Fanfic / To Hell and Back (Arrowverse)

Everyone meets in hell.
It's not as bad as they thought it would be.

—Summary of Prologue: PART I ^note As it turned out, it would be much worse.

To Hell and Back is an Arrowverse Fan Fic by Nyame. It is also available on FanFiction.net. There is an official Tumblr blog located here, where the author makes announcements for new chapters and contests.

It takes place in an Alternate Universe where a sixteen year old Oliver Queen is joined by a fourteen year old Barry Allen and a twelve year old Kara Zor-El on Lian Yu, alongside Slade Wilson, Shado Gulong, and a baby Kal-El.

Official Summary:

Oliver Queen was the sixteen-year-old scion of the wealthy Queen family before a boat trip gone awry landed him on the island hell of Lian Yu.

Three years prior, Barry Allen, all eleven years of age, woke up to a whirlwind of gold and scarlet and watched as a man in a yellow suit ruined his life. Three years after, he washes up on the shores of purgatory.

Kara Zor-El, age twelve, had neither luxury. She was shoved into a space ship, baby cousin in hand, and tossed into the ebony abyss as her planet exploded around her, landing in a world so similar and yet so very different from her own.

(Or: The AU where Oliver, Barry, and Kara survive Lian Yu together for years, raising a baby Kal-El, and are eventually rescued — by the League of Assassins)

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Tropes:

