Crossed / Tropes A to D

Crossed Trope Examples
A - D | E - M | N - S | T - Z

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A

• Aborted Arc: In the second issue of Volume One, a rumor is brought up that units of the Canadian Army went crossed and were dug in at the border waiting to pounce on fleeing American refugees. The thought of trained soldiers with heavy firepower going crossed was enough to scare the protagonists into avoiding Canada entirely. After the group meets Brett, he dismisses the rumor as complete bullshit, saying that the crossed do not have the patience or the cohesion to wait for anything, military training or no. After this, it's never brought up again and the group crosses the border without incident.
• Abusive Parent: Joseph Pratt rapes his daughters and beats up Addy when she objects to this.
  • Leon's father has made him his personal Chew Toy.
  • Boss Yamada is a downplayed example, since he still cares about Hazuki to the point he goes with an entire team of mobsters through the Crossed-infected streets to save his daughter.
• Abusive Precursors: The Homo Tortor ("Man the Torturer") were a different hominid species who may have been responsible for the human population bottleneck of 75,000-70,000 BC (when the global human population may have been as low as 1,000-2,000 people). It's implied they drove other hominids to extinction. That is, if any of the story we see happened at all, or at the very least, happened the way we see it. The professor of the story had a theory, which had been mostly reviled and mocked by the scientific community, about some sort of plague being spread by a prehistoric empire, but the story we're shown appears to be just fiction, since it's a firsthand account made by a tribesman who is killed by the end, and the story in question was written (or, at least, finished) after the professor and his assistant have turned Crossed.
• Action Mom: Cindy
  • Jackie from Wish You Were Here is another example, being a decent rifle shot and often being on the front line of defense whenever Cava is coming under attack.
• Adipose Rex: Todd, the fat Australian trucker in the 2013 Special. He's a slovenly, degenerate slob who leaves the heavy work to his women. The only reason he's in charge is because he keeps the truck keys in a combination lock on his wrist whenever he isn't driving.
• Adorably Precocious Child: The Masoud's unnamed son, Patrick, and the Crossed child, Now from +100.
• After the End: Crossed +100 is set a hundred years after "C-Day," when the infection went public. Much of humanity's accumulated knowledge has been lost, parts of the continental United States are irradiated, and the surviving uninfected humans live in small communal societies in the ruins of the Midwest, raising ostriches for food. Zoo animals have colonized parts of North America, and at one point, the narrator watches a family of elephants in what's left of Tennessee. Oh, and language has changed significantly as well.
• A God Am I: The main flaw of the captain in Grave New World is his messiah complex. It results in everyone but him in his island community being killed or infected.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Often, understandably although it rarely if ever works unless the one hearing that begging is Smokey (and in those cases it would have really been better for everyone if it hadn’t worked).
• Alas, Poor Villain: On occasion.
  • First Child from 'Homo Tortor' is an example when it's revealed his parents and the rest of the community have been raising him to be sacrificed his whole life while letting him think he was the heir and teaching him to relish violence to make their betrayal worse for him, and that they see the whole thing as a joke.
  • Ann Cooke, the cannibalistic teacher in Volume 1, is clearly tormented by what she's done but was desperate to keep her class from starving, and in the end they all die anyway.
  • Cody and Oliver might feel this way by the time they finally turn against Smokey.
• All Bikers are Hells Angels: Horsecock, the leader of the Crossed hunting Stan's group in the first volume, wears a vest covered in patches that imply he was a member of one such outlaw motorcycle club.
  • In "Yellow Belly" Edmund manages to convince several biker gangs to rally against the Crossed in Badass Army style. They fare only slightly better than everyone else who tries that.
• All for Nothing: A hallmark of the series given how often a story arc ends on a Downer Ending. Notable examples include Cindy’s efforts to protect Patrick, the majority of what Shaky does, Cody and Oliver selling out people to save their own lives, and Amanda’s efforts at redemption in Breakdown. Zigzagged in Crossed 3D, where the mission to save one of the last living doctors by one of the last groups still actively helping people fails and gets most of the rescue team killed, but they do manage to save the vital medicine that Dr. Tang had been after, as well as one of her assistants.
• Alpha Bitch: The twins, both before and after being infected. Shaky hints that Jackie may be an adult version on Cava, but it's more of an Informed Flaw. Surprisingly, Yellow Belly averts this with the popular girls that Edmund ogles over, as while they see him as an Abhorrent Admirer, it's in a fairly benign and passive manner (not to mention kind of justified).
• Alternate History: The Thin Red Line establishes the setting as this. The arc is set in 2008 despite being published several years later and establishes the Crossed appeared during this time-contemporary figures such as Gordon Brown, Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush all play plot-relevent roles in trying (or failing) to address the outbreak. This is because the original arc was published and set in 2008.
• Ambiguously Gay: Shaky suspects Miranda is, due to her butch appearance and rugby past (although given that it was a voiceover, it was hard to tell if he was joking or not) and either way we never see her show any attraction towards men or women.
• Ambiguous Syntax: Cindy says she got rid of Patrick’s (abusive) dad and they moved around a lot afterwards; it’s vague if she means that she left him and was afraid he'd find them, or killed him and was afraid the authorities would find them.
• Amusement Park of Doom:
  • The first issue of Yellow Belly takes a place at the carnival, complete with Crossed clowns and performers.
  • Five Bloody Fingers has a similar setting, just replace clowns and performers with cosplayers.
• Anachronic Order: The narrative in the first volume jumps around from "now" to ten months earlier when the infection was beginning. It takes a read or two to grasp this.
  • The franchise in general is like this, with the various arcs taking place during different times in the Crossed plague, ranging from the initial outbreak to a few years later. Two Badlands arcs, Yellow Belly and The Golden Road, start on the very first night of the outbreak, Psychopath and its sequels take place at least two years after the C-Day, the first Badlands arc takes place four years after the outbreak and The Fatal Englishman takes place five years after the outbreak, while Crossed: +100 by Alan Moore and Gabriel Andrade takes place a whole century after the outbreak, the furthest yet in time.
  • Grave New World is an interesting case - the reader explores the life on Fort Jefferson during certain years while also drawing parallels between the man Captain Barnes used to be during the sea operation and the tyrant he has become by the time he reached the island. The timestamp eventually reaches five years by the present day.
  • Wish You Were Here also has two parallel timelines recorded in Shaky's diary: the journey that brought him from London to Cava, and his time as part of the Cava group.
  • There are also a few arcs that examine periods before the outbreak to some extent as a way of contextualizing characters - the Crossed Annual centered on Jackson being the most clear example as a good chunk of it is set in the 1980s aftermath of the Falklands War. And of course half of Homo Tortor is set thousands of years ago though those bits are most likely fictional even in-universe.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • In the final issue of Homo Tortor, when Washington checks out the computers at Professor Nelson's bunker, they clearly have Windows 7 installed on them as shown by the boot-up screens. Given that the C-day happened in the summer of 2008, Windows 7 would not become available for distribution until 2009 (and it didn't even have such name until October 2008, literally months after the C-Day started in the comic proper).
  • In Lockdown the prison nurse is seen playing on her smartphone and mentioning Candy Crush. The thing is, Candy Crush was released in 2012, while in the comics the C-Day took place four years earlier, in 2008.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Seen disturbingly (yet tragically) in Vol.4 Chapter 18 of Wish You Were Here when the infected Aoileann tearfully asks Shakey if he loves her via a radio, which he even more tearfully replies yes to. Unfortunately, this display of weakness is visibly pissing off her huge army of Crossed whom were only kept in check by fear of her.
  • Jae makes one to Wendy as Samarkand is being overrun and the two are in the process of being infected.
• Angrish: Fairly rare for a series about a Hate Plague, but there are a few examples of Crossed spouting completely unintelligible gibberish.
• Annoying Arrows: Brought up in the Homo Tortor arc of Badlands. Bows are very good at wounding and killing humans, but Crossed can shrug off any arrow wound that doesn't outright kill them long enough to murder whoever loosed the shot. It doesn't help that unlike in movies, being able to nock, draw, and loose more than one arrow every five seconds with any kind of strength or accuracy behind the shot is difficult, to say the least. One Crossed is able to keep moving with an arrow in his eye socket—it's definitely causing him a lot of brain damage, but in the heat of battle, that scarcely matters when it's damage all the way down.
• Anti-Hero: Many of them, but Shaky and Land take the cake. Rab also becomes one as the comic goes.
