The series follow a pair of ghostly British teens as they solve supernatural mysteries and stay one step ahead of Death herself. The series premiered on Netflix April 25, 2024.
Dead Boy Detectives includes examples of the following:
- Adaptational Backstory Change: In the comics, Charles was killed by the ghosts of the same bullies who'd killed Edwin, who had returned to the boarding school where they died due to the events of the Sandman arc "Season of Mists" (Lucifer abdicated the throne of Hell and everyone temporarily left).
- Adaptational Sexuality: As the case was in Doom Patrol, Edwin Paine in this continuity is established to be gay, when his comic counterpart was indicated to be straight by attempting to court Joh in the crossover with The Books of Magic that occurred in issue 3 of Vertigo: Winter's Edge and implying an attraction to Lady Beatrix Quarles and Persephone (the latter especially) in the 2014 series by Toby Litt.
- Advertising by Association: The trailers market the show as being "From the author of The Sandman, the producer of You, and the creator of The Flight Attendant".
- Affably Evil: The demon that originally killed Edwin apologizes for the inconvenience beforehand, knowing that he's only taking Edwin on a technicality.
- Age Lift: As in Doom Patrol, Edwin and Charles are portrayed as a few years older than they were in the comics.
- Ambiguously Bi: When Edwin finally confesses his romantic love for Charles, while the other boy doesn't exactly reciprocate immediately he heavily implies it's not out of the question either.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Given this show shares a universe with The Sandman, the Endless are these — specifically Death and Despair make appearances.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Even if he's a ghost, and deals with a large number of supernatural happenings every single day, Edwin doesn't believe in astrology.
- Aspect Ratio Switch: Edwin's flashbacks to his sacrifice in 1916 are portrayed in a 4:3 ratio.
- Back from the Dead: What seems to be Niko's fate at the end of episode 8. Our ghostly boys don't count, having been dead and here from the start.
- Bag of Holding : Charles' bag is able to store an infinite amount of things. He still has to remember to put them in it, though.
- Bait-and-Switch: After Edwin mentions preparing their disguises in the first episode, it cuts to a pair of guys in old and dirty clown costumes on a subway. Then the clowns leave, and it turns out Charles and Edwin are flawlessly disguised as an elderly couple.
- Big Bad: For Season 1 it's Esther Finch, her schemes for both revenge and power carry over into each episode despite the Mystery of the Week format and culminate in the season finale.
- Bully Brutality: What both Edwin and Charles were victims of.
- Cats Are Magic: Cats can see ghosts, talk to ghosts, and their scratches are poison to ghosts. But don't try using magic on them, there are consequences.
- Cold Iron: Iron burns ghosts and temporarily makes them solid.
- Comfort the Dying: In an episode 7 flashback we see that's the way Edwin met Charles, as the latter was dying and Edwin stayed to comfort him. Charles decided to stay with him as a ghost after dying with Edwin by his side.
- The Comically Serious: Edwin is very serious-minded, and frequently the funniest character on the show because of it.
- Conversational Trope: Charles directly says that Monty, in crow form is going through his Redemption Arc after helping him.
- Dark and Troubled Past: All of our main trio qualify in some form.
- Charles, between his family life, where his father hit him (and it's implied his father also abused Charles' mother) and his manner of death (he stopped the bullying of a Pakistani boy and his "friends" stoned him in a lake in the middle of the night, causing his slow death by the internal bleeding and hypothermia).
- Edwin's death as demon sacrifice, which caused him to be trapped in Hell for 70 years.
- Crystal, with David the Demon as her ex-boyfriend and, once her memories are recovered, the discovery of her rich parents, whose negligence led her to misuse her psychic powers to reveal unwanted truths, get drugs, steal, and cause at least one guy who was an asshole to girls to walk into traffic.
- Death by Origin Story: Considering Edwin and Charles's status as ghosts and protagonists, this is a given.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Due to Edwin's old fashioned sensibilities, when Niko suggests that Monty might have a crush on him, he thinks that it's preposterous since they're both boys — despite the fact that he's battling his own Gayngst.
- Demonic Possession: What David the Demon does to Crystal, and what the boys must liberate her from in episode 1.
- Depraved Homosexual: Downplayed, but the Cat King entraps Edwin and offers to free him if he has sex with him. When Edwin balks at this, the Cat King says he values consent (although though his offer — and general interest in Edwin — is already questionable when it comes to consent).
- Deus ex Machina: In episode 8, Lilith's intervention in taking out Esther is a very literal example of this: a goddess that comes in and saves our protagonists at the last moment.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: In episode 8: Niko, who dies in Crystal's arms after taking a magical dagger to the chest and saving Crystal's life.. Doubly counts as a heroic sacrifice.