A to D

• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • Ralph Dibny to Iris West. On one of Eddie and Iris' dates, it's commented that he's like that with every woman that catches his eye, making him also a Casanova Wannabe.
  • Carter Bowen to Kara.
• Abusive Parents:
  • The Thawnes to Eddie. They both demean and insult him every single chance they get, diminishing his accomplishments as a detective and never giving him a single good word. Barry notes in astonishment that even Malcolm Merlyn loves his child more than they do. They don't even visit Eddie during his nine-month coma, yet they do ambush him with paparazzi outside of the hospital to pressgang him into attending a charity gala they're throwing.
  • Patricia Arias, as per canon, threw her daughter Sam out of the house when she became pregnant out of wedlock at sixteen, leaving her completely on her own - and when she tries to re-enter her daughter's life, it's primarily because she needs Sam's money. To her credit, she does realize how scummy she was/is and genuinely wants to have a relationship with her, but it's far too little too late.
• Accidental Murder: Eddie accidentally unlocks his powers when an argument with his parents goes out of control and leads to him sucking them dry of their life force, killing them. Later on, he accidentally kills Ralph the same way when his powers act up in response to his anger.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The original Invasion! was a three-episode Crossover, mostly centered on Central City and only involving the heroes fighting against the Dominators. Here, it spans one third of Arc IV and the invasion covers the entire world, forcing countries to amass huge armies to fight back.
  • The Metapocalypse, which was reduced to one episode and barely had any coverage over the massive army of metahumans, instead focusing on Black Siren. Here, it's Zoom's ultimate plan and is revealed to be regarded throughout history as one of the worst supervillain attacks of all time. The battle to finally end it requires not just the Flash but the entire Justice League, their allies, and whatever soldiers A.R.G.U.S. managed to scrounge up on short notice.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Several, due to the nature of the premise of the story.
  • Oliver Queen is a Nice Guy, compared to the Jerk with a Heart of Gold he is in canon. He's also not a playboy in this timeline, largely because he was stranded on Lian Yu before he could really get into the 'party boy' lifestyle, and had his emotional growth in that area stunted.
  • Barry Allen is The Gadfly, being far more confident and abrasive than he is in canon; nowhere near the socially awkward geek that is his canon portrayal. He's also far more comfortable with the 'gray' and 'dark' aspects of being a vigilante.
  • Kara Danvers is more maternal and mature than her canon counterpart, due to being able to fulfill her role as Kal-El's caretaker, and, like Barry, is much darker. That being said, of the three leads, she is the closest to her canon portrayal.
  • Laurel Lance is more-or-less the same person she is in canon, though she is a far kinder and understanding to Oliver than she was in Arrow — mainly because, in this timeline, she and Oliver did not date prior to his disappearance. The same applies to Quentin Lance, who is still fond of Oliver since he never cheated on Laurel with Sara, or took Sara on the Gambit with him.
  • Speaking of Sara, on top of being Demoted to Extra, she's also a lot more lighthearted, since she never became a member of the League of Assassins.
  • Thea Queen, instead of being a Bratty Teenage Daughter, is instead a lot more down-to-earth and a bit sheltered thanks to her parents' overprotectiveness after Oliver's disappearance.
  • Iris West is a lot more colder and withdrawn, due to Barry's disappearance and her estrangement with her father. That being said, she starts reverting back to a personality closer to her canon one thanks to Barry's return.
  • Eddie Thawne is a lot more hostile to Barry, perceiving him as more of a threat to his relationship with Iris than his canon counterpart did, and Barry's new personality isn't helping matters. He's also a lot more obsessed with catching the Flash than he was in canon due to the Flash being less "superhero" and more "vigilante", which puts a strain on his relationship with Iris.
  • Slade Wilson is closer to his post-Season Five portrayal straight from the beginning, due to being injected with a serum that negated the Mirakuru's insanity-inducing effects.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • In canon, Slade's relationship with Oliver was brotherly before turning sour over Shado's death. Oliver's own relationship with Shado was romantic before she died. Here, thanks to Age Lift, Slade sees Oliver as a surrogate son and Shado a hybrid between brother and son. The two also had no relationship with Barry, Kara, or Kal-El, while Oliver only saw them as comrades and close friends. Here, they're a makeshift family, with Slade and Shado seeing the former three the same way they see Oliver, and Oliver seeing them as siblings. Slade's relationship with Oliver also remains on good terms, thanks to the changed circumstances of Shado's death.
  • Canon Tommy was Laurel's Second Love, and while Oliver was her One True Love, she did love Tommy. Here, Tommy still has feelings for her, but they remain unrequited and Laurel only sees him as a friend and even a sibling.
  • Oliver and Sara's relationship never becomes romantic, due to Oliver never dating Laurel before the Gambit and thus not taking Sara with him.
  • Oliver and Nyssa's relationship is much closer here than in canon, to the point of being romantic, due to Oliver essentially taking Sara's place with the League of Assassins.
  • As a byproduct of that, Quentin has a much better relationship with Oliver and Tommy and is fond of both of them.
  • Canon Barry was coworkers with David Singh and Ralph Dibny, even getting the latter fired for evidence tampering prior to the start of the show. Here, he never works for the CCPD and the two are friendly acquaintances of his through his connection with the Wests.
  • Barry was also much closer to Eddie in canon, being good friends and Eddie even becoming a temporary member of Team Flash before his death. Here the two can barely stand each other and only do so for Iris' sake. Eddie's animosity with the Flash also never dies down, and he only stops hunting him when his superiors force him to. After his coma and his relationship with Iris collapses, the two men actually start striking up something of a friendship, coming closer to their canon relationship, to the point that when Barry has to investigate Eddie for the Thawnes' murder, he's genuinely hoping for his innocence.
  • While canon Kara was friends with Sam, both were much closer to Lena Luthor than they were to each other. Here, due to Lena being Adapted Out, they are Heterosexual Life-Partners, their bond even stronger due to Kal and Ruby also being best friends.
  • Canon Leonard Snart was one of Barry's greatest enemies and rivals before eventually becoming an ally. This Leonard Snart is absolutely terrified of the Flash due to the latter being a much darker and more competent vigilante. The only reason he commissioned the cold gun was as an insurance policy — otherwise, he'd much rather avoid the Flash altogether. After the Metapocalypse is averted, he, Mick, and Lisa choose to get the hell out of Central City rather than risk running into him or any of the Justice League again.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Inverted and played straight with Oliver. This Oliver never had to watch his dad die or live with the guilt of cheating on his long-time girlfriend with her sister, the sister who he also assumed he got killed. He even made a new family on the island, and his relationship with Slade remained strong. On the other hand, he still got tortured, lost Yao-Fei, Shado, and Slade (who he thought dead for years), and then got forcibly inducted into the League of Assassins to protect his adoptive family. So it was overall better, but not by much.
  • Played straight with Barry and Kara. In addition to their canon back stories, they also washed up on Lian Yu with Oliver and endured the same Trauma Conga Line Oliver did during his first two years on the island, before also being inducted into the League of Assassins with him. And considering they are naturally more compassionate than Oliver, it ups the angst all the more for them.
  • Played straight with Slade. He's the one who took canon Oliver's place in Hong Kong, Shadowspire, and Russia, before reuniting with his son Joe...only to be forced to leave him again to protect him from Amanda Waller. All while assuming that his four adoptive kids were dead for years, after making a promise to the woman he loved, on her deathbed, that he would get them off the island and get them home. And then when he finally does reunite with them, he finds out they joined the League of Assassins.
  • Even Kal-El doesn't get off lightly. Instead of a loving childhood with the Kents, he has a loving childhood with his adoptive Lian Yu family, all while suffering the same trauma they did. Then he was basically held hostage and raised by the League to keep his siblings as members, giving him a Friendless Background.
  • Tommy gets hit with this hard. In canon, Tommy manages to secure a relationship with Laurel before the revelation of Oliver's vigilante activities drives him away from both of them. Here, Laurel never reciprocates his feelings and his father begins to show Oliver much more affection than usual (Oliver is his child in this continuity, not Thea), driving him to that point much faster. Since he's Spared by the Adaptation, he also gets to live with the fact that Starling City blames him for the Undertaking that he genuinely wasn't a part of and his friends are starting a new relationship until he eventually snaps completely.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Oliver's combat ability is equivalent to the current Ra's al Ghul, putting him in the running for World's Best Warrior.
  • By the time Barry returns to Central City, he already has complete control of his speed and can even throw lightning, on top of being a trained assassin on par with Nyssa al Ghul. He's also much smarter, as a Combat Medic and scientist for the League.
  • Kara also has complete control of her powers, and can use them effectively in conjunction with her abilities as an assassin (also on par with Nyssa al Ghul), having been trained in hand-to-hand without her powers through exposure to red sunlight lamps.
  • As a side effect of Barry's dose of this, Eddie gets a dose of this too. In canon, his fighting abilities were never really seen, though he clearly has some skills. In this one, after removing the Flash's speed, he and Barry manage to go one on one for a fairly long time before Barry comes out on top. It's especially noticeable because the S.W.A.T members with him get taken down much faster than he does.
  • Tommy Merlyn, of all people, has now been trained by Talia al Ghul. After her failed attack on Nanda Parbat, he even manages to kill her with a sneak attack she never saw coming.
  • Canon Dante was largely Locked Out of the Loop and never directly aided the team before his death. Not only does this Dante play a critical role in the Battle of Earth-1, he also develops Rupture’s meta powers during the battle.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Ra's al Ghul, as he plays a major part in the backstory of all three leads. His daughter Nyssa is a lesser example^note Nyssa debuted in the second season of Arrow; Ra's, while constantly alluded to, did not make an onscreen appearance until the third season for the same reason.
  • Ralph Dibny appears much earlier than he does in canon, thanks to For Want Of A Nail; as Barry never joined the CCPD as a CSI in this timeline, Ralph was never caught tampering with evidence and thus was never fired. This same nail also presumably prevented his death during the Particle Accelerator Explosion, which was reversed by Flashpoint in canon.
  • Samantha Arias and Ruby Arias appear early on as well, and even meet Kara earlier, thanks to Ruby being enrolled in the same class as Kal-El at Balliol Prep. Sam and Kara even become best friends.
  • Maseo Yamashiro starts making appearances once Slade re-enters the story, as he still a member of A.R.G.U.S. in this timeline thanks to another nail.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Hartley Rathaway is closer to his post-Flashpoint portrayal from the beginning of the story - while he does have his original moment of villainy as per canon, it's foiled much faster than canon and thus he's forced to change faster. By the time that Zoom comes knocking, he's already a bonafide member of Team Flash.
  • Slade Wilson never becomes a full villain due to the changed circumstances surrounding Shado's death (alongside an A.R.G.U.S. serum to keep him sane), keeping him permanently in the Anti-Hero phase that defined him post-Arrow season five.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Barry Allen. While canon!Barry was far from stupid (just a bad habit of grabbing the Idiot Ball), this Barry is a confirmed genius on par with Eobard Thawne. He correctly deduced the source of Kara Zor-El's powers when he was just fifteen, managed to become a capable Combat Medic in a year at the same age thanks to Shado's tutelage, and later became the League of Assassin's go-to doctor and Omnidisciplinary Scientist after his recruitment. He's even managed to replicate the Human Target's disguising abilities and create a rudimentary version of the A.I. Gideon.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Eddie Thawne goes from a nice guy behind his initial bluster, makes friends with Barry, and is an attentive boyfriend to Iris to someone openly resentful of Barry's connection to Iris and becomes so obsessed with and paranoid over the Flash that he temporarily drives Iris away.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Zoom manages to be even worse than he was in canon; while canon Zoom at least appeared to have a dedication to his word and honored most of the deals he made, this Zoom murdered Jesse in front of Harry just to spite him after he'd done everything that Zoom asked for. He also murdered his own Earth-1 counterpart and took over his life before revealing his alter ego to the world, something that his canon self never did.
  • After unlocking his powers, Eddie becomes a multi-murderer (albeit largely accidentally) and is willing to go so far as to mutilate Ralph's corpse to make it look like a mugging gone wrong.
• Adapted Out:
  • Most of Supergirl (2015)'s cast. According to the author, this was due to both lack of familiarity and not fitting into the story's planned direction.
  • The author later made a post listing all the characters from Arrow and The Flash (2014) that won't be appearing in the story. Some are out of personal preference, and some because they wouldn't fit in the direction the story will go in ^{If Interested...} For those who don't want to click the link: Emiko, Diaz, the New Recruits, the DeVoes, Cicada, Icicle, and characters post Arrow season 6 and The Flash season 3.
  • The author confirmed in the notes for Chapter 101 that the Crisis on Earth-X crossover will not be taking place in this story because it's too much of a repeat of the Zoom/Earth-2 storyline that takes up most of Arc IV.
  • Technically, Killer Frost would apply; while Caitlin does receive her ice powers, she doesn't receive a Split Personality in the process, meaning the "Killer Frost" identity doesn't exist.
• Affectionate Nickname: Kal-El is called "Kal" by his adoptive family ('disguised' as being attributed to his middle name 'Calvin' to cover for his alias of Clark Kent).
• Age Lift: Minor adjustments so Oliver, Barry, and Kara have two-year age gaps between them. The only exception is Kal, who inverts this: because Kara and Kal arrive in the same pod, Kal is still a child by the time Supergirl becomes active.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: According to Nyssa, after a mission where Talia murdered 50 women just because one of them insulted her, Malcolm got on his knees in front of Ra's and outright begged to be released from his service.
