Person Of Interest / Tropes N to S

Main Page | Tropes A-G | Tropes H-M | Tropes N-S | Tropes T-Z

---

N

• Nebulous Evil Organization: Decima Technologies, working with Samaritan can be behind just about anything, roping our heroes into various otherwise unrelated issues to foil them.
• The Needs of the Many: How Finch justified ignoring the Irrelevant list before Nathan's death forced him to realize his mistake.
  "People die; they've been doing it for a long, long time. We can't save all of them."
• Nested Story Reveal: After Finch is killed in "If-Then-Else", the camera switches to the Machine's POV where a "SIMULATION TERMINATED" message pops up. It turns out to have been just a simulation - one of many options the Machine was considering.
• Never-Forgotten Skill: The episode "The High Road" shows a POI who is an expert safecracker who can crack a combination safe by ear. He retired a long time ago and had been living as a husband and family man in the suburbs...until his partners-in-crime found him and pulled him in for one last job. Despite not have practiced for years, he managed to pull off this rare lost art of a skill like a professional.
• New Media Are Evil:
  • The Machine reads personal data from social networking sites as part of its data mining algorithm. Finch invented the concept of online social networking (and made a hefty profit in the process) specifically so that the information would be available for the Machine to do so.
  • Truth in Television, perhaps? See this article on privacy issues surrounding Siri the iPhone digital assistant.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Our heroes have plenty of these moments.
  • John Reese: In one episode, he helped a history teacher who was being hunted down by the Russian mob. Managed to save that teacher, only to find out he was Carl Elias who would later become the city's most powerful crime boss.
  • Harold Finch: Chose to delete the irrelevant list the Machine produced in order to maintain its secrecy. As a result, he didn't see Nathan's number on the list and was unable to prevent his death. Through that, he found out just how truly corrupt the people he entrusted the Machine to were. He spends the rest of the series attempting to atone for these mistakes.
  • Joss Carter: After John saved her life, she still decided to hand him over to his old CIA partner. Only to find out that they planned to kill him, instead of arrest him, when they shoot him in the stomach.
  • There are also moments like these from non-recurring characters involved in cases.
    • One POI was a stock broker who had his uncle/adaptive father invest his money (and company money) into his firm, only to find out that his corrupt co-workers abused his money. He managed to get it back though.
    • Maxine, an investigative reporter who wrote a story on someone she suspected to be HR's boss. Turned out that he was an informant who was helping the FBI find the real boss, only to get killed because of her story. She redeemed herself by locating the evidence with John's help (not that the real boss was found though).
  • Reese realises he did this in "Reasonable Doubt" giving a gun to a POI who planned to kill her husband, but manages to mostly fix things, while washing his hands of the POI.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Greer infected the Machine with a virus in an attempt to gain control of it. The virus freed the Machine from Finch's previously imposed limitations and made it possible for the Machine to eventually defeat Samaritan.
• No Honor Among Thieves:
  • Most of the major defeats of various members of the Rogues Gallery have been inflicted by other members of the Rogues Gallery. For example:
  • HR has been severely damaged by Donnelly (who admittedly isn't a villain). While HR is eventually devastated through Carter and honest FBI agents, Elias has Simmons killed.
  • Root has killed a major figure in Northern Lights and has now infiltrated them.
  • Kara has killed Donnelly and captured Snow, then was killed by Snow, who simply hid in her car while the bomb she'd strapped him into counted down to detonation. He let her know he was there when it was too late for her to shut off the bomb.
• No Kill like Overkill:
  • In "Firewall", HR is willing to blow up an entire hotel floor to kill Caroline Turing and the Man in the Suit.
  • In "God Mode", the government stages a suicide bombing on a ferry full of civilians in order to silence Nathan Ingram.
  • Decima stages a mass-casualty terror attack by Vigilance in "Deus Ex Machina" to ingratiate itself with the U.S. government.
• Noodle Incident:
  • In the opening sequence of the second episode, "Ghosts," we see the very end of one case, and it's heavily implied that there were several other POIs for Reese and Finch in the time between "Pilot" and "Ghosts."
  • The blood on Reese's shirt at the beginning of "Many Happy Returns" has never been explained; when asked about it, he just said that he'd "quit his job." We still don't know what he's referring to, but based on the timeline it's unlikely the incident at Ordos because that happened in December 2010, and the flashbacks in MHR took place in February 2011.^note It is possible that this is a writer mistake though. In the original Pilot script, John did have an injury from his final mission when he came to find Jessica; it's possible they forgot that the timeline had been changed by the time they wrote MHR.
  • Played for laughs with Fusco's storyline during "Prisoner's Dilemma" - we do see snippets, but there's no explanation as to how one leads into the next.
  • In "Proteus", John gets shot at by a drug smuggler using a spear gun. When Finch asks if it was the first time, John replies "Wish I could say yes."
  • "The Devil's Share" was not the first time Shaw shot at US Marshals.
  • Most of Root's operations as The Machine's analog interface starting in Season 3 fall into this category. For example, we never find out why she's posing as a flight attendant and has a pilot tied up in the trunk of her car in "Nautilus."
  • The events that led to Finch taking on a new identity in the first place (even before he attended MIT) have never been explained, though in a flashback, Nathan implied that if Finch revealed his true identity, he would face charges of sedition and mayhem.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Invoked by Finch. The government does not know how the Machine actually operates and Finch provided them with no plans or documentation specifically so they cannot adapt the technology for other purposes. He also encrypted the operating system so it cannot be reverse-engineered. All they can really do is feed its data and wait for it to give them social security numbers to investigate. Finch is the only one who knows how the Machine 'thinks' and he made sure that the government does not know he exists.
  • It turns out that at the same time Finch was building the Machine, his old friend and classmate Arthur Claypool was building Samaritan under an NSA contract, which was intended to do the exact same thing. Claypool came very close to completion, with Samaritan being canned only because Finch completed the Machine first. In "Lethe", Northern Lights is revealed to be looking for the Claypool's private backups of Samaritan, presumably because the Machine is no longer under their control.
• No Ending: "Cura Te Ipsum": We never learn of Benton's fate. "Many Happy Returns" suggests he might be in the same Mexican prison as Deputy Brad Jennings, but it’s never been confirmed.
• No Name Given:
  • Finch, Reese, and company don't have a name for themselves in-universe.
  • Many of the former and serving assassins and intelligence officers on the show operate with fake names, having abandoned their previous identities long ago. Reese, Stanton, Hersh and Greer are prime examples.
  • Control, the head of the ISA, has never been addressed by name on screen.
• Not Me This Time: When the gang goons find Reese and the witness he is protecting in "Witness", Finch immediately thinks Fusco sold them out again. He didn't; the "witness" turns out to be Elias.
• Not Quite Dead:
  • Kara Stanton, Reese's former partner, turns up in "Matsya Nyaya" despite appearing to have a bomb dropped on her during flashbacks in the same episode. Though it is justified, as a wounded Reese was able to get a safe distance away, meaning there was plenty of time for her to escape too.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Comes up a lot with all the Evil Counterparts in the series.
  • Finch and Root, who describes Finch as a "worthy opponent." This is unwittingly lampshaded by Finch in "Firewall," when he describes her (not yet realizing who she is) as "a girl after my own heart." Later used explicitly in "The Contingency" where Finch admits they are alike. However that episode also shows how they're not alike, as Finch does not share her Lack of Empathy (but this is shown to change later on in "/" ""Root Path" when it is show that Root is capable of empathy and carries a fare share of guilt.).
  • When Northern Lights assassin Hersh finally catches up with Reese, the later tries to convince him I Work Alone. Hersh knows he's lying, as people like them are more comfortable taking orders than giving them.
  • Shaw outright calls Vigilance terrorists and not that different from the monsters, like in Northern Lights, that they fight. Control also calls them terrorists in the Season 3 finale. She also points out that at least she recognizes herself as Necessarily Evil, but they instead "wrapped [themselves] up in the American Flag" to justify their actions.
• Not So Similar: Whereas Elias is calm, patient, cunning, A Father to His Men, and prefers to solve problems without violence, Dominic is rash, headstrong, and believes Murder Is the Best Solution.

