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  • The Faceless: Sylar, for a surprisingly long time after he was introduced as a character. The first time we actually see his face is in a flashback; therefore the fact that he's uncomfortably handsome is more of a shock. This is, of course, due to the fact that the first part of Season 1 was filmed before Sylar was actually cast, with veteran voice actor Maurice LaMarche providing his voice in the Sylar/Chandra phone call and the on-set Sylar being played by stunt doubles until Zachary Quinto was hired.
  • Failure Hero: The show couldn't seem to write a good guy who isn't one of these, with Peter and Mohinder getting the worst of it (and Hiro beginning to catch up). It's no coincidence that characters like Angela Petrelli, Noah Bennet, and Sylar — ranging from morally ambiguous to downright evil — tend to be extremely popular, given that they have been shown actually succeeding at their goals on a fairly regular basis.
  • Fake Guest Star: James Kyson Lee gets this treatment throughout Season 1, even though Ando appears in twenty-two out of twenty-three episodes. That's more than Peter, Nathan, or Mohinder, and way more than Simone.
  • Fake Ultimate Mook:
    • There was Stephen Canfield who could create black holes at will.
    • Then there's the Nightmare-man Maury Parkman who was implied in Volume 1 to be even worse than Sylar, but all he ever did was give a little girl nightmares.
      • Since it was that particular little girl who described him that way, we can excuse her.
  • Fallen Princess: Claire used to be the school's most popular cheerleader and kept her friendship with indie kid Zach a secret from everyone. However, after turning against a jock who tried to rape her, she found herself rejected by the cheerleaders and accepted by pretty much everyone else in the school, resulting in her being voted homecoming queen.
  • Family Versus Career As a part of Samuel's plan to manipulate Hiro, he hides Charlie in 1944 Wisconsin. Since Charlie's power is perfect memory, and she had spent the 6 months prior to her appearance learning everything there is to know about everything, she's a walking Timeline-Altering MacGuffin. Despite being in a unique position to manipulate world events (or at very least make herself fantastically rich), she chooses instead to be Rosie the Riveter and raise kids.
  • Fantastic Aesop: There are episodes devoted to explaining that You Can't Fight Fate and/or change the past. This, however does not apply to the future. You can change that as much as you like. In fact the resolution for both the first and second Volumes is the characters preventing a future event, one witnessed firsthand by one or more characters, from happening. This seems to imply that the "present" timeline that most of the show takes place in is somehow more valid or real than any other timelines.
  • The Farmer and the Viper: Due to Sylar's shifting allegions, he's frequently pitied by others who believe that he's turning good, only for him to later reaffirm his villainy and betray them.
  • Fat and Skinny: Hiro and Ando are a downplayed version. Hiro is happy, idealistic, and a little on the short and chubby side, whereas Ando is much more worldly and is a little taller and slimmer.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Adam Monroe is stuck in a coffin underground, thanks to Hiro's teleportation ability. Did we mention that he is immortal? And that he essentially can't die? He suffocates, then regenerates, then suffocates again, etc...
    • He is released by Hiro in the next season in exchange for helping Hiro and Ando. Before he can do much of anything, he is kidnapped by an agent of Arthur Petrelli, who steals Adam's immortality/healing power with a touch, causing him to die for good.
  • A Father to His Men: Danko. He admonishes Nathan for not caring enough about his agents, then later tells the rest of his team to remember two killed by a shapeshifter.
    • Subverted later when he's willing to sacrifice members of his team to allow Sylar to continue working with him undercover.
    • Also Danko's motivation in volume 5. Tracy is killing former members of his team, so Danko goes after her for revenge. Or maybe it's that whole Fantastic Racism thing again.
  • Faux Fluency: Since, despite apparently having a decent working knowledge of Japanese, Adam still pronounces Yaeko's name "Yay-ko", his Japanese is probably an example of this. And who knows how many other examples there are, since polyglots seem to grow on trees in the Heroes universe.
  • Fauxlosophic Narration: Mohinder's Book Ends mentioned above. Though in Volume Three, they mercifully switched to using actual poetry instead of MoeMoe's fluff for a time. They also let a few other characters have narration duty.
  • 15 Minutes of Fame: After Claire rescues a man from a fire early on, she lets Jackie lie about being the one who did it (all anyone saw was that the rescuer was wearing a cheerleader uniform), since she herself is mortified about the existence of her superpowers.