• Aliens Speaking English: Inverted; Kara has to be taught English when she arrives on Lian Yu, to the point that she still makes some grammatical errors when she initially joins the League of Assassins, although this is quickly solved.
• All There in the Manual: The author is always happy to explain why things are happening in post-chapter notes.
• Alternate Timeline: Like in canon, except not. Canon's nail was the death of Nora Allen. Here, while Nora's death has had a major ripple effect on the timeline, it is not the only one. It's noted that there have been several changes to the timeline prior to Nora's death, heavily implied to be caused by another time traveler that Eobard was unaware of until recently. Of these changes and others:
  • Kara, and by extension, Astra and co., were not due to arrive on Earth for another five years. Kal-El is the right age, but he's being raised by Kara and his original adoptive parents, the Kents, were killed in a fire before they could ever meet. To say nothing of the different landing place. This is also implied to be the reason why her supporting cast, and the location of National City, are not a part of the story — most of them are kids / teenagers living in different parts of the country.
  • Bruce Wayne's parents were never killed, so he is a well-adjusted individual who never becomes Batman. This presumably has a ripple effect that prevents the rise of most of his Rogues Gallery.
  • Princess Diana never leaves Themyscira, so there's no Wonder Woman either.
  • Felicity Smoak is incarcerated for the creation of her hacktivist supervirus, rather than moving to Starling City and eventually becoming infatuated with Oliver (see Demoted to Extra below).
  • John Diggle and Lyla Michaels never divorced, and live in another city with their son and daughter.
• Alternate Universe: A League of Assasins!AU with Oliver, Barry, and Kara. Per Word of God, National City and most of Supergirl's supporting cast don't exist in this reality; Kara instead bases herself out of Starling City, along with Oliver.
• Always Someone Better: In a weird sense, Malcolm Merlyn is eventually determined to be a better parent to Tommy than Eddie Thawne's parents were to him because at least Malcolm loved Tommy and wouldn't have deliberately hurt his son even if he was really bad at showing his affection, whereas the Thawnes always treated Eddie as more of a tool in their own plans rather than his own person.
• Ambiguous Situation: Zoom appears to be from Earth-2 as in canon, but Earth-1 Hunter Zolomon is one of Barry's professors and gives him the creeps, leaving it ambiguous just as to what is up with the Earth-1 version—or, indeed, whether or not Earth-1 Hunter Zolomon is Zoom. The two are later revealed to be one and the same - Earth-2 Hunter murdered his Earth-1 counterpart and took his place.
• Arc Villain: While each major arc has over-arching villains whose storylines take one or two major arcs to defeat (detailed in Big Bad Ensemble), there are several mini-arcs that have villains of their own. Arc III was particularly guilty of this, since it had no over-arching villains and was composed entirely of mini-arcs.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Barry Allen and Earth-2 Hunter Zolomon, aka Zoom. In a mere matter of weeks, the latter has managed to screw over Barry so much that Barry straight up hates him more than any other enemy he has ever had in his entire life. And considering the downright awful people this Barry has had to deal with over the years, that is a major accomplishment.
  • Zolomon can also be considered this to the Justice League as a whole. While they have had to work together to stop other threats, such as Merlyn, the Dominators, and Talia, they managed to stop them fairly easily once they figured out what their plans were. With Zoom, they actually manage to figure out his plans, but he still manages to get everything he wants and force them into a complete retreat to the Fortress of Solitude.
• Artistic License – Biology: With the reveal that Oliver is actually Malcolm's son and not Thea, Oliver and Thea's hair colors become impossible; blonde hair is a recessive trait while black hair is dominant, meaning that Thea's two blonde parents should have given her blonde hair while Oliver's blonde and black-haired parents should've given him black hair.
• Artistic License – Martial Arts: Played with. Supposedly, men are unable to train women in advanced hand-to-hand combat techniques due to differences in anatomy. However, this may actually be a Justified Trope given the League's misogyny. In this specific instance, the teacher in question (Oliver) had little experience teaching women beyond the basics, and assumed that it would be harder for him to pass on the more advanced techniques to his student (Laurel) because of that. Not to mention, this "problem" was just one of many issues about their teaching situation. He felt that was unfair to her, seeing as she was clearly talented and deserved a teacher that would help her reach her full potential faster. That's why he passed this student on to Nyssa after he taught her as much as he could.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Samantha Arias and her daughter Ruby appear much earlier than they did in canon, and are elevated to major supporting characters by becoming the best friends of Kara and Kal, respectively.
  • Astra remains the Big Bad for the story's equivalent of Supergirl Season One, like she initially was supposed to be in canon. She even survives her season, albeit locked up, and gets a small redemptive arc during the Dominators invasion.
  • Reverb, Deathstorm, Killer Frost, and Rupture all only appeared in a single episode of the TV show, but here, they’re part of the plan to replace their counterparts on Earth-1.
  • Dante Ramon, who appeared all of three times in canon, ends up helping the Justice League during the battle against Zoom’s army.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Talia al Ghul. While it's not a good sign that Malcolm controls her forces and it's sad that Tommy was the one to do it, no one will ever be anything but happy that the murderous and petty psychopath is gone.
  • Hugo and Charlene Thawne are murdered by Eddie in Arc V, after going too far with their mistreatment results in his powers awakening.
• Atrocious Alias: How the leads feel about their superhero names. Unfortunately, they're ideal for softening their public images when the Justice League forms.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: An In-Universe inverted example with Cisco. Cisco chose to watch the Twilight movie over reading the book because he heard the book was worse. Caitlin, who actually did read the book, agrees wholeheartedly with that opinion.
• Awesome, but Impractical: A.R.G.U.S.'s derivative serum gives all the benefits of the Mirakuru serum and none of the side effects. The issue? The recipient needs to have the Mirakuru in them already for it to work, and that has a nine in ten chance of killing whoever is injected with it. So far, Slade and Akio are the only known successful cases.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Ra's al Ghul figures out that Oliver is Malcolm's child instead of Thea purely because his reaction when Oliver was in danger was stronger than his reaction to seeing Thea in danger.
• Badass Normal:
  • During the Dominator invasion, the superheroes fight alongside armies, police forces, and average civilians who are willing to help.
  • Leonard Snart is still in fine form here. While he ends up in Iron Heights early on due to Barry's Adaptational Badass status, when Zoom arrives to break all the prisoners out and kills Mirror Master and Top, the rest of the prisoners, most of whom are metas, turn to him as their leader.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Quentin and Laurel do this during the Dominator invasion.
• Badass Bystander: Due to the severity of the situation when Zoom’s army attacks, Wells, Caitlin, and Dante are forced to go into the field to build the machine that will take down all of the Earth-2 metas. While Wells and Caitlin at least have the required science knowledge, Dante has literally no skills that can help except for the fact that he has hands.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • After Eddie manages to briefly stall him using S.T.A.R. Labs' anti-speedster technology, the end of the chapter cuts to Barry glaring at Caitlin and Cisco, looking as if he was about lose his temper at them. He then bursts out laughing, admitting he was actually impressed that they managed to hide their anti-speedster measures from him for so long, and that, honestly, he would've done the same thing.
  • Isabel Rochev spends months believing that she is an equal partner in Talia's plans against the Queens, only to be killed by Adrian Chase.
  • After Barry warns Zoom that he would regret killing his father, Zoom shoves a vibrating hand through his heart anyway, only to be shocked when "Henry" stands up and peels off a fake face, revealing himself as Christopher Chance.
• Batman Gambit:
  • Talia manages to play both the Justice League and the League of Assassins expertly - she sends an assassin after Iris, knowing the Justice League would figure out it was her and go to the League of Assassins for help, putting all of her targets in the same location so she can wipe them all out in one fell swoop.
  • As soon as Barry escaped from Zoom's prison, he immediately called Waller to put his father into protective custody and hired Christopher Chance to take his place, believing that Zoom would try to kill Henry next. He is 100% correct and the plan goes off without a hitch.
  • The younger Eobard's plan to flush out the Flash's identity relies on both Eddie and Ralph acting like he expects them to; he hires Ralph to investigate the Thawnes' murder, expecting Ralph to uncover the truth and confront Eddie over it, where Eddie would then kill him and get the Flash's attention. He didn't expect that Ralph would be savvy enough to leave Barry a message should anything happen, but it works out for Eobard anyway.
• Beyond the Impossible: The revelation that Eobard ruined Eddie's life just to get the Flash's attention angers him so much that he overpowers his meta-dampening cuffs and knocks both Barry and Eobard out almost immediately.
• Big Bad Ensemble: One for each lead, per season/arc(s).
  • Oliver: Malcolm Merlyn/Al Sa-Her/The Dark Archer (Arc I/II), Talia al Ghul (Arc III/IV), Tommy Merlyn (Arc V)
  • Barry: Eobard Thawne/False Earth-1 Harrison Wells/The Reverse-Flash (Arc I/II), Zoom (Arc III/IV), Eddie Thawne (Arc V)
  • Kara: General Astra In-Ze (Arc I/II), The Dominators (Arc III/IV), Samantha Arias/Reign (Arc V)
• Big Bad Wannabe: Isabel Rochev believed that she was an equal partner in Talia's plans against the Queens, to the point of making requests that Tommy be spared to act as her 'trophy husband' once the main plan was concluded, but in reality she was just a patsy who ends up dead at the hands of Talia's true partner, Adrian Chase.
• Big Brother Instinct: Barry, Kara and Kal arrive at Lian Yu shortly after Oliver. He becomes their big brother of sorts and he is extremely protective, to the point that he is willing to let himself be killed if it would guarantee his surrogate family's survival. It's implied that some of it at first was because he was projecting his younger sister Thea on them (who he wouldn't see again for ten years).
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • A brief but important one; Zoom has just killed Everyman and Chien na Wei when Plastique manages to put her hand on his suit, forcing him to retreat or be blown up with the suit.
  • More characters get such moments in the Battle of Earth-1, when Steel, Zatanna, Thunder, Archangel/Astra and Green Lantern save the lives of Vixen, Black Lightning, Martian Manhunter, Supergirl, and Green Arrow and Black Canary respectively.
• Big Damn Kiss:
  • One between Tommy and Isabel, after Tommy seems to finally give up on Laurel.
  • Oliver and Laurel share one in the last chapter of Arc III after learning each other's secret identities.
• Big Eater: Barry, Kara, and Kal, much to Oliver's simultaneous disgust and resignation.
• Birthday Episode:
  • "B-Day" takes place on Ruby Arias' birthday. It's a Wham Episode that ends with Kara killing Non and Oliver realizing that Malcolm is the Dark Archer.
  • "For the Boy Who Has Everything" is a Breather Episode entirely dedicated to Kal-El's first ever birthday party.
• Blatant Lies: Talia tries to claim the Justice League ganged up on her and defeated her when she just lost a one-on-one duel with her sister Nyssa.
• Body Double:
  • Owing to their Crazy-Prepared/Properly Paranoid personas, the main trio had the League send in these using technology that replicated Christopher Chance's concealment abilities to act as their vigilante alter-egos, months before they were scheduled to return to modern civilization. As a result, all their loved ones don't even think to connect them to said alter-egos; not even Joe and Quentin, who are experienced detectives, nor Malcolm, who spent months trying to figure out the Hood's identity. The only people who manage to see through the ruse are Eobard Thawne, who's from the future, A.R.G.U.S., and Astra and her forces, who all have insider knowledge that everyone else lacks.
  • Malcolm manages to use one that's so effective that even A.R.G.U.S is fooled by it, using it to successfully fake his own death in the wake of Talia's death.
• Boxing Lessons for Superman:
  • Kara's normal training in the League featured her fighting under red solar radiation, she could only practice her powers during extra training.
  • Barry agrees to help train Cisco after his Vibe powers manifest, but forces him to learn to fight without either his technology or powers.
• Brain Bleach: Kara, Barry and Oliver have this reaction every time someone mistakes the nature of their sibling-like reaction for romance.
  The detective felt his hopes plummet. "So, you two aren’t…"
  "No. The thought of dating Barry – or Oliver for that matter – makes me want to lobotomize myself with a rusty spoon." Kara settled the matter instantly. Oliver sobered up at that, and he too shuddered. Kal tried to get his laughter under control, though there were still tears in his eyes.
  "Yeah. These two are like my siblings. Never happening – ever." Barry added in for good measure.
• Broken Masquerade: The first thing that Zoom does during the Metapocalypse is publicly go on television and inform the entire planet about the existence of the multiverse, showing off some of his minions who are doppelgängers of Earth-1 celebrities and politicians. It's stated that the public was still slightly unsure of if it was true until it turned out that the President of the United States on Earth-2 is Malcolm Merlyn.
• Brought Down to Normal: This is how Barry manages to defeat Zoom. In their final battle, he lures Zoom to Earth-2's S.T.A.R. Labs and then turns on the meta-dampeners, leaving both of them without their speed. Unfortunately for Zolomon, this trope only applies to him - Barry is instead Brought Down to Badass and proceeds to absolutely wipe the floor with him.
• The Bus Came Back: After a more than 70 chapter absence, Helena Bertenelli is revealed to have become a member of the League of Assassins.
• Call-Back: In Arc I, Laurel admits to Oliver that the reason why she rejected Tommy is because she's still hung up on another guy, who left years ago. Oliver tells her that if he's been gone for that long, he probably isn't coming back, and that she should move on and let herself be happy. At the end of Arc III, after learning about each other's secret identities, Oliver brings up the mystery guy again — and asks Laurel if that guy was him. After she confirms it, they kiss.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: After Barry's presumed death, Iris and Joe became estranged; when Iris learned about Francine and Wally, she disowned him and moved to Keystone with them after high school. When the readers finally get a glimpse of their relationship in the present, Iris addresses him by his title, "Detective West". She only moves on to "Joe" after Barry returns to Central and convinces her to mend their relationship.