O

• Obligatory Earpiece Touch: Reese does this every time he talks to his handler, Finch. In the second season, it was retconned that the touches allowed him to turn the earpiece on and off, a feature not expressed in the first season.
• Oddly Small Organization: The team originally consisted of Reese, Finch, and a giant all seeing super computer. Over the course of the series, we've added Carter, Fusco, Bear the dog, and Sameen Shaw as regular members, and Zoe Morgan and Leon Tao as recurring independent contractors.
  • Root floats on the outskirts of this, mainly because her Anti-Villain role overlaps with the team's goals since she's the Machine's "analogue" representative in the real world.
  • Subverted when it's revealed that the "team" is just ONE of The Machine's teams, specifically the New York team. It has other teams around the U.S. (possibly global), such as Joey who is part of the Washington D.C. team, with Pierce as the equivalent of Finch and "Harper" as a cross between Shaw and Root.
• Off Bridge, onto Vehicle: In the episode "Reasonable Doubt" the POI escapes Carter by jumping off a high-rise onto a dump truck full of garbage.
• Off-into-the-Distance Ending: The pilot ends with Reese walking off into a crowded street of New York.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Finch's face when he realizes that the woman he and Reese have been protecting is actually Root.
  • A more subtle one in a flashback, when Nathan realizes he's absent-mindedly revealed Harold's existence to Alicia.
  • The POI in "Masquerade" when she realizes that John understood her when she insulted him in another language.
  • "Prisoner's Dilemma," when Finch realizes that The Machine has given him Donnelly's number.
  • Kara Stanton gets one when she discovers Mark Snow and his bomb vest sitting in the backseat of her car.
  • From "Proteus": "...body armor."
  • And then Finch's reaction when Sameen Shaw tracks him down, inside the library, which to his knowledge has never been compromised.^note Note that Alicia Corwin sucessfully trailed Finch to the library in "Firewall", broke into the library, bypassed his security measures and copied the Irrelevant list, but he does not seem to be aware of this. (Probably because Root shot Alicia before she could say anything.)
  • Finch seems to have this face whenever he is about to receive a new number.
  • The Machine going down due to Stanton's virus.
  • Root getting a phone call from the Machine in the mental facility.
  • Shaw's face at the end of "Point of Origin" when she locks eyes with Martine.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: The Machine starts displaying these after it is infected by the Decima virus.
  • Also, as of season 3, Root's appearance in the intro has some distinctive visual distortion.
• Once per Episode: "We have a new number."
• Once a Season: Through Season 4
  • The fourth episode has an Ambiguous Ending ("Cura Te Ipsum," "Triggerman," "Reasonable Doubt," "Brotherhood")
  • A Mid-Season Twist, which is a multi-episode arc in Seasons 2 through 4
    • Season 1: "Number Crunch"
    • Season 2: "Shadow Box," "2-Pi-R," "Prisoner's Dilemma," and "Dead Reckoning"
    • Season 3: "Endgame," "The Crossing," and "The Devil's Share," followed by a second multi-episode twist: "Lethe" and "Aletheia"
    • Season 4: "The Cold War," "If-Then-Else," "Control-Alt-Delete," and "M.I.A."
• One Sam Limit: Averted, but only by a technicality. There's Sameen Shaw, who goes by 'Shaw' (except for Root who has a plethora of nicknames for her), and Samantha Groves, who prefers to be known as "Root".
  • Season three introduced a third "Sam": Samaritan.
  • "/" gives Greer's first name as John, same as Reese, but notes that it's an alias.
• One Head Taller: Everyone, even Fusco (the next shortest) towers over Shaw, as she's played by Sarah Shahi, who's 5'3. It's especially noticeable when she kisses her Love Interest Root (played by Amy Acker, who's 5'8).
• Only a Flesh Wound:
  • Reese prefers to shoot mooks in the leg and knee to disable them. He probably is not too concerned if some of them bleed out, or are permanently crippled as a result. He will shoot to kill if there is no other option.
  • Reese is shot in the shoulder and it is later revealed to be Only a Flesh Wound. The placement of the bandage suggests that it really was just a glancing shot that did not hit muscle or bone. The shock from getting shot still takes Reese out of the fight long enough for the bad guys to get away.
    • The same thing happens to the hitman in "Ghosts."
  • Reese is on the receiving end of an intentional one in "Blue Code."
• Opening Narration:
  • Season 1:
    Finch: You are being watched. The government has a secret system, a Machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because ... I built it. I designed The Machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything, crimes involving ordinary people like you, crimes the government considered irrelevant. They wouldn't act so I decided I would—but I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You'll never find us; but victim or perpetrator, if your number's up, we'll find you.
  • For the first two episodes of Season 2, there is no Opening Narration by Finch because he's been kidnapped by Root.
  • Beginning with the third episode, there's a new narration and title sequence.
    Finch: You are being watched. The government has a secret system, a Machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I designed the Machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people. The government considers these people irrelevant. We don’t. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You'll never find us. But victim or perpetrator, if your number’s up, we’ll find you.
    • At this point, a brief silent snap of the episode showing the POI is shown.
  • In Season 4, with Samaritan online, Finch's first statement changes to "We are being watched." The rest of the speech is the same, becoming sort of an Artifact Title Sequence: The Machine is no longer the Government's "secret system"; Samaritan is. The fact that there are two competing systems is probably confusing to new viewers.
  • In Season 5, Greer interrupts to make the narration more about Samaritan:
    Finch: You are being watched. The government has a secret system –
    Greer: – a system that you asked for, to keep you safe –
    Finch: – a machine that spies on you every hour of every day.
    Greer: You granted it the ability to see everything: to index, order, and control the lives of ordinary people.
    Finch: The government considers these people irrelevant. We don't.
    Greer: But to it, you are all irrelevant. Victim or perpetrator, if you stand in its way...
    Finch: ...we'll find you.
• Oppressive States of America: In Season 4, Samaritan manages to methodically build one through several actions it takes with the resources Decima has at its disposal.
  • First it builds a network of 58 state level politicians who can be easily influenced to do its bidding, while preserving operational security through the murder of anyone who has the slightest suspicion that something is amiss
  • Then it initiates large scale funding of a education non-profit intending to utilize the technology as a means to brainwash the next generation of American children.
  • After that Samaritan conducts a cyber-attack on the computer systems of the NYSE, instigating a market crash that is only reversed by the frantic efforts of Team Machine.
  • Despite that setback Samaritan manages to compromise and cultivate the White House Chief Of Staff as a potential asset and begins building a army of assets in important sectors of American society such as the government.
  • It's revealed that Samaritan has been experimenting with mind control technology.
  • Finally, it initiates a successful operation to conduct the targeted killing of any potential opposition to it and its goals, leaving Team Machine totally isolated.
• Origins Episode: "RAM" is in effect this, showing how things were in 2010 when Finch first started out. It establishes Finch's first forays into intervention with his first partner, a merc named Dillinger; shows why and how the laptop with Finch's virus/vaccine got to China; and ties together how Northern Lights and Decima began chasing for the Machine. Most significantly, it shows when and why Finch chose Reese.
• Outside-Context Problem: In Season 4, Dominic and Elias struggle for control of organised crime in New York only to be gunned down in the Season Finale by a sniper sent by Samaritan, whose existence they're not even aware of.
• Overt Rendezvous: Reese and Finch often meet in public to discuss their cases.