  • Fight Unscene: Happens three times in "Five Years Gone": twice when Future!Hiro and Future!Peter square off against the cops and once when Future!Sylar and Future!Peter have their big showdown.
    • They pull the "seen only through a crack in the door" trick again in the Volume Four finale, when Nathan and Peter fight Sylar.
      • The penultimate episode ends with a villain with the power to multiply himself surrounding Peter and a now-good Sylar in Parkman's basement. The next episode begins with Matt, upstairs, being rescued by the pair, having already defeated the villain.
  • Finger-Snap Lighter: Ted Sprague and Meredith Gordon both do this. (Meredith does it so much that fans nicknamed her "Flamepalm".)
  • Fingore: There's a scene in which Claire cuts off one of her toes. Sure, it regenerates soon after, but the whole thing's just so damn graphic.
  • First Girl Wins: Charlie over Yaeko. Well, in the order that Hiro meets them. Hiro met Charlie in present-time in Season One and went back in time and met Yaeko in feudal Japan in Season Two. Except that Charlie also didn't end up being with Hiro in the end; she was trapped in the past and married a WWII soldier and then refused to let him change her life after she'd grown old.
  • First-Episode Twist: HRG is Claire's father. Claire is also adopted and asks Sandra who her biological parents are, but we don't find out who they are until "Distractions".
  • Flanderization:
    • Matt Parkman's power was initially simply the ability to read minds. As the series went on, this was gradually expanded to the point of anything to do with minds.
    • Ditto Tracy Strauss - initially can just turn people into ice, but later expands into practically anything involving water.
    • Subverted with Sylar. In Volumes 1 and 2, all he wants to do is kill people in order to gain their abilities, and he cares about absolutely nothing else. While this is never removed, its importance is gradually reduced, as Sylar remains evil but for increasingly important other reasons.
  • The First Superheroes: The story starts with a group of seemingly ordinary people slowly discovering that they now have super powers after a solar eclipse, and now they must learn how to control their abilities, decide how to use it, and for some they choose to investigate how they acquired these powers in the first place. As shown later, there have been supers throughout History before. In the very last episode of the original series: Claire jumps from a very high ferris wheel to her "death" in front of reporters. However, as she has Healing Powers, her body begins to mend itself in front of the cameras, basically revealing their existence to the world at large.
  • Flung Clothing:
    • Peter throws off his Badass Longcoat in the middle of giving Sylar a beat down at Kirby Plaza.
    • Niki/Jessica stripping before tearing those mobsters to pieces.
  • Flechette Storm: The first time Peter and Sylar fight in Volume 1, Sylar responds to Peter's attempt to hide using Claude's invisibility by using his telekinesis to levitate shards of glass from a broken mirror and fling them through the air.
    Sylar: Interesting! I can't wait to try that one!
  • Forceful Kiss: This is how Gretchen makes her crush on Claire known. Claire also got one from Sylar, which she responded to by stabbing him in the eye.
  • Forbidden Fruit:
    • Volume Three introduces Hiro by him watching a video will of his father Kaito telling him he just inherited a safe, and never to open the safe, or the world may end. The very next thing Hiro does is open it. Kaito apparently expected nothing less of his son, seeing that the safe contains a note telling Hiro to unpause the video, in which Kaito immediately goes "I told you not to open it!"
    • Bennet telling Claire to stay away from Samuel then leaving the compass out in a highly visible hiding place. (Head-on, apply directly to forehead.)
  • Forgot About His Powers:
    • Pretty much everybody, but Hiro Nakamura takes the cake - with his powers to travel through time / freeze time, there isn't in theory any villain he couldn't defeat or any situation he couldn't save. Hell, if you raise a whole army against him, he can go back in time to the day before you started to raise an army, freeze time and kill you while you're taking a piss. So far there hasn't been a season finale climax / final confrontation which couldn't have been avoided had Hiro simply used his powers well had a brain.
      • volume 5, when Hiro goes back in time to save Charlie, does, by showboating his powers in front of Sylar. Then, Samuel kidnaps Charlie. Oh no, I better obey his wishes rather than go back in time to save Charlie, which I just did 5 minutes ago. To be fair, Hiro’s powers were malfunctioning but he still managed to travel back in time for Samuel in hopes it would help him rescue Charlie.
