Film / Wonder Woman (2017)

"If no one else will defend the world, then I must!"

"I used to want to save the world. This beautiful place. But I knew so little then. It is a land of beauty and wonder, worth cherishing in every way. But the closer you get, the more you see the great darkness simmering within. And mankind? Mankind is another story altogether."

— Diana of Themyscira

Wonder Woman is a 2017 film starring the world's first popularized superheroine, DC Comics' Wonder Woman. The movie is directed by Patty Jenkins and is the fourth film in the DC Extended Universe.

The film revolves around the first venture of Diana of Themyscira / Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) into the human world, as she recalls her memories in modern day following the events of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. In 1918, after the mythical Amazons have refused to take action in the affairs of mankind for thousands of years, Diana resolves to leave her island home of Themyscira in order to help bring an end to one of the most destructive wars in humanity's history, and follows Captain Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) in Europe.

The Comic-Con Teaser can be viewed here, which was cut down to become the first official trailer. The second trailer can be viewed here.

A sequel, Wonder Woman 1984, was released in December 2020. A third film has also been confirmed.

Not to be confused with the 2009 Wonder Woman animated film.

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Wonder Woman provides examples of:

Tropes A to F

• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: Lots of examples, and unusually for an action movie, they not only establish the characters but are the most important parts of Diana's Coming of Age Story.
  • Hippolyta telling Diana the origin of the Amazons as a goodnight story.
  • Diana and Steve talking about sleep customs and sex.
  • The chat by the fire after they meet Chief.
  • Diana asking Sameer about Charlie in the village square.
  • Steve and Isabel in the formal ball.
  • Diana and Ludendorff, at the same ball.
  • The conversation between Diana and Sir Patrick right before the end.
  • Steve saying goodbye to Diana.
• Action Girl:
  • Wonder Woman was trained as a warrior from the time she was young and is a very good fighter.
  • Etta, of all people, smashes a guy over the head with a bottle and then a chair during an epilogue, which can be accessed from the disk's menu.