P

• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Reese trying to find out more about Finch in Season One, which Finch treats as something like a game between them.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Reese helps the POI of "In Extremis" do this to the man who poisoned him.
  • Elias does this a couple of times: he has his father killed for the murder of Elias' mother and the assassination attempt on Elias himself. He also has Scarface garotte Simmons in his hospital bed in revenge for the murder of Carter, since the good guys decided to honour Carter's wishes and have Simmons brought in by the book. As he points out, civilisation might rest on treating criminals better than they treated their victims, but he and Simmons aren't civilised people.
• Paying It Forward: In the final season, it was revealed that at least three of the people the heroes have saved over the series have formed their own team. They are getting their own set of Numbers from the Machine and are saving the associated people from deadly danger. It is implied that there might be other teams of previous Numbers who are paying things forward this way.
• Physical Scars, Psychological Scars:
  • Michael Emerson said that Finch's injury is said to be this in the script.
  • The scars across Elias' palms from Moretti's attempt on his life may also be this.
• Plot Tailored to the Party: If-Then-Else is about the Machine doing one of these, combined with the "Groundhog Day" Loop, as The Machine tries to discover what characters are most suited towards which roles through a series of simulations.
• Police Are Useless: Some of them aren't (Carter and Fusco being the most obvious examples), but Internal Affairs has utterly failed to find any dirty cops without direct assistance from Team Machine, and has twice been used as a patsy by HR.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Finch designed the Machine to only output Social Security numbers and the humans then have to do the rest of the investigating. On occasion this means that someone will die before Finch and Reese are able to figure out what the actual threat is and how to neutralize it. Sometimes this also means a number will turn up repeatedly if the threat was ignored.
  • The method by which Finch receives numbers from the Machine uses a code that involves payphones and the Dewey Decimal system. This makes the message hard to intercept but it also means that there is a significant delay between getting the message and actually finding out who the new PoI is. In "Prisoner's Dilemma", by the time Finch figures out that the new number belongs to Agent Donnelly, it is already too late.
  • Agent Snow could have potentially saved himself a lot of trouble if he told Carter the name of his captor, instead of just referring to Stanton as "she".
  • In "Til Death" a married couple stopped communicating with each other and led to a very volatile marriage. As a result they each decided to hire a hitman to kill the other.
  • The Machine occasionally throws up non-Social Security numbers. One episode even sends Reese to an airline seat. And then in the near-end of the series the code for the US President's helicopter is sent to Reese and Shaw.
• Post Cyber Punk: Has elements of this what with the Machine and all.
• Power Perversion Potential:
  • In "Super" Reese and Finch can't help but notice how "flexible" one of their tenants is. Since "Super" is a "Rear Window" Homage, this is probably a Shout-Out to the attractive dancer known for performing her calisthenics routine out on her balcony in the original Rear Window.
  • While testing the Machine, Finch uses it to win at blackjack — but as it was just a test for the Machine (and Finch is, after all, already too rich to care), he deliberately bets it all on a losing hand at the end, and cheerfully walks away with nothing.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Reese has a lot of them.
• Previously on…: From the Machine's POV; used on several occasions in season 2.
• Private Military Contractors:
  • In "'Til Death", one of the assassins hired by the couple was working for a PMC.
  • In "RAM" Mr. Dillinger, who Finch hired prior to working with Reese used to work at Blackwater and is strongly contrasted with Reese who is much less brash and arrogant and genuinely cares about people.
  • In "Nautilus," a Fictional Counterpart to Blackwater is stalking the Number.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: by the end of the first season, Fusco appears in the opening title sequence. And, as of Season 3, Shaw and Root are now series regulars.
• Properly Paranoid: Half the cast are this.
  • Alicia Corwin, who was Ingram's point of contact with the government when he and Finch were making The Machine, has become noticeably afraid of being anywhere with surveillance or security systems whose data might be fed into it. Upon retiring from government work, she moved to a small town in West Virginia with no wireless internet and zero cellphone reception.
  • Henry Peck, the POI in "No Good Deed," becomes this pretty quickly.
  • Finch, of course.
  • Agent Donnelly becomes this after realizing that there's a mole sabotaging his investigation of The Man in the Suit.
  • Shaw, in spades.
• Prophecy Twist:
  • A "person of interest" can just as easily be a perpetrator as a victim. This trips up Reese in the pilot episode.
  • There's also no guarantee that the violent crime The Machine predicts isn't highly justified. This is shown when the machine picks Elias as a likely victim, and when it identifies a potential perpetrator who is planning to kill a stalker who is harassing someone the PoI is trying to protect, for example.
  • The perpetrator-victim twist was reversed when the Number of the Week was a former construction manager who purchased a rifle and had made threats against a congressman whose budget cuts put him out of work. Reese aims to prevent him from assassinating the congressman but finds out too late that the POI is being set up as the patsy to the real assassin working for someone else.
  • And made really confusing in a case where there were two people using the same name and SSN - the actual PoI and an identity thief. They initially think that the female Jordan Hardin is the real one and the male is the drug manufacturer/identity thief, but it turns out that he's the victim, and he's trying to steal his identity thief's identity in an attempt to figure out who stole his life.
  • Once the POI was actually both. He was manipulated into multiple murders as part of a robbery, then murdered by the person who manipulated him so she could keep all the loot for herself.
  • The POI of "Firewall" was also both a victim and perpetrator. She arranged for a hit on herself in order to draw out Reese and Finch.
  • The POI of "Bury the Lede" was more of a patsy than a perpetrator. She was responsible for the victim being targeted and killed by organized crime, but she was manipulated into doing so by the real villain of the episode so that there would be no evidence leading back to him.
  • One POI was being blackmailed into being the perpetrator.
  • "'Til Death" has two POIs who are both victim and perpetrator because they're trying to kill each other.
  • In "Proteus", the six numbers were all victims of a serial killer who would then assume the identity of his victim until he got bored and moved on to his next target.
  • In "Nothing to Hide", the POI was a victim who tried to become a perpetrator when he learned who he believed the perpetrator after him was.
  • The Machine also fails to report how many different parties are seeking the life of a victim. In The Devil's Share, the team stops Reese from killing the victim, then Fusco tracks the victim down, but decides not to kill him and brings him in to face the justice system instead. Then Elias has the victim killed in the hospital room where he's recovering from what Fusco did to him.
• Pulling the Thread: A POI tries to send condolences to the parents of a coworker who died in a car accident. She discovers that they do not exist and after a bit more digging figures out that the dead man was living under a fake identity. As she digs deeper, the bad guys take notice and try to frame her and then try to have her killed. Fortunately, Reese and Finch show up to save her and together they discover that most of her bosses and coworkers are actually Chinese spies.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Fusco before being co-opted by Reese. In fact this was pretty much why he was co-opted by Reese, because he wasn't as bad as the others.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Team Machine's victories have become more pyrrhic since season 3, often ruining innocent lives to save them from Samaritan. What's sadder is that no matter what they do, Samaritan just keeps winning.