      • Even better, why not just have a future Hiro visit his present self, telling him where Charlie is. Then, after rescuing Charlie, present Hiro does the same thing. It's a stable time loop.
    • At the end of Season 3, Sylar kills Nathan. Angela and Noah decide to cover up the death by having Matt brainwash Sylar into thinking he's Nathan, despite the fact that Claire was elsewhere in the same building and they could have easily brought Nathan back with an infusion of Claire's blood, just as they did for Noah in Season 2.
    • Everyone Peter encounters tells him Adam Monroe can't be trusted, including people Peter knows and trusts. At this point Peter has many powers, including the ability to read minds and simply never verifies Adam's story.
  • Forgot I Could Fly: Nathan had to fly Peter out of Kirby Plaza. Hand waved that he was too busy trying not to explode.
  • Forgotten Fallen Friend: Caitlin who? Never heard of any Simone. Yaeko? Charlie? Possible Lampshade/Subversion of Charlie's death in Volume Four. Conveniently, with Simone dead, there's nobody to cry for Isaac.
    • There's possible exception of Dead Twin: the only people who knew of him on the show are Sylar (his killer) and Molly and Maya.
    • The trope was lampshaded later by Sylar. It went something like this: "What was his name again? Ted...Ted something. Ted...It's on the tip of my tongue." A few moments later... "Sprague! Ted Sprague! That was his name."
    • Matt Parkman reunites with his ex-wife after discovering he has a son, despite her history of infidelity, and apparently forgets all about his deceased girlfriend Daphne Millbrook, whose murder nearly led him attempt to exact revenge on Emil Danko and basically sapped him of the will to live.
  • Formally-Named Pet: Mr. Muggles, the Bennet family dog.
  • For Science!:
    • Mohinder. The Volume Three opener is easily the most blatant example, but he's had elements of this all along.
    • This is even lampshaded in 1961, when in a What Have I Done moment Mohinder outright states "For Science!" was his misguided motivation for the crap he pulled in Volume 3.
  • For the Evulz: The only reason Sylar ever does anything.
    • Actually a plot point After Sylar meets bio-dad who attempts to steal Sylar's healing powers to heal his cancer, gives Sylar a speech about all the things he is going to do when he is healed (pretty much all of them Evulz), which motivates Sylar (who was just pretending the whole to be caught).
    • Later while being manipulated by Adam, Peter nearly rips his brain out prying open a vault door with telekinesis where he could have easily phased through it. But that wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic nor have left him exhausted and distracted so Adam would have the opportunity to release the virus depopulation bomb.
  • Four Is Death: Twice in Volume Three. In one of Angela's dreams, and then again in a painting done by the precognitive Botswanan Usutsu.
  • Four Lines, All Waiting: The show's format is such that you have multiple characters with powers dealing with the day to day implications and difficulties thereof. Their troubles can grow to be so isolated and insular it's a wonder they interact at all. Occasionally, these characters do meet and then go on their way due to a strange kind of "fate interconnectedness" (a bit of a show theme).
  • Framed Clue: Chandra Suresh's diary is hidden inside the case of his laptop, and only discovered when Mohinder throws it down in frustration. There's also a very clumsy version of this involving reaching for some salt at a diner.
  • Freudian Excuse: While it isn't depicted in the show itself, Malcolm McDowell has speculated that Linderman must have had "quite an unhappy childhood" to take his plans so far. This is confirmed in Volume Four, where flashbacks show that he was placed in an internment camp simply because he has powers, and given his deduction on what the camp actually was, its likely that he may have spent time in the German Concentration Camps when he was younger.
  • Friendly Enemy: Sylar and Peter. In the fourth episode of Volume Three, Peter has been brought four years into the future and visits Sylar, who gives him a hug and offers to make him waffles. This is also when Peter learns that the two of them are brothers, although it later turns out not to be true. Once they realized that it's another Company scheme, they're back to punching each other's lights out. In Volume Four, they end up working together again.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Sylar/Gabriel Gray goes from a nebbish clockmaker to mass-murdering supervillain in a pretty short period of time. Even among other superpowered people, he's one of the most powerful and feared.
  • Future Badass: Hiro and Peter and almost everyone in "Five Years Gone", Peter and Claire in "I Am Become Death". Inverted with the "I Am Become Death" version of Sylar as a family man and father.
