Series / Krypton

Bad day to be a hero.

Krypton is a DC Comics-inspired Science Fiction / Space Opera television series initially developed by David S. Goyer and Damian Kindler for Syfy, with writing additions by Geoff Johns. The first season premiered on March 21, 2018.

The story takes place on the planet Krypton, 200 years before its destruction and Kal-El's arrival on Earth. It follows Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe), Kal's grandfather. As a boy, Seg-El witnesses his grandfather Val-El (Ian McElhinney) being sentenced to death for sedition and heresy by the oppressive High Council of his city, Kandor. The House of El is dissolved, with its members deemed among the "Rankless", Krypton's underclass (making him just Seg, in practice).

Decades later, as a young man, Seg meets a stranger named Adam Strange (Shaun Sipos) who claims to be from the planet Earth in the future, and that Seg's grandson will become "the greatest hero in the universe". However, this means an enemy, Brainiac (Blake Ritson) — who Val-El had discovered, to no avail — is coming to destroy Krypton to prevent that hero from ever existing. Now Seg must take up his grandfather's work and fight to redeem his family's honor, save his homeworld, and ensure the existence of Superman.

To promote the second season, a comic called Krypton: Tales from The Phantom Zone was released online.

A Spin-Off centering around Lobo, who debuted in Season 2, was said to be planned. In August 2019, Syfy announced that Krypton was cancelled and (seemingly) the Lobo spinoff with it, leaving the last plot threads of Season 2 unresolved.

Previews: Trailer for Season 1, Trailer for Season 2.

Characters tropes go on the character sheet.

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The pilot provides examples of:

• Actor Allusion: In the first episode of Season 2, when Jax-Ur (Hannah Waddingham) bumps into Adam Strange and grabs his face, he says "Shame!". Waddingham played Septa Unella in Game of Thrones, who has "Shame!" as Catchphrase when watching over penance rituals for those the Sparrows condemn.
• Adapted Out: Many members of the House of El fail to make it into this continuity.
  • In the comics (in some continuities, anyway), Jor-El has an aunt with three sons and uncle with one son, but his father Seg is an only child here.
  • Adam and Zod never say anything to indicate that Supergirl or her father Zor-El exist, as Adam doesn’t list Supergirl as another reason the timeline must be stabilized and Zod tells Seg that he knew his son (singular). However, since Zod is unaware that Cor-Vex is Jor-El, his knowledge of the family may be incomplete.
  • In the Silver Age continuity, Jor-El has a twin, Nim-El, who goes on to have a son, Don-El, before both are abducted when Brainiac shrinks Kandor. Here, Jor-El has no twin and if not for the altered timeline, Kandor would have been shrunken before any additional children Seg-El may have were born.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • Seg-El's name is spelled Seyg-El in the comics.
  • Also, his grandfather Val-El was Don-El in the comics.
  • The show also changes the classic Kryptonian naming conventions. In the comics, females use their father's full name as their surname (Supergirl is Kara Zor-El, for instance). The show just has the females use the family name like the males (which would make her Kara-El, if she existed). Word of God says this was to make it less patriarchal.invoked
• Aliens Speaking English: The pilot glosses over how Adam Strange can communicate with Kryptonians. It's later shown that there exist other languages on Krypton that a regular Kryptonian, like Seg, has no familiarity with.
• Alternate Continuity: While early in development, Word of God from David S. Goyer indicated the show was set in the DC Extended Universe ("200 years before Man of Steel"). However, this seems to have been changed as Geoff Johns later clarified that this is its own thing. It's also one to the Arrowverse version of Krypton as seen in Supergirl (2015).invoked
• Alternate Timeline: The series firmly becomes this as of the first season finale, where Kandor is saved from Brainiac and Krypton's fate is altered, thereby erasing Superman from existence.
• And I Must Scream: When Brainiac bottles a city, its inhabitants are put into a living stasis, unable to move, never suffering from age or the necessities of life, but constantly aware.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Seg to Adam in "Civil Wars", after learning that Krypton is doomed to explode:
  Seg: What's the point of any of it, of making the world a better place, of having children, of protecting our loved ones, if it all just ends in fire and death?