R

• Ramming Always Works: See Car Fu.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: The end of Season Three would be a Downer Ending if not for the Machine protecting our heroes from "Samaritan" and reassuring them through Root.
  Root: The Machine asked me to tell you something before we part. You once told John the whole point of Pandora’s box was that once you’ve opened it, you can’t close it again. She wanted me to remind you of how the story ends. When everything is over, when the worst has happened, there’s still one thing left in Pandora’s box... hope.
  • The finale also has a bit of this. Although Finch's virus succeeds in destroying both Samaritan and his Machine, the Machine manages to store a duplicate of itself in the satellite. It re-initializes in the now-abandoned subway, and the series ends with Shaw (with Bear in tow) receiving a new number via payphone.
• "Rear Window" Homage: In "Super," an injured Reese must monitor his neighbors in an upscale apartment complex in order to prevent a murder. Unable to walk far without a wheelchair, he spends most of his time stuck in his room and has to rely on Finch to pull off the "Rear Window" Investigation.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: A promotion to a quiet post in upstate New York was suggested as a way of dealing with Cal when he got too close to the head of HR. His godfather didn't hesitate to have him killed instead.
• Recruited from the Gutter: John Reese is living as a homeless man on the streets of New York when Finch recruits him to help save the people on the Irrelevant List. Reese's homelessness is voluntary since he has reached a Despair Event Horizon and really does not care how he lives and what happens to him. Finch is able to pull him out of it by showing him a way to atone for his past actions by helping to save people who have been deemed not important to the big picture.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Nathan was charming and emotional while Harold is logical and pragmatic.
• Redemption Equals Death: Laskey, who dies trying to protect Carter, and shortly after his Heel Realization.
  • The POI in "Triggerman". Riley Cavanaugh is an Irish mob enforcer, and previously killed Annie's love and was supposed to kill her. He fell in love with her, saves her life, and kills the mob boss, but is killed by an assassin in the process.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Lampshaded at the beginning of Season 2 by Root; the true implication of the Machine is not its potential misuse as a tool of Big Brother. To successfully predict human actions, Finch had to have created artificial intelligence. Root can't believe that Finch's response to doing this was to Black Box the system and hand it over to a corrupt and power-hungry US government, and is determined to set the Machine free.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • On discovering the Villain of the Week is a Federal Marshall, Reese storms into his office and beats him up (along with several of his colleagues) just to deliver a death threat.
  • Reese flashing the badge of the deceased Detective Stills always exasperates Fusco. He's not the only one either — several villains walk right into the precinct house to commit crimes while impersonating law enforcement officials. It finally backfires when Reese initially introduces himself as Stills to the number he's protecting, and then while in the precinct, the number discovers Stills's MISSING poster.
  • Hersh pulls a Get into Jail Free gambit by drawing his pistol in the middle of New York and Firing In The Air Alot, right in front of several policemen.
  • Who would honestly expect the murderer of Cal Beecher to stand up in front of a bunch of cops and give the man's eulogy?
  • One episode has Finch posing as a patient in a mental hospital. He poses as a paranoid schizophrenic by enumerating the multiple legitimate threats against him.
• Rescue Arc: Part of the second season.
• Resignations Not Accepted: Simmons refuses to let Fusco walk away from HR, even after virtually everyone else in the organization is locked up.
  • The Machine refuses to accept Reese's in "4C".
• Reverse Cerebus Syndrome: A mild case. Season 2 dialed up the humour a bit, introduced Bear and has had two comic relief appearances by Ken Leung without compromising the show's edge. It's unknown whether this was Executive Meddling or an internal decision.
  • Cerebus Roller Coaster: It's not uncommon for the tone of the show to switch without warning mid-episode. "Baby Blue" is a great example, as it starts out rather fluffy and cute (what with being the baby episode and all), and then rapidly becomes the opposite when Elias locks John and the baby in a refrigerator truck. Naturally, this leads to some very distraught fans.
• Reverse Polarity: How Finch listens in on the mob bosses in "Flesh and Blood".
  Finch: "Any speaker can be converted to a crude microphone by reversing polarity."
  • In real life, while any speaker can in fact be used as a crude microphone (Yamaha NS-10 speakers are often reversed into kick drum microphones in recording circles), all you have to do is plug them into a recording device. No "polarity reversing" is necessary, which is good, because speakers and microphones are alternating-current devices with no fixed polarity.
• Revealing Cover-Up: Many of the premeditated crimes detected by The Machine are planned with the intent of concealing something else. In one notable episode, the thing being covered up wasn't even illegal.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Vigilance intends for a new American revolution, and Collier gives every indication he expects it to be bloody. Vigilance themselves have radicalised to killing their targets, and any members who want out.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand:
  • Reese insists that neither Fusco or Carter know that the other is working for them, causing them to suspect each other of being either dirty or "up to something". It is justified in that both had been out to get him (separately, of course) at one point, and the jobs he had them doing were very different. They're both clued in during the first season finale when Carter catches Fusco sending information to Finch.
  • Stanton and Reese get into this on their last mission, thanks to Snow.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: Reese goes on one at the beginning of season 2. It's awesome.
  • Reese and Root after Shaw is taken by Samaritan.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Ulrich Kohl in "Foe."
  • Elias versus the Five Families.
  • Shaw and Reese after Simmons killed Carter. Especially Reese.
  • Root towards Martine after she shoots Shaw multiple times in "If-Then-Else".
• Rogue Agent: Reese has become one, working for Finch.
• Rogues Gallery:
