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From the Co-creator of the somewhat similarly-themed Misfits Of Science. "Heroes" is an ambitious Story Arc-based series about what would happen if people with super powers started appearing in the "real" world.

Heroes is known by its fans for three things: its overwhelmingly vast array of characters, its heavy, complex, and fast-moving storyline and its creative use of online content. There is also the characters' almost embarrassing Genre Blindness and mis-application of their powers, not to mention a plethora of bad decisions... if there was a "This Will Not End Well" trope, Heroes would be the poster show.

The first "Volume" (see note below) of Heroes started out somewhat slow, but it soon matured and was entertaining, engaging, and interesting. The show picked up tremendous speed as the story progressed. Sadly, the second Volume was screwed by the Screenwriter's strike of 2007. It was cut short from 23 episodes to only 11. As a result, the storyline became muddled and there were several mistakes made in regard to newly introduced characters, pacing, plot and overall characterization. Fans were so vocally disappointed that Tim Kring, the producer and mastermind behind the series, felt compelled to apologize publicly in an open online letter to the fans.

The series has thus far not yet really recovered from the trauma of the strike. The third Volume seemed to be getting on track, with several interesting plot twists as early as the season premiere. Unfortunately, after starting with some interesting Character Development, it took a sharp turn off a cliff into a Random Events Plot with little coherence. The characters started acting very strange and almost every plotline from the first 75% of the season was either forgotten or ignored. The Fourth Volume struggled to get back on track - Your Mileage May Vary widely as to what extent they managed it. A lot. Currently, Volume Five looks to be "redeeming" the show quality-wise, but it is unknown if it can both retain the fanbase and it's quality for the rest of the season.

Be sure to check out its character sheet page. Naturally, there is also a Fetish Fuel page associated with this series. There is also a tool for gathering and voting (or venting) on your Biggest Complaints.

NOTE: "Heroes", wanting to be different, has "Volumes" instead of seasons. Each Volume has its own Story Arc and so far there have been four, with the fifth just starting as of the season three finale. A volume is, however, not quite synonymous with a season, as season 3 contains volumes 3 and 4. Got that? (If not, don't worry too much; it's what editors are for.)

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Warning: This page, much like this entire web site, contains no small number of spoilers. Reading it before watching the episodes to date will ruin plot points, wilt your geraniums, drive your pets crazy, and make you get a hair cut.

This show provides examples of:

• Absentee Actor: Common in seasons 1, 2 and 4, but not so much 3. Notably, Heroes is one of the few shows to not credit actors who don't appear.
• A God Am I: Adam Monroe, at least in the supplementary comic books. Also Baron Samedi, the Haitian's brother. He seems to give off major Xerxes and Colonel Kurt vibes, too. Let's not forget Arthur Petrelli, with his delusional Nietzche fixation.
• A Nazi By Any Other Name: The Building 26 operation, Nathan's Nazis.
• Aborted Arc: We had a list up (see the Discussion page), but Heroes had enough of these in Volume 3 to make even the hardliners queasy. Not That Theres Anything Wrong With That, mind you.
• Abusive Parents: Nikki Sanders, Elle Bishop, and Flint and Meredith Gordon all had abusive fathers.
  • ...and Eden's mother.
  • The mind-fuck that Virginia puts Gabriel through "to be special" most certainly qualifies. ..and then there's bio-dad who murdered his biological mother in front of him when he was five.
  • Arthur Petrelli takes this to new levels, as he attempts to MURDER his sons. And has his granddaughter attacked by two thugs, one of whom is a psychotic rapist.
• Achilles Heel: Claire can regenerate her body, and is therefore invulnerable unless her brain stem is destroyed... Maybe...
• Adults Are Useless: HRG suffers from this, especially in the first Volume. He repeatedly forbids Claire from doing something important to her, guaranteeing she will do exactly that. He is genuinely shocked and upset that his teenage daughter does the opposite of what he has ordered her on multiple occasions. It's generally because he's seen one of Isaac's paintings, but if he'd only tell her that, things would be smoother.
• Affably Evil: Mr. Linderman. After spending most of Volume One as a sinister Ghost in charge of threatening Mooks, he turns out to be a kindly, grandfatherly old man who, in his time away from managing his criminal empire, enjoys cooking, healing cripples — and plotting nuclear holocausts. All to make the world a better place, of course.
• All Devouring Black Hole Loan Sharks: Mr. Linderman
• All The Myriad Ways: Future timespaces are like throw away countries where you can have massive casualties, even of the main characters, and it doesn’t matter because it hasn’t happened yet and (probably) never will.
• All There In The Manual: There is quite a lot of supplemental material, and one of the best things about this series is the way it has happily adopted using online content as a storytelling medium. There was an ARG mentioned below, several online-exclusive miniseries, and an ongoing series of comics. The latter introduce new characters, establish the (usually sad) backstories of existing characters, set up new subplots, and, most importantly, enable you to actually see the characters use their special abilities.
• All Your Powers Combined: Peter Petrelli, Sylar, Linda Tavara from the graphic novels, Arthur Petrelli, and Samson Gray.
• Alone With The Psycho: Sylar and anyone really. He did it several times with the Bennets and the third time actaully succeeds in getting Claire's power. And back in the first season, Mohinder visits a powered human, unaware that the "Zane" he's speaking to is actually Sylar. The real Zane's body is stashed in the kitchen.
• Alternate Reality Game: The Heroes 360 experience. player blog.
• Always Save The Girl: Hiro trying to save Charlie twice despite warnings about his disrupting history.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Sythan
• And I Must Scream: Happens to Adam Monroe between Seasons 2 and 3 and Angela Petrelli at the end of "Angels and Monsters"
• Anyone Can Die: The deaths of Simone and Isaac and the planned death of at least one other main character (Nathan) by the end of the series. (Not to mention all the potential main characters killed by Sylar.) As with Lost, fans have had to suffer quite a few "Oh no, your favorite character might die!" teasers. (It's a little easier to take once you notice that the writers only rarely have the balls to kill off popular characters.)
• Arc Words:
  • The stylised RNA symbol that appears on almost everything surrounding the Heroes (it's also a combination of Japanese characters saiyo meaning “great talent” or “godsend”), "Save the cheerleader, save the world," and the Activating Evolution book written by Mohinder's father, just to name a few.
  • Volume 3's arc words were "Good will battle Evil: choose a side", which were somewhat inaccurate, since pretty much all the characters were going through a dick phase that volume (although Hiro and Matt managed to avoid most of it other than a Super Dickery trick on Hiro's part). In fact, they all ended up turning on each other before the "heroes" could actually get around to fight the "villains", with Sylar wiping out all the leftovers and facing off against Claire in the finale.
• Archnemesis Dad: Arthur Petrelli
• Ascended Extra: Brutally subverted with Scott, the Super Soldier Marine in Volume Three.
• Ass Pull: This show is made of this. Let's see... Arthur Petrelli as a whole (but especially the whole "let's kill Adam because I can" thing), Sylar and his inability to get killed off, the entirety of the time traveling and the way it's handled ("Random scene of the future halfway through the season? Oh my God! We must change it! It's not like time travel isn't linear or anything!"). The list goes on...
• The Atoner: Nathan goes through this in Volume 2, including getting tanked and growing an uber-scraggly Beard Of Sorrow, over his role in nearly blowing up New York City in Volume 1. He goes back to being a dick midway through Volume 3 and through most of Volume 4, though, with pretty much the rest of the cast ending up as The Atoner in Volume 4.
• Attending Your Own Funeral: Volume 4 ends with all the Heroes gathering together for the first time in the show's history to witness the destruction of Sylar's body. What most of them don't know is that "Nathan" is really Sylar after he was brainwashed into believing he's Nathan and assuming his appearance permanently by Ma Petrelli and Matt Parkman. The body being burned is a fake, a dead shapeshifter who died while mimicking Sylar's appearance.
• Attempted Rape: Brody to Claire. Subverted, though, in that rather than being stopped by the Big Damn Heroes or even the girl herself, the attempt fails because he accidentally kills the girl, and apparantly he's not a necrophiliac.
• Author Existence Failure: In-universe with Isaac. Subverted in that it doesn't seem to stop him. Even after he died characters have found and followed eight unfulfilled paintings, a year's worth of comic issues, and one of his sketchbooks. The same can be said for Mohinder's father and his writings.
• Awesomeness By Analysis: Sylar's original power, Intuitive Aptitude, that allows him copy the superpowers of others... oh, and to repair watches (by intuitively figuring out how things work or where they're broken, which makes him a candidate for Cut Lex Luthor A Check). Also, Monica can do this with Muggle skills (Muscle Memory).
• Axe Crazy: Sylar and, to a comparatively lesser extent, Elle
• Back From The Dead: Claire (twice), Peter Petrelli, Adam Monroe/Kensei, and of course Sylar (I've lost count!), all thanks to the secondary Disney Death powers of their regeneration. Mr. Bennet and Maya, thanks to Claire's blood. Linderman was teased to be this in Volume Three, but ultimately he wasn't.
• Badass Decay: Nearly avoided by Sylar in Volume Four, though his redemption subplot let him still be a Bad Ass. Undone by Volume Four, where he gains new powers with unprecedented Super Dickery potential.
• Badass Family: The Bennets. Noah sets the gold standard for Badass on the show. Claire Took A Level In Badass in Volume Three, and single-handedly let the heroes loose in Volume Four. Sandra helps Claire hunt down villains in Volume Three and hide fugitive heroes in Volume Four. And even Lyle tries to brain the radioactive Ted Sprague with a baseball bat and even gets to take down Psycho Electro Elle in Volume 3.
• Badass Longcoat: Sylar, Peter, Future Hiro, and Matt.
  • In Volume Five, Big Bad Samuel wears a grunge version of one.
• Badass Normal: Mr. Bennet. And arguably Peter during the "Find the Haitian" thing. Unfortunately, in Peter's case, it didn't take. The Golden Boy is back to power mimicry thanks to the super-serum, though it's apparently a bit more limited. (Also, that would imply Peter had ever deserved the label badass). And as of Volume 4, it seems Hiro might be going this way too. He's certainly giving it his all.
• Bad Future: Once a season. (Note: Season, not Volume.) In a possible example of You Cant Fight Fate, pretty early in Volume Four it becomes clear that the Volume One Bad Future is turning into the Bad Present.
• Bad Powers Bad People Both subverted and played straight — with Walking Wastelands Ted (and those that copied his power) and Maya, the blackhole-producing Stephen Canfield, and Sylar who's power comes prepackaged with a compulsion to take things (and people) apart to see how they work.
  • A few episodes of volume 4 and the webisode "Nowhereman" indicate the same is true of creepy puppetmaster Eric Doyle.
  • With the Webisode series over we've seen that Doyle, while not pure evil as he first appeared, is far from a hero. Even when he does good things he does them in a bad way and he's creepy as hell while he does it.
• Barehanded Blade Block: Sylar does this when Hiro takes a swing at him in “The Hard Part.”
• Batter Up: When Claire demands that Noah teach her how to fight, he starts her off with a block of wood.
  Claire: "What is this? Kung fu?"
  Noah: "No, It's baseball."
• Bavarian Fire Drill: "… and get us some coffee! Decaf!!!"
• Beard Of Sorrow: Nathan Petrelli in Volume Two. General fandom reaction was Kill It With Fire - thankfully, it vanished after a couple of episodes. It's possible Mohinder's new lumberjack beard for Volume Five qualifies for this. Stay tuned!
• Beethoven Was An Alien Spy: According to the online graphic novels, Benjamin Franklin had the ability to absorb electricity, which is how he survived his famed kite experiment.
• Berserk Button: If someone you had never met in your life that has no impact on your life and that might have only had one thing even slightly in common you, would you make a big deal out of it? Maybe not, but Samuel sure would. Oh yes, he sure would.
• Beware The Cute Ones: Peter almost going all explody, Claire threatening Elle, Hiro's punishment of Kensei, and so on. Micah, the seemingly harmless kid genius managed to mastermind a huge underground resistance network that succesfully fought back against a man with government funding and resources and a team of highly trained killers on his side.
• Big Applesauce
• Big Bad:
  • Mr. Linderman seemed to have emerged as the one true villain of Volume One, though Noah and Sylar gave him one hell of a fight for the title for a while. Also, at the end of the first Volume, numerous mentions of Molly's "Nightmare Man" inspired many to believe that whoever it was would be the Big Bad for Volume Two. It was Matt's dad, an original member of the Company. However, he was quickly and easily dispatched in early episodes.
  • In Volume Two, it is revealed that Adam Monroe, aka Takezo Kensei, is behind the deaths of the original members of the Company.
  • In Volume Three, Papa Petrelli was pulling the strings.
  • In Volume Four, the governmental anti-super conspiracy took the role from the start. For a while, it seemed like Nathan would play the figurehead, but he was quickly usurped by Danko, who in turn gets usurped in a last minute steal by Sylar.
  • Tracy looked all set to be this for Volume 5 from the end-of-episode teaser, but the recently released trailers prominently feature a new character Samuel who just screams Big Bad.
• Big Brother Complex: Peter Petrelli
• Big Damn Villains: Sylar got a couple of moments like this in Volumes Three and Four. As did Knox and Flint in the Volume Three finale. And Elle at the end of Volume Two. And Samuel's Magneto-style takedown of the child-killing southern sheriffs.
• Big Good: Angela Petrelli in Volume 3; Rebel in Volume 4.
  • Richard Drucker, an opponent of the Company, served this role in the Season 2 graphic novels plotline, but had no role in the main show's plot and appeared to be killed by the Company after a couple of appearances. The Volume 4 graphic novels show that Rebel was inspired partially by Drucker's legacy, though.
• Big No: Several times, but most notably HRG in Volume One after Sylar locks him up in a cell and sets on his way to Claire. Also Angela Petrelli after seeing Nathan dead in the Volume 4 finale.
• Big Ol Eyebrows: Nathan Petrelli, whose signature thick brows have been affectionately named 'Pasbrows' by the fandom.
  • This also goes for Sylar, complete with his own affectionate nickname, 'Sexy Brows.'
• Big Screwed Up Family: The Petrellis. Especially now that Sylar's been revealed as the third Petrelli brother — maybe. It's complicated of course. And then there's Daddy... But apparently Daddy is not Sylar's daddy. (Lying to the homicidal semi-maniac who can learn powers — like the ability to tell if someone is lying — in retrospect, may have been a bad idea.) Mommy Petrelli, on the other hand keeps trying to adopt him.
  • As of the Volume 4 episode "Exposed", Sylar is officially not a Petrelli. Though that in itself doesn't stop the family from still being big and very, very screwed up.
  • And then after the volume's finale. It looks like he really is a Petrelli now, but ...not exactly in the way you'd think...
  • Also the Bennet's. C'mon it's a miracle Lyle isn't in therapy with all the weird crap going on around him.
• Black And Gray Morality: The only hero who hasn't done any morally grey activity is Molly, and she is ten years old. Even Micah, who is about the same age, used his ability to rob an ATM and commit electoral fraud. And as the series progressed, all the adults have become darker. Which makes you wonder why the show is called "Heroes."
  • Black and Gray is especially apt. The prevailing moral philosophy seems to be that there is no such thing as good, only innocence/naivety. Everything else is varying degrees of evil, and the sooner a character embraces evil, the happier and more successful they will be.