  • Future Me Scares Me: Hiro and Ando have the following conversation in "Five Years Gone". This is the basis for the trope's name, with a clarity tweak.
    Hiro: I look upset.
    Ando: Go talk to yourself.
    Hiro: No way! I scare me; you do it.
    • Most of the future heroes are pretty scary. The exception is Sylar, who is considerably nicer...and is rather afraid of reverting to his past self (in one future, anyway; in another, he's President, and has just about everybody else's powers, and is about to top even himself by committing super-genocide.
  • Gambit Roulette:
    • Subverted. It appears the mysterious organization seems to be manipulating a ridiculous number of variables to come out at a dark future, but we eventually discover that things didn't turn out quite as they planned either. Also, they specifically have: 1) a guy who can see the future; 2) a little girl who can tell them exactly where any human being in the world is at all times; 3) a telepath capable of reading people's minds over long distances and probing their deepest memories. And, initially, 4) an agent capable of total mind control, being able to order anyone she can talk to to do anything and then make them forget about it. All this makes the villains' prescience at least a bit more plausible. Really, the dizzying array of assets the Company has at the outset of the series tends to make their failures less believable than their successes.
    • Played Straight on a smaller scale, when Nathan's crusade is about to be shut down by an appalled Homeland Security agent (and acquaintance of the currently imprisoned Tracy), Nate's second-in-command manages to rig Tracy's restraints, so she'd break free, try to escape, and show just how dangerous she really is...just in time for the agent (who'd just returned with an armful of Cease and Desist orders) to see her freak out and kill someone (something Tracy hadn't done in a while because she had actual control of her powers now). This whole scenario only works if Tracy panics and kills - something she hadn't done in months. Plus the chance that the agent shuts the place down anyway and insists Tracy be tried for murder, publicly.
  • Gender Bender: Once Sylar acquired the shape shifting ability, we saw him shit to females often enough.
    • In "Into Asylum" (season 3 episode 21) Sylar acquires the ability to shape shift, and his first transformation is into a female agent.
    • In "Turn And Face The Strange" (season 3 episode 22), Sylar shape-shifts into the form of Sandra Bennett.
    • In "The Fifth Stage" (season 4 episode 11), Sylar shifts to become Nurse Hammer.
  • Gene Hunting: Claire. Toyed with, in that she does this not out of any sense of insecurity, but because she wants an explanation for her immortality. Eventually she finds her biological parents: her mom is Meredith Gordon, a petty crook and powerful pyrokinetic, and her dad turns out to a be congressman and brother to the man who saved her life: Nathan Petrelli, destined to become President. Nice.
  • Generic Doomsday Villain:
  • Genocide Backfire: The whole cockup at the Coyote Sands Concentration Camp. Although not a deliberate attempt at genocide, it was a major effort by the U.S. Government to round up and contain supers; before you know it Dr. Suchong Dr. Suresh slaps a little girl, little girl blasts him with lightning, soldiers freak out and open fire on everybody, and hey nonny nonny you've got blood all over the place and a whole bunch of dead supers. And from the ashes rises two groups of very pissed off supers: The Company (who have been responsible for, among other things, attempting to nuke New York City and creating a virus capable of wiping out 99% of the Earth's population), and Samuel Sullivan (the super Antichrist who, if powered by enough followers, potentially has the ability to split the Earth in half).
  • The Ghost: Mr. Linderman spent the first half of the first Volume as an invisible character. This was later revealed to be due to budget constraints. The show's budget wasn't big enough to pay for the high cost of Malcolm McDowell appearing from the start. In Volume Three, he appeared as sort of a literal ghost.
  • Given Name Reveal: Volume One, for some odd reason, had a big reveal in the final episode that HRG's name was really Noah. It's the final stage in the humanization of the character, who started the show as a seemingly absolutely cold-blooded man in black but was gradually shown to be more sympathetic, complex and heroic over the course of the first season.
  • The Glasses Come Off:
    • Mr. Bennett whips off or puts his glasses back on every time he makes a big decision. His glasses are such an iconic part of his character that in the early days of season one, before his name was revealed, he was known to fans simply as HRG (Horn-Rimmed Glasses).
