Series / Misfits

Curtis: So, what happens now? Is this it? We gonna be like this forever?
Simon: What if we're meant to be, like, superheroes?
Nathan: Superheroes? You lot! No offense, but in what kinda fucked-up world would that be allowed to happen?

Misfits is a British Speculative Fiction series about a group of young offenders on a community service programme, who get caught in a freak electrical storm that imbues them with superpowers. The series debuted in November 2009 and the second series aired the following year with a bonus Christmas special. A third was broadcast in late 2011, minus Robert Sheehan (Nathan), and a fourth series in 2012. The fifth and final series aired in 2013. It won the BAFTA award for Best Drama Series in 2010.

The "Misfits" are a group of five 20-somethings who are united by a series of traumatic events, and the emergence of their freaky new superpowers. These newfound abilities all relate to their deepest personality traits and psychological drives; turning their desires into realities, and their greatest weaknesses into weapons.

The original cast:

• Curtis is a former star athlete who was caught in possession of cocaine and publicly shamed, losing his chance to pursue the life he always dreamed of. Haunted by regret, he develops the power to turn back time when he feels incredible guilt.
• Simon, a shy, introverted and Genre Savvy young man who has been ignored and bullied all his life, develops the power to turn invisible and inaudible.
• Kelly, mouthy, aggressive, and always worried about what people think of her, is granted the power of telepathy.
• Alisha, a shallow and vain party girl, who flaunts her sex appeal in order to use and abuse the men around her, develops the ability to inspire uncontrollable lust in anyone who touches her.
• Nathan, snarky jerkass, who much to his consternation does not seem to have a power.

Later additions to the main cast:

• Rudy, a crude young man whose buried fears and emotions are represented by his more sensitive clone.(Series 3 onwards.)
• Finn, an incredibly naive guy that never knows when to shut up, whose weak telekinesis is due to his own sense of powerlessness. (Series 4 onwards)
• Jess, a fiercely outspoken girl with hidden vulnerability whose refusal to take bullshit from anyone is reflected by her ability to see through solid surfaces. (Series 4 onwards.)
• Alex, the handsome but reserved local bartender who's not on community service, but seems to be keeping a power-related secret.
• Abby, a girl with a love of booze and an ever-present blank expression who lost her entire memory during the Storm. (Series 4 onwards).

The Series is described by The Other Wiki as a "live-action superhero comedy drama", but is more frequently deemed X-Men meets Trainspotting.

Not to be confused with the band of the same name. Or Misfits of Science, which has a similar premise. The Italian Web Video Series Freaks!, while having a completely different plot, has the same core premise of five young adults gaining superpowers from a strange event and the first episode of the second season referenced Misfits, which was confirmed as a tribute by the director.

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This show contains examples of the following tropes:

• Accidental Murder:
  • Kind of a plot-motor here. The Misfits kill a lot of people. Curtis has on multiple occasions warned them ahead of the crime that somebody must die for the greater good. Becomes somewhat of a prominent theme of the third season finale.
  • It is frequently brought up for black comedy purposes. For instance, when Nathan claims that they're the good guys because they don't murder anyone, Curtis reminds him that they've actually killed quite a few people, but Nathan brushes it off with "we didn't mean to." Additionally when Finn starts getting a bit idealistic, Alex responds with "We kill people. Frequently."
  • Subverted in episode 4.5. Finn thinks he killed Greg and they go as far as putting him in the hole they dug before they figure out that he's alive.
• Accidental Pervert: Nathan averts the trope by being an actual pervert who just happens upon situations sometimes.
  • Rudy averts the trope to a degree.
  • Simon doesn't mean to spy on Curtis and Alisha.
  • Super Hoodie wasn't sniffing Alisha's panties.
• All Guys Want Cheerleaders: Averted by Rudy. When he was thirteen he witnessed a Primal Scene in which his mother was dressed as a cheerleader. Now the very sight of them makes him nauseated.