• Canon Character All Along: Eddie's therapist in Arc V, Dr. Aryton Shelby, is revealed late in the arc to be a younger version of Eobard Thawne, seeking to find out the Flash's Secret Identity.
• Cassandra Truth: Malcolm is absolutely correct that Talia and Isabel were working together but he doesn’t bring it up out of a combination of his son’s feelings and the fact that Tommy would never believe it anyway.
• Christmas Episode: Chapter 16, aptly titled "Beebo Day".
• Cliffhanger: Chapter 94, the conclusion of Arc IV, heavily implies that Caitlin and Ronnie have been replaced by their Earth-2 counterparts on Zoom's orders.
• Cloning Gambit: Zoom has (thus far) killed a copy of himself twice - once on Earth-2 that he had acting as Jay Garrick to further demoralize Earth-2 and once on Earth-1 to frame the Flash for his own murder.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Amanda resorts to using a torture device on Killer Frost to get Deathstorm to talk. Luckily for the victim, Deathstorm caves immediately.
• Commonality Connection: Barry and Eddie's first interaction that isn't outright hatred comes about when Eddie's parents reveal that he used to be a fencer. Barry challenges him to a friendly duel, and they begin to joke about who would win.
• Continuity Nod: After Zoom is defeated and Ralph becomes a metahuman, it's heavily implied that the canon scene in which Ralph sneezes his face off and makes Joe vomit occurred off-page.
• The Coup: The main plot of Act II of Arc IV is Talia's attempt to usurp control of the League of Assassins from her father and sister.
• Crazy-Prepared: Ra’s al Ghul doesn’t even try to pretend that the League’s "destroy kryptonite on sight" doctrine is for anything other than ensuring that no one but the League has access to it.
• Crippling Overspecialization: When Barry expresses concern that Zoom's greater speed gives him too great an advantage, Iris encourages Barry to instead consider it a weakness, as Zoom only has his speed as an asset where Barry has his training and his allies. Exploiting this weakness is how Barry defeats him; he lures Zolomon to S.T.A.R. Labs, turns on their meta dampeners, and beats the absolute hell out of him while he's crippled.
• Crossover: Technically. Arrow, The Flash (2014), and Supergirl (2015) all existed in the same shared universe but only interacted during the annual crossover. Here, they interact far more often to the point that if this story were a live-action series, they'd be in the same show. As Vixen also exists in the same universe, the same applies to Vixen as well. The story did eventually become a true crossover after Black Lightning was added to the mix, with the titular character joining the Justice League in Arc III ^note This was written before Black Lightning was confirmed to be a part of the Arrowverse.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Zoom killed "Jay Garrick" by beating him to a pulp, ripping his arm off, and then shoving a vibrating hand through his chest on live television.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Part IV of the Prologue along with almost all of Arcs I & II feature these.
  • PART IV of the prologue describes a two month-long one that the three leads give to the entire organization of H.I.V.E., which they dismantle base by base. Of particular note is Damien Darhk's death, in which he manages to stop one of Oliver's arrows with his magic and begins to gloat — only for Barry to speed over and stab him in the throat with one of his knives.
  • Many of the metas that Barry originally faced in Season 1, as well as Vartox, receive these from Barry and Kara, assuming they aren't just killed or knocked unconscious outright.
  • Chapter 19 feature two of these Kara completely destroys the 8 members of the Kord Industries attack team which includes 2 Kryptonians without any effort; while Oliver forces Malcolm to flee without getting hit.
  • Even after being having his speed dampened, Barry manages to take out an entire S.W.A.T. team with little difficulty.
  • Oliver almost beats Thawne one-on-one when Thawne has his speed dampened, and manages to knock him out after he is distracted by Firestorm.
  • After both running out of arrows, Oliver manages to incapacitate Malcolm in 12 moves, with Malcolm only getting one hit in.
  • In Zoom's first appearance, Zoom manages to absolutely thrash Barry, who barely survives the encounter.
  • In their final battle, Barry manages to lure Zoom into the labs with meta-dampeners, removing both of their speed and ensuring that Barry can proceed to thrash him right back. The fight is an entire chapter long and Zolomon doesn't manage to get a single hit in.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • On top of their canon backstories, the three main protagonists have the added benefit of basically being press-ganged into the League of Assassins in their teens. While it wasn't completely terrible, it still wasn't very pretty.
  • Slade had to endure all of Oliver's post-Lian Yu adventures while believing that his adopted children are dead, and it ends with him losing an eye, forced to abandon his biological children, and unwillingly recruited to Task Force X.
• Darker and Edgier: Kara and Barry are much darker than their canon counterparts, being hardened killers like Oliver. Ironically, Oliver himself inverts this trope by being (to a certain extent) Lighter and Softer, having had a Family of Choice with him on the island and with the League.
• Darkest Hour: By chapter 112, everything that could possibly be going wrong has gone wrong. Zoom's Dark Matter Collector has gone off in Central City, leading to Barry publicly being disintegrated and the Justice League and their allies having to hide in the Fortress of Solitude. Meanwhile, Eddie is in a coma, Henry and Joe don't know what happened to Barry (though Iris is painfully aware), Amanda has been taken hostage, and Zoom's Earth-2 army is now free to cross over to Earth-1 and begin the carnage they've been waiting for. The author, a known Troper, namedropped this trope in the chapter notes, making it invoked as well.
• Deadpan Snarker: Oliver, though it's more pronounced when he's around Barry and Kara, both of whom have shades of this as well.
• Dead Man Writing: Predicting that his investigation of the Thawnes' deaths would get ugly to the point of him getting killed, Ralph sends a letter and a compilation of his evidence to Barry, partly because he correctly guesses that he's the Flash.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Since Robert isn't on the Gambit with Oliver when it sinks, Walter Steele dies in his place.
  • Several of the trio's targets who were spared in their respective episodes are killed thanks to the vigilantes being much darker than in canon.
  • Jesse Wells of Earth-2 was murdered by Zoom before he turned his attention to Earth-1.
  • Earth-1 Hunter Zolomon was killed by his Earth-2 counterpart to take his place and get closer to Barry.
  • Jay Garrick of Earth-3 was tortured to death by Zoom just to see how much a speedster could take before dying.
  • Chien Na Wei is killed by Zoom during Task Force X's mission to break Barry out.
  • Ralph is accidentally killed by Eddie when his powers act up.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Iris was an Ice Queen in high school after Barry's "death", to the point that she earned a very unflattering nickname: "Ice Bitch". Even as an adult she still shows signs of this, and it's only after Barry's return does she really begin to return to her old self.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • John Diggle and Felicity Smoak, largely because their roles on Arrow have been subsumed by a number of characters (particularly Barry and Kara). Diggle isn't even mentioned, while the only reference to Felicity is from Thawne about how, in the previous timeline, she was a Green Arrow stalker who revealed Oliver's secret identity to the world after he rejected her. According to Word of God, Diggle and Lyla never divorced and are currently living in another city with their son and daughter, while Felicity is in jail for creating her hacktivist supervirus.
  • Thea's role is also reduced significantly, mainly since she isn't a Bratty Teenage Daughter — attributed to Oliver's departure at a younger age meaning that her parents paid more attention to her — and doesn't need a lot of Character Development. Her lack of a connection to Malcolm also means she's unlikely to be taken in and trained by him, so the odds of her joining Team Arrow are slim.
  • Caitlin and Cisco are demoted to supporting characters, as Barry has mastered his powers by the time he meets them and is not as nearly dependent on them as he is in canon, although this may improve now that Wells/Thawne is out of the picture and Barry is more inclined to trust them.
  • Non and Indigo were the Big Bad Duumvirate of Supergirl Season One. Here, they remain Co-Dragons of Astra and are both killed off.
  • Adrian Chase, AKA Prometheus, the Big Bad of Arrow Season Five, kills himself after his first battle with Oliver when he loses.
  • Linda Park was a recurring character in seasons 1 and 2 of The Flash, with her last appearance actually being very story-critical. Here, her only appearance is when her Earth-2 doppelgänger attacks her.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Subverted. Kara carries around a Kryptonite sword after learning there might be other Kryptonians on planet. She also wears Kryptonite-proof clothes to protect herself from radiation.
• Desecrating the Dead: Eddie mutilates Ralph's corpse after accidentally killing him. In this case, this isn't because of any spite towards Ralph himself, but rather to obfuscate the true cause of death so Eddie can frame someone else for the murder.
• Dies Different In Adaptation: In canon, Adrian Chase died when he shot himself in the head to detonate Lian Yu. Here, he kills himself with a cyanide pill after his first confrontation with Oliver.
• Didn't See That Coming: Talia gets caught completely off guard by Tommy stabbing her after her failed assault on Nanda Parbat. Malcolm even drops the trope name when complimenting him on the kill.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Eobard apparently didn't consider what would happen if he took Eddie, a newly awakened meta-human with fire powers he can't control, trick him into becoming a serial killer, then reveal that all of it was just so he could get the identity of the Flash (the man Eddie hates more than anything) right in front of him. The result is that his powers get so out of control that he overpowers his meta-dampeners and knocks both Barry and Eobard unconscious briefly.
  • Malcolm manages to convince himself that he can pull a pincer maneuver on Ra's al Ghul's people, which goes completely predictably when the forces he sends to do that are easily killed before they even make it to the ambush point.
• Dirty Coward: For all his confidence when he's in control of the situation, Eobard is a coward when push comes to shove. When Eddie manages to attack him and drain some of his Speed Force, Eobard has to literally hide behind Barry while Barry negotiates to spare his life.
• Disproportionate Retribution: On two different occasions, Talia slaughtered dozens of innocent people just because one of them insulted her. Once it was over fifty women in a harem, another it was an entire village with hundreds of people.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: After being rescued from Zoom's prison, Barry notes that the only reason why he isn't yelling at Dante to stop sending him pitying looks is because he doesn't know Barry well enough to realize that he hates it.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment:
  • Black Siren is painfully aware that Earth-1's residents are not her loved ones, but at the same time they are and she just misses them so much. In spite of constantly reminding herself she's undercover, she can't help but slip up.
  • Zoom forces Barry to watch his torture of Jay Garrick, knowing that he's the doppelgänger of Barry's father. He tries his hardest to remind himself that it's not actually his father, but he still can't help but feel like he's watching his dad die.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Barry's Red Baron in his League days was "Al Sa'Iqa," the Lightning," because he was so fast. Then he gets the connection to the Speed Force.
  • Iris notes that some days, it seems like Eddie is more into the Streak than he is her. Meanwhile, Eddie is complaining that some days, it seems like she's more into Barry than she is him.
  • During Arc I and the first half of Arc II, Oliver tries to encourage Laurel with her love life. As the readers know, the reason why Laurel's love life is in a rut is because she's in love with him.
  • Once the readers know that Oliver is Malcolm's child in this continuity instead of Thea, every interaction between those two characters is thrown into a completely different light, especially since Oliver remains completely unaware of this.
  • During the Dominator invasion, Quentin compliments Black Canary's combat prowess, completely unaware that he's talking to his own daughter.
  • After being imprisoned by Talia, Malcolm is left desperately trying to convince his son of what's really going on. Tommy, of course, doesn't believe him, with only Malcolm and the audience knowing that, for once, he's actually telling the truth.
  • Several times after Zoom's first appearance, Barry comments that it's almost like he fell off the face of the Earth. Zoom has the ability to travel between dimensions, so that's probably exactly what he did.
  • After the Dark Matter Collector goes off, Barry seems to be disintegrated by the energy. The characters think he's dead; anyone who watched the TV show knows that he was merely taken into the Speed Force.
  • Following the Metapocalypse, Quentin and Dinah comment that at least they never had to meet Black Siren. Laurel, Oliver, and the audience are all aware that they interacted with Black Siren for several hours and never had any idea anything was wrong.
  • Tommy returns to Star City with plans to kill Green Arrow because Malcolm's concerned that the League of Assassins will try and kill Oliver if they knew that Malcolm was his biological father; neither have any way of knowing that Oliver is the Green Arrow.
  • After spending the entire story being lied to and manipulated, Tommy decides to go his own way, separate from his father and from Oliver, to ensure he's never lied to again. Unknown to him, he's the only person in the story who actually has the entire truth, meaning that none of his allies have ways to lie to him like they did before anymore.
• The Dreaded:
  • The Girl in Blue/Supergirl, thanks to her Combo Platter Powers and martial prowess.
  • The debut of the Justice League reduces the amount of crime around the world significantly.
  • Played for Laughs with Carter Bowen, who is feared by his peers for being an insufferable overachieving tool that's fawned over by their parents. When Oliver heard he had gotten worse during his disappearance, he half-jokingly suggested that he shouldn't have left Lian Yu.
  • Ra's al Ghul. The main trio, who are among the best fighters in the world, are flat-fucking terrified of him. Barry point-blank states he is the one man they can never afford to cross, and when they meet him again for the first time since leaving the League, all of them are completely deferential to him and address him as "master". Only Oliver even dares to speak up against him, and that is because he is perhaps the only man in the world who has any chance of defeating Ra's in a straight fight.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Everyman uses his abilities to impersonate Reverb during Task Force X's mission to break Barry out of Zoom's prison, serving as a distraction for the guards so that Chien Na Wei can kill them.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: China White and Everyman are killed during their attempt to break Barry out of Zoom's prison as soon as the evil speedster himself shows up. China's death is actually so fast that it's very easy to miss in the narration.