    • Sylar doesn't need glasses — but in a Flashback, it's shown that he used to, and turning evil apparently improved his eyesight. However, Sylar is only seen wearing his glasses while working on a watch, implying that he is farsighted rather than nearsighted, which would explain why he does not have to wear them while kicking arse. In later episodes, Sylar's glasses seem to have become more symbolic. When he's wearing them he's Gabriel Grey, the nice watchmaker he used to be. When he takes them off, he's the evil Sylar.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Ted, Peter, and Sylar get the glowy eyes when they're about to explode.
  • Good Feels Good: In Volume Five, a freshly-turned Sylar seems to have finally settled on this — subduing Eric Doyle and tying him up for the police really did feel better than going the extra mile and killing him.
  • Good Powers, Bad People: Linderman has the power to heal, but his goal is to blow up New York. He usually uses his power to manipulate or control people by giving, withholding, or revoking healing.
  • Good Thing You Can Heal: Claire Bennet is sort of the Trope Namer (it isn't a direct quote but might as well be due to all the trauma the writers like to put her through.) Lately, ever since he gained Regeneration, Sylar is giving Claire a run for her money, with getting shot, his shoulder dislocated, his throat slashed etc.
    • Especially in the early episodes in Volume I, Claire seemed to do something stupid just to get injured and heal, as if to remind the audience what her power was (grabbing a hot pan out of the oven with no mitts, sticking her hand into a running garbage disposal, etc.) While it's quick shorthand for those who may have come in late, it still made it seem like gaining regeneration turned Claire into either a moron or a masochist.
  • A God Am I: Adam Monroe, at least in the supplementary comic books. Also Baron Samedi, the Haitian's brother. He seems to give off major Xerxes and Colonel Kurtz vibes, too. Let's not forget Arthur Petrelli, with his delusional Nietzche fixation.
  • Gone Horribly Right: At the start of Volume Three, Mohinder injects himself with a serum to give him powers like the other heroes. He does indeed get powers similar to Spider-Man. Unfortunately, he then starts sticking people in webs. Also in "Villains" the company wanted to get Sylar to kill again so they could analyze his ability. They got him to kill again but they also turned him into a murderous psychopath that ended up killing several of their agents.
  • Grand Theft Me: Several episodes of mindscrewing with the poor schlub, before Sylar officially took control of Matt's body.
  • Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: There's actually a scene in the second episode where Peter is standing on a ledge talking to Nathan. Peter gets angry and starts walking towards his brother — off the ledge and onto thin air. He doesn't even realise he's doing it until Nathan points out the three feet of empty space beneath him, at which point Gravitational Cognisance apparently kicks in and he falls back to the ground. Justified in that Peter is unwittingly using his new flying ability, but the effect is still remarkably cartoony.
  • Greasy Spoon: Hiro met his beloved at one of these, and Nathan Petrelli at another.
  • Groin Attack: A particularly painful variation occurs when Peter takes a nail gun and fires it right into Sylar's groin.
  • Growing Up Sucks: An amnesiac Hiro declares this in Volume Three after discovering everything that happened in the previous Volumes.
  • Hand Wave: Muggles can apparently find Specials by carefully thumb-tacking several bits of colored string to a map. It happens several times.
  • Hannibal Lecture: Subverted. Mr. Bennet is too clever to fall for Sylar's speech. Likewise, his daughter Claire gives Sylar a good Shut Up, Hannibal! in the Volume 3 final showdown.
  • Hanlon's Razor: Future Peter. Especially that corollary of any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
  • Happily Adopted: Claire. It helps that her "real" family are mostly jerks.
  • Harmful Healing: Because of their Healing Factor, both Sylar and Claire have had their regrown flesh lodge foreign objects inside.
  • Have You Told Anyone Else?: When Noah Bennet asks this of Claire about her powers, she tells him that Zach knows and Lyle found out. The next day, Claire finds that their memories have been erased.
  • Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?: In Volume One, complete with Claire being asked if she plans to "come out" to her family. The Shanti virus (the original strain) also has some parallels to HIV.
  • Headphones Equal Isolation: Emma, a deaf character, wears iPod earbuds that aren't connected to anything to prevent people from trying to talk to her.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Mr. Bennet, whose various ruthless actions proved to be an elaborate stratagem to protect his daughter from the very company he's working for, and who is eventually outed and forced to join with two of the heroes in order to keep her safe. This seems more like a mole], although the problem with both of these is that he still seems more like a {{Heel}} than a {{Face}}. Continuing to think of him as a {{Heel}} is seeming more reasonable all the time, as Claire (very) briefly flirted with [[FaceHeelTurn going Heel in Volume Three.