• Arranged Marriage: Standard for at least the Kryptonian Houses. Seg is matched up with Nyssa-Vex (despite being Rankless) because of their superior projected genetic combination. Her father Daron-Vex even offers to adopt Seg into the family, making him Seg-Vex. Lyta-Zod is promised to Dev-Em.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The leaders of Sagitari units can be challenged to single combat for command.
• Back for the Dead: The Season 2 premiere reveals that Daron-Vex survived his speeder crash in his last appearance in Season 1, only for this revelation to be almost immediately followed by Lyta shooting him.
• Badass Family: The House of Zod have a long history of military service to Kandor, specifically as commanding officers.
• Bad Future: In the season 1 finale, Brainiac is sent into the Phantom Zone with Seg, and Dru-Zod destroys the projector to prevent any rescue. As a result, Krypton is spared collection by Brainiac, but Zod takes over as a military dictator. While the details aren't clear, it seems that Doomsday is eventually released on Krypton, and Zod makes his way to Earth, either becoming its hero or its conqueror. Brainiac then eventually collects a city from Earth, which presumably means Earth will be destroyed.
• Bar Brawl: Seg's very first scene. He's drunk, owes some money to some people, said people beat him up, and he hits back.
• Batman Gambit: In the season 1 finale, Dru-Zod gives up the location of the Fortress and Val-El with it to Brainiac in a desperate attempt to save Krypton. When he gets there, Seg threatens to kill Val to deny Brainiac his prize, but Brainiac just tosses him aside with telekinesis and reveals that what Seg threatened to shoot is a mere hologram. Seg then reveals that the point was to maneuver Brainiac into the path of the Phantom Zone projector.
• Big Bad: Though Krypton has an mysterious masked overlord called "The Voice of Rao" who holds sway over the Kryptonian High Council, the main villain of the story is Brainiac, who has traveled back into time to destroy Krypton in the past and thus avert Superman's birth, which would allow him free reign over a universe no longer protected by the greatest hero it has ever known. Geoff Johns literally calls him the Big Bad of the show. And then there's the matter of General Dru-Zod — whereas it turns out that Brainiac isn't a time traveler (his attack on Krypton was always part of the timeline), Zod is, having come back to save and take over Krypton, erasing Superman from existence as a side effect.
• Big Bad Ensemble: In Season 2, Zod, Brainac, Doomsday and Lobo are all separate villains following their own agendas.
• Bilingual Bonus: All the Kryptonese in the show does translate. The words on the Voice of Rao's robes are the Kryptonian version of Malachi 3 from the Geneva Bible.
• Body Backup Drive: "Hope" reveals that the ruling class of Krypton have clone bodies in storage that would allow them to live forever and retain their power.
• But What About the Astronauts?: Referenced indirectly. Krypton has three moons, and while only one is described as having a "completely self-sufficent, fully sustainable colony", that also seems to indicate that the other two moons have colonies more dependent on the planet (or at least they are during the main series). What happens to those moons and their colonists after Krypton is destroyed in the original timeline is unclear, although the two non self-sufficent ones would have been in for a rough time. While the third moon, Wegthor, is destroyed during the course of the series, the chain of events that causes this happens due to history changing, making it unclear what happened to it in the old timeline.
• Call-Forward: Plenty to drive the point home about how this is a Superman prequel.
  • Perhaps the most blatant of them all is the fact that Val-El has a secret icy lair called "the Fortress of Solitude".
  • The use of the first notes of John Williams's Superman theme here and there.
• Celebrity Paradox: The Star Wars movies exist on Earth in the series' universe (they're mentioned by Adam Strange):
  • Ian McElhinney (Val-El) played Jan Dodonna in Rogue One.
  • Dempsey Bovell (Van-Zod) played an Imperial clerk in Solo.
  • Elliot Cowan (Daron-Vex) voiced several characters in The Old Republic.
• City in a Bottle: The first live-action appearance of Brainiac's collection of shrunken bottled cities. One is visible in the first trailer. After he collects cities this way, he destroys the rest of their planets.