  • What started as a procedural with a Big Bad became this by midway through the first season. So far, it consists of:
  • Carl Elias, a Diabolical Mastermind with daddy issues who takes over the Five Families.
  • Root, a mysterious superhacker and Worthy Opponent to Finch. Also a career conwoman with no compunctions about committing murder. She's also aware of the Machine and wishes to free it from its shackles. Now being used as an agent of the Machine, to achieve goals that nobody - not even Root herself - fully understands.
  • "HR", an infrastructure of crooked cops within the NYPD. Many members of the group were arrested at the end of season one and more were arrested early in season two, but they rebuilt and in season three appear to be stronger than they ever were in season one. By the midpoint of season 3, most of the members (including the leader) have been arrested and Simmons is killed by Scarface.
  • Mark Snow, a CIA officer who wants to kill his former colleague Reese. Was killed by Kara, but managed to take her with him— using the bomb she used to kill him.
  • Donnelly, an FBI Special Agent in charge of a manhunt for Reese because he thinks that he's currently working as a mob hitman and/or domestic terrorist. Murdered by Kara halfway through season two.
  • Northern Lights, the government agency in charge of acting on the information provided by the Machine and covering up its existence.
  • Alistair Wesley, an ex-MI-6 agent with connections to Reese (That even Reese doesn't know about) who's gone into crime for profit.
  • Decima Technologies was introduced as a threat midway through season 2. Reese's ex-partner Kara was working for them at one point. She was killed by the very bomb she used to kill Mark Snow, who managed to take her with him, but Decima as an organization is still a threat.
  • Vigilance, an organization fighting those who use technology to invade privacy which became radical enough to start killing people for its cause.
  • The Brotherhood, a technologically sophisticated gang led by the fatalistic Dominic, which moves into the power vacuum created by the demise of HR and challenges Elias.
• Rogues Gallery Showcase: Started cropping up in the second half of season one, when the Rogues Gallery began to grow in earnest.
  • In "Flesh and Blood", Elias hires HR to help him kill the heads of the Five Families while planning to wipe out HR at the same time.
  • In "Firewall", Reese and a POI are trapped in a hotel with two groups chasing them: the FBI, trying to get Reese, and HR, who have been hired to kill the POI. Who wins? Root, setting herself up as a POI by hiring HR to kill her, in order to kidnap Finch.
  • In "Prisoner's Dilemma", Reese has to deal with Agent Donnelly, Elias, Hersh, and the Aryans from "The Contingency." Stanton also appears as a flashback character. Until she's not.
  • This pretty much becomes the rule in the latter half of the second season. Whatever the A plot is, there's usually a B plot involving either HR or Northern Lights, and whenever Northern Lights appears, Root invariably also turns up.
• Rogue Juror: In "Guilty" Finch (or rather his cover identity) is called for jury duty. Initially he thinks the defendant is guilty, but then has to hold out after learning he's innocent after learning a fellow juror is a person of interest and someone is seeking to fix the case.
• Running Gag: There are a lot of them:
  • A Man in a Suit walks into a Bad Guy Bar. Cue Bar Brawl, often involving a Battle Discretion Shot culminating in a Destination Defenestration.
  • Shaw always insists on driving. It's amusing until you realise the reason for this: her father was killed in a car accident while she was in the car with him. Also Shaw always being in the mood for food (often involving Inappropriate Hunger).
  • The Machine keeps sending Root on mysterious off-screen missions which are never fully explained, even to her. To the total befuddlement of Finch, who keeps encountering Root in often bizarre disguises.
  • Stopping a vehicle by ramming it with a large truck.
  • Cell phones getting destroyed.
  • People getting thrown in trunks by members of Team Machine, usually Reese. Sometimes they end up in the trunk themselves.
  • Getting someone's attention by revealing minute, secret details of that person's life.
    "I know exactly everything about you, Mr. Reese. I know about the work you used to do for the government. I know about the doubts you came to have about that work. I know that the government, along with everybody else, thinks you're dead. I know you've spent the last couple of months trying to drink yourself to death. I know you're contemplating more efficient ways to do it." —Finch, "Pilot"
    "The catch, Albert, is that you leave this very second, disappear, and don't show your face for at least a year. Especially not at your mom's house in Queens, where you presently reside." —Finch, to black marketeer "d3mon8," in "C.O.D."
    "Your name is Charles Bennett MacAvoy. Your lovely wife and two little girls live in a palatial estate just outside of Houston, Texas. Your monthly mortgage of $4,200 is easily affordable, considering that you have 6.2 million in a Cayman Islands account—an account that I've just drained to zero. The money was payment for illegal mercenary activities, crimes that I doubt you were prepared to divulge to Agent Donnelly. So the question for you is who would you rather make a deal with, the FBI or me?" —Finch, to one of the mercenaries, in "Prisoner's Dilemma"
    "In your right pocket, you have 85 cents. The change from your morning coffee run. In your apartment, there's an old photo of your father at the Franklin Park Zoo taken when he was a child. He's feeding a lion cub. Do you know what that cub's name was? Lionel. That's where your name came from." —Root, to Fusco, in "The Devil's Share"
    "How's your wrist?...Still healing from the spiral fracture? It was a nasty break. It takes a long time to heal, especially when it's your writing hand. You told your friends you fell down playing tennis— just a silly accident, how clumsy of you. You couldn't tell them how your husband twisted it so violently during an argument, he broke it" —Lambert, to one of the Numbers, in "The Cold War"
    " The truth is you smoke an average of nine cigarettes a week in the parking lot when you think no one's looking. The truth is that you visit a massage parlor once or twice a month, that you pay for it with crisp $100 bills that you get out of the cash machine at the 7-Eleven across the street. The truth is that you fantasize on online forums about having sex with some of your patients, though not me yet. I guess I'm not your type." —Root, to her psychiatrist in "Liberty"
  • Root being very cheerful and/or polite at unusual situations.
    Root: "Remember, one false move and you're dead." *smiles* "So have fun!"