• All-Natural Fire Extinguisher: Prior to the beginning of the series, a drunk Simon tried to get revenge on a bully by setting fire to his house. However, after noticing a cat in the house, Simon came to his senses and decided to extinguish the fire by urinating through the letterbox in the door. This is what caused him to be sent to do community service.
• All There in the Manual: A pair of webisodes give more clarity on Nathan's departure (and also serves as Rudy's first appearance), and on where a graffiti artist (that the gang is constantly cleaning up after) comes from. Both are up on Hulu, but are listed in the 'Clips' section, so it's very easy to miss them, especially the first webisode, which serves as a bridge between Series 2 & 3.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us:
  • Inverted. The Misfits ransack Superhoodie's flat for clues, and Nathan takes a dump in his bed. Oops, that should read what they thought was Superhoodie's flat.
  • More conventionally, both Virtue Girl and "Jesus" have based themselves in the community centre.
  • In the alternative world where the Nazis won, the community centre is the local Nazi Party base and prison.
• All Your Powers Combined: Jesus takes the powers of Alisha and Nikki, while a girl called Sarah receives several powers that appeared in season 5 when Alex's powers are reversed and he fucks them into her.
• Alternate Identity Amnesia: Nathan's mother's boyfriend, regarding his "weredog" form.
• Alternate Universe: A natural side-effect of Curtis's time winding. Notable examples include;
  • 1.4: Where Curtis never got caught in the drug bust, and everyone (except Nathan) died when the probation worker attacked them.
  • 2.6: When the Misfits, and many other people with powers become famous, but are all killed by a young man with the power to manipulate lactose because, despite being the first person with powers to go public, he's quickly considered a joke or novelty compared to the more impressive/cool abilities.
  • 3.4: The premise of the entire episode, where an old Jewish man uses Curtis' power to try and kill Hitler. Predictably, he fails, and Hitler ends up with his phone, which he then uses to accelerate Germany's technological development and win WWII.
  • 5.8: Jess is pushed ahead a year into the future by a boy she hooks up with at the bar. In the time she's missing, the superhero gang started by Rudy Two have turned into sociopaths, killing both criminals but also anyone they deem simply to be wankers.
• Always Need What You Gave Up: The gang in 2.7, unable to save Nikki having given up their powers.
• Amicable Exes:
  • The eventual fate of Curtis and Alisha.
  • Same for Jess and Alex.
• An Aesop: Rudy is subjected to one in episode 3.6, when he finally learns to stop mistreating women through his constant one-night stands, or as he puts it "living for himself", when his latest conquest curses his penis to rot and fall off. Hilariously, he goes on about how he's a better person and how "we're all in this together" right up until his other self walks in, having been forced to spend a night in a police cell thanks to Rudy forgetting about him.
• And I Must Scream:
  • What Monsieur Grand Fromage does to Nathan in 2.6.
  • Kelly is briefly body-swapped with a coma patient in Season 3.
• And the Adventure Continues: The final episode ends this way. Helen and Rudy Two decide to see the world while the main gang (at this point, original Rudy, Jess, Finn, Abby and Alex) decide to become proper superheroes. In the final shot, a new storm, that looks similar to the first one that gave everyone powers, is seen rolling up in the distance.
• Anyone Can Die: Nobody is safe. While many deaths are reversed through time travel, the series is not above killing off recurring and regular characters for real. By the end of the series Simon, Alisha and Curtis are all dead, as are at least five probation workers.
• Anti-Villain:
  • Most of the bad guys -Lucy, Sally and Tony for example - have been fairly sympathetic in their own way, and not just evil for evil's sake. Again, a major aspect of the third season finale.
  • Averted with Brian, who admits up front, quite gleefully, he's killing "shitloads of people" so he can get attention again.
• Arc Words: "It's not down to you."
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • Simon asking Alisha "Why are you being so nice to me?" after she brings him a drink and thanks him for saving them. It actually drives her to tears.