• Citywide Evacuation: In the season 1 finale, Brainiac tries to collect the city state of Kandor, shrink it, and put the residents in suspended animation, and lots of people try to get out before he can finish the process. Many citizens and soldiers flee in skimmers offscreen (although some are shot down), Seg tries to get people out through tunnels and calling transports from other cities, and Jax-Ur and her Black Zero troops pack up to flee across the Outlands on foot.
• The Clan: Kryptonian houses are basically family clans.
• Cliffhanger:
  • At the end of Season 1, Brainiac drags Seg into the Phantom Zone, Dru-Zod takes over Kandor as dictator and Superman's El cape sigil vanishes and gets replaced by a Zod sigil.
  • For Season 2, on the planet where she's looking for Sardath, Nyssa finds an Omega Symbol painted on a tree and sees dozens of winged humanoids flying above her. Meanwhile, Brainiac is headed to Earth with Baby Jor-El.
• The Coup:
  • The Vexs plan to oust the Voice of Rao and seize control of Kandor. With Jayna's help, they make their move in "Civil Wars"... and due to Brainiac's having possessed the Voice, they fail.
  • Dru-Zod takes over Kandor once the Brainiac threat is neutralized, with no Seg in his path.
• Crapsack World: Krypton is at its very worst before its death. The whole planet has had an apocalypse, stuck in a centuries-old planet-wide sub-zero snowstorm. The former mega-cities have been reduced to small, ugly police states where martial law is the official government and the Ranked have full reign over the poverty-stricken Rankless. Kandor is currently at war with giant monsters, undiscovered aliens, and all the other surviving cities. At this point, it's no wonder why the technologically-advanced space-faring Kryptonians didn't realize their planet was going to explode — they were too busy trying to deny it along with the crippling, suicidal depression of a dead world.
• Crapsaccharine World: In season 2, everything looks better—Krypton is breaking out its stasis, the Rankless have been freed, and fortunes are up for all involved. As long as you ignore the brainwashing, torture, the fact the Rankless are conscripted into the army, and the fact General Zod is making a fleet to conquer other worlds.
• Death's Hourglass: Seg gets Superman's cape, which is slowly disappearing. When it's completely gone, Superman will have been erased from history. Reversed in the first season finale... then the sigil changes to the Zod symbol.
• Detonation Moon: In "Blood Moon", the Resistance accidentally destroys Krypton's moon Wegthor when they detonate the tunnels to trap Doomsday. The explosion causes a chain reaction in the reactive minerals in the surface which causes the entire moon to explode.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Kem raises his middle finger to Doomsday as he's being killed by the invincible monster and activates the detonator, which blows up not only the mine but the whole of Wegthor.
• Disappointed in You: In "House of Zod", Jayna calls her daughter Lyta her greatest shame, since she was forced to make a deal to save her at the cost of her honor. Though in "Transformation", Jayna tells Lyta if she knew the whole truth then, she would gladly do it again.
• Distressed Dude: Seg seems to require a lot of rescuing. In season one alone Lyta gets him out of being arrested, teams up with Adam to save him from Black Zero and punches out someone holding him at gunpoint, his mother rescues him from the Sagitari and is arrested in his place, Nyssa saves him from the Braniac-controlled voice of Rao... frankly the guy just can’t seem to stay out of trouble.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: A Sagitari fatally shoots a Rankless essentially for telling her not to choke his friend to death, and claims self-defense when Lyta-Zod demands to know why. Lyta, thoroughly unimpressed, snaps that a highly-trained officer of the law with a gun has no reason to be so afraid of a civilian—and promptly arrests her.
• Domed Hometown: Kandor has a dome covering it to shield against the endless blizzard which has rendered most of Krypton uninhabitable. Other cities on Krypton are similarly domed.
• Dragon with an Agenda: The commander of Black Zero knows of Brainiac and is also working to stop him, but is doing so separately from Seg and even Black Zero. He's really General Zod, who's come back in time to prevent Krypton's destruction.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: In the Season 2, while in the Phantom Zone, Seg sees a vision of Zod strangling Lyta to death. It turns out to be a case of Dreaming of Times Gone By later on, as it actually happened much earlier when Zod choked her unconscious and stuck the Black Mercy on her.