• Anyone Can Die: Given the setting, it's hard to get attached to many characters, knowing that they will most likely meet a horrible end. Even the hardened Crossed killer experts are not exempt, with Plot Armor rarely being a thing, if at all. Look no further than Jackson from Wish You Were Here, who during a botched attempt to kill Aoileann gets shot and wounded by a Crossed with a simple handgun. Shaky is forced to give him a rifle to shoot himself before other Crossed get to him as a result.
• Apocalypse How: Class 2, with 3 being highly probable; almost all of humanity has turned into the Crossed, and the remaining normal humans are being hunted down by them.
  • In The Fatal Englishman, Harry estimates that Great Britain's population has dropped from sixty million to one million, of which 95 percent are Crossed. If this is extrapolated further, that would mean that there were around 100 million people left in the world, and only about five million non-Crossed.
  • It is made clear both in The Fatal Englishman and other stories set years after the outbreak that despite their numbers being continually thinned by exposure, starvation, accident, and especially infighting, there is a real danger that before the Crossed die out they will reduce the remaining human population to extinction levels. Despite this, Harry and his team are fairly optimistic that the surviving communities they have found during their travels across the post-apocalyptic UK will be able to outlast the infected... though this might be them trying to justify not wiping out the Crossed and the majority of Britain's survivors with chemical and bio-weapons to themselves.
  • Crossed +100, set 100 years after the initial outbreak in 2008, states that out of a global population of 7 billion, after a year only about 2 million uninfected humans were left alive, and about 100 million Crossed. By 2020, the uninfected population was down to less than 1 million, while the Crossed also declined to about 14 million. The more feral Crossed didn't even clothe themselves but ran around naked like animals attacking people - meaning that they died off in the millions in the first winters. By 2050, a combination of violence, disease, and simply old age left only about 5 million Crossed, while the uninfected population began to rebound to slightly over 1 million. It is also said that STD's such as AIDS spread like wildfire among the Crossed. Alan Moore stressed that on an evolutionary scale, humans as a species are limited by things like food and winter, while the long-term survival of the Crossed as a species is limited by the fact that they will gleefully rape, kill, and eat their own children. By 2070 the uninfected globally outnumbered the Crossed, with about 2 million uninfected and only 1 million crossed. In the southern USA around the Allegheny Mountains, there were about 100,000 uninfected to 50,000 Crossed. The remaining Crossed are reduced to inbred clans hidden in the mountains and forests who had the wherewithal not to eat their own children. Much of humanity's knowledge has been lost in the intervening period. They've barely reinvented steam-power, but among other things, they don't know how to make wine. Nuclear detonations caused by the Crossed in the original outbreak are still a problem, such as in Kansas and Alabama (though overall the US government managed to stop more detonations in its last official act; shutting down all of the nuclear power plants and killing all of their staffs so if they got infected they couldn't take out the control rods).
    • And as of #5 of +100, there's a second faction of Crossed, descended from a serial killer named Beauregard Salt, who maintain a set of teachings and traditions that allow them to act with a frightening, systematic intelligence... including using the more common, dumber Crossed as shock troops.
• Apocalyptic Log:
  • Captain Michael Juneaux's journal in the first volume of Crossed details the fall of the U.S. military, including a mention of the destruction of Air Force One over Oklahoma.
  • Shaky's diary in Wish You Were Here would have ended up being this, if Aoileann hadn't torn it up.
  • In one of the side stories in Crossed +100 MIMIC, we see a woman named Remy Crowell trying to write one as her community burns down around her.
  • Oliver has a diary but it’s kind of a subversion in that he doesn’t expect anyone to read it and mostly writes because he has anthropologist training, and feels “we must be true to what we are.” He does get one reader, Smokey, which horrifies him into burning it.
  • Future, Julie and various other archivists in +100 are subversions. While they write diaries for official record keeping, things have improved enough so that they don’t feel like Apocalyptic Logs, at least not at first.
• Appropriated Appellation: Smokey is initially just a nickname Oliver gives him from a distance due to his coat, but Smokey is calling himself by that name for his final appearances.
• Arc Words: "One chief, one leader" in Wish You Were Here, referring to how Cava needs both an honorable man and a pragmatic man in charge, with Rab and Don both embodying half of that equation.
• Master Archer: Downplayed with Curtis from Washington's group. His of choice is a composite bow and he is quite good with it... yet when the lead team is ambushed while trying to open up the bunker door, his bow proves to be less than effective. Sure, it has certain perks, but it nonetheless puts you at disadvantage against a Crossed, someone who can and will No-Sell certain attacks that might be lethal to a usual human (like an arrow to the eye). It fares even worse against a whole crowd of them.
• Armies Are Evil: Shaky presumes the Black Watch turned out to be this. Eventually shown to have been an aversion, they treated Seline very well and the fort's destruction was completely unrelated.
  • Played straight with the personnel at Camp Casper during 100+ Mimic. They have imposed a highly stratified society where the soldiers can abuse and rape civilians with impunity. It got so bad that when the Salt Clan took over, the civilians joined them.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Averted with the Thackerys but played straight with Gideon Welles.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Boss Yamada, Hazuki's father in "Five Bloody Fingers," is angry at his enemy, Boss Ishiguro, for three reasons. First, that Ishiguro flayed Yamada's underling Kawamata; second, that Ishiguro and his men are attacking Yamada's headquarters; and third, that Ishiguro has seemingly tattooed his own face with a red cross. That is, until Koki informs Yamada that that isn't a tattoo...
• Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: The prologue of Volume One ends with a mushroom cloud in the distance, and Stan speculating that someone pulled the control rods out. of Wolf Creek power station. Nuclear power plants do not malfunction that way; the two worst nuclear disasters in human history, Chernobyl and Fukushima-Daiichi, resulted in fires and explosions that spread radiation, but nothing on the order of a full-scale atomic bomb-style explosion.
• Ascended Extra: Kitrick is initially a background member of Cindy's group, but gradually increases in prominence. There’s also quite a bit of this in Wish You Were Here due to gradual introduction of characters, most of whom start in the background before getting a name or dialogue. The most notable example is Viceroy, who appears in the background from the very first issue of Wish You Were Here, does almost nothing relevant to the plot for Volume One and doesn't even have his name mentioned until the final issue, only to become one of the main characters of volume 2 after being selected for the sortie.
• Asshole Victim: Brett's unexpected death came immediately after he (literally) kicked the dog. This was not too long after he had said some very unkind words in regards to Stan's grief over the death of Cindy's son.
  • The psychologist brother from Shrink is about to be infected by his Crossed brother at the end. By that point, the audience won't be feeling too bad considering it was just revealed he molested his brother as a child.
  • Morgan and Olivia from Lesser of Two Evils are a duo of manipulative women who indirectly wiped most of the group out, so it's really satisfying to see their survival guide tactics backfire on them and leading to Morgan getting infected. She is last seen preparing to brutalize Olivia just as Tyree jumps off the bridge.
  • Jasper is rowed to a rock off Cava while unconscious, left there as bait for Aoileann and her Crossed, tied up and with his tendons cut so that he is unable to swim away, before finally being blown up by a land mine. However, he was also a dumb, racist thug who treated Richie like a slave, wanted to make himself a dictator, and openly threatened to rape Tabitha before getting Richie killed and Viceroy infected (albeit accidentally) while trying to murder Shaky.
  • The Gamekeeper, the man who treated everyone as expendable, raped Agnes, killed her husband Lloyd and carved the "X" on Aoileann's face while raping her, gets killed at the very end when Shaky shoots him in the mouth with a flare gun after Aoileann's horde had been dealt with.
  • All Camp Casper soldiers and their leader Nathan in Crossed +100 MIMIC are unlikable thugs who enjoy abusing and raping the mostly female "support" personnel, so it feels sweet when they get brutally killed by the people they used to abuse and their Crossed allies.
• Attack Animal: Boss Yamada has a lion named Usama which he trained to act as his attack dog. He turns out to be more loyal to his master's daughter Hazuki when she stops him from killing Satoshi and has him feed on her father's body.
• Atomic Hate: Mostly averted. Once governments recognize what's going on (i.e., that the Crossed retain enough humanity to use nuclear weapons, while losing enough to want to) they put as much effort as possible into making sure that their arsenals go unused. India doesn't retaliate when a group of Crossed in Pakistan hits New Delhi, and Thin Red Line uses the desire to avert this as a major plot point. Only Israel uses its weapons in full force, and it's unknown whether that was done by a group of Crossed or in horrified recognition that their neighboring countries were overrun. In the US, meanwhile, the government shut down the power to all the nuclear plants, then killed all the staff to ensure no one would know how to turn them back on.
• The Atoner: Cody and Oliver in their final issues, after accepting how low they've sunk in the service of Smokey.
