endangered.
  • And, if that wasn't enough, she appears in person at the end of the Season 16 finale, "Daughters." Wham Shot in and out of universe, as Gibbs clearly didn't know she was still alive (and, considering that the episode had been about him hallucinating his dead ex-wife, probably thought he was seeing another ghost at first) and the show's crew went to a lot of effort to keep this quiet, to the point of bringing Cote in after the rest of filming with a minimum of crew to shoot that final scene and even keeping her appearance out of the table read.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Tony ends up killing Michael Rivkin, who was Ziva's ex-boyfriend and Mossad partner she was rekindling a relationship with, the entire following episode has her royally pissed off as all hell and thinking Tony just got rid of a personal obstacle. There's a partial truth to it, as Tony was being a bit of a Green-Eyed Monster which everyone points out, but Rivkin was corrupt and trying to murder Tony for attempting an arrest on him, justifying self-defense. Plus Tony grabbed a gun and was begging Rivkin to not charge him with a glass shard shiv after their scuffle, though Ziva presses him hard on emptying a magazine into Rivkin despite this.
• White Sheep: She's the only decent member of her family. Her brother was a murderer and terrorist and her father was a Well-Intentioned Extremist at best.
• Willfully Weak: Gives up her knife and engages in what seems to be a losing fist fight in "Shalom" to make the opponent that framed her start beating the crap out of her and make it seem like she's weak and pathetic.. solely so that they would explain who they really are in arrogance of their victory, which Ziva promptly thanks them for. Two blows later and the aggressor is knocked out across the ground before they even realize what just happened.
• You Killed My Father: To Ilan Bodnar, her sent her spiraling into a wave of grief upon shooting her father.

Director Jenny Shepard

Played By: Lauren Holly (seasons 3–5)

"Do you think it would be inappropriate if, as director, I went in there and smacked that smile off her face?"

• Da Chief: From season 3 to season 5.
• Fake Guest Star: In season 3.
• Hypocrite: She won't let Gibbs go after Ari without proof, yet she goes after La Grenouille with a vengeance, positive he killed her father, even though she has no proof.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Does not appear in the show until Season 3.
• It Gets Easier: Implied after she died, when the Paris assassination operation she and Gibbs went on to take out an ex-KGB hitman and his handler, resulted in Gibbs killing his target — and the fairly-fresh Shepard being unable to pull the trigger on hers. After Mike and Gibbs resolve the problem in the present day, Gibbs goes on to say that her skill with the gun was never natural, being something he personally had to teach and instill in her.
• It's Personal: Her possibly unwarranted hunt for René Benoît is this, since she believes Benoît killed her father. Benoît claims that he had actually been bribing her father and that he killed himself out of shame.
• The Last Dance: She died in a gunfight with five assassins, taking most of them with her.
• Military Brat: Her father was a colonel in the Marine Corps and a former NCIS director.
• Ms. Fanservice: She's occasionally subjected to blatant Male Gaze starting from her very first appearance (in that case it was her legs).
• Promotion to Opening Titles: Immediately after joining and leading The Team.
• Secretly Dying: In Season 5, she was plagued by a fatal illness hinted to be ALS. Instead, she went out in a shootout, taking down five people before she succumbed to blood loss, and it's implied that she preferred this end to her life. Nobody except Ducky knew, as she'd went to him for a second opinion and advice; in fact, when he learned about her death, he initially thought the disease had killed her sooner than expected.
• Sharp Dressed Woman: After dying in a hail of bullets, Abby commented on how Jenny was always such a sharp dressed lady.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: She and Gibbs have this vibe, even though they had a relationship.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Abused her power to try and get revenge on Rene Benoit, the man who killed her father.
  • Her father's still alive. Apparently. It is heavily implied that CIA was taking advantage of AFIS to make her father appear to be alive, thus discrediting her and preventing her from further ruining The Dragon's operation.
• You Killed My Father: To La Grenouille. Later she does kill him, but no one figures it out until she's already dead... or was it Trent, actually telling the truth?
• Your Days Are Numbered: Before she was killed, she was sadly already terminally ill. It's implied that she preferred "hail of bullets" to "terminal illness" and that's part of why she acted the way she did leading up to her death.

Senior Special Agent Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo Jr.

Played By: Michael Weatherly (seasons 1–13, 21)

Ziva: Tony, your dying words will be 'I've seen this film'.

NCIS' resident lothario. Tony is a former college athlete who decided to become a cop after an incident where he had to leave a girl behind in a burning building while saving her brother. He was recruited to join NCIS by Gibbs from the Baltimore Police Department and has established himself as a highly effective, albeit extremely unorthodox, investigator. Most people consider him to be Gibbs' heir as SAC of the MCRT.

He departs NCIS in the Season 13 finale so that he can focus on raising his daughter with Ziva in the wake of Ziva's death.