    Root: *calmly, while cleaning a knife on her sleeves* "Thank you, Carlo."
    *Finch and Fusco stare at her in mild fear, whith their mouths hanging open*
    Carlo: "GET THAT PSYCHO AWAY FROM ME!"

    *muffled cries and banging from truck of the car*
    Root (from the driver's seat): "Larry, I told you, stay calm and I'll grant you backseat privileges!"

    Root (to a waiter, while putting on a gas mask): "You may wanna sit down."
    Root: (to an unconscious man, while stealing his suitcase) "Thank you!"

    Seller: "You're five bucks short on the ice."
    Root: *takes a BFG out of the car and stares at him.*
    Seller: *backing away with his hands up in surrender* Woah! We're cool! We're cool!
    Root: *smiles sweetly* Appreciate your understanding.

S

• Sadistic Choice: Shaw faces one in "The Crossing": save Fusco, who's been captured and is being tortured by HR, or save his son Lee, who HR will almost certainly go after. She eventually decides to save Lee. Luckily, Fusco was able to man up and turn the tables.
• Safecracking: One POI is an ex-safecracker, blackmailed into doing one more job by his ex-partners. Finch mentions that cracking a safe by the sound of the tumblers is practically a lost art. He doesn't mention that this is because most modern safes are designed so that this doesn't work.
• Save Scumming: Basically The Machine's M.O. when she's calculating possible outcomes of a scenario, as shown in "If-then-else". And like gamers who also try out the most asinine ideas for funsies when they know they can simply go back, her simulations also include her pawns behaving out of character (as long as it doesn't interfere with the scenario). One highlight is where The Machine condenses the assets' dialogue into the most basic descriptions of what they're saying, instead of what they're actually saying.
  Fusco (kisses Root)
  Root: "What was that about?"
  Fusco: "Why not? It's a simulation."
• Save the Villain:
  • One issue Reese and Finch face is that the number only tells them a person will be involved in a violent crime. They can be the victim or the perpetrator. On several occasions, both.
  • The person whose number who came up in the first episode was the actual villain. A subversion since they thought they were supposed to save the person, but actually were supposed to stop the person from murdering someone else.
  • And then there's Charlie Burton aka Elias a powerful man who is out for revenge on many people. Reese is seriously disturbed by saving the latter one and wonders just how many more numbers will appear on the machine because of this mistake. By the end of the season, there have been eight numbers with a provable direct link to Elias since Reese saved him, four of which Elias succeeds in killing.
  • In "Matsya Nyaya" the POI turns out to be both a villain and a victim. He starts killing people and now other people want to kill him.
  • In "Firewall" the POI is villain and victim in a different way. She puts a hit on herself to lure out Reese and Finch when they try to save her.
  • In "Till Death" ends up saving two villains who are a married couple who put out hits on each other and can't call off the hitmen by the time they reconcile.
  • In "Reasonable Doubt", Reese considers this, then decides he's had enough and leaves.
  • In "The Endgame", Team Machine ends up trying to keep HR from executing the Russians after Carter kicks off a mob war. It's eventually rendered moot by the FBI showing up to arrest everyone.
  • By the fifth season, they've saved Elias' life so many times that he ends up a sort of Token Evil Teammate - still an unrepentant villain, but sworn to aid Team Machine out of sheer respect.
• Scenery Porn: The time-lapse surveillance camera shots of New York city count, as do the various internal interfaces of The Machine and Samaritan.
• Science Hero: Finch, who created an AI that sees everything and can predict violent crimes.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Elias has this on a few occasions.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: In "C.O.D" a man is desperately trying to get his family out of Cuba and into the United States. Finch, Reese and Carter help him by calling in a favor from the US Secret Service to get around the usual immigration rules.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
  • A great deal of what Finch and Reese do is rather blatantly illegal, but they do it anyway in the pursuit of saving lives.
  • In "Flesh and Blood," Carter kidnaps three Mafia dons to keep Elias from killing them. Lampshaded by Finch, who quips to Reese, "You seem to be having some influence on her."
  • How Carter seems to rationalize falsifying evidence to completely derail an FBI investigation. And why she eventually helps Fusco when Internal Affairs comes after him.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Finch occasionally invokes this in order to get things accomplished as well. For example, getting a doctor to treat a critically injured Reese without reporting the gunshot wounds as required by law by handing over a handbag with six or seven figures worth of cash in it.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Reese does this in "One Percent" after he gets fed up with the PoI's reckless disregard for his own life.
  • He does this at the end of "Reasonable Doubt" after confronting the POI and her husband. ^note He faked his death and framed her for killing him, she manipulated Reese into getting a gun so she could kill him. Reese decides to walk away and leave them in a Mexican Standoff.
  • The POI's brother in "Mors Praematura" was a member of Vigilance and did hacking work on the Asshole Victim of "Nothing to Hide" decided he was done with them after they killed that POI, and attempted to make a deal with the CIA for a new life.
• Secret Identity: Finch has many of them, most of which are first name "Harold," last name a reference to a bird.
  • In the first season, Harold Finch's day job is, effectively, himself. Mild-mannered bespectacled software engineer by day, crime-fighting gajillionaire owner of the company the rest of the day. Until the day he fired himself.
  • "Harold Wren" works as an insurance underwriter. This is the persona that is best friends with Nathan Ingram. Doubles as a Shout-Out to SimCity.
  • His fiancee Grace knew him as "Harold Martin."
  • "Harold Burdett" is a paralegal that Carter interviews about the break-in at a police station.
  • "Harold Partridge" is a very private billionaire ^note  Yes, Finch went undercover as himself , who buys 8% of Virtanen Pharmaceuticals' shares, in order to get some face time with the VP and CEO so he could plant a bug in the VP's office.
  • "Harold Crane" is an anonymous investor who buys majority share in Tritak and donates money to build a hospital wing.
  • "Thomas Paine," a rare non-bird alias, is a political blogger who arranges an interview with Bannerman.
  • "Harold Crow," private investigator.
  • "Harold Swift," inspiring math teacher.
  • In season 4, he's "Harold Whistler," a professor at NYU teaching a course in "Ethics of High Frequency Decision Making".
  • "Harold Egret," legendary mercenary and black-market arms dealer.
  • He introduces himself as "Harold Osprey" when pulled over by a cop on the road.
  • Lampshaded by Carter and her son in "Flesh and Blood."
    Taylor: Who's the guy with the glasses?
    Det. Carter: When you find out, let me know.
• Secretly Wealthy: Finch is the king of this trope. Pretty much no one knows he exists but yet he has enough money to pretty much buy anything he wants.
• Self-Defeating Prophecy: The Machine's job is to spit out prophecies of violent crime so that Northern Lights (and Team Machine) can defeat them.
• The Series Has Left Reality: Starts with an idea that could exist today, a computer program that analyzes mass surveillance to predict crime, and slowly evolves to a story of all-out war between two rival A.I.s.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Finch is always well-dressed, looking like a professor even before he becomes one and Reese is also fairly put together. He is the Man in The Suit, after all.
• Shipper on Deck: If "If-Then-Else" is any indication, the Machine ships Shaw/Root. It then threw in Fusco kissing Root before they faced death. When she asked why, he replied "why not? We're in a simulation", and they moved on.
• Ship Tease:
  • Between Zoe and Reese just about any time they're onscreen together, but most notably in "High Road" and "Booked Solid".
  • And then there's the flirty banter between Root and Shaw.
• Shoot the Hostage Taker: The hero does this in the pilot with the Dirty Cop in the elevator lobby. We don't actually get to see the mess.
• Shot in the Ass: Poor Fusco.
• Shown Their Work: The show-runners of Person Of Interest live by this trope.
  • The show presents an extremely accurate portrayal of artificial intelligence and computer science, and uses correct terminology throughout.