• Blessed With Suck:
  • Maya and Alejandro, the unloved new characters in Volume Two, nicknamed The Blunder Twins by some fans. To quote another website, "Form of Mass Murder!" "Shape of Retcon!!!"
  • Could extend to Emma and her "hysterical blindness" ability, and by extension Peter after he accidentally acquires her ability, replacing his super speed.
• Blonde Republican Sex Kitten: Tracy Strauss
• Bloodless Carnage: Tends to be subverted like woah. Which makes scenes like Hiro stabbing Sylar instead of slashing through him and Peter and Kensei's Foe Tossing Charge through Primatech all the more ludicrous.
• Blown Across The Room: Happens a couple of times to Sylar when Bennet shoots him.
• Blue Bishonen Ghetto
• Body Horror: It seems Sylar's new shapeshifting power has a few side-effects... like extra teeth, uncontrollable shifting, and mental instability because The Mind Is A Plaything Of The Body. And let us not forget Mohinder's "Let's experiment on myself!" adventure. Scales, goo, and cocoons, oh my!
• Boring Failure Hero: Peter, Mohinder.
• Boring Invincible Hero: Peter. The writers realised this in Season 2; unfortunately this lead to him getting Easy Amnesia in the first half of the season and a massive Idiot Ball in the second instead of having it fixed in any meaningful way. Fortunately, they learned from their mistake and got rid of his power altogether in Volume 3.
• Boring Invincible Villain:
  • Arthur Petrelli, after stealing Peter's powers (made even worse by the fact he barely ever used them, effectively becoming the Boring Invincible Villain who never did anything).
  • Sylar, made much worse because he has Joker Immunity to the power of ten.
• Break The Cutie: The reason Elle is a sociopath is because her father decided to take his little girl and see just how much torture it would take to break her.
• Break The Gamebreaker: The most egregious (mmmm, beer) being Volume Three's "Woah, wait, Hiro will just go through time and fix things! I will erase his memory and make him think he is a little kid again! Bwahaha!"
• Broken Base:
  • The Nathan and Sylar fans have pretty much exited in droves and are baying for blood after the Season 4 finale. Those who aren't hopelessly confused, that is.
  • Pretty much anything related to Sylar has this effect. That's because he's The Wesley to half the fanbase and the best thing on the show to the other half.
• Brought Down To Normal: In Volume Three, Peter, of all people. But it seems to have done a lot for his God Mode Sue problems. And everyone during "The Eclipse" episodes. And Hiro, temporarily as well, in Volume One and at the end of Volume 3.
• Bullet Catch - Sylar has on multiple occasions shown the ability to freeze incoming bullets in the air Neo style. Although after he gained Claire's superpowered Healing Factor, he generally stopped bothering and just took the hits.
• Bullying A Dragon - Snobbery directed at the Big Bad that can level your house tends to be a suicidal idea.
  • Edgar starts a feud with Sylar, despite the latter apparently having quite a reputation amongst the superpowered community as an unstoppable brain-stealing murder machine. Granted, Edgar is Darth Maul and Sylar is currently a mild-mannered amnesiac, but it still seems like he's just asking for trouble.
• Butterfly Of Doom: Take a shot whenever someone makes this analogy in Volume Three.
• Butt Monkey: Niki, though Ted's and Maya's Power Incontinence issues pretty much qualify them for this as well.
• Cain And Abel: Peter and Nathan in the Volume Three season finale.
• California Doubling: Los Angeles doubles as New York, Texas, and Japan, among other places.
• Calling The Old Man Out: Nathan and Angela; Matt and his father; Claire and Mr. Bennet; Nathan and Arthur; Sylar and Samson.
• The Cameo: Several, but we especially loved Stan Lee's awesome appearance as a bus driver in "Unexpected" and Seth Green in "The Eclipse".
• Cannot Spit It Out: The show would probably be 40% shorter if characters actually shared basic, critical information with each other.
• Canon Discontinuity: There was a lot of bad ideas introduced in Volume Two and Three. Volume Four spent a lot of time undoing the ones that could be undone, and the remaining ones... well, they're just not mentioned anymore. Ever.
• Cant Hold His Liquor: Oh, Nathan. You think you're so tough but you're an embarrassment to drinkers everywhere. The fandom will laugh forever at the tequila scene in "Into Asylum".
• Cape Busters: Nathan and Danko's team of Black Ops soldiers in Volume 4, who are attempting to capture and detain every evolved human in the United States.
• Card Carrying Villain: Knox in Volume 3, mainly because his Start Of Darkness backstory got cut from the Volume 3 flashback episode. It is still available online, however.
• Cast From Hit Points: Hiro gets a weakened version of his power back from Baby Touch And Go's power, only to find out that every time he uses it takes a toll on his body and brain and is slowly killing him. Thanks a lot, Baby Touch And Go.
• Cast Incest: Heroes co-stars Hayden Panettiere (Claire Bennet) and Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli) dated while playing an onscreen uncle and niece.
• Character Derailment: Volume Three — Oh, where to begin? Sylar, Elle, Adam, Noah, Linderman, Nathan, Mohinder. About the only character who benefited from this Volume was Claire, who took a much-needed level in badass.
• Characterization Marches On: Most notable with Ando, whose Stalker With A Crush behavior towards Niki was gradually dropped as he gained popularity.
• Chaste Hero: Past-Noah manages to refuse the advances of a beautiful woman who he was working with at the time.
• Chekhovs Gun:
  • The last 9th Wonders comic book is needed for a Plot Coupon in Volume Three. Unfortunately, the author... well you know. But wait! He gave his sketchbook to an anonymous bike messenger back in Volume One...
  • At the beginning of the series, Angela gets busted by the police for shoplifting socks, which perplexes her sons and seems out of character for her, especially as the audience gets to know her better. In the Volume Four episode "1961", the reason is finally revealed: whenever Angela feels lost, she steals socks to remind herself of her sister, her goals, and her purpose (It Makes Sense In Context).
  • In the third episode of Season 3, during Angela Petrelli's reign of babymomma-ing Sylar, the superpowered serial killer was given the ability of clairsentience by a hapless mook. Didn't seem to do much until the middle of Volume 4, when Sylar learns the fate of his true parents in the dilapidated cafe, and even further still in Volume 5, when Angela gives him a box of Nathan's belongings (as Sylar has shapeshifted into Nathan) which triggers "Nathan's" memories of a young girl's murder back when he was a teen.
• Circus Of Fear – Looks like Samuel’s running one of these.
• Click Hello: Well, more of a "Click Goodbye".
• Coconut Superpowers: The show that inspired the trope. Fortunately, the budget seems to finally allow for more "showboating" beginning in Volume Three.
• The Combat Pragmatist: Noah Bennet and Takezo Kensei.
• Comatose Canary
• Come Out Come Out Wherever You Are: Sylar in Claire's house.
• Comic Book Time: Bizarrely inverted. By the third Volume a lot of time seems to have been added to the timeline!
• Comic Books Are Real: The clairvoyant comic series that charecters are big fans of.
• Compelling Voice: Eden.
• Complete Monster:
  • We went from complex and morally grey villains in Volumes One and two (Mr. Linderman and Adam Monroe) to Arthur Petrelli and Danko of Volumes Three and Four respectively. Both men are amoral sociopaths — Arthur's just more slimy about it.
  • Although Danko has at least a few moments, most notably when he leaves a message with Aileena explaining how he wants to be a good man, that suggest he has a better side. It's just buried under layers of cold hearted Fantastic Racism against evolved humans
• Conspiracy Redemption: Several agents of the Company, most notably Hana Gitelman and Donna Dunlap.
• Contagious Powers: The only remaining Muggle main characters are Noah Bennet and Hiro, but we don't expect that to last. Parkman's baby solved THAT problem...
• Contemplate Our Navels: Mohinder's long and pointless opening and closing narration. Rumors persist that these monologues have something to do with evolution or destiny or something deep, but are currently unconfirmed as nobody gives a crap about Mohinder's ramblings.
  "Every creature cursed with awareness asks, 'Who are we? Why are we here?' Is it the Search for Self? Why do we dream? When will someone finally point out that RNA does not work this way? What happened to Caitlin? When will I ever shut up?"
• Contractual Immortality: Every. Freaking. One of them. And even if they do kill you, guess who has a secret twin? Or is it triplets? Clones are probably next.
  • Isaac is an exception, as is Simone. Noticeably, both of these are from Volume One. No main character/actor killed off in the latter Volumes has stayed dead.
  • However, no main character introduced in Volume Two lasted through Volume Three, either by Bridge Dropping or Being Put On A Bus. In particular, promising new main characters such as Adam Monroe, Elle Bishop, and Bob Bishop were all killed off without mercy.
  • Ironic that the only character to be introduced in Volume 2 and survive appearing in Volume 3 is Maya, the most disliked character on the show, while more popular characters like Adam Monroe got Bridge Drop deaths.
  • Bryan Fuller confirmed that unfortunately, Daphne's death is permanent.
• The Corpse Stops Here: Twice.
• Couldnt Find A Pen: Sylar painting the future in his mother’s blood.
• Crowning Moment Of Funny: After unknowingly absorbing the ability to see sound, Peter attempts to take off running via superspeed. They even toss in epic music that abruptly cuts off when Peter realizes he isn't going super fast. Peter even smacks his leg as if that would kick start the ability.
• Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming / Tearjerker:
  • Socks. No, really, It Makes Sense In Context.
  • Daphne's fantasy sequence as she lays dying. "Fly me to the moon". Oh god...the only way it could be more heart wrenching is if someone made an AMV of it.
  • Hiro saying goodbye to Kaito after visiting his mother's funeral.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Isaac gets one of these◊ when Sylar kills him near the end of Season One.
• Cymbal Banging Monkey: One of Baby Touch-n-Go's toys.
• Danger Takes A Back Seat: Sylar pulls this on Danko in Volume 4.
• Daydream Surprise: A few in Volume 5 (season 4).
• Dead Little Sister: Revealed to be Angela Petrelli's Start Of Darkness motivation. Mohinder also had one in Season 1, although he didn't even know she existed until halfway through the season.
• Dead Man Writing: Hiro's father leaves him one at the beginning of Season 3.
• Dead Star Walking: Scott, the Pinehearst Marine played by Chad Faust.
• Death Glare: deployed by Nathan in Season 1 whenever Peter proposes, says or does something especially dumb. Also used to good effect in Cold Wars, when Danko defenestrates Senator Skyboy from the nth floor of their government office building. Nathan glares every insult in the BOOK at him before booming off. Essentially, this is Nathan's default look when he has to deal with his mother's or Danko's machinations or with people like Peter, Hiro and Parkman.
• De Power: Peter, Sylar, and Hiro temporarily.
• Destination Defenestration: Jessica throws Matt out a window in Volume 1. Sylar does this to Peter in Volume 3.
  • Not to mention what happens to Claire's peppy new roommate in Volume 5 (season 4).
• Diabolus Ex Machina
• Die Or Fly
• Differently Powered Individuals: The show generally avoids using a general term for its supers, and they are mainly referred to vaguely as "people like me" or "individuals with abilities".
  • The Company seems to officially refer to them as "specials", although this was mostly in the online comics. Adam also used the term "specials" to describe powered humans. Danko's started using the term too, so it seems to have become the show's "official" word for people with powers.
  • The general fan consensus seems to refer to them as "evolved humans", so much so that even NBC's publicity department uses the term.
• Discard And Draw: Peter lost his ability in Volume 3, and regained a weakened version — the ability to copy the powers of the last person he touched at the end of the season. As of the end of Volume 4 he has Sylar's powers, or at least shapeshifting, as well as retaining the ability to touch and copy. During the Volume 5 opener he uses Mohinder's super strength ability to rescue civilians as a paramedic, before taking Edgar's super speed/badass knife-wielding skills to then save more.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Samuel goes to New York City and decides to visit the mansion where he lived as a boy, and asks to have a look around. The new owner, with some condescension, turn him down since they're in the middle of a fancy dinner party, and then everyone in the house laughs when he returns. So he destroys the whole place by creating a massive sinkhole underneath it, killing three of the party-goers in the process.
• The Ditz: Hiro, in a lovable fashion, though he matures a bit in later episodes and especially in the second Volume.
• Does This Remind You Of Anything: Volume Four.
• Dork Age: Actually seen in-universe. Several characters who were last seen attempting to kill each other in Volume 3 meet again in the first episode of Volume 4 and act quite civil towards each other, with the apparent unspoken agreement to pretend that Volume 3 never happened.
• Draco In Leather Pants: Sylar. Oh so much.
• Dressing As The Enemy: Peter is all set to try this after knocking out one of the Black Ops agents, until Tracy points out to him what a stupid idea it is (he still puts on the guy's uniform, though, because why say no to free Kevlar?). In a later episode, Sylar does the exact same thing, with much more success, although he has much more experience in performing that particular trick.
• Dropped A Bridge On Him: DL, Caitlin, Adam Monroe, Bob, Usutu — though he got better, maybe, — Scott, Knox, Daphne, Nathan...
  • Danko. He survives the entirety of Volume 4, despite the fact that every single person wants him dead. He is back for Volume 5, and he is building up to retaining his recurring character status. He even narrowly avoided death at the hands of Tracy. Not even a minute later, Knife Guy comes in and slices him up, killing him before he even knows whats going on.
• The Dulcinea Effect:
  • Both Hiro (unsurprisingly) and Peter Petrelli (even more unsurprisingly given his carriage of the Idiot Ball throughout Volume Two) fall under this effect.
  • In Volume Three, Matt is fawning over a thief with Super Speed he just met yesterday, all because he had a psychic vision of them being married in the future.
  • Hilariously subverted by Hiro during his introduction to Daphne. Rather than assume she's a complex human being with a complex motivations, he likens Ando and he to Batman and Robin and then refuses to refer to her as anything but "Villain" or "Catwoman" afterwards. He quite literally gets too caught up in assuming she's evil to make any sort of judgement call on her.
• Dye Or Die: Claire in "Five Years Gone"
• Dying To Be Replaced: Arthur Petrelli becomes the new Big Bad by murdering the previous season's Big Bad, Adam Monroe. Of course, Sylar eventually reasserts himself.
• Dysfunction Junction
• Earth Shattering Poster
• Easy Amnesia: Peter Petrelli at the start of Volume Two. (Actually more of a Laser Guided Amnesia, but that fits too.)
  • Sylar, too. But that definately doesn't overlap with Laser Guided Amnesia.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Part of Volume Three had Noah Bennet and Sylar teaming up. It didn't work out so well.
  • The Volume Three finale, where Bennet frees all the Level 5 supervillains to help fight Sylar. They all last about 3 minutes, tops.
  • Sylar is pretty damn good at getting mortal enemies to drop their differences in order to team up and stop him from Taking Over The World (of course.) The Season 1 finale basically had all the disparate characters coming together to put the smack down on Sylar before he could nuke New York to become President of the United States. Though granted, that was shown to be a future result of the nuke and not his actual motivation. And, in the Volume 4 finale, Bennet and Danko team up to stop Sylar from (again) becoming President of the United States... which lasts for about 5 minutes, until Danko decides to backstab Bennet just for the hell of it.
  • Used in the Volume 5 opener, when Bennet and Tracy quasi-team up to get Danko off her case - resulting in Danko being swiss-cheesed by Edgar five seconds later.
• Enemy Within: Sylar seems to have become this in Volume 5... although, in a bit of a twist, it's to Matt, rather than to "Nathan".