---

• Accidental Misnaming: Of course, there's the McNicknames, but Tony gets his own share of this from Fornell, who pronounces his name DiNotso (he says the double z's like 'pizza') and occasionally McGee calls him DiNosey. ^note Fornell's pronunciation is actually how an Italian speaker would pronounce Tony's surname. It makes sense if Fornell has Italian ancestry, as suggested in "Short Fuse" where we see him cooking "spaghetti alla puttanesca" for himself and Gibbs using a recipe from his "nonna" (grandma)
• Abusive Parents: Of the emotionally distant variety. Anthony Sr. was often gone for most of young Tony's life, resulting in a distant relationship. They start to amend the relationship once it comes out that his father was financially broke for years and became the Con Man he's known as to keep something stable under his and Tony's feet.
• Affectionate Nickname: Zoe Keats calls him "Spider", a name dating back to when they were cops in Philadelphia.
• Becoming the Mask: In season four when he went undercover. Which makes it all the more heartbreaking when Jeanne Benoit discovers the truth.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Ziva.
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't ever betray NCIS or the USA in general (like Agent Lee) or make fun of people he makes fun of but you don't know (like Det. McCadden).
  • Oh... and don't try to kill him and then think you can work with him.
  • And for the love of all things military, leave Ziva alone.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Do not let the Cassanova-like personality with all the jokes and snark fool you. He is a trained interrogator and can break anyone given the right leverage.
• The Big Guy: He's originally the "muscle" of the team and he mentioned that he majored in physical education. After Kate dies, he steps up as The Lancer (though he's the official Number Two) with the group's muscle then being filled by Tyke-Bomb Action Girl Ziva David.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer:
  • Very often Gibbs catches him apparently slacking off, only to then reveal all the investigation and work he's been doing.
  • Whenever he's in charge of a case he uses a brainstorming technique he calls "campfire", where the squad roll their chairs into the middle of the bullpen and talk through a conundrum. The rest of the team roll their eyes whenever he calls for one but can't deny that it's an effective tool.
  • Also has the unorthodox interrogation technique of being as obnoxiously annoying as possible to aggravate people into talking just to make him stop.
• Butt-Monkey: In the early seasons, this was his position for the most part. In the pilot, he was thrown out of a car onto a highway and in the second he was thrown out a plane, he had a parachute in this case.
• Cartwright Curse: He fares almost as badly as Gibbs, with a significant amount of the women he's been attracted to meeting untimely deaths—Kate, Paula, the reporter in "Obsession", and Ziva.
• The Casanova: Especially in early seasons, he was seen as wooing a lot of women. After his time with Jeanne, it slowly stopped.
• Catchphrase: "On it, boss."
• Characterization Marches On:
  • Zig-zagged. In season 1, he's said to have played basketball at Ohio State, and went to the Final Four. In season two, he he says that he played football at Ohio State, and broke his leg in the rivalry game with Michigan. Later seasons retcon this back to basketball, as seen in "Baltimore," "Rekindled" and "Cadence." He also mentions his mother encouraged him along with his father in high school, before we learn Mrs. Dinozzo died when he was eight and Senior has yet to remarry. Furthermore, at the very beginning of the show in the Backdoor Pilot, Tony has greased up hair which is dyed black. A flashback to 2001 reveals he also had this hairstyle back as a Baltimore cop, suggesting he dropped it sometime later in the year during 2003.
  • Fails to recognize The Maltese Falcon early in S1 before his cinephile trait was established.
• Clear My Name: Twice. First the lab assistant Chip hated him for getting him fired in the past and sought out a complicated, nearly forensic-proof case. Second, Jeanne Benoit claimed to have seen him kill her father, the arms dealer René Benoit ("La Grenouille"). Director Shepard quickly proved she was only saying that because she was still angry about Tony lying to her.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He's a clown, but he's a clown who can trick the head of Mossad into confessing to illegal activities and can beat up a mook while tied to a chair.
• Deadpan Snarker: Almost every sentence contains some snark.
• Distressed Dude: Generally, Tony is the resident dude in distress, but he usually manages to get himself out of his situations by himself.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: He gets very annoyed when NCIS doesn't get their due credit for solving cases and foiling terrorism, either being referred to simply as "federal agents" or being ignored entirely.
• Everybody Knew Already: He tried keeping his relationship with Zoe Keats secret but couldn't hide the positive effect it had on his personality. No one was surprised when he finally admitted it
• Exasperated Perp: His preferred method of interrogation. Most prominent when he doesn't ask questions, but just sits there, chewing on his tie and playing Tetris on his phone.
  • He once inverted the trope, pulling it off while he was the one being interrogated by the director of Mossad, who he successfully aggravated into admitting that he had sent the agent Tony had killed to spy on a meeting of several law enforcement agencies, which were discussing an operation regarding Israel.
• Five Temperament Ensemble: Sanguine
• Freudian Excuse: One that's something of a Tear Jerker: It turns out the reason Tony's such a movie buff is because his mother took him to movie theaters a lot when he was a kid before her death; they were even watching a movie when she passed away in the hospital. Ziva notes the irony that this is the first time Tony's ever mentioned his mother to her.
• "Friends" Rent Control: He lived in a very nice apartment in a good neighborhood and, to McGee's shock, owned it outright. As it turned out, the place was the scene of a grisly triple homicide and Tony was able to purchase it for much less than its actually worth because nobody else wanted the place.
• Genre Savvy: He's a big movie buff, and will very often find a way to compare the current case to a movie he's seen. Occasionally, however, he turns out to be Wrong Genre Savvy.
• Gossipy Hens: A rare male example: whenever he learns some juicy tidbit about something, he can't help but share with everyone. At one point Gibbs even gives him a Dope Slap for "spreading rumors".
• Handsome Lech: Definitely. He got gradually better after Ziva joined the team, and more so after his undercover assignment that turned into a real love affair, but in the first few seasons he was this trope to a T.
  • In the pilot, "Yankee White", his Establishing Character Moment has him educating Kate on why NCIS sketches crime scenes even after photographing them ... by asking if she can tell the measurements of the blonde model on a magazine cover just from the cover photo.
    Tony: Can you tell if she's five foot four and a 34C, or five foot seven and a 36D? (smirks) You can't. Not from a photo. That's why we do sketches, take measurements.
  • From episode 2, "Hung Out to Dry":
    Kate: "Your mind, DiNozzo, runs the gamut from 'X' to triple 'X'."
• Has a Type: Four of his five main love interests (Kate, Ziva, EJ, Zoe) on the show are action girls.
• Hey, You!: Calling McGee Probie or one of many McNicknames.
• Hidden Depths: He maintains that he coasted through school and shows pride in being kicked out of many expensive prep schools. In Season 12, however, it's revealed that he cleaned up his act while at Military School and was a model student from that point onwards. He swears Bishop to keeping that fact a secret.
• Hideous Hangover Cure: To cure a bad hangover, he uses the "DiNozzo Defibrillator": a concoction of lemon juice, tabasco sauce, and soda water.
• Jerk Jock: He was a member of the Ohio State Buckeyes basketball team when it went to the NCAA Final Four^note In Baltimore, where he rescued a young boy from a house fire. The incident led to his becoming a cop. He also graduated with a degree in Phys Ed.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: If you dig deep enough, you may find it, somewhere.
• Ladykiller in Love:
  • With Jeanne Benoit; he was undercover at the time, so it wasn't supposed to happen.
  • He had a spectacular eight year will they won't they arc with Ziva, with genuine feelings coming from both parties.
  • From season 12 to season 13, he was head over heels for Zoe Keats, an ATF agent and his former partner from the Philadelphia PD. Hilariously, the entire team knew about the relationship before he revealed it because he couldn't hide how happy it made him.
• The Lancer: While he's always been Gibbs' official Number Two, it wasn't until Kate dies when he really steps up to this role.
• Last-Minute Hookup: With Ziva, ending 8 seasons of UST in her final episode.
• Like Brother and Sister: With Abby and Elle whom he treats like younger sisters. Also treats McGee like a younger brother. Also Zigzagged with Ziva Depending on the Writer.
• Limited Advancement Opportunities: Director Shepard offered him the chance to lead his own team in Rota, Spain, in Season 4 but he turns it down in favor of keeping an eye on Gibbs in the wake of Gibbs' accident. Shepard warns him that such chances are few and far between. He hasn't been offered a chance to move up in the agency in the eight years since.
• Locked in a Freezer: In a shipping container with Ziva in "Boxed In".
• Long-Runner Cast Turnover: Has appeared in 13 seasons before leaving the force and moving to Paris in the season 13 finale, making him the fifth longest serving character on the show.
• Loving Bully: He was kind of like this towards Kate.
• Military School: We find out that he attended one on season 12.
• The Movie Buff: His defining trait outside of being the Handsome Lech. He is a library of cult films from the 1940s to early 1980s.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Is on the receiving end of this twice in the episode "Last Man Standing."
• Not So Above It All: After spending an entire episode giving McGee a hard time about his jet pack obsession, Tony is the one full-on geeking out while chasing down a perp attempting to escape using a fully-functional jet pack.
• Number Two: He easily steps into the role of leader when Gibbs is absent, even demonstrating Gibbs' seeming-precognition and knowing when major developments will happen before they occur.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: He jokes around and plays the fool, to the annoyance of everyone around him. However, when he drops the act and becomes totally serious it's almost scary as he rivals Gibbs' seeming precognition.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Drops his Class Clown identity for a while (stops dissing [McGee], quits making wisecracks, combs his hair up neatly without any messy spikes in front, and becomes all brooding and distant) around a particularly distressing Christmas season when he learns a girl he used to date has checked into a rehabilitation center and blames himself for encouraging her breakdown. Ziva is able to get him to overcome his guilt and Tony promptly returns to being a joker in style by the end of that same story.
  • In another episode, when Gibbs is out of commission, Tony drops any and all snarky sarcasm and immediately starts acting exactly Gibbs, stepping up as leader. Abby tries to call him on this, only to be on the receiving end of one of the most awesome lines of the entire series:
    Abby: Acting like Gibbs doesn’t make you in charge, Tony.
    Tony: You’re right. Acting like Gibbs doesn’t make me in charge. Being second in command makes me in charge. So if drinking coffee and slapping heads motivates you people, so be it.
• Persona Non Grata: After the events of "The Admiral's Daughter," he can never go back to Marseilles again (Despite the fact that the mess in question wasn't his fault).
• Plucky Comic Relief: In the first few seasons.
• Porn Stash: We've never seen it, but it must require a C-5 Galaxy to carry. However, in "Bikini Wax," he reveals that he has a subscription to "GSM" ("Get Some Magazine"), and brings in one of the issues from his collection because the victim had a photo shoot in it.
• Proud Beauty: He knows full well how good looking he is, and is far from humble about it. There's one episode where he gets mad because McGee was chosen to be the "face" of the organization in a cardboard cutout. it turns out to really be a prank McGee is playing on him.
• Promoted to Parent: Discovers his daughter (by Ziva) in the Season 13 finale, driving some major life choices.
• Put on a Bus: He left the show in the Season 13 finale, having spent a good portion of the preceding season becoming detached from his job and questioning his life choices.
  • The Bus Came Back: Returns in "The Stories We Leave Behind" for Ducky's funeral.
• Replacement Goldfish: Owns a literal one. Her name's Kate. Now it's up to two, as of season 12, because he has a goldfish named Ziva. (See below.)
• Reference Overdosed: His movie references turn this show into this all on his own.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Several episodes reveal that his wardrobe is a who's-who of expensive name brands. His grousing during the shower scene in "SWAK" is one of the best examples:
  Tony: This very instant, someone is incinerating my Ermenegildo Zegna suit, my Armani tie, my Dolce & Gabbana shirt, and my Gucci shoes!
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Manly Man to McGee's Sensitive Guy.
• Shipper on Deck: In "Safe Harbor", Tony attempts to set up Agent Borin and Gibbs because he thinks that they would work well together given how similar they are.
  Tony: So nobody's with me on Team Bibbs?
• Slimeball: A mild example. While he's not a bad person, he certainly comes across as kind of a sleazebag a lot of the time.
• Someone to Remember Him By: He discovers, in the Season 13 finale, that he has a daughter with Ziva a short time after learning of Ziva's supposed death.
• Spanner in the Works: Tony is often so unpredictable that he can screw over the best laid plans of the villains by simply being his annoying self. This is also his preferred method of interrogation, thinking so far out of the loop that rehearsed defenses are useless, and being so annoying or weird that the suspect is unable to think clearly. This methodology also proves useful when he is being interrogated by the FBI or the Director of Mossad. He even called himself one in the season 7 opener:
  Tony: I'm the wildcard. I'm the guy that looks at the reality in front of him and refuses to accept it.
• 10-Minute Retirement: Between seasons 10 and 11, to get the case against Gibbs dismissed.
• Took a Level in Badass: Multiple levels between seasons three and four, then smaller yet still noticeable levels between seasons five and six, then multiple levels again between seasons six and seven.
• Unorthodox Holstering: Discussed. Apparently he annoys the NCIS armorers by constantly visiting them to try out different sidearms and carry methods to figure out the coolest combination that works for him.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: A little with Kate, but to a much greater degree with Ziva.
• Urban Legend Love Life: Starting in season five. He acknowledges in Season Six that he's going through a dry spell since falling in love while undercover. He just doesn't want anyone to know.
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • Type 2 with McGee. They act almost like brothers.
  • Tony is also very close to Gibbs, but you wouldn't say so from their normal interactions. It's the same story with Kate (which appears at first like a type 1), and with Ziva.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: Has this dynamic with his father ironically given his usual attitude. Though given DiNozzo Senior is The Casanova and a Chivalrous Pervert par excellence this is to be expected.
• Walking the Earth: His leaving to take care of his daughter is hinted to be partially this as well, along with hinting at investigating the circumstances of Ziva's death.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy:
  • Mostly in the early seasons, with Gibbs.
  • Also clearly present with his biological father. They're improving.