• Adaptation Inspiration: Many previous incarnations of Wonder Woman were rooted in a Mars and Venus Gender Contrast perspective, where the Amazons believed that Women Are Wiser and men are responsible for all the war and pain and suffering in the world. They treated Steve Trevor and any other men stumbling on Themyscira with open hostility just for being men. In the film, they don't differentiate between men and women of the outside world both contributing to the beauty and ugliness of humanity. Diana herself is more curious than anything when she encounters Steve and goes to London for the first time. Even when Ares tries to break her faith in humanity, he uses the woman who developed the toxic gas weapon as an example of why Humans Are Bastards.
• Adaptational Modesty: Downplayed example. In broad appearance, her costume is faithful to the comics, but flayed strips of fabric gives her a micro-skirt, the bustier doesn't give her an Impossibly-Low Neckline, and her footwear extends to her knees. The overall look is a much more armored one, rather than just a Form-Fitting Wardrobe.
• Adaptational Ugliness:
  • Ares is oftentimes depicted as rather handsome. In the movie, he looks like an average middle-aged man.
  • Zig-zagged with Dr. Poison. In the comics, she wore a disguise that made her look rather Gonkish, whereas her actual appearance was that of a pretty Dragon Lady. The film version has a facial disfigurement, that involves a melted nose and skin, a half of a Glasgow Grin, covered over by an elegant facial disfigurement mask.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • In the comic books, the Amazons were superpowered to a similar degree as Diana. Diana actually had to fight for her right to represent the Amazons to Man's World, a number of them became rivals or enemies fighting her on equal footing. The Amazons in the movie are still superhumanly strong and fast (the beach battle sees them killing men in single punches, jumping thirty feet vertically, launching arrows that then embed themselves a foot into solid rock, loosing three arrows at the same time while back-flipping with perfect accuracy, etc.) but much less so than Wonder Woman, who is indisputably their strongest by a large margin.
  • Fausta Grables, a German Olympic athlete was given the Red Baron title "The Nazi Wonder Woman" as a Badass Normal who could temporarily grapple with Wonder Woman. Here Fausta makes The Cameo as a screeching German socialite that approaches Diana in the woods before the gala by accident. Diana succeeds in stealing her dress without breaking a sweat.
• Adaptation Distillation:
  • The film is heavily inspired by George Pérez's 1980s reboot of Wonder Woman and her mythos — most notably the history of the Amazons, Ares being the Big Bad of her first adventure in Man's World, and her misconception that the ongoing wars are the direct result of Ares's intervention, when it turns out that Ares simply gets benefited by wars that the humans start all by themselves, and that Diana was sculpted from clay and animated by the gods, not a natural-born Amazon child such as before.
  • It also borrows elements from the New 52 version of the character — specifically the idea that she's the daughter of Zeus, and thus a demigod, as well as Ares taking the appearance of an older man.
  • As in Justice League, the Amazon that leaves the island is not decided in a tournament, as in the original canon. Instead, Hippolyta prefers to dismiss the war as someone else's problem, so Diana steals some weapons and escapes from the island to help in the conflict.
  • Last but not the least, the idea of Diana first coming to Man's World during a world war harks back to the original story by William Marston; albeit it's World War I here rather than World War II as it was in the earliest comics.
• Adaptation Name Change: As part of her Race Lift, Dr. Poison's name is changed from Princess Maru in the comics to Isabel Maru.
• Adapted Out:
  • The contest to send an ambassador to Man's World is written out, with Diana doing what she did in Justice League instead, going "Screw my mother's edict, people need my help," taking up the armor and weapons, and going off into Man's World's on her own.
  • Wonder Woman's friend Mala, who discovered Steve Trevor washed ashore together with her in the comics, is not in the film.
• Advertised Extra: Robin Wright is present in many of the promotional materials and is billed third in the CBB only behind Gal Gadot and Chris Pine. Her character, Antiope, gets killed a quarter of the way into the movie.
• Aerith and Bob: The names of the Amazons are: Hippolyta, Antiope, Melanippe, Artemis, Euboea, Venelia, Acantha... and Diana. Of note, most of these names, including Diana, are from Classical Mythology, but Diana is the only one still commonly used today, and of a Latin root instead of a Greek root.^note In the mythology, Diana was the Roman goddess of the hunt, analogous to the Greek Artemis. Granted, this is inherited from the comics.
• An Aesop:
  • One person, no matter how badass they are, can't save the world. It takes the help of many.
  • Evil has complex roots. Killing one bad person will not, on its own, fix an evil situation.
  • Also, Humans Are Flawed. Wars and conflicts can bring out the worst and the best in people, and we should strive to achieve the latter and help others to do the same, not simply giving up on them.
• Affably Evil:
  • While he still considers himself to be superior, Ludendorff makes no effort to hide how impressed he is with Diana, taking time out of their battle to call her "magnificent".
  • Ares also is Brutally Honest with Diana and tells her the truth about the world while beating her to a pulp. He actually doesn't want to fight her, not because he thinks she can beat him, but because he believes he is right. He even lets her get her sword back.
• All for Nothing: When Diana first arrives at the No Man's Land, she encounters a few villagers from the village of Veld telling about the cruelty they suffered. Diana then does her best to put an end to that. It's rendered pointless when Ludendorff fires the chemical weapon at the village later on, killing everyone that Diana had saved earlier.
• All of the Other Reindeer: While she isn't outright rejected by her fellow Amazons, being their princess, it's clear that Diana has been held at bay by many of them. Part of it is due to her relatively young age, having been the only Amazon to be born and raised on Themyscira, and thus the only one to have never really experienced the evils of the outside world. The other reasons are because of her divine heritage, which makes her above all of them, even her own mother, and the purpose of her conception: to kill Ares, another god. It's greatly implied that the Amazons had a hard time reconciling the idea of her being both their princess and a Living Weapon — especially after she accidentally injured Antiope during training. Ironically, it's also implied that the reason why Diana wanted to train to be a warrior so badly when she was younger was so she could fit in better.
• Alliterative Title: Wonder Woman. For Added Alliterative Appeal, she's played by Gal Gadot.
• Alone in a Crowd: During Ludendorff's gala, Steve sees Dr. Poison is alone by the fireplace.
• Alternate History:
  • The movie takes elements of this toward the end, when Wonder Woman kills Ludendorff in battle. The real Erich Ludendorff lived until 1937, almost twenty years after the events of the film. The German high command also survived the war, but they are gassed by Ludendorff and Dr. Poison in the film.
  • There's an even bigger one that's not as obvious. It's mentioned in the novel and confirmed by the credits that the German Commander that Ludendorff argues with at the High Command meeting and who he gasses to death is none other than Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg himself, who became President of Germany after the War and had a pretty big role in the events between the World Wars, namely appointing Adolf Hitler chancellor. However, several clues suggest World War II happened anyway, since Lex Luthor's father came from East Germany, which existed as a direct result of World War II. In a deleted scene of Justice League, Cyborg explores a virtual reality setting featuring soldiers from Nazi Germany.
• Amazon Brigade: The Amazons. The very same from Greek myth, so obviously they don't have any men in their ranks.
• Amazon Chaser: Sameer is "both frightened... and aroused" upon seeing Diana take down the goon that nearly shoots Charlie at the bar. Judging from the face Steve makes at a couple of points, he's not the only one.
• Ambiguously Bi: In a conversation about relationships and sexuality, Diana tells Steve that the Amazons concluded a long time ago that men are needed for procreation but are not necessary for pleasure. Being from the early 20th century, Steven decides to Change the Uncomfortable Subject.
• Ambiguously Human: The Amazons have superhuman abilities. At the very least, they seem to be ageless.
• Ambiguous Time Period: It's unclear how old Diana was when Steve crashed on the island. The involvement of Zeus in her creation implies that she's been on Themiscyra since it was cloaked (since Zeus cloaked the island "with his dying breath"), which would put her age at somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half thousand years. However, she acts far closer to her physical age. An old bit of comic book canon stated that Themiscyra drifted in and out of time at random intervals, which further clouds the issue.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: Overlapping with Values Dissonance, the marketing for the Japanese release of the movie focuses on Wonder Woman's lack of experience in love as one of the biggest parts of her character. The Japanese theme song is also titled "A Woman Can't Sleep Alone" by Nogizaka46, with lyrics that discuss that no matter how strong a woman is, she has a vulnerable, lonely side and secretly yearns for love. This has caused some ire among fans of the franchise.invoked
• Ancestral Weapon: The God-Killer sword, treated as sacred by the Amazons and powerful enough to kill a god. Zeus forged the sword and gave it to the Amazons in the event that Ares returns. Diana steals it with the intent of killing Ares. However, when Diana confronts the God of War, he vaporizes the blade and reveals that she herself is the God-Killer. Zeus conceived her through Hippolyta, so that when the time comes, she will confront Ares and slay him once and for all, explaining that only a god can kill another god.
• And the Adventure Continues: The film ends with Wonder Woman getting ready to continue her mission. Fittingly, Wonder Woman herself named the trope in Justice League Unlimited.
• Anti-Smother Love Talk: When Hippolyta chastises her sister for training Diana, her sister retorts that they both know it's only a matter of time before Ares returns and Diana has to be ready. Hippolyta then relents (in fact telling her that she can train her ten times as hard as any other Amazon), but tells her that Diana must not know the truth about herself.
• Anti-Villain: Ares. As he tells Diana, he really didn't have to corrupt men; humans did that on their own. He wants to help wipe them out so that the world won't be destroyed, and its former glory can be restored. During their fight, he starts on the defensive while trying to talk Diana down.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: When Steve tells the others about Diana's belief that Ares is behind WWI, Charlie scoffs at the idea. Sameer points out how silly it is that Charlie finds it hard to believe when they had just witnessed Diana conquer No Man's Land, throw a tank into a building with her bare hands, and demolish the top of a church by just jumping into it.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Wonder Woman fights with a sword, shield, and lasso against WWI Germans using contemporary weapons and tanks. She's shown using her shield to protect herself from machine gun fire and even deflect mortar shells.
• Arc Words:
  • "I used to want to save the world" used as Book Ends.
  • "They do not deserve you", in various variations, concluding in the next:
  • "It's not about what they deserve, it's what you believe."
• Arrows on Fire: Somewhat justified. The Amazons' initial volley of fire arrows could have been their attempt to set the German boats on fire, panicking the Germans as well as preventing any of them from escaping and revealing Themyscira to the rest of the world.
• Art Evolution: Prior movies in the DCEU had a much darker and more muted color scheme. Diana's Wonder Woman outfit in this film has almost supernaturally vibrant blues and reds, which was a deliberate contrast to the outfit in the movie Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (it appeared to had been scuffed up over a long period of time whereas in this movie it has never been used before).
• Artistic License – Chemistry: Dr. Poison's new hydrogen-based mustard gas makes no scientific sense, but that's probably for And Some Other Stuff purposes. Also, it has a god behind it, so he may be working his magic.
• Artistic License – History: Has its own page.
• Artistic License – Linguistics: At one point, a group of scientists is utterly confused about the nature of a script, and Diana immediately points out it's written in Sumerian and Ottoman. They can't have been experts on the topic, as the Sumerian Cuneiform script (which is clearly visible in the movie) had already been deciphered in the 1850s, partly by German scientists. And the Ottoman language and script (the predecessor of the Turkish language) were still in use at the time, making it even more implausible.
• Artistic License – Ships: As pointed out in an article on Cracked.com, there is no wind blowing on the sails when Steve and Diana leave Themyscira for London. Also, both characters then proceed to go to sleep overnight on the boat, despite at least one of them needing to stay up and keep the boat on course. (Unless, of course, it's a magic boat, which isn't improbable).
• Audible Sharpness: Both straight and played with.
  • The knives, swords, and arrows of the Amazons during the battle on the beach.
  • The Godkiller makes this sound whenever it's drawn.
  • Also a very faint and high-pitched one when Diana pulls out the pin from her hair right before walking into No Man's Land.
• Ax-Crazy: Ludendorff shoots people for complaining about fatigue or hunger and thinks that it is hilarious to throw a useless gas mask into a room full of people that he just gassed.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Diana is the youngest Amazon and the only one born on Themiscrya, so she is largely treated as a child by the other Amazons even after she becomes an adult. Since she is the only Amazon who never saw the world outside the island, she has a naïveté that they do not share.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Diana and Steve against some enemy soldiers after crossing no man's land.
• Badass Adorable: There is just something endearing about how sweet, loving, kind and compassionate a mighty-warrior like Diana is towards everyone, and how sincere she is about fighting tyranny and cruelty to make the world a better place, by herself if she has to.
• Badass Boast: Diana delivers an archetypal one near the end of the movie, but to the wrong person.
  Diana: I am Diana of Themyscira, daughter of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, and your wrath upon this world is over.
• Badass Bystander: One of the completely random German soldier Mooks during the village fight manages to dodge the bullet Diana deflects at him, runs in and tries to shoot her at point blank range, and even manages to duck one swing from her before hitting her with his knife. Diana picks him up and chucks him out a window for his trouble, but hey, points for effort.
• Bad Boss: Ludendorff murders a subordinate simply for complaining about his men being tired and hungry. Not that he's more merciful to higher-ranking officers, killing the negotiators with his gas and, For the Evulz, throwing one gas mask into the room before locking it, simply to see them fight over it. (The mask won't protect whoever gets it, but they don't know that.)
• Bait-and-Switch: While Steve is standing naked talking to Diana after bathing, she lowers her eyes and asks, "What's that?" He hems and haws for a few seconds before realizing that she's asking about his watch.
• Barehanded Blade Block: In spirit if not technically. Diana does manage to catch a sword this way, but her forearms and part of her palms are wrapped in leather, with her bracelets layered on top.
• Bathtub Scene: Steve has one of the Greek variant for all the ladies and gay men in the audience to enjoy.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: After Diana takes down a sniper by jumping into the tower the sniper was in, destroying it, she walks out of the rubble all clean and her hair still fresh.
• Big Bad: Ares is the God of War responsible for the Death of the Old Gods, and the one Diana believes is responsible for the war under the guise of Erich Ludendorff. However, Sir Patrick turns out to actually be Ares, and simply gave Ludendorff and Dr. Poison the idea for their gas superweapon. While he's responsible for providing them with their resources, they decided to use the gas of their own accord, with Ares only getting directly involved to become the Final Boss.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • The Amazon cavalry charge defending against the German invaders.
  • The No Man's Land scenes are two such scenes in succession.
    • Diana dramatically reveals herself in her full superhero outfit and proceeds to cross No Man's Land, but after parrying rifle and mortar fire, she gets pinned down by machine gun fire.
    • Steve, Charlie, Chief, and Sameer follows her once Steve realises she draws all the German fire, and manages to suppress the German fire enough that Diana can reach the German trenches.