  • Heel–Face Revolving Door:
    • Sylar starting in Volume Three. So many in fact that you think he'd get whiplash.
      • Finally resolved near the end of the series as Face.
    • Also Nathan Petrelli throughout the show. But then, he IS a politician...
    • Tracy Strauss: she's started as a political ally to Nathan Petrelli with a penchant for turning journalists into popsicles, who then jumps ship after being told she's a synthetic superpowered triplet and becomes Arthur Petrelli's office bitch, who then tries to "help" Peter and the others at the start of Volume 4 after Arthur kicks the bucket, who then breaks out of Building 26 captivity and is shot, whilst frozen, by Danko, who then returns as some killer ice queen/water-controlling wench with a serious grudge against anyone from Building 26, including Noah Bennet, who then goes a bit soft and gooey around Bennet when he offers her clam chowder after watching Danko get sliced to ribbons. Yeah, we got a little confused with her too.
      • She's related to Niki, who had a split personality. Only makes sense she's kind-of crazy, too.
    • Angela Petrelli could be an alternate title for the Trope.
    • Mohinder can't seem to decide whether he's teaming up with one side, the other, or working for himself. He spends the first half of Volume 2 working with Noah and agreeing that they're going to "Take this company down." Two minutes with Noah's boss and Mohinder has decided that capturing and experimenting on the Specials for the greater good is the way to go.
  • Heroic Fatigue: Peter in season 4.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Maury Parkman, of all people.
    • Then subverted. D.L. takes a bullet from Linderman to save Niki. Enter season two, he is dead, and we are led to believe that is how he died. But then a flashback to four months ago has him make a full recovery from the hospital, and is indeed well enough to go fight fires and stuff...only to get shot by some random crackhead with the hots for Niki.
    • Don't forget Niki Sanders, who tries to rescue Monica from a burning building at the end of Volume 2, without her super-strength. Monica gets out, Niki doesn't.
    • Daphne is shot trying to rescue Claire, Matt, and the others. She initially survived, but later dies from sepsis because Danko had her removed from the medical facility.
    • Hana Gitelman does it twice... but on the supplementary comic books.
    • And Traci apparently sacrifices herself in a spectacularly permanent-looking fashion to prevent Danko from killing Micah/Rebel. The Volume 4 finale shows that she got better.
    • Nathan Petrelli flies off with his critically nuclear little brother Peter in the Volume 1 season finale. He also "gets better" after a sense in the next season... Then at the end of Volume 4 trying to atone for this Volume's douchery he goes up against Sylar by himself (ditching Peter in the middle of the battle) and gets himself killed.
    • Matt, after having his body possessed by Sylar, uses his ability to arouse everyone else's suspicions about him, leading the Texas police force to deploy a dozen men with guns to form a circle around him. In order to stop Sylar from going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the people who stole his body, Matt makes the cops think Sylar has a gun, leading them to open fire, and effectively taking out both Sylar and Matt.
      • Too bad that Peter ruins everything
  • Heroic Suicide
    • Eden, who kills herself to prevent Sylar from gaining her ability.
    • Peter also tries to pull one in "How to Stop an Exploding Man", but is saved at the last minute by Nathan.
  • Hidden Elf Village: This seems to be the purpose of Big Bad Samuel's Carnival in Volume 5. They're a bit more proactive than most, as Samuel's M.O. often involves secretly arranging the deaths of Muggles to push other supers into joining the Carnival.
  • Hijacked By Sylar: Pretty much a constant.
  • Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Mocked hilariously when Hiro repeatedly uses his power to sabotage a copier so that a goofball accountant won't photocopy his butt and get fired. Every time Hiro stops him, he just does it again at the next party.
  • Hitman with a Heart: Edgar is an assassin who wants to quit.
  • Hollywood Law: In "Ink" Peter Petrelli, a paramedic, is sued for injuring a man by dislocating his shoulder while rescuing him. This turns out to be false, but in any case there were no grounds to sue in the first place: the Good Samaritan Law immunizes any person who accidentally injures someone when attempting to help them from liability.
  • Homage: Lots and lots.
  • Homeless Hero: Claude, Danny Pine, Daphne.