Special Agent Alexandra "Alex" Quinn

Played by: Jennifer Esposito (season 14 only)

A federal agent training instructor, Quinn is friends with Gibbs and was once McGee's trainer. Introduced in Season 14 after Gibbs repeatedly shoots down agents to take Tony DiNozzo's place that she recommended, prompting her to come pay him a visit, which ultimately led to Gibbs not only recruiting Agent Torres, but recruiting her for his team as well. She leaves the team early in season 15 to take care of her ailing mother, who has developed Alzheimer's disease.

---

• Broken Ace: Was a great field agent until My Greatest Failure broke her.
• My Greatest Failure: ...she was traumatized by the death of her partner because (from her POV) her partner, a new mother, just wanted to give her some privacy during a stakeout and got out of the car right in front of the criminals they were watching and got shot to death. Additionally, because the reason her partner died (again from Quinn's POV) was an argument with her (Quinn's) fiance...
• The Prankster: Quinn always remembers her trainees. Bishop was one of them. Quinn says she doesn't remember Bishop, although she later tells McGee that she definitely remembers her. She's just messing with her because she's so tightly wound... "and besides... it tickles me."
  • In "M.I.A.", later on in the season Quinn, Torres, McGee, and Bishop are training for a marathon. Quinn and Torres are able to finish in unbelievable time. Later on, McGee and Bishop figure out that Quinn cheated on the training run; she took a taxi. Quinn reveals she was never going to run in the marathon and did it to mess with them. It would be off-putting... but then she goes into a goofy happy dance, giggling like a fool.
• Put on a Bus: Left the team to care for her ailing mother in-between seasons 14 and 15.
• Red Baron: Quinn was called the Queen of Hearts when agent afloat because of her love of card playing. Running into a sailor who knew her then causes her to remember the nickname when dealing with a murder on a mixed navy/civilian cruise.
• Remember the New Guy?: Prior to her debut appearance, Quinn met Gibbs and was McGee's training officer.
• Two First Names: "Alexandra" and "Quinn".
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Lasted only a season, the shortest length of any main character.

MI6 Officer Clayton Reeves

Played by: Duane Henry (seasons 13–15)