• Big "OMG!": Charlie's reaction when they finally see Ares in the flesh is loud and incredulous, and also literal.
• Big "NO!":
  • Diana and other Amazons utter this when Antiope dies.
  • The team shouts this when Steve asks if the deadly gas is hydrogen-based, and runs to the plane after asking for cover.
  • Diana lets out a really epic one late in the movie when she sees Steve Trevor's plane explode.
• Bilingual Bonus: Diana and the Chief's greeting in Blackfoot. Many languages, indeed.
• Bittersweet Ending: Diana wastes Ares and brings an end to World War I, but Steve is forced to sacrifice himself to destroy the chemical weapon and Diana realizes that she will never be able to completely eradicate mankind's flaws. She also either can't or won't return home, and even if she did, she's not the same girl that left.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: During her confrontation with Ludendorff, Diana blasts his gun out of his hand with one of his own bullets deflected by her bracelet.
• Bloodless Carnage: Clever use of Gory Discretion Shot (see below) keeps the much of the blood off the camera, but there is some war-appropriate evidence of violence (a soldier's legs were blown off). However, when Steve sees Diana's sword sticking through the ceiling after plunging it through Ludendorff's heart, it's bizarrely spotless. Maybe the sword stays magically clean?
• Blown Across the Room: When Diana first (accidentally) fires off a Shockwave Clap from her bracers, all the Amazons are sent reeling. Antiope's proximity means she gets sent flying further away and lands on her back.
• Board to Death: Ludendorff barges in on a meeting of the German High Command, who are preparing to accept an armistice with the Allies, and exposes them all to the new toxic gas developed by Doctor Poison, wiping them out.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: Zigzagged. When confronted by would-be assassins in an alley, Steve's first instinct is to protect Diana. Once she proves fast enough to block bullets with her bracelets, she proceeds to protect him.
• Book Ends: Steve Trevor is first introduced flying a plane into Diana's line of sight before crash landing into the sea. His last action is flying a plane away while Diana looks on, before he blows the plane up to destroy the chemical weapons without harming anyone.
• Bullet Catch: Technically, Diana is just reacting fast enough to block them with her bracelets, and while the traditional "crossed wrists" and upturned fist poses show up, the manner in which she blocks the bullets almost looks like she is catching them. Humorously, she blocks one bullet from striking Steve and the ricochet landed in Steve's hand, but since it was recently fired, it is hot and he reacts accordingly.
• Bullet Time: When the Germans storm the beaches of Themiscyra, Diana notices she has a sharp enough reaction time that she can see the bullets as they travel. Later on, in the Veld onslaught, several instances of slow-mo bullet-time occur, with Diana casually swatting them away with her vambraces.
• But Not Too Bi: Diana, who has been confirmed as bisexual by Word of God, makes a passing reference to men "not being necessary for pleasure," but is otherwise only depicted as being interested in Steve.
• Cain and Abel: Ares, the film's Big Bad, is Diana's half-brother by way of their father Zeus. Her last words before killing him are "Goodbye, brother."
• Call-Forward:
  • In Batman v Superman, when fighting Doomsday, she mentioned killing other worlds' beings in the past. Here, we see that said otherworldly opponent was Ares.
  • In the same film, Superman's death parallels Steve's, with both of them going on deliberate flights to their deaths to defeat the enemy and save an untold number of people. They even have the same last words: "I love you."
  • Both General Zod and Ares showed that if humanity is wiped out, they can claim Earth as their own, where their kind can live in peace. Kal-El and Diana's response: "I can't be a part of this."
• The Cameo: Zack Snyder cameos as a British soldier in the town of Veld after its liberation when Diana, Steve, and the crew are posing for the photo.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: All the human invaders of the island were killed, except for Trevor. Diana's pleas that he saved her were ignored. Still, he was kept alive for a more pragmatic reason: he was the only one they could interrogate, and if they killed him, they would have no way to find out who were these people, and why did they invade the island.
• Casting Gag:
  • This isn't the first time Chris Pine has been the love interest to a princess.
  • Rebeca Patiño voices Wonder Woman's mother in the Mexican dub... after voicing Wonder Woman herself in the Injustice games.
• Celebrating the Heroes: The film shows celebrations at the end of World War I that has posters up to honor the heroes who died in the war.
• Cerebus Retcon: Steve was the one who gave Diana her mundane name "Diana Prince", giving it a much sadder light when she's still using it in the present day.
• Chainmail Bikini: While the Wonder Woman outfit costume utilizes Adaptational Modesty, it still leaves a lot of skin exposed. Building off her appearance in Batman v Superman, she at least is given a shield in most of her action sequences. In conjunction with the armored appearance, she looks more like a gladiator than a dancer in a leotard. This may be more a consequence of it being royal ceremonial armor instead of everyday armor.^note It does contain all the same items as standard Greek armor: breastplate, bracers, greaves, battle skirt, and shield. The only thing missing would be a helmet. Not that's any uncommon in film.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • During the beach battle between the Amazons and the Germans, an Amazon named Melanippe lifts up a shield for Antiope to use as a platform to leap behind some Germans covering behind a large rock before shooting them with her arrows. This is witnessed by Steve and he decides to have Diana do the same trick to eliminate a German sniper hiding in the church tower in Veld later in the movie, with Steve, Sameer, and Chief lifting a large metal panel for Diana to leap off it into the tower.
  • In the beach battle, Diana is shown to be easily following a bullet with her eyes, just before it hits and kills an Amazon. This shows that Diana can see incoming bullets and eventually she'll start blocking them.
  • Sameer says that he was an actor before the war, and he then uses his acting ability to get past a German guard.
  • Steve also mentions he's a spy that managed to infiltrate Dr. Poison's base. When going with Sameer, he puts on a convincing appearance of an arrogant German soldier.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Sir Patrick Morgan, who is actually Ares.
• The Chessmaster: Ares.
• Clark Kent Outfit: The suit that Diana eventually settles on in London. Etta Candy hangs a lampshade on the paper-thin disguise. "Really, specs, and suddenly she's not the most beautiful woman you've ever seen?" Also a bit of a Mythology Gag, as in her pre-crisis incarnation, Diana really did wear glasses as part of her civilian disguise.
• Close on Title: The title of the film only appears at the end of the main set of credits.
• Clothing Damage: Played for Laughs. Diana accidentally breaks some of the clothes she tries on in the London boutique.
• The Coats Are Off: Before heading into No Man's Land, Diana sheds the cloak she had been wearing for most of the film and climbs the ladder onto the battlefield. Within the movie, this is the first time her Wonder Woman costume is seen in full.
• Comic Book Movies Dont Use Code Names: Diana is never called Wonder Woman in the film, though Isabel Maru is called Doctor Poison (said to be a nickname the Allied troops gave her). The only allusion to Diana's codename is in the epilogue featured on the Blu-Ray, as Steve's friends consider calling their group "Wonder Men".
• Coming of Age Story: Given its genre, Wonder Woman has a very nuanced and coherent coming-of-age story. Diana starts the movie with a strong moral core and a desire to make the world a better place, but she is also impulsive, prone to Black-and-White Morality, and judgmental. Throughout the movie. she learns more about the world and about herself, and by the end of the movie she has applied the lessons. Some of the key lessons she learns are forgiveness; seeing the difference between a person and the role they act or are forced into; the relationship between fear and courage; and that she herself can fail to uphold her ideals.
• Con Man: Since Sameer can't work as an actor due to his brown skin, he became an effective Con Man instead.
• Consummate Liar:
  • As a spy, Steve is expected to be this. In his words, "lying is what I do". Having the Lasso of Truth compel him to speak honestly is an unpleasant experience for him, and even when he puts it on himself to convince Diana he's not lying, he's visibly uncomfortable.
  • Sameer makes his living as a Con Man. When he is introduced, he is trying to lie the wallets off a couple of men in the pub, and later on he and Steve bluff their way into Ludendorff's gala.
• Continuity Nod: Diana in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was looking for a valuable picture, revealed as a picture taken of her in WWI, but only a digital scan of the original picture (along with other secret files on her). This film shows the physical picture and the story about how it was taken.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • After having stolen the book that contains the deadly formula Ares inspired Dr. Poison to create, Steve Trevor just happens to crash his plane right next to Themyscira, the home of Ares' arch-enemies.
  • In Belgium, Diana happens to come across a snobby German noblewoman leaving her car to complain about being stuck in line to the gala event. The lady also happens to wear a dress that's exactly Diana's size so she can easily steal her dress and infiltrate the gala.
• Cool Plane: The giant German bomber seen at the climax is clearly derived from a real-life example — the Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI, a biplane with a wingspan greater than that of a Boeing 737. And yes, it was built by the same Zeppelin company that made, well, Zeppelins.
• Costume-Test Montage: First thing to do in London: get new clothes for Diana, with Etta Candy as guide. Most outfits are rejected for being impossible to fight in, or being itchy.
• Covers Always Lie: On one of the posters, Diana is seen lifting a tank. That tank is a Soviet T-28 model (which is anachronistic, since neither USSR nor that tank existed in 1918). She does indeed lift a tank in the film, but it's an era-accurate British Mark IV (a number of these were captured and used by the Germans).
• Crapsack World: The fact that Diana witnesses one of the most destructive wars in humanity's history first-hand shows she learned what kind of world she lives in much earlier than others such as Superman.
• Creative Closing Credits: The names are shown next to stylized recreations of the movie's scenes.
• Creator Cameo: Zack Snyder, who produced the film, chose to cast Gal Gadot and wrote the story, cameos as a British soldier.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Just before Diana hits Ares with the lightning bolt(s), she hovers above the airfield wreckage. (It is unclear whether she is actually flying or just at the apex of her leap.)
• Cue the Sun: Diana obliterates Ares just at the crack of dawn.
• Cunning Linguist: Sameer combines skills with at least four languages with being an effective Con Man and actor.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Diana versus the German soldiers after Steve blew up the airplane, then again when Diana unlocks her full power in the fight with Ares. She effortlessly no sells his attacks and defeats him by reflecting his own lightning back at him.
• Curb Stomp Cushion:
  • Sure, the Germans that invade Paradise Island got stomped into the ground, but quite a few Amazons got killed before they realized how to do it.
  • General Luffendorf got beaten by Wonder Woman rather handily, but at the same time, he held his own for a decent bit and at one point almost stabbed her with her own sword.
• Cuteness Proximity: Shortly after arriving on London, Diana gets distracted by a woman's baby and starts to walk over to the woman and child with a huge grin on her face before Steve pulls her back away as he reminds her of why they're there. Seeing as Diana was the last child "born" on Themiscyra, she's literally never seen a baby before.
  Diana: Oh, a baby!
  Steve: Nope, c'mon, we don't have time. Besides, that one's not made of clay.
• Cyanide Pill: A German spy who attempts to retrieve Dr. Poison's notebook takes a cyanide pill when he's captured.
• Dance of Romance: Steve and Diana "sway" during the celebration of Veld's liberation and the romantic tension is high. It also leads to a kiss later that night... and possibly more.
• Dead Star Walking: She may not have been top billed, but Robin Wright's role as Antiope 30 years after her role as Buttercup has been notably likened to Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia becoming a general to memetic levels. Antiope happens to be the first casualty of note in the film.
• Deadly Gas: It's set during the First World War, where chemical warfare was introduced to the world. Doctor Poison creates a gas that is deadlier than standard sulfur mustard gas (the most commonly used gas at the time), as it dissolves a gas mask by itself.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • According to Hippolyta's story, Ares killed all the Gods of Olympus except for Zeus. In the comics, they are still alive even during the formation of the Justice League.
  • Steve Trevor, by way of Heroic Sacrifice. Steve has died multiple times in the comics, but only after multiple adventures with Diana, so this still qualifies as the subtype where the character dies significantly earlier in the adaptation.
  • A historical example, but the film's portrayal of General Erich Ludendorff is killed by Diana, whereas his real-life counterpart lived until 1937, dying of liver cancer.
• Death of the Old Gods: All of the Greek Pantheon sans Ares and Diana are dead. By the end, only Diana is left, which leaves room for the incoming New Gods of Justice League (2017).
• Deconstructor Fleet: The film subtly subverts a lot of common superhero movie tropes, most notably with the ending.
  • The regular human Love Interest, rather than being a Damsel in Distress (cf. the cinematic adaptations of Lois Lane and Mary Jane), is badass and useful in their own right. Steve saves Diana's life from a German soldier during the beach fight and plays a critical role in the final battle.
  • The Multinational Team is formed ad hoc rather than being an official unit because of the racism of the era; Sameer and Chief are very upfront about their experiences as a Moroccan Berber and First Nation Indian respectively.
  • During the final battle, Wonder Woman gets a Heroic Second Wind against the villain and makes a renewed attack. The villain seems to be hard-pressed, but very quickly regains control and slaps her down with little effort, as he's still plainly much more powerful than her. She has to redirect his own lightning to kill him.
  • How the superhuman Amazons fare against modern weaponry; a small group of German soldiers armed solely with rifles (no artillery or tanks here, or even machine guns) in unfavorable terrain manage to kill several of them with bullets. The Amazons are as unprepared for the power of modern weaponry as anyone else.
  • A hero (Steve) performs a Heroic Sacrifice and gets a Dying Moment of Awesome from it — but rather than facing it with Nerves of Steel and dignified badassery, they're clearly terrified.
  • In the final battle, killing Ares doesn't automatically stop the war. Diana has to face the fact that sometimes humans just fight among themselves for their own reasons and horrible things happen in war without the machinations of a Big Bad, especially when one side is led by people like Ludendorff.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Downplayed, but it still comes up. Diana gets pretty quickly kicked out of a military summit in London for being a woman, and is treated condescendingly by Steve Trevor's superiors. Etta Candy offhandedly mentions the fact that women haven't been given the right to vote in the United Kingdom yet in a separate scene. Sameer talks about wishing to become an actor but was denied the opportunity because of the color of his skin. Chief mentions how the Native Americans were wiped out and displaced by white Americans prior to the start of World War I. And if anybody is homosexual, they're certainly not going to make it obvious.
• Despair Event Horizon: Diana gets dangerously close to the precipice when Steve sacrifices himself. In her despondent rage, she vents on all the German soldiers, and comes close to gruesomely crushing Dr. Poison with a tank. She pulls herself back when she tries hard to figure out what Steve was saying to her when her Steel Eardrums failed her a few moments before.
• Destination Defenestration: When Diana throws down in the warehouse in Veld, two German soldiers fly through a window; one flies through right in front of Steve and the boys as they try to keep up on the ground outside, and another gets a knee to the gut to send him flying as Diana finishes off in the warehouse and runs across the lower level's roof.
• Destructive Savior: Not unexpected given the WWI setting, but Diana sure demolished a few buildings in Veld.
• Didn't Think This Through: Ares realizes just a little too late that trying to use Zeus's power to kill Zeus's daughter isn't going to work.