  • Geoff for his past as a Serial Killer, given his working to save Kitrick, protesting on behalf of the kindergartners and the shell-shocked kid whom Joel berated, and burying the bodies of some Crossed victims the group stumbles across.
  • Shaky, by the end of Wish You Were Here, once he accepts that It's All My Fault, although it's arguably too little, too late.
  • Wentz's entire post-C-Day character arc is driven by this, although it could be madness and his sincerity is questioned many times, especially by Land. When Land finally kills him, Wentz seemingly admits his claims of seeking atonement were bunk, but it's still ambiguous, especially given that he also asserts that the refugees he sent to the island and Lands wife and son are alive and waiting for them.
  • Des in a dark way. He's trying to make up for abandoning his son by killing as many Crossed as he can.
• Author Tract: The Anti-Crossed arc features this both in and out of universe. In-universe, several of the issues of Anti-Crossed Leigha writes are thinly veiled condemnations of the trio of nerds for their treatment of her, with one issue showing the Anti-Crossed berating a Crossed drawn to resemble one of them for his rape efforts. More broadly, the arc is pretty clearly seeking to critique misogyny in the comic book fandom and industry.
• Ax-Crazy: The Crossed do this to inhuman levels. It takes a truly degenerate mental state to butcher, rape, and murder (not necessarily in that order) everything living you find. What's more frightening, some uninfected humans manage to commit such heinous acts that it becomes hard to differ them from the actual Crossed.

B

• Baby Factory:
  • Jokemercy unsympathetically brings this up when Kingstenn pleads they're too small of a settlement to sacrifice as many people as he’s demanding, telling them to “start sexing.”
  • Smokey also attempts to start a breeding program among his captives, raising uninfected humans like cattle.
• Badass Biker: The biker gang that Edmund meets and joins in Badlands #12 when he tries to warn people in a neighboring town about the Crossed. They form an army with other gangs to fight the "Geeks".
  • Errol from the American Quitters arc lives and breathes this trope.
• Badass Bookworm: the various archivists in +100, especially Future
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Boss Yamada and his Yakuza goons, Gideon Welles, Emiko's father and Harry and his team (during "The Thin Red Line", they’ve shed them by "The Fatal Englishman"). Bobby Lee tried to be one of these but it was undermined by his cockiness, instability and early death. Gordon Brown and his cabinet (save for Alistair) count as non-action versions, whom we watch issue orders to try and stop the outbreak quickly and reasonably (particularly the one who knew about the hangers with stealth bombers that could be used to take out the Russian planes attempting to nuke America).
• Bad "Bad Acting": Shaky isn’t exactly singing praise for Des and Elisa’s chiming in to support his lie that the Drift Fleet is planning to loot Cava and doesn't really want an alliance with them.
• Bait-and-Switch: The Blood Men from the Homo Tortor arc have all the signs of being a (slightly civilized) version of the Crossed until the actual Crossed show up and wreak havoc.
  • Also used in an example that's somewhere between tragic and darkly comic in the 2013 Annual. Technically a part of the "Wish You Were Here" arc, it follows the completely insane kilt-wearing ex-special forces agent Jackson to a biological weapons lab in Iceland. There, he recalls a series of meetings with a woman who told him about her work building a chemical weapon that sounds almost exactly like the disease that created the Crossed, and who sprayed him with a prototype, causing his insanity. Unfortunately for the man he ties up and plans to kill for "creating the Crossed" (believing him to be her), he ignored about half of what she said because he just wanted to get in her pants. She was intentionally making a weapon that wouldn't work and had sprayed him with harmless steam knowing that he hadn't listened and was already unstable. While he experiences enough lucidity to realize this error, he kils the man anyway out of bitterness at the world being too complicated.
• Bait the Dog: After Leon is dumped in the bottom of the outhouse for screwing up on sentry duty by his father and the other militia members, after a few hours a man named Manatee Mike lets him out. It's established within two panels that Mike didn’t do this out of any concern or sympathy for Leon, but because he has to use the outhouse himself and he felt it would be a sign of homosexuality to let another man see his bare butt, something he mocks the others for.
  • Cody and Oliver seem like resourceful and good leaders to their allies before selling out to Smokey.
  • Jack is a fairly relatable protagonist before he starts getting nastier with Tiffany and we find out what he did to his brother when they were kids.
  • Ryan (fleeing with Natalie after the Crossed give them a Coitus Interruptus moment) feels like a Plucky Comic Relief tritagonist for his first couple issues, until we find out he led the gang rape of Emiko back in America.
  • Liza briefly seems like an Only Sane Man and The Lancer to Addy in Family Values, agreeing that having more kids in the group will be a danger and provide false hope, and sitting outside with her wounded leg and a rifle waiting until Crossed come. Then that fatalism turns into madness which leads her to shoot Addy’s baby brother and Jack, before being killed herself.
  • Bailey is still sympathetic to some readers, but his Knight Templar tendencies aren't evident when he first appears.
• Bald of Authority: "Smokey" from "Quisling," who is the leader of his group of Crossed, and is easily one of the most intelligent Crossed in the series. Any normal Crossed he encounters quickly take to following him, though it often doesn't stick when Smokey's plans hit snags and the more mundane Crossed get impatient.
• Bald of Evil: Many Crossed individuals are bald, but Smokey and Horsecock stand out among them. Human examples include Gideon Welles, the Gamekeeper and Jasper.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: The Crossed are not just limited to raping humans, they've also been seen raping animals as well.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Due to Welles' Bad Boss tendencies his men have some of this, although according to Nathan he pays them so much they don’t care anymore.
  • Mustaqba has some exasperation serving the stubborn Im’am Fair in +100 volume two.
  • Alistair claims to be this to the indecisive Gordon Brown, but he has ulterior motives early on and is pretty short-sighted himself.
  • Lloyd might not be high enough in the hierarchy to count as an assistant, but he is often flustered to Cody’s harsh attitude, and the same is true of Richie to Jasper’s group in Wish You Were Here.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: What characters will do if trapped and about to be caught by the Crossed. More often than not, it fails either because they are out of ammo or because Crossed get them first.
  • Justified Trope in that anyone caught by the Crossed will shortly suffer a much worse death than a simple suicide, and even if you are infected (and technically alive), there is a chance you will still be horribly murdered, just now you are Too Kinky to Torture and will enjoy your horrible death.
  • Of course, the other alternative is much worse, as instead of being killed, you just become a Crossed. In Family Values, a woman intentionally infects herself so as to be able to rescue her daughter. While she manages to do so, she then becomes the leader of a massive pack of Crossed who track down the survivors of the settlement and nearly wipe them all out, very nearly killing her daughter in the process. In short, you either kill yourself, get killed by the Crossed, or become a monster that has no problem killing everyone you've ever loved.
• Bittersweet Ending: Despite the Darker and Edgier tone in comparison to most Zombie Apocalypse series, this is one of the few where we know that humanity survives in the long term and eventually returns to its status as the dominant species on Earth. Several individual stories also feature the protagonists surviving, and at least a few of those are bound to be among the human beings who eventually rebuild civilization.
  • In Family Values only Addy, three of her siblings (one of which is missing a leg, another having recently given birth, and the third still being fairly young), and two newborn babies survive. However, at the very end, Addy finds their missing horses, which increases their chances of survival tremendously.
  • 3D ends with only two survivors, one of the assistants and a soldier, manage to escape the city alive. However, they are able to get back to their group of survivors to help cure some of the sick kids, who ain't infected by the Crossed virus.
  • In #70 issue of Badlands, while a bare fraction of the evacuees made it out of San Diego alive, Land manages to get one ship out of the city, along with its load of civilians and survivors, and it actually finds safe harbor thanks to Wentz's actions.
  • "Anti-Crossed" ends with Butch and Patrick helping Leigha free herself and kill the comic book fans that had been holding her hostage before leaving, and she burns the comic book store down on her way out. She's alone, but she's free.
  • 3D ends with only one member of Hunt's crew making it back to the community, but while Dr. Tang is dead, he did get medicaments for children and also brought a healthy researcher with him.
  • The Fatal Englishman arc ends with Harry killing his friends in order to spare them from being killed or infected at the hands of the Crossed, before stepping outside the Porton Down facility to face his end at the hands of the Crossed horde. However, they did save Father Dennis and the children from certain death, and helped them to reach (relative) safety in the Channel Islands. They also ultimately decided against unleashing the biological and chemical weapons, as that would have killed not only Britain's Crossed, but almost all the non-Crossed as well. Instead, the entrance to the weapons is sealed off with explosives in order to ensure that no one will use them.