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Claude, Ando, even Mr. Muggles has a fanbase. In the first half of the first Volume, Hiro was like this too - then the producers listened and gave him an increasingly larger role. Minor characters from the Graphic Novels such as Linda Tavara (Who only had three appearances, total) have sizeable fanbases. The most extreme example is Sparrow Redhouse who, despite only appearing in 3 panels until recently, was a character many wanted to see on the show
• Equal Opportunity Evil: The gang that forms out of the Level 5 escapees.
• Even The Guys Want Him: Mmm... Mohinder Suresh. Also Adam Monroe and Sylar, proving that evil is, indeed, sexy.
• Eviler Than Thou: Pa Petrelli has his first speaking line after draining Adam Monroe's power, causing him to age Last Crusade-style and crumble to dust. Those words?
  Pa Petrelli: Feels good to breathe again.
• Evil Foreigner: "The German," the psycho with Magneto-type totally original electromagnetic powers.
• Evil Makeover: According to Volume Three, hair gel = evil.
• Evil Is Cool: Sylar.
• Evil Is Not A Toy: Whenever some erstwhile Chessmaster keeps Sylar alive or even feeds him powers while plotting to use him to further their own evil schemes, you know the main man is going to eventually turn around and make things end badly for them. Bennet even Lampshades this when confronting Danko. "Just how dumb are you? Who did you think would be left standing the moment Sylar got bored? You?"
• Evil Is Sexy: Possible explanation for why occasionally-repentant Sylar is a major fan favorite. Plus, he goes shirtless and gets nookie with Elle. Evil sex!
• Evil Matriarch: Mrs. Petrelli, especially in the first two Volumes.
• Evil Overlooker: Both covers to the first graphic novel collection show Sylar looming over the Heroes. As does the Season 2 DVD cover. And the second graphic novel collection.
• Evil Overlord: Arthur Petrelli fits pretty much every item in the checklist.
• Evil Versus Evil: Volume Three looked like it was working towards a battle between Primatech Paper/The Company (a morally ambiguous Ancient Conspiracy that tried to blow up New York City to unify the world) and Pinehearst Industries (a Legion Of Doom of supervillains whose actions are apparently destined to make the world explode). Yeah...
• Evolutionary Levels: You keep using that word “evolution.” It does not mean what you think it means.
• Exclusive Enemy Equipment - Ooh, free Kevlar!
• Expansion Pack Past: For Sylar and Angela Petrelli.
• Expecting Someone Taller: After meeting him in Volume 5, Samuel and Lydia discuss their disappoint that the long feared, Shrouded In Myth figure of "Sylar, the most powerful one of all" turns out to be a confused amnesiac with a rather mild-mannered disposition.
  • There's a reason for his nicer attitude - the memories he's retained are still Nathan's.
• The Faceless: Sylar, for a surprisingly long time after he was introduced as a character. The first time we actually see his face is in a flashback; therefore the fact that he's uncomfortably handsome is more of a shock.
• Fake Brit: Adam is played by David Anders (from Oregon).
• Fake Nationality: James Kyson Lee (Korean) plays Ando (Japanese). Robert Knepper (American) plays Samuel (Irish). Katie Carr (English) plays Caitlin who is allegedly Irish, but has one of the shakiest Irish accents yet seen. Additionally, while Mohinder is from India, the actor playing him is from Texas. Lampshaded by Ando who says (of white people, though): "They all look alike."
• Faking The Dead: Arthur Petrelli
• Fallen Princess: Claire
• The Family For The Whole Family: The Oirish mob in Season 2.
• Fan Disservice: Several, but Claire's topless scene (on an autopsy table) and Mohinder's nude scene (think "Species") win. Not to mention that fat guy puppeteering Claire and both her moms.
• Fan Nickname: There are several, but highlights include:
  • Mystery Sock for Isaac
  • Fryingmon for Nathan (based on Hiro's pronunciation of "Mister I-saac" and "Flying Man")
  • Momo, "Moe" (as in the Stooge), or Pretty-But-Stupid for Mohinder and/or Peter.
  • Mohindrance, for the many, many times Mohinder steals the Idiot Ball.
  • Rafiki for Usutu, the man Matt meets in the African plains.
  • Pac-Man for Matt (based on Usutu's pronunciation of Parkman).
  • HRG for Mr. Bennet (because of the glasses).
  • Senator Bambi for Nathan Petrelli. (It's the eyes.)
  • President Worf or Worfbama for the President, because he's played by Michael Dorn and he's kinda sorta an Expy of Obama
  • Pasbeard for the infamous, butt-ugly Beard Of Sorrow sported by Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) in the beginning of Season 2.
  • Nuke, for Luke the microwave boy.
  • Hiro ando Ando (bilingual pun)
  • Sythan for Nathan!Sylar.
• Fandom Nod: Sylar explains to Claire that he, in fact, does NOT eat brains. What he does do is, for some fans, worse. His response when he hears his victim say this: "Eat it? Claire, that's disgusting." In that slow, creepy Sylar voice.
• Fantastic Aesop: There are entire episodes devoted to explaining that You Cant Fight Fate and/or change the past. This, however does not apply to the future. You can change that as much as you like. In fact the resolution for both the first and second Volumes is the characters preventing a future event, one witnessed firsthand by one or more characters, from happening. This seems to imply that the "present" timeline that most of the show takes place in is somehow more valid or real than any other timelines.
• The Farmer And The Viper: Anyone who talks to Sylar. Ever.
• Fate Worse Than Death: Adam Monroe is stuck in a coffin underground, thanks to Hiro's teleportation ability. Did we mention that he is immortal? And that he essentially can't die? He suffocates, then regenerates, then suffocates again, etc...
• A Father To His Men: Danko. He admonishes Nathan for not caring enough about his agents, then later tells the rest of his team to remember two killed by a shapeshifter.
  • Subverted later when he's willing to sacrifice members of his team to allow Sylar to continue working with him undercover.
  • Also Danko's motivation in volume 5. Tracy is killing former members of his team, so Danko goes after her for revenge. Or maybe it's that whole Fantastic Racism thing again.
• Faux Fluency: Since, despite apparently having a decent working knowledge of Japanese, Adam still pronounces Yaeko's name "Yay-ko", his Japanese is probably an example of this. And who knows how many other examples there are, since polyglots seem to grow on trees in the Heroes universe.
• Fauxlosophic Narration: Mohinder's Book Ends mentioned above. Though in Volume Three, they mercifully switched to using actual poetry instead of MoeMoe's fluff for a time. They also let a few other characters have narration duty.
• Fetish Fuel: Lampshaded in Volume 5. Claire and Gretchen are kidnapped as part of a sorority hazing and stuffed into a car trunk:
  Gretchen: "Here we are, tied up in the dark"
  Claire: "There are entire websites devoted to this."
• Flanderization: ... EVERYONE.
  • Peter goes from being a naive dreamer to having permanent possession of the Idiot Ball
  • Mohinder turns from a researcher into a Mad Scientist whose ethics have taken a wrong turn somewhere
  • Claire goes from a likeable teenager into full Wangst and back.
  • Nathan goes from being a Magnificent Bastard with a rather strait-laced world view to a fanatic with his head in the sand about everything
  • Sylar's mommy and daddy issues take on a life of their own
  • Hiro is turned from a happy-go-lucky goofy nerd into a ten year old boy... literally. And so on and so forth.
• First Girl Wins: Charlie over Yaeko.
• Flung Clothing:
  • Peter throws off his Badass Longcoat in the middle of giving Sylar a beat down at Kirby Plaza.
  • Nikki/Jessica stripping before tearing those mobsters to pieces.
• Foe Yay: Where to begin... depending on who you ask, Mohinder/Sylar, Sylar/Peter, even, in a disturbing way, Sylar and Claire in the Fourth Volume finale. Sylar's just sort of a Foe Yay whore.
  • Sylar/Chandra belongs here too. "Hello, Chandra. Why won't you talk to me? You can't leave me like this."
  • Then there's Sylar/Elle which counts as canon Foe Yay.
  • We can safely add Sylar/Danko to the list, if only because Sylar seems to enjoy impersonating Danko a little too much. Sylar really is a Foe Yay whore.
  • ...Sylar uses his new shapeshifting power to pretend to be Bennet's wife.
  • Adam/Hiro and Adam/Peter goes here too.
    Adam (to Hiro): You were more than a friend to me...
• For Doom The Bell Tolls: The hilarious scene where Sylar and Elle are about to kill the rental car guy.
• Forbidden Fruit: Volume Three opens with Hiro getting his father's video will with specific instructions not to open the safe. Guess what Hiro does as soon as he hears this? (Face-palm!)
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Charlie. Made more egregious by the fact that there's a whole tie-in novel dedicated to her romance with Hiro, and she's still forgotten by the next Volume. And don't bring Caitlin up. Really, just don't. Word Of God is that Charlie is making a reapperance in Volume 5 at some point.
  • Hiro mentions her in Tabula Rasa and even mentions about how he could have forgotten her.
• Forgotten Phlebotinum: In regards to the Volume 4 finale: Um, hello? Claire's healing blood, anyone? Sure, it would make Death Is Cheap even worse than it already is, but c'mon! Even a cursory Ass Pull Holding Back The Phlebotinum excuse would have been better than just forgetting about it. Also Ando's power to supercharge other powers. It was used three times (twice by accident) at the end of Volume Three. In Volume Four he instead just shoots red lightning.
  • They did mention Claire's blood, stating that due to differences in Claire and Hiro's biology, Claire's blood would just kill Hiro faster, as his tumor would grow from it just as much as the rest of him would. Strangely, it seems to keep Claire herself from ever getting tumors. Doesn't excuse why they don't just surgically cut the entire tumor out, then have Claire's blood repair any damage incurred during surgery.
  • Sigh, because the tumor is inoperable, and even if they found a brain surgeon willing to do it, the brain is the only thing not effected by Claire's regeneration. Plus, it would just grow back like a weed, anyway.
• For Science:
  • Mohinder. The Volume Three opener is easily the most blatant example, but he's had elements of this all along.
  • This is even lampshaded in 1961, when in a What Have I Done moment Mohinder outright states "For Science!" was his misguided motivation for the crap he pulled in Volume 3.
• Forgot I Could Fly: Nathan had to fly Peter out of Kirby Plaza. Hand waved that he was too busy trying not to explode.
  • Later while being manipulated by Adam, Peter nearly rips his brain out prying open a vault door with telekinesis where he could have easily phased through it. But that wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic nor have left him exhausted and distracted so Adam would have the opportunity to release the virus depopulation bomb.
• Four Is Death: Twice in Volume Three. In one of Angela's dreams, and then again in a painting done by the precognitive Botswanan Usutsu.
• Four Lines All Waiting
• Fragile Speedster: Daphne. Subverted by Edgar.
• Framed Clue: Chandra Suresh's diary is hidden inside the case of his laptop, and only discovered when Mohinder throws it down in frustration. There's also a very clumsy version of this involving reaching for some salt at a diner.
• Fridge Logic: An airburst (a nuclear explosion at high altitude) generates a powerful EMP that will short out electronics for miles around. But nobody noticed when Peter did it right over New York City?!?
• Friendly Enemy: Sylar in Season 3.
• From Nobody To Nightmare: Sylar/Gabriel Gray "I could have been a nobody." The Trope Namer.
• Future Badass: Hiro and Peter and almost everyone in "Five Years Gone", Peter and Claire in "I Am Become Death". Inverted with the "I Am Become Death" version of Sylar as a family man and father.
• Future Me Scares Me: The Trope Namer, as seen immediately above. Hiro says this in "Five Years Gone".
• Gender Bender: What’s the first thing Sylar turns into after getting the ability to shapeshift? You got it...
• Gene Hunting: Claire in Volume 1, Sylar in Volume 4
• Genocide Backfire: The whole cockup at the Coyote Sands Concentration Camp. Although not a deliberate attempt at genocide, it was a major effort by the U.S. Government to round up and contain supers; before you know it Dr. Suchong Dr. Suresh slaps a little girl, little girl blasts him with lightning, soldiers freak out and open fire on everybody, and hey nonny nonny you've got blood all over the place and a whole bunch of dead supers. And from the ashes rises two groups of very pissed off supers: The Company (who have been responsible for, among other things, attempting to nuke New York City and creating a virus capable of wiping out 99% of the Earth's population), and Samuel Sullivan (the super Anti Christ who, if powered by enough followers, potentially has the ability to split the Earth in half).
• The Ghost: Mr. Linderman spent the first half of the first Volume as an invisible character. This was later revealed to be due to budget constraints. The shows budget wasn't big enough to pay for the high cost of actor Malcolm McDowell appearing from the start. In Volume Three, he appeared as sort of a literal ghost.
• The Glasses Come Off: Mr. Bennet and Gabriel Gray/Sylar
• Glasses Push: Hiro
• Glowing Eyes Of Doom: Ted, Peter, and Sylar get the glowy eyes when they’re about to explode.
• God Mode Sue: Peter Petrelli's incarnation from the future, and later Arthur Petrelli. It must run in the blood
• Goo Goo God Like: Baby Touch n'Go.
• Good Powers Bad People: Linderman.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Claire Bennet is sort of the Trope Namer (it isn't a direct quote but might as well be due to all the trauma the writers like to put her through.) Lately, ever since he gained Regeneration, Sylar his giving Claire a run for her money, with getting shot, his shoulder dislocated, his throat slashed etc.
• Gone Horribly Right
• Grand Theft Me: After several episodes of mindscrewing with the poor schlub, Sylar has now officially taken control of Matt's body.
• Greasy Spoon: Hiro met his beloved at one of these, and Nathan Petrelli at another.
• Growing Up Sucks: An amnesiac Hiro declares this in Volume Three after discovering everything that happened in the previous Volumes.
• The Gwen Stacy: Charlie Andrews.
• Hannibal Lecture: Subverted. Mr.Bennet is too much of a Magnificent Bastard to fall for Sylar's speech. Likewise, his daughter Claire gives Sylar a good Shut Up Hannibal in the Volume 3 final showdown.
• Hanlons Razor: Future Peter. Especially that corollary of any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
• Has Two Daddies: Mohinder and Matt took care of Molly for a while. It was very cute.
• Headphones Equal Isolation: Emma, a deaf character, wears iPod earbuds that aren't connected to anything to prevent people from trying to talk to her.
• Heel Face Turn: Mr. Bennet, whose various ruthless actions proved to be an elaborate stratagem to protect his daughter from the very company he's working for, and who is eventually outed and forced to join with two of the heroes in order to keep her safe. This seems more like a Reverse Mole, although the problem with both of these is that he still seems more like a Heel than a Face. Continuing to think of him as a Heel is seeming more reasonable all the time, as Claire (very) briefly flirted with going Heel in Volume Three.
• Heel Face Revolving Door:
  • Sylar in Volume Three. So many in fact that you think he'd get whiplash.
    • He's at it again in Volume 5, having been seperated into two distinct personalities; his amnesiac, rather easy-going and mild-mannered body, and his malevolent "spirit" currently inhabiting the body of Matt Parkman.
  • Also Nathan Petrelli throughout the show. But then, he IS a politician...