• Did They or Didn't They?: It is heavily implied that Steve and Diana did have sex after the Veld liberation party, but nothing is shown, nor do they comment on it in the following scenes.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • Happens several times when men encounter Diana. It's partly because she's beautiful, but also because she's turned up where she shouldn't be or somewhere that any woman wouldn't be expected at all. Also, her clothes are highly unusual for the time period, at least before Etta and Steve get her a modern outfit, as well as when in costume at the front.
  • This almost exposes Steve during the ball at the castle; as Steve is talking up Dr. Maru, he notices Diana entering the room, dressed in the blue gown she "acquired" from the German lady earlier. Maru naturally thinks he is distracted by Diana's beauty, not the fact Steve knows who Diana is.
• Distressed Dude: We first meet Steve trapped in his sinking plane, rescued at the last second by Diana. Then she has to save him a second time from her own people. It happens a third time in London when German soldiers try to steal back something he stole on his earlier mission. He's not useless in the slightest, but, yes, he needs a lot of saving.
• Devil in Plain Sight: It's easy to suspect that a monster like Ludendorff is Ares, and that's just what Ares wants Diana to think. In reality, his true identity is in even plainer sight, that of Sir Patrick Morgan, a British officer who appears to be an old man who needs a cane to walk, and is Steve's superior.
• Doomed by Canon: As this is a prequel to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the audience already knows how some things are going to turn out. No matter how much faith Diana has in humanity, she will inevitably lose it. Also, her relationship with Steve will not last, although the reason why is not predetermined.
• Double Entendre: During the pool scene. Thrice. First, when Diana witnesses Steve naked, she asks him whether he's a typical member of the male sex, to which he responds that he's "above average". Then she asks him what "this thing" is, to which he reacts hesitatingly until he realizes that she's referring to his watch. And after he informs her that the watch is there to tell him when it's time to do which activity (sleeping, eating, working etc.), she quips that he is controlled by "it".
• Dramatic Irony: Steve calls The Great War "the war to end all wars". This term for it is both historically accurate and, sadly, factually inaccurate.
• Draw Aggro: The machine gun nests on the enemy line in No-Man's Land get so fixated on Diana hunkering down behind her shield that they're left wide open to counterattack. First Steve and the guys, then the rest of the British soldiers after they see Steve and company make it over.
• Dressing as the Enemy:
  • Steve is introduced wearing a German uniform, which causes some extra tension with the Amazons. He later explains how he is a spy and was doing recon.
  • Steve steals another uniform to get into the German gala event.
  • Diana finds her own outfit to get into the gala by coming across an obnoxious socialite in a blue dress; amusingly, all we see Diana do is size her up and compare their heights while the lady is confused. In the next cut, we see Diana wearing it.
• Dying Smirk: Steve has to mentally psyche himself up in order to blow up the plane carrying Doctor Poison's deadly gas and foil the villains' evil plan. He is visibly afraid and clearly doesn't want to die, but the moment before he shoots one of the gas canisters, he does smile.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: Downplayed. Modern-day Paris is introduced with the Eiffel Tower in the corner, but with emphasis on the Louvre, which is Diana's workplace. London is introduced with the Tower Bridge, but the Big Ben is nowhere to be seen except in one faraway city-wide shot. The back of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral can be seen in the last shot of Wonder Woman jumping in action before the end credits roll.
• Empowered Badass Normal: The villainous General Ludendorff is shown to be a fair fighters and shot even without superhuman abilities, but naturally this will not suffice to help him against Wonder Woman's magical powers, any more than the ordinary German soldiers have any chance against her. In their battle, he uses a Super Serum Poison has manufactured to give himself Super-Strength, evening the odds a little through human ingenuity and science.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Diana appears running from her tutors to watch the women on her island train under Aunt Antiope.
  • Steve enters the movie on a plane that crashes into the ocean. He nearly drowns due to his belts being stuck, but on regaining consciousness, helps Diana in the fight against his attackers.
  • The German forces are chasing Steve for Dr. Poison's notebook. When they break through the illusory glamour and see the island, they plan to storm the beach. They also attack the women who are aiming defensively at them, without even thinking of parleying.
  • All of Steve's friends get one. Sameer is immediately awestruck with Diana and begins flirting with her in multiple languages, Charlie is shown getting the shit beat out of him in a bar fight but is still noticeably chipper afterwards, and Chief is first seen quietly making a fire at their camp and having a quiet conversation with Diana while the others sleep.
• Everyone Has Standards: The British soldiers pinned down at the Veld go Mass "Oh, Crap!" when Diana climbs over the trenches, given by their expressions. They want to go help on realizing that she's making headway across the wasteland; their commanding officer has to be Cruel to Be Kind and shout at them to hold their positions, because that is an order and they could get killed as well. When she, Steve and his crew actually clear a path, you can hear them shouting, "SHE'S DONE IT!" and cheering as they are finally given permission to provide assistance.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Ares is completely incapable of seeing any good in humanity, even when Steve performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save countless lives right in front of him. His response to Diana outright telling him to his face humanity has good in them despite their potential for destruction and evil is to call her a liar.
• Evil Laugh: General Ludendorff and Dr. Poison share a delightfully cheesy cackle after gassing the German high command.
• Exact Words: When Steve tells her that "no man can cross" no-man's land, Diana decides to do so. After all, she is definitely "no man."
• Facial Dialogue: Chris Pine conveys Steve's internal conflict when steeling his resolve to pull his Heroic Sacrifice entirely through facial expressions.
• Fake Static: Steve does the telephonic version to end his phone call back to HQ when his boss orders him not to proceed with the mission.
• Fall-in Angel: Diana's interest in the outside world begins when she saves Trevor after he falls into Themyscira.
• Female Gaze: There's a extended scene of Diana talking with a naked Steve after she startles him from his bath. Full-body shots, only covering his genitals with his hands. The first topic of conversation is how "typical" Steve is for a guy.
• Feminist Fantasy:
  • The feminist icon finally gets her own film, and directed by a woman to boot.
  • Ironically, the feminist themes are downplayed in the actual movie itself. While some attention is drawn to the Values Dissonance between Lady Land-raised Diana and the sexism of the early twentieth century, most of the focus is on Diana trying to understand the differences between her (a god) and humanity as a whole. In fact, it's argued that by not drawing so much attention to the feminist themes, it makes the story more powerful as a feminist movie.
• First Snow: Because she's lived on Themyscira her whole life, Diana's never seen snow. She experiences it after Veld is freed. It stands out vividly when some falls on Diana's long dark brunette hair, and she goes to catch some on her tongue when Steve reassures her that it's benign.
• Fish out of Water:
  • Steve when he's on Themyscira. He is baffled by both the magical properties of the island and the primitive lifestyle of its inhabitants, and unsure of how to act around women who exist without men.
  • Diana acts as a Blithe Spirit for much of the film, both in dress, actions, and how she reacts to Europe in 1918. At the fashion store, it appears she even knows that she is acting in a way that embarrasses her helpers.
• Flashback Within a Flashback: The film as a whole is a Whole Episode Flashback as Diana recalls leaving the island and working with Steve Trevor. Contained within it at one point is Steve's flashback as he recalls how he ended up on the island in the first place. The Imagine Spot that accompanies Hippolyta's bedtime story about the origin of the Amazons might also count, since she was there.
• Flight Is the Final Power: Flight is the last ability Diana demonstrates, and only during the film's epilogue, suggesting that she only mastered it years after she adopted the Wonder Woman identity.
• Fling a Light into the Future: Before he faced off against Ares for the last time and succumbed to his wounds, Zeus left the Godkiller with the Amazons to kill Ares in case he ever threatened the world again. Diana believed it to be a sword, when in truth it was Diana herself, as Zeus' daughter and Ares' half-sister.
• Fly-at-the-Camera Ending: The film ends with Diana leaping (literally) into action once more, and traveling straight toward the camera.
• Flying Brick:
  • Diana has immense supernatural strength, basically making her somewhat of a living battering ram on par with and possibly exceeding Superman, and while her strength enables her to leap great heights, towards the end of the movie, it's implied she has the power of flight as well.
  • Ares is one as well, being capable of flight, hits as hard if not harder than Diana, and is durable enough to survive gigantic point-blank explosions.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • No matter how the film's story plays out, it will inevitably lead to Diana losing hope in humanity and retiring until the events of Batman v Superman. This is actually a bit subverted, as the closing narration does imply that she did keep up the good fight that Steve inspired her to in the intervening years, but realized she had to do so way down on the QT or else she wouldn't be that different from Ares. It's more that, as she notes in Justice League, a Second Age of Heroes is upon us, and the time for being subtle has passed.
  • Her relationship with Steve counts given that a century passes between this film and Batman V Superman. As she definitely ends up outliving him.
  • There's also a subversion late in the movie. Ludendorff being a real historical character, viewers with some knowledge of World War One and/or modern German history would probably think he'd survive the movie, since the real one died in 1937.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The evidence that Diana is more than just an Amazon starts as soon as Antiope accidentally wounds her in the last illicit training session before Mother Dearest discovers their efforts. There's not a sign of the wound on her. The second is the shockwave that knocks Antiope off her feet. The third is when Diana has a Bullet Time moment when the first German gunshot kills an Amazon archer swinging on a rope (Diana was literally watching the flight of the bullet as if it were in molasses). Her Healing Factor is then more explicitly pointed out when the healer redresses her wounds from the beach battle, only to find that they're already healed, much to the healer's curiosity. The final is when she really starts cottoning on this fact of her nature, when she leaps the ravine to the tower In a Single Bound, and then smashes the wall to create handholds when she climbs it.
  • When Queen Hippolyta brings Diana into the tower and shows her the sword, she never confirms that the sword is the Godkiller.
  • When Diana is about to take the leap to get into the Amazon armoury, she is witnessed by a bull. The bull is one of the symbols of Zeus, and also an animal that Zeus could turn into.
  • Early in the movie, General Ludendorff visits Dr. Poison to check on the progress of the gas weapon she developed, but she insisted that she can't improve it further without her journal that Steve has stolen from her. A gust of wind then blows one of the pieces of paper notes she had thrown away back to her. After she reads it, she instantly realizes what she needs to do. Also, just a scene earlier, she gives Ludendorff a gas pill that gives him superhuman strength, telling him that she came up with it the night before. In the climax, it is revealed that these are the works of Ares, who indirectly provides Dr. Poison with new ideas of deadly weapons.
  • Another one when Ludendorff gets a taste of Dr. Poison's Super Serum. Surely a god wouldn't need a man-made performance enhancer, hinting that Ludendorff is not Ares.
  • Steve uses the Lasso of Truth to get Diana to trust him, saying "I am taking you to the front... we are probably gonna die... this is a terrible idea!" Obviously, Diana survives, but Steve was half-right, at least, about them both dying.
  • Steve Trevor's Ragtag Bunch of Misfits toast each other with "May we get what we need! But may we never get what we deserve!" Later, Diana is faced with a decision whether to continue helping them (and by extension humanity) when she knows they need her help but is no longer sure they deserve it.
  • Diana wandering into the still gas-laden Veld without so much as stumbling. The emotional impact of the scene may make you overlook it, but it serves to hint at Diana's hidden divinity as well.
  • As a child, Diana has her gauntlets, but her mother says she can't have weapons. When she's training against the Amazons, Antiope disarms her, and she wins by accidentally shocking her with her gauntlets. During the battle against Ares, she doesn't have her shield, and he breaks her sword. She wins by using her gauntlets to fling Zeus's lightning.
  • When Steve is infiltrating the gala, he notices that chairs for all the attendees are being placed in the castle's ramparts facing away from it. This is the first hint that Ludendorff's demonstration of the new weapon is going to take place during the gala, and it's going to be on a rather large scale.
  • During Diana's fight with Ludendorff, we see that Ludendorff uses his gun first, and when Diana deflects the bullet back into his gun and destroys it, he is baffled and confusingly asks Diana "What are you?". Finally, when he's stuck on the roof and Diana reveals her origins and her intention to destroy Ares, he clearly has no idea what Diana is talking about. These clues are clear signs that show Ludendorff isn't really Ares.
  • Every fight scene Diana has is foreshadowed in her training.
  • Ares's true identity is foreshadowed by the fact that Hippolyta notes he was heavily wounded. Dr. Poison notes that she's restoring Ludendorff's strength. However, the only major character who appears weak is Sir Patrick Morgan, who walks with a cane and a limp.
  • It doubles as a Rewatch Bonus, but in Sir Patrick Morgan's first appearance, he's giving a speech and gets visibly distracted at seeing Diana. Everyone assumes it's over the shock of a woman being in the War Room. It's not. It's because he's realizing she's a god too and who she is.
  • Queen Hippolyta mentions that the Godkiller can only be used by the fiercest Amazon warrior. However, in the fight with a powered-up Ludendorff, he manages to separate Diana from the Godkiller sword, then he takes it and almost impales her with it. This showed that the Godkiller sword was just a normal sword and something else had to be the Godkiller.
  • Steve nearly lures Dr. Maru to his side by waxing poetic about the ultimate destructive power of fire and how all things are destined to be destroyed by it. He later dies by destroying Dr. Maru's gas bombs in a fireball.
• Forgiveness: Several implied examples as part of Diana's Coming of Age Story:
  • Chief shows Diana that he can be friends with Steve, despite Steve's people having taking everything from Chief's people.
  • Steve shows by his actions that he has forgiven Diana for her failure to help him destroy the chemical gas factory, just before he boards the plane.
  • Diana chooses to forgive Isabel Maru, when the alternative is to kill her.
• For the Evulz: When gassing the German High Command, Ludendorff and Doctor Poison toss a single gas mask in with them. Thing is, they know perfectly well that the mask won't work against the gas, and that the officers will desperately fight for it only for the winner to die anyway.
• Four-Star Badass: General Ludendorff as portrayed in the movie is a rather more hardcore fighter than the middle-aged Badass Bureaucrat he was in real life. This is seen most clearly in his fight with Wonder Woman, where he demonstrates both impressive rifle drill fighting skills and Nerves of Steel.
• Friendly Sniper: Charlie is a talented marksman and a boisterous Scotsman, although it's shown he's not so good at being a Cold Sniper when the time comes. He's dealing with his own demons and freezes up at one point.
• Frontline General: Antiope personally leads her troops into battle and dies fighting Germans on the beach. This clearly has a huge influence on Diana, as she later criticizes several Allied Generals for refusing to lead from the front and not caring enough about their troops.
• Funny Background Event:
  • In London scenes where Diana struggles with her Fish out of Water experiences, you can see many British citizens giving her weird looks in the background.
  • When the inhabitants of Veld celebrate their village's liberation with Diana and her team, the German tank Diana smashed into a building during the fighting is repeatedly shown to be still lying where it fell, with the Belgians simply having set up their tables around the wreck without a care in the world.