  • Lesser Of Two Evils ends with Tyree escaping the bridge just as infected Morgan goes with other Crossed to brutalize Olivia and ends up being pulled out of the water by his father Richie (who was pushed off the bridge by Russ at the start of the girls' machinations but survived by falling feet first into the water), who gives him a valuable lesson of life as they sit near the river.
  • In the end of Wish You Were Here Rab manages to devise a perfect plan to wipe out Aoileann's horde and put it into action, completely decimating the Crossed army via Selene's Heroic Sacrifice, and Shaky and Aoileann herself reconcile soon after that before killing the incapaciated Gamekeeper and commiting a suicide together. However, most of the island's population has been lost (including Cava's best fighters, Elisa and Des) and the island itself is considered uninhabitable, so the survivors now have to look for a new home, though Rab notes that there are more islands to settle on.
• Black Dude Dies First:
  • In 3D, Martin is the first to die, just a couple of pages after his introduction.
  • In Psychopath, Darwin becomes Harold's first victim.
  • Subverted in The Lesser of 2 Evils. Richie, despite being the first one to be disposed of at the start of machinations, turns out perfectly fine and his son Tyree is the only one of the rest of the group to make it through the comic, even getting to reunite with his father.
• Blatant Lies: The "All characters as depicted in this story are over the age of 18" in the fine print legalese of every issue, considering the various children that have ended up as Crossed or victims.
• Blood Knight: While most survivors know to stay as far away from the Crossed as possible, a few enjoy fighting them. Steve from "Homo Superior" and Des from "Wish You Were Here" are two of the most notable examples.
  • Jackson from the "Wish You Were Here" arc is also a notable example. He lives apart from society by choice, and is completely insane. After being injured on Hoy, he brings up his Blood Knight traits when convincing the protagonist to shoot him, noting that they do not want to see what happens if he turns.
• Bolivian Army Ending: So far, Badlands specializes in these. The first Badlands arc ends with the last survivor, having been splashed with infected blood, about to blow himself up with a grenade with his freshly turned companions right behind him.
  • Delano's arc on Badlands ends with all the major characters dead or turned, and the last panel shows the last survivor voluntarily submitting to the infection.
  • Lockdown ends right when two surviving inmates face the horde of Crossed and choose to stay till the very end.
• Boom, Headshot!: There are multiple headshots in this series, and none of them are neat.
• Born After the End: +100 era stories are set in an era where people are accustomed to fighting the Crossed-infected hordes, use lots of Future Slang, and remember little about the past.
• Both Sides Have a Point:
  • Shows up sometimes in Rab and Don’s arguments about whether to risk sending sorties off Cava.
  • Cindy and her group trying to decide what to do with the cannibal kids. On one hand, the are children and likely unable to fully process the implications of what they were taught. On the other hand, if they are left to their own devices they will likely continue to be cannibalistic and they would consume quite a bit more supplies than the group can sustain if they are brought along.
• Break the Cutie: Amanda in Psychopath is one of the few survivors in Crossed to cling to her humanity, and tries to help out Harold Lorre when she finds him injured and helpless. Guess how dearly she pays for doing such a foolish thing.
• Brick Joke: Potentially. The cover of the first issue features Crossed tossing people of an airplane. In the second issue, we see what landing would look like.
  • Cindy's often calling out the men in the first arc for swearing around Patrick could also count considering the latter's fate and Wham Line.
  • Similarly, Steve calling Greg "dog" in Homo Superior may count as such when the latter becomes a literal dog for the Crossed twins after being infected.
• Bring My Brown Pants: The Asshole Victim in the "Gore Angels" arc suffers this when Emiko ties him up and threatens to castrate him.
• Broken Bird: Emiko in the Gore Angels arc, as a result of being gang-raped when she was in America. She tries to cope with her trauma by drawing extremely violent underground manga.
  • Really, Emiko is just the most extreme example. For every long-lasting arc there's probably at least one character out there who fits this description.
• Broken Pedestal: The Mormon elders to Joseph Pratt, Jr. given their conduct after being turned. Joseph Pratt, Sr. Zig Zags this interestingly, as Addy knew he was an incestuous rapist but thought he’d reformed and turned into a good leader. She is sickened to realize that she was wrong.
  • Shaky is a highly respected figure on Cava, seen as intelligent and trustworthy until his blackmail and threats to get put on the sortie (and his actions during it, like jeopardizing their location) are exposed.
  • Ian’s group (with the possible exception of Harry) views him a bit more coldly after he reluctantly proposes leaving behind Anya.
  • At first, Harold Lorre respects Rick, considers him a good man and even worries about how will Rick react upon learning Harold's true intentions. That respect is ruined when he secretly observes him and Amanda making out and eventually decides that Rick needs to die. And boy does he kill him.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Kimo from Grave New World is surprisingly tender with the groups kids. The same is true of Jock and Taff during The Fatal Englishman.
• Butt-Monkey: Clooney in The Golden Road. He eventually graduates to The Dog Bites Back, however.
  • Lloyd Thackery, Gerry Stillwell, Viceroy and Richie also have their moments.
  • Smokey surprisingly qualifies as a villainous example. While he experiences bursts of success in his efforts, his Quislings tend to betray him, the mainstream Crossed break from his rules when he shows weakness and in the end he is betrayed by his wives and son and left for dead. It's telling that despite being a 'Super-Crossed' and one of the first such Crossed to show up in the franchise, the advanced Crossed society to last to the time of +100 was founded by someone else.
• Bury Your Gays:
  • Thomas from the original run lasts until the final issue where it's implied that he commited suicide alongside Kelly.
  • Kevaughn and Ernesto from Grave New World both end up slain by Mateo before his own implied death at the hands of Crossed.

C

• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": By the time of Crossed +100, science fiction and fantasy are referred to collectively as "wishful fiction." Yes, even the dystopian works.
• Call-Back: The final arc of Badlands is full of them.
  • In addition to the return of Smokey from Quisling, his relationship with Cody parallels that with Oliver, in addition Cody himself comes off as a less sadistic version of the Gamekeeper from Wish You Were Here with people who enlisted him for service pre C-Day (one of which is a guy named Lloyd, in both cases) now depending on him for survival, complete with Cody killing his employers, directly or othewise.
  • Ashley and Ashlynn from Homo Superior also return as Crossed and make reference to their original plans from the end of that arc.
  • The ship captain Smokey talks to brings up his destruction of Cheyenne Mountain and makes a passing reference to Aoilean from Wish You Were Here as a rumored intelligent Crossed. The rumor the captain mentions about George W. Bush being an intelligent Crossed may also be a reference to the phone call to the White House in The Thin Red Line and the fact he dismisses this rumor likely means he is aware of the destruction of Air Force One over Oklahoma mentioned in Volume One.
  • Smokey's travel to find the girls shows the Texas oil fields still burning, just like how it was mentioned in the same volume.
  • A rival tribe of Crossed Smokey and his band fight are red and resemble the depictions of Homo Tortor in, well, Homo Tortor, though they could also be the band of Crossed from Psychopath that soak themselves in the blood of their victims.
  • Smoky killing the sailor by breaking his neck is similar to him killing Oliver the exact same way in Quisling.
  • The presence of an intelligent Crossed in Tennessee is referring to Beuregard Salt's clan that sets the groundwork for Crossed +100.
• Calling Your Attacks: HORSECOCK!
• Carved Mark: Aoileann got her distinctive X-shaped facial scar by the Gamekeeper cutting her face while he was raping her.
• Cassandra Truth: The only ones on Cava shown to believe Shaky when he goes around telling people that Jasper is bad news are Richie (who has plenty of experience of Jasper's abuse) and Tabitha as well as Rab and Don, who understand that Jasper is a gung-ho, wannabe tinpot dictator who is likely to get everyone killed. The rest are either apathetic, mistrust Shaky because of his own misdeeds, or openly side with Jasper because of their desire to strike back at the Crossed.
  • Edmund gets this reaction, at least initially, to everyone he tries to warn about the Crossed except the Badass Biker gang.
  • Ryan and Nathalie in Gore Angels warn an elderly British tourist couple they are forced to borrow clothes from following the Coitus Interruptus by the Crossed of 'psychotic pervert monks' in the nearby woods. They are dismissed as lunatic Americans up until the couple fall victim to the same monks. Cody doesn't believe them either when they call him about the situation.
  • In the second volume of +100 , Future and Cautious have a very hard time convincing anyone about the Salt Clan.
  • Jared warning Clooney about the risks of taking his girlfriend to a party Gideon Welles is hosting.
  • Rab is right about the vulnerability of the Drift Fleet, commenting "Ships sink, islands don't." But no one believes him not even Shaky and Don when they work with him to sabotage the alliance for more selfish reasons.