• The Alcoholic: A recovering one, at least, revealed by his presence at an AA meeting.
• The Aloner: Part of the reason was that "he didn't want anyone with a family" to put themselves at risk (he was in the foster care system). While he might not know the team's exact family situations (he knows Bishop's and he clearly doesn't know he's not one to talk to Gibbs about the lacking a family) he's aware they consider themselves True Companions.
• The Atoner: Possibly why he apparently signed up for an operation that Quinn described as a suicide mission.
• Black Dude Dies First: Is shot and killed protecting Abby from a mugger.
• Character Death: Is killed at the end of "One Step Forward" - his body is seen at the start of "Two Steps Back".
• Dark Secret: Screwed something up really bad in the past to the point he wasn't sure if he would be able to stay in MI6.
• Death Seeker: Considering how he was practically ordering Vance in "MIA" to get him another Whillowby-style assignment and receiving one that would've taken him to Syria... (he ultimately rejects it).
• Fire-Forged Friends: After learning his best friend and fellow agent betrayed both for money he declares that "We're not mates, she (Bishop) is my mate".
• Heroic Sacrifice: Clayton is killed fighting to save Abby from a hitman.
• Loners Are Freaks: Bishop becomes increasingly disturbed that he apparently has no friends as of his MI6 partner's betrayal and only has himself as an emergency contact.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: After three appearances as a guest star.
• Separated by a Common Language: Apparently his Running Gag to parallel Ziva's Blunt Metaphors Trauma: One of Bishop's brothers reminds his other brother that "mate" means "friend" in British; Reeves insists his gift to Bishop are "crisps" not "chips".
• Shipper on Deck: Is clearly not bothered that Bishop's brothers suspect he's in a relationship with her (he isn't, but what with the sudden death of her boyfriend...).
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: For both DiNozzo and Ziva, as he's introduced in episodes mentioning both characters: Outgoing, sharply-dressed lover of pop-culture and foreign person of color from their country's equivalent of the CIA. Subverted in that he didn't wind up joining the team immediately.
• Taking the Bullet: For Abby, in the season 15 finale.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Torres. As the team has never seen two big guys of relatively equal status with this relationship everyone is worried they're going to fight, but this is just how they affirm their friendship. They *are* going to fight, however -- how else will they know who's better?

Forensic Specialist Abigail "Abby" Sciuto

Played By: Pauley Perrette (seasons 1–15), Brighton Sharbino (young)

Tony: Abby Sciuto, resident NCIS forensic scientist, heart and soul. A paradox wrapped in an oxymoron, smothered in contradictions in terms. Sleeps in a coffin. Really, the happiest goth you'll ever meet.

A forensic science genius who apparently handles the lab work for all of NCIS by herself, Abby is a perky goth who always tries to see the best in everyone despite being confronted by all the horrible things people do to each other every day.

She is the barometer by which the mood at NCIS can be judged. If Abby is anything other than her usual cheerful self it means something is most definitely wrong and upsetting her in any way is a guarantee to getting your ass kicked (by her with the rest of Team Gibbs rushing in just as she's finishing up).

She retires from NCIS near the end of season 15 to start a non-profit in England that Clayton Reeves was going to start before he died saving Abby's life from a hitman.