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Kryptonians believe themselves to be the only intelligent life in the universe, and any suggestion of other intelligent beings existing out there is treasonous and heretical. This is partly why Val-El was sentenced to death - he saw Brainiac coming for them.
• Easily Forgiven: In season 2, Seg is happy to see Adam again, despite the last time they saw each other Seg was angry at Adam for keeping the knowledge of Krypton's destruction from him.
• Enemy Mine: In "Hope", Seg tries to get the Sagitari and Black Zero to work together to stop Brainiac. It's Teeth-Clenched Teamwork to the core, but they reluctantly go along with it. Sadly, Brainiac telekinetically forces one of Black Zero's mooks to shoot a Sagitari, causing a firefight that quickly ends with all but Seg dead.
  • At the end of season 2 Seg teams up with Lobo to track down Brainiac and get his son back.
• Evil Overlord:
  • The Voice of Rao is a theocratic dictator. And then he gets possessed by Brainiac.
  • Zod, after he becomes supreme dictator of Krypton and then, eventually, the galaxy.
• Evil Is Petty: General Zod takes the time out before leaving on a mission to retrieve a weapon of mass destruction to shine a flashlight in Adam Strange's eyes.
• Evil Versus Evil: General Zod knows Krypton doesn't possess the technology to repel Brainiac, but he thinks Doomsday might have the strength to defeat him.
• The Faceless: The Voice of Rao's face is kept hidden, either by his mask or being shot from the back. Even when he rips the mask off during the possession by Brainiac, he covers his face with his hands. By the time he unmasks later in the season, his face has been distorted by Brainiac's machinery.
• Faking the Dead: Val-El used a Phantom Zone projector to survive his execution, but lacked a way to escape thanks to Zod stealing the device which would allow him to return.
• Familial Foe: Brainiac and General Zod, both of whom are destined to become members of Superman's rouges gallery in two generations, end up battling against Superman’s grandparents and great-great-grandfather.
• Fantasy Pantheon: Krypton formerly followed a pantheon of six gods before turning monotheistic. Rao is now their sole god, and Daron-Vex rattles off the names of the five others that the Kryptonians used to routinely worship. At least one of them, Cythonna, still has worshippers, the Cythonnites, but declare they were heavily purged in the past and now exist entirely underground.
• Flipping the Bird: Season 2 has quite a few of them.
  • Both Seg and Adam Strange flip their middle finger to Lobo as they teleport away with the Zeta Beam after extracting Brainiac out of Seg's body.
  • Kem flips the bird at Doomsday, while performing his Heroic Sacrifice by blowing up the mines of Wegthor, causing a chain reaction that makes the moon explode.
• Foreshadowing: The destruction of the Wegthor moon, the source of fuel needed for Zod's spacefleet, foreshadows that even if future warnings of Krypton's destruction were believed, a planetary evacuation by spacefleet wasn't even feasible. It also foreshadows the energy shortages mentioned as forcing the Kryptonians to resort to harvesting their planet's core as an energy source, causing the catastrophe.
• Gender Flipped: Unlike in the comics or other adaptations, Jax-Ur is a woman.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: In "Blood Moon", Jayna and Dev ask two Mooks they've just captured if anyone else know they are there. The two prisoners remain defiant and don't answer, but are spared after Lyta convinces them to make a Mook–Face Turn.
• Heroic Lineage: Seg-El is Superman's grandfather and Jor-El's father, and he is the hero of this story.
• Homage: Seg-El's name is a modified version of Jerry Siegel, one of Superman's original creators.
• Hope Spot: The season 1 finale has Brainiac sent to the Phantom Zone and then Superman's dissolving cape immediately becoming whole again, only for Seg to be seized by Brainiac's tentacles and pulled into the Zone with him, and the cape's sigil of Superman/El turning into the sigil of Zod.