  • Cindy and the others are unable to convince Joel how reckless it is to use salt on the Crossed without anything else. He really should've listened to them.
• Celebrity Survivor:
  • The first arc of Badlands has a heavily bandaged (and ginger) ex soldier who claims to be Prince Harry (who claims that the Royal Family was turned, complete with the Queen chewing Prince Charles's bollocks off) and indeed looks suspiciously like him though his companions (and the audience) can't be sure due to his heavily mutilated/bandaged face. He is actually pretty damn useful given his skill with a gun and him being sawn in half marks the beginning of the end for his group.
  • Gideon Welles from The Golden Road also counts, being a famous author who tries to organize survival from his home, Samarkand. He doesn't succeed and gets his limbs torn off before getting infected for his troubles.
  • Bobby Lee in Badlands' final arc wants to be this way too badly, which is why Cody kills him before he can enter the survival bunker.
  • Karen, another member of Cody's group in that arc, got rich marketing skin cream.
  • Wentz was a movie producer (both legitimate films and underground pornos) before C-Day and got away with his pre-outbreak crimes due to his wealth and influence.
  • Shaky wrote comic books before C-Day and seems to feel that his works were fairly well-read, but he never sees to capitalize on this, and indeed as far as we know never reveals his real name to anybody else. The Gamekeeper chews him out hard on "writer" part the instant he learns this, stating that there's "nobody left to be impressed".
• Child by Rape: Smokey's plan to create a Crossed civilization involves keeping uninfected humans for anything more intellectual than grunt work, so he rounds up women and has Cody impregnate them. The Crossed guarding the women can't hold back and attack the women as they're giving birth.
• Circus of Fear: The Crossed (or "Geek") circus in the "Yellow Belly" arc of Badlands.
• Citywide Evacuation: The population centers are death traps during the Zombie Apocalypse, although only one real evacuation is seen. The Marines at the San Diego Naval Base venture into besieged parts of the city to evacuate trapped civilians, who they bring to the docks and load on ships to evacuate. They save thousands, but there aren't enough ships for everyone, and the reinforcements they're hoping will evacuate more people are infected.
• Class Princess: In Yellow Belly, prom queen and cheerleader Katie Weiner is well-liked enough that no one makes fun of her surname to her face and is quick to join the attempted defense of the town. That being said, it's implied that she cheated on her boyfriend once.
• Clownification: The main antagonists of the Yellow Belly arc force anyone who's been recently infected into joining them by giving them clown outfits, as seen with Joe Rigg, a classmate of Edmund.
• Cluster F-Bomb: In Crossed +100, "fuck" has become such common parlance that it's a near-meaningless verbal tic that's perfectly accepted in polite conversation, sometimes (but not always) seeming to serve as an intensifier (like "very"). "Sex" seems to have swapped places with it as an obscenity, being used almost identically to the previous application of "fuck."
• Cold Sniper:
  • Elisa zigzags this in Wish You Were Here. She carries a sniper rifle, is Cava's best shot and is generally ruthless but the only three times we actually see her firing the rifle, she is trying to save a fellow survivor from the Crossed and seems upset whenever she fails.
  • Prince Harry plays this straighter, although we never actually see him firing his rifle, just taking range with it once and estimating whether he'd be able to kill all of the nearby Crossed before being overrun.
  • Ashley of the twins has her marksmanship compared to Annie Oakley before she's infected, but is also one of the least moral survivors in the entire series.
  • Addy Pratt worries she’s turning her sister Merrily into one of these although Merrily shows more Friendly Sniper traits.
  • Sutter from Haven arc plays this trope completely straight.
• Combat Medic:
  • Amanda is one but we don’t see much of the medic part after the first issue of The Livers.
  • Ricky, a skilled paramedic, is the member of Ian's group who puts up the best fight at the end of the first Badlands arc.
  • Denise Tang, her nurse Lori, and her orderly Joe, although they prefer to move without being noticed.
  • Elisa spent years as the caregiver for her sick mother and is one of Cava’s main fighters, although any medical skills she might have are never displayed.
  • Karen in the last arc of Badlands isn’t much of a medic or a combatant but is The Closest Thing We Got and does keep up with Cody and Badass Driver Anna.
• Complexity Addiction: Shaky’s plan to sabotage the alliance with Drift Fleet. He could have maybe got Tabitha to go out there anyway and just argued the Drift Fleet's unpreparedness on its merits to everyone instead of being sneaky about it and convincing people to wait and see how they did on the Fleet raid or making it look like they kidnapped Tabitha.
• Confession Cam: Unique for a comic book, the 2013 special uses reality television inspired cutaways that feature interviews with the characters.
• The Confidant: Stan serves this role for Cindy. Preacher is this to the rest of Hunt MacAvoy's group in Crossed 3D. Elisa initially appears to be this for Shaky but later on Tabitha takes that role, although he keeps a lot secret from both of them.
• The Conspiracy:
  • Speculated in the "Thin Red Line" prequel arc by Alistair given how "patient zeroes" appeared in every country from Chad to Russia to Pakistan at the exact same time spreading the earliest strains of the Crossed virus.
  • This is increasingly becoming averted as the arc goes on and reveals just how alien the virus is to science to the point of being effectively supernatural in both structure and ability. Alistair refuses to believe this and continues to believe that there is some conspiracy. Eventually, this leads to him tricking several soldiers into abducting Patient Zero for "enhanced interrogation".
  • In Quisling, the Right-Wing Militia Fanatic group Oliver later betrays claim the Crossed were created by a cabal of Jews who hid from the outbreak in bunkers waiting for the destruction of the white race. Their claims are regarded with scorn by Oliver.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character:
  • Fleshcook is a contrasting character to Smokey. Both are Crossed leaders who try to restore civilization by any means possible, and thus are willing to destroy anyone who gets in their way; they also enlist the help of humans to do so. The main difference is that unlike Smokey, Fleshcook wants to unite both Crossed and humans, something that his ancestors tried to propagate. Also, while Smokey has a number of Kick the Dog moments to both Oliver and Cody (hence why they eventually betray him), Fleshcook seems to be much more benevolent and nice to his allies, and he does not end up betrayed by Julie and other Camp Casper "support personnel." Smokey is a black man while Fleshcook appears to be white underneath his burn scars. Finally, Fleshcook succeeds in forming the Merge with the Camp Casper inhabitants, while Smokey's plans either don't go the way he wanted or outright fail.
  • Cody from the bunker arc is a contrasting character to the Gamekeeper from Wish You Were Here. Both men used to work for the highest bidders (bunker designers in the former's case and a luxury couple in the latter's case) before the C-Day aftershock put them in charge of their respective survivor groups. Both of them are also not above killing and/or humiliating their former employers and also eventually end up captured by a smart Crossed individual. But while the Gamekeeper abuses his power among fellow people, Cody is more pragmatic than outright cruel. The Gamekeeper is an expert at many things required for survival in the new world (hence why other members of his group have no option but stay with him all the time) while Cody lacks many of these skills but compensates this with his secure survival bunkers. Cody's group stays hidden in the bunker until Smokey discovers them while the Gamekeeper leads his group to the north. Finally, when captured by an intelligent Crossed, the Gamekeeper stays inactive through all the chores he has to endure with Crossed Aoileann until Shaky finally kills him, and Cody openly assists Smokey with building a civilisation before finally turning on him and managing to cripple his efforts before dying.
  • Des and Kitrick are both strong black fathers who became a Death Seeker, due to loss of children but Kitrick is more peaceful and defeated, while Des is wrathful and brutal, and has a living child he neglects but still cares about to some extent.
  • Elisa is arguably a contrasting character to Cindy from the original run. Both are tough women who are good enough fighters that people assume they were cops or soldiers before the apocalypse once when really they just had normal, albeit at times troubled lives, and both are somewhat lusted after by male narrators who they just see as friends. Dark-haired Cindy is a leader who avoids fighting though, while blonde Elisa is a follower who almost welcomes it. Cindy still has a son and Elisa has no one, Cindy and Stan’s bond grows stronger throughout their story, while Elisa and Shaky’s deteriorates rather quickly.
  • Washington may be a contrasting character to Harry from The Fatal Englishman. Both men have their respective teams supplied with firearms and have at least one person with an actual military training, and also lead their men into an underground facility in hopes of achieving their goal (for Harry it is to unleash bio-weapon on the entire United Kingdom, while Washington desires to learn about the first Crossed outbreak and also locate his ex-girlfriend), even if they are going to die in consequence. However, unlike Harry, Washington lacks proper combat training and instead relies on anthropology knowledge, ancient weaponry and his skills at being a Consummate Liar. Washington also keeps the true reason behind his mission from his companions, while Harry is honest about his intentions to everyone. Harry and his crew are True Companions, while Washington sees certain members of his group as expendable. Finally, Harry's crew decides to not go through the risk and chooses to go out on their own terms, whereas Washington manages to reach the awful truth but pays for it with his life in return.