---

• All-Loving Hero: Played straight, with a few exceptions - she generally thinks people who abuse children or animals are scum and deserve whatever they get.
• All Women Are Prudes: Downplayed. She has no problem with sex, just certain expressions of it, like Palmer's foot/shoe fetish AND how carefully he takes note of his coworker's footwear.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Pulls this on a smarmy forensics student while teaching a week-long symposium in Mexico, correctly determining that the woman owns an orange tabby and two calicos, has a citrus allergy, went bowling the night before, and was ovulating, with zero forensic equipment, just by giving her a once-over. Don't make fun of Abby's fashion choices.
• Badass Adorable:
  • Once, she was Alone with the Psycho, who was her current assistant, and he tried to kill her. The team figured it out, and came running, only to find that she had kicked his ass, hog tied him, and gagged him. She wasn't even winded. There's also the time she was taken by a hitman hired to kill her to prevent her from testifying. By the time Gibbs and company arrive, she's using a taser on him.
    Abby: [To the hitman, lying on the ground squealing while she stands over him] And don't look up my skirt! [zaps]
  • Implied by Ducky to the corpse in "Toxic": "You messed with the wrong forensic scientist."
  • There's the Poison and Cure Gambit she pulls on Robert King. She tracks him down to a coffee shop, lets him brag about how he's outwitted her and the whole team, then casually tells him that she's spiked his coffee with cyanide that will kill him in less than an hour. She offers to trade the antidote for his confession that he set up a hit on her, leading to his arrest. The fact that it's a bluff makes it even more awesome, as she's able to completely sell it to a trained black-ops specialist. (She'd actually slipped powdered caffeine pills into the coffee, relying on their natural effect and the power of suggestion to fool him.)
  • In another episode, the perpetrator infiltrates her lab in the guise of helping with the investigation and deletes the incriminating evidence, leaving her livid and itching to kick his ass. When he smugly tries to extort a plea deal out of Gibbs, Gibbs simply steps aside and lets her break the man's nose.
• Badass Bookworm: She's a skilled forensic scientist and is capable of defending herself if the need rises.
• Berserk Button: Abby's two biggest pet peeves are people who claim to be vegetarians but still eat chicken, and poorly handled evidence.
  • In "Toxic," (Season 6, Episode 21), she insists, "What is Abby's rule #1? Do not lie to Abby!"
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • She once threatened Agent Lee that she's one of the few people in the world who can kill someone and leave absolutely no forensic evidence.
  • And a couple times people tried to hurt Abby, the scene cuts to agents running to help her, and when they arrive, Abby has taken her attacker down, and is clearly coming down from a major adrenaline rush (see Badass Adorable).
  • She can verbally dress you down as well as Gibbs, and in a way it's even more harsh just because it's coming from her.
  • One of her interns flat-out declares to Gibbs "I'm more scared of her than you" even though she hasn't really been mean to him, just bombarded him with a list of bizarre rules and and made him wear bells to avert him causing any problems.
• Boring, but Practical: Her job as The Lab Rat isn't as conventionally exciting as chasing down suspects but Abby would vehemently disagree.
• Brainy Brunette: Has jet-black hair and is the smartest member of the team.
• Breakout Character: She's basically the series mascot.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: See Perky Goth. Can also be something of One of the Kids at times.
• Cargo Ship: Abby ships herself In-Universe with her mass spectrometer, which she calls "Major Mass Spec". She even says that she wants to "have his little mass spec children".
• The Cast Show Off: Pauley Perrette has a Masters Degree in Criminal Science.
• Cast the Expert: Before becoming an actress and being cast as Abby Sciuto, Pauley Perrette's early ambitions included working with animals, being a rock musician, or an FBI agent. She studied criminal justice at Valdosta State University in Georgia and at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. In a 2005 interview with Craig Ferguson, she started her master's degree in criminal science before she ended up in the entertainment industry.
• Catchphrase: "I hate it when he/she/they does/do that." Also, "Gibbs! Gibbs! Gibbs! Gibbs! Gibbs!"
• Casual Danger Dialogue: More like Casual Post-Danger Dialogue, but after working with - and later duck taping up - the Obviously Evil assistant Chip (an assistant that she specifically requested against), Gibbs and co come to rescue her, only to find her sitting in a chair with only one thing to say.
  Abby: (casually sitting in her chair, used duck tape roll in hands) Now can I work alone?
• Characterization Marches On: Go back and watch some Season 1 episodes, and you'll see that Abby isn't nearly as bubbly or talkative as she would later become. She's also gotten something of a Girliness Upgrade over time.
• Cheek Copy: Admits in "Left for Dead" (Season 1, Episode 10) that she did this once.
• Cheerful Child: In a flashback we see she was an extremely cheerful tomboy with a knack for science and detective work.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Abby plays the halves of the trope title separately with McGee. The "clingy" can kick in when she's upset or worried. The "jealous" can kick in if there's a non-team member around who pulls McGee's attention away from her (e.g. an ICE agent played by Jaime "Hustle" Murray). You'd swear at times that they were still dating...
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: In spades. You wouldn't give her credit in being a competent badass when needed, despite clearly being very intelligent, but this innocent and sweet geek is actually very capable of defending herself when needed.
• Cuddle Bug: Abby snuggles up to people she's close to and often hugs them from behind. It's her way of showing fondness and affection.
  • In season 4's Driven she, the team, and several other agents are attending a sexual harassment seminar...and Abby is downright upset that people would find it offensive when she hugs them. Every agent present reassure her that they don't, indicating she tends to hug other agents other than Gibb's team.
• Damsel out of Distress: Got captured by the villain when she went over to NCIS: Los Angeles for a crossover. She used his live camera feed to send her location to Callen's team via Morse code blinks.
  • This happens several times over the series, including tasing a stalker into submission and duct taping up a forensics specialist who was trying to get Tony convicted of murder. Abby does occasionally get into trouble, but she's more than capable of saving herself.
• Dark Is Not Evil: She dresses in black and has a big interest in death. She's easily one of the nicest characters on the show (so long as you don't piss her off).
• Despair Event Horizon: When she thought she isn't doing enough good to counteract all the bad, she was horribly detracted and even called in sick. Triggered when she was reminded of her very first "case": When she was a child she found a little girl's teddy bear and went to return it, but due to family drama (the girl's dad hated his father-in-law who had given her the bear) the girl couldn't take it back; she even found the girl's grandpa who told her it was impossible. Eventually Abby secretly gave her one of her own toys instead and kept that bear until it fell apart.
• Disappeared Dad: She lost her adoptive father at a young age, and heaven knows she feels regret over the fights they had.
• Does Not Like Guns: Downplayed. Though she handles guns and ammo on a regular basis in lab tests, Abby never uses a gun to shoot people- ever.^note Tasing them, on the other hand... However, she has no problems opening fire on dummies and using guns for ballistics tests and simulations.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: With her looks she comes across as this, but she's actually a Perky Goth and a very Nice Girl.
• Embarrassing First Name: She doesn't much care for being called "Abigail" by Ducky.
• Fake Food: The giant cup of the Caf-Pow soda that Abby frequently drinks is actually sugar-free cranberry juice; it was orginally Hawaiian Punch up until around the fourth season, when Pauley Perrette started abstaining eating or drinking anything that contained refined sugar.
• First-Name Basis: Besides his wife and Gibbs, she's the only one who calls Director Vance "Leon".
• Foreshadowing: In "Kill Ari, Part I", Abby mentions she's originally from New Orleans when it's discussed that people there play lively jazz music at funerals and she interjects that before them, they play a dirge to properly mourn the departed. Many seasons later Abby's New Orleans background leads back to the discovery of a biological brother. It also becomes a big topic of intrest for the backdoor pilot of NCIS: New Orleans, which is all things NOLA.
• Freaky Fashion, Mild Mind: Abby's dress sense blares with goth, but she's got a brainy and generally level head. When she's not talking about creepy/gothic fetishes and fetishism in general, that is.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Used to great effect while helping Ziva to subdue an intruder at Gibbs' place. She even lampshades her choice of a weapon.
  Abby: It's a frying pan. It's a little cliché.
  Ziva: Works for me.
• Genki Girl: If this were a manga, she would be most likely to Say It with Hearts.
• Girlish Pigtails: "Hit and Run" shows that she had these even as an actual young girl.
• The Glomp: She is compelled to hug everybody. In fact, it deeply distressed her when a lecturer at a meeting for sexual harassment in the workplace made it seem like it was wrong to hug people and the entire room assured her they appreciated her hugs.
• Happily Adopted: Nine seasons in and we learn she was this to her deaf parents.
• The Heart: As indicated in the character quote, again. Even those who know she isn't an easy mark will go after her first for that reason.
• I Call It "Vera": "Major Mass Spec" and her other lab equipment. She also names her own teeth, though they appear to be masculine names - one is Frank.
• I Owe You My Life: After Clayton Reeves dies saving Abby from a hitman, Abby decides to retire from NCIS so she can begin the non-profit that Reeves was planning to start up in order to honor him.
• Iconic Item: Her black lace parasol.
• Improbable Age: Abby was stated as being in her late twenties during season 7. And it's also been heavily implied she has a PhD in chemistry.
  • There is a lot of deliberate vagueness about her age, being a highly qualified competent scientist who talks and dresses like a schoolgirl. The actress that plays her was born in 1969. A flashback episode to her childhood where she wears dungarees and lives on a farm had no clues to the time period it was set. The cars might have been from the 70's but looked old.
• I Work Alone: For the sake of everyone involved. Including the bad guys.
• I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That: When Michelle Lee suggests that NCIS is better off without Gibbs in the episode "Escaped":
  Abby: I like you Michelle, so I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that.
• Killer Rabbit: See below.
• Klatchian Coffee: Sometimes, Abby gets a little too wild after drinking one too many Caf-POW!s in one setting. Gibbs has had to make her slow down and stop on a few occasions because she was running at a mile a minute. She also set a huge record one time... which presumably ended with marathon barfing, given her reluctance to bring it up and mentioning how it didn't end well.