  • Alex gives one to Stuart when asking him about the irony of their situation "Am I fucking you because you're not gay and you're just sick of having your power or am I fucking you because you are gay and you just don't want to tell anyone about it?"
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  Alisha: My friend Chloe did crystal meth and she nearly shagged her brother. And he's really ugly.
• The Artifact: The opening evolves whenever a cast member joins or leaves. The animated bits remain unchanged though, which becomes very noticeable as more and more cast members are replaced. By the fifth season all the original cast members are gone, but they still appear as the animated silhouettes getting struck by lightning. This also applies to the powers displayed by the silhouettes, which no longer have any significance when they gain new ones in the third season.
• As the Good Book Says...: Rudy tries invoking the Good Samaritan when getting Helen to help him, Jess and Abbie. He then humorously gets this mixed up with the Crucifixion and Nativity stories however. Jess sarcastically comments after hearing it about how well he knows the scriptures. Nathan also refers to the Good Samaritan when trying to persuade the gang to steer clear of trouble in 2.4, "like the Good Samaritan".
• Attempted Rape:
  • Alisha's power is the ability to induce irresistible lust for her in others. However, she can't turn her power off, which as a result causes her to suffer this.
    • Which caused her to realize that the "fun" she'd been having early on with abusing her powers was pretty nasty to the people on the receiving end who had their ability to consent stripped away.
  • Melissa and Emma in 3.2 at the hands of their would-be rapist coach.
    • It's downplayed because of Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male and because he went down on her (instead of forcing her to pleasure him), but this also coincides with one of Rudy's lowest and most despicable moments as he found the drugged and barely conscious Melissa!Curtis and started giving her oral sex even as she weakly protested.
  • It looked like Greg was going this way with Finn but his telekinesis flared up and knocked him over some railings.
• Attention Whore: Nathan will do virtually anything to get attention, including simulating oral sex on a mop, performing strange and lengthy Bono impersonations, and pretending to masturbate with a paint-brush. Sometimes his extravagant attention-seeking actually gets the group out of trouble. Alisha has her moments too, though she specifically craves positive male attention rather than just needing to be noticed in general. She becomes a lot more mature in Series 2 and doesn't display nearly as much attention-seeking behaviour, whereas Nathan, if anything, gets worse.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Rudy tends to err in this direction when grabbing weapons - whether it's a sledgehammer that he can hardly lift or swing, or a chainsaw that stalls mid-fight.
• Ax-Crazy: Tony the probation worker, who is transformed into a crazed murderer by the storm, and does literally hack a young guy to pieces with an axe.
  • To drive the point home, when he chases Kelly, he grabs an axe-shaped piece of metal fencing to use as a weapon.
  • The power in Series 4, Episode 1 causes people to desire a briefcase full of money, to the point they'll maim and kill for it.
• Back from the Dead:
  • The main trait of Nathan's power. Given a hilarious nod, with Nathan's waking up in his coffin, and going "I'm alive! I have a power! I'm alive! ...You buried me alive, you dicks!"
  • Technically this happens a fair few times, due to Curtis' time-turning ability. Most notably, 2.6, in which the Misfits becoming famous leads to a bad future where they're all dead, or good as.
  • The power that Seth acquires in 3.6, which is the ability to raise the dead. It has the side-effect of making them a zombie with a taste for flesh.
  • The third season finale introduces us to a medium who can bring back the spirits of the dead, calling up Tony, Sally, and The Virtue Girl who then become the primary focus of most of the episode.
• Badass Biker: "Super Hoodie", the mysterious BMXer who saves Nathan.
  • The Four Horseman ^note or rather Four Cyclists, though that doesn't really have the same ring to it of the Apocalypse definitely count.
• Badass Boast: This exchange.
  Simon: I've always had a set of balls, it's just you've never seen them.
  Nathan: That is about the gayest thing I ever heard.
