History PersonOfInterest / TropesTToZ

** In the season five premiere BSOD, [[spoiler: Team Machine manages to save the machine by jury-rigging a supercomputer made using a cluster of Sony {{UsefulNotes/Playstation3}}, something which [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster has been done in real life]].]]

** The series seems to have no love for bankers and Wall Street types. [[AcceptableTargets Not that anyone's likely to object in this day and age...]]
** Though one episode did feature an honest investment banker as the [=PoI=], [[spoiler: who is being targeted by a less scrupulous coworker because he noticed that there was something fishy about a certain stock his firm was investing heavily in]].

** [[spoiler: It turns out to fail in "Lethe" as Root is able to escape rather easily when she needs to save Finch. In "Aletheia" it was revealed that she was was able to hear high frequency pulses in Morse code. ]]

** [[spoiler: Carter pushes the unarmed Reese behind her, taking the brunt of Simmon's fire, at the close of "The Crossing."]]
** Reese [[spoiler: jumps in front of Finch and saves him, taking the bullets in If-Then-Else]].

* ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet: Thoroughly averted with [[spoiler: Root, the eponymous hacker of "Root Cause"]], who even outsmarted Finch and forced him to pull the plug on his library setup.

* VigilanteExecution: [[spoiler: Fusco reveals that he did this once in "The Devil's Share", though his target was a drug dealer who'd killed a rookie cop, so Fusco figures he had it coming.]]

** Finch's business partner reacted like this when he found out about the 'irrelevant' list and the fact that Finch was ignoring information about people whose lives were in danger solely to protect the secrecy of the machine, and because their cases were not relevant to national security.

** Donnelly's explanations as to what The Man In The Suit is doing and who he's working for are starting to come across as this.

* WouldHurtAChild / WouldntHurtAChild: Elias manages to [[AmbiguousSituation play both]]; he locks Reese and the baby in a refrigerated truck to get Reese to spill the location of [[spoiler:Elias' father]] before the baby freezes to death. After Reese has given up the location, he lets them go and claims he wouldn't hurt a child but we don't find out what Elias would've decided if Reese had refused to break.

** FBI Agent Donelly believes Reese is a homicidal former CIA officer who has either gone into murder for hire, become a serial killer or joined a private intelligence firm. He's right that Reese is a former CIA operative, but completely wrong about [[WeHelpTheHelpless his new line of work]].

* XanatosSpeedChess: "Prisoner's Dilemma." Donnelly is [[spoiler: trying to identify which prisoner is the "Man in the Suit"]] ''and'' [[spoiler: determine if Carter is the "mole" in his investigation.]] so he has Carter [[spoiler: aggressively interrogating Reese and the others]]. For her part, Carter is trying to [[spoiler: interrogate Reese aggressively enough that Donnelly doesn't suspect anything]] but without [[spoiler: eliciting an answer that blows Reese's cover]]. meanwhile, Finch is listening in and [[spoiler: creating supporting documentation for Reese's cover ''in real time'' so that if Donnelly runs a search to confirm what Reese is saying, he won't find any gaps]].

** Shaw tells this to the suicide bomber in "If Then Else"

** Invoked several times in "Matsya Nyaya." In flashbacks, Reese and Stanton appear to get a long-distance, high-explosive version of this. Reese survives.[[spoiler:Stanton does too]]. Three more people run into this trope in two separate incidents in the main storyline of the episode. The POI [[spoiler: was on both sides of this trope at different times.]]

** In "God Mode", after interrogating a terrorist who planned to suicide bomb the Statue of Liberty, Hersh [[spoiler: shoots the interpreter, because he plans to use the terrorist to kill Nathan Ingram.]]

* YouKnowTooMuch

** "Control-Alt-Delete" and "M.I.A". [[spoiler:Reese and Root go on a epic quest to find Shaw, complete with mass kneecappings, torture, and a rocket launcher. They go to a town that's been taken over completely by Samaritan and... it turns out they've been following the trail of another woman who had been abducted by Decima.]]

* TheyFightCrime: One of the main themes of the show.

--> '''Reese:''' Who would be dumb enough to get into a life threatening situation again?

--->[[spoiler:'''Greer''']]: The question is what, my dear [[spoiler: Samaritan, are your commands for us?]]
--->[[spoiler:'''Samaritan''']]: [[spoiler:CALCULATING RESPONSE...]]

-->'''Reese:''' Doctor has [[CrazyPrepared everything she needs]] to erase Benton for good.\\

-->'''Fusco:''' Should I even ask?
-->'''Shaw:''' Really wanna know?
-->'''Fusco:''' Honestly? No.