Tropes G to L

• Gas Mask Mooks: The guards at the factory/military base where the climax takes place, which for once makes in-story sense given that they're handling chemical weapons. This enables our heroes to infiltrate the facility easily, posing as some of them. Played with at the end: after the fighting is ended, the surviving guards pull off their masks, symbolically giving up their role as Faceless Goons and becoming real people.
• General Ripper: Ludendorff is depicted as a sociopathic general who relishes war, longs to use devastating chemical weapons on his enemies, and is disgusted by the idea of an armistice. His lust for war is so great that he shoots a fellow officer who warns him that German troops are running low on supplies, and gasses a room full of German generals who see the need for the armistice.
• The Ghost:
  • Present-day Diana receives her memento photo from Wayne Enterprises and corresponds with Bruce Wayne, but he himself does not appear even once.
  • Even though the demonstration of the new gas during the gala is ostensibly for his benefit, Kaiser Wilhelm II is never seen in the flesh.
• Glasses-and-Ponytail Coverup: Discussed when Diana arrives in London and Steve wants to give her glasses and tie her hair up. Etta comments how basically nothing could disguise the fact that she's got to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and Diana quickly shucks the glasses and lets loose her hair, remaining disguise-less for most of the action.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: Inverted. Steve gives Diana a pair of glasses to make her less conspicuous, though Etta Candy remarks that they don't suddenly make her not beautiful. They then fall off and get trampled underfoot in the alley fight.
• Good Guns, Bad Guns: The Luger P.08 pistol stands out as the sidearm of choice for the evil General Ludendorff. On the good side, the good ol' American Winchester Model 1897 and M1911 are notably Steve's weapons, despite being attached to British units.^note The Winchester shotgun was popular with American forces during World War 1, where it earned the nickname "Trench broom" or "Trench sweeper" for its brutal effectiveness in close combat. In addition, M1911 pistols were used by British forces and Colt even manufactured them as "British Service Models" in the traditional .455 Webley caliber.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Downplayed to "Good Underestimated the Power of Evil" where Diana understands that evil exists but believes that the humans are only fighting The Great War was because of Ares' influence. She believed the humans are being corrupted to fight one another, but after Ares reveals himself as the British politician Sir Patrick Morgan, he reveals to her that he only acted as their personal muse who gave the humans tools and ideas to kill. The humans themselves chose to listen and follow Ares' influences.
• Gory Discretion Shot: To keep the PG-13 rating, the film uses clothing and camera work to conceal blood and the horrifying blistering effects of mustard gas. Google the effects if you dare.
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: The very first dress Diana tries in the London store is a Byzantium gown, but in her opinion she cannot be graceful in it.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Diana makes an effort to help end the war and participates in an important mission, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned, the war ended normally and few have any knowledge of who Diana is and what she did.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Much like the real World War I, neither side is particularly good or evil. Despite being Wonder Woman's enemies, the Germans are shown to be willing to sign an armistice to end the war so no more innocent lives will be lost. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman learns that her American and British allies have committed atrocities of their own in the past, such as the Americans constantly taking land away from Native Americans via military force. And while the German side has supervillains such as Ludendorff and Dr. Poison, it's revealed that on the British side, Ares himself is running the show. In particular, Ares is behind the entire Paris Peace Conference, where the decisions made will later become one of the reasons for Hitler's rise to power.
• Grin of Audacity: After Diana's Shockwave Clap incident in training, all the Amazons look on her with fearful awe. Her mother is horrified that her power is manifesting. Antiope? She smirks as she lays on the ground after getting Blown Across the Room by the shockwave; she finally succeeded in getting her niece's latent divine powers to manifest.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Steve and Sameer infiltrate that gala by pretending to be a German officer and his chauffeur. When they cannot produce an invitation, they pretend to have lost it, and the guard lets them in because they are holding up the line, but doesn't even bother to ask their names.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Inverted. Diana is a Flying Brick and is thus more likely to rush head-on into combat, while Steve and his companions tend to cover her through shooting guns.
• Hand Blast: Diana soaks up Ares's lightning blast with her bracelets. She then plays around with the lightning, realizing that she can manipulate it. After that, she leaps up in the air and melts him with a massive lightning bolt from her hands.
• A Handful for an Eye: One of the Amazons causes a spray of sand by dragging her spear on the beach while riding a horse, blinding several German soldiers in the process.
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: Steve deploys the hand version as he's getting out of the bath in front of Diana.
• Healing Factor: Diana gets cut on the arm during the beach battle; later that evening a healer redresses the wound and it's practically gone, piquing the healer's curiosity.
• "Hell, Yes!" Moment: Steve tells Diana that they can't save a village held hostage because in No Man's Land anyone who storms it will be killed. Diana goes up, uses her gauntlets and shield to take the fire, and makes steady ground. On realizing she's taking the German fire, Steve grabs a gun and yells at everyone to follow. His friends, and the trapped British soldiers, manage to cross No Man's Land for the first time in a year and take back Veld.
• Her Heart Will Go On: Diana will keep fighting for justice even though Steve died, performing heroic suicide..
• The Hero Doesn't Kill the Villainess: Dr. Poison is the only woman among the villains and the only one who is spared by Wonder Woman.
• Heroic BSoD: Diana suffers from this twice:
  • After Diana has killed Ludendorff but the thunder of artillery still continues, and the German soldiers continue to work with the chemical weapons.
  • After Steve blew up the chemical weapon-loaded plane in the air with him in it, Diana enters a berserker rage and kills every German soldier nearby.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Antiope Taking the Bullet for Diana.
  • Steve flies the plane containing Doctor Poison's gas weapon as high as it will go and then blows it all up, killing him and incinerating the gas where there's no risk any of it will spread.
• Heroic Seductress: Steve's scheme to get information from Dr. Maru involves at least an element of this, since he starts a conversation implying that he's turned on by her homicidal genius. We never find out how far he was willing to go with it, since Diana interrupts.
• Heroic Second Wind: Diana gets one after Steve sacrifices himself, after which she's capable of matching Ares blow for blow.
• Hesitant Sacrifice: Steve is visibly terrified when he realizes that he has to die, and it takes him a while before he gets the courage to pull the trigger.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Defied; Diana hates that both sides target noncombatants. Ares tempts her into killing Dr. Poison, who despite being a lethal chemist is a noncombatant. Diana refuses to kill a defenseless woman, even if the woman has done terrible things.
• Hidden Elf Village: Themyscira, or Paradise Island (Steve can't pronounce the name), is hidden by a magical fog, somewhere in the Mediterranean.^note Although Steve arrives there in a plane fleeing from Turkish territory, pursued by a ship, and he and Diana get to London simply by sailing west, so maybe it floats between seas. When Diana tries to leave, Hippolyta tells her that she may never come back; not in the "you will be banished from here" way, but in a "you might not find your way back" way.
• Hijacked by Jesus: Ares is portrayed as Zeus's rebellious, humanity-hating son (a.k.a. Lucifer) and Zeus as God, who cast him out. Zeus sends his begotten child (read: Diana) born of a human woman (Hippolyta) to redeem the sins caused by Ares.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: The real Erich Ludendorff's political opinions would not be acceptable in polite society today, but he wasn't the supervillain this movie portrays him as, and he didn't oppose the armistice, if only because he understood that Imperial Germany really was losing and couldn't afford to keep fighting. Interestingly enough, he grew more villainous after WWI; during the Weimar republic, he served as the poster boy of the extreme right and took part in every single coup d'état — including the one led by Adolf Hitler. He later disowned the Nazis — because they weren't extreme enough for his vision of an Odin-worshiping stratocracy constantly at total war or on war footing, and refused a promotion to Field Marshal from Hitler because "An officer is named General Field-Marshal on the battlefield! Not at a birthday tea-party in the midst of peace."
• Hobbes Was Right: Hippolyta and Ares present different views of Hobbes's overall theory. Hippolyta claims humans are violent beings because Ares corrupts them. Ares, however, believes humans are more likely to choose such methods when given the means. When all is said and done, however, Diana's actions suggest both are Subversions.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Ares really got what he deserved for believing it a good idea to attack Diana, his own sister by their father, the thunder god Zeus himself, with lightning strikes.
• Hollywood Tactics: Some examples
  • In the battle on the beach, the Germans run towards the Amazon cavalry charge while firing. Historically, the correct response against cavalry, which they would have been trained in, due to cavalry still being in limited use, would be to form square and fire either volleys or aimed shots.
  • The German trench in the No Man's Land scene was made out of a single line, with rifles as the first weapons used, and there was a village with civilians close behind the front. This might fit the trenches of 1914, but by 1918 German trenches were made up of several lines after each other, with far more machine guns in strong points in front of the main battle line. The defensive depth of the trench system was counted in kilometers. Also while Diana was protected by her shield from several machine guns firing directly at her, in reality she'd be in a crossfire from machine guns sited in enfilade positions.
  • Diana accuses Field Marshal Haig of being a coward for not leading his men from the front (Like her mother does). Field Marshal Haig's Army at this point is just under two million men. He can't lead from the front even if he wanted to.
• Hope Spot:
  • Steve hopes that by showing the notebook to British Intelligence that he can warn them that Ludendorff won't agree to an armistice if he has a potent chemical weapon that can wipe out all of London. The generals won't even consider the possibility except for Sir Patrick Morgan, who sends Steve on a mission precisely to escalate the war further and strip Diana of her innocence.
  • Diana believes that if she wipes out Ares, then she can save humanity from war. It doesn't work. When she kills Ludendorff, mistaking him for Ares, she's horrified to see that the German forces are still fighting and a tearful Steve has to explain that while he wishes she were right, humans don't need a god's influence. Even though Diana defeats Ares and stops World War One, as she puts it, humans have still kept fighting while she's stayed in Europe.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Hippolyta holds this view, as she sees humanity as having been corrupted by Ares. Ares himself appears to see humanity this way as well — in his words, he gives humans the means to destroy each other, but the decision to do so is made by humans themselves.
• Humans Are Flawed: Diana eventually comes to hold this view — while humans have their flaws, they are also capable of loving.
• Humans Are Special: Played with. Diana initially believes the best of humanity, as they were created by the gods, but this view is eventually corrupted by what she experiences in World War I.
• I Am X, Son of Y: Wonder Woman identifies herself as "Diana of Themyscira, daughter of Hippolyta" as an oath before killing Ludendorff and attempting to kill Ares.
• I Don't Want to Die: He doesn't say it, but Steve bears this expression after he successfully steals the plane and prepares to blow it up, while he can't or won't escape, he needs a minute to brace himself before pulling the trigger.
• Immortal Breaker: Diana takes the Godkiller, a sword forged by Zeus, with her so she can use it on Ares. Subverted when it turns out not to work, and simply disintegrates on stabbing Ares. However, in a double subversion, it turns out Diana is the Godkiller herself.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: While the German soldiers shooting at Diana actually do manage to hit her while she's walking across no man's land, they only manage to hit her shield, even though it only covers roughly 30% of her body while she's in a standing position (which she is in for most of the scene), or her bullet-proof bracers. Not a single round from the dozens of troops shooting at her manages to hit any exposed skin.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: One of the German soldiers who landed on Themyscira managed to shoot a bullet perfectly into a moving target: an Amazon fast-swinging down from the cliff at 45° angle, at long distance, on first shot. You gotta admit, the guy's skilled. So much so that you might think it was a stray bullet, or at least aimed at Steve or Diana, who dodge.
• In a Single Bound: Diana frequently leaps really high and really far.
• Innocence Lost: Diana's character arc in the film. She starts off believing the best of humanity, but this naive view is soiled by her experiences during World War I.
• In Spite of a Nail: At the end of the film, both General Ludendorff and much of German High Command are dead. However, World War I apparently ends in much the same way, and Hitler and the Nazis presumably also rise to power, even though those characters played major roles in both events in real life.
• Instant Death Bullet: Particularly notable when the Amazons take on the Germans on the beach. The first casualty we see is shown taking a single bullet to the hip as she swings on a rope. An instant later, she's seen hanging lifelessly from the rope.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Hippolyta doesn't want to train Diana for fear that Diana will learn to crave war when War Is Hell. She's also scared that Ares will find her daughter and kill her for being half-siblings.
• It Was with You All Along: After disintegrating the God-Killer Sword, Ares tells Diana that she herself is the God-Killer, being the daughter of Zeus, and being able to kill him because of said divinity.
• Just a Stupid Accent: With a few brief exceptions, everyone in the film speaks English. This includes members of the German military speaking amongst one another, with a faint attempt at a German accent. While this is presumably Translation Convention, it is a bit jarring when Steve Trevor is impersonating a German officer; rather than speak German, he simply affects a German accent.
• Karma Houdini: Dr. Poison receives absolutely no (on-screen) comeuppance for her role in developing the superweapon or killing the entire German High Command, and is the only one of the film's villains to survive.
• Keystone Army: Diana honestly believes that killing Ares will free humanity of the urge to wage war. She is rather dismayed when killing Ludendorff doesn't do anything. The final scene at the weapons plant suggests that this did happen to some extent after Diana kills the real Ares.
• Kill the God: The ultimate purpose of the aptly named "God-Killer" is to slay Ares, who himself had killed the rest of the Greek Pantheon. Diana was told it was a sword, which she stole to fulfill its supposed purpose, but as Ares states, only a god can kill another god — the actual "God-Killer" is Diana herself, as a child of Zeus.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Steve Trevor is, by his own admission, representative of many of humanity's flaws that Diana finds distasteful. He's a liar, a thief, and a killer, and it's implied that all of this is the result of his participation in The War. As he notes, when you see something bad happening, either you do something about it, or you do nothing. And he already tried nothing.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Steve doesn't even bother with trying to interfere with Diana's battle against Ares, knowing full well that he and the others are so completely out of their league that they'd only get in Diana's way if they tried. Instead, he directs their intentions towards something they can take down: the plane outfitted with toxic gas.
• Lady Land: Themyscira, as always, is ruled by a queen and immediately attacks men who approach their shores (although it might have been because those men were soldiers/invaders). They're all female because Zeus explicitly created them as a counterpart to mankind.
• Lady of War: Befitting her status as the Princess of Themyscira, Diana is dignified, sophisticated, and graceful, as well as an unparalleled warrior who fights with techniques refined from centuries of Amazonian training to complement her superhuman strength.
• Last of His Kind: In the story recounted by Hippolyta, Ares sought to destroy mankind and ended up killing all the other gods, although Zeus managed to injure him and protect the Amazons on Themyscira before succumbing to his wounds. Diana is revealed to be the God-Killer, a child he sired with Hippolyta and to be the last defense for the world if Ares returned, as only a god can kill a god. As Diana kills Ares, she is essentially all that's left of the Greek Pantheon.
• Last-Second Word Swap: When Diana is introduced to Sir Patrick Morgan, she's about to casually reveal her true identity. Steve interrupts her and makes her alias up on the spot.
  Diana: Diana, princess of Themys...
  Steve: Prince, Diana Prince.
• Legendary Weapon: The God-Killer sword, a gift from the Greek Gods given to the Amazons. Actually, the sword isn't the God-Killer. It's Diana.
• Legend Fades to Myth: Greek myths were real in the setting, yet were dismissed as fiction after centuries have passed.
• Leg Focus: Upon gearing up to leave Themyscira, Diana wears a cloak that largely keeps her armor hidden, but at certain positions emphasizes her relatively bare legs as she is walking. She ends up getting a Feet-First Introduction when she approaches Steve ready to go. This necessitates getting new clothes upon arriving in London, as full-length dresses are the norm for the time period and she stands out.
• Little "No":
  • Diana lets out several small "No"s when Antiope dies.
  • Steve lets out a funnier one after Diana mentions that Amazons don't feel men are necessary at all for physical pleasure.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Diana's shield can stand up to machine-gun fire, causing Diana herself to simply strain a little. She's also able to deflect mortar shells with it, but in fights she most often uses it as a bashing weapon.