• Beauty Is Bad: Especially noticeable with Lucy, who, compared to all the other crazies, is practically a goddess.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Curtis desperately wanted the chance to undo the mistakes he'd made, but he didn't bargain for the problems meddling with history would involve. Nikki really wanted a heart; the teleporting ability that came with it is not always controllable.
  • There's also an early episode when Alisha began reveling in her power to inspire lust and abusing it. But she realizes the lack of value and meaning in her sexual encounters, and is almost raped by a man she's been using her powers on to repeatedly manipulate into losing control of himself AND by the friend who tries to help her escape when he too is affected by her powers in the process. She got the power to do exactly what she always wanted, be desired and lusted after by everybody, but her Power Incontinence makes it a case of Blessed with Suck
  • Curtis wishes for a chance to run again, but it complicates his life in unforeseen ways.
• Bed Trick:
  • Lucy and Simon in 2.01, courtesy of Voluntary Shapeshifting.
  • Averted in 3.05, when Dom knows it's Jen in Kelly's body.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Nathan and Kelly, in spades.
• Berserk Button: Call Kelly a chav, and she might just literally kick your face in.
  • Also Tony the probation worker, after being struck by the storm, wound up having his button stuck, in a manner of speaking.
  • Do not suggest that Shaun the Probation Worker was sexually abused as a child.
• Better as Friends: Kelly's decision regarding her and Nathan. She claims it's "like shaggin' me cousin."
• Big Damn Heroes: Super Hoodie, twice.
  • Then there's Abby and her screwdriver.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: Jeremy, the boyfriend of Nathan's mom, is well-endowed. Alisha and Kelly comment about this, to Nathan's distress.
• Binge Montage: Nathan and Ruth getting wasted together in 1.2.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Series 3 finale. Simon and Alisha are locked in a time loop of falling in love and dying. Lampshaded when Rudy asks whether he should be happy or sad, and Curtis tells him "both".
• Black Widow:
  • Simon's girlfriend Jessica is suspected of being one. Turns out she's a virgin, and her father has been killing off all potential lovers.
  • Curtis also ends up with a variation of one who uses whoever her current lover is to kill the previous one.
• Blatant Lies: Angry at "Jesus" for misusing their powers, Nathan states that it's not as if the main cast have murdered and raped anyone. Curtis quickly shoots him down, reminding him that actually, they have.
  Nathan: When we had our powers, we didn't rape or kill anyone!
  Curtis: What? She raped me, and we've killed loads of people!
  Nathan: Well...yeah, but...we're the good guys!
  Curtis: We'll get you an ambulance. Hold in there. You'll be fine.
• Blessed with Suck: Everybody, to a degree. The show focuses a great deal on the annoying and inconvenient aspects of having a superpower. Some people have powers that are practically useless, or just drove them crazy.
  • Special mention must go to Alisha, who is nearly raped every time she touches a man for the first few episodes.
  • Kelly, especially in Series 3. What good is being a rocket scientist if nobody believes you actually are one?. However, this is subverted as her new power actually proves to be one of the more useful ones.
  • Most powers: Kelly's telepathy allows one to hear other's thoughts...many of which are insulting or really dirty, Tony gets super-strength coupled with murderous rage, Lucy could shapeshift but transformation was very painful, Lily's pyrokinesis (actually cryokinesis but she took ecstasy, which reverses powers) was triggered during intercourse, teleportation is used by several people but Nikki can't control it, emotional duplication (creates a duplicate in a Literal Split Personality situation and owned by Rudy and Geoff)creates psycho clones representing the deep, dark parts of the user, the ability to tell the future (in many forms, including knitting) will probably show someone dying eventually, resurrection makes flesh-hungry zombies, power removal requires sex (although depending on who needs their powers removing this one's debatable), one time-travel power doesn't let you come back (except the slow way) and there are many more. Some are like this before the users are used to them (flight only works if you're fleeing, invisibility and camouflage only work when ignored) but they're fine once controlled better.