** Reese gets another one, [[spoiler:or rather two at the same time from Carter and Fusco after their BigDamnHeroes moment in "Firewall" when they learned they both were working with him and neither knew it. They demand to know how they can expect to trust him if he doesn't trust them. Reese responded that [[NotSoDifferent Carter was hunting him for six months and Fusco had tried to kill him in the past, so Reese had some viable reasons to take things slow.]]]]

** In the same episode, Root has (non-romantic) shades of it for [[spoiler:Harold himself. Specifically, her running sales pitch wherein she presents herself as [[NotSoDifferent a more suitable companion]] for Finch than Reese ever could be.]] Root confirms this in "Zero Day" when she gets more emotional about the way Harold has programmed the Machine than about all the people she's hurt on the way to her Great Communion with the Machine.

* WorldOfCardboardSpeech: Finch gives a ''terrifying'' one in "The Day the World Went Away", letting [[spoiler:Samaritan]] know, in no uncertain terms, that [[ThisMeansWar he's done playing by the rules]].

* YourCheatingHeart:
** Carter gets the girlfriend of a gang leader she's trying to arrest for murder to recant the alibi she provided for him, by proving that the man was cheating on her in "Get Carter".
** One number that we only see the resolution of was a businessman whose wife had put a hit on him for being unfaithful.
** The primary plot of "Baby Blue" centered around the six-month old product of an extramarital affair whose [[spoiler:father's wife is trying to get rid of in order to conceal her husband's infidelity (She had already bumped off the kid's mother)]].
** Elias was the byproduct of a mafia boss's infidelity; his plan to take control of organized crime in New York started from a desire to get revenge on his father for covering up the affair by having his mother killed.
** This trope has been invoked at least two more times than has been mentioned so far, and it seems like the list of examples is only going to get longer.

* TheWarOnTerror / IncitingIncident: The September 11th attacks figure prominently into the backstories of a few important characters:
** Finch built the Machine for the government as part of its response to 9/11.
** Reese was ready to quit the Army and marry his sweetheart Jessica, but 9/11 motivated him to rejoin.
** Carter was an interrogator in Iraq.
** Control was in the Pentagon when Flight 77 hit the building.

** [[Recap/PersonOfInterestS03E11 "Lethe."]] "Harold, I did it. I solved it before they shut me down. Harold, Samaritan is ''alive''."

** [[Recap/PersonOfInterestS01E07 "Witness"]]
** [[Recap/PersonOfInterestS01E10 "Number Crunch"]]

** [[Recap/PersonOfInterestS02E13 "Dead Reckoning."]] The person who sent the laptop to China that caused Reese and Stanton to go to Ordos is...Harold Finch.

** Reese [[spoiler: jumps in front of Finch and saves him, taking the bullets in If-Then-Else]]

** The series is still young, but already it seems to have no love for bankers and Wall Street types. [[AcceptableTargets Not that anyone's likely to object in this day and age...]]

* YanksWithTanks: The US military has had an influence on members of the cast:
** Reese was a Green Beret, and had tendered his resignation to be with Jessica. 9/11 changed all that, and he deployed to Iraq.
** Carter was an Army Warrant Officer and interrogator in Iraq, and still holds her security clearances.
** A group of down on their luck army vets form a crew to rob banks.
** The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Support_Activity Intelligence Support Activity]] first appears attempting to assassinate an NSA analyst who's begun to learn about the Machine. Later, it's revealed that the ISA provides manpower to Northern Lights, which is responsible for both following up on the Relevant numbers, as well as covering up anyone who learns about the Machine.
** The POI in "Liberty" is a sailor who's being used by a group of corrupt Force Recon Marines to be the middleman in a deal involving stolen diamonds.
** Shaw joined [[SemperFi the Marine Corps]] after dropping out of medical school.

** In "Allegiance," PoI Maria is under Team Machine's protective custody to protect her from the French Legion members after her, but instead of deciding to stay put she ditches her bodyguard Shaw and heads straight to the UN building where the rest of the team is in the middle of raiding it. Naturally she gets caught by the leader of the group and nearly ends up with a bullet in her head as a result, not contributing anything.

* TonightSomeoneDies: "Endgame"/"The Crossing" ([[spoiler:Carter]]), "The Day the World Went Away" ([[spoiler:Elias and Root]]). The promo for "If-Then-Else" showed [[spoiler:Finch]] dying, but it's revealed in the episode itself to be [[spoiler:[[AllJustADream just a simulation]]]].

* ThatThingIsNotMyChild!: Harold's general attitude towards the Machine - despite the fact that it is very obviously sentient (and loves him), he maintains a distant, businesslike relationship with it, and insists that it is a program, not a life. He wavers on it, though: in a discussion with Root, he compares the dreams of code he had when creating the Machine to a mother dreaming of her unborn child's face.