- Discovering Your Own Dead Body: In episode 7, Charles. While speaking with Edwin, he stands and wanders to the window. His outfit different than what he was previously wearing. When he turns back to Edwin, they both realize that Charles has left his body behind. His corpse is still sitting where he left it.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Edwin, by Charles — pretty noticeably during a moment in episode 4, where he loses track of the conversation about the case because he's too distracted by Charles's face.
- The Dreaded: Despite Death being extremely kind and compassionate, Edwin and Charles do what they can to avoid her, for fear she will force them to move on.
- Driven to Suicide: The lighthouse ghosts who are the source of the case in episode 4.
- Empty Bedroom Grieving: In episode 8, our main group's reaction to Niko's bedroom after Esther killed her. Her bright and cutesy bedroom décor just adds extra pain for our already mourning group.
- Experienced Protagonist : Edwin and Charles have been operating as detective's for well over 30 years when the story starts and often bring up Noodle Incident cases from decades earlier.
- Expy: As a social awkward genius Detective Edwin shares many tropes with Sherlock Holmes, meanwhile Charles is very close to the original (and most common modern) portrayal of Doctor Watson being slightly less intelligent but still able to keep up with the Detective while acting as the brawn and being the people person of the group.
- Faux Affably Evil: Esther is outwardly gregarious and quick-witted, but as soon as things don't go her way she betrays her true viciousness.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Edwin died in 1916 and has made no real effort to update himself to modern times. He has no idea what the Internet or "VHS" is for instance. Charles, who died in 1989, suffers from this to an extent as well.
- Fluffy the Terrible: Crystal, who was possessed by a demon named David. Charles even points this out in episode 1.
- Friendly Ghost: What Edwin and Charles are, specifically to Crystal and Niko.
- Ghostly Animals: The gang finds a spectral deer in the forest in episode 6.
- Haunted Fetter: In episode 3, Crystal and the boys have to find this to save the ghosts in the Devlin house. It ends up being the father's video tapes.
- Heel–Face Turn: After experiencing human emotion via Forced Transformation, Monty the Crow develops real feelings for Edwin and ends up helping him and Charles against his mistress, Esther.
- Hope Bringer: What Edwin is for Simon, his schoolboy bully and murderer, who is trapped in Hell until Edwin stumbles upon him. Edwin realises Simon was just another closeted kid who didn't intend for things to get so out of hand. He tries to get Simon out of Hell, but has to go before he can convince him to move. It does make Simon realize he doesn't belong to Hell, and Death comes to bring him to a better place. Edwin brought Simon hope that he didn't deserve that endless despair.
- Hope Springs Eternal: The implication that Hell is not forever, caused by Death taking Simon out after his encounter with Edwin.
- Immortality Seeker: What Esther was: she got her immortality but forgot to ask for youth. She stays young by feeding little girls to a magical snake instead.
- In Love with the Mark: Monty. Esther has him become friends with the boys so that she can get them out of the way, but he begins to seriously fall for Edwin.
- Jerkass: It's eventually revealed that Crystal was a terrible person before losing her memories; she used her powers to lie, steal and even force people to kill themselves. Crystal is appropriately horrified to learn that she was bad even before meeting David.
- Jerk Jock: Brad and Hunter, the victims from "The Case of the Two Dead Dragons" were so horrible that an otherwise kindhearted girl was driven to slip them drugged alcohol, albeit with the intent to knock them out rather than kill them. When they finish their unfinished business, Death doesn't even put in an appearance for them. They just go directly to Hell.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Jenny the Butcher is curt, abrasive and purposefully unsocial but she is a good person and she's barely able to hide it, even though it's clear she tries very hard to keep people at arms reach, she ends up helping people regardless even when it makes things harder for her.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: David appearing in the blue dimension to speak to Crystal is revealed to be this. It also happens when Crystal talks to her ancestors in episode 6.
- Killer Finale: Niko's death in the finale.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: After David is exorcised by the boys, Crystal finds herself short of most of her memories.
- Love Dodecahedron: Literally referred to as a "love rhombus"
by the showrunners. Charles and Crystal are attracted to each other, but David is still trying to get back with Crystal, and Edwin is in love with Charles. Not to mention the Cat King, Monty, and even Simon are all romantically interested in Edwin. - Love Makes You Evil: The reason for Edwin's death. Simon made a clumsy attempt to come onto Edwin and thought he'd been rejected (plus his own humiliation at possibly exposing his own homosexual tendencies) which caused him to lash out at Edwin, leading to the campaign of bullying that culminated in their deaths.