E to O

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it mention of Talia al Ghul in the prologue.
  • In the very first chapter of Arc III, there're mentions of Black Lightning's return and Hal Jordan's dissapearance.
  • Hunter Zolomon appears in Arc III, over thirty chapters before Zoom's first appearance.
• Elaborate University High: Balliol Prep, the school that Oliver, Tommy, Laurel, and Sara attended, and also where Thea, Kal, and Ruby attend in the present storyline. This is justified, as Balliol is a prestigious academy that caters specifically to Starling City's elite. A person has to apply in order to attend, and not even high monetary status guarantees acceptance.
• Elite Four: It's mentioned that the League of Assassin has what is called "The Four Horsemen", who serve as extensions of Ra's al Ghul's will and in the words of Amanda, worked as his sword and shield. Thus far, Oliver, Kara, Barry, Nyassa, and Malcolm are mentioned to be either former or current Horsemen.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Barry was the fastest in the League when it came to drawing and using a weapon. He was so fast that his League name was Al Sa'iqa or "The Lightning"; he got his League name five years before gaining Super-Speed.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Barry and Kara are forced to turn to Astra for help finding Oliver and Laurel when they are taken captive by the Dominators. This directly leads to her permanent Heel–Face Turn.
  • When Barry is captured by Zoom, Oliver is forced to turn to Task Force X for help since the Justice League is too busy to do it themselves. It's downplayed since Task Force X is led by Slade, but two of the other four members are people that Barry directly helped put away.
• Entertainingly Wrong: The League of Assassins is aware that Malcolm has a bastard child who bears the Queen name and decides to kidnap them as a potential hostage to goad him into their demands as their usual methods in revenge would alienate Oliver. Unfortunately, what they don't realize is that the Queen they kidnapped, Thea, is not Malcolm's bastard child in this continuity. It's Oliver.
• Epiphanic Prison: The Dominators' illusion has shades of this. Oliver and Laurel are only able to break out when they have a Love Epiphany. Interestingly, it is not realizing their love for each other (something they have both been long aware of), but rather realizing their respective love for Nyssa that does the trick.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Astra still loves Kara, and spends most of Arc II plotting to sway her niece to her side. She also genuinely loved Non, and is devastated when Kara kills him. Her one request in return for her aid against the Dominators isn't a full release from prison, but the chance to sit and talk with her niece.
  • Malcolm genuinely loves Tommy. And Oliver, after learning that Oliver is his biological son.
  • Earth-2 Ronnie and Caitlin are Happily Married and genuinely love each other, just like their Earth-1 counterparts. Ronnie in particular is terrified at the prospect of Zoom doing anything to her like he did to Jay Garrick. When Amanda starts torturing her to get him to talk, he immediately caves and tells her everything he knows.
  • Similarly, Reverb and Rupture care about each other (in stark contrast to their relationship on Earth-1), to the point that Reverb is willing to release Iris and risk Zoom's wrath to get him back when Barry takes him hostage.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • A Played for Laughs example: Eobard Thawne hates the Twilight series and fully agrees with the law from the future that all copies of the books must be burned.
  • Malcolm is well aware that he’s crossed many moral lines, but he also knows that Talia is much worse than he could ever hope to be and is rightly scared of her. It’s revealed that Talia killing fifty innocent women during an assassination because one of them insulted her was what made him leave the League.
    Talia, of course, spun a tale for her father, one that he nodded along with, but inside he was sickened. There was being extreme, there was being petty, but this... this was neither of those things. This was just wrong.
  • After this incident, Ra's al Ghul himself honored Malcolm's request, recognizing that his loyalty to the League was divided due to her actions. Though he kept Talia around for a little while longer, it was when Talia slaughtered an entire village just because one man insulted her that he completely excommunicated her from the League.
  • Even Talia herself muses that she found Adrian Chase to be extreme and a little too manic, even if she felt he would make a useful fighter.
  • Apparently, what Zoom did to Earth-2's Flash was so twisted that even Earth-2 Ronnie is disturbed to think about it.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Hunter Zolomon (the Earth-1 version, at least) can't stand the Thawnes, both because of how obviously rude they are to their son and their own arrogant personalities. Given that he is later revealed to be Zoom, this was mostly likely a lie.
  • Amanda is willing to cross every moral line there is for the "greater good", but she refuses to be compared to the likes of Zoom, as all of her heinous actions have a greater purpose behind them while Zoom does everything he does just because he finds it fun.
  • For all that Robert's affair with Isabel was gross due to their age difference and he's nowhere near proud of it, he's offended when Tommy asks him if she was legal yet.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Zoom apparently believes that Barry and the Justice League are establishing themselves as heroes just to destroy that hope later, much like he did when he established his other identity as Jay Garrick.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Zoom reveals that he's intending to torment Barry just because it took so long to find out the Flash's secret identity that he wasn't able to use Barry's speed to restore his own.
  • Just like canon, Eobard's entire motive is based around pettily deciding that if he couldn't be the Flash, then he would embrace his destiny as his biggest enemy and dedicate himself to ruining Barry's life, even being willing to ruin his ancestor Eddie's life along the way just to find his real name. Barry outright calls him a deluded fanboy.
    This plan, this horrible, diabolical plan, all this needless death and heartbreak, had all happened just because a jealous, deluded fanboy wanted to figure out his secret identity.
• Evil Power Vacuum: A consequence of Green Arrow's (and to a lesser extent, Supergirl's) early vigilante careers. While he manages to root out most of the major crime and corruption in Starling City, including taking down and/or driving out the Bertinellis and the Triad, he also leaves a massive hole in Starling's underground that several criminals are trying to fill. While he mostly succeeds at keeping them at bay by "filling in" the vacuum with himself, his increased responsibilities with the Justice League are taking him more and more out of the city, meaning that it's a stopgap at best. Eventually, Brick and his benefactor Tobias Church take advantage of this and take hostage of Balliol Prep while he and Supergirl are out on Justice League business (that they themselves orchestrated). It was only thanks to Black Canary that they didn't succeed in their goals.
• Exact Words: After Tommy learns Oliver and Laurel's identities when they kill the assassins Malcolm sent to fake-capture them, Tommy tells his father that the assassins were killed by Green Arrow and Black Canary without revealing that Oliver and Laurel are the vigilantes in question.
• Exposition Cut: As per Word of God, Barry spent his time with Dante in Zoom's prison filling him in on what's been going on in the outside world, meaning when he gets to talk with Cisco for the first time, he has all the information he needs to keep up the conversation.
• False Flag Operation: Talia has one of her assassins attack Iris pretending to be a member of the League of Assassins in an attempt to get the Justice League to go to war with the League of Assassins. It fails immediately because the assassin is so incompetent that there's no way he was trained by Ra's al Ghul, so Barry immediately realizes it was Talia. And then it turns out she intended it to fail because she wanted to draw the three main characters to Nanda Parbat so she could kill them with her sister and father, ensuring that no one stands in the way of her becoming Ra's al Ghul, meaning it gets subverted, deconstructed, and then reconstructed in rapid succession.
• Family of Choice: This dynamic is formed between Oliver Queen, Barry Allen, Kara Zor-El, Kal-El, Slade Wilson and Shado during their time spent on Lian Yu; even after Shado died when he was barely a year old, Kal-El still thinks of Shado as 'Mama', and Oliver and Barry each make it clear that they've known Kara for so long that just the idea of dating her makes them each want to gag.
• Fatal Flaw: Rupture and Killer Frost end up costing Zoom the Battle of Earth-1 due to their bloodlust and Pride. Instead of killing Pied Piper, Caitlin, and Dante the second they arrive, they choose to take their time and savor killing their doppelgängers as much as they possibly can. As a result, not only do Caitlin and Dante develop powers and put the evil metas on their asses, but they're so focused on torturing their counterparts that Harry manages to finish the wave emitter unimpeded and knocks out every meta from Earth-2 all at once.
• Foil: When Barry meets Eddie Thawne's parents, he compares them to the Queens as they are relatively equally wealthy, and the Thawnes come up short; where the Queens are businesspeople who need competent children who can take over the family business and genuinely care about Oliver and Thea, the Thawnes are socialites who just need to look good and actively (albeit subtly) belittle Eddie at every opportunity.
• Foregone Conclusion: Sam will become Reign one day. The author does not deny it, and it even factored in her decision to not make Kara and Sam a couple.
• Forgot to Gag Him: Talia apparently forgot that on top of his League training, Malcolm Merlyn is a master manipulator. Therefore, she leaves him relatively unguarded where Tommy stumbles on him, allowing him to convert his son to his side and planting the seeds of Talia’s own death.
• For Science!: Zoom uses this justification to explain his torturing of the real Jay Garrick, saying that he only wanted to see just how far a speedster's Healing Factor could be pushed before it couldn't take anymore. Barry sees it as the bullshit excuse that it is.
• For the Evulz: Zoom's entire Motive Rant can essentially be boiled down to "I took over my planet and I'm going to torment your entire planet just because I can".
• For Want Of A Nail: See Here
• Freudian Excuse: It's a superhero story, so this is inevitable:
  • The main trio, of course, were trapped on Lian Yu before ending up in the loving care of the League of Assassins, stunting them emotionally and turning them into the fierce killers they became.
  • Slade had to endure all of Oliver's post-island adventures while having no idea if his children were even still alive. It's a wonder he never reverted to super villainy as he did in canon.
  • Iris is such a hardass because she has blamed her father for Barry's "death" her entire life (and she has a decent reason for it, too), driving her to a much tougher career path.
  • Tommy's Green-Eyed Monster tendencies are even worse than usual because, unlike canon, he never actually managed to get the relationship he was hoping for with Laurel, and combined with both her and his father's very evident appreciation of Oliver following his return, his own feelings of inadequacy begin to take him over. His Trauma Conga Line detailed below only makes things infinitely worse.
  • Cisco's feelings of inadequacy can be traced back very quickly to his parents constantly treating him as The Unfavorite compared to his brother, always heaping praise on Dante while never once complimenting him.
  • Eddie has such an aggressive side of himself because his parents emotionally abused him all his life for his decision to become a detective, driving him to overcompensate for these perceived failings.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Zoom's pathetic attempt to justify his own actions because of his father murdering his mother is such a bad excuse that Barry outright laughs at it before simply responding with a You Monster!
• From Bad to Worse: In a brief moment of triumph, the Suicide Squad manages to rescue Barry and Dante from Zoom's imprisonment, Barry stops Zoom from killing his father by hiring Christopher Chance, and the Justice League stops and publicly unmasks him. Immediately afterwards, Zoom's forces break into A.R.G.U.S. and break out all of Earth-2's prisoners, as well as the meta-humans Iron Heights couldn't contain, and, while the Justice League is distracted, Atom Smasher and Sand Demon blow up the Dark Matter Collector and cause a second wave of dark matter to irradiate the city. Fittingly, the chapter summary for chapter 111 is "It all goes to hell".
• The Gadfly: Barry, which is why he likes to Troll people so much.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Once upon a time, Nyssa and Talia al Ghul deeply loved each other as fellow disappointments to their father's ambition. Then Nyssa grew more and more skilled to the point she surpassed her older sister, was acknowledged as Heir to the Demon, and Talia snapped in front of what she perceived as betrayal. Nowadays, Talia only wants to kill Nyssa for the crime of being more skilled and beloved than her.
• Grandfather Paradox: Lampshaded by Barry, when he's protecting a younger version of Eobard Thawne from a murderous Eddie. Barry notes that not only does he not want to kill Eddie, he can't — killing Eddie will effectively cause the same problems killing Eobard will, because without Eddie living long enough to have a child, Eobard will not exist.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • Arc III has many, thanks to being more episodic than previous arcs and serving as a prelude to Arc IV, which will be focusing on the Justice League. They include:
    • The Dominators, who drive A.R.G.U.S. into recruiting more members for the League after their arrival become imminent.
    • Tobias Church, who is backing Brick as a benefactor and potential partner. It was through him that Brick was able to get Green Arrow and Supergirl out of the city long enough to stage his plan.
    • Talia al Ghul, whose increased activity as leader of the League of Shadows forces Nyssa to temporarily hide herself in Starling. At the end of the arc, she's also revealed to be The Man Behind the Man to Isabel Rochev and Adrian Chase.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • Eddie towards Barry, thanks to his extremely close friendship with Iris, Eddie's girlfriend.
  • Tommy towards Oliver, not just because Laurel seems to prefer Oliver over him, but also because Malcolm, Tommy's father, seems to also be fonder of Oliver than him.
• Guilty Pleasures: Laurel had a secret love for High School Musical back during college.
• Happily Failed Suicide: After Barry's "death", Henry Allen attempted to commit suicide. He was stopped, and put on suicide watch with frequent visits from Iris to help him regain the will to live. He is eventually rewarded when they find Barry alive on Lian Yu, and his son returns to Central City.
• He's Just Hiding: In-Universe example. Barry knows that Eobard has to be alive somewhere after being sucked into the portal, but also knows that, wherever he is, it's likely somewhere that is currently beyond their reach.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • Oliver and Barry. Oliver and Tommy are trying to return to this status, and while they've somewhat succeeded, it's mitigated by Tommy's jealousy.
  • Kara and Sam. Sam even entrusted Kara with planning Ruby's birthday party when she was swamped with work.
• History Repeats: Talia al Ghul and Adrian Chase set up Isabel's relationship with Tommy Merlyn for the sole purpose of killing her in front of Rebecca Merlyn's old clinic; Isabel is even noted as looking somewhat like Rebecca.
• Hold the Line: Iris and Joe happen to be visiting the hospital to check on Eddie and Ralph when the Metapocalypse begins, leaving them no choice but to barricade the hospital and try their best to keep the hostile metas out. They perform rather well until Zoom himself shows up; he knocks them both down and kidnaps Iris within seconds. It's only thanks to the invasion not lasting much longer that the hospital doesn't get overrun.
• I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship:
  • Why Laurel refused to go on a date with Tommy; not only did she not have strong feelings for him, the man she actually has feelings for is Oliver (who, ironically, was the one to push Tommy to ask her out) — she didn't think it would be fair to try for a relationship with Tommy when it was his best friend she really wanted. It's also the reason she has yet to tell Oliver her feelings, as, having just recently returned to Starling City after ten years of being stranded on an island hell, he's clearly not ready for a romantic relationship.
  • Just like in canon, Barry's reasoning for not telling Iris his feelings. It's only aided by his ten-year disappearance and Iris' current relationship with Eddie.
• I'd Tell You, but Then I'd Have to Kill You: Barry says exactly this to Caitlin regarding his League training. He's really not joking, and even regards the act as a Mercy Kill, knowing that the League would do worse.
• I Have Many Names:
  • Oliver Queen: "Al Sah-Him"/"The Arrow"/"The Hood"/"Green Arrow"
  • Barry Allen: "Al Sa'iqa"/"The Lightning"/"The Streak"/"The Flash"
  • Kara Zor-El: "Saraab"/ "Phantom"/ "Kara Danvers"/"The Girl in Blue"/"Supergirl"
• I Have Your Son:
  • Talia has Tommy train with her in order to force Malcolm into compliance, keeping him under an Implied Death Threat unless Malcolm tells her about the Lazarus Pit he found.
  • Eddie tries to invoke this by taking Iris hostage to force Barry to give up Eobard.
• I Owe You My Life:
  • The source of the leads' loyalty to each other.
  • Maseo's strong friendship with Slade is because Slade saved the life of his son, Akio.
• I Reject Your Reality: After Sam finds her spaceship in her mother's basement, she basically chooses this option, refusing to acknowledge that she's an alien and live a human life.
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: This basically justifies how a past version of Eobard Thawne was able to pose as Eddie's therapist; Barry was keeping an eye out for the Eobard Thawne he knew who assumed the identity of Harrison Wells, never realising that the older Thawne stole Harrison's face as well as his name.
• Implausible Deniability: Patricia tries to justify the fact that she doesn't know her own granddaughter's name because Sam never talks to her anymore. Kara angrily points out that Sam is a famous up-and-coming CEO with several social media profiles and her own Wikipedia page, so there's no excuse for her to not know Ruby's name.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: In Chapter 13, Barry tells a story of how a 7-year-old Iris once came across a baby she found so adorable that she tied a note to his stroller telling the parents that she would be borrowing him for a couple of days and walked off with the baby. She would later try to take other babies over the next couple of days.
• Initiation Ceremony: Archangel, Thunder, Zatanna, Firestorm, Vibe, Citizen Steel, Green Lantern, and Pied Piper are all added to the Justice League following the Metapocalypse due to their heroic actions during the event. It's as public as it possibly can be in order to give the general population hope for the future and put the disastrous incident behind them.
• Innocently Insensitive:
  • Oliver and Laurel don't mean any harm when they flirt with each other, but it's only once they push him away for good that they realize that doing it in front of Tommy, whom they both know is still in love with her, wasn't something they should have done.
  • Cisco asks Barry to give him some more work so that he has an excuse to miss his family reunion and not have to deal with his parents and brother. Barry reminds him that his own mother is dead and his father is away from them making up for the lost time in prison, so he's not getting any sympathy from him.
  • When Patricia Arias tries to use Kara as an in to reconcile with Sam, she makes the mistake of asking "who's Ruby?", unaware that she's asking about the identity of her own granddaughter. It pisses Kara off and gets her thrown out of the building.
• Inspector Javert: Eddie towards the Streak/the Flash. It has shades of Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist considering that the Flash has committed murder, but the sympathy decreases as Eddie's obsession grows.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Shado still dies.
  • Despite Eobard's fears to the contrary and to his eventual relief, Barry still gets his Super-Speed despite not being in Central when the Particle Accelerator is activated. Chapter 110 reveals that this is no coincidence, as the Speed Force itself has long since chosen Barry as its champion and thus used its power to send the bolt created by the Particle Accelerator to Nanda Parbat.
  • Slade replacing Oliver in all his post-Lian Yu adventures only changes the outcome of Hong Kong. The rest end more-or-less the same way.
  • Off-page, Malcolm still cuts Tommy off financially in order to force him to mature, which succeeds just like it did in canon. It just happened much sooner since Tommy fell off the wagon earlier in the timeline.
  • The Undertaking is still publicly revealed the night it is due to occur, but this time, it's Frank Chen giving the warning and it is completely unwillingly.
  • Despite the Mirakuru no longer driving him insane, Slade is still forced to abandon Joe; this time, in order to protect him from Amanda Waller.
  • A number of encounters that Oliver and Barry had with Villains of the Week have largely unchanged outcomes, which is why the author opted not to include them in the narrative besides passing mentions.