    • Danny Pine, a murdering thug, is hardly a hero
  • Homeless Pigeon Person: Claude. He basically walks a fine line between this and Crazy Homeless Person.
  • Honey Trap: Under Company orders, Elle is dispatched to get close to and encourage a pre-Sylar Gabriel to develop his burgeoning powers. She ends up falling for him, but it all goes heads up when he discovers she had been lying to him about not having powers. Needless to say, he was not happy to see her pop up in Mohinder's lab.
  • Horrible Judge of Character: Mohinder Suresh embodies this trope. Maya is even worse.
  • Horror Hunger
  • Hot-Blooded: Peter Petrelli
  • How Do I Shot Web?: Peter. Oh, the number of time he tries. It gets depressing.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl/One Head Taller:
    • Matt (6'2") and Daphne (5'2")
      • Daphne is also significantly shorter than her partner Knox (5'10") when they approach Hiro and Ando at the bar.
    • Sylar (6'2") and Elle (5'1").
    • Claire (5'1") and West (6'), Sylar...heck, any guy she stands next to (with the exception of Hiro).
    • Noah (6'2") and his subordinate Eden (5'3").
  • Idiot Ball: It's like they're playing basketball with the damn thing. May even count as an aversion, in that everyone is so stupid all the time that it's out of the ordinary when one of the characters does anything intelligent. "Smart Ball", perhaps?
    • Beforehand, Hiro was persuaded by the carnival guy that he can change the timeline without doing too much damage. A few episodes later, the carnival guy tells Hiro that saving Charlie would screw up history...and he believed him despite that other encounter where the carnival guy says the opposite thing.
    • Then there's Mohinder, who pulls a move straight out of BioShock's playbook, and injects himself with an untested serum for superpowers. Then, he, a scientist, is horrified when it doesn't work. No, seriously, Mohinder. There is a reason for the scientific method. And human testing laws. And psyche evaluations.
      • And how does Mohinder decide to fix his little problem? Well obviously by kidnapping people to experiment on.
    • Think of what Peter, Nathan, and Claire could have learned if they'd actually sat down and talked to each other at the end of ".07%"! Bonus points if they'd thought to bring Mohinder into the conversation, or, you know, their mom!
    • When Tracy Strauss is imprisoned by Nathan's men, one of her many powerful friends comes to inspect the building. Said friend is shocked to find Tracy in such conditions and promises to get her out. What does Tracy do afterwards? She breaks out of the prison and kills one of their men, turning her friend against her.
  • Idiot Hero: Peter, first and foremost, though he starts to grow out of it. Switches off between Hiro, Mohinder, and Nathan.
  • If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: Happens to Hiro at one point, when he is told to kill Ando. Hiro goes back a few minutes to get a trick sword and a bag of fake blood.
  • If You Won't, I Will: Season 1 when Ando goes off on his own to kill Sylar.
  • I Have You Now, My Pretty: Inspired by their different paths over the course of the series, Sylar woos a captive Claire in the Volume 4 season finale just before his attempt to become President of the United States. Especially creepy in that, by the series' timeline, Claire is barely 17 at this point.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal:
    • Claire, but other characters fall into this as well.
    • Parkman says this to Daphne in Volume Four. Claire, on the other hand, seems to have given up on any hope of a normal life.
    • Parkman, at the start of Volume 5, is trying to lead a normal life with his wife and son - trying to give up using his powers, attending drug rehabilitation sessions to try to keep his "addiction" under control. Of course, now he's got Sylar living in his head, this obviously won't last...
    • Believe it or not, Sylar.
  • I Just Want to Be Special: Seriously, don't mention being special around Sylar—it will only lead to tears and dissection. Also Hiro and Peter (at least until Peter learned the downsides of his ability), Monica too.
  • I Know Mortal Kombat: Monica gains the Kung fu skills by watching a Bruce Lee film.
  • I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Charlie Andrews.
  • I Lied: Done by Matt. To Sylar.
  • I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Averted. George Takei and Nichelle Nichols were both in Volume Two, but had no scenes together.
  • Immunity Disability: Claire can't get drunk because of her regenerative ability. She uses this to her advantage once, but complains about it other times.