• Labcoat of Science and Medicine: Usually unbuttoned to frame her goth outfits. Whenever she is showing her Wrench Wench attitude, she swaps it for red NCIS overalls.
• Leitmotif: You will almost always hear techno/rock music pulsing in the background when a scene occurs with Abby in the lab. Compared to the mostly orchestrated score of the series, it really stands out as unique, just like she does.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: People who target Abby tend to wish they hadn't (via off-screen mayhem).
• Like Brother and Sister: With Tony whom she treats like an older brother. Also McGee after both received some Character Development. She also treats Ziva and Kate like older sisters.
• Long Runner: Been on the show for 15 seasons before leaving NCIS and moving to London towards the end of season 15, making her sixth longest serving character on the show.
• Misfit Lab Rat: She embodies the essence of this trope (despite being Perky Goth and not Punk). Her love for her job appears to be less out of morbid fixation on the crime scene/murder element and more on the delightful puzzles it provides, as well as a grizzled, Marine sniper boss who protects her like the gothyboots-wearing daughter he never had.
• Morality Pet: To Gibbs. He refers to her as the team mascot. What happens near the end of Season 15 is a HUGE testament to that.
• Motor Mouth: And how. It seems the more stressed she is, the faster she'll talk and the more tangents she'll go off on. Usually Gibbs has to pull her back on track.
• Must Have Caffeine: In the form of "Caf Pow" soda.
  • She's tried to break the addiction before. It never works.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Played with in that while she is definitely a nerd and highly intelligent, she looks like the exact opposite. Men who are attracted to her are initially attracted by her goth sensibilities.
• Nice Girl: Despite her looks, she's easily among the kindest and sweetest characters in the series, with no mean streak at all. That said, Beware the Nice Ones is still to be taken into account.
• Nightmare Fetishist: She sleeps in a coffin.
  Marty: You wouldn't happen to have an unhealthy obsession with death, would you?
  Abby: Oh, no. It's just a hobby.
• Odd Friendship: her friendship with Ducky, rare to see a young perky goth woman, and an old British guy getting along so well.
• Older Than They Look: Pauley Perrette was born in 1969, meaning she was in her early-mid 30s when she was cast. Abby looks maybe 25-30 even after 15 or so seasons.
• One of the Kids: She is rather childlike in a good way (cute, sweet, innocent, cheerful etc.) In one episode she has to watch over a teenage girl who's friend was kidnapped (to make sure she didn't get kidnapped as well). Unsurprisingly, they hit it off right away.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Abby stopped wearing pigtails for a while, ditched her dark lipstick, and played a dirge instead of the usual techno rock music as she mourned Kate. The "spirit" of Kate called her out on it.
  • In "Skeleton", she's surly for most of the episode and tries to stop wearing her elevator boots. It turns out that she was upset because her boyfriend broke up with her because he felt she was "too tall for him".
  • As a rule, whenever she's not her sweet, cheerful self, it's a sign something is seriously wrong (and not just with her, but often the whole team.)
• Parasol of Prettiness: Has a black, lacy one, that she carries in a few episodes. Speaking of which...
• Perky Goth: If you put Lisbeth Salander and Penelope Pitstop in a blender...With the ratio of perkiness to gothiness gradually shifting in favor of the former over time.
• Platonic Life-Partners: She and McGee dated once early in the series, and they had a Will They or Won't They? that ended on "won't".(especially with McGee marrying Deliah), but they still get along fairly well. Enough for her to be his Best Woman.
• Power Echoes: "...and I will rise up, and I will find the man that did this to Tony, and I will crucify him!"
• Properly Paranoid: She was afraid to work in the lab in the days following Kate's death out of fear she would come under attack by the sniper who killed Kate. Ari opened fire on the lab and bullets burst through the windows, and had the lights in the lab not been killed, Abby might have been instead. Gibbs then resorted to having bullet-proof glass (well, bullet-resistant glass, because Abby insists that no glass is truly bulletproof) installed in place of the old lab windows to prevent this from ever happening again.
• Put on a Bus: After Reeves dies in a hit meant for her, she retires from NCIS and starts a non-profit in London in his memory towards the end of season 15.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: She has stark black hair that heavily contrasts with her fair skin.
• Really Gets Around: Abby's sex life hasn't gotten much attention since the early seasons, but it is known to be... eclectic.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Energetic Girl to McGee's Savvy Guy.
• Secret Test of Character: She has a list of criteria that the men she dates have to meet before she'll commit to a long term relationship. None know that they are being tested, none (including McGee) have passed, and her friends take it for granted that every man she's involved with will be gone within a few months. She eventually makes an exception for Burt, the Parks Police Sergeant. It seems like the true parameters of Abby tests are that she's trying to find out if her love interest exhibits pure and rich feelings toward her and possesses a kind and charitable heart, because she dislikes it when men aren't satisfied with what they get and doesn't want to be made to change for a man or humor men only concerned about fulfilling their own self-interests and not thinking about her. When McGee went and asked where their relationship was going, it made her feel very insecure and sad that he felt she wasn't trying hard enough to make it work when she was already doing her best to understand him, and in that one moment, the whole thing fell down like a house of cards.
• Secret-Keeper: Abby knows Gibbs killed somebody in cold blood. She was made to perform a DNA test on the autopsy results for the man that Gibbs murdered (who killed his family), and invariably found out that Gibbs was a murderer. Abby buried the results as furiously as possible, and later shredded the documents when Gibbs was put under a separate investigation for his misconduct throughout his career, as this was the one piece of absolutely damning evidence he could never talk his way out of.
• Separated at Birth: Turns out in season 9 that she was adopted. Her biological twin brother runs an SPCA-affiliated pet shop.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Most notably in the Halloween Episode, "Witch Hunt", from Season 4, where she dresses up as Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, causing speechlessness in McGee and DiNozzo when they first see her. There's also that one time she's forced to adhere to a standard dress code and looks like Dream Career Barbie...with tattoos all over... and curly, slicked-back hair instead of pigtails and none of the usual dark lipstick or eyeshadow.
• Sherlock Scan: When Abby's teaching a class on forensics for the Mexican government, one of her students looks at her and snarkily asks if she forgot when The Day of The Dead is. Abby proceeds to tell the woman that she has a cat. When the woman isn't impressed, Abby reels off a list of things she's observed that range from the woman having three cats of two different breeds, all the way to the fact that she's currently ovulating. The woman quickly shuts up.
• Spikes of Villainy: Inverted. She often wears a spiked collar, but is probably the kindest person on the show.
• Stereotype Flip: She's about as unlike the stereotypical goth as can possibly be imagined.
• Sweet Tooth: She's got a serious one, based on her reaction to having a gourmet chocolate cupcake (a thank-you gift from Ziva) stolen from her lab before she can eat it.
• Tattoo as Character Type: A big black spiderweb on the far left-hand side of her neck. It firmly cements her as a fan of all things gothic. She also remarks to then-boyfriend McGee she got a new one during Season 1, an unspecified one which Kate reveals is on her ankle. Later, in a moment of pure Fanservice, after she is forced to don regulation clothing but then gets to change back to her normal attire, we see she also has a giant gothic cross tattooed on her back and two stick figures on her shoulder blades. There's a tattoo of a circular skull emblem on one of her fingers as well.
• Tomato in the Mirror: In "Enemy On The Hill", Abby applies to donate a kidney for an 18-year-old at her church whose kidneys no longer work and couldn't find a donor match for a transplant among his family, but winds up discovering that she and another possible donor for the kidney are a very close DNA match, meaning they're siblings. She spends the episode tracking down this long-lost twin brother of hers, wondering why her parents would give Kyle (who ends up being the one selected for the kidney donation) up. Then, on a hunch, she runs a DNA test between her hair and a lock of her mother's hair she has saved in a locket. She's shaken to discover that there's no familial DNA match between the two hair samples, meaning that her mother and father had adopted her from whoever her and Kyle's birth parents were.
  Abby: Why didn't they tell me I was adopted?
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Girly Girl to Kate and Ziva's Tomboy. Being a Wrench Wench puts her in Tomboy territory, too.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Implied with Abby in "Bloodbath":
  McGee: Now, you stay here and don't answer the door, or I will tie you up!
  Abby: Really?
• Trademark Favorite Food: "Caf-Pow," an energy drink that Abby chugs down from extra-large cups. She sometimes switches to "No-Caf-Pow" if she thinks the caffeine may disrupt her sleep.
• Tsundere: On any given episode she can be the sweetest, most loving and caring ball of fluff on the series and turn around to threatening anyone with the fact that she can kill them and leave no forensic evidence. Witness her Dere to Tsun turn around in the season 5 episode "Dog Tags" with McGee when she first sees McGee hurt, only to wanting to never have met him when she realized he shot a dog. Never mind that It Was Self-Defense.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Season 7's endgame partly starts because Abby took a forensics teaching trip down to Mexico, only to end up being forced by Paloma Reynosa to discover who killed the latter's father, Pedro Hernandez — which turns out to be Gibbs blowing his brains out for vengeance over Pedro killing his family. Cue Paloma and her brother, Alejandro, going on a warpath to try to kill Gibbs over Abby's discovery, and Abby herself having to take extreme risks for her job to eliminate all the evidence of Pedro's killer.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: A nightmare she had of being autopsied left her too scared to enter Ducky's lab herself for a time. She forcers herself to overcome this fear by sleeping on one of the examination tables for the night.
• Will They or Won't They?: Rather, will they or won't they again; she and McGee used to date, and still have chemistry, up to and including being jealous of whoever the other one is currently seeing. As of Season 12, however, McGee makes clear that they never will because Abby has a secret list of criteria that the men she dates must meet (without them even knowing that there is a list) before certain dates and no one's ever made it past two months with her. Also, McGee and Deliah married each other at the end of Season 14.
• Vanity License Plate: "4NS CHIK" displayed on her red 1932 Ford Deuce Coupe. The car before this one was a hearse.