  • Someone still tries to assassinate Malcolm at his 'Humanitarian of the Year' award ceremony. This time, however, the one who hired the assassin was Malcolm himself, in a half-assed attempt to suss out the Hood.
  • Kara and Kal's Earth names are still Kara Danvers and Clark Kent.
  • Zoom still ends up on Earth-1 even though Barry doesn't create the singularity that originally brought him over.
  • Zoom still pretends to be Jay Garrick and then kills a time remnant of himself to frighten everyone, he just does it on Earth-2 before coming to Earth-1.
  • Laurel is still set to get her Canary Cry from Cisco.
  • Zoom still attacks Henry Allen to try to convince Barry that they're not so different. It's only thanks to Barry preparing for this outcome that Henry doesn't die like in canon.
• Insult Backfire: Doubles as I Am the Noun:
  Barry: You bitch.
  Waller: I am THE bitch, Mr. Allen.
• Internal Reveal:
  • Despite training together for some time, Green Arrow and Black Canary only learn each other's identity after Black Canary is inducted into the Justice League.
  • The rest of the Justice League finally learn about what happened to the trio during their time away just before the mission to Nanda Parbat.
  • Chapter 124 has Tommy learn that Oliver is his half-brother on his father's side. Chapter 142 then has him learn that Isabel and Talia were working together and that she never loved him.
  • Chapter 162 has Laurel reveal to her family that she is the Black Canary and that she had been replaced with Black Siren for a few hours without them noticing. Unfortunately, immediately afterward, they also learn that Tommy is a traitor when he takes Sara hostage.
  • Thanks to Ra's al Ghul, Oliver finally learns that Malcolm is still alive and that he's Oliver's biological father.
• Irony: Malcolm's subsequent efforts to blackmail Robert and Moira into helping his campaign against the League of Assassins is based on the idea that the League will seek revenge on the Merlyn bloodline for his actions, anticipating that Green Arrow will be sent to kill them, everyone naturally unaware that Oliver is the Arrow.
• It's All My Fault: Cisco ends up blaming himself for Rupture almost killing his parents because he was so determined to stay away from them that he didn't even realize anything was wrong until it was almost too late. Dante, who is far and away the person who was harmed the most in this situation, tells him that he shouldn't blame himself for what Zoom did and the two brothers actually start to reconcile.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Why Barry has yet to confess to Iris when he finally returned to Central City; he knew she would most likely be in a relationship already (and she was).
• Jerkass Has a Point: Tommy is out of line when he spurns his friends and blows up at them, but they also spent a lot of their time together flaunting their blossoming relationship (unintentionally for sure, but it still happened) when they all know that Tommy still has feelings for Laurel. There's only so far someone in that position will be pushed until they just can't take any more.
• Kick the Dog: After holding Jesse hostage to force her father's cooperation, Zoom goes back on his promise to release her and instead murders her in front of Harry.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: It's not a good omen for Tommy that he now officially has a kill count, but Talia couldn't have been a more deserving first kill.
• Kill and Replace:
  • This was Earth-2 Linda Park's plan. Zoom threatened her to kill the Flash, but when she realized that the Flash would kill her just like Zoom would, she decided to hide in plain sight by killing her Earth-1 version and replacing her to hide from both of them.
  • Earth-2 Hunter Zolomon killed and replaced his Earth-1 counterpart several months prior to Act III of Arc IV.
• Killed Offscreen:
  • Chapter 112 has Zoom reveal that he had Dr. Light murdered offscreen for being a traitor to the cause.
  • Chapter 140 reveals that Patricia- Sam's mother- was one of the victims of Pestilence's disease, which they only realised after the fact as Supergirl was fighting Pestilence and Barry hasn't met Patricia in person to recognise her while he was clearing the infected out of danger.
• Kiss of Distraction: When escaping the Dominators' Lotus-Eater Machine, Laurel kisses the fake Nyssa as a distraction, allowing her to stab her with a knife. She's understandably shaken afterwards, despite Oliver's assurances that she did what she had to.
• Knight of Cerebus: Just like in canon, Zoom. Everything seems to finally be going back to normal with the Justice League after the planet manages to repel the Dominator invasion. Then he shows up, beats the crap out of Barry on live TV and makes a public vow to terrorize Central City and crush the Justice League. The story becomes dark again almost immediately afterward with no signs of letting up anytime soon.
• Kryptonite Factor: Kara and Kal soon find out they are vulnerable to Kryptonite. Nonetheless, Barry Allen designs Kryptonite-proof clothes which protect Kara from Kryptonite and allow her to use Kryptonite weapons against rogue Kryptonians.
• Kryptonite-Proof Suit: Barry designs Kryptonite-resistant clothes for Kara.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Frank Chen betrayed his friend Robert to Malcolm and planted the bomb that stranded Oliver on Lian Yu. Ten years later, he's forced to take canon Moira's place in revealing the Undertaking to the public, while the friends he betrayed have all evidence of their involvement with Tempest erased and get off scot-free.
  • After treating Tommy and Malcolm as nothing but pawns, Talia gets caught off guard and killed by Tommy thanks to Malcolm convincing him of what she did to Isabel.
• Like Brother and Sister: The main trio, to the point that the thought of any of them dating one another makes them visibly sick.
• Living Emotional Crutch: After surviving mercenaries, pirates, and the League of Assassins, the Lian Yu survivors are all this to each other; however, the one that functions this as the most is Oliver. According to Kara, without him, neither she nor Barry would still be alive, as he's the one who pushed them to keep on going even when the going got tough.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Ironically enough, Oliver. He manages to learn all of his parents and Malcolm's secrets — except the fact that he's Malcolm's biological son. And his parents have every intention of keeping it that way. It's later implied that others know about this as well, among them Amanda Waller.
• Logical Weakness: Indigo can travel the internet through computer systems. Shutting down the power of whatever room she's in effectively strands her unless someone happens to have a working smartphone.
• The Lost Lenore:
  • Shado for Slade; his last promise to her was to make sure the kids got home, which is why he's so protective over them.
  • Oliver for Laurel during his "death"; Laurel had feelings for him, but he disappeared before she had the chance to tell him. She never quite managed to get over him, and it has doomed every relationship she's had since.
  • Similar to Laurel's example above, Barry for Iris, though she never realized the romantic implications of her despair over Barry's presumed death. Iris was so desperate to cling to Barry's ghost that she not only started visiting his dad, but also started chasing after "impossible" events like he did and writing about them on his blog, even signing her name to it. This feeling returns after Barry seemingly dies in Arc IV, right before the Metapocalypse. It takes Iris everything she has not to breakdown and nearly loses the will to live entirely, not even bothering to fight when Zoom comes to kill her. Thankfully, Barry saved her, and after their brief reunion, Iris finally realizes that she is in love with him.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: The Dominators abduct and trap Oliver and Laurel in one, like they did with the former in canon. According to the author, they interpreted the prison in canon as using a combination of For Want Of A Nail and Your Heart's Desire, and tailored theirs accordingly. In the illusion, Rebecca Merlyn was never murdered and so the Gambit never sank and Oliver never got stranded on Lian Yu. As a result, he got to live the next ten years with his family and friends, including dating and eventually getting engaged to Laurel. As a result, Tommy never developed feelings for Laurel and instead got together with Sara. Oliver also never met any of his adoptive family, who themselves have infinitely better lives: Barry's mother was never murdered and Eobard Thawne never replaced Harrison Wells, so in this reality he's Wells' protege and prospective successor as head scientist of S.T.A.R. Labs and Happily Married to model and reporter Iris; Kara and Kal are middle-aged with families of their own on Krypton, which never blew up; and Slade and Shado are Happily Married with a child on the way. Even the al Ghuls are better off — they're musicians instead of assassins, with Nyssa being the musical director of Oliver and Laurel's wedding.
• Loved by All: Henry Allen is so respected by everyone in his prison that the guards are willing to allow him to hug his son even though his visits are not conjugal visits, and they all show support when he’s released from prison.
• Love Epiphany: Iris realizes she's in love with Barry during the last act of Arc IV.
• Love Makes You Evil: A rather subtle motif with the Merlyn men. Malcolm obviously went off his gourd with his wife's murder and plotted to destroy the Glades to avenge, while Tommy's craving for love leads to alienate his long-lasting friendships when Laurel picks Oliver over him, join the League of Shadows to avenge his girlfriend Isabel's murder and plot with his father to rally his half-brother Oliver to their cause. Interestingly, Oliver as the White Sheep inverts this, as their loved ones grow more ruthless from losing them.
• Love Triangle: Three major ones:
  • Barry/Iris/Eddie: Barry loves Iris, Eddie loves Iris, Iris loves Eddie but is also implied to have feelings for Barry that she is currently unaware of. Iris breaks up with Eddie in Arc IV, and soon afterward realizes she's in love with Barry.
  • Oliver/Laurel/Tommy: Tommy has feelings for Laurel, who has feelings for Oliver. Oliver currently isn't interested in romance yet, but he's starting to develop feelings for Laurel. Oliver and Laurel ultimately win out, but by that point Tommy lost interest, breaking off his friendships with both and starting a relationship with Isabel Rochev.
  • Laurel/Oliver/Nyssa: Laurel and Nyssa both have feelings for Oliver, and he's starting become more aware of his feelings for both of them. They settle into Polyamory, as Laurel and Nyssa had developed feelings for each other during Laurel's time as Nyssa's student.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Malcolm learns that Oliver is his biological son in Chapter 25. Oliver has yet to find out, though.
• Mad Scientist: It's implied Barry dabbled in this while he was a member of the League.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: In chapter 136, Eddie accidentally kills his parents in a moment of anger after having enough of their abusive behavior. After realizing what he has done, he decides to stage a house fire to cover up his tracks.
• The Man Behind the Man:
  • Astra to the rogue prisoners of Fort Rozz. Kara doesn't find this out until the last leg of Arc II.
  • Tobias Church to Daniel Brickwell, though Brick is trying to strike out on his own.
  • Talia al Ghul to Isabel Rochev.
• Manipulative Bastard: Malcolm manages to turn the tables against Talia and the Justice League so perfectly you'd think that he'd planned to get into that situation. In a single afternoon, he manages to get Tommy on his side, convince him to kill Talia, pay off enough of her men to ensure he will take her place upon her death, and then use a Body Double to fake his death.
• Manipulative Bitch: Amanda Waller. She plays everyone, up to and including the three leads, does so blatantly, and manages to get away scot-free by virtue of how useful she is.
• Manly Tears: Henry Allen makes no attempt to hide his tears when he learns that his son is alive.
• Married in the Future: Barry and Iris, according to Eobard Thawne. It still isn't enough to break Barry's I Want My Beloved to Be Happy mindset.
• Mass Super-Empowering Event: The Particle Accelerator Explosion which is then recreated by Zoom and his forces in Arc IV by detonating the Dark Matter Collector. The second one results in Laurel, Dante, Caitlin, and Ralph all getting powers. It's later speculated by Barry that it also granted Eddie his powers as well, and he just lacked a sufficient emotional trigger to consciously activate them until the night he murdered his parents.
• Mirror Match: Frequently during the Zoom storyline, with several heroes facing off against their evil doppelgangers in battle.
• Mistaken for Romance: Eddie mistakenly believes Barry and Kara to be a couple when he meets the latter before the Queen Thanksgiving Dinner. When he voices this out loud, Oliver and Kal burst out laughing while Barry and Kara act like they're going to throw up.
• Mood Whiplash: During Zoom's otherwise terrifying Motive Rant, Barry manages to get in a surprisingly hilarious zinger.
  Zoom: Don't take me for a fool.
  Barry: Speed drug.
  Zoom: Shut up!
• Moral Myopia: Malcolm, as per usual. While persuading Tommy to follow his lead and kill the Green Arrow, he claims that what happened to him isn't fair when the Queens got away with everything scot-free. He seems to completely gloss over the fact that they did everything they did under the threat of their daughter's life and thus have both the moral and legal high ground on him.
• Moral Event Horizon: In-Universe, it's made very clear that no one will ever forgive Malcolm for sinking the Queen's Gambit. Tommy himself mourns the fact that this act means that eventually, he'll have to choose between his father or his brother Oliver.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Malcolm Merlyn had this reaction when he realized that it was Oliver, not Robert, on the Queen's Gambit, where he just had Frank Chen plant a bomb on. While this didn't stop him from taking advantage of the incident to force the Queens under his heel, he still felt immensely guilty for what happened and was relieved when Oliver was found alive ten years later. The feeling returns with a vengeance when he learns he's Oliver's biological father, as this means he had unintentionally ruined his own son's life, which eventually transforms him into a full-on "Well Done, Dad!" Guy.
  • Eddie has this reaction when he accidentally almost gets Iris killed and the Flash captured by Reverb. It's one of the many things he struggles to deal with when he wakes up from his nine-month coma. He later has a far more severe one when his rampage in the CCPD ends with Joe taking a dangerous wound; it prompts him to finally come to his senses about his actions and flee the scene.
• Myth Arc:
  • In the author's notes, there are a lot of references to Arc V, which will mark the halfway point of the story. Accordingly, every preceding arc is building to this one, whatever it may be.
  • There are references to a second time traveler that is screwing around with the timeline, and is implied to be responsible for earlier changes in the timeline that Thawne couldn't influence, such as Kara and Kal-El arriving on Earth under such different circumstances. According to the author's notes, this won't be resolved until a much later arc.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The name of Kara's realtor in Chapter 13 is "Miss Mericle", after Wendy Mericle, one of the showrunners of Arrow.
  • Kara's middle name is Linda, referencing her Pre-Crisis "Linda Danvers" Earth name.
  • Chapter 16, the Christmas Episode, is titled "Beebo Day", after the stuffed toy/Memetic Badass Beebo from Legends of Tomorrow. Kal even receives a Beebo toy as a gift from Ruby.
  • Nathaniel Adam, Bette Sans Souci's deceased fiance, is the secret identity of Captain Atom, Plastique's husband in the comics.
  • The title of Kal-El's Birthday Episode is "For the Boy Who Has Everything", in reference to one of his most famous stories.
  • The mugger that Eddie frames for Ralph's death is Joe Chill, the man who usually kills Thomas and Martha Wayne and thus creates Batman.
• Never Found the Body: Oliver and Barry, though that didn't stop their loved ones from assuming they were dead. In fact, when the U.S. Embassy in China called Joe to inform him about Barry's survival, he had initially assumed they had found his body and was already planning the funeral.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: During the hostage exchange between the Flash and Reverb, Barry is inches away from getting everyone away from the situation unharmed when Eddie arrives, shoots him with a speed-dampening dart, and moves to arrest him. In the chaos that follows, Reverb manages to get away with both Rupture and Barry, while Iris is almost killed in the crossfire.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Metapocalypse is undone in part because of the actions of the people who instigated it. Killer Frost, Rupture, and Reverb simply toy with the heroes to satiate their sadism rather than fight outright, but Caitlin and Dante develop powers due to Zoom's own Dark Matter Collector going off, allowing them to fight back. This buys Harry enough time to finish the machine that knocks out all the Earth-2 metas at once.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Ralph tries to convince Eddie to get ahead of his parents' murders by turning himself in, trying to show him that taking responsibility for it (since it genuinely was an accident) will help him get a lighter punishment. Eddie's response is to murder him (albeit accidentally), mutilate his corpse, frame a mugger for it, and then blow up a police department's evidence locker while people are in the building to cover it all up.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Barry's final defeat of Zoom is so one-sided that it can't even be called a fight. Barry manages to take their speed away, leaving Zoom with next to no abilities and Barry with training from the League of Assassins. Zolomon never manages a single hit throughout all of it, while Barry takes his sweet time and enjoys torturing him throughout the fight.
• Noodle Incident:
  • The incident that finally made Iris stop channeling Barry involved her almost being arrested while investigating the impossible.
  • The trio had a mission for the League in Prague; details are scarce, but it involved a lot of chaos and the use of a costume that Barry had to burn.
  • The leads' first encounter with Kryptonite. Whatever happened, it traumatized Kal-El and caused the League to issue a mandate to their members to destroy any sample they come across. When faced with it again, even Kara is visibly unnerved, though her apprehension doesn't stop her from using it as a weapon.
  • "The Monkey Incident". Not a lot of details are revealed about it except that it happened because Barry was bored and Ra's punished him by personally taking over his training sessions for the next month.
  • Dhaka. The number one rule about Dhaka is that it never happened and anyone who says otherwise is a big, fat liar.
• Not His Sled: Thea is not the biological child of Malcolm Merlyn. Oliver is.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Just like in canon, Zoom tries to pull this card on Barry. Unlike in canon, however, Barry has many more Freudian Excuses than just the death of his mother and sees it as Hunter desperately trying to find someone else as evil as he is.
• Oblivious to Love: Oliver is completely oblivious to his Childhood Friend Laurel's obvious crush on him. For that matter, it's implied he was also oblivious to Nyssa's feelings for him, though Nyssa is far more reserved and in control of her emotions than Laurel is.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Just about any time anyone committing a crime catches sight of one of the three leads' vigilante alter-egos.
  • The trio when they realize that Fort Rozz has been on Earth for the last ten years.
  • Hartley Rathaway, when Barry exposes his plan to escape the Pipeline.
  • Barry when he sees a newspaper from the future and realizes who (or rather, what) Dr. Wells actually is.
  • Barry again, when he realizes that Oliver and Laurel are being held captive in space.
  • Barry and Laurel have one when they realise Zoom has been 'replacing' the team at S.T.A.R. Labs with their Earth-2 counterparts for the last couple of weeks, and has now replaced Laurel with Black Siren after capturing her and Barry.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Purposely invoked by the League when they were training Barry. His powers only made it that much easier.
• Omniglot: Oliver, who knows dozens of languages, and can even speak in different dialects of said languages.
• One Degree of Separation: Arc III reveals that Robert Queen's ex-lover Isabel Rochev is a former classmate and rival of Samantha Arias.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Of the three leads, Oliver is clearly the most straight-laced when they're off the clock.
  • Caitlin Snow is this for S.T.A.R. Labs when Barry joins.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Malcolm throwing himself to his knees to beg to Ra's to let him out of the League after he witnessed Talia murdering 50 innocent people was the first time Nyssa realized that the rumors about her sister may be accurate after all.
  • Amanda making it clear that she genuinely doesn't know how the copy of Linda exists manages to unnerve Barry, since she's always so dedicated to making sure she knows everything. Similarly, the Justice League take the following summon more seriously when they see Barry pacing around the room.
• Out-of-Character Alert: It’s not clear what tipped him off, but Oliver is clearly aware that something is wrong with Laurel, who is actually her Earth-2 counterpart pretending to be her. When confronted with both versions at once, he's able to realize which one is Black Siren because she gives the wrong number of years since the Gambit sank.
• Outside-Context Problem: Just like canon, Zoom comes out of absolute nowhere and damn near kills Barry with no warning or explanation.