• Hotter and Sexier: The show is more sexually charged than most previous adaptations of the Superman mythos. Seg and Lyta-Zod make love in the pilot, albeit with Modesty Bedsheets. Nyssa-Vex's outfits show generous cleavage and later she changes in front of Seg, with a quick glimpse of sideboob.
• Human Aliens: As usual in any Superman media, the Kryptonians all look like humans from Earth. As a matter of fact, Adam Strange is the only human on the show.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Seg to Rhom.
• Impaled Palm: Jayna Zod impales the hand of Lyta Zod to teach that Sagitari never ask for mercy, and never give it.
• Kid from the Future: Black Zero's commander is Lyta-Zod's future child, General Dru-Zod.
• Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: In Season 2, Brainiac kidnaps baby Jor-El and brings him to Earth.
• Kneel Before Zod:
  • The House of Zod, who "kneel to no one". It Runs in the Family apparently.
  • In the first season finale, the man himself makes this declaration after taking over Kandor as a military dictator.
• La Résistance: In the trailer, Seg says "The House of El led a revolution against tyranny." In the show, a movement called "Black Zero" opposes the Voice of Rao.
  • In Season 2, the Els actually get to live up to that trailer promise, as Val (along with Nyssa and Jax-Ur) leads an underground rebellion against General Zod's rule of Krypton.
• Last of His Kind: By the pilot's end Seg is the last of the El family, except that Adam Strange gives him Superman's cape.
  Adam Strange: This belongs to your grandson, Kal-El. Emphasis on the El.
• Light Is Not Good: The Voice of Rao wears white robes and a gold mask, and is a theocratic dictator.
• Liquid Courage: Just like Earthlings, the Kryptonians produce liquors and get drunk for fun.
• Logo Joke:
  • The DC logo is set in space, and embedded with red Kryptonian earth. It turns green (the color of kryptonite, radioactive Kryptonian earth) and explodes (foreshadowing Krypton's fate). The WB logo appears from the explosion, still shaded green. See here.
  • An accidental one: with all the flip-flopping of the show's DCEU-or-not status, the Superman logo having the DCEU version's extra lines but the classic version's proportions is ever so fitting.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: The Black Mercy shows up in another Superman adaptation, trapping its host in a happy illusion. Zod used it to trap the real Lyta then had a clone made and reconditioned to better serve his agenda.
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Brainiac has traveled back in time to destroy Krypton and prevent Superman from ever existing. In fact, this is not true. Brainiac isn't from the future; he was always meant to attack Krypton and steal Kandor. Doing so destabilizes the planet's core and ultimately causes its destruction 200 years later. Adam Strange is actually the one invoking this trope, as Krypton has to be destroyed so that Superman will come to exist. He insists he didn't know better, however, assuming Brainiac had traveled back until General Zod clarified history for him.
  • As of the Season 2 finale cliffhanger (which we'll presumably be stuck with forever due to the show's cancellation), not only has Krypton's continued survival called Superman's future existence into question, Brainiac has abducted infant Jor-El and plans to raise him as his own.
• Mercy Kill: After Jayna-Zod shoots both Ter and Charys, Daron-Vex accuses her of giving them easy deaths compared to what he had planned for them. Jayna-Zod had earlier promised Cherys a merciful and quick death, pointing out that there were things they could do to the condemned worse than merely killing them.
• Mooks: Subverted in this setting, as Brainiac's sentry operates at first like the sentries/drones carrying out plans similar as presented in previous Superman media, then is shown able to carry out more complex and even subtle planning.
• Mythology Gag: Enough of these to have its own page.
• New Era Speech: In the Season 1 finale, General Dru-Zod gives one about the glory of having united Krypton's city-states under a single regime, and how they'll now make Krypton the seat of an interstellar empire.
  • He gives another one in the Season 2 premiere, celebrating how strong and unified Krypton has become under his rule.
• No, You: Between Daron-Vex and Jayna-Zod.
  Daron-Vex: You're just a blunt object.