Senior Special Agent and Operational Psychologist Jacqueline "Jack" Sloane

Played By: Maria Bello (seasons 15–18)

"...even extraordinary people make mistakes. That's a given. It's our response to those mistakes that defines us."

A former Lieutenant in the United States Army. Sloane served in Afghanistan, where she was held a prisoner of war and endured vicious torture and watched several friends killed. Her regrets follow her, and they truly left their mark. She later transferred from the Southwest Field Office in San Diego to NCIS Headquarters at the behest of Director Vance, and is now the team's profiler and emotional crutch. She leaves NCIS in the Season 18 episode "True Believer" to stay in Afghanistan and help with the local town after she and Gibbs rescue three girls from the Taliban.

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• Action Girl: Unsurprisingly given her background, she can kick ass and take names with the best of them, both with a gun and without one. Turns out she's an Action Mom too, as she reveals that she had a daughter whom she put up for adoption.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Starkly averted. When Sloane gets beat up, she gets beat up, blood, dirt and bruises all included, and the scars on her back are not pretty.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She is, by nature, a warm and caring person who will always reach out to people in need of help... but you really don't want to step on one of her trauma buttons. Anyone who does is usually fortunate to survive the encounter.
• Broken Bird: She can be warm and caring when dealing with someone else’s problems, but her own trauma has given her some sharp edges that come out when she’s angry or triggered. This comes to a head in Season 18, as she's become disillusioned with how little change has happened despite nabbing tons of bad guys. She eventually decides to leave NCIS because of it, though she officially departs for a different reason.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: She's starting to act as the Gentle Girl to Gibbs' Brooding Boy when he gets particularly troubled, coaxing him out of his dark moods with her gentle compassion. This largely stems from the fact that she has her own demons to contend with, so he knows she understands his pain. That understanding, combined with her natural warmth and lack of judgment when he needs to talk, means that he will turn to her when he wouldn't turn to anyone else.
• The Chessmaster: Jack has been known to misrepresent herself as something other than a psychologist or a cop when she's trying to get a read on a person. She does this to elicit specific responses from them that she wouldn't get if they knew who she really was and why she was really talking to them.
• The Confidant: To the team in general in her role as a psychologist/counselor. She's also this to Gibbs on a more personal level, being one of a very few people he has been shown to genuinely open up to and the only person he's ever voluntarily told the whole truth about Shannon and Kelly.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She suffered Cold-Blooded Torture in Afghanistan. She also had a daughter she gave up for adoption because that daughter was conceived when somebody raped Jack while she was drunk during a college party.
• Death Glare: She very rarely uses hers, which is a good thing because it can rival Gibbs in intensity.
• Every Scar Has a Story: The end of her debut episode shows the scars on her back. It's later revealed that she was captured and tortured for several months, losing her entire squadron in the process. The finale of season 15 delves into her brutal past when her torturer re-materializes and Jack wants revenge for the people from her unit he killed, and for herself.
• Fair Cop: She's played by Maria Bello.
• Girly Bruiser: She's a former Army Lieutenant and fully qualified Action Girl, but she's also notably fashionable, with a fondness for high heels and form-fitting dresses, skirts, and sweaters. (Fortunately, when she goes back into a combat zone, she wears fatigues.)
• Must Have Caffeine: As you'd expect of a federal agent, she drinks her coffee "by the gallon." Unlike Gibbs, however, she likes hers with loads of sugar.
  Sloane: [to Vance] Black, three sugars, more sugar, then coffee.
• One Head Shorter: Than Gibbs^note Mark Harmon is 6'0" to Maria Bello's 5'5". However, this isn't usually apparent, because Jack is usually wearing three- to four-inch heels. It's only obvious when she's dressed down, e.g. the basement scene in 15x17, or when she's wearing combat boots, like at the end of 15x10.
• Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: She has a tangled lattice of scars on her back, courtesy of her time as a prisoner of the Taliban, who tortured her for months on end. This left not only enduring physical scars, but a mess of psychological ones as well.
• The Profiler: Whereas Ducky more or less acquired an ability at profiling through years as a medical examiner and an interest in the subject, Jack actually went to school for it^note What degrees she actually has are up for debate. She's called "Doctor Sloane" at least once and is implied to be an M.D., which would make her a psychiatrist, but this hasn't been outright clarified, and it's also entirely possible she has a PhD in psychology. It's also possible she has both. and is a forensic psychiatrist. When she served in Afghanistan, it was with a psy-ops mission that's still classified.
• Put on a Bus: She decides to leave NCIS in Season 18 after becoming disillusioned with the job. While she initially planned to retire to Costa Rica, Sloane settles on Afghanistan instead after she and Gibbs rescued three girls from the Taliban; believing that she could do more work there than in NCIS.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: She usually handles it well, but her time in the Army and captivity in Afghanistan left her with a hefty case of PTSD and Survivor Guilt.
• The Shrink: And a pretty damn good one. Even though her teammates all show varying levels of aversion to talking about their feelings, she's proven to be good at getting them to open up, even if it sometimes requires a little benign manipulation to get them there. Even Gibbs opens up to her — although there might be other reasons for that one. Also, she's an exceptional profiler.
• Team Mom: She's a professional counselor and often there to console people when they need it, especially the team. However, sometimes, it becomes a matter of "physician, heal thyself" when her own demons come back to haunt her and the team needs to be there for her.
• Tomboyish Name: Her full name is Jacqueline, but she's referred to as Jack. The only person to call her "Jacqueline" with any sort of regularity is Ducky.
• Worthy Opponent: She sees Gibbs as one, who had already deduced she was trying to pull a ruse on him in their first meeting and humored her by pretending to be led on by it. In actuality, Gibbs had immediately figured out who she was and what she was doing when she knocked on his door as an "excuse" to get out of the rain, and likely caught on to the charade thanks to something Jack didn't know about — Rule 39: "There are no coincidences". (Also, she showed her drivers license the way an agent would show a badge.) They go on to become very close friends.

Special Agent Eleanor "Ellie" Bishop

Played By: Emily Wickersham (seasons 11–18)

"I wrote it my third day at the NSA. It was a Wednesday morning, I'd just finished a box of Coco Pebbles."

An NSA analyst brought to joint duty with NCIS in Season 11. Gibbs says that he wants to keep Bishop around after she helps the team solve a case involving high-level security leaks, which she predicted in a paper years ago. Now officially the newest Probie on Team Gibbs. She leaves NCIS at the end of the Season 18 finale to take part in a secret undercover operation under Odette Malone.