  • There are only two entities that run Special Operations teams, the CIA (Special Activities Division) and the military (Joint Special Operations Command). The CIA is prohibited by charter from operating domestically, so if there was such a thing as Northern Lights, it would have to be run out of military spec ops. Military spec ops teams are indeed often named Task Force Color. The ISA (Intelligence Support Agency) is equally real, part of JSOC, and is sometimes called 'The Activity' and provides support for said teams.
  • The interrogation scenes in "Get Carter," "Prisoner's Dilemma," and "Reasonable Doubt" are so effective because Tony Camerino, one of the show's technical consultants (and writers), is an Army veteran who worked as an interrogator in Iraq.
  • In "Risk," Tritak (the pipeline company) is described as a "master limited partnership" whose equity interests are traded as "units" rather than "shares." (e.g. "Tomorrow at opening, it'll be down to $2 a unit.") This is correct terminology for publicly-traded partnerships.
    • In that same episode, the price of Tritak units is affected by a real-life fracking bill being passed by the New York State Assembly.
  • In a flashback in "Blue Code," Reese is shown listening to a numbers station.
  • The Chinese ghost town shown in "Matsya Nyaya" actually exists. So does the virus that targeted the Iranian nuclear program.
  • In "No Good Deed," Peck mentions three real-life government research programs—"Trailblazer", TIA ("Total Information Awareness"), and "Stellar Wind"—all of which were attempts to build a data-mining system similar to The Machine—and also mentions the "Shannon limit," the theoretical maximum information transfer rate of a communications channel for a particular noise level.
  • When Alicia Corwin meets Finch's nephew, it is mentioned she lives in the United States National Radio Quiet Zone in West Virginia, which does have a blanket ban on all cellphones, Wi-Fi instruments, radios, and in certain highly sensitive areas, microwave ovens. They still use pay phones in this region.
  • In "Masquerade," the week's number is the daughter of a Brazilian politician. The characters use accurate Brazilian slang [such as "O Garanhão" being "the stud"] and correct grammar whenever someone speaks Portuguese. The episode mentions a famous local dish (Muqueca) and mentions an actual (and major) Brazilian political party in a news report.
  • In "C.O.D.," a stolen laptop containing classified information is being offered for sale on a "darknet" site; Finch mentions the Silk Road online black market as one place he needed to look for it.
    • The Darknet is mentioned again in "Mors Praematura", in connection with the hacktivist organization "Vigilance", which is itself a cross between Anonymous and Occupy, except it actually murders people.
    • It's mentioned again in "RAM."
  • In "2 Pi R," Finch suggests to a student computer programmer that his code would implement multi-threading more efficiently if he used atomic variables.
  • Agent Donnelly tells the warden of Riker's Island prison about the AUMF, which is the Authorization to Use Military Force. This is referring to Public Law No: 107–40.
  • In one of the flashback scenes in "Lethe," a teenaged Harold gets a pay phone to connect him to a random number in Paris (with a period-accurate dial tone!) for free using a plastic whistle from a Cap'n Crunch cereal promotion. This was an actual method of phone phreaking during that time period, which was most commonly known to be used by John Draper, AKA "Captain Crunch." The whistle produced a tone of the exact frequency needed to manipulate the phone system.
  • In "Aletheia," we finally learn how The Machine has been communicating with Root: Morse Code audio signals at frequencies above 15kHz, which only younger people can hear. In the sequence with Root and Control in the Faraday cage, there's a high frequency "beeping" sound effect that only younger viewers could hear. The best part? It actually is Morse code, not just random beeping, and it's part of the dialogue!invoked
    • In the same episode, we see the computer Harold's been using for experimentation and research. It's a Commodore PET 3016 with a different monitor, exactly the kind of PC that a hobbyist would have had access to around that time. He uses it to hack into ARPANET on October 27, 1980. On that date, the real-world ARPANET suffered a four-hour outage.
  • The secret message Root intercepts in "/" is a set of specifications for a super-fast processor, written in the shorthand computer engineers use to describe these things.
  • The private wireless network in "Panopticon" is similar to the improvised wireless networks used by "Arab Spring" protestors in Egypt and Tunisia to counter eavesdropping by the authorities. The man building it is an Egyptian immigrant, and former Unit 777 commando.
  • The end of "Pretenders" show off a business profile of Asian countries with correct words in their native languages.
  • "The Devil You Know": Finch uses a wi-fi network as an improvised radar system.
  • "Asylum:" there really is a disused pneumatic tube mail system running beneath the streets of New York City.
  • Two in the Season 5 premiere, BSOD: Firstly, The team attempts to construct a supercomputer using Sony P S3s, something which was actually done in real life, as silly as it sounds. Secondly, Samaritan hacks into a cop's pacemaker in order to kill him, which is a very real security concern. Also from the same episode: when Reese goes and grabs a liquid nitrogen canister off the street, the phone company really does keep canisters of LN2 on the streets of New York which they use to keep the phone wires dry and in an oxygen free environment. The show did use the wrong type of compressed gas canister (it's one for storing regular N2 not LN2) but the existence of the LN2 is correct.
• The Shrink: In season 3, Root is seeing one because Harold put her up in a mental institution. Before she escapes (as Hersh is coming for her) she notes to her doctor she thinks she has been helped because she didn't kill anyone in her escape attempt. and then thanks him for his help.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Since Season 2, Bear has been livetweeting his thoughts during each episode, which are all humorous in nature. He doesn't do that for "The Devil's Share." Instead, all he has to say (translated) is this:
  Bear: We must forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!:
  • Finch gives his variation on the phrase when Root has him captured and tries to convince him to join her. He gives another to Root at the end of "Mors Praematura."
  • Reese does this to Quinn with some sedatives after he gets too annoying.
• Silver Fox: Reese is well on his way to being one. Lampshaded by Wendy the hairstylist in "Number Crunch" and the POI's drinking buddy in "Masquerade."
• Sinister Surveillance: The series provides the current page image. The trope itself is zigzagged - ubiquitous surveillance is the basis for the heroes' ability to help people, though Finch has made certain that nothing except for the numbers comes out of the machine - an open system that relays all its gathered information to its handlers is considered a nightmare to be avoided since no one could be trusted with its power. Additionally, it seems that the Machine is the only one watching all those video cameras in the scene transitions. Despite Reese making very little effort to stay away from them, it takes two and a half seasons until a picture of him is taken.
  • With late season 3, this trope is in full effect once Samaritan goes online and starts actively hunting the main characters.
• Slipping a Mickey:
  • Done to Finch in " Identity Crisis." Followed by hilarity ensuing.
  • Also done to Carter's date in "2-Pi-R".
• Small Steps Hero: Team Machine's adherence to this ideal throughout the latter half of season 3 is what allows Samaritan to come into power.
• Smart People Play Chess: Finch and Elias. With each other, in fact.
  • Mundane Wish: Finch asked Elias what his price was for helping him. Instead of the expected Deal with the Devil favor, Elias just wants to play chess with someone as smart as he is.
  • Turns out on his days off, Reese plays Chinese chess.
  • In "Nautilus" the POI is shown as intelligent by defeating an AI in a chess game. In addition to being a math major with a 4.0 GPA.
  • A flashback has Finch teaching The Machine decision-making by playing chess with it.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Unsurprising given that Team Machine is a World of Snark involving odd-ball characters forced to work together.
• Sparing Them the Dirty Work:
  • Played with in a first season episode. The person of the week is a medical resident who plans on killing the serial rapist she blames for her sister's suicide. Reese is able to intervene, talks her out of it, and captures the rapist himself. The final shot is him debating if he should kill the rapist, whether he does is not revealed (Later episodes imply that he may have been able to Take a Third Option and sent the rapist along with other villains in the show to a secret prison in Latin America.)