  • Tracy Strauss: she's started as a political ally to Nathan Petrelli with a penchant for turning journalists into popsicles, who then jumps ship after being told she's a synthetic superpowered triplet and becomes Arthur Petrelli's office bitch, who then tries to "help" Peter and the others at the start of Volume 4 after Arthur kicks the bucket, who then breaks out of Building 26 captivity and is shot, whilst frozen, by Danko, who then returns as some killer ice queen/water-controlling wench with a serious grudge against anyone from Building 26, including Noah Bennet, who then goes a bit soft and gooey around Bennet when he offers her clam chowder after watching Danko get sliced to ribbons. Yeah, we got a little confused with her too.
  • Angela Petrelli could be an alternate title for the Trope.
• Heroes: Obviously. Though it's somewhat subverted; the show seems to like exploring just how hard being a superhero would be like in practice.
• Heroes Want Redheads: Hiro and Charlie, the waitress.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Maury Parkman, of all people.
  • Eden who kills herself to prevent Sylar from gaining her influencing abilities.
  • Then subverted. D.L. takes a bullet from Linderman to save Niki. Enter season two, he is dead, and we are lead to assume that is how he died. But then a flashback to four months ago has him make a full recovery from the hospital, and is indeed well enough to go fight fires and stuff...only to get shot by some random crackhead with the hots for Niki.
  • Don't forget Niki Sanders, who tries to rescue Monica from a burning building at the end of Volume 2, without her super-strength. Monica gets out, Niki doesn't.
  • Daphne is shot trying to rescue Claire, Matt, and the others. She initially survived, but later dies from sepsis because the Complete Monster Danko had her removed from the medical facility.
  • And Traci apparently sacrifices herself in a spectacularly permanent-looking fashion to prevent Danko from killing Micah/Rebel. The Volume 4 finale shows that she got better.
  • Nathan Petrelli takes a break from being a Magnificent Bastard (... or maybe ends his Magnificent Bastard era) by flying off with his critically nuclear little brother Peter in the Volume 1 season finale. He also "gets better" after a sense in the next season... Then at the end of Volume 4 trying to atone for this Volume's douchery he goes up against Sylar by himself (ditching Peter in the middle of the battle) and gets himself killed.
  • Matt, after having his body possessed by Sylar, uses his ability to arouse everyone else's suspicions about him, leading the Texas police force to deploy a dozen men with guns to form a circle around him. In order to stop Sylar from going on a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge against the people who stole his body, Matt makes the cops think Sylar has a gun, leading them to open fire, and effectively taking out both Sylar and Matt.
• Hey Its That Guy: Linderman is Alex DeLarge
  • Nathan Petrelli is Jim Profit.
  • Peter Petrelli is Jess Marchiano.
  • Governor Maldon is Captain John Sheridan.
  • Edgar, the knife wielding minion of Samuel, is Darth Maul and Toad.
  • Looks like the police hired Cathica Kadanie (of Bad Wolf TV) to work for them a bit.
  • And Winston Zeddmore also works for the police!
  • As does Carth.
  • ...can't forget Stan Lee's cameo as a bus driver back in season 1.
  • Sylar is young Spock...
  • Sylar’s first victim, Brian Davis, worked at the crime lab.
  • Now in a separate page.
• Hidden Elf Village - This seems to be the purpose of Big Bad Samuel's Carnival in Volume 5. They're a bit more proactive than most, as Samuel's M.O. often involves secretly arranging the deaths of Muggles to push other supers into joining the Carnival.
• Hitman With A Heart - Edgar is an assassin who wants to quit.
• Homage: Lots and lots.
• Homeless Hero: Claude, Danny Pine, Daphne.
• Horrible Judge Of Character: Mohinder Suresh embodies this trope. Maya is even worse.
• Horror Hunger
• Hot Blooded: Peter Petrelli
• How Do I Shot Web: Peter. Oh, the number of time he tries. It gets depressing.
• How Do You Like Them Apples - "Forbidden fruit. My favorite kind."
• Ho Yay: Various pairings, the most popular of which include Mohinder/Sylar (nicknamed "Mylar," "Sylinder," "S & M," etc."), Hiro/Ando (nicknamed "Hando") and Peter/Nathan (nicknamed "Petrellicest"). Most obviously, Mohinder and Matt (most commonly rendered "Matthinder"), in the second Volume. "Obvious" to the extent that we were surprised they never actually incorporated it into the plot. An online-only miniseries seems to suggest Matt/Knox! Hell, at this point the writers are just encouraging us: The "We shall never speak of this" line that clearly followed an offscreen sequence where Nathan flew Matt thousands of miles and *must* have made damn sure that Matt didn't accidentally slip...) A common sentiment in the fandom is, "If you're not slashing at least two characters, you're watching it wrong!" Note that this isn't even getting into the crack pairings. Little Mohinder the Iguana/Mr. Muggles/Spirit Guide Tortoise for the waffles!
• Huge Guy Tiny Girl: Matt and Daphne, Sylar and Elle, West and Claire. Actually, most couples on the show would qualify.
• Humans Are Bastards: A major theme of Volume 3 and 4. In Volume 3, we learn that giving everyone superpowers would create rampant superhuman crime, leading to the U.S. building an army of superhumans, creating a global arms race that ends up blowing up the planet. Whoops! Conversely, in Volume 4 (as well as Dark Futures versions 1.0 and 3.0), we learn that if normals ever learn about the existence of superhumans, they'd round them all up and kill them all (presumably because of a "if we can't have it, no one can" mentality).
• I Am Your Father: The number of major characters who have been revealed to be related to each other is getting a little silly at this point. For example, Claire is Noah's adopted daughter; she's also Nathan's biological daughter and therefore, Peter's niece and Ma Petrelli's granddaughter. Oh, and it was just recently revealed that Sylar (maybe) and Flint (yes, cause why the hell not?) are her uncles We half expect the writers to say, "What the hell, Adam "Kensei" Monroe is '''everyone's''' great-great-great-great-ect.-grandfather." He does have a Meaningful Name. This is possible. At one point Adam took the last name Sanders. Also he had two sons in Italy in the 17th century and his heraldic crest (the symbol) is also the symbol of the Petrelli family law firm…
• If Youre So Evil Eat This Kitten: Happens to Hiro at one point.
• I Have You Now My Pretty: Inspired by their Not So Different paths over the course of the series, Sylar woes a captive Claire in the Volume 4 season finale just before his attempt to become President of the United States. Especially creepy in that, by the series' timeline, Claire is barely 17 at this point.
• I Knew It: Rebel's identity... if you weren't betting on it being Hannah.
• Idiot Ball: It's like they're playing basketball with the damn thing. May even count as an aversion, in that everyone is so stupid all the time that it's out of the ordinary when one of the characters does anything intelligent. "Smart Ball", perhaps?
  • One recent example: Beforehand, Hiro was persuaded by the carnival guy that he can change the timeline without doing too much damage. A few episodes later, the carnival guy tells Hiro that saving Charlie would screw up history...and he believed him despite that other encounter where the carnival guy says the opposite thing.
  • Another moment when Matt decides to drown out Sylar by drinking, which results in Sylar being able to take over Matt's body. A case of a plan backfiring. Sure, not eve nthe audience saw it coming, but still.
• Idiot Hero: Peter, first and foremost. Sometimes Niki. Hiro. Mohinder. Aw, f___ it! EVERYONE.
• Idiot Plot: Although it had been passed around freely between the characters in Volume One, by the time of Volume Two, the writers appear to have grasped the Idiot Ball firmly, with the result that the premature conclusion to that arc almost feels like a mercy killing. Volume Three was even worse, with a promising plot involving twelve escaped villains and the return of Adam Monroe scuttled in favor of the introduction of Voldemort-wannabe Arthur Petrelli and a series of nonsensical subplots best not mentioned.
• I Got Better: Now that we know Linderman was a hallucination, Fridge Logic means that, for the time being, we must assume this is how Nathan recovered from being shot, twice. Then again, it worked for Matt and he got shot four times. Sucks for D.L., I guess. Although, given sudden religious streak Nathan embarks on shortly after his death, there are certain implications that he was either miraculously saved or just really, really lucky.
  • It seems Nathan's luck has run out, as his character is Killed Off For Real (with his pseudo-personality residing in a mind-blanked Sylar).
  • Tracy Strauss had this after being frozen-shot by Danko in Volume 4: come Volume 5, she's a water-toting ice queen with a score to settle with Building 26's remaining occupants.
• I Just Want To Be Normal:
  • Claire, but other characters fall into this as well.
  • Parkman says this to Daphne in Volume Four. Claire, on the other hand, seems to have given up on any hope of a normal life.
  • Parkman, at the start of Volume 5, is trying to lead a normal life with his wife and son - trying to give up using his powers, attending drug rehabilitation sessions to try to keep his "addiction" under control. Of course, now he's got Sylar living in his head, this obviously won't last...
• I Just Want To Be Special: Seriously, don’t mention being special around Sylar—it will only lead to tears and dissection. Also Hiro and Peter (at least until Peter learned the downsides of his ability), Monica too.
• I Know Kung Fu: Literally: Monica gains the ability by watching a Bruce Lee film.
• If You Won't, I Will: Season 1 when Ando goes off on his own to kill Sylar.
• Im Standing Right Here: In Volume 1 when Nathan gives a campaign speech on his "mentally disturbed" little brother.
• Important Haircut: The show lives off Hair Tropes like a king. Aside from the Evil Hair Gel mentioned above, the best example was Sylar (mercifully) cutting Peter's trademark Emo bangs.
• Improbable Weapon User: Mohinder has attacked people with things like tuning forks, syringes, microscopes, rolling chalkboards, elephant sculptures, tables, fire extinguishers, and taxi doors with an astonishing rate of success.
• In A Single Bound: Sylar does this in an early episode using telekinesis.
• In Harms Way: Bennet tried to retire after the fall of the Company. It didn't take.
• Infant Immortality: Subverted with the onscreen death of future-Sylar's child, Noah.
• Informed Flaw: For all of Volume 3's talk about Sylar's uncontrollable "hunger", he seems perfectly capable of hanging around and interacting with other supers without eating fingerbanging their brains to see what makes them tick. This seems to be the case even after he turns back fully to the side of evil (he never chows down on Luke, for example, despite on multiple occasions being given a good reason to do so. Ditto for Doyle, who he must have been lugging around for more than a day). Peter Petrelli, on the other hand, pretty much chops open the head of every single person he meets after acquiring Sylar's ability, despite (unlike Sylar) receiving no apparent tangible benefit from doing so.
  • (Though in Sylar's case this could be because he spent Volume 3 working to get it under control for the sake of his (fake) family.)
  • This was an unforgivably poor explanation of Sylar's murderous impulses. If his power was responsible for him being evil, how do the writers explain his violent, power-lusting behavior during the second season, the entire duration of which he was powerless?
  • In Volume 2 he mostly murdered and manipulated for the sake of self-preservation... and the powerlust could be interpreted as withdrawl symptoms.
• In Spite Of A Nail: "I Am Become Death" shows Nathan as President and Peter as a scarred renegade — the same as in "Five Years Gone" despite other major differences. And as of Volume Four, "Five Years Gone" seems more likely than ever.
• In The Blood: According to Momma Patrelli, it's not Sylar's fault he's a mass murdering psycho; his powers ("The Hunger") just drive him to murder. Oh, okay...
  • Not really a retcon, per se. it doesn't contradict anything previously shown and, in all fairness, it's been made pretty clear that even without his powers he's still a killer as he was perfectly willing to help Elle kill Noah and abduct Claire after "The Eclipse" stole his abilities. It's just that his powers give him a thirst for abilities.
• Internet Backdraft: Mention the Volume 4 ending to the Natetiggers or Hossies (Nathan and Sylar fans, respectively). Or discuss when and if the show jumped the shark. (Wear asbestos underwear. Whoo boy.)
  • Claire's healing blood was mentioned in passing in "Tabula Rasa"... cue Nathanites going APESHIT and cursing the writers' idiocy all over again. And 'just' when it had all simmered down, too.
  • The alleged circumstances of Adrian Pasdar's exit from the show were a cause of much rage among his fangirls, leading to some fast excuses from everyone involved. This still doesn't stop them demanding Kring's balls on a skewer, though.
• Invisible Man: Claude. It's there in his name.
• It's All About Me: Sylar. In his mind, Angela pretending to be his mother is worse than her trying to destroy New York.
• It Runs In The Family: The Petrellis — revenge and cheap powers. Also leaving behind loved ones for dead seems to be a Petrelli-family trait.
  • Sylar and his dad.
  • And Mohinder and his dad. It seems Mohinder has inherited his doofus genes. Both are unstable scientists, prone to obsession who invariably end up working for evil people who they fail to see for what they are. We learn in 1961 that Chandra was indirectly responsible for all the crap that has happened in the Heroes universe, namely setting off the tragic events that would lead to the formation of the ruthless Company and all the nastiness they've ever done. Nice going, Papa Suchong Suresh. Mohinder is understandably chagrinned.
• Its Raining Men
• Its The Best Trope Ever: Hiro and the comic book guy agree.
• James Bondage: Peter Petrelli in a container, Nathan Petrelli in Haiti, Hiro on the loading trolley at the beginning of Volume 5.
• Jeannie Cut: Some of Hiro's teleports are achieved this way.
• Jossed: "Are you going to eat my brain?" "Claire, that's disgusting."
• Joker Immunity: Sylar. Oh so much.
  • Ali Larter. She's played two different characters on this show already - chances are she'll take the third at some point.
• Jumping The Shark: Your Mileage May Vary when, exactly the show made the jump. Discussion may lead to an Internet Backdraft.
• Just Think Of The Potential: Mohinder at the start of Volume Three regarding the Super Serum. Nathan, too, near the end, but before his (final) Heel Face Turn.
• Karma Houdini: It seems that the universe is bending over backwards to let Sylar be his dastardly brain-and-power-stealing self. In Volume Three, he worked for The Company. Because the Company has shown itself in the past to not associate with dangerous psychos at all...
  • Later, he was working with the "villains", and somehow this only makes him more of a good guy. Sylar is the moral equivalent of a Timey Wimey Ball.
  • You could argue that his constant Emo counts as a consequence.
  • Six weeks after mind-wiping Sylar, Angela Petrelli seems thus far to have escaped full retribution...
• Katanas Are Just Better: The sword of Kensei. As an aside, it is never outright stated that it is a magic sword, but it does focus Hiro's abilities somehow.
  • Magic Feather: Or so Hiro chose to believe.
• Kick The Dog: Though considering it twice(!) involved someone willingly giving Sylar someone to steal a power from, it may count as Moral Event Horizon instead.
  • Pretty much the entire point of Papatrelli's role on the show. He is either talking or being a dick. No exceptions.
  • He's also occasionally being a MORON too. He learns Sylar has turned against him. Does he track down and kill him, as he has every other person who opposed him? Nope, he figures "Hey, it's just a brain stealing serial killer with delusions of grandeur. No biggie". Too dumb to live, people. Too dumb to live.
• The Kimberly: Claire Bennet. Very much so. She has the power to heal, but it seems to have the odd side-effect of drawing catastrophe from absolutely everywhere. She's been shot countless times, been involved in two airplane accidents, a small nuclear explosion at her house, and has been forced to play Russian Roulette with two members of her family. As one does.
• Kiss Of Death: Or rather the Hug of Doom.
• Kitsch Collection: Sylar's mom and snowglobes.
• Knife Nut: New villain for Season 4/Volume 5 Edgar, a speedster and member of the sinister Carnival that Big Bad Samuel is running, apparently prefers to dispatch people with a well thrown blade when possible.