  • Important Haircut: Aside from the Evil Hair Gel mentioned above, there was Sylar (mercifully) cutting Peter's trademark Emo bangs.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Mohinder has attacked people with things like tuning forks, syringes, microscopes, rolling chalkboards, elephant sculptures, tables, fire extinguishers, and taxi doors with an astonishing rate of success. We're nearing "In the average living room, there are 1,242 objects Chuck Norris can use to kill you, including the room itself" territory here.
  • I'm Standing Right Here: In Volume 1 when Nathan gives a campaign speech on his "mentally disturbed" little brother. Naturally, Peter punches him right in the face afterwards in the parking garage as Nathan was getting ready to leave.
  • In a Single Bound: Sylar does this in an early episode using telekinesis.
  • Informed Flaw: For all of Volume 3's talk about Sylar's uncontrollable "hunger", he seems perfectly capable of hanging around and interacting with other supers without eating fingerbanging their brains to see what makes them tick. This seems to be the case even after he turns back fully to the side of evil (he never chows down on Luke, for example, despite on multiple occasions being given a good reason to do so. Ditto for Doyle, who he must have been lugging around for more than a day). Peter Petrelli, on the other hand, pretty much chops open the head of every single person he meets after acquiring Sylar's ability, despite (unlike Sylar) receiving no apparent tangible benefit from doing so.
    • (Though in Sylar's case this could be because he spent Volume 3 working to get it under control for the sake of his (fake) family.)
    • This was an unforgivably poor explanation of Sylar's murderous impulses. If his power was responsible for him being evil, how do the writers explain his violent, power-lusting behavior during the second season, the entire duration of which he was powerless?
      • Addiction to power can be separate from addiction to knowledge.
      • In Volume 2 he mostly murdered and manipulated for the sake of self-preservation... and the powerlust could be interpreted as withdrawal symptoms.
      • What about in volume 5 with fake Nathan? Shouldn't he have felt urges? And also when Peter borrows fake Nathan's powers. Shouldn't Peter have been overcome by the urges again?
  • In Harm's Way: Bennet tried to retire after the fall of the Company. It didn't take.
  • In-Series Nickname: FLYING-MAN!!! Ironically, the character with the least interest in becoming a superhero is one of the first to get a superhero alias.
  • In Spite of a Nail: "I Am Become Death" shows Nathan as President and Peter as a scarred renegade — the same as in "Five Years Gone" despite other major differences. And as of Volume Four, "Five Years Gone" seems more likely than ever.
  • Instant Sedation: In Volume Four, the Building 26 teams stick tubes up the noses of captured "specials" that release some sort of gas that instantly sedates them. The inverse is also the case: when the tubes are removed, the victims instantly wake up again.
  • Invincible Hero: Peter. The writers realized this in Season 2; unfortunately this lead to him getting Easy Amnesia in the first half of the season and carrying a massive Idiot Ball in the second instead of having it fixed in any meaningful way. Fortunately, they learned from their mistake and reduced his power significantly in Volume 3(He can now only copy one ability at a time).
  • Invisibility: Claude. It's there in his name.
  • Invulnerable Knuckles: Peter shakes his fist in pain after clocking Sylar in the mouth for making an insensitive comment about Emma. Oddly enough, this takes place inside Sylar's head, so the pain should have been at least imaginary.
    • And in their Kirby Plaza altercation, Peter's fists made contact with Sylar's face enough times for Sylar to spit up blood and Peter's radiation ability started to go haywire.
  • The Irish Mob: Peter's Aborted Arc in Season 2.
  • It Is Not Your Time: Happens to Hiro.
  • It's All About Me: Sylar. In his mind, Angela pretending to be his mother is worse than her trying to destroy New York.
  • It Runs in the Family: The Petrellis, patron saints of revenge and cheap powers. Also leaving behind loved ones for dead seems to be a Petrelli family trait. Then there's Sylar and his dad, who are both cold-blooded killers who have no qualms about taking life whenever it suits them. And Mohinder and Chandra; it seems that Mohinder inherited those stupidity genes. Both are unstable scientists prone to obsession who invariably end up working for evil people who they fail to recognize for what they are. It's shown in 1961 that Chandra is indirectly responsible for all the crap that has happened in the Heroes-verse, namely setting off the tragic events that led to the formation of the ruthless Company and all the nastiness they've ever done. Nice job breaking it, Papa Suresh. Mohinder is understandably chagrined when he finds out.
  • It's the Best Whatever, Ever!: Hiro and the comic book guy agree.

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