• Blood from the Mouth:
  • Kelly gets this in 2.4.
  • Curtis briefly in 2.3
  • Happens to Charlie in 3.1 when she gets stabbed.
  • In the Series 3 finale, it's Alisha, courtesy of getting her throat slit by Rachel, Virtue Girl.
• Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress: Poor Kelly has shades of this come 2.4 when Tim kidnaps her. His power causing him to view everything as playing a violent videogame. He sees her as his ex-girlfriend who stole his money and jilted him at the altar. He forces her to wear a wedding dress.
• Body Horror:
  • Lucy the shapeshifter and her Painful Transformation sequences, during which she writhes, screams and appears to claw her own face off.
  • Rudy's penis after his one-night stand curses it. Thankfully we only see it briefly, broken off in his hand in Simon's vision. Mostly, we get vague descriptions, including that it's going black.
• Body in a Breadbox: This happens, courtesy of Simon putting Sally into a freezer after accidentally killing her.
• Bonding Through Shared Earbuds: Because Alisha can't touch anyone, she and Simon bond by sharing his earphones so she can listen to his music.
• Book Ends: Compare these lines from the ending of the first episode and the ending of the last episode:
  Nathan: Superheroes? You lot! No offense, but in what kinda fucked-up world would that be allowed to happen?
  Finn: Superheroes? You lot! No offense, but...fuck it. Let's do it!
• Boom, Headshot!: How a zombified Curtis shoots himself, to save the rest from infection.
• Brain Freeze: Rudy suffers from one after Abby dares him to eat his ice cream in one go.
  Rudy: She dared me to swallow me full Cornetto in one go. Mate, it's given me the worst brain freeze. I thought I was going to die there for a minute.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: What Virtue Girl apparently believes she's doing with her power. It turns drug-using, sexually promiscuous young people into upstanding, straight-laced Christians.
• Break the Cutie: The torrent of pain and misfortune endured by Simon could be seen as this, although he was well on the way to being "broken" anyway; years of being bullied and humiliated at school caused him to Freak Out one day and attempt to burn down his worst tormentor's house. Until he realised that would involve killing a cat, and extinguished the flames. By pissing through the letterbox.
  • Sally also did this to him by accident near the end of Series 1, after pretending to like him in order to get close enough to find information proving he and the other Misfits killed Tony. In an ensuing struggle, he accidentally bangs her head against the door with enough force to kill her.
• Brick Joke:
  • A very dark one comes in Series 2. Nikki tells Curtis that someone with his power would normally use it to travel back in time to kill Hitler. He can't, since he can only time travel to change events he feels guilty about. Come the Christmas Episode and Seth, the powers dealer, says he sold Curtis' power to an old Jewish man planning to do just that. Since he's a Holocaust survivor with Survivor's Guilt, he can go back to before it happened and try to stop it. We actually get to see the attempt and how it turns out in Series 3.
  • In the first episode, Nathan guesses that his power is flight, as "there's always one who can fly". No luck, all the way until series 5, when it's shown a man can fly.
  • Throughout series 1 multiple characters ask what Nathan did to get community service. His answer is always the same- he stole some pick'n'mix but given that he's The Gadfly no one believes him. Come episode four we find out that he really was done in for stealing some pick'n'mix, of course he left out the whole part about him being a nuisance who harassed the manager but even Nathan was surprised to be told that this was a jailable offense.
• British Brevity: The first series has six episodes, the second has seven (including the Christmas Special), while the rest had eight.
• Brought Down to Normal:
  • All of the cast in the Christmas Special by their own choosing. Causes some complications.
  • All of the main cast apart from Rudy in the Nazi timeline. Presumably none of the Misfits were out in the open when the storm hit.
• Bungled Suicide: Jess relates that she attempted suicide after her boyfriend left her.
• Buried Alive: Nathan, the first time he dies.