• Knight Templar: Pretty much every major Big Bad, really. Mr. Linderman, who desires to heal humanity at any cost. Rivaled solely by the Primatech organization, which systematically abducts, studies, and slaughters potential heroes in order to protect all the fragile, regular humans from... we don't know yet but it involves lots of Stuff Blowing Up. Primatech's working for Linderman. So is just about everybody and everything else, for that matter. Then there's Adam Monroe, who wanted to wipe out 95% of the human race so the remaining 5% would stop fighting and get along. Seems Nathan Petrelli may be going down this path as well...
  • He's there. And the Hunter seems to be a mix between this and Complete Monster. Guess it'll be by volumes end that we'll see which side he comes down heavier on.
  • Indeed, the only Big Bad who never bothered to put on pretentious airs about Shooting The Dog in order to save the world is Sylar. He's just in it for the brains and the lulz.
  • Let's not forget Arthur Petrelli, who's superdickery was motivated by the noble aspiration of - proving he was better than everyone else.
• Knight Templar Parent: Mr. Bennet, especially in Volume One. His daughter has superpowers, and could suffer if her mother found out? Wipe the mother's memory every time she becomes suspicious. His daughter's only friend knows, and could blow her cover? Wipe the friend's memory of ever knowing her. The daughter seems rather upset about this? Wipe her memory as well. The guy's one step away from feeding her anti-growth hormones to avoid losing Daddy's little girl.
• Kryptonite Is Everywhere - Happens to Hiro in Volume Three.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • When Arthur tries to recruit Mohinder's services, the latter replies that there's always some shady organization looking for his help for diabolical ulterior motives. This doesn't stop Mohinder from helping Pinehearst.
  • Claire asking "Why is it always me?" is a spectacular lampshade hanging.
• Large Ham: Linderman, Hiro, Sylar.
• Laser Guided Amnesia
• The Law Of Diminishing Defensive Effort: Sylar, Adam.
• Lawful Stupid Chaotic Stupid: Peter Petrelli and Hiro Nakamura are the worst offenders.
• Leitmotif: Sylar gets a really nice one in Volume 3. It's used as a general one for a while, but then ends up just being used for whenever he's being... Sylar.
• Legion Of Doom:
  • In Volume Three, the team of villains being assembled by Pinehearst Industries a.k.a. Arthur Petrelli.
  • Seems to be what the new "carnival" is in Volume 5.
• Les Yay - Gretchen and Claire!
  • Oh, it's not exactly subtext anymore...
• Lets Get Dangerous: Almost every season ends with geeky otaku Hiro Nakamura teleporting in and pretty much pwning the Big Bad in literally the blink of an eye. He takes out Sylar (twice!), Adam, Danko, and the entire Build 26 Black Ops unit (the last two defeated while Hiro was using a weakened version of his powers that are slowly killing him). So far the only Big Bad who could beat Hiro was Physical God Evil Overlord Arthur Petrelli.
• Lets You And Him Fight: Season 2 had Matt vs. Nathan when Maury trapped them both in a nightmare and a Hiro vs. Peter misunderstanding fight thanks to Adam's manipulations.
• Level Five Onix:
  • There was Stephen Canfield who could create black holes at will.
  • Then there’s the Nightmare-man Maury Parkman who was implied in Volume 1 to be even worse than Sylar but all he ever did was give a little girl nightmares.
• The Libby: Jackie, Debbie, Annie (I'm noticing a pattern with the last two letters of their names...)
• Line Of Sight Name: Gabriel Gray gets the name Sylar from the brand of watch he's fixing when he kills his first victim.
• Lingerie Scene: Ali Larter has several, spread over the series. Not quite enough to dub her Ms Fanservice, but still.
• Loads And Loads Of Characters: All the "heroes," and their friends, family, colleagues, etc. It's easy to get lost.
• Long Lost Sibling:
  • Early in Volume Three, Angela reveals Sylar may be the third Petrelli brother neither Peter nor Nathan was aware of. Noah later states that she might be a damn liar.
  • We see Sylar's actual biological family in Volume 4, though we still don't know much about them.
  • ... and then there's Alice Shaw, Angela's long lost sister.
• Love Makes You Evil: Kensei/Adam, Angela Petrelli.
• Love Martyr: Sylar and Elle
• Luckily My Powers Will Protect Me: Knox seems compelled to mention in every single scene he's in that other people's fear gives him Super Strength. The Crazy Eye look he gives while saying this may count as well. It gets to the point where it must be asked, what kind of power does other people's annoyance give him? He also has the amazing ability to fail to notice a very tall woman with bright blonde hair enter a small room.
• Made Of Plasticine: Claire is a comparatively mild version of this trope, but still prone to dying or breaking bones in completely ridiculous ways. Some fans claim she has a secondary power: causing herself unlikely and violent accidents.
• Magical Negro: Dying African American Charles and his inspiring speech to Peter. The Haitian can also sometimes be considered as fitting this role, being a mysterious, mute, plot device. Usutu, the new African Trickster Mentor character is almost certainly this — though he had a neat little subversion where what Matt assumes to be ancient African mumbo jumbo is a quote from Jung.
• Magnificent Bastard: And in this corner, the fight is between Bennet and Nathan Petrelli. Odds favorite is currently Nathan, as he manages to be a Magnificent Bastard even when the people know it. With the introduction of Mr. Linderman - who calmly managed to talk Nathan down - a new contender was on the field. And just when we thought Bennet was out of the race, he cranks it up to 11 and shows he's a bigger bastard than even we dreamed. And then there's Bob, and don't discount Adam Monroe yet... it's a veritable bastard battle royale! And don't forget Magnificent Bitch Angela Petrelli.
  • Sylar's totally a magnificent bastard. "This is usually the part where people start screaming."
  • Given his apparent (and as-yet-unclear) Xanatos Gambit, Samuel Sullivan could well be a contender for this trope.
• Mama Bear: Niki/Jessica will put anyone who dares to try and hurt Micah through a world of grief.
• The Man Behind The Man: Linderman and Angela Petrelli are behind the Primatech company in Season 1.
  • And in turn Adam Monroe was The Man Behind The Man for Linderman, Angela, and the other ten founders.
  • In a rare good version, Rebel/Micah Sanders is The Man Behind The Man to our heroes in Volume 4.
• Man On Fire: Elle sets Adam on fire as he’s escaping Primatech.
• Manipulative Bastard: Adam Monroe in Season 2, Angela Petrelli in Season 3.
• Matter Of Life And Death
• Mc Leaned : Arguably Adam Monroe. Of all the character deaths in Volume Three, his was the most spiteful. David Anders left to film Children of the Corn very shortly afterwards. The interviews he gave shortly before Adam was killed off seem to hint at this as well. And Elle for sure.
  • Apparently, Adrian Pasdar only found out he was fired when he read Nathan's final death scene... ouch. His fangirls promptly started baying for Tim Kring's blood, leading to some serious damage control by everyone involved.
• Me Love You Long Time: 100% subverted in the Hiro/Yaeko/Kensei love triangle.
• The Mean Brit: Claude (ironically, one of only two British characters on the show played by an actual Brit).
• Meaningful Name: Many of the protagonists have first names with "hidden" meaning that fits their story background.
  • Biblical names with roots in Greek or Hebrew are common, or names derived from Christian saints. Angela could come under this as well.
  • Of course, the name Hiro Nakamura might simply be a pun on the English word "hero", since it's pronounced similarly. In the online comics of the series, Hiro explains that he was named after Hiroshima, since his grandfather survived the nuclear explosion there, which could be an explanation of his powers.
  • And then there are the not-so-hidden meanings of Elle (who controls 'electricity), Flint (who can start fires), and Echo (with, of course, sound powers). The other obvious one is Adam Monroe, who predates all other known "evolved humans" (this would come under Biblical names too).
  • In an interesting bit of irony, the character of Danko is a complete inversion of his counterpart in the Russian folk tale publicized by Maxim Gorky (the folk hero Danko ripped out his heart to bring fire to his people, whereas Emile Danko is attempting to "extinguish" the fire of evolved humans from the world).
  • And of course the main hero, who actually believes that With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, is named Peter P.
• Meanwhile In The Future: Gets a Lampshade Hanging on the UK DVD covers.
• Meddling Parents: HRG, Angela Petrelli, and Bob; but the prize goes to Mrs. Gray, the mother of watchmaker Gabriel Gray, who placed so much emphasis on her son being "special" that it drove him insane and turned him into the serial killer Sylar. So its kind of ironic that his 'specialness' ended up causing him to (accidentally?) stab her. Angela takes the prize right back due to her being Sylar's real mom. Xanatos Roulette, much? This entire Series is a Xanatos Casino!
• Mega Manning: Peter and Sylar. And their dads. Monica can also do this with Muggle skills instead of superpowers.
• MIB: Noah Bennet, Badass Normal for hire, among others.
• The Messiah: Micah Sanders aka "Rebel" gets promoted to this in Volume 4, being the driving force behind the Resistance Movement attempting to save all evolved humans from Building 26. He even (in the graphic novels) convinces Doyle to turn over a new leaf, and even tries to redeem Sylar (that last one doesn't turn out so well, though he at least convinced him to spare his life; as Sylar said to an unrelated character, that's "kind of a big deal" for him).
• Mighty Whitey: Takezo Kensei/Adam Monroe. A blond-haired, blue-eyed samurai running around Japan in the 1600s. With superpowers, yet.
  • Which is then Subverted, as he makes a Face Heel Turn and Hiro saves Japan.
• Milky White Eyes: Isaac, as well as anyone else who uses similar precognition.
• Mind Rape: Frequently, using the Haitian's powers. Also Freddy Krueger Maury Parkman the Nightmare-man... and then Matt does this to Sylar in the Volume 4 finale. As of the beginning of Volume 5, it looks like Sylar's giving Parkman a taste of his own medicine.
• Missed Moment Of Awesome: Everyone has been waiting for a major showdown between Peter and Sylar. We finally got it in the Volume Four finale, but it was offscreen.
• Mister Danger: Kensei again.
• Mister Muffykins: Mr. Muggles came so darn close to being the Trope Namer. Note that he fails utterly in being an Evil Detecting Dog.
• Mobstacle Course
• Moral Dissonance: Bullying is unforgivable. Traumatising someone and getting them suspended from school is A-OK! Claire and West have clearly been taking lessons from Yu Gi Oh Abridgeds Pharoah Atem.
• Moral Event Horizon: Subverted with Sylar since, despite all of what he has done, he's apparently immune to the gravitational fields of a black hole.
  • Samuel has a killer one in "Once Upon a Time in Texas" - after spending the episode doing his utmost to save Charlie from Sylar, three years in the past, Hiro walks out to discover that she's been taken by Arnold, Samuel's time-traveling carnival member, at the behest of Samuel. Samuel reveals the entirety of the episode, including his previous attempts at goading Hiro into changing the past, have all been a manipulation to force Hiro to work for him, and to possibly prevent the death of Mohinder. Needless to say, Hiro is less than amused.
• Morality Chain: Future!Sylar and his son. Does he ever get pissed when his son is accidentally killed!
• Morality Pet: Claire for HRG, Luke Campbell for Sylar, Noah Grey for Future!Sylar. Aileena is a subversion of the trope. Around her Danko is a far kinder, gentler individual than the cold blooded killer we know. But then when Matt holds him and Aileena hostage Danko reveals that at the end of the day, unlike with HRG, he will choose the mission over his loved ones.
• More Expendable Than You: Depowered Peter argues this when he’s trying to save Nathan in Haiti.
• The Mountains Of Illinois: "Odessa, Texas" has mountains in the background. The real Odessa is completely flat and dry, as actor Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder) pointed out in the DVD commentary.
• Murder The Hypotenuse: Brutally subverted when Isaac, in a move inspired at least partially by jealousy over Simone, thinks he hears Peter leaving and immediately fires two shots. But it wasn't Peter leaving; it was Simone entering.
• My Grandson Myself: Adam Monroe in a tie-in graphic novel.
• My Sister Is Off Limits: Inverted with Hiro. When his accidental time traveling causes him to undo a mistake, causing best friend Ando fall in love with his sister Kimiko, Hiro is ecstatic.
• Narm: The Hunger.
  • Peter's Angry Face
  • "TELL ME YOUR SECRETS!!!!" Oh Peter. You're angry, we get it. But... indoor voice? Please?
  • A bit more subtle are some of the odder drawings in the online comics.
  • Nathan Petrelli's God kink. :: wince ::
• Not Using The Z Word: The heroes' powers are supposed to be derived from an abnormal genetic factor, but nobody ever mentions the word "mutant" or the X-men, not even the comic-book geeks.
• Neck Lift: Niki/Jessica and her father. And in Volume Three, Sylar with Claire.
• Nerd Glasses: Gabriel Gray.
• Nice Job Breaking It Hiro: Volume Two Hiro should be the posterboy for this trope.
  • He broke HISTORY. Not even Superman over on Superdickery managed that.
  • Volume Three Peters. Just Peter. Angela gets one of these too.
• Nietzsche Wannabe: Arthur Petrelli, though the keyword here is definitely 'wannabe.' Wannabe defines everything about Arthur Petrelli.
  • Interestingly, from what we've seen of him so far Volume 5 Big Bad Samuel Sullivan seems to be defining as a genuine Ubermensch; he doesn't seem to regard the lives of Muggles as holding any moral worth and happily offs them as needed, but at the same time he isn't going around killing folks just for shit and giggles, and seems to genuinely be trying to build a world of his own for evolved humans after he brings them around to his point of view.
    • Samuel's Humans Are Bastards view seems entirely justified after the episode Strange Attractors, where he levels the police station after Jeremy Greer's senseless murder.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Sylar.
    • By that token, Sylar taking control of Matt to have sex with Matt's wife.
  • The puppeteer guy.
  • Mohinder's "LOL, let's experiment on myself" adventure went in this direction too.
  • Samuel's Ink, and his hand...
• Ninety Percent Of Your Brain: "Imagine what we could acomplish if we used one hundred percent of the brain." Massive seizures?
• No Mr Bond I Expect You To Dine: "...breakfast?"
• No Sell: Peter and Sylar are/were/are immune to just about everyone else's powers.
• Noodle Incident: Whatever it is that Luke's ability does to pacemakers.
  • It's commonly believed that microwaves can disrupt/stop pacemakers, but there's not a whole lot of science behind this.
• No Ontological Inertia: In "Dual" Primatech's lockdown system turns off when Claire "kills" Sylar.
• No Name Given: The Haitian, even in a recent story arc that took place in Haiti.
  • Except that in Shadowboxing, Claire calls him René. When they were told this is unknown.
    • Brother's Keeper reveals Peter knows his name, too.
• Not My Driver: Inverted, Mohinder the cab driver realizes that his passenger is Mr. Bennet and flees. This is probably the smartest thing Mohinder does in the entire series.
• Not Worth Killing: Sylar spares Luke and Peter didn’t have anything he wanted anymore.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Although Mohinder is almost always carrying the Idiot Ball, there are a few instances in which he's only pretending to carry it.
• The Obi Wan: Claude
• Odd Couple: Company policy, one of us, one of them. They Fight Crime.
• Offing The Offspring: Arthur Petrelli; Matt Parkman's father
• Offscreen Teleportation: Sylar does this a lot, so much so that it's kind of become his signature move. Also, to a lesser extent, the rest of the cast seem to have the ability to make long cross-country trips in an abnormally short period of time.