Tropes M to R

• Magic Feather: The God-Killer likely has no more divine power than any other Amazon sword; the real God-Killer is Diana herself.
• The Man Behind the Man: Ares, who gave Ludendorff and Dr. Maru the idea for their gas weapon and is looking to have WWI continue indefinitely.

• Masquerade: Given that this is set a long while before the Battle of Metropolis, the world is unaware of the existence of metahumans.
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Steve Trevor asks Diana how she knows about the pleasures of the flesh if she lives on an island with only women. She holds up her hand and he instantly understands.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
  • Is the war caused by Ares influencing the people to fight? Or is it something that the human race did by itself, with no divine intervention? The film gives credence to both ideas: the very existence of the amazons, their island, and their enchanted artifacts proves that Gods exist, but beyond that, there is no evidence of any supernatural force at work outside of the borders of Themyscira. The answer: Ares DOES exist, but he merely influences people to find the principles to create greater and more destructive weapons (such as the chemistry behind bombs). He does not influence anyone into actually using those weapons, or into starting those investigations about weapons. He certainly did not brainwash all of Germany, as Diana first suspected.
  • A scene toward the very end of the film's 1918 body narrative serves as a microcosm for the entire concept: Once Ares is slain, a number of the German soldiers wake up from being knocked out by Diana, and the remainder of Team Steve dig themselves out of their improvised cover. None of them seem to want to fight anymore, and the German soldiers and the teammates even awkwardly embrace as the sun comes up. Was Ares lying and actually influencing men to war? Or is everyone who remains just glad that the battle is over and grateful to greet another dawn? Both? The movie leaves it 100% up to the viewer's interpretation.
• Mayfly–December Romance: In the modern age, Diana doesn't look a day older from when she fought in the 1910s. Which she didn't know at the time, due to her mother not revealing she was a god. If Steve had lived, he would be a centenarian to a youthful Diana.
• Meaningful Background Event: When Diana and Steve arrive in London, one of the civilians in the background is a middle-aged man with a distinctive beard. This man then shows up later in several following scenes, including in the clothes shop where Steve has Diana tries out new clothes, and again when they are about to leave the shop (Steve lets him go through the door first). Etta Candy eventually notices that he has been following Steve around and tracks him. Turns out he is the leader of a hit squad working under General Ludendorff tasked with recovering Dr. Poison's journal.
• Meaningful Rename: Diana Prince is really Amazon royalty.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Antiope, Diana's combat trainer, is killed during the Germans' attack on Themyscira. This spurs Diana to find Ares and stop the war.
• Meta Casting: Gal Gadot is former Israeli military, which was a major factor in her casting.
• Metaphorically True: Hippolyta's story about Ares winds up being this. He does act as The Corrupter to humanity, but the way the story was told to Diana made her think that he used supernatural means to influence them, when actually his methods are closer to giving people fire and watching them burn themselves and everything around them.