• Bury Your Gays: Subverted when the gang go to actually bury their gay probation worker, but it turns out he's not dead.
• Butterfly of Doom: Curtis encounters this problem in 1.4.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Simon.
  • It seems whenever someone's power starts messing with people, it's always Nathan. Sometimes it's not even powers: the universe just loves screwing over Nathan. Although his misfortune is very often a direct result of his own idiocy, arrogance and/or general jerkassery, whereas Simon is undeservingly victimised. Plus Simon is painfully aware of his own butt monkey status, while Nathan remains ridiculously over-confident despite leading a life of near-constant humiliation. That trait is what makes him immortal.
  • Ollie up until his prompt death, anyway.
  • Finn.
• Call-Back: In the Nazi episode, a few powered people the group encountered before appear when the Nazis are looking for people with powers.
  • The Series 3 finale;
  Kelly: There was a guy who could control cheese and he was a fucking psycho.
  • Greg sings the Power of Love in 5.3, having previously sung it at karaoke.
• Call-Forward: Nathan and Curtis each accuse the other of being about to shit themselves. Oddly, because of Curtis' time manipulation, neither of them remember the other saying it to them when they say it.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Nathan in 2.2. And Jamie.
• Came Back Wrong: With the resurrection power introduced in Series 3, any living thing brought back from the dead develops a craving for flesh. But unlike most examples of this trope, the resurrected maintains their intelligence and personality and don't become entirely mindless zombies.
  • They do, however, take on a "rage virus" quality when attempting to feed.
• The Cameo: Phil Daniels' brief yet memorable guest appearance as the voice of Kelly's filthy-minded dog. No, really.
  • Also, Nicholas Burns (from Nathan Barley, and various other British comedies) plays the horny policeman in 1.2.
• Can't Have Sex, Ever: Oddly enough, the effective result of Alisha's first power. She and Curtis can't have mutually consenting sex. Her pheromone manipulation causes him to forget who he is momentarily. He stops caring about her and just wants to have sex with her, and once the physical contact is broken, he can't remember any of it. Because they want to preserve their emotional connection, they are forced to resort to more unconventional methods of sexual intimacy.
• Capepunk: It's made clear from the very first episode that this show isn't about superheroes, but about five delinquents trying to cope with abilities they never asked for and dealing with all the other superhumans they encounter. Being a Genre Deconstruction on superheroes, it often portrays it's heroes as being incredibly violent and flawed and it's villains as sympathetic victims.
• Captain Obvious: Nathan's "The probation worker's gone mental!" line, when he'd already been warned about said probation worker's mentality and refused to believe it. In his defence, you probably wouldn't believe that your supervisor had suddenly turned into a murderous axe-wielding maniac until you saw it with your own eyes. Especially if you're The Ditz.
• Cassandra Truth: In Episode 3.7, which also makes this Arbitrary Skepticism considering the conversation and who is involved in it.
  Kelly: You gotta kill 'er! She's a fookin' zombie!
  Seth: [shoves Kelly down the hall, then slams the door in her face]
• Catchphrase: Rudy suggests they come up with some in 3.1.
  • "I'm a fucking rocket scientist!" is a legitimate one.
  • "Now you see me, (beat) now you see two of me!" is said once by Rudy as a joke. Him saying to his copy "Come on, get back in here" while gesturing to his chest is a more legitimate catchphrase.
    • "Jeeeesus! ".
  • "It doesn't work like that!" said by Curtis in the first two series whenever anyone wants him to deliberately use his power to rewind history to prevent some unfortunate occurrence from happening.
  • "You don't need to behave like this. You can be so much better..."
• Caught with Your Pants Down: In Nathan's defence, Curtis and Alisha really should have locked the door...