• Oireland: Peter's subplot at the beginning of Volume Two. You know... maybe we shouldn't have brought it up again...
• Oh Crap: Mohinder disables Sylar's superpowers in order to torture, taunt, and eventually kill him. After torturing him for an hour, Mohinder shoots him in the head, only for Sylar to telekinetically freeze the bullet in mid-air, undo his restraints, and rise up revealing his powers have been restored. Mohinder's deer-in-the-headlights expression is quite appropriate.
  • Sylar on Kirby Plaza after getting several super-powered punches to the face looks up just in time to see Hiro teleport in ready to stab him.
  • In Volume 3, The look on Bennet’s face after he realizes that Peter is no longer possessing Jesse.
  • Likewise, in Volume 4, after Sylar decides he's had enough of Danko's crap and isn't willing to play along anymore, Danko casually stabs Sylar in his weak spot when he's not paying attention, seemingly killing him. Just as Danko turns to walk away, Sylar rises up from the ground and looms over Danko, clear very much annoyed at just having been backstabbed. The look on Danko's face is simply priceless.
    "That hurt. "
  • And again in the Volume 4 finale, when it looks like Sylar's plan to get close to the President so that he can shapeshift into him is about to succeed, we find out that he can't because it's actually Peter, who stole his ability earlier and in turn stabs Sylar with a tranquilizer. The look on Sylar's face shows that he's finally been owned after 3 seasons of fighting him with no clear winner, followed by a Badass quote from Peter:
    "You didn't think I took that one from you, did you?"
  • In the Volume 5 preview, Sythan looks at a clock and remarks on how it's going a few minutes fast, with Angela Petrelli waiting for him at the door so they can go to lunch. The "FUCK." expression on Ma Petrelli's face is a classic.
• One Degree Of Separation
• One Scene Wonder: John Glover as Samson Gray, Sylar's father
• One Season Wonder: to many former fans.
• Only I Can Kill Him: subverted on Kirby Plaza when all the characters (without access to profetic materials) believe that Peter will be the one to take down Sylar but its Hiro that delivers the coup de grace.
• Our Presidents Are Different: Of the President Minority type, but subverted due to recent real world events.
• Pandering To The Base: and HOW.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Noah. Bennet. The end. Do NOT mess with Claire, EVER, if you don't want him to go Terminator on your ass. Which made a LOT of people wonder whether he'd had a lobotomy sometime during An Invisible Thread.
  • Sylar in I Am Become Death after his son is accidentally killed in a shootout.
  • Matt Parkman, normally a mild-mannered everyman, will mess you up if you go near his surrogate daughter Molly Walker.
  • Nathan Petrelli *tries* to be a Papa Wolf for Claire as well, but... kind of fails miserably and manages to fuck everything up. As he does.
• Parental Abandonment: For lots and lots of characters.
• Parental Substitute - Angela keeps trying to adopt Sylar, with mixed results.
• People Puppets: Level 5 inmate Doyle
• Person Of Mass Destruction: Walking nukes Ted, Peter, and Sylar, and Maya our lady of bioweaponry.
• Personality Powers
• Pet The Dog: The Volume Three flashback episode "Villains" was one big Pet The Dog moment for most of the series' major baddies: Sylar, Linderman, Angela Petrelli, Elle, and even Thompson all got to have sympathetic and humanizing moments. The only exception is Big Bad Arthur Petrelli, who's revealed to have been a grade A Jerk Ass even back then.
• Ping Pong Naivete: Powers roughly 75% of the plot.
• Pineal Weirdness: Implied to be the source of superpowers.
• Power Hair: Ma Petrelli
• Power Perversion Potential: Explicit in the Series. In Volume 2, Master Of Illusion Candice offers to let Sylar sleep with anyone he wants. Including twins. Or himself.
  • Parkman uses his power in a more romantic way in season 1, by reading his wife's mind in order to give her a perfect date. Sylar (inside his head) in season 4 uses it in a darker manner, by having sex with Janice and making her enjoy it much more than she ever did with Matt.
• Posthumous Character: Linderman in Volume Three, though he's quickly outed as a hallucination created by Maury Parkman.
• Power Incontinence: Peter, Maya, Ted.
• Preemptive Apology: Hiro (to Tracy): *bows* “Sorry” *whack!*
• Product Placement: Take a shot every time Everyone Is Driving A Nissan.
• Professor Guinea Pig (Mohinder)
• Promotion To Opening Titles: Ando, Sylar and Angela. Also sometimes someone is promoted midseason: most notably HRG started as a guest star, but season 2 had Adam Monroe promoted midway in and Samuel is a regular as of "Once Upon A Time In Texas".
• Prophecy Twist: Isaac's paintings, both used straight and averted. Paints Peter dead: Peter dies, then regenerates in seconds. Paints Hiro up against a dinosaur: Hiro goes to a natural history museum and looks at a dinosaur model. Paints a sequence of Claire getting killed: the sequence turns out to be just ambiguous enough to let the victim be someone else. Paints himself, dead, his brains removed: Gets killed and has his brains removed. There wasn't really much room to manoeuver with that last one. He was still doing it in later Volumes, from beyond the grave...
  • Peter does it too, with the dream where he nukes New York, And this appears to have happened with Angela's dream of Bob, Kensei and Co followed by Sylar. Except Bob got Sylared
  • Bob was not in Angela's dream. The four "villains" were Adam, Tracy, Knox, and Maury. Sylar seemed to be on her side.
• Proud To Be A Geek: Hiro
• Pstandard Psychic Pstance
• Psychic Nosebleed: Matt gets one when he over-exerts his mind-reading ability in order to overcome the Haitian's Power Nullifier field. In Volume 4, Hiro gets one, suggesting his new partially restored powers come at a significant cost.
• Psychic Static: Mr. Bennet thinks in Japanese to throw off American mindreaders.
• Puppy Dog Eyes: Yes, we KNOW Nathan Petrelli is a Jerk Ass and a Magnificent Bastard... but Adrian Pasdar flutters the eyelashes and pouts and panties ''everywhere'' commence to drop. (Although this was mostly cancelled out by the fugly Beard Of Sorrow in Season 2.)
  • And Sylar. Serial killers should not look this cute.
  • Also Peter, when he's trying to convince convincing Nathan to go along with one of his ideas.
    • See The Eclipse Part 1 where he persuades Nathan to fly him along to Haiti - the entire scene can be summarised as "take me?" "no." (puppyface)"??" "... grrgh, OK then :: fume ::".
• Put On A Bus: Man, they're bad about this. Zach (he is currently busy evading Terminators), West, Molly, and Monica with no ceremony at all (Micah at least got a few brief cameos and West's departure was given a "aw, he and Claire broke up" Hand Wave). Also Caitlin, in the cruelest possible way. And Claude, who just ran out and was never seen again (for obvious reasons). He still makes occasional appearances in the graphic novels, so his fans keep hoping that he'll return, but that hope fades with every passing episode.
  • Rumor has it that Monica and Molly may be returning soon.
  • Well we learned in the Graphic Novels that Monica was captured by Building 26 so she's either free and heading back to New Orleans...or dead. The GN's are apparently going to reveal this during the summer. And West was working with Rebel and being surprisingly awesome.
  • Mohinder is taking five as of this volume. Mainly due to being killed by Samuel.
• Rage Against The Mentor: Matt and Nathan spend much of the second Volume interrogating and browbeating (and Mind Raping) each other's and their own parents for answers. Answers about their origins and Jerk Ass activities: the creation of the MIB-like Company, their controlling their children, never helping with their abilities, and basically being dicks "for their sakes", and committing Karma Meter -reducing sins "for them". All while never being clear or concise on what they had in mind or why they did these things. Needless to say, fans are exasperated at all this holding out too. All together now: Oh, Kudzu Plot, we hate you!
• Random Events Plot: About everything in Volume Three.
• Real Life Relative: The actors that play Ted and Sandra Bennet are married in real life and Milo (Peter) and Hayden (Claire) were dating.
• Real Life Writes The Plot: Or... doesn't. Due to the writers' strike.
• Really Dead Montage: Sylar gets one in the graphic novel following the Volume 4 finale. Not to mention the final scene of Volume 4 itself, with all of the heroes coming together for the first time ever in the show specifically just to watch him burn.
  • But this is Sylar we're talking about, so he's not dead, he's hiding. In Nathan.
• The Reason You Suck Speech: Seems to have become Sylar's signature move in Season 3 (Volume 3 & 4), as he often delivers one to each of his victims before killing them. Apparently, this is a function of his original power (understanding how things and people work) combined with one of his acquired powers (learning the history of people and objects through touch).
  • Also Adam Monroe caps off the final episode of Season 2 with a magnificent diatribe against humanity's petty nature, successfully arguing in the process that Hiro Nakamura, the man who has come to stop him, effectively turned him into the man he is today.
• Rebellious Princess: Claire Bennet.
• Recap Episode: At least one a Volume.
• Red Oni Blue Oni: Peter and Nathan. Peter and Sylar. Flint and Meredith.
• Redemption Equals Death: Ted calms down and finally gets off his revenge kick, just in time to be snacked on brain-fingerbanged by Sylar. And later Maury Parkman gets swiftly executed for defending his son.
  • Also, Nathan Petrelli in the Volume 4 finale, during a "face" portion of his Face Heel Revolving Door. Fandom was NOT amused.
  • Volume 5: Redemption seems to be taking this as literally as possible. Victim #1: "Nathan", who attempts to atone for a Ted Kennedy-esque incident from his past where he accidentally caused the death of a young woman, which only results in him being murdered by the young woman's mother... which also incidentally pops open the lid on the Person Shaped Can that was keeping Sylar sealed away. Nice going there.
• Redemption In The Rain / Happy Rain: "Into Asylum." Angela and Peter in one scene, Sylar in another.
• Reed Richards Is Useless / Cut Lex Luthor A Check: Name a character. Literally any character.
• Reluctant Mad Scientist: Mohinder Suresh in the first two seasons, particularly the "Five Years Gone" episode. When he dropped the "reluctant" part in S3, many fans considered it Character Derailment.
• Replacement Goldfish: mind wiped Sylar becomes one for Nathan.
  • Thus far, it seems Volume 5's main plot involves Samuel Sullivan screwing with the Heroes in order to find which one is a suitable Replacement Goldfish for his dead brother Joseph. He seems to have finally settled on Sylar. Yeah, that's going to end well...
• Rescued From The Scrappy Heap: Volume Five is trying its hardest to do this for everyone. (And it seems to be succeeding for several characters so far.)
  • Superspeed knife fight! Okay, Peter, you're cool again.
• Resuscitate The Dog: Sylar in Volume Three. It doesn't take.
• Ret Gone: Daniella Parkman and Noah Gray.
• Rich Idiot With No Day Job: Hiro now owns Yamagato. The Petrellis have money. Otherwise it's pretty much a mystery how most Heroes off chasing their destiny have money for groceries.
• Ripple Effect Proof Memory
• Rival Turned Evil: Takezo Kensei/Adam Monroe.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: West and Claire in Volume 2.
  • The conflict of Volume 5, whatever it is, had better be only resolvable by seeing sound as colors or I'm gonna be seriously pissed.
• Room Full Of Crazy: Sylar's closet. Also Future!Hiro and Future!Peter's string collection timelines. And Mohinder's room full of cocoons.
• Rooting For The Empire - the villains / morally grey characters in this show tend to be the most popular because the heroes are retards.
• Ruined FOREVER: The Volume 4 finale has led many fans to think this.
• Rule Of Scary: First Volume Sylar. Later on... not quite as much.
  • Though in Volume 4 he managed to be properly terrifying, stalking around, on the edge of a nervous break down and giving up unpleaseant "Bad touch" vibes around Claire.
• Running Gag: Killing Nathan in each Season Finale
  • Oh my God you killed Nathan! You bastards!
  • Hugs always seem to turn disastrous for Peter. Peter finally turns the tables in one Volume 4 episode where he hugs Nathan, secretly absorbing the latter's flying ability, to make a quick and badass escape when Nathan tries to capture him.
• Sadistic Choice: Sylar presents a number of these to Claire and Bennet in the Volume Three finale. They each opt to Take A Third Option.
• Salaryman: Hiro Nakamura, and — even more so in Volume Two — Ando, who was stuck back in his cubicle as Hiro has wacky adventures traveling through time...
• Scary Black Man: Volume Three introduced us to Benjamin "Knox" Washington, a black man who derives superhuman strength from people's fear. While technically he himself doesn't have to have caused that fear, it sure looks that way in most of the scenes he has appeared in. Some fans have thus dubbed him the King of the show's many Unfortunate Implications.
  • Subverted with DL who is suggested to be this at first, only to be revealed as a compassionate, kind man who wants to lead a good life and look after his wife and child, having completely abandoned his criminal past. Sadly he winds up dying in the second stupidest death on the show (Right after Adam Monroe's but just before Elle's on the list of pointless death scenes)
• The Scrappy: Volume Two gave us West the flying Emo Teen, and Maya and Alejandro the Blessed With Suck Twins. Some fans would add Volume Three's Not-Niki, Flint, and Knox to this list as well.
• Screams Like A Little Girl: In "Into Asylum", Fake!Sylar is about to be killed by the real one. Cue Zachary Quinto's high-pitched squeaky screaming like a little bitch, and the Internet busting a collective gut.
• Sealed Evil In A Can: Volume Two's Big Bad, Takezo Kensei aka Adam Monroe. Volume Three went this way too with Level 5. And Adam. Again. For two episodes.
  • Mind-wiped Sylar. How long do you REALLY expect that to last?
• Sealed Inside A Person Shaped Can: Sylar again. Although the twist is that the "can" seems to be Matt, rather than "Nathan".
• Seasonal Rot: Second Volume. Then it got worse,but has recently started to bounce back.
• Seeking Sanctuary: Angela and Peter in "Into Asylum."
• Seen It All: Claude.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Or will go wrong, as it were.
• Sexy Back: Lydia the carnie from Volume 5 has some sort of power that involves Samuel's tattoo ink forming images on her bare back.
• Shadow Archetype: The Volume Two episode "Cautionary Tales" pretty much states outright that Elle is what would have happened to Claire had Mr. Bennet not hidden her powers from the Company. Word Of God is that they were originally meant to be sisters, further highlighting the parallels.
  • Also, Peter and Sylar. Both capable of Mega Manning, but one kills to do it and the other tries to save people. And in Volume Three, they're claimed to be brothers. The Powers That Be also briefly mixed up who's the "shadow", with Sylar attempting to go straight and Peter gaining his Great Power And Great Insanity. And then abandoned that plotline again.
  • Danko is very clearly HRG's dark counterpart, a stark illustration of what Bennett would become without Claire and his family. While HRG may occasionally toe the Moral Event Horizon line, Danko gleefully leaps over it
• Shaggy Dog Story: The whole "Save the cheerleader, save the world" plot from the first Volume was undone in the first episode of the third Volume.
  • Well, no; New York's still around, yeah?
  • Volume Three seemed like a Shaggy Dog Kennel, specifically where Peter and Sylar are concerned (and ESPECIALLY the latter's ludicrous redemption arc) Tell me, Peter absorbing Sylar's power was supposed to save the world HOW? Not that it matters since Peter was completely depowered shortly afterwards.
• Shapeshifting Squick: Why are we so surprised that Sylar would immediately use his newly acquired "Turn Into Anyone You've Met" powers to deeply freak people out?