• Nom de Mom: Ranked Kryptonians will take the surname of the parent (or spouse, for that matter) who comes from the more influential House, regardless of whether that's the mother or father. Hence although Seg inherited the El name from his father, Lyta inherited the Zod name from her mother Jayna, and Nyssa inherited the Vex name from her own mother while her father Daron is a Vex by marriage. Seg and Lyta's son is named Dru-Zod (although in his case his father's identity was a secret), and Seg and Nyssa's son Jor-El was originally planned to be named Cor-Vex.
• The Order: Krypton's professions are divided into Guilds (Lawmakers, Military, Science, etc.), which are intimately linked with family houses and bloodlines.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Subverted. Seg explicitly states that he knows the tunnels better, allowing him to arrive shortly after two people who left hours before he did.
• Only One Name: Rankless Kryptonians don't have surnames.
• Outside-Context Problem: Brainiac is an alien intelligence of incalculable power menacing Krypton, a society that has laws against even believing other life exists, much less having a means to counter it.
• Palm Bloodletting: Seg-El slices his palm to drip blood onto the El family glyph on a console in Val-El's Fortress of Solitude to activate the computer systems.
• Place Beyond Time: The Phantom Zone exists beyond time and space. In there, everything is happening all at once, and both the past and future are visible to its occupants. Not that this is much help to its occupants, since there's still no way to leave unless you have a means to force open a wormhole.
• Prequel: Takes place 200 years before Krypton's destruction, although it veers into Alternate Timeline.
• Race Lift: In the show, the members of the House of Zod look similar to black humans. Its most famous member, Superman's foe General Dru-Zod, looks like a white human in the main comics universe and most incarnations. Though Val-Zod, the Superman of Earth 2, is a black Kryptonian.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: The leaders of the Sagitari also tend to be the best fighters. In the entire series, the only character who even comes close to being able to match General Dru-Zod one-on-one is his Grandmother Primus Jayna-Zod. Even in the final showdown it takes both Seg and Lyta to take him down.
• Related in the Adaptation: Dru-Zod is the son of Seg and Lyta, meaning that like in Superman: Earth One he's Jor-El's half-brother and Superman's uncle.
• Red Shirt Army: One or more of the Sagitari get killed almost per episode.
• Ripple Effect Indicator: The fact that Kal-El/Superman's cape is slowly vanishing from existence serves as a hourglass for Seg now that he's in a Race Against the Clock to save the future.
• The Scapegoat: After the botched Black Zero raid, the Voice of Rao demands someone be held responsible so the people will calm down. Lyta-Zod is framed for the casualties and arrested as a Black Zero supporter.
• Secret Test of Character: A rare villainous example. The Voice of Rao, who's now being controlled by Brainiac, gives Ona questions about faith to see if she's worthy of joining him. While he does outright state it's a test, he does not tell her what kind.
• Sequel Hook: The season 1 finale ends with Zod taking over as a military dictator, Adam Strange in a bottled city evidently taken from Earth, and Doomsday's stasis pod failing, letting the monster free.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: General Zod claims to have come back in time to prevent Krypton's destruction, which will happen if Brainiac is allowed to collect Kandor. Unfortunately, this would also stop Superman from existing, if not in body then at least in spirit.
• Shout-Out:
  • A couple to Star Wars:
    • Daron-Vex's excuse for his absence during the failed coup is that he was "on a diplomatic mission". (And then Vex also gets subjected to a one-handed Neck Lift from The Dragon.)
    • When the Voice of Rao is facing down an assassination attempt he removes his helmet, requesting that, if this his last moment, he be allowed to "look upon it with his own eyes".
  • In the second episode of season 2, Seg does Henry Cavill's memetic fist reloading from Mission: Impossible – Fallout when facing Lobo. Cameron Cuffe confirmed that it was an intentional reference.
• Space Elevator: Krypton has the Hypersonic Orbital Tether, a space elevator that links it to its moon, Wegthor, the soil of which is rich in Stellarium ore, which is needed to make hyperspace fuel. The resistance against General Dru-Zod's dictatorship established their base on Wegthor, and end up blowing up the Hypersonic Orbital Tether to prevent Zod from sending his Sagitari armies against them.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Seg-El and Lyta-Zod are in a clandestine and forbidden relationship. They're in different social classes, and even if he wasn't, his grandfather was a notorious criminal. Oh, and they're both promised to other people.