• Character Focus: Happens in several of the episodes;
  • Nathan - 1.2 and 2.2
  • Curtis - 1.4, 2.4 3.2, and 4.4
  • Simon - 1.5, 2.1, and 3.3
  • Alisha - 1.3, 2.3, and 2.4
  • Kelly - 1.1, 2.5, and 3.4
  • Rudy - 3.1, 4.8, and 5.2
  • Seth - 3.7
  • Finn - 4.2, 4.5, and 5.5
  • Jess and Rudy share 4.3
  • Alex and Abby have 4.7
  • Alex - 5.1
  • Abby - 5.3, in fact, it's her Origin Episode.
  • Jess - 5.8, the series finale.
• Chekhov's Gun: Simon's videography.
  • Subverted. Curtis being lactose intolerant seems important when going up against Brian's dairy powers, but ultimately doesn't matter as Brian immediately has an equally deadly backup plan.
• Child by Rape: Jess's son, at least by fraud, as his father continually reverses time to seduce her.
• Christianity is Catholic: Apparently Curtis is Catholic, judging by his crucifix and saint medallion. A disgruntled Catholic priest impersonates Jesus, and Nathan appears to have been raised Catholic.
• Christmas Episode: 2.7, which in typical Misfits fashion is a Twisted Christmas.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Throughout her limited amount of time on the show, Marnie definitely came across as this.
  • Finn's starting to show some shades it as well.
  Jess: "Will you please stop saying vagina."
  Finn: "What do you call yours then?"
• Coconut Superpowers: The show thrives on this. Of the original cast, only Simon's superpower requires any sort of special effects, and even then, only when he initially turns invisible. Of the season 4 cast, only Rudy and Jess's powers require special effects, since Finn can only move small objects with his telekinesis. In season 5 Rudy very rarely merges or splits on-screen (although effects are needed then), Alex has some fairly basic effects (bright lights) and Abby's power needs no effects.
• Coitus Uninterruptus: The fake Jesus is shown counting some wads of stolen money and receiving oral sex from a girl in a Santa hat (for extra evil points, she's under the influence of a sex-pheromone-manipulating superpower at the time, so it's actually rape). When he's interrupted by a group of six people, he just holds a conversation with them as though absolutely nothing unusual was happening. Although he does pull a few interesting facial expressions.
• Comes Great Responsibility: Yeah, right.
  • Series 5 does use this a little bit. Alex pretty much only uses his power because of this and although it isn't said at all, it is implied with Rudy Two's other powered associates.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Most individuals affected by the Storm seem to be very close to Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
• Compelling Voice: The power of Virtue Girl from the Series 1 finale. The only way to reverse the effects is to kill her.
• Competence Zone: Power users are almost always about the same age as the Misfits, with lots of the exceptions having bought their powers rather than obtaining them naturally. And an even more disproportionate number of them end up doing Community Service!
• Contrast Montage: The gang's stunning and diverse array of attitude problems are depicted in this scene.
• Constructive Body Disposal: In the first episode, they bury the bodies of Gary and Tony under a flyover. A few episodes later, it turns out that an environmental monitoring station is due to be built there, so they have to hide the bodies in their local community centre; eventually, the corpses are returned to the flyover and dumped in the wet concrete foundations of the building site.
• Contrived Coincidence: Jess somehow manages to get pregnant again with her son from a single hookup, despite this not being in any way guaranteed.
• Cosy Catastrophe:
  • Nathan seems remarkably cool about being buried alive - after an initial short outburst, he just lies back and starts listening to his iPod.
  • Simon points out this is the inevitable result if they don't quarantine and deal with the zombie problem immediately.
• Country Matters: Played with particularly in the "Grand Theft Auto" episode with the character of Conti, and fairly frequent appearances throughout, Jessica Brown Findlay among others having uttered the Deplorable Word on the show.
• Creepy Child: Looks like we've found the "daddy" counterpart of the Doctor Who "Are you my mummy?" child. The baby in 1.5 has the power to induce any man with the desire to be his dad.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Virtue Girl appears to be part of the comic relief for the Series 3 finale, until she turns out to be one of the few people able to kill off a main character for good.
• Crying Wolf: This happens