• Shape Shifter Swan Song: Happens during Sylar's ultimate defeat in the Volume 4 finale, when he involuntarily undergoes a shapeshifting spasm through all his previous forms after Peter uses his own copied shapeshifter power to overload Sylar's.
• Ship Sinking: Volume Three crushed Matt/Mohinder Audrey shippers with a forced romance between Matt and new character Daphne Millbrook, and Sylar/Elle shippers could not have been happy when Sylar kills off Elle in a painfully transparent attempt to get rid of Kristen Bell's character.
• Shirtless Scene: Often. Peter, Nathan, Sylar, Mohinder, Matt, and Bennet have these.
• Shout Out: Lots. Most are to comics, including specific title and issue references. Television Without Pity have commented that some lines and scenes seems like shoutouts to them.
  • Although Hiro correctly cites Kitty Pryde in Days of Future Past from the X-Men comic book, he is a couple of issue numbers off.
  • Watch the scene where Hiro incapacitates Adam Monroe. Then read/watch the scene in Naruto where Shikamaru incapacitates Hidan. Really, you only need to see one or the other. They're almost exactly the same scene.
  • Mr. Claremont, the swordsmith from Episode 22, Landslide, is named for Chris Claremont, who wrote one of the most successful arcs of the comic book X-Men.
  • The license plate on the limousine belonging to Kaito Nakamura is NCC-1701, the call sign for the original Enterprise starship from Star Trek. It's probably worth mentioning that Kaito Nakamura is played by George Takei, the actor who played Hikaru Sulu from the original Star Trek.
    • Similarly, the catalogue number for Kensei's katana in the private collection is CRM-114, the cipher for plane communications in Doctor Strangelove
  • And when Claude first appears, he says "Fantastic!", which was Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor's Catch Phrase. It should also be noted that Doctor Who is Britain's equivalent of Star Trek.
  • It's also no accident that the climax of the first Volume winds up taking place at Kirby Plaza (as in, famed comic artist Jack Kirby.)
    • And Kirby is also the name of a video game character that devours his enemies and copies their abilities. Sound familiar?
  • The name Takezo Kensei is a Shout Out to historical Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, aka Shinmen Takezo (or Takezo Shinmen in the western order).
  • Simone may be named after comics writer Gail Simone.
  • Best of all, the bits in the Volume Three premier that suggest the writers are aware of us! For example, Claire asks "What Kind Of Lame Power is Healing Anyway?"
  • Hiro has now shouted "MUDAMUDAMUDA!" twice. First while fighting samurai in "Lizards" (S2, E2), then while teleporting around Daphne the speedster thief in "The Butterfly Effect" (S3, E2).
    • Not to mention his constant exclamations of "YATTA!!!"
  • Magneto The German.
  • Sylar's original use of his power to fix watches.
    • Not to mention that the big plan in Volume One is to destroy New York to unite the world...
  • Hiro, after getting mindwiped, is in shock at recent Marvel Comics plots: "Captain America is dead!? Spider Man revealed his secret identity!? And The Hulk is RED!?"
  • Apparently, Ando is now capable of using the Kamehameha.
  • The Volume 4 episode Into Asylum has a Shout Out to Se7en. What's in the box? A severed head.
  • Telekinetic Big Bad Sylar is searching for his father with a semi-apprentice figure with daddy issues... called Luke.
  • Everyone loves Waffles... just like on that other show Brian Fuller worked on.
  • As a child a person with powers is trapped in a "Relocation" camp full of people who are different. They survive but their family and countless others are killed by their captors in a mass wipe out. They go on to help form a group of people with abilities to protect their own kind against humanity by any means neccessary. Sound like Magneto's origin? Well it's also Angela Petrelli's as per "1961".
  • The Psycho way Sylar deals with his mommy issues.
  • "...cake?"
    • The cake is a LIE!
  • Bennet: (freaking out Mohinder) I’m sure there’s a lot of Sureshs where you’re from. Its like Smith… or Anderson.
    • Also the “5 Years Gone” wardrobe.
  • The latest Mac Guffin is a compass that doesn't point north.
  • A troubled teen name Jeremy and "we could have saved him."
  • There's a kid with the power to kill people... and then there's Parkman’s apple-eating invisible friend...
  • Lydia the tattooed lady has eyes you'll adore so & a torso even moreso.
• Shrouded In Myth: Both Mr. Bennet and Sylar seem to have something of a legendary reputation amongst the superpowered community; Bennet as the guy who comes when superpeople misbehave to kick their ass, and Sylar as the unstoppable power thief who hunts you down and steals your brains.
• Shut Up Hannibal
  Sylar: From cheerleader to stone-cold killer! Who's the monster now?
  [Ka-chuck. BANG! Busy signal.]
  Claire: You are.
• Sigil Spam: The logo of The Company is either Sigil Spam or a Running Gag.
• Signature Sound Effect: Sylar has his clock ticking whenever he is being particularly evil, and in Volume Three, Mohinder's more...erm...interesting actions are accompanied by the sound of June Bugs.
• Sitting On The Roof: Peter in the early episodes. Also the roof of the Deveaux building is a popular meeting place.
• Slow Electricity: In "Dual", when the lights go off in the Primatech medical facility's hallway. Possibly justifiable in that maybe Sylar did it that way on purpose.
• The Slow Path: In Season 1, Hiro meets a diner waitress with super memory on the day she is murdered by Sylar. He travels back in time 6 months and lives with her for the interim, falling in love along the way. Conveniently, this is how he learns English.
• Soaperizing
• So Bad Its Horrible: People liked to say this about Volume Two. Then Volume Three showed us just how much worse it could get. Obviously, not everyone agrees.
• South Of The Border: The Maya y Alejandro subplot in Volume 2, Nathan and Claire’s getaway flight.
• Spotlight Stealing Squad: The Petrelli family
• Spirit Bomb: An interesting inversion in Volume 5. It's been revealed that Big Bad Samuel Sullivan's Earth Bending ability is powered by the presence of evolved humans. It's strongly hinted that if he gathers enough followers at the Carnival, he'd gain the power to split the Earth in half.
  • Which suggests that the Volume 3 Bad Future has not been averted...
• Stalker With A Crush: Invoked almost word-for-word with Gretchen.
• Stalking Is Love: West. Just West
  • He's essentially Edward Cullen without the vampirism, isn't he?
• The Starscream: Sylar. Trying to recruit him as your Dragon ''never'' ends well for you.
• Staying Alive: Sylar. So much so that they don't even bother explaining how he survived seemingly being perma-killed by Claire then left to burn in the Volume Three final showdown (after several episodes they finally throw in some jazz about "melting glass", So Yeah). He's Sylar, for crying out loud. Of course he survived.
  • And as of the Season 4 finale it seems not even attacking his weak point For Massive Damage works anymore, eliciting a well-deserved Oh Crap reaction from Danko.
• Stay In The Kitchen: Ryan Hanover, the sexist and unpleaseant Marine in "The Recruit" webisodes.
• Stealth Hi Bye: Sylar.
• Steven Ulysses Perhero: Hiro, again.
• Stock Superpowers: For a while, they seemed to be going down the list — then they jumped to things like "Ability to Talk To Machines".
• Stockholm Shnozzing: Arthur ships Sylar and Elle by locking them together in a cell.
• Storming The Castle: Matt and Bennet storming Primatech in the Season One finale.
  • In Volume Four, Matt and Peter storm Building 26, armed only with the power to control minds.
• Story Arc
• Story Breaker Power: Peter, Sylar and Hiro have these. Fortunately the writers realised this and Nerfed Peter and Hiro in Volume 3. And those that are overpowered tend to forget how insanely powerful they are at critical moments..
• Strangled By The Red String: Matt Parkman and Daphne Millbrook in Volume Three. Exactly what do these two characters have in common again?
  • Which she just acknowledged herself.
• Strapped To An Operating Table - Bennet does this to Matt and later to Sylar at Primatech in Volume 1. Mohinder does this to Nathan and Tracy and Arthur does this to Peter at Pinehearst in Volume 3.
• Stuffed Into The Fridge: Many female characters (see Unfortunate Implications) However, Charlie appeared to be climbing back out, only to be Stuffed into a different fridge by the Volume 5 Big Bad.
• Stupid Sacrifice: Nathan.
• Subways Suck: Subverted — Future Badass Hiro stops a subway train with his time manipulation powers.
• Summers Family Tree: The Petrelli's immediate family thus far includes Angela and Arthur, Angela's sister Alice, sons Peter and Nathan, Nathan's wife and legitimate kids, and Claire. Claire, in turn, has the Bennets as her foster family as well as biological mother Meredith, making Meredith's brother Flint her uncle. Sylar was teased for a bit as a third Petrelli brother; this was a lie but he's now Nathan's Replacement Goldfish.
• Super Empowering: Ando's power.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Superpowered parents have superpowered kids, though this is at least partly the result of a breeding program by The Company.
  • Subverted With Niki, Tracy, and Barbara who are identical triplets (just go with it) with powers but got them artificially.
• Superpower Meltdown: Ted, Peter, Gabriel/Sylar (in an alternative future).
  • This is what kills Meredith at the end of Volume Three.
    • Meredith's death isn't confirmed. Until stated otherwise, she's MIA.
• Superpower Lottery: Sylar, Peter, Hiro, Eden, and perhaps definetly Matt now. Hopefully he won't be killed/depowered for it. Arthur Petrelli, Alice Shaw.
• Super Senses: Dale Smither from Volume One had super hearing.
• Super Serum: the Volume Three Mac Guffin
• Super Soldier: The Pinehearst Marines in Volume Three, most notably Scott and Rachel Mills.
• Sword Fight: Hiro and his father, Hiro and Kensei
• Take Your Time: With some rather Squicky implications. Noah learns that the eclipse temporarily neutralizes powers. Seeing this as his chance to kill Sylar for good, he grabs a sniper rifle and sets up where, through the scope, he can see Sylar and Elle kissing, fully clothed. End episode. At the opening of the next episode, Sylar and Elle are post-coital in a sleeping bag, and Noah's still out there aiming...
• Taking You With Me: The first battle between Peter and Sylar ends with them grappling and throwing each other off a 30 ft drop off the bleachers. Peter died (he got better), Sylar slowed his fall with TK and limped away.
• The Taxi: Mohinder's day job at the beginning of the series.
• Technicolor Fire: Flint’s pyrokinetic fire burns blue because unlike his sister he embraced his powers and practiced burning it REALLY hot. Peter’s fire looks like this too since he mimicked it from Flint.
• Terrible Ticking: The ticking clock sound effect that plays whenever Sylar's up to his old tricks evokes this trope. Even though it's not literally a ticking he can hear, it symbolizes that he can see how everything works in a way no one else can, which drives him batty.
• That Man Is Dead: Sylar pretty much refuses to answer to "Gabriel" most of the time, but goes back to it when he's repressing his "hunger".
  • Subverted and made all the more intriguing by the fact that when he is Gabriel repressing the hunger, he takes the opposite stance, refusing to answer to Sylar. His little identity crisis is edging dangerously close to split personality disorder (now THAT would be awesome).
    • Makes one wonder what "Nathan" will end up answering to.
    • "I’m not Darth Sylar anymore. I’m X now."
• Theme Music Power Up: Sylar, Peter, and Spider-Mo
• There Are No Therapists: ...and that one time there was a therapist, she only survived for half an episode.
• There Is No Try
• They Changed It Now It Sucks
• They'd Cut You Up: Seems to be the plot of Volume Four.
• They Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot: Volume Three in five words.
• Third Line Some Waiting
• Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
• Thirty Xanatos Pileup
• This Is Something Hes Got To Do Himself: Kirby Plaza, Peter (to Nikki): Thanks, I've got this. Go back to your family.
• The Three Faces Of Adam: In Volume One, Peter is a Hunter, Nathan is a Lord, and Linderman is a rather hopeful Prophet.
• Time Travel: Hiro Nakamura multiple times. Peter, too, for some apocalypse storyboards.
• Timey Wimey Ball: the "Fantastic Aesop" entry above pretty much covers it
• Together Umbrella: Peter and Simone. Aww. Redone in the online comic to include Peter and Mohinder instead!
• The Tokyo Fireball: In New York in one timeline. The latest prophetic paintings suggest one is up and coming for Washington D.C.
• Too Dumb To Live: Claire edged dangerously close to this in Volume Two. She knows the kind of people looking for her family. She knows her flyboy has sworn a vendetta against her father. She's caught him spying on her at her house. How certain are we that Sylar didn't steal her brain? However, the true champions of stupidity have got to be Maya and Alejandro, with Alejandro actually getting killed by Sylar and Maya trusting Sylar completely, even after she's found out that he was wanted in connection with his mother's murder. (To be fair, that was one death that Sylar honestly didn't intend, as it was an accident.) Also, Mohinder Suresh is an example of this most of the time, but especially in the Third Volume opener.
  • Wait, nobody has mentioned the show's resident moron PETER here?! And Nathan too from time to time, when being character derailed after Volume 1.
• Took A Level In Badass: After spending Volume Two wallowing in Wangst, Claire spent Volume Three kicking ass and generally being much more proactive in dealing with life's hard knocks.
  • Matt seems to have taken at least half a level in Volume 4.
  • Micah apparently took one in Volume Three. In Volume Four, he's adopted the codename "Rebel" and is organizing a resistance effort against the government.
• Total Eclipse Of The Plot
• Toy Ship: Micah and Molly.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Hiro loves waffles.
• Tragic Hero: Mystery Sock Isaac
• Training From Hell: Claude's training of Peter involved beating him with a stick and throwing him off of a skyscraper, Hiro's training Adam to be a Samurai by introducing him to the 90 Angry Ronin, also standard Company training is done The Spartan Way.
  • Not to mention Meredith's training Claire to teach her regeneration isn't everything...
• Trauma Conga Line: Peter, ESPECIALLY in Volume 3.
• Trickster Mentor: Again, Claude, whose training methods involve gleefully whacking his pupil repeatedly with a pole and throwing him off a building. Given the circumstances, it's often hard to tell whether Claude sincerely cares about his pupil or hates his guts.
• Try Not To Die: Bob to Mohinder in Volume Two
• Turtle Power!: And take a shot when you want to scream, "Dammit, he is actually a tortoise!"
  • To which Matt would, in all likelihood, respond, "Wait, there's a difference?"
• Trying To Catch Me Fighting Dirty: EVERYONE!!!
• Twin Threesome Fantasy: Referenced, along with Screw Yourself
• Two Lines No Waiting
• Tykebomb: Elle Bishop.
• Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: Sylar in Volume Three after acquiring the ability to sense truth. Sylar is utterly casual in the elevator, as is his fellow passenger... albeit for different reasons given Sylar is drenched in blood.
  • Another memorable one happened all the way back near the finale of Volume One, where Matt, Niki, HRG, and D.L all find themselves sharing an elevator (the last time Matt saw Niki, she was throwing him out a 10 story window... which she outright reminds him of just prior to getting into the elevator). Complete with cheesy muzak in the background.
• The Un Favorite: A staple of Petrelli family dynamics. Also Mohinder was the unfavorite to his dead little sister.
• Unflinching Walk: Volume 5 Big Bad Samuel gets a totally badass one; after some corrupt cops brutally murder an evolved human, Samuel uses his earthbending ability to level the police station, then walks towards the camera as the station collapses behind him.
• Underwater Kiss: Claire and Alex in a pool.