• The Starscream: Daron and Nyssa are planning to overthrow the Voice of Rao and take control of Kandor for themselves.
• Suicide by Cop: The Heroic Sacrifice of Seg's parents to protect him and the secret of the Fortress of Solitude. They both draw a blaster gun inside the court room in which Charys was on trial, and Jayna-Zod shoots them both as a result.
• Time Skip: The season 1 finale ends with a one-month time skip, during which Zod has seized control of Kandor and conscripted its populace, Doomsday has broken free of his pod, and Earth has a dark future of being visited by Brainiac while Zod has replaced Superman.
• Token Good Cops: Many of the Sagitari who enforce the laws of Kandor City are well-versed in Police Brutality against the lower classes (whom they show constant disdain for), but Lyta tries to be an Internal Reformist, her mother and Dev-Em improve their behavior after Heel Realizations, and a handful of minor Sagitari troopers (like Tai-Un, Thur, and Pline) seem like decent people who do their jobs well and without malice.
• Trapped by Gambling Debts: Along with the very human practice of drinking, Kryptonians enjoy gambling, which Seg does and gives him trouble regularly.
• Two-Keyed Lock: The seal on Doomsday's vault requires blood samples from two distinct sources: the House of El and the House of Zod, who originally sealed the monster away.
• Unobtainium: Stellarium ore, which is needed to make hyperspace fuel. The soil of Wegthor, the moon of Krypton, is full of it, which makes the moon particularly valuable to Dru-Zod's space conquest project. The downside is that Stellarium is volatile. The explosion Kem triggers to bury Doomsday is enough to make the Stellarium supply of the moon explode, and the moon with it.
• Uterine Replicator:
  • Kryptonians reproduce by putting their DNA in the Genesis Chamber, similar to Man of Steel, leaving their offspring to be grown. Seg and Nyssa-Vex conceive a child that way in the pilot. But Kryptonians can still have old-fashioned coitus.
  • Reminiscent of the film Gattaca, Seg and Nyssa's child has its sex, lifespan, career and likely cause of death computed and announced to them, all from a single fertilized egg. It's a boy, he's already named Cor-Vex, and he'll be a famed lawmaker before dying of old age. Except he'll really be a scientist named Jor-El.
• Villainous Rescue: For some time in Season 2, Brainiac is in Seg's body and helps him survive with calculations and aiming. It's entirely out of self-preservation but still qualifies.
• Visionary Villain: General Zod's goal in Season 2 is to build an empire, and terraform all conquered worlds into new Kryptons, in order to ensure that the Kryptonian species never faces extinction again.
• Wham Episode: The season 2 finale, "The Alpha and the Omega", in so many ways:
  • The war ends with Zod deposed and trapped by the Black Mercy.
  • Nyssa steals Adam's zeta beam to teleport to Rann in a bid to find Brainiac, but finds the planet under invasion by winged humanoids. These could be either Parademons or Thanagarians, though the Omega symbol she finds suggests Darkseid is involved.
  • Doomsday, of course, is still in one piece and has crashed back on Krypton.
  • Seg teams up with Lobo to find Brainiac and his son.
  • And finally, Brainiac has claimed Jor-El as his son, and plans to take him to Earth where Jor-El will gain power under a yellow sun.
• Wham Shot:
  • Season 1, the El crest vanishing from Superman's cape and being replaced with the Zod one.
  • Season 2, Brainiac's ship approaches Earth, nearly a century before Superman would exist to oppose him.
• Xanatos Gambit: Brainiac's sentry carried out the traditionally expected operation of reaching a planet and then signaling back to Brainiac, while carrying out a second plan to quietly approach and take control of Krypton's central leadership figure.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The "Black Zero" group. In their first major scene, one member tries to suicide bomb the Voice of Rao, but Seg helps stop him solely to save his father who was in the same place. Later in the season, they're expanded on as wanting to end the oppression of the Ranked and bring equality and freedom to Kandor.

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