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• Action Girl: Having had three older brothers, Bishop is fairly adept at grappling with opponents who are much larger than her. On the other hand, she has little experience with gunfights before joining NCIS and hasn't done well in those she participated in so far^note In her first shootout, she fired one shot that appeared to cause a major explosion and incinerated a suspect (later revealed to be not her fault). In her second, the first shot fired hit her in the vest and she is left groaning on the ground while the rest of the team return fire. Her third gunfight, at the time against a Taliban mook, was more successful, but still left her pretty shocked. By season 13, she's gotten better.
• Affectionate Nickname: She inherits the title of "Probie", although Tony calls her that with none of the venom he used when McGee was the junior member of the team.
• Anti-Hero Substitute: Inverted. She's a lot more personable and easygoing compared to her notoriously stern and snarky predecessors.
• Audience Surrogate: In Season 13's "Savoria", Bishop is the only main character who wasn't around when Tony's undercover romance with Jeanne Benoit happened, so McGee gives her (and by extension, the audience) the summary on what exactly happened.
• Awesome by Analysis: Her job when she worked for the NSA was to figure out the plans that villains would come up with, and she continues that during her work
• The Baby of the Bunch: She mentions she has "three older brothers" in her debut episode, and they all showed up in Season 14's Thanksgiving Episode.
• Beware the Nice Ones: One of the nicest people you'd ever meet. Just a word of advice: Don't piss her off. Trust us on that.
• Big Eater: She loves to snack and uses food as a device to help her recall details. The first thing she asks about the NCIS New Orleans office is if they have a junk food machine, which completely dumbfounds SSA Pride.
  Ellie: [While at a 24-hour diner] I'll take a bowl of chili with onions and cheese, and... the Turkey Reuben, Russian dressing, an order of fries and... let's see... uh, pancakes, please.
  Gibbs: [To the waitress] She hasn't eaten in a week.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Tends to create "nests" where she works, which is often on the floor rather than a desk (or sometimes on her desk), although Gibbs eventually puts an end to this practice in the office. Also associates key details of situations and her surroundings with foods she was eating at the time.
• Cartwright Curse: One failed marriage, one dead boyfriend/would-have-been fiance, and one badly injured potential boyfriend. It looks like she's well on her way to having the same screwed up love life that nearly everyone else on the show (except for McGee and Palmer) does. In her final season, she starts showing chemistry with Torres, then has to break up the budding relationship after she deliberately craters her career so she can work undercover at an undisclosed location.
• Characterization Marches On: Early in Bishop's introductory days, her NSA analyst with an impulsive streak element was played up. Smart girl, tough cookie. However, after she outright asks Gibbs to fully induct her into the team and be treated and trained equally to DiNozzo and McGee, her status as Ziva's replacement was gradually played up more and more, she started becoming more of a Cowboy Cop leaning into occasional Rabid Cop depending on the personal proximity to the case, and she became more gung-ho and probable for the first to dive into action. The NSA days only really started coming back up again late in her tenure to set up the reason for her departure.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: To Kate and Ziva, as cited below, right down to her looks, as well as coming from a happy and stable family and initially being Happily Married.
• The Cutie: She is notably Lighter and Softer compared to her two predecessors, Kate and Ziva. It's even reflected with their hair colors and personalities (she's blond and more social, while both her predecessors were initially Aloof Dark Haired Girls to the max). She can also match Abby's perkiness if she wanted to.
• Deadpan Snarker: Later seasons make her this, no doubt influenced by her increasing experience on the job.
• Disposable Woman: Genderflipped; is revealed to be dating an Afghani interpreter (about a year after getting divorced) who was rescued in a previous episode. The second episode featuring their relationship is also when he's shot to (brain)death by a Chinese financial terrorist because he cracked the terrorist's code. The third tells their story in flashbacks while she seeks vengeance on his behalf, capped off with the revelation that she would have accepted his proposal had he not been killed. . . and he hasn't been mentioned since.
• Dynamic Entry: She misunderstands Tony asking her to open a hotel door and eagerly tries to kick it down but doesn't do any damage because of her small stature. Tony then reminds her that they'd just gotten a key from the front desk and meant for her to use that.
• Fake Guest Star: In season 11.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: On her desk is a sticker for Oklahoma State University, presumably her alma mater. OSU is located in Stillwater, Oklahoma, the same name as Gibbs' hometown in Pennsylvania.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: A nice girl, raised by a rural family in Oklahoma, she has some unusual euphemisms in place of actual swearing, as shown after she takes a bullet in her vest in Season 11's "Bulletproof":
  Bishop: (wheezing) Holy fish sticks, that hurt!
  • However, in Season Fourteen's "Beastmaster", she is shown to have an impressive repertoire of invective from six different languages, as Reeves witnesses admiringly when she gets pepper sprayed.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Has blonde and is a genuine Nice Girl, even with her snarkiness increasing as the seasons go by.
• Happily Married: She was married to a man named Jake, who she's known since they were in college together. Her new job as an NCIS agent caused a strain on her marriage, which fell apart when Jake had an affair with a coworker.
• Head-Tiltingly Kinky: Bishop claims to have had sex in a position that Tony and McGee consider to be impossible. She was about to start explaining how it was done when Gibbs walks in, ending the conversation.
• Honey Trap: Implied to be how Bishop became the NSA's expert on Benham Parsa. (the NSA does number crunching, not fieldwork, so this got Bishop yanked off the case.)
• The Maiden Name Debate: She used her maiden name rather than Jake's surname while they were married.
• Motor Mouth: When she gets going, she could give Abby a run for her money.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Quite the nerdy person herself as well as being incredibly beautiful.
• Never Gets Drunk: Claims this is the case, though it hasn't been shown on screen. She apparently learned this during a Noodle Incident at college with her future husband.
• New Meat: Has to bear the brunt of Tony and McGee's ribbing and hazing and does all the dirty work the senior agents don't want to do. Her first day as an agent involved sifting through buckets of human excrement and climbing up a rickety fire escape even though she isn't good with heights.
  Bishop: First, 'Probie' sounded endearing...and cute...doesn't anymore.
• Noodle Incident: Claims to have successfully executed a sexual position that Tony and McGee had previously considered anatomically impossible. She starts to explain when Gibbs walks in.
  Tony: Are you double jointed?
• Photographic Memory: She uses food association to help her with her recall.
• Poor Communication Kills: Losing her NSA security clearance made it hard to have regular conversations with Jake. Instead of finding other things to talk about, Jake decided to have an affair with someone else with NSA credentials, leading to the end of their marriage.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: Immediately after she joins The Team.
• Put on a Bus: In the Season 18 finale, she quits NCIS under the guises of a "disgraced NCIS Agent" in which she planned an NSA file leak long ago in order to tank her NCIS career and create her cover story. She is now working for Odette for an unknown period of time.
• Retcon: Bishop originally said that she and Jake knew each other in college, but Jake tells a story where they first met at the NSA.
• Revenge: Vows to avenge the death of her fiance Qasim at the hands of Chen the terrorist, going rogue and risking her life and job. Gibbs, who has some familiarity with Ellie's situation having also gone rogue to kill the guy who murdered his wife and child, is worried about her given how screwed up his emotional life has been ever since and that he and his friends were targeted by the killer's children years later.
  • She is similarly suspected of having done this with the man who presumably ran down Torres. It's later revealed in season 19 that Gibbs is the one who killed Xavier.
• Sadistic Choice: Gave Chen a similar "choice" he gave that episode's victim: Kill himself or get captured by terrorists that Chen ratted out. Chen chose to kill himself and it's implied Ellie tricked him.
• Took a Level in Badass: Initially a NSA analyst with no experience in firefights to a genuine Action Girl who can certainly be just as terrifying as Ziva if she wanted to be.
• Tragic Keepsake: A romantic card with photo booth pics of her and Qasim which would have been her answer to his marriage proposal ("YES!") that she was planning on giving him the day he died. After she avenges his death she gives it to Gibbs so she'll stop dwelling on the past.
• Will They or Won't They?: She has developed this vibe with Torres and there's also the implication that they may have already.