• Unfortunate Implications: Mostly involving the portrayal of minorities and women. A full list is on the trope page; and it could be a show ruiner for some.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: As one editor joked during one episode (and this is but the most spectacular example of many), "Wouldn't you know it? That's the second time in as many years the corpse of a cute blonde girl suddenly vanished off one of our operating tables!"
  • A truck driver who picks up a hitchhiking Hiro and Ando learns that the baby the two of them are carrying has the power to shut down machinery (i.e. the trucker's truck) when upset (which is pretty much all the time). His only reaction is to politely ask them to remove their "magic baby" from his truck so he can continue on his journey. It's especially notable that this polite nonreaction occurs in the middle of a plot arc about how normals would be so threatened by the existence of supers that they would commit mass genocide against them if they ever learned about them. There's either something very profound there, or it's just a funny piece of dissonance in a comic relief scene.
    • He most likely didn't know how to react to a "Magic baby". And it was the government who were shown to be paranoid of Specials, not mankind as a whole. We've seen several ordinary people on the show happy to be around evolved humans without being threatened.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: What? You didn’t get that Sylar lost all his powers from the Shanti Virus in Volume 2-3 except for the original and telekinesis from that one throwaway line?
  • How many people would get what Hiro tells his future self about Charlie in "Once Upon A Time In Texas" when he says she's "The Marle to my Chrono!"
• Viewers Are Morons: Gee, I wonder how Peter survived that fall.
• Villain Decay: The BAMF Level 5 escapees a.k.a. Sylar chow.
• Villains Out Shopping: The scene in season 1 where Sylar apparently stopped for ice cream while stalking the Heroes.
  • Elle really likes Slusho’s.
  • How will they ever stop Pinehearst… cut away scene to Arthur Petrelli engaged in arts and crafts.
• Villain Protagonist: Sylar spent the first half of Volume Four looking for the truth about his parentage. Of course, he's still killing anyone who gets in his way.
• Villain Sue: Sylar, Arthur Petrelli.
• Villainous Breakdown: Elle goes through a moderate one in Villains. Sylar goes through this multiple times, each time involving his mommy issues.
  • Oh good lord...I Am Sylar. With Quinto's excellent Norman Bates impression with his mother...topped only by his skin crawling scenes with Claire in An Invisible Thread.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Luke and Sylar, type 1. "You're my bestest friend ever!" "Get lost!"
  • Poor Luke. At least Sylar didn't kill him. That's kind of a big deal for him.
• Voice With An Internet Connection: Hana. "Rebel". And hilariously, Hiro tries to be this to Ando at the beginning of Volume 4; but Ando isn't interested and just ignores Hiro to go out and meet girls.
• Waking Up At The Morgue: Claire. And HRG, and Claire again, and Sylar offscreen... (These weren't at the morgue, but still.)
• Wall Banger: Nearly everything Mohinder Suresh does in Volumes Two and Three. The Maya y Alejandro subplot. Nearly everything everybody does in Volume Three.
  • For Nathan and Sylar fans, the Volume 4 finale, with fan rebellion brewing as we speak. Also, the HUGE fight scene in the same episode... which happens entirely behind closed doors. What the hell are you ''smoking'', Kring?!
    • In the Season 4 Finale, Matt, Angela, and HRG all decided to keep Nathan dead and simply replace him with a homocidal maniac. What's even worse is that both HRG and Matt listened to the irrational and desperate pleas of a grieving mother instead of settling a compromise by leaving Nathan dead and giving a killing blow to Sylar. Worse, the mother was the same one who was willing to callously sacrifice her son to save the world in season one. Her grieving is an Ass Pull. Even without being a fan of either Sylar or Nathan, it's hard to look at this scene and not feel the urge to destroy the TV.
    • This troper would very much like to see Peter, of all people, call his mother out on this, pointing out that Claire's healing blood would have resolved both the Nathan and Sylar issues.
• Wangst: Yeah, Claire, all normal people subject to debilitating diseases and injuries are just brimming with sympathy for your desperation (in every. single. episode.) with your own friggin' regeneration power.
  • Wangst about her regeneration power? I think you mean "wangst" about constantly having to live in hiding, and then losing the ability to feel pain.
    • Apart for the fact that she openly complains about her being "special" too, having to "hide" is hardly a big deal when you are both immortal and invulnerable - it's a deal most people would be glad to make. Also, the only purpose of pain is to make us avoid noxious stimuli, therefore, for someone like Claire, lacking it can only be considered a blessing. Anyway, see the notes on Claire on the Wangst page and you'll see I'm not the only one who feels that way. In general, a lot of the characters in the show are oddly repulsed by their powers and absurdly reluctant to use them.
• Was It All A Lie: Sylar and Elle. Mohinder and Eden.
• Weapon Of Choice: Tasers. People get tazed a lot in this show. Maybe because all the actor has to do is squirm and shake after being poked by a prop with lights glued on it.
  • Prior to Volume 4, the show's signature weapon was apparently the heavily customized Colt .45 pistols wielded by Company Agents.
• We Could Have Avoided All This: Almost everything, really.
• We Want Our Magnificent Bastard Back: The usual fandom reaction to Nathan Petrelli's attempted Woobiefication and character derailment in Season 2.
  • Not that his freaky Jesus trip and Face Heel Revolving Door antics in Volume 3 are any better.
  • And not many people were particularly pleased by Sylar's rather out of left field redemption arc in Volume 3, either. Cheers all around now that he's back to form after learning it was all based on a lie. "Cake?".
    • No one make a Portal joke. NO. Don't. Stop!
    • It's the CAKE that's a lie!
• Weird Moon: Eclipses do not work that way!!!
  • Thank you Morbo.
• Welcome Back Traitor: A little attempted murder mass murder genocide won’t stop the Petrellis from having family brunch together.
• Well Done Son Guy: LOADS of them. Sylar's probably the biggest, but Elle and Mohinder follow pretty closely too. Nathan also apparently suffers from this, but he handles it much more sensibly than most.
• Well Intentioned Extremist: Utopia Justifies The Means seems to be the motive for pretty much every major villain in the series. Except for Sylar, of course, who runs more or less on pure evil (at least until the writers oddly decide to give him an In The Blood excuse in Volume Three, though Ma Patrelli could just be is a damn liar).
  • Arguably Danko. He genuinely sees evolved humans as a threat but some of what he does make him seem a lot more like a Graydon Creed than a Senator Kelly. Yes it's an X Men reference, seemed appropriate somehow.
• The Wesley: Sylar, from Volume Two onward, because he was originally supposed to be Killed Off For Real at the end of Volume One but was saved due to his popularity. Since then, he's been pretty much the focus of the show along with (the near-equally annoying) Peter and Hiro. It doesn't help that he's also a God Mode Sue who only those two characters have a slight chance of defeating, or that he was saved again in the most contrived, idiotic way at the end of Volume Four.
• Wham Episode: Lots of them, most notably "Homecoming," "Company Man," and the Volume Three premiere.
• What Could Have Been: The obvious example is how volume 3 was cut short, with plot threads obvious to be related to the main story ending up going nowhere. A bigger example would be the entire style of the series: The original intent was to have a revolving cast, with most characters not returning in future seasons. What could have been, indeed, if after season 2 we didn't have to deal with most of the extended Patrelli family?
• What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome?: Matt subduing Head-Sylar by drinking him under the table. This being Sylar, it doesn't take.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic?: The cockroach. Also the eclipses. And the single helix, er, symbol.
• What Happened To The Mouse?: What happened to Caitlin? As of the latest episodes, she is still trapped in Crapsack Future Version 2. Or not, because that timeline was erased — probably taking her with it...
  • Also, who is watching Molly?
    • Apparently, Word Of God is that she's chillin' in India with Mama Suresh. Which is actually a surprisingly smart move on Mohinder's part, seeing as how most of the assorted superpowered wackiness and nuclear explosions seem to be mainly limited to American soil.
    • I'm waiting for someone to say "Why don't we launch our plan OUTSIDE of America" ala Sailor Moon Abridged.
  • The Graphic Novels show Molly having stayed in India with Mama Suresh before returning to America to help REBEL.
• What Have I Become: Mohinder and Peter went through this in a big way in Volume Three. Having taken Sylar's ability to understand the plot how things work, Peter also developed "the hunger", a corresponding addiction to ripping out peoples' brains.
• What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway: Alejandro's ability is limited to immunity to and suppression of Maya's deadly plague ability. You know what else? Maya eventually learns to control herself on her own. Not surprisingly, Alejandro is swiftly offed. Sucks to be him.
  • Ando's power is to supercharge other people's powers. Even he complains about how lame it is. But now he can also blast people with energy.
• What Measure Is A Mook: Lampshaded in Volume 4 with regards to Danko's Black Ops stormtroopers - "People have died. Or do my men not count?!". Indeed, the fact he genuinely values the lives of his men (sociopathic snake eaters and all) seems to be Complete Monster Danko's only positive attribute.
  • Of course, he doesn't mind sacrificing a few of them just to prove his point of how dangerous people with abilities are... or to collaborate with Sylar.
• What Measure Is A Non Super: The reason for The Company to be ambiguously evil and controlling, and Sylar's drive to be special. Referenced again in Volume Three with Marine Super Soldier Scott.
• Who Wants To Live Forever: Hinted early in Volume Two. Pretty explicitly explained in "Cautionary Tales". Also hinted at in the Volume Four finale when Sylar points out to Claire that (barring power loss or losing their heads) it's eventually going to be just the two of them.
• Why Am I Ticking
• Why Couldnt You Be Different: Sylar, Peter, and Hiro have these kinds of issues.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You
• The Wildcats: Claire's Texas High School mascot.
• Window Pain - Volume Four, Episode 1.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Sylar, who discovered his power to see how things (and people!) fit together, and decided to use this wonderful gift to... eat study fingerbang people's brains and steal their powers. Mr. Bennet stated that all the alterations Sylar made to himself by stealing other special's powers drove him insane. (Never mind the fact that a guy who even starts removing people's craniums probably had a screw or two loose to start with.)
  • As of Volume Three, they're claiming that his "see how things work" power gave him a desire for more knowledge, and for more powers.
    • This Troper saw it coming back in Volume One. Granted, back then, that probably wasn't where they were planning to take the character, but from the snowglobe scene on I felt that having it be somewhat less of a conscious choice was the right way to go.
  • Also, Adam Monroe, who wanted to kill nearly every human because... they had wars. Never mind that the major reason why wars are bad is because people die.
    • But modern wars are worse, because they might kill us all. Nukes and all that.
• Women In Refrigerators: Up there with Knox as one of the show's most Unfortunate Implications. Niki/Jessica, Maya, Elle, Simone, Eden, Caitlin, Daphne... Although male characters also frequently get killed or Put On A Bus, there are also a lot more of them in the main cast, and the ones who are killed are far more likely to come back.
• The Woobie: Multiple characters get this treatment notably Hiro, Peter, Adam, Elle, and Sylar.
  • Also attempted with Nathan Petrelli at the beginning of Season 2 (mostly by making him grow a truly horrific Beard Of Sorrow) - a decision which pretty much led to a fandom revolt and was never referenced again.
  • Poor Noah ;_;
• Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds: Adam.
• The World Is Always Doomed: Oh, God, yes.
  • Possibly averted in Volume Four, as it deals with a government roundup; not New York getting nuked, a viral outbreak, or the planet cracking in half. That said, the show hasn't addressed whether or not the planet-cracking has been averted, and the "nuke" Bad Future looks like it might more or less come to pass anyway.
    • Perhaps no longer the case, now that Matt has painted a procog painting of Washington D.C. getting nuked. (Although Volume 4 is now over and the D.C. nuke still hasn't been referenced at all in the plot).
    • Patience, Parkman.
• World Of No Grandparents: Averted- Claire, while the parents of the parents she grew up with are never shown, has a biological grandmother who is actually a fairly prominent character- Angela Petrelli, and a biological grandfather who is presumed dead but returns from not quite death to be a Big Bad. They are also, obviously, the grandmother of Nathan's two legitimate sons, but those two don't show up much. When Micah's parents are dead/indisposed (one of each), he goes to live with a great-aunt ([[Cameo Uhura!), who is taking care of her own grandchildren, including Monica ("Blaxploitation Taskmaster"). Matt Parkman has a son and a father, although the latter isn't introduced until the former is dead. We also meet Sylar's father and an alternate future version of his son.
• Write Back To The Future: Hiro's letters to Ando throughout Volume Two.
• Xanatos Roulette: Although Linderman at least has the excuse of having prophetic paintings to help him.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: In contrast to the seemingly perfectly laid out master plans of The Chess Master Linderman, Volume 5 Big Bad Samuel Sullivan seems to have a general master plan, but also seems to be making a lot of it up on the fly as he's clearly not in total control and has to deal with multiple unexpected events that are not in his favor.
• X Meets Y: X-Men meets Lost meets Watchmen.
• You All Meet In A Bar
• You ALL Share My Story: Seen throughout Season 1 as the Heroes slowly come together, finally converging on Kirby Plaza in the season finale to save the world from Sylar. Oddly, the remaining seasons seem to avert this in increasing illogical ways, having to keep the Heroes seperated and/or at each other's throats since any given Volume's plot could probably be solved in 5 minutes if they actually communicated with each other.
• You Already Changed The Past: The results of Hiro’s adventures in feudal Japan.
• You Can See Me ?!: Claude, when first meeting Peter.
• You Fail Astronomy Forever: Apparently eclipses are fairly common, can be seen simultaneously in Texas, India, and Japan and last for hours.
• You Fail Biology Forever: Mohinder's speeches once again (yes, we know this is a show where a guy can fly and a kid can talk to machines, but since Mohinder is a molecular biologist we can't let it slide). Every time he opens his damn mouth, you can hear Tim Kring's high school science teacher suddenly start weeping openly without knowing why...
  • And we should have known what we were in for in the first episode when he tells his class that human beings only use ten percent of their brains....
  • This is a myth common in DC and Marvel comics so this is a shout out. Villainous Teen Titans bad guy Slade (AKA Deathstroke) has a power set based off the fact he uses 90% of his brain apparently. As does the Key who uses 100% of his brain. Yeah, he's crazy.
• You Fail Physics Forever: Aside from the many, many physical problems with superpowers, in one scene there's a big storm blowing in, and the TV weather report shows a massive high pressure system throughout the area. High air pressure makes for calm weather. It's low pressure that causes storms.
• You Get Me Coffee: Sylar use this on the cop who seems to be in charge of a hostage situation while impersonating an FBI agent in the third season.
• You Killed My Father: Elle and Mohinder had these moments with Sylar. Also Adam killed Hiro's father.
• You Will Be Assimilated: Sylar and his ability to steal the superpowers of those he kills. Doubly so now that he can assimilate other peoples very identities, through a combination of a shapeshifting power that lets him copy anything whose DNA he samples via touch, and a psychic power that lets him absorb memories via touch.
• Your _____ Is Broken: From early in the third volume, when Hiro meets Daphne after she compromises his time-stop:
  Daphne: This whole time-stopping thing, how does it work, exactly? I mean, if you chase me to Bangkok, will time stay frozen in Tokyo?
  Hiro: I don't know.
  Daphne: Well, something to think about when you get back on your feet.
  Hiro: But... I am on my feet.
• Your Mileage May Vary: This is a very polarizing show here in Internet-Land.
• Your Worst Nightmare: Maury Parkman’s schtick.
• Zen Survivor: Claude.

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