• A Million Is a Statistic: Diana accuses the British leadership of not caring about the thousands of lives that are lost as they negotiate towards a ceasefire.
• Misplaced Wildlife: An armadillo, endemic to the Americas, is seen on the Mediterranean island of Themyscira.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Dr. Isabel Maru, called "Dr. Poison" even by German soldiers. She studies medicine only as a means of finding easier ways to kill people in the cruelest way possible.
• More than Mind Control: Implied when after killing Ludendorff, whom Diana thought was Ares, the bomber crew kept loading gas bombs onto their plane, instead of giving up fighting, and Steve tells Diana that killing one "bad" person doesn't solve anything, and no one wants to stop fighting until they've won.
• Mugged for Disguise: Implied when we see Diana enter the gala, wearing a flowing blue dress worn by an obnoxious socialite that she was sizing up earlier.
• Multinational Team: Diana's companions are comprised of an American spy, a Scottish sniper, a Blackfoot smuggler, a Moroccan Con Man alongside herself, a Greek Amazon.
• Multishot: Antiope takes out three German soldiers by jumping over them and releasing three arrows simultaneously.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Hippolyta's reaction after Diana accidentally injures Antiope during training with her burgeoning divine powers, realizing that in acquiescing to her sister's demands to train Diana, she basically allowed her to become a Living Weapon, just like how her father intended — making the confrontation with Ares all but inevitable.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: Diana formally announces herself twice as she prepares to do battle with Ares.
• Mysterious Mist: The isle of Themyscira is protected by a mist that discourages human ships from venturing near its coasts, although it can be crossed without trouble. That mist also creates a microclimate, making Themyscira a paradise island.
• Mythology Gag: Has its own page.
• Naked People Are Funny: The scene where Diana catches Steve emerging from the bath manages to be both this and Fanservice, with penis joke innuendo abound.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: While liberating Veld, Steve's team is pinned down by a sniper in a church steeple. Charlie, the team's sniper, is told it's his time to shine, so he takes aim... and has a Heroic BSoD instead of a Saving Private Ryan-esque Scope Snipe.
• Neutral Female: Gender-inverted. Several German spies corner Steve and Diana in an alley, but Diana beats them up while Steve simply watches. It's most likely due to shock, as this is the first time he's seen Diana fight and she's casually deflecting bullets with her bracelets. Alternatively, he's smart enough not to get in the way of someone much better at this than he is.
• Neutral No Longer: The Amazons, who used to guard and guide humanity, have become isolationist. Diana chooses to leave their domain in order to guide humanity forward.
• Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight: The Amazons realize how the outsider's guns work and adapt their tactics to battle the Germans more efficiently, decimating them thanks to their superior training and experience. They mostly close to melee range and use their superior agility.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: When the Amazons, armed with just archaic weaponry, have their first encounter with early 20^th century firearms, they lose several warriors before they grasp what they are dealing with, including Antiope, their main instructor and most experienced fighter.
• Never Trust a Trailer: There is a brief, but eerie glimpse of Dr. Poison in the first trailer where she glares ominously at the audience. In the film, it turns out the shot is from the rather comical scene where Steve is fake-flirting with her and she's just listening intently.
• Newspaper-Thin Disguise: In the scene where Steve realizes he and Diana are being followed, one of the people he spots is watching them from behind a newspaper.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Steve preventing Diana from killing Ludendorff at the gala could've prevented the bombing demonstration. To be fair to Steve, he is well on his way on seducing Dr. Poison into revealing the location of the gas bombs when Diana suddenly shows up at the gala (against his advice earlier, even) and distracts him, which Dr. Poison notices and brushes off his 'advances', and if Diana had killed Ludendorff in the middle of the gala, it could jeopardize the peace treaty.
  • Diana in Heroic BSoD refuses to help Steve stop the plane, because she's trying to figure out what happened. This means that Steve alone decides to blow up the plane in the air when it's flying, while Diana is pinned on the ground watching it happen. While she hadn't discovered her flight powers yet, she could have grounded the plane and saved him.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Ares deciding to start a massive explosive superhero fight with Wonder Woman in the middle of the German airfield provides one hell of a distraction that likely really helped Steve and his crew hijack and stop the super-bomber that was going to bomb London with poison gas. it's justified in that Ares had no investment in Ludendorff's supervillain Evil Plan and couldn't care one way or the other whether it actually succeeded or not, given he's playing the long game over thousands of years.
  • Diana wouldn't have defeated Ares if he hadn't intentionally revealed himself to her and then told her outright that she was able to kill him even without her sword.
• No Man of Woman Born: A quick one in the trenches. Diana asks why No Man's Land is named so, and the answer is that no man can cross it. Fortunately she's not a man or even a human; she's a demigod.
• No Ontological Inertia: Diana expects this to be the case with Ares — that if she kills him, his influence on mankind will be broken and the war will immediately end. The true situation is not nearly so simple, since Ares only provides weapons and inspiration. Humans go to war all on their own.
• No-Sell:
  • When the Amazons are training, the brawny Artemis throws down her sparring opponent. Another Amazon sneaks up behind her and bashes her right on the back with a stick. All it does is annoy her, as she slowly turns around and knocks the other off.
  • When Veld is gassed by Ludendorff, Wonder Woman runs into the gas without any ill effects whatsoever. The same gas causes Steve to choke when he gets somewhere near it.
  • The lasso doesn't cause Ares pain because he is Brutally Honest. He even turns the tables on Diana by using it to show her visions of the true world he desires.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: The Belgian girl asking for help later in the film has a German accent. Which is even more jarring since the people living in that region have a very unique accent.
• Not-So-Small Role: David Thewlis, as Sir Patrick Morgan, has a larger role to play in the climax of the film than it initially seems he's going to.
• Not This One, That One: When Diana notes that "at least Charlie is good with his fists", Steve tells her Charlie is the one being beaten.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The British military can't launch an offensive on the compound where the poison is being made, as it would violate the negotiation terms of the armistice. At first, this seems like they're just being foolish, until The Reveal that shows Morgan is doing it on purpose.
• Offhand Backhand: Antiope in the fight on the beach, but she does it with a bow and arrow instead of her fists.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Steve when his plane crashes into the ocean and he can't unstrap himself as it sinks.
  • Steve and co.'s very understandable reaction when Ares finally appears and starts showing off godly abilities even beyond those of Diana's. Charlie even point-blank asks Steve what they're going to do, as, unlike with the liberation of Veld, there is no way in hell they can help Diana with this sort of enemy.
  • A subtle one occurred when Steve was trying to gather information from Dr. Poison and saw that Diana somehow infiltrated the gala to kill Ludendorff.
• Omniglot: Side-stepping their version of Aliens Speaking English, Steve asks Diana how they know English and she says Amazons know hundreds of languages, and Diana demonstrates at least eight throughout the film. Exactly how the Amazons know so many languages isn't explicitly stated: if it's a magical ability conferred by Zeus (he wanted them to be a peacekeeping force to stop humanity's wars, so knowing everyone's languages instantly would help), or if they simply learned every language as they developed, due to being literally thousands of years old (though again, they'd need some magical means of observing the outside world for that). Languages Diana is shown to understand on-screen include: English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Chinese, even some Blackfoot, ancient Sumerian, and of course, Ancient Greek.
• Once More, with Clarity: When Diana and Steve speak to each other for the very last time, the sound of their voices is muffled and indistinct, almost as though Diana's hearing is still recovering from the explosion that had just knocked her onto the airfield. However, when Diana later recalls the conversation, the scene is played again, this time with the vocals played clearly. It turns out that Steve had decided to give his life to blow up the poison gas bomber, and he was letting Diana know that this was their final goodbye. That memory inspires Diana to spare Dr. Maru and reject Ares once and for all.
• One-Woman Army: Diana stands up to a battalion of the German army alone, kicking some serious ass.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In the scenes on Themyscira, some of the other actress' accents slip on occasion; they seem to be matching Gal Gadot's as much as possible.
• Origin Story: Tells the story about Diana's parentage, how she acquired her uniform and other equipment, how she received her mundane name, and how she came to be in the world of man.
• Out of the Inferno: During the Final Battle against Diana, Ares stands in the fire caused by an explosion, his Sir Patrick Morgan clothes burn off and he summons his armor on himself in said inferno, then attacks Diana from it.
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • The Germans have no way of stopping Diana once she actually steps into the war, and this is a long time before Superman would make himself known, so they have zero idea of who or what they're dealing with. After they've been holding off the Allies for four years, it takes Diana about 15 minutes to break through their defenses and liberate a town. The only thing they've got that can do anything to slow her down is a drugged-up Ludendorff, who doesn't last all that long despite his newfound strength.
  • Steve instantly recognizes Ares as this, and tells his crew there's nothing they can do about him, so they should focus on destroying the gas while Diana handles fighting the god.
• Passing the Torch: After Antiope's death, Hippolyta gives Antiope's tiara to Diana, as it belonged to "the greatest Amazon warrior who ever lived", meaning it's up to Diana to become the next.
• Pedestrian Crushes Car: During the battle in Veld, Diana faces off against an armored car with a heavy machine gun and a cannon. After closing to point-blank range, she proceeds to punch the armored side so hard that she leaves a big dent in the entire facing, and then she table-flips the whole thing into the air so it lands upside-down.
• Plot Hole: In-Universe, Diana's nanny tells her a story of humanity's and the Amazons' origins. It goes from "The gods sent us to create love. Things were okay for a while. Then your mother led a revolt to take us out of slavery."
• Poison Is Corrosive: Dr. Poison's new gas can break glass, somehow.
• Posthumous Character: Given the film's prequel nature, every character in the film other than Diana herself and the surviving Amazons are this.
• The Power of Love: What eventually snaps Diana out of her berserker rage after seeing Steve die in front of her is love. Specifically, it is remembering Steve's parting words before his Heroic Sacrifice, Diana finally breaks out of Ares's influence and restores her hope in humanity, and it's what eventually convinces her to come back from retirement after relieving the memories of Steve's love for her in the present day.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Dr. Poison was originally Japanese, as she was written like a Imperial Japan caricature like most Axis villains Wonder Woman fought during World War II. Because the setting has been updated to World War I where Japan wasn't with the Central Powers^note They were actually one of the Allied Powers that time around, and most notably captured the German port of Tsingtao/Qingdao in China, Dr. Poison is not depicted as Japanese in the movie. Instead, she is a Spaniard to accommodate her actress. ^note During WWI, Spain was a neutral power, despite polarisation among its citizens between supporters of the Allies and Central Powers, many of whom volunteered to fight for either bloc.
• Precious Photo: Bruce Wayne found the original 1918 group photo of Wonder Woman alongside Steve Trevor and his crew (Sameer, Chief, and Charlie). He sends it to Diana at her workplace at the Louvre museum in Paris, and the memories she recalls from looking at it tell her origin story and involvement in World War I.
• Pre-Sacrifice Final Goodbye: Just before setting off to hijack the plane with the gas, Steve Trevor stops to give Diana a few encouraging words and tell her he loves her.
• Present-Day Past:
  • Cyanide Pills were first used during World War II, not World War I.
  • When the party lands in Belgium, one can see a river boat named "Édith Piaf". The singer was three years old in 1918, and thus not a celebrity at that time.
• Prequel: Being a movie about the first World War, the story takes place roughly a century before Diana's first appearance in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
• Previews Pulse: The Wonder Woman theme introduced in Batman V Superman seems almost made for this. Most trailers have something like this going on, including the first trailer.
• Protagonist Title: This is Wonder Woman's origin story in the DCEU.
• Proud Warrior Race: The Amazons are dedicated warriors who train and learn to fight from a young age.
• Psycho Serum: Maru provides Ludendorff with a drug that gives him inhuman strength and stamina, while also agitating him and giving him Tainted Veins. Of course, all indications show that he was pretty psycho before that.
• Race Lift:
  • Dr. Poison is changed from a Japanese to a Spaniard, indicated by her name Isabel and being played by a Spanish actress.
  • Artemis was originally a red-headed Caucasian; here she has an African appearance.
  • Epione was white in the comics, while her actress has Japanese descent.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Steve's gang. Sameer is a conman who loves to act more than anything, Charlie is a sniper who only cares about making people dead and loves to sing, Chief is a Native American war profiteer who finds freedom on the sidelines of the battlefield, and Steve himself is a spy. They're proud of who they are.
  Steve: May we get what we want!
  Charlie: May we get what we need!
  Sameer: But may we never get what we deserve!
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: General Ludendorff is the only German soldier in the film who can actually take Wonder Woman on in hand-to-hand combat, though this is only because of the special gas Maru gives him.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Interesting meta-example. Many people complained that the supermodel Gal Gadot was not muscular enough to play the warrior Diana. In fact, though, Gadot was an actual soldier — and combat instructor, no less — in the IDF.
• Reconstruction: A lasso would be an impractical weapon in the middle of a war, given that anytime Wonder Woman uses it, she would have to untangle it and reset the knots. The film takes full advantage of its magical properties by giving Wonder Woman telekinetic control over the lasso, to the point that she tends to use it more like a whip than a lasso, lashing it around her enemies to throw them around or bring them in close.
• Real Event, Fictional Cause: Diana hypothesizes that the war was caused by Ares' influence on humanity. It's actually played with. Ares may have given humanity the means to destroy each other, but humans decided to go to war all on their own. That said, Ares actually was manipulating things in an attempt to lead towards World War II, but had no role in its actual occurrence, as he was dead by then.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Hippolyta doesn't want her daughter to learn how to fight, but Diana is rebellious and stubborn and a fighting god who is destined to defeat Ares. Eventually, after finding out that her sister Antiope is training Diana and has been for years, Hippolyta acquiesces and insists that Diana is trained even harder.
  • The Amazons as a whole are reasonable when Diana rescues Steve from drowning, which leads to the Germans invading and opening fire on the Amazons, who were only holding up a defense. When several suggest killing Steve since he brought invaders to their paradise, Antiope's comrades point out that he's the only one who can answer their questions. After they interrogate him using the lasso, they dress his wounds and offer Sacred Hospitality while debating whether or not to set him free. Steve is grateful to be alive, and tries to get some relief from his Gilded Cage.
  • Subverted with the British politicians. Diana, who is used to her mother's reason, is horrified at how arbitrary they are. The Only Sane Man and Steven's boss turns out to be Ares, who recognized Diana from the start. Ironically played straight with the German politicians, who are rightly angered at Ludendorff's war-mongering and seek an end to the fighting as soon as possible. He even kills them because they would rather sign a peace armistice with the enemy than obliterate them with superweapons.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In London, Diana chews out the military officers for not personally leading their troops to battle and their willingness to sacrifice innocent lives just to win.
• Red Herring: Ludendorff is set up to look like he's actually Ares. He's just an Unwitting Pawn.
• Red Right Hand: Doctor Poison wears a mask over the lower left half of her face, to hide some pretty extensive disfigurements.
• Red Shirt: Dr. Poison experiments on the German soldiers, who are revealed to be frightened teenagers at the end of the movie. Steve sees one screaming in agony through a gas mask as he's being experimented on, which motivates him to steal the notebook.
• Refuge in Audacity: Diana brings her sword into the gala by carrying it down the back of her blue dress, with the hilt and guard very visible. No-one arounds her hardly bats an eye. After all, no one would bring a sword to a gala, and (from the perspective of the era's mindset), especially not a woman.
• Rescue Romance: It did not happen immediately, but Steve and Diana gradually become close after she rescues him from a plane crash.
• Retreaux: The picture that Bruce sends Diana at the beggining of the movie that features her, Steve, Samir, Charlie, and the Chief, was actually shot on a camera from the time period, and developed on a glass plate. This was done because according to the producers, merely developing a picture and modifying it to look old would have looked fake.
• The Reveal:
  • The movie itself keeps the identity of Ares secret until Diana learns it late in the movie. Of course, the casting reveal of David Thewlis in the movie spoiled it there.
  • Diana is told by her mother that she was sculpted from clay as a child and given life by Zeus. She learns from Ares that she is actually the child of Zeus and Hippolyta, making her a demigod and the actual "God-Killer", as only a god can kill a god.
• Reverse Psychology: Ares loves to use this is conjunction with the Xanatos Gambit; he often vocally and eloquently argues against what he wants, hoping people directly disobey him, while making sure that even following his suggestions won't stop anything. The near constant mixed signals he sends to Steve and Diana (like "You can't deploy into Germany while I'm negotiating an armistice!/Here's some money and under the table support to deploy to Germany.") push them further and further into his trap.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • After The Reveal, a lot of actions Sir Patrick Morgan did earlier in the movie suddenly shine a darker light. The reason he trails off during his speech when he sees Diana entering the meeting room is not because of the stigma regarding women prevalent in that era, or because she's gorgeous, or both, but because he was stunned to see his little sister, and an Amazon at that, suddenly show up. He's the strongest voice to push for the armistice to happen, but only because he knows that humans couldn't keep the peace that he provided, and the flawed treaty would eventually end with humans starting another bloody war. He suddenly shows up at the bar where Steve and Diana are planning to get behind enemy lines and immediately supports them, knowing that it will get Diana to witness how cruel mankind could be first-hand so he can easily corrupt her later in the movie. Finally, he tries to abort the mission so that the Germans can go forward with their surrender and sign the peace treaty.
  • Right after Dr. Maru demonstrates "a new kind of gas" to Ludendorff by breaking a blue capsule, a seemingly random gust of wind pushes a crumpled piece of paper near her from which she gets the idea to form a deadlier gas. Upon second viewing, the wind was another one of Ares's doing, manipulating Maru to complete her deadly weapon and aiding in humanity's destruction.
  • When Queen Hippolyta brings young Diana to the tower, she never confirms for Diana (and the audience) that the sword she is showing her is the godkiller weapon.
• Rock Beats Laser: Zig-zagged when a small force of Germans stumble upon Themyscira and attack the Amazons. The Amazons are initially cut down when the Germans form a firing line and overwhelm them with massed fire. Then Amazon reinforcements on horseback reach the beach and break up their formation, allowing the Amazons to rout the Germans in close combat, albeit while incurring multiple casualties. If the Germans had been more numerous and better prepared, the Amazons likely would have suffered even greater casualties.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Diana (a woman) being the first person to cross No Man's land.
  • Until her last scene, Doctor Poison never takes off or loses her mask. The mask finally coming off symbolizes Diana's newfound insight into humanity. Like Doctor Poison, humanity covers up its ugliness. However, also like Doctor Poison, that imperfection is merely an aspect of humanity as well.
  • Wonder Woman using her bracelets instead of her sword to finish off Ares means that war can't be fought with more war (when she uses the God-Killer against him, it instantly shatters). Using a defensive weapon to protect others by redirecting his attack back to him represents Diana using love and compassion to defeat Ares, by redirecting his aggression back to him.