P to Z

• Parental Substitute:
  • Slade and Shado served as this to the protagonists during their time on Lian Yu.
  • Henry became a second father to Iris while she and Joe were on the outs.
  • Moira serves as another mother figure for both Kara and Kal (much to Astra's jealousy).
    • Not a major part of their relationship for the most part, but when Ruby was part of the Baliol Prep hostage crisis, Robert and Moira immediately volunteered to pay the necessary money for her ransom when Sam worried that she couldn't come up with that much cash herself in the available time frame.
• Parting-Words Regret: Prior to Lian Yu, in the heat of the moment, Joe called Barry "crazy". He immediately tried to take it back, but it was already too late — it was the final push needed for Barry to go to China, which led to his disappearance and assumed death. Joe's guilt was only doubled when it estranged him from Iris, basically costing him both his children. He only begins to get over it when Barry returns to Central ten years later.
• Pass the Popcorn: Barry, when watching an argument between Cisco and the imprisoned Hartley Rathaway.
  Caitlin: Why are you eating popcorn?
  Barry: Don't you eat popcorn while watching good entertainment?
• Pet the Dog:
  • After Brick takes the children at Balloil Prep hostage, Sam begins to worry that she won't be able to get enough money in time to pay off her part of the ransom. The second they hear that, Robert and Moira all but force her to allow them to pay for it instead.
  • Malcolm refuses to tell Tommy his suspicions that Isabel was working with Talia only to be betrayed because, disregarding whether or not Tommy would even believe him, it would break his heart even further than it already has been.
  • After Zoom forces Barry to watch him torture a doppelgänger of his father, Dante crawls over to his cell and puts his hand on Barry's shoulder. As small a gesture as it is, it's coming from a complete stranger and he desperately needs the comfort, so Barry remains grateful for it.
  • Joe tells Barry and Iris to go home after they give their testimony regarding Ralph's murder, saying that there's no way he's letting them work that day.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: While they weren't completely isolated from the outside world, the three main leads had no time or interest to keep up with modern pop culture, which comes up occasionally. Oliver has no idea what High School Musical is, and Cisco is horrified to learn that Barry has lost out on ten years of pop culture after he fails to understand a reference to The Twilight Saga.
• Power Creep, Power Seep: See Adapted Out. This is the main reason why a lot of Arrow's main villains were cut out — it's hard to imagine them as any sort of a threat when Supergirl resides in the same city.
• The Power of the Sun: After spending several months in the island of Lian Yu, Kara all of sudden starts exhibiting extraordinary strength and toughness and amazingly keen senses. Barry quickly guesses that she draws power from a yellow sun. Shortly later she is flying around and shooting heat beams.
• Pragmatic Adaptation:
  • Many Arrow villains were Adapted Out, as they would pose a negligible threat with Barry and Kara around.
  • The remainder of the villains are either dealt with swiftly, or else must adapt their strategies to deal with three heroes (two of whom are superpowered), not just one. This is especially noticeable with Zoom, whose plan is hugely expanded to give trouble to the entire Justice League instead of only Barry.
• Pragmatic Hero: During the Battle of Earth-1, Harry remains at the wave emitter even though Hartley, Caitlin, and Dante are currently getting their asses handed to them, reasoning that this means the evil metas are distracted and getting the machine turned on is an absolute necessity even if it means someone else has to die. Luckily, Caitlin and Dante develop powers, rendering the decision moot.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The younger version of Eobard Thawne is smart enough to go back to his time as soon as he has what he came for - he's found the Flash's identity, and now he can safely head back to the future to plan his next move. Unfortunately for him, he didn't account for a pissed-off Eddie managing to break free of his cuffs and siphon enough of Eobard's Speed Force that he can't escape on his own.
• The Problem with Fighting Death: Barry explicitly points this out when explaining to Eobard why he's refusing to go back in time and prevent his mother's murder. According to Barry, all he'd get by doing that is more time with Nora; she'll still die eventually, either due to old age or disease. And while he would love to have more time with her, he isn't willing to do so at the risk of everything he has right now.
• Promotion to Parent: After the destruction of Krypton and landing on Lian Yu, Kal-El was initially raised by a makeshift family, with Slade and Shado as the "parents". After Shado's death and Slade's disappearance/presumed death, however, he was then raised by his "siblings", Kara, Barry, and Oliver, with the... questionable help of the League of Assassins.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • Following Zoom's attack, the government mass produces Cisco's doppelsensor and dispenses one to every family across the country. Quentin ends up using one on Laurel and Oliver when they return home from Central City, still completely unaware that they had in fact already met Black Siren for a few hours.
  • Ralph wisely chooses to compile a letter filled with the evidence from the case he's investigating just in case anything goes wrong. It's a good thing he did, as Eddie accidentally kills him, leaving the letter as the only lead that puts Barry on the case once all the evidence is gone.
• Rage Breaking Point: For most of the first three arcs, Tommy pines after Laurel, who only sees him as a close friend and rebuffs his advances. At the same time, Laurel and Oliver become closer and closer and are almost on the verge of becoming a couple, something Tommy seethes at but endures. He finally loses his patience when the two begin obliviously flirting on what was supposed to be a friendly dinner between the three of them and Isabel, culminating in a rant at both when Oliver suggests they should do this again some time and Laurel agrees.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Barry delivers the following to Zoom when he tries to play the "Not So Different" Remark on him:
    You think it was that tragedy alone that made me what I am today? You think it was one thing that turned me into this? Get real. It took years of tragedy to make me what I am. Years of pain I had to endure, year of scars I was forced to bear, years and years of swallowing my tears as I tried to make it through to the next day. All those crimes I committed, all the blood on my hands, it'll all never wash away. I'll live with it and eventually, I'm sure I'll die for it. And whatever hell that's waiting for me afterward, it'll be nothing less than what I deserve. But... if there's one consolation prize to all of it, it's that not even the worst of what I lived through made me as depraved a monster as you. I only ever killed because I had to, Hunter Zolomon. You only ever killed because you could.
  • Kara gives a scathing rebuke to Patricia Arias when she tries to use Kara as a shortcut to reconcile with Sam, yet in the same conversation reveals that she doesn't even know her own granddaughter's name:
    You lost any and all right to be part of Sam's life when you threw her out all those years ago. It's up to her now over whether or not you'll reconcile — not me, and certainly not you. So I suggest you keep on reaching out to her instead of trying to take shortcuts. Now get the hell out of my office before I call security. I don't want to see you here ever again.
• Redemption Earns Life: Kara chooses to spare Astra since Alex isn't around to kill her in this continuity. Barry and Kara then go to her for help during the Dominator invasion, giving her a chance to fight alongside her niece instead of against her and start to redeem herself from her past crimes. The next time we see her, she's working with the Justice League full time.
• Related in the Adaptation:
  • In this Alternate Universe, Oliver is Malcolm's child with Moira, not Thea.
  • Mari and Kuasa's grandfather is Rex Tyler in this continuity, opposed to a random man from Zambezi.
• Relationship Upgrade:
  • Tommy and Isabel become a couple towards the end of Arc III after Tommy finally gives up on Laurel.
  • Oliver and Laurel enter their own relationship in the last chapter of Arc III after Laurel joins the Justice League.
• Retcon: A very slight one; it's originally implied that Slade Wilson is the President on Earth-2, but because Slade isn't an outright villain in this continuity, it's later revealed to be Malcolm Merlyn, with Slade having been a former President instead.
• Revenge Before Reason: Eddie is so determined to capture the Flash that he rushes into a hostage situation completely blindly and makes everything worse; thanks to Eddie's attempt to arrest Barry, Reverb manages to take Rupture, wound Iris, and capture Barry for Zoom before anyone can even see what's happening.
• Ruling Family Massacre: This is the spirit of Talia's goal in drawing the main trio to Nanda Parbat during her coup. As they are now officially heirs to the Demon Ring, the League of Assassins will never follow Talia as long as one of them is alive. So, Talia drew them to Nanda Parbat, which contains safeguards that can negate Barry and Kara's powers, to slaughter them alongside Ra's and Nyssa. That way, no one will stand in her way of ascending to the title of Ra's al Ghul.
• Running Gag:
  • Carter Bowen's ill-fated attempts to hit on a completely uninterested Kara.
  • Big Eaters Barry, Kara, and Kal gorging down on food while a disgusted Oliver watches in resignation.
• Sadistic Choice: Harry gets accidentally forced into one during the battle against Zoom’s army. He can either shoot Rupture to save Dante’s life while making the metas notice the machine he’s building or he can finish the machine and watch Dante die. He quickly decides the latter in order to ensure Zoom’s defeat, but Dante develops powers and handles the situation himself.
• Satellite Character: In-Universe, Kara believes that she is one of these for Kal; when Kal goes off to high school, Kara laments that her entire life until this point has revolved entirely around him, and now that he's getting his own life away from her, she has no idea what to do without him.
• Save the Villain: Barry is forced to save Eobard's life from Eddie's rampage because Eobard hasn't killed Nora Allen yet, meaning that if Eddie kills him, it'll create a time paradox that risks the stability of the universe. He ends up forced to take him to the Hall of Justice.
• Scholarship Student: Laurel and Sara were only able to get into Balliol Prep because their mother was one of the teachers at Balliol's college campus. The reason why they bonded with Oliver and Tommy is because they were the only two students willing to reach out at them despite their "lesser" social status.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: As soon as Zoom is defeated once and for all, Leonard, Lisa, and Mick get out of the city as fast as they possibly can.
• Secret-Keeper: Tommy ends up learning Oliver and Laurel's secret identities when assassins attack them in their home; from there, he quickly deduces Barry and Kara's identities. He's given the chance to tell Malcolm, but chooses to keep it to himself.
• Secret Secret-Keeper:
  • Ralph reveals in a letter sent after his death that he knew Barry was the Flash.
  • When Laurel reveals her secret identity to her family, Quentin confirms that he'd already known for several weeks, both because he's a naturally highly observant person as a detective and because he'd made close-up eye contact with her during one of the Worldkiller's attacks..
  • Just before he passes away, Joe reveals that he knew from very early on that Barry is the Flash. In short order, Henry, Wally, and Francine also reveal that they've known for some time.
• Ship Sinking:
  • The author preemptively sunk all Kara ships, all Tommy ships, Oliver/Felicity, Oliver/Sara, and any ships that put Oliver, Barry, and Kara together in any capacity.
  • Despite the author stating numerous times that Tommy/Laurel was never happening, readers kept on asking for it. The fervor for the pairing finally died down after Tommy's rant over Oliver and Laurel's Unresolved Sexual Tension after what was supposed to be a friendly dinner, and his subsequent Relationship Upgrade with Isabel.
  • Chapter 107 features Iris and Eddie breaking up permanently. Word of God stepped in to confirm this was the true end for them.
• Ship Tease: Despite sinking all his ships, that doesn't stop the author from teasing a few with Tommy. On top of trying to flirt with Kara in Arc I, he has a lot of moments with Isabel (which eventually saw a Relationship Upgrade) and has a few with Sara. They even imply that, had the Gambit not sank, Tommy and Sara would've become a couple.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Moira ships Oliver/Laurel (which has a strong possibility of happening), and Carter/Kara (which will never be happening).
  • A number of people, including Henry, Oliver, and Kara, ship Barry/Iris. That being said, they recognize that Eddie's presence and Barry's refusal to pursue his best friend romantically means it won't be happening for a while.
• Shout-Out: Several chapter titles are references to other media, including The Hunger Games, Scooby-Doo, and As You Like It.
• Sibling Triangle: The Oliver/Laurel/Tommy Love Triangle is also this, as (unbeknownst to all three), Oliver and Tommy are half-brothers.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Killing Hugo and Charlene Thawne is one thing; the victims were such horrible people that no one takes it very personally, and the audience definitely sympathizes with Eddie over it. Killing Ralph, framing a mugger, and then blowing up an evidence locker, however, makes it clear that Eddie is losing it and needs to be stopped as soon as possible.
• Social Climber:
  • Carter Bowen is strongly implied to be this. His family is Nouveau Riche and had to pull a lot of strings to get him into Balliol, suggesting that his overachieving is to compensate for this perceived failing of his background.
  • The Lances became this by complete accident. Because Laurel befriended Tommy and Oliver on her first day of school, the Lances unavoidably got dragged into the world of Starling City's elite. By the present day, they've been a part of that world for so long that everyone, including even themselves, have forgotten that they aren't nearly as well-off as the rest of their social circle.
  • Isabel Rochev. One of the reasons why she hates the Queens is because she can't get any higher up the ladder without marrying well, something Moira will do everything in her power to make sure it won't happen.
• So Proud of You: Laurel's family proves to be very supportive to her when she tells them she's the Black Canary, admitting that they don't like the danger she's in but that she's handling herself well and is making a difference in the world.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • There's a rogue time traveler that's been messing with timeline since at least Krypton's destruction. It's implied that he or she are responsible for many of the more radical changes that didn't stem from Nora Allen's murder.
  • The Hood is even more of this to the Undertaking than he was in canon. Malcolm becomes more unhinged and desperate to kill him since the Hood has ties to the League of Assassins, which are the absolute last people Malcolm wants to know about his plans. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't learn about the Hood's ties to the Streak and the Girl in Blue until the plan is already foiled.
  • In the end, Malcolm ends up being this to himself when he performs a magic trick for Ruby Arias at her birthday party. Oliver witnesses this and thanks to Ra's al Ghul's warning about "The Magician" manages to piece together that Malcolm is the Dark Archer.
  • Black Canary and Nyssa al Ghul are this to Brick's plan to take Balliol Prep hostage. He and his benefactor Tobias Church managed to lure Green Arrow and Supergirl out and neutralize the rest of the Justice League by launching multiple riots/attacks in different cities, but their failure to take Black Canary in account ultimately proves to be their undoing.
  • Talia's attack on Nanda Parbat manages to have three that very quick add up:
    • The Justice League would've had no idea what was happening had Helena Bertenelli not managed to get away from the temple before Talia's forces attacked.
    • Barry and Kara's powers would've been kept under control had she planned for the presence of J'onn, who manages to bypass the temple and turn off the meta dampeners, restoring Barry's speed.
    • Finally, her hopes of a comeback are dashed when she is stabbed by the absolute last person she expected, Tommy Merlyn.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Robert Queen, who never gets on the Queen's Gambit. Sara Lance technically counts as well, for the same reason.
  • Akio Yamashiro, who survives the the Alpha-Omega Virus outbreak after Slade injects him with the Mirakuru serum.
  • Bette Sans Souci, aka Plastique, who joins Task Force X as one of the few willing members after General Eiling's arrest.
  • The Justice League manages to completely prevent the Undertaking, meaning Tommy didn't die in CNRI. He instead gets shot in the abdomen by a Merlyn Global security guard, but survives when Malcolm injects him with either Lazarus Water. Either way, Tommy survives Oliver's first year back.
  • Zigzagged with Ralph: Ralph is alive in canon, but he originally died in the Particle Accelerator explosion before Flashpoint reversed it. He survives the explosion here.
  • Since Eddie Thawne isn't a part of Team Flash, he never kills himself to stop his descendant Eobard Thawne, which never creates the Singularity that killed Ronnie Raymond. Technically, Eobard counts for this as well since this means that he was never erased from existence and stuck as a time remnant.
  • Tony Woodward, because Barry managed to defeat Blackout entirely on his own.
  • Astra survives her final duel with Kara since Alex isn't around to kill her and Kara can't bring herself to kill her aunt.
  • Despite all of the buildup implying that Henry would meet his canonical death, Barry manages to switch him with Christopher Chance before Zoom can notice.
• Spiteful Suicide: Hunter Zolomon kills himself when confronted by the Flash to frame him for his own murder.
• Stalker without a Crush: Eddie Thawne monitor's the Streak/Flash's movements closely, commandeers an entire room solely dedicated to the Flash, and has large piles of notes completely filled with conjectures and theories about him. At one point, Iris compares Eddie to Captain Ahab.
• Stations of the Canon: Subverted. The original For Want Of A Nail and other changes to the timeline eventually pile up to the point that there is no longer any attempt to keep to canon after Arc II.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Barry, Oliver, and Kara, having been trained by the League of Assassins, often pull these on people — either for tactical advantages, or else just because Barry (and, to a lesser extent, Kara) is The Gadfly.
• The Stoic: As always, Ra’s al Ghul. At one point, J’onn communicates with him via telepathy and he doesn’t even blink.
• Story Arc: The story is primarily arc-driven. Thus far, there are four major arcs, and those arcs in turn are split into mini-arcs that tend to focus on one or two characters.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Oliver and Barry.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land:
  • Oliver. While he manages to adapt to daily life relatively easily and finds ways to fit in with his family and friends' lives, there is an underlying sense of bitterness over how much he missed out on, not just from him but from the people who care about him as well. Kara even points it out early on in the story during a meeting with Moira.
    Kara: Oliver lost ten years of his life. When he came back home, he saw that his seven-year old baby sister was almost an adult, that his irresponsible best friend was now an executive at his father’s company, and that his other closest friend had already moved on with her adult life, with a job and everything.
  • Downplayed with Barry. Unlike Oliver, Barry didn't have a lot to go back to — the only ties he had left to Central City were his father and the Wests. If he hadn't sworn to somehow free his father from his wrongful imprisonment, he could've easily started over elsewhere while keeping in touch with Iris and Joe. This is particularly prevalent when Barry moves back into his old room at the West home. He calls it a "child's room", and, for better or for worse, Barry hadn't been a child in a long time.