  • Washington is also a less villainous (but still morally ambiguous) counterpart to Harold Lorre. Both tell lies about a quest related to a Sole Surviving Scientist to get allies and protectors while really on a quest involving a woman they loved but who didn’t love them. Washington’s is more rescue-oriented and Harold’s is described under Insane Troll Logic, and also has elements of Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Washington is aware of what he’s doing, Harold is self-deluding. Washington’s story has some basis in truth and might not be a complete lie, while Harold’s is completely made up. Harold brutally kills most of his companions and Washington does try to keep them alive (though he does sacrifice a couple members of his group to get into the professor's bunker alive). Harold is a middle-aged white man, Washington is a college-aged black man.
  • Both Harold and Washington might also be contrasting characters to Shaky. All three are separated from a woman they love who was turned into a Crossed and are somewhat manipulative to the detriment of those around them. But Shaky struggles to keep his lover away (feeling either she'll kill the Cavities or they'll kill her, neither of which he wants) rather than going on a quest to seek her out. Shaky's lover also returns his feelings to the end (unlike the subjects of Harold and Washington's affections).
  • Harold is also a contrasting character to Richie, the Villain Protagonist of DOA. Both had serious issues even before C-Day, have plenty of Unreliable Narrator moments, and paint the members of their group as being weak or flawed to justify turning on them. Yet Harold’s driven by a twisted sense of love and a desire to strike out at the Crossed, while Richie is incapable of love and focuses on avoiding the Crossed. Harold is far more sadistic and better at hiding what he is, while Richie is poor at disguising his nature, but is more selfish than outright cruel. Harold also comes a lot closer to achieving his goals than Richie does and ultimately survives due to giving up on Amanda and deciding to find a different target whereas Richie ends up dying horribly during his backstab attempt.
• Cool Car:
  • Some of the Crossed in the "Wish You Were Here" arc's backstory managed to get their hands on something that looks like a Lamborghini. They use it, of course, to transport themselves to a hospice where they set about killing everyone horrifically.
  • There are several of them in Cody's survival bunker that he and the others use to try and escape after Smokey cuts their air off.
• Cool Old Guy: Tabloid-selling balloonist Genheim McBlareny, who saves Future's life several times in +100. Viceroy, post Character Development, in Wish You Were Here.
• Cool Shades: Skip often wears a pair. Kelly from Volume One also wears these due to being blind.
• Corrupt Church: As expected from a Garth Ennis franchise, religion is not exactly depicted in a favorable light.
  • On the Crossed side there are the infected Mormon clergy of Salt Lake City discussed in Family Ties who begin a murderous orgy with their congregations before turning on the uninfected children (thankfully no details of the latter event are given), the group of highly religious Crossed fanatics in Badlands who hunt down any "sinners" human or crossed and inflict religious themed punishments, and the infected Aoilean in Wish you were Here. On the human side is Joseph Pratt's apocalyptic cult which he uses to cement his own power and engage in any depravity he so wishes.
  • Averted interestingly in the case of Father Dennis in the Garth Ennis penned The Fatal Englishman arc, who, despite being dangerously naive and pacifistic, is not only pretty much the sole Nice Guy in the entire franchise not to end up very, very dead or very, very broken, but whose faith is depicted in a fairly positive light by Ennis which make the survival of him and the children he had been protecting all the more surprising given how much the franchise punishes such characters.
  • This trope is not limited to Christian churches either. In Gore Angels, the infected monks continue to discuss Buddhist and Shinto beliefs (albeit filtered through Insane Troll Logic, such as jusifying rape as a form of acting on desire and thus alleviating it or having intercourse with a tree as 'embracing all living things without distinction'). Al the Chemist (due to a combination of the virus, psychedelic mushrooms and semen coupled with his preexisting New Age beliefs) apparently regards becoming Crossed as a form of enlightenment that he seeks to spread to the uninfected 'purple people' and he ends up succeeding in turning most of the cast by the end.
• Cosy Catastrophe: Zigzagged in the final arc even before Smokey shows up. Cody's group has a luxury bunker but with Crossed above have to stay quiet, there’s depression, and the group has no doctor (except for dermatologist Karen), gardener or electrician to properly maintain the bunker as it was meant to. All in all, there are very few smiles in the group.
• Cowardly Yellow: Edmund "Yellowbelly" Wickenthorpe got his nickname for his cowardice and the series, even though he does not really wear anything of yellow cover on-panel. He runs from danger, abandons people, and is responsible for two deaths. After killing Nicole in a fit of fear (he was checking if she was ok and she lunged forward, causing him to instinctually pull the trigger), he was convinced by Harold Lore to defile her corpse so he can cover up his crime (only to be told after having sex with the corpse that he only needed to destroy the head). Edward does own up to his crime, escapes his execution through a random Crossed attack, and redeems himself by saving Donna. However, Donna kills him after they have sex, brutally staving his head with a rock as punishment for killing Nicole.
• Crapsack World: Can a world where The Virus turned most people into gleefully sadistic rapist homicidal maniacs on a rampage be anything else?
• Crazy Survivalist:
  • Brett from Volume One had been living off the grid by the time Cindy's crew found him.
  • The Gamekeeper wasn't one before the apocalypse, but oh boy does he take to the role afterwards.
  • Sutter, in spades except he doesn't actually plan on surviving and his endgame is a big Taking You with Me moment that involves sacrificing all of the refugees he's sheltering as collateral damage.
  • Lewis, one of Washington's group in Homo Tortor, was living out in the woods with a bunch of weapons and canned food even before C-Day, due to being convinced that the government would take his guns. He has since mellowed and mocks his own paranoia a little.
  • Cody's clients are a subversion, being either more down-to-earth survivalists, or wealthy, easily-cowed doomsday preppers.
• Creator Cameo: An issue of Ennis's book Stitched is the only comic identified by name in the "Anti-Crossed" arc. It's apparently the last comic he put out before C-Day. Interestingly enough, some Crossed comics are also seen in the background, even those who had been released after 2008, including the past Badlands arcs covers.
• Creator Provincialism: A somewhat downplayed example. While most of the stories take place in the United States, there are several notable exceptions (three of the Badlands story arcs, Wish You Were Here and the latter's specials take place in England or surrounding territories, the Australian special takes place in, well, Australia, and two more Badlands arcs take place in Japan).
• Creepy Child:
  • The kindergarteners in Volume 1 have been setting traps for passersby, after being taught how to do this by their former teacher. The protagonists end up killing them because of the high risk that they will continue doing this in her absence. Any Crossed children are this, as well, including Patrick in the first volume.
  • For the kindergartners, it's ambiguous how much their teacher has sheltered them from what they're doing, and they show a childish innocence racing out of cover and telling Cindy's group not to hurt her.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • Emiko's father. When he's first shown he seems to be a resentful jerk who alternates between trying to sell his art and being rude to American tourists. When the Crossed attack his village, he is unable to move or even think for several minutes as the Crossed do their thing on his street, not even noticing him. Then he goes for his katana...
  • In American Quitters, Frank qualifies. "Hippie can shoot" indeed. He's also the one who braves a horde of Crossed to fulfill Errol's revenge.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: All over the place. Some standouts are:
  • Arwen being drawn and quartered by bare-handed Crossed.
  • The drawn-out manner Harold beats Claire to death.
  • Harold savagely torturing and raping Rick before leaving him for the Crossed to finish the job.
  • Pat from Ian's group having his tendons cut and then apparently being a victim of Flaying Alive off-screen.
  • Smokey cutting off a cop's fingers and peeling off his face before throwing him to his followers to finish off.
  • What Patient Zero does to Alistair (thankfully off-screen).
  • Whatever the religious Crossed do to the poor woman they manage to capture in Breakdown.
  • Dylan surviving a suicide attempt by gun, having the Crossed get him and shove their fingers through the fresh bullet hole in his head.

D

• Deadpan Snarker: Shaky's narration in "Wish You Were Here" positively oozes with snark. He's less of one when talking to the other characters, but he can still be fairly bitchy when he wants to be.
• Death by Irony: Edmund could have survived the story if he remained a coward, not play the hero and save Donna.