- Medium Blending: In contrast with the rest of the series, some backstories (notably Tragic Mick's and Esther's) are told through 2-D animation.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The killer from "The Case of the Two Dead Dragons" was horrified when she'd realized that her attempt to drug the victims of the week resulted in their deaths, since she was only trying to knock them out. She's doubly horrified that she was about to do the same to Crystal. After the situation is resolved, she turns herself in to the police.
- My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: In the finale, Niko experiences this as she takes the killing blow for Crystal.
- The Nothing After Death: What Edwin and Charles say happens to ghosts that are trapped in loops when the place they're looping in is destroyed. Also what the fungus from episode 6 is said to do to ghosts. In general it's implied that this is the fate for any ghost who suffers the equivalent of a second "death" since they are already dead.
- Occult Detective: A show about two teenaged ghost boys solving supernatural mysteries brought to them by other ghosts.
- Psychic Powers: Crystal has these, and they serve to forward the plot on more than one occasion. Her ability to see ghosts and enter in other people's minds are vital.
- It's also shown that a near death experience will cause most people to be able to see ghosts as well, even though they don't get the many other powers Crystal exhibits.
- Psychological Torment Zone: What Hell is for the souls trapped there. Their torments are crafted specifically for each soul.
- Simon was guilty of summoning a demon with a book he had found and using Edwin as a sacrifice (albeit ignorant that what he was doing was real) because he was projecting his complicated feelings into aggression. In Hell, he's seen tearing out pages from the various books around him under the promise of freedom, the books regenerating faster than he can deface them. The book he's seen tearing up is shown to be a book on Demonology, with his and Edwin's initials on the pages as a reminder of the terrible thing he did.
- In the Gluttony room, people are mindlessly scarfing down confections presented to them, occasionally vomiting it back up to make room for more.
- In the Lust Room, all of the people there are writhing together in their bodily fluids (in this case, pools of blood).
- Limbo is portrayed as a fancy hotel lobby, with all of the people there frozen in place and still conscious. While the specifics are vague, it's implied that they can only move if someone rings the call bell, but it also inflicts extreme pain onto all of them.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Despite being fairly unpleasant, the Night Nurse is just a minor afterlife functionary trying to put Edwin and Charles in their proper place. When she notices a problem with Edwin's records, she agrees to temporarily pause her efforts to reclaim them until the situation is sorted out.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The Night Nurse's unnamed superior allows Edwin and Charles to remain on Earth in exchange for continuing to solve unresolved mysteries for the dead since the afterlife is struggling to get a handle on the ever-increasing number of humans living and dying (while forcing the Night Nurse to stay with them as a chaperone).
- School Bullying Is Harmless: Completely subverted. Every instance of bullying by teens that appears in the show is portrayed seriously. Given that it's the cause of death of both Charles and Edwin, it couldn't be otherwise.
- Shout-Out:
- In 'The Case of the Two Dead Dragons', one of the suspects is wearing a Doom Patrol shirt, not doubt also
giving a wink to the fact that the show was originally meant to be a sort of spin-off from that previous show before being re-tooled into being tied up into being connected to the Sandman series. - 'The Case of the Devlin House' is clearly inspired by The Amityville Horror, both the fictional story and the real life-backstory/real life gruesome events that inspired the book and movie series.
- Hell, at least the personal version of both Edwin and Charles, looks very inspired by the Silent Hill's Otherworld, with at least the "Lobby" section looking a little bit like a certain Overlook Hotel aesthetic.
- In 'The Case of the Two Dead Dragons', one of the suspects is wearing a Doom Patrol shirt, not doubt also
- Stalker with a Crush:
- David the Demon and Crystal used to be romantically involved, and after a voluntary possession gone wrong, he is now stalking her.
- The Cat King is one for Edwin: after propositioning him and then trapping him in town after Edwin turned him down, he continues to have his cats stalk Edwin.
- Jenny Green's secret admirer Maxine turns out to know a lot more about Jenny than they should.
- Stepford Smiler: Charles is always friendly, cheery and upbeat... but as it turns out, he's using his cheery nature to mask quite a bit of pain and trauma.
- Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious: The reason why Esther wants to torture Edwin. It seems she can get a lot of energy out of torturing a soul tough enough to survive Hell. Consuming the sparkling, magical liquid that her machine generates out of Edwin's pain gives her one hell of a power up.. Subverted in the case of the dandelion sprites, who use Niko as last resort and don't seem to think she's specially tasty.
- To Hell and Back: The plot of episode 7, where Edwin gets taken to Hell and Charles goes after him to bring him back. He's successful.
- Vain Sorceress: Esther the witch made a deal with Lilith for eternal life... unfortunately, she neglected to ask for eternal youth to go along with it, so she regularly murders young girls in order to steal their youth.
- You Can See Me?: The boys get this reaction when Nico's near-death experience allows her to see them.