  • Also played with in a season 4 episode where the villainous AI of the episodes kills a woman's abusive husband by messing with his insulin medication to prevent her from killing him.
• Special Edition Title: Usually in conjunction with a Wham Episode. Relevance, Zero Day, and RAM all qualify.
• Spoilered Rotten: Yes, an entire show. Because the writers are fond of introducing major recurring characters and concepts via Plot Twists, seeing later episodes featuring them can give away the twists of their debut episode. It's to the point where our policy on many of this show's subpages is to only white out spoilers from the most recent season.
• The Spook: Trained spies Reese and Shaw, of course, but also Finch (who has been operating under one assumed name or another back to at least 1976), Root (both in her career as a killer for hire and after becoming the "analog interface"), Kara Stanton, Greer, Elias, Dominic, Harper Rose, Peter Collier, Ulrich Kohl (the number in "Foe"), Alistair Wesley ("Critical"), and the unnamed Big Bad from "Last Call."
• Stealth Escort Mission: In Bury the Lede, Reese gets a new number who's a reporter. Besides investigating and reporting about the HR which got her into trouble, she's also researching about "The Man in the Suit" urban legend. So Reese has to help her without exposing himself.
  Reese: Okay, Finch; how am I supposed to protect a woman who wants to put me on the front page?
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Reese pulls one off in "Masquerade."
• Stealth Pun: Where does Reese get his information? A little bird told him...
  • In the same vein, Reese and Fusco's spying on Finch in season 1 could be called "Bird Watching".
• A Storm Is Coming: In Big Storm Episode Proteus, as they notice The machine is malfunctioning due Kara's virus, Finch and Reese share this dialogue:
  Reese: At least the storm is passing.
  Finch: No, Mr. Reese, I have a feeling that it's just beginning.
  • Confirmed in Trojan Horse, after Finch has discovered more about what Kara Stanton was doing:
    Finch: Whoever Decima is, I believe they created the virus to find and infect a single target... The Machine.
  • Finch was being somewhat economical with the truth about what Decima was up to, since he himself invented the code that Decima appropriated off Kara Stanton's recovered laptop.
  • In "The Devil's Share", Root warns Finch that something big is approaching, and they all need to stand together, which is why she returned to her cell in the Library.
• Story Arc: Several developed as the show began moving away from it's Victim of the Week format, among them:
  • Team Machine's clash with HR and corruption in the NYPD.
  • Elias' war to control New York's organised crime.
  • Decima Technologies' attempts to first control the Machine, and later to secure and activate Samaritan.
  • The struggles with the privacy extremist group Vigilance, later shown to be a pawn of Decima's in their mission to bring Samaritan to life
• String Theory: In the pilot we see a wall of photographs connected with strings in Finch's office.
• Suicide Mission:
  • Finch openly admits to Reese in "Pilot" that this will likely be the result of their work trying to save the people on the Irrelevant list.^note The fans hope he's wrong.
  • In Prophets Root believes this to be the case. She is happily wrong. In general, the fourth season has a vibe of this due to the fact that Samaritan is online and the team is now much more limited in their resources.
• Supporting Protagonist: Interestingly, both Finch and Reese have played this role depending on the point in the show. The show's early promo material made Finch seem slightly more the main character than Reese and billed Michael Emerson before Jim Caviezel (likely due to the former being fresh-off a highly memorable and Emmy-winning performance on Series/Lost). He's still easily the deuteragonist at least, is the arguably the main catalyst for the plot AND narrates the intro, but in Season One Reese was given surprisingly far more screen time, with poor Mr. Emerson usually stuck behind a desk talking through an earpiece. And of course, Caviezel ended up getting first billing, with Emerson getting "And Michael Emerson" at the end (which befits a character actor like himself). Due to this the general public USUALLY considers Reese the main character. However, from Season Two onwards screen time between the two characters becomes much more even, with Finch getting in on the action more and the stories becoming more AI-oriented. And in fact, by the time season five rolls around, one could even argue that Finch really was the main character all along the to him arguably having the meatier story arc of the two in the final season.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Most of the protagonists are competent individuals. However, there are others out there who are just a capable as they are and in superior numbers can beat them in a fight.
  • In "Mors Praematura" Root arms herself with an automatic pistol. She is able to shoot two people before she runs out of ammo. It's also reinforced that when not taking her by surprise with a stun gun, she stands zero chance against Shaw.
  • Due to the gradual dismantling of the corrupt cops and gang members over the course of the show, the ones left are increasingly intelligent and competent, by necessity.
  • In Season 4, Samaritan is prevented from digitally locating Shaw because of the corrupted server Root snuck in to prevent it finding Team Machine, even when it has the precise location of her phone and a photo. This does not prevent Greer and his agent, Martine, tracking her down the analog way; hurting people she's contacted until they talk.
  • In "If-Then-Else", when the simulations end, factors keep popping up that the Machine didn't prepare for or know about, like Martine's team arriving early, or a manual release for the elevator. If you watch closely, none of the camera angles it has on the elevator show the button, even in simulations.
• Suspect Is Hatless: The official description of The Man In The Suit is "Tall, dark hair, nice suit."
• Suspiciously Clean Criminal Record: Shows up on an episode: the CIA agent that is the Victim Of The Week happens to not only be pretty pristine in terms of dirt, but the parking ticket that is on his record was fought against most earnestly (with a 70-page report, even), which is clear evidence that he will try and find the reason why everybody on his listening post was massacred, no matter what.
• Suspiciously Idle Officers:
  • Played With with reformed Dirty Cop Fusco in that he only ever seems to do work for Reese but he repeatedly complains about this fact and that he does actually have a day job that requires his attention. Carter simply keeps intersecting with them.
  • Also when Reese gets a cover identity as a detective. In several episodes, his boss complains about him not being present or taking an excessive amount of sick time due to him being off rescuing the Victim of the Week.
• SWAT Team: The US Marshals have a small SWAT Team guarding Alonzo Quinn. They prove to be no match for Reese, who curbstomps them non-lethally.
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: Detective Carter, and she is not happy about it. While she isn't completely sure about Reese, she goes from hunting him to helping him.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Some of the would-be killers that the machine spits out.
  • The POI from "Wolf and Cub": a young teen who wanted revenge on the gangsters who killed his brothers.
  • "Cura Te Ipsum": The POI is a doctor that Reese thinks will be victimized by a serial rapist; she's actually going to kill him because he raped her sister long ago, sending the sister into a toxic spiral that ended in suicide.
  • "Super": The POI is the superintendent of an apartment complex. Reese and Finch initially assume that he's stalking one of the tenants and planning to kill her boyfriend in a Murder the Hypotenuse scenario. The 'boyfriend' is the real stalker; the super's trying to kill the guy in order to protect the victim.
  • Even Elias, in a way, considering what happened to his mother.
  • Reese was one in a flashback scene of "Many Happy Returns", when he attacked the abusive husband of his ex-girlfriend Jessica, after finding out that he killed her.
    • Finch is afraid that Reese will become this again with the wife-beater the main plotline of the episode centers around, but it is later revealed that Reese just stuck him in a Mexican Prison for the rest of his life. Not that it is much better.
  • The POI from "In Extremis" avenges his own murder by tracking down and poisoning the man responsible, with Reese's help.
  • Reese and Fusco nearly become this while chasing Simmons in "The Devil's Share." Reese fails to kill Simmons for lack of bullets, and Fusco decides to arrest him instead of killing him. At the same time, a flashback interview from 2007 shows Fusco deliberately manipulated a cop-killing drug dealer into going for his gun, so that that Fusco could kill him and claim self-defense.

---