• Death Glare: Harry gives one to Alistair in #53 of Badlands when the latter suggests to Harry that he "go out there and put those other four savages out of their misery," meaning Harry's good friend John Duff and his men, who have all been infected and become Crossed.
• Death of a Child:
  • The cover for one issue has the Crossed putting kids on a playground slide. At the bottom of the playground slide is a wood chipper.
  • In Wish You Were Here, the Crossed throw a newborn baby into the air and then shoot it to splatter its infected blood on the Black Watch soldiers.
  • An especially cruel example pops up in Family Values.
  "I'm so happy. Aaddyyy... So happy...they saved my babyyy for me. And goddamn if she don't taste gooood.
  • The original arc stands out for the sheer number of times this happens. First, the very first set of characters to be killed by the Crossed consist of a whole family including their young daughter, who is gruesomely killed on panel. Then later on, the group encounters Anne Cook's group of kindergarteners turned cannibalistic, whom the group (actually just Cindy and Stan) gun down rather than stretch supplies too thin or leave to the Crossed. Finally, there is Patrick, who is killed by his own mother after being infected by Horsecock's group.
• Death Seeker: Kitrick turns out to be this at the end of the original series, when he decides to stay behind and buy as much time as he can for Thomas and Kelly to escape Horsecock and his Crossed. He had been teetering on the edge of this throughout the series as a result of witnessing the brutal murder of his wife and two children at the beginning of the pandemic. It's implied that the final straw for him was the infection and death of Cindy's son Patrick, which undoubtably reminded him all too well of his own loss.
• Deconstruction: Of traditional zombie apocalypse stories, but more pointedly of the "zombie apocalypse survivalist" fandom. The Crossed are not conventional Romero-style zombies, and any attempts to deal with them as though they were always ends badly for the characters. At best, these survivalists are portrayed as suffering from Crippling Overspecialization regarding the kind of apocalypse they're prepared for, and at worst they're just plain incompetent.
  • In the final arc of Badlands, Cody makes a major point regarding armchair survivalists' bugout plans: having an apocalypse survival bunker is only going to do you any good if you have the chance to get to it when the apocalypse hits. He notes the vast majority of his wealthy clients who paid for the luxury bunkers he sold pre-outbreak were in Austin or Houston doing the things that earned them the money they spent on their bunkers when the Crossed outbreak began and thus had little (if any) chance of actually getting to safety. Even those who did get to the shelter in one piece are either too arrogant (Bobby Lee) or too self-preserved (Red Mitchell) to become useful in the long run, and therefore Cody makes sure to bump them off as well.
• Deconstructor Fleet: Oh boy, where do we even begin... Lots of tropes get deconstructed left and right.
  • Pretend We're Dead: The method of fooling the Crossed by painting a red cross on an uninfected humans' face sounds good on paper... Except, as Oliver from Quisling states, his group had been utilizing such strategy with extreme caution. Not only do they avoid standing in the Crossed's field of view for too long (because the Crossed would inevitably figure the trick out), but getting the uninfected blood from dead corpses is pretty risky too because most of these bodies would be infected. It would only be made harder if the corpse is headless or otherwise maimed beyond recognition. Similarly, The Fatal Englishman opens with Harry's crew rescuing Father Dennis and children he swore to protect, who tried the aforementioned trick with paint. Of course, Crossed did not buy it. Furthermore, Harry himself states that he had never ever seen the face paint trick working during the past five years.
  • Celebrity Survivor: In Wish You Were Here when Shaky reveals his past as a writer when he meets the Gamekeeper the first time, the latter just bursts out laughing and says that having such talent is no longer useful. In his own words, "no one left to be impressed".
  • Kansas City Shuffle: When Shaky attemps to sabotage the lottery in the first Wish You Were Here volume, he has Tabitha organise a drawing contest as a distraction before trying to sneak to the chest with names of the Cava residents chosen for the sortie. Unfortunately, having a person organize such contests without much preparations will raise suspicions, and thus Shaky gets confronted by Rab, who realized that something was wrong. As result, Shaky gets a black eye and has to change the approach.
  Rab: Tabitha just decides tae draw us, eh? Ootae the blue? While youse go caperin' off?. Gimme some credit, lad. I'm no' stupid, y'wee fuck!
  • Honor Before Reason: Related to the above, Shaky gets assigned to the sortie team by Rab who was blackmailed into doing so and kept it a secret. But by the time Shaky returns with his crew, he finds out to his dismay that Rab told others what really happened back then. Did you really expect that Rab would forget the whole incident so easily?
  • America Saves the Day: While the Drift Fleet (which consists of mostly American personnel) is a very large and organized group, it lacks experience in fighting Crossed and is pretty vulnerable in general, a weakness that Rab points out. This is exactly what leads to its downfall at the end of Volume 3.
  • Open Heart Dentistry: In the last Badlands arc the closest thing to a doctor the bunker survivors have is Karen the dermatologist, so when she has to perform an appendectomy on a man, she fails to save his life exactly because she is Not That Kind of Doctor and thus unfamiliar with surgery.
  • Cowardly Lion: ''Yellow Belly' centers on a teenage boy named Edmund who is quite cowardly and hates himself for it. However, despite his shame, it is his fear that ultimately keeps him alive and uninfected and when he finally chooses to overcome his fear for good to rescue a woman it gets him killed for his role killing her friend earlier.
• Decoy Protagonist:
  • Cody, a former apocalypse bunker salesman, is set up as the protagonist for Badlands' final arc. Smokey kills him halfway through and takes on the role of Villain Protagonist for the rest of the arc.
  • Possibly subverted if you choose to see the last eight issues not as one continuous arc but as two, back-to-back arcs of four issues each, with both happening to feature Smokey. the fact that Cody, what he and Smokey did and all of the other characters and plot points from those first four issues besides Smokey looking for the twins are never referenced again might reinforce this opinion.
• Depending on the Writer: Given how many writers have poked at the franchise over the years, there ends up being a fair bit of disagreement. Individual characters tend to stick to their own writers, but details about how Crossed and their infection work can change frequently.
  • Does the Crossed mark start at the edges of the face and work its way inward, or start at the center and work outward? Most lean toward the former, but The Golden Road does the latter at one point.
  • How capable of speech are Crossed? "Super-Crossed" are obviously special, but some writers have apparently otherwise normal Crossed able to use complete sentences, while in other stories, a Crossed can't speak in anything other than an incoherent stream of swears and slurs even if they'd want to.
  • Can you disguise yourself as a Crossed? "The Fatal Englishman" explicitly claims it never, ever works, but other subsequent writers (such as Quisling, American Quitters and Psychopath, the latter of which came out before The Fatal Englishman) have had it work in one way or another, usually justifying it with, for instance, using blood or cigarette ash to make the cross mark.
  • The reaction at having the Crossed infection making its way into the human organism tends to vary as well. In certain stories survivors don't seem to notice it until it's too late while in most other story arcs humans feel its effects straight away.
  • Related to the above, how much self-control do the infected maintain before fully turning Crossed? Most of the time, the characters go off the rail right off the bat, while in other cases they are able to think rationally and even try to have themselves killed before completely transforming.
  • The Crossed speech font is another thing since in most stories it stays red and distorted, yet in Dead or Alive the font most of the time remains black and normal even after the person in question has turned Crossed.
  • The way Crossed treat animals also tends to vary a lot. While in most stories, they slaughter both domesticated and wild animals alike with little provocation, some of them have the Crossed actually tame them and utilize them either as a trap (such as in the very first volume of Wish You Were Here) or as attack force (more prominent in +100, which at least justifies the whole thing by having the Crossed act more pragmatic instead of suicidally bloothirsty, all due to Beauregard Salt's teachings).
  • The state of the US Government in the early days of the outbreak. In The Thin Red Line, Washington DC was overrun almost immediately with the president becoming infected, while in the original series, Air Force One was reported to have gone down over Oklahoma meaning only the military was left to do anything about the infection. In The Golden Road and Lesser of Two Evils, the White House, Surgeon General and Congress are all still functioning at least within the first week of the outbreak and giving orders and statements regarding the virus's spread.
  • Falling in the same body of water as Crossed also tends to have different outcomes. Some story arcs have the character notice it and try to spew it out (such as Vincent from Wish You Were Here), but in Grave New World, the main protagonist falls in the sea along with the Crossed pirate leader and manages to emerge uninfected despite having to fight back against her physically.
  • More like depending on the artist, but the covers are also subjected to this, just not in the usual way. Covers Always Lie is in full play most of the time, so it seems that the artists themselves took liberty with the C-Virus while knowing it won't have much of impact on the story itself. For example, certain covers shows that primates can be infected with the Crossed plague as much as normal humans tend to, even though not a single one of these is shown infected in any Crossed arcs proper. Some covers take it further with the animals that are not primates still somehow showing up with a cross rash on their face.