• Succession Crisis: Discussed in Arc IV. The recent emergence of superheroes and supervillains and other extraordinary threats has made Ra's al Ghul more conscious of his mortality, leading him to declare a line of succession: in the event that he dies and Nyssa can't succeed him, the Demon Ring will go to Oliver. If he is also indisposed, it will go to Barry and then to Kara. In doing this Ra's hopes that, no matter what happens, the League of Assassins will still be intact for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, this also causes Talia to move up her plans for the trio since they're now rivals for leadership of the League.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Played with. While Kara resides in the same city as Oliver and makes occasional visits to Central City, she pointedly stays away from Oliver and Barry's respective "prey" and sticks to major disasters (such as crashing airplanes) and extra-terrestrial threats — mainly because her intervention would be complete overkill, especially in the case of the former. However, she will intervene if they are unable to (including China White attacking Laurel in her apartment during one of Oliver's frequent visits) or the threat is too big for them to handle without serious injury (such as Barry's fight with Grodd).
• Super Serum: The Mirakuru, like in canon, is a Psycho Serum. However, A.R.G.U.S. managed to derive a secondary serum from it that would suppress the insanity-inducing side effects. It was because of this serum that Slade Wilson has all of the Mirakuru's benefits with none of its downsides. It's also because of this serum that the Yamashiros are permanently under A.R.G.U.S.'s employ.
• Super-Strength: Kara learns about her superhuman strength when she shoves a thug away... and into a tree.
  Kara struggled in her captor’s hold, writhing as his arms tightened, until she screamed and, completely on instinct, hitched up her back, lifting the man up and throwing him over her body to one of the trees. His body had been thrown with such force that it broke through the tree trunk, ripping it in half. He continued to skid across the ground before his back hit another tree, and remained there motionless, either unconscious or dead.
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: Eddie Thawne to the Streak/Flash. While the latter genuinely has his heart in the right place, and has saved the lives of several innocent civilians, that doesn't change the fact that he's a vigilante who has committed several petty crimes and even committed murder (albeit, even that was largely justified). However, Eddie gradually loses his more sympathetic traits as his obsession with the Flash grows, turning into an Inspector Javert.
• Sympathetic Murderer: If Tommy Merlyn's first kill had been anyone other than Talia al Ghul, it would likely be considered a morally reprehensible act. As it is, the only negative emotion anyone will feel over that particular situation is that Tommy had to be the one to do it.
• Sympathy for the Devil: "Devil" is a strong word, but despite his fervent dislike of the other man Barry can't help but feel pity for Eddie when he sees the way his parents demean him at every possible opportunity. He even notes that Malcolm Merlyn managed to love his child more than they did.
• Take That!:
  • To The Twilight Saga in Chapter 13. Cisco only read the book to stay "culturally relevant", Caitlin only read it for a bet and found it to be "the most pathetic excuse of literature [she] had ever read in [her] life", and Eobard reveals that, in the future, the movies will be banned in France and the books burned en masse in the States. Ironically, the author admits that they don't really have anything against Twilight, only mocking it because it was "low-hanging fruit". They even tried to read it at one point in high school, but lost interest thanks to its Beige Prose.
  • PART IV of the prologue, where Oliver, Barry, and Kara systematically destroy H.I.V.E., killing both Damien Darhk and his wife, Ruve, can be taken as one to Arrow Season Four.
• Thanatos Gambit: When confronted by A.R.G.U.S and The Flash, Zoom (or rather, one of his time duplicates) kills himself and frames Barry for his murder in the process.
• Thanksgiving Episode: Chapter 14, titled "Turkey Day".
• Tears of Joy: Many, many people when Oliver and Barry are rescued from Lian Yu after ten years of being presumed dead.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: It is made clear that the Earth-2 Cisco, Caitlin and Ronnie are only working together because Zoom has ordered them to, with Caitlin and Ronnie finding Cisco annoying at best and only tolerating him on Zoom's orders.
• Terrible Interviewees Montage: A variant when Kara goes flat-hunting; she rejected three options on-screen for proximity to a meth kitchen, racoons and the mentally unbalanced neighbor.
• Time Title: Chapter 16, the Christmas Episode, is titled "Beebo Day", a.k.a alternate Christmas.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: When Barry finally meets a younger version of Eobard for the first time, some confusion is caused because Barry already knows who he is while Eobard is only just starting out. This ends up being crucial when Eddie attacks Eobard, as Eobard hasn't killed Nora yet and killing him before he can do so would cause a time paradox.
• Took a Level in Badass: During the Battle for Earth-1, Laurel, Caitlin and Dante each manifest powers.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Aside from some Green-Eyed Monster moments, Tommy is still the same Nice Guy he is in canon for the duration of the first two arcs. Over the course of Arc III, though, he becomes more belligerent, isolating himself from his friends and family. Eventually, he completely breaks away from Oliver and Laurel and cuts himself off from the Queens and the Lances, to the point of even disparaging Thea. It's implied that whatever Malcolm used to save his life at the end of Arc II is responsible for the change.
• Tragic Villain: Eddie largely ends up becoming a villain because of things that aren't his fault. He loses his girlfriend, is knocked into a coma, unlocks his powers when he accidentally kills his parents, accidentally kills a friend who discovers this, and then discovers that all of this was because of his psychopathic descendant's obsession with the Flash, the man he hates more than anything in the world. By the end, Eobard has ruined his life so thoroughly that he's willing to cause a time paradox (and thus risk destroying the entire universe) if it means killing Eobard because he just has nothing to lose at this point.
• Training from Hell: According to Amanda Waller, Ra's al Ghul poured countless amounts of resources into training Oliver, Barry, and Kara into the perfect killing machines. By the start of the main storyline, they are unquestionably the three most dangerous assassins in the world. But from what is implied by the narrative, the training itself was not a cakewalk at all, and left them both mental and physical scars that they've trained themselves to hide from the rest of the world.
• Trapped in Villainy: A downplayed example given that the two are still willingly criminals, but Atom Smasher and Sand Demon both think that taking over an entire planet is way too far even for them. Unfortunately, their leader is Zoom, who they know will kill them the second they don't serve his plans.
• Trauma Conga Line: His level in jerkass aside, Tommy gets put through the wringer in Arc II and beyond. He witnesses the same assassination attempt on his father's life and gets shot trying to protect him, his two best friends accidentally flaunt their new relationship in his face, he finds out about his father's madness and genocidal plans, gets shot again (and it's implied that the serum used to save him that time is causing Sanity Slippage), and then he has to run his father's company after he tried to kill thousands of people. And when he finally manages to find some happiness with Isabel (who's only dating him as part of a larger plan), she gets murdered in the same place as his mother after he was going to propose to her, leaving him with nothing left but to leave Starling City entirely and train with Talia al Ghul. Thanks to his father managing to convince him of the truth about Talia, he then gets his first kill when he stabs his newfound teacher after her failed mission, scarring him.
• Troll: Barry, to both friends and enemies. Though his comments tend to be more mean-spirited with the latter.
• Two-Person Love Triangle: An interesting variation with Oliver and Laurel. Laurel has had feelings for Oliver stemming from prior his disappearance, and the more time they spend with each other, the more Oliver starts feeling the same way. At the same time, Green Arrow finds himself constantly drawn to Black Canary, the Glades' newest vigilante, while Black Canary professes to deeply admire Green Arrow and cites him as her main inspiration.
• Uncertain Doom: During the prologue chapters, Kara hurls one thug into a tree hard enough to break the trunk in half. It's never revealed that happens to him and the narration states he might or might not be dead.
  Kara struggled in her captor’s hold, writhing as his arms tightened, until she screamed and, completely on instinct, hitched up her back, lifting the man up and throwing him over her body to one of the trees. His body had been thrown with such force that it broke through the tree trunk, ripping it in half. He continued to skid across the ground before his back hit another tree, and remained there motionless, either unconscious or dead.
• Underestimating Badassery: After Kara returns to Argo City, she and Kal are attacked by a group of cultists worshipping Reign, but the cultists are swiftly defeated as they are obviously unprepared for Kara's skill at hand-to-hand combat.
• Unholy Matrimony: Just like in canon, Earth-2 Caitlin and Ronnie are Happily Married like their Earth-1 counterparts are.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: Simultaneously inverted and played straight. Thea Queen is not Malcolm Merlyn's biological child with Moira — Oliver, however, is.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension:
  • Oliver has some with both Laurel and Nyssa. He's only recently starting to become aware of it though.
  • Barry and Iris, bordering on Everyone Can See It territory. Barry refuses to resolve it for his own reasons.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • Due to a Freudian Slip in an argument, Robert and Malcolm are forced to admit that Isabel was only using Tommy to get revenge on the Queens and never actually loved him. The knowledge that the woman he loved more than anything was just using him like everyone else has is the last straw on Tommy's fragile sanity, and it causes him to strike out on his own; by the end of his first steps, Amanda Waller and Ra's al Ghul are dead while Thea, Sara, and Nyssa are his hostages.
  • Eddie's therapist assures him that disagreeing with a friend who was trying to force their viewpoint on him is completely okay and that it makes the other person a bad friend. What he doesn't realize is that Eddie murdered said friend because he wanted Eddie to turn himself in for a double homicide, and Eddie takes his therapist's words as validation that he didn't do anything wrong. However, it's later revealed that the therapist was a younger version of Eobard Thawne manipulating Eddie for his own ends.
• Unwitting Muggle Friend: Unlike in canon, Oliver, Barry, and Kara deliberately try to keep their vigilante personas separated from their civilian personas as much as possible. That means absolutely none of their loved ones know about their secret identities. As of this writing, only Iris, Laurel, and Tommy know, and for different reasons. Iris managed to connect the dots after Barry slipped too many times around her, Laurel ended up becoming a vigilante herself, and learned their identities as part of her initiation into the Justice League, while Tommy was present when they fought off a group of assassins and was let in on the secret.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Just like in canon, Malcolm Merlyn. Interestingly, this becomes evident in the story's equivalent to Arrow Season One; according to the author, this is a logical deduction of Malcolm's current level. As he only had spent two years with the League of Assassins and had no sparring partners on the same general level as him to push him to be stronger, he is no match for Oliver, who, despite being younger than him, has seven years of training and Barry and Kara as frequent sparring partners (not to mention that Merlyn underestimated his foe). Thus, when he and Oliver first clash, it's a Curb-Stomp Battle in favor of the latter.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Hunter Zolomon is believed to be a beloved college professor by the majority of the community, with only the Justice League aware of his true identity as the mass murdering speedster Zoom.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Oliver and Barry. They bicker Like an Old Married Couple, but there's no doubt in anyone's mind how absolutely devoted they are to each other.
• We All Die Someday: This is the explicit reason Barry gives to Eobard when refusing his offer to go back in time and save his mother. Having lost other loved ones in the forms of Shado and, at one point, Slade, and then forced to join the League of Assassins alongside Oliver and Kara, Barry is far more familiar with death than he is in canon, having long since accepted it as another facet of life. As Barry explicitly points out, preventing Nora's murder would change nothing in the long run; she would still die, just later than she originally did, either by old age or disease or even an accident. All he would be getting by stopping past!Eobard is more time with her — and as much as he would like that, he won't have it at the risk of everything he still has and has gained since then.
• "Well Done, Dad!" Guy: Malcolm Merlyn, of all people, becomes this to his illegitimate son Oliver. This is justified by the fact that he basically ruined Oliver's life, something he already felt plenty guilty of; learning of their true relation just makes it worse, and it becomes clear that Malcolm is willing to do anything to make up for it short of giving up the Undertaking itself. What further complicates matters is that Oliver is completely unaware of the situation — he just sees Malcolm as his distant but loving godfather, and then as his worst enemy after learning that he sabotaged the Gambit. What's more, Malcolm can't tell him the truth due to the Queens forbidding it, making Malcolm's chances of reconciling with Oliver nonexistent.
• Wham Episode:
  • Arc II, Chapter 14: Vartox attacks Kara, alerting the trio to the presence of aliens on Earth.
  • Arc II, Chapter 16: Slade finally reunites with the leads after escaping A.R.G.U.S..
  • Arc II, Chapter 21: Amanda Waller sends Kara to collect Mari McCabe, and proposes the formation of the Justice League.
  • Arc II, Chapter 25: Tommy gets shot, and thanks to a blood transfusion to save him, Oliver is revealed to be the biological son of Malcolm Merlyn, instead of Robert Queen.
  • Arc II, Chapter 27: Oliver realizes that Malcolm is the rogue Al Sa-Her, the same time Barry discovers the Time Vault and learns that Dr. Wells is the Man in the Yellow Suit. Kara learns that it is her Aunt Astra who is leading the Fort Rozz forces after meeting her Uncle and Astra's husband Non again, and promptly kills Non as a warning to Astra.
  • Arc II, Chapters 34-35: The leads finally capture Dr. Wells, who reveals his true identity as Eobard Thawne. Thawne then reveals that there have been changes to the timeline that he was not responsible for, among which include Kara and Kal-El landing together on Earth instead of just the latter at first. He also reveals their superhero names from the alternate timeline, and that Barry will one day marry Iris. S.T.A.R. Labs is then attacked by the remaining Fort Rozz escapees and the metahuman criminals that Barry captured and were imprisoned by A.R.G.U.S. Cisco awakens his powers. Thawne is then sucked into a random portal that inexplicably appears in the Pipeline during his final battle with Barry.
  • Arc II, Chapters 39-40: Frank Chen reveals the Undertaking on live TV. Tommy gets shot again, and Malcolm saves his life using a vial of what is implied to be Lazarus Pit water. Afterwards, Oliver defeats him and captures him, and they use the failure of the Undertaking as the debut of the Justice League.
  • Arc III, Chapter 42: The trio rescue an alien from one of Eiling's old bases. Said alien turns out to be J'onn J'onzz, the last son of Mars, who reveals to them that those who wiped out his people were not the White Martians like in canon, but the Dominators.
  • Arc III, Chapter 43: A breach opens up in the basement in S.T.A.R. Labs, and spits out Zoom's helmet, much to the confusion of Cisco, Caitlin, and Ronnie, and the apprehension of Barry.
  • Arc IV, Chapter 77: Zoom makes his first appearance and outright thrashes Barry.
  • Arc IV, Chapter 89: Tommy gets his first kill when he assassinates his teacher Talia, allowing Malcolm to take her place leading the Shadows.
  • Arc IV, Chapter 107: The Justice League briefly manages to capture Zoom, but the Dark Matter Collector goes off, Zoom's forces are broken out of prison, and Barry is disintegrated into the Speed Force.
  • Arc V, Chapter 141: Sam learns of her alien heritage and Tommy learns that Laurel and Oliver are Black Canary and Green Arrow respectively.
  • Arc V, Chapter 143: While Tommy decides to strike out on his own against both his father and Oliver, Eddie kills Ralph on accident.
  • Arc V, Chapter 160: Tommy's first moves come to an end with Amanda and Ra's dead, Oliver learning that Malcolm is his biological father, Thea and Sara in Tommy's custody, and Joe attacking Nanda Parbat to find Nyssa and finding something about her appearance surprising; meanwhile, Eddie attacks the CCPD directly and mortally wounds Joe before fleeing.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Downplayed with Oliver Queen. He understands the concept on an intellectual level, and is by no means aromantic or even asexual, but differentiating between familial/platonic love and romantic love is where he struggles. For example, he didn't realize he might have feelings for Laurel until Tommy accused him of "putting the moves" on her, and it was only by comparing how he felt around to Laurel to how he felt around Nyssa that he realized he might have feelings for the latter as well.
• What the Hell, Hero?: After the failure of the tradeoff with Reverb, Iris calls Eddie out for rushing into the situation without thinking because he was so desperate to get the Flash, specifically saying that if he had paid more attention he would've noticed that it was a hostage situation and the Flash was inches away from getting everyone out of there alive.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: The three main leads are familiar with using several different weapons, though they still have their preferences.
  • Oliver's is, of course, a bow and arrows.
  • Barry is a knife expert, thanks to their versatility and how easy they are to draw on quick notice. He's particularly fond of throwing them, with contributed to his alias of 'the Lightning' even before he gained his powers.
  • Kara is a swordswoman, and Barry handcrafted a straight sword with a Kryptonite blade for her to use after they learned there might be other Kryptonians on-planet.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Tommy, and his repaired relationship with his father has only made this problem worse.
• When She Smiles: According to Henry, Iris' smiles were rare after Barry's presumed death. During the visit where he learned of Barry's survival, the first sign that something major has happened is how she's positively beaming at him.
• Wild Card: After being the victim of one too many lies, Tommy decides to start striking on his own against both Oliver and his father, beginning by freeing Joe Wilson to kill Amanda Waller and steal the Alpha-Omega virus for himself. His ultimate goal is to take control of both the League of Assassins and the League of Shadows.
• The Worf Effect: Even with being a much more skilled and smarter fighter than his canon self, Barry hardly does any better against Zoom than he does on the show.
• Workaholic: Eddie Thawne becomes one as his obsession with the Flash grows. It becomes so bad that he and Iris even briefly break up over it.
• World's Best Warrior: After his training, Oliver is on par with Ra's al Ghul when it comes to non-powered fighting, and they make up the top two Warriors in the World. When confronting them Amanda states that Oliver is the best Warrior the League has ever had that never was a Demon's Head, making him one of the best Warriors ever. Barry (pre-Empowered Badass Normal), Kara (Power Loss Makes You Strong) and Nyssa round out the top 5.
  • Kara, however, is unambiguously this trope—her hand-to-hand combat skills and Combo Platter Powers are dangerous enough by themselves, but combined, it takes a mutated gorilla and a top-class Kryptonian to even give her serious trouble (and in the latter, Kara was Willfully Weak in order to give her Worthy Opponent an honourable fight).
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Malcolm is in fine form here, always managing to turn the bad situations he gets himself in to his own advantage. When he goes from government prisoner to Talia's prisoner, he still manages to manipulate the situation (more specifically, his son Tommy) to ensure that he comes out on top once the dust settles.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: After Zoom tortures Jay Garrick for weeks, Zoom actually stops the torture, nurses him back to health, and feeds and hydrates him. Then, out of nowhere, he runs a vibrating hand through his chest and steals his speed.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Oliver, with Barry's help, gives a speech to Kara along these lines after she gets a Heroic BSoD over killing her uncle.