Tropes S to Z

• Sacrificial Lamb: Antiope, a figure very close to Diana, is killed early in the story by human invaders. This death establishes the threat of humans and the war and encourages Diana to go out into the world of man.
• Sacrificial Lion: Steve's Heroic Sacrifice in the final act provides the Heroic Second Wind Diana needs to defeat Ares.
• Sadly Mythtaken: The story presents a very altered version of Greek myth. Some of the most notable departures include:
  • Amazons in Greek myth are not peaceful enemies of Ares nor daughters of Zeus. They are warlike and barbaric daughters of Ares.
  • Zeus was not a creator-god.
  • Ares did not kill all the other Greek gods. Zeus was mightier than all the other Greek gods combined, and Ares was a particularly ill-favored god among the Greeks, causing him to often get embarrassed or defeated in their myths. In fact, the story given in the movie, Ares killing his father and the other divine predecessors to make way for a new pantheon is a lot more like Zeus' own rise to power against the Titans.
  • Ares was also one of two gods of war^note the other being Athena: for the Greeks, he represented physical strength, valour, anger, and violence, far from the scheming planner of the film.
  • Humankind was created by Prometheus, who later tricked Zeus into accepting bones and fat from animal sacrifice so that humans would be able to keep the meat, and stole fire from Zeus on humankind's behalf. Zeus was actually behind the plan to release evil upon humankind with the whole Pandora thing, rather than being the beneficent father-creator god described by Hippolyta.
• Scenery Porn: The cinematography and production design for Themyscira is absolutely stunning.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
  • Much like Justice League, Hippolyta decides to write off a crisis Diana wants to stop as Men's World's problem and tells Diana not to get involved, only for Diana to ignore said edict and get involved, anyway.
  • Steve leads a rogue mission to Belgium to destroy the German poison gas stockpiles in defiance of explicit orders not to do so from his commanding officers in London.
  • Diana, still the Wide-Eyed Idealist and horrified by what WWI is doing to anyone caught up in it, ignores Steve's orders, puts her mission on hold, and charges through no man's land to liberate a Belgian village occupied by the Germans just because a desperate mother asked for her help.
• Setting Update: Inverted. Wonder Woman's origin story was originally tied to World War II, and later retellings updated it to the present day. The movie ties it to World War I.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: After liberating Veld, Steve and Diana share an intimate moment together. Following their dance in the snow, Steve escorts Diana to her hotel room. Rather than leave, Steve enters too after Diana gives him an inviting look. They kiss passionately before the camera cuts away to the outside of the building, where the light in Diana's room is the only one still on.
• Shaking Her Hair Loose: Diana does this while donning her circlet before entering No-Man's Land.
• Shell-Shock Silence: Diana momentarily loses hearing during the Final Battle after the explosion of a crate full of grenades that she threw at Ares. She can't hear Steve's last words to her as a result before he jumps on the gas containers-filled plane to stop it, and she has to figure out what he said to her later on.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Etta Candy almost completely disappears in the final act of the movie, only showing up again when she, Diana, and Steve's friends visit the memorial wall during the peace celebration, as well as The Stinger in the home-video release.
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon:
  • Due to the Amazons' Hollywood Tactics on the beach, the close range skirmish shows several Amazons using their bows at near-point blank distances.
  • The German Gewehr 98 rifles have a range of 500 m with iron sights. The landing party typically tries to use them as clubs.
• Shouting Shooter: When Diana ventures into No-Man's Land, one of the Germans manning a machine gun is doing this while firing at her.
• Shout-Out:
  • Near the end in the alley scene, Diana blocks a bullet while taking the classic Rosie the Riveter stance.
  • The climax of the film is so similar to Return of the Jedi (with Diana and Ares taking the place of Luke and the Emperor respectively) that it's hard to imagine it's not intentional.
• Shown Their Work:
  • The armour that the Amazons and Diana use in the opening is inspired by actual classical Greek armour. Granted, the armour that Diana uses was likely the armour of an archer, not a melee fighter.
  • The outfit that Diana settles on in London is very similar to the uniforms that serving women used, as surgeons, police, firefighters, or other positions.
  • The movie displays pretty accurate World War I equipment, especially for the Imperial German army, such as Fokker E. III planes, Maxim machine guns, a 7.58 cm Minenwerfer mortar and even a Stirnpanzer◊ (additional metal protections that were worn on steel helmets), which are all accurate for 1918.
  • After Ares's defeat, several German troops remove their gas masks to reveal themselves as boys in their mid-teens. By this point in the war, this practice was sadly common to both sides, as entire generations of older men were destroyed in previous battles. Germany especially needed Cannon Fodder since it didn't benefit from fresh troops like the Allies when the USA joined in the war in 1917, and thus had to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
  • The German army lacking food is brought up twice in the film. This refers to the Allied naval blockade of all German ports, which was one of the most decisive factors in the Allied victory and seriously crippled the German war effort.
  • While it may seem a rather obvious error for there to be a British tank at a German military base, by this time in the war, the Germans had managed to capture or recover about forty of them and incorporate them into their own army, as the Germans were far behind the British and French in both design quality and production quantity of tanks.
  • Steve's watch. Prior to the Great War, wristwatches were almost exclusively for women, with men favoring pocket watches, generally on a chain fitted into their Waistcoat of Style. In the military, however, this quickly became impractical, as the chain could get snagged, the watch could get dropped, and in any case it needed a free hand to read. Many military actions require precise timing, such as coordinating artillery barrages with advancing troops and aerial navigation, and Steve is seen to be a pilot before he became a spy. Even the construction of his watch is accurate: before there were specifically-designed wristwatches, there were leather wristbands made to hold a conventional pocketwatch.
  • The group photo that was first seen in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was taken with a real late 19th century camera, the actors had to pose for a long exposure time. The end result is that the photo looks "authentic" without having to add any modern filter.
  • The boats used by the German landing party at Themyscria are labeled "Schwaben"; likely the warship they came off from (and sank in the background). SMS Schwaben was a real warship with the Imperial German Navy. (But was a different design from the one on film and served the entire war in the Baltic Sea, and survived until 1921.)
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: The entire film shows how Diana develops this mindset, starting out as a Wide-Eyed Idealist and setting out on the straightforward task of stopping World War One. Ares tells her that mankind is evil and beyond redemption. Diana can't deny this but instead of agreeing, moves into The Idealist.
• Situational Sexuality: Implied by Diana during a conversation with Steve, about topics of procreation, pleasure of the flesh and the island being populated with only women.
• Slipknot Ponytail: Used for symbolic purposes in the No Man's Land scene. Through the first half of the film or so, Diana mostly wears her hair tied up and out of the way, even on Themyscira. When Steve takes her to the front lines and she sees what trench warfare is really like, she refuses to simply stand by and do nothing, pulling her hair out and dropping her cloak, revealing her full, iconic comics visage for the very first time.
• Sniper Duel: Subverted. When the team gets pinned down by a German sniper hiding in the church tower, it seems like this will happen with the team's sniper Charlie. Unfortunately, Charlie freezes up from PTSD and is unable to take the shot. Fortunately, Steve remembers an Amazon using a shield as a platform to leap behind some Germans, and has Sameer and Chief lift a large metal panel for Diana to leap off it into the tower.
• Snow Means Love: It snows the night Diana, Steve, and company help liberate Veld, leading to Steve and Diana having a little dance in the snow.
• Soft Water: Diana jumps off a high cliff to the sea when she sees Steve crashing, but then again, she is superhumanly tough and it shouldn't really matter. Besides, proper diving posture is supposed to make breaking the surface of the water safer.
• Something Only They Would Say: Diana realizes that British politican Sir Patrick Morgan is actually Ares the God of war and the film's Big Bad when he reveals himself by saying, "You were right, Diana. They don't deserve our help. They only deserve destruction," something only Ares would say.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • To Superman: The Movie, in depicting a unapologetically heroic and moral character. Richard Donner has literally passed the baton to Patty Jenkins.
  • In the depiction of the Amazons as a Proud Warrior Race, the movie is appropriately similar to 300 (which was directed and co-written by Zack Snyder, who is a producer of this film and has a story credit). All the Amazon performers, including the name actors, went through a near identical training regime. 300-style ramping/slow motion fighting is used liberally as well, by Diana and by the other Amazons.
• Start X to Stop X: Ares's plan to end war and bring about permanent peace is to create a humanity-exterminating war.
• Statuesque Stunner:
  • Gal Gadot, 5'10, as Wonder Woman.
  • In fact, many of the Amazons count. For one, Connie Nielsen as Hippolyta is taller than Diana by half an inch (in an interview with Empire magazine one of the crew observed it was his best summer ever, spent on a perfect beach surrounded by hordes of gorgeous, scantily clad glamazons).
  • There's also the German woman from whom Diana steals her blue dress because they have the same size.
• Stay in the Kitchen: At the military summit, Diana is continuously treated as if she were a child interrupting adult business, with the generals alternating between offense and amusement at a woman being present.
• Stealth Pun:
  • The first person to cross No Man's Land is a woman.
  • This is a non-sequel Wonder Woman film set during World War I. Thus, it's a WWI film in two different ways.
• The Stinger: Found only on the home-video releases. Etta (Lucy Davis) rounds up the boys for a mission after the end of the war; a mysterious artifact found in Liège and they are to recover and deliver it to the Americans — it's one of the Mother Boxes, the one used to create Cyborg decades later. It's a Sequel Hook for Justice League, in which the New God Steppenwolf goes on a rampage looking for them.
• Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: Ares pulls this on Diana, or rather, "Strike her (Dr. Poison) down," to officially renounce humanity and accept his cynical view on things. It's in a very Palpatine-esque scene. Thankfully, she chooses not to.
• Stripperiffic: Steve and his friends discuss the revealing nature of Diana's battle gear (especially given the time period) during the middle of the film.
  Steve: She's not exactly undercover!
  Sameer: I dunno, she looked pretty under-covered to me.
  Charlie: *snerk!*
• Strong as They Need to Be: Diana goes from being weaker than Antiope to being on the same level as Ares, without additional training in between the two occasions. Justified as she is the God-Killer, and slowly discovers her true powers.
• Suddenly Shouting: While restrained by the Lasso of Truth, Steve is asked to tell the Amazon leaders who he is. He starts off with some basic information and starts giving even more detail than he intended, learning that he is compelled by the Lasso. He mentions he is with British Intelligence and visibly struggles before exclaiming "I am a SPY!", before repeating at a normal volume.
• The Suffragette: Etta Candy tries to defend her position to Wonder Woman in British Society by saying they will get the right to vote... someday
• Super Hero Origin: The film details how Diana grew up to become a great warrior, how she decided to get involved in the human world, and why she decided to step back from it.
• Superhero Movie Villains Die: In Wonder Woman comics, Ares is one of her major villains, and thus benefits from Joker Immunity. In here, he dies in his first fight against Diana.
• Superpowerful Genetics: In terms of power level, Diana takes after her divine father.
• Super Serum: Maru provides Ludendorff with a drug that gives him inhuman strength and stamina. The gas allows him to crush a pistol with his bare hands and momentarily trade blows with Diana.
• Takes One to Kill One: Quoted verbatim, with the one being a god.
• Take Up My Sword: Diana's tiara actually belongs to Antiope, her aunt and combat instructor who is killed protecting Diana during the beach battle. As she leaves the island, Hippolyta gives it to Diana to remind her of the greatest Amazon warrior who ever lived.
• Taking the Bullet: Antiope takes a bullet for Diana during the battle on the beach.
• Teach Him Anger: Ares tries to convince Wonder Woman to give up on humanity by showing her the horrors of mankind-led war.
• Thousand-Yard Stare:
  • Steve momentarily goes into such a state when regaling the Great War's horrors to the Amazons ("It's like nothing I've ever seen... it's like the whole world's gonna end!")
  • When the crew-assembled-so-far is wading through the returning wounded soldiers, several of them are in such a state as well, most prominently a helmetless young soldier being led through the crowd by another one.
  • Diana is left in such a daze after watching Steve's Heroic Sacrifice, teetering dangerously close to the Despair Event Horizon, and then vanquishing Ares. She's just emotionally spent after all that.
• Time-Shifted Actor: Diana is been played by three actresses: a child (Lilly Aspell), a teenager (Emily Carey), and an adult (Gal Gadot).
• Tough Love: Why Antiope disregarded her sister's orders and started training Diana in secret — she had no desire for Diana to fight any more than Hippolyta did, but she knew that Ares was going to return one day and come after Diana, regardless of what any of them wanted. The only way to protect her niece was to make sure she could protect herself. Once Antiope sways Hippolyta to her way of thinking, the Queen of the Amazons makes sure her daughter is trained harder than any other Amazon before her. Antiope not only gained the permission to train her, but the edict to push Diana to her maximum potential; Hippolyta wouldn't settle for anything less than Diana surpassing Antiope herself.
• Tragic Keepsake:
  • Diana's tiara counts, as it previously belonged to her beloved aunt and mentor, Antiope.
  • Steve gives his watch to Diana before he makes a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • The 1918 group photo functions as one, as it triggers her memories and the people who appeared on it are long dead. And because it commemorated their rescue of a village that was gassed to death soon afterwards.
• Trailers Always Spoil: David Thewlis being announced as playing Ares spoils The Reveal that Sir Patrick Morgan, Thewlis's character, is actually the God Of War in a mortal guise, as well as undermining the Red Herring that General Ludendorff is Ares.
• Training from Hell: What began as light training by Antiope on the sly to pique young Diana's interest became an edict by Queen Hippolyta for Antiope to submit Diana to this after Antiope finally convinced her sister. And Antiope succeeded.
• Training Montage: The first 30 minutes of the film shows Diana and the other Amazons honing their skills.
• Traveling at the Speed of Plot: Diana and Trevor leave Themyscira for London, crossing the Mediterranean Sea on a small boat. It's not mentioned how long the trip took place, but it takes the difference of two scenes in the movie. Steve mentions that they got lucky and were able to hitch a ride on a presumably-faster boat. Also, as the Artistic License – Ships entry points out, they didn't stay awake to keep the boat on-course, suggesting that it's magical, and can move faster than it should be able to.
• Trick Boss: Diana thinks Ludendorff is Ares, but after the initial surprise of his Super Serum, she regains the upper hand, and slays him... and then the war doesn't stop like she expected. When the real Ares appears, he proves to be much, much deadlier.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: "Diana of Themyscira, Daughter of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons". If given half a chance, Diana will introduce herself by rattling out the whole thing.
• True Blue Femininity: Diana wears a blue gown when she infiltrates a gala to kill Ludendorff. She stole it from a German noblewoman.
• Truth Serums: The lasso of truth naturally functions as one. Steve does his best to resist it, but can't. Interestingly, since it compels its wearer to tell the truth, in the absence of questions, they'll start talking about whatever's on their mind; Steve wraps himself with it to convince Diana he really is taking her to the front after lying about it to his superiors, then starts rambling about what a terrible idea it is.
• Unknown Rival: General Ludendorff and Dr. Maru spend almost the entirety of the movie completely unaware that Diana even exists, let alone that she's working with Steve to foil their plans.
• Unreliable Narrator: Considering Hippolyta is doing everything she can to hide Diana's true identity as Zeus's God-Killer and the eventual reveal that Ares barely had to do anything to send humanity into their violent ways, her telling of the fall of the Olympian gods to Diana becomes questionable in terms of accuracy and honesty.
• Unstoppable Rage: When Steve's plane explodes, Diana went full berserker mode, tearing through German soldiers like they were wet tissue.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: At the gala, Wonder Woman (disguised as an European woman) wears a sword in full sight down the back of her (backless) dress. No one ever seems to notice this, or to even look twice if they do.
• Unwitting Pawn: Ludendorff and Doctor Poison are manipulated into creating their gas weapon by Ares, who wants to use it to extend the war indefinitely.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Believing that humanity is too corrupt and unworthy to occupy Earth, Ares has made it his mission to help them wipe each other out so that the Earth can go back to the way it was.
• Vague Age: While it's obvious Diana has been around for centuries, it's never made clear exactly how old she really is or what time period she was born. Zack Snyder states she's 5000 years old as of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. In a Collider interview, though, Patty Jenkins says that Diana is about 800 years old in World War 1.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Reversed: Going into the ball, Diana puts the God Killer sword down her back, with the hilt looking like an unusual brassiere strap. The storage capacity is shown to be the same as the normal VSC configuration, otherwise the length of the blade would have interfered with her walking and dancing.
• Villain-Beating Artifact: On the hidden island of Themyscira, the Amazons have been guarding an ancient sword known as the God-Killer. It's the only weapon capable of killing Ares, the evil deity responsible for spreading death and destruction among humans and the one who wiped out the rest of the Greek pantheon when they wouldn't side with him. Subverted when Ares reveals it to simply be an ordinary blade. The actual God-Killer is Wonder Woman herself, who is Ares's sister through their father Zeus. Gods can only be killed by other gods.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: While Ludendorff and Ares are both killed, Doctor Poison escapes in the chaos of the Final Battle.
• Villain Has a Point: Ares claims that while he might have put the idea for various weapons into the heads of humans, it was the humans who chose to use them because war is in their nature and thus they are truly the ones responsible for the war, not him. Given that the Russian civil war continues after the armistice (having started in November 1917), with World War II commencing a couple of decades after World War I and several other conflicts post-1945, despite Ares not able to influence mankind in any way on account of being dead, he's not wrong.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Diana refuses to crush Doctor Poison with a tank, Ares completely loses his composure and unleashed everything to try to kill her.
• Villainous Friendship: General Ludendorff and Dr. Poison are genuinely loyal and friendly to each other. Ludendorff doesn't exert his Bad Boss tendencies on her, and Maru concocted a special Super Serum pick-me-up just for him.
• Villainous Valour: You have to hand it to the troops occupying the town — they're willing to keep coming even though Diana just took out an armored car with her bare hands.
• Voodoo Shark: In-Universe. Steve has a lot of questions about Themyscira. Diana's answers don't explain anything, and raise many new questions.
• Walking Spoiler: Ares is the Big Bad; saying anything else about him will spoil too much.
• War Is Hell: Considering that it focuses on World War I, the war that codified this trope to the rest of the world for years afterwards, this is obvious. Diana is also introduced to the power of the rest of the world's weapons when the Amazons charge a company of German soldiers on a beach, pitting swords, spears, bows, and armor against guns. The film doesn't shy away from the vast number of soldiers left horrifically mutilated by trench warfare, either: there's an extended bit in London where Diana sees a stream of badly wounded men coming back from the front lines, many of them having lost arms and legs. Her Dante-esque descent to the front line trenches shows men screaming as they bleed out from where their legs used to be, horses slowly drowning in the mud, women and children coming under artillery fire and chemical gas attack, etc.
• Warrior Poet:
  • Diana speaks hundreds of languages and talks about reading libraries in addition to their combat training. In the present day, she works at the Louvre in art restoration; mostly weapons.
  • The villain Ludendorff is also one. He admires Hellenic culture and philosophy, and has an elevated, almost mystical view of war as the purifying fire of sacrifice that reforges and ennobles humanity in its harsh crucible.
    War gives man purpose. Meaning. A chance to rise above his petty, mortal little self, and be courageous. Noble. Better!
• The War to End All Wars: The film features Wonder Woman participating in the Trope Namer, World War I, to help bring an end to it. After telling the Amazons he's fighting in "the War" and they don't understand what he's talking about, Steve Trevor even uses this specific phrase when he quizzically emphasizes, "The War to end all wars?" This gets no traction either, so he more literally describes, "Forty nations, at war for the past four years? 25 million dead? Weapons far deadlier than you can possibly imagine! It's like nothing I've ever seen... It's like the whole world's gonna end!"
• We Are as Mayflies: Steve and Diana talk about his father's watch and Diana seems confused over why he would lead his life according to such a thing. Being an immortal, she doesn't have the same perception of time. As Steve races off to destroy the bombs, knowing he won't return, he tells her that he wished they had more time together. At this point, she starts to understand.
• We Can Rule Together: Ares tries to convince Diana that they're kindred spirits and can revert the world to a paradise once humans are eliminated, trying to show her that Humans Are the Real Monsters. It doesn't work, because she knows at least one who isn't.
• We Didn't Start the Führer: Discussed. Diana is completely sure that the war is caused by Ares brainwashing people's minds and forcing them to fight, and all the conflict will be resolved as if it was a Keystone Army. Her companions do not share much of that opinion, and think that she is too naive. Ultimately subverted, as it turns out that Ares does exist, but simply gets benefited by the war; he did not start it or force anyone to fight it against his nature.
• We Have Reserves: The Allied Generals in London refuse to authorize sending Steve on a mission to destroy the German poison gas stockpiles in Belgium because it might jeopardize the armistice talks with Germany and they consider any casualties that might be lost as a result to be acceptable losses.
• Weird Historical War: Superhuman Amazon princess marches through the Western Front's trenches in the last year of World War I saving soldiers from super-weapons.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: From a certain (at least his own) point of view, oddly enough Ares is not being evil. According to him, he just wants to bring out humans' true nature, and if/when humanity destroys itself, the Earth will be able to become beautiful once more, because they're not mucking it up with their wars.
• Wham Shot:
  • Most of the conflict in the movie is with human soldiers fighting a mundane war, giving the impression the film is thematically moving away from the big superhero showdowns present in prior DCEU films. It's not even clear that Ares is still alive, and when Ares first appears, he presents himself more as a psychological threat than a physical one. Until it becomes clear that Diana cannot be talked down, and the entire tower she's standing on explodes in a flash of power.
  • Ares effortlessly destroying Diana's sword, the supposed God-Killer.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: ZigZagged. When they're on the boat leaving Themyscira, Diana seems confused at what "marriage" is, leading Steve to think she doesn't really know what sexual attraction between men and women is like. She then explains that they do have books on Themyscira, and she has read quite a bit about it, including "all twelve volumes of Cleo's treatises on body and pleasure". Steve is still the first man she's ever met and been attracted to, though.
• What the Hell Are You?: General Ludendorff asks Diana "What are you?!" after she deflects his bullet right back at his gun.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Diana goes into the wider world honestly thinking that the Allies are the "good guys", the Central Powers are the "bad guys", and even then, that the Germans are assuredly only fighting such a massive war because Ares is influencing them to. She gets disillusioned as the movie progresses, resulting in several of these reactions:
  • She's surprised that the "good" Allied leaders in London don't actually want "peace among nations" but their peace: either keep the war going to grind Germany into dust, or force an incredibly unfavorable armistice treaty which will only lead to new wars later.
  • Diana is disgusted when she learns that in modern warfare, generals don't lead from the front anymore, but even the "good" Allied side is led by men like Field Marshal Douglas Haig sitting safely in London while sending thousands of their own men to die in trench warfare. When she protests that their own soldiers are dying on the front every day the war is prolonged, Haig flippantly tells her "That's what soldiers are for".
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Possibly to accommodate Gal Gadot's Israeli accent, none of the Amazons speak a generic American accent. Considering the Amazons' Omniglot culture, having an undefined accent makes perfect sense.
• Whole Episode Flashback: The story is book-ended by a pair of sequences set in the present, making the vast majority of the film this trope.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • We never learn what became of the German woman whom Diana targeted for her blue dress outside the gala.
  • The final fate of Dr. Maru/Dr. Poison is not revealed.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: The film plays with this trope. Diana abhors war, but is a warrior herself and fights German soldiers with sometimes lethal force in pursuit of her goals. According to director Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman uses lethal force as a last resort and takes no pleasure in killing (she still does kill a lot of people who were not directly threatening her, for someone who comes to spread love and peace). The ending, however, averts this when after the defeat of Ares, the camera pans to German soldiers (who also turn out to be teenagers) waking up and simply taking off their gas masks with expressions of relief. The German soldiers don't even engage Diana and her friends, who simply stand by their side.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Diana is certain that Ares is behind WWI and that once he is killed, his influence on humanity will dissipate immediately and they would have no more inclination to fight. Steve humors her to some degree, but does try to let her know the world is not that simple, which only becomes more heartbreaking towards the climax.
• Workout Fanservice: The first 30 minutes of the film features a number of training montages featuring literal Amazonian beauties in their usual Stripperiffic get-up performing incredibly awesome combat feats.
• World's Best Warrior. Diana's aunt and mentor, Antiope, is proclaimed to be the greatest warrior of the Amazons. Diana defeats her in their last spar, and after Antiope passes, Hippolyta passes her tiara to Diana, as Antiope's successor.
• Wrecked Weapon:
  • Ares casually obliterates the God-Killer sword with his hand simply by letting Diana thrust it at him... because it is not the God-Killer; Diana herself is.
  • During Diana's onslaught upon the German occupiers of Veld, she gets ahold of one soldier's rifle in a close-quarters fight and breaks it into a shower of splinters and broken parts across the small of her back, all in slow-mo to see the destruction.
• Xanatos Gambit: Ares has two of them:
  • His plans for Diana. He funds Steve's mission because it will require Diana to experience the Western Front first-hand. At the point that Sir Patrick calls off the mission, every possible outcome will result in Diana being disillusioned. If she goes ahead and kills Ludendorff, she'll be horrified that the war doesn't magically end. If she goes back to London, she won't reach the city until its millions of inhabitants have been gassed. If she stays in the town she liberated, she'll have a front-row seat to it and her friends being gassed. Every outcome leads to Diana's conception of humanity being inherently good stripped away. What Ares can't conceive, however, is that Diana won't share his belief that man deserves to be exterminated, that she could still see their better nature while being forced to grow aware of their worst nature.
  • Ares bringing about the Armistice. Either Ludendorff sets off his chemical weapon, killing millions, the Armistice is rejected, and everybody continues fighting, one or both sides rejects the terms of the Armistice outright and everybody continues fighting, or the Armistice is accepted with such unfavorable terms for the Germans that they rise up and cause another war before long, one even more destructive than World War I. Regardless of what happens, war will continue to devastate mankind.
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • Diana for all her life has believed that the Amazons would just have to kill Ares and men would be free from his influence. She finds out the hard way that men don't need a god's influence to go to war.
  • Also, she saves a village caught in the crossfire between the British and Germans; Charlie starts to sing again, as a result. Dr. Poison gasses the village as a demonstration.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Hippolyta tells Diana just before she leaves for WWI that she may never come back to Themyscira. However, the choice of words and the way the scene is played makes the exact meaning ambiguous. It may be a queen warning a subject of exile, or a mother worrying that a child will not return from a dangerous situation... or both.
• You Don't Look Like You: An action figure and LEGO set both show Ares sporting a helmet that resembles a ram's skull and a face that's blackened out except for his eyes. In the film itself, Ares wears a different kind of helmet and his face looks completely human. Also, he's of average height, whereas the LEGO set showed him being much bigger than a person. This appears to have been derived from an abandoned concept where he went One-Winged Angel during the final act.

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"I used to want to save the world. To end war and bring peace to mankind. But then I glimpsed the darkness that lives within their light. And learned that inside of every one of them, there will always be both. A choice each must make for themselves. Something no hero will ever defeat. And now I know. That only love can truly save the world. So I stay. I fight and I give. For the world I know can be. This is my mission now. Forever."

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