• Depraved Bisexual: The Crossed are extreme sexual sadomasochists, to the point of being aroused by anything that suffers or causes them to suffer regardless of gender. Harold Lorre is a human example, having no problem raping and murdering both Claire and Rick.
• Despair Event Horizon: Given the nature of the series, expect the characters to either commit suicide to avoid death or infection, or willingly becoming Crossed themselves because they can't take it anymore.
• Determinator:
  • The cast of the first volume walk from Kansas to Alaska, pursued all the way. The Crossed will also go to absurd lengths if they see something they want to abuse.
  • Amanda, the heroine of Psychopath and a recurring character in Badlands, also qualifies. She saws off her hand with barbed wire to prevent becoming Crossed.
  • Smokey, the "Super-Crossed" remains dedicated to his mission of ensuring the Crossed's survival, crossing multiple states to find Ashlee and Ashlynne and starting from scratch whenever his efforts are stymied.
• Diabolus ex Machina:
  • While downer endings - or at best, heavily bittersweet ones - are par of the course for the series, the ending to Badlands third arc really comes across as forced. Specifically, Edmund has finally manned up, saved Donna from the Crossed, and gotten his girl. Then, later that night, Donna murders him for having abandoned one of her biker friends earlier.
  • The ending of the Thin Red Line: After the threat of nuclear armageddon is averted, Gordon Brown and his cabinet are finally able to focus on dealing with the pandemic by organizing the evacuation of key people to safe and fortified locations across the UK. Unfortunately, the medical team in charge of studying the virus becomes infected off-panel. Which leads to Gordon Brown's death.
  • In-universe example from Badlands #80. Just as Lion is about to escape the Blood Men's camp of camps, an Eldritch Abomination emerges out of nowhere and kills him. It was at that point that Washington (and the readers) realize that the whole story about Lion was made up.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Joseph Pratt is set up to be the villain of Crossed: Family Values, acting as a more religious-themed Expy of The Governor. However, The Crossed overrun his community at the end of Issue 3 and he's infected the following issue, leaving the true Big Bad status to his now Crossed wife.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Edmund, the main character from the "Yellow Belly" arc. Edmund has been a snivelling, pathetic wuss his entire life, and the end of the world doesn't exactly improve that. At first, it appeared to be understandable as he was in a situation beyond his control and his cowardice did keep him alive. He was too scared to defend his brother from his infected father, his family told him to run as they sacrificed themselves for him, and Sweeney, his childhood bully, was trying to make Edmund sacrifice himself in a doomed last stand against the Crossed. After killing Sweeney to escape a building overrun with Crossed, his cowardice gets progressively worse as he constantly runs from danger and abandons the people who have helped him. Ironically, when he does finally man up, he's killed by a vengeful biker (the one he had just saved from the Crossed) because his cowardice caused the death of one of her friends.
  • Oliver in the "Quisling" storyline who allies himself with an unusually intelligent Crossed he nicknamed Smokey, who keeps him alive and safe from the other mindless Crossed who obey him in return for being led to survivors. However, he eventually snaps out of this when he realizes that Smokey might not be the only intelligent Crossed around, and that if the planet is to survive, even if humanity doesn't, Smokey has to die.
  • Cody in the final arc. He makes a deal with Smokey as well, but goes even further than Oliver did, actively assisting Smokey in his attempts to build a new Crossed civilization. He snaps out of it when he realizes he's in effect going to raise his own offspring to be raped and murdered.
• The Dog Bites Back:
  • Bobby Lee from the final Badlands story finds out the hard way that actively abusing someone who sold you a place in the bunker will not end well, especially if you lack proper skills required in keeping the bunker operational. Cody kills him before he can even set foot underground because even he had enough sense to realize Bobby's action-oriented attitude could get the whole group wiped out. The same thing happens with Red Mitchell, who despite paying for three floors was still denied access and left to die outside because Crossed were right on his tail and could have easily destroyed the whole bunker from within. Even Ben, who claimed to be a soldier, was briefly threatened by Cody himself, before being allowed to enter the shelter.
  • Lloyd from Wish You Were Here finally mans up after obtaining a shotgun from the hunting store and attempts to kill the Gamekeeper while the latter is raping Agnes. The Gamekeeper manages to bluff and then kill him, leading to Agnes commiting suicide; essentially, Lloyd's attempt only made things worse.
• Don't Look At Me: Shows up during an odd sex fantasy of Harold Lorre back in the very first Psychopath issue, where he is raping Claire while dressed as a Monster Clown.
• Doomed Hometown:
  • Yellow Belly has Palmer, Edmund's hometown, completely ransacked and overrun by Crossed by the end of the second issue, leaving Edmund himself as the Sole Survivor. The second half of the story instead takes place in Lakeside.
  • In +100, Chooga is overrun by Salt's descendants about a third into the story, forcing the survivors to settle in Murfreesboro.
• Doom Magnet: Rab accuses Shaky of being one, and it's hard to argue with him.
• Downer Ending: Has its own page.
• Drawing Straws:
  • This is how Shaky's group decides which survivors go back with them at the end of the sortie.
  • Also how Sugar Tree decided who to sacrifice to the Crossed offscreen in +100.
• Drunk with Power: Those survivors who suddenly find themselves in positions of power are all too easily tempted to abuse it.
  • Rab, however, is a subversion, as he does not abuse his power at all. Shaky theorizes it's because Rab never wanted to be a leader in the first place and was thrust into the part.
  • In Wish You Were Here, Jasper was also headed down this path before his untimely demise.
  • The captain in Grave New World has this as his Fatal Flaw.
• Dub Name Change: The Russian translation of the comic refers to the infected as krestonostsy (крестоносцы). The word literally means "cross-bearers", but it is also used to refer to the Crusaders, which makes sense given their cruelty - especially for a nation that has been on the receiving end of the Crusades.
• Due to the Dead:
  • Geoff causes trouble with this by burying the bodies they'd found outside Cindy’s group's hideout, which alerts Crossed who’d earlier seen them unburied.
  • Zigzagged in Wish You Were Here; The Cavaites are implied to bury some bodies but are seen dumping others in the bay when they’re infected and/or cold made the ground hard. Also when Vincent is taken by the Crossed in the first issue, Elisa is seen with a lowered head, while Shaky briefly takes his cap off in respect.
• Dwindling Party: Regularly.
  • From the very beginning of the series, we have Cindy’s group. For context in the first issue they have 12 members (and later on they pick up two additional ones and a dog). By the beginning of #9 they only have five members (and the dog) and not all of those five survive that issue. Even worse, a throwaway line in the second issue implies that Cindy’s group had twenty-three people at one point.
  • In Family Values only four of the thirteen original Pratt’s survive (plus two babies born later) and all of the ranch hands and stragglers they take in also die.
  • In Wish You Were Here less than a third of the original Cavaites make it to the end.
  • Zig-zagged in the first Badlands arc, where the group has nine members and they lose none in the first issue, but in the second issue one is left for dead and the other one dies from childbirth. And then the third opens with another one being sawed in half, and things go downhill from there to the point of no survivors.
  • 3D plays this trope straight: the squad has six soldiers, and two of them are killed before they meet Dr. Tang and her assistants. Then Hunt gets infected and then kills one of the assistants before falling down from the balcony. Then another soldier gets mutilated and then blown up with his own grenade, and soon after that Elmer stays behind to cover Dr. Tang, Lori and Preacher with his minigun before blowing himself up. Finally, Dr. Tang herself gets fatally shot by the Crossed (with Hunt among them) and dies despite Lori's best efforts, leaving only two survivors to make it back to the settlement.
  • Homo Tortor has the main team of five people try and find the professor's bunker, which they succeed in the second issue. Lewis dies after triggering an explosive trap in the hatch while Curtis and Ronnie both die while trying to hold the Crossed back and open the main steel door. As result, only Warren and Washington himself manage to get inside, and things don't go well for them even afterwards.
  • Psychopath has a group of four discover a seemingly innocent man who is revealed to be a psychopath, who then proceeds to pick his companions off one by one in brutal ways until only Amanda is left, having escaped him on her own, though Harold himself manages to survive too, still hellbent on his "quest".
  • Breakdown has a similar setting, except Amanda is the one who is psychotic, and she kills off all four people she stuck up with, all thanks to Harold Lorre hallucinations.
• Dying Declaration of Love: Tom and Jackie, right before their nuke blows up in Thin Red Line.
  Tom: Jackie... You do know, don't you?
  Jackie: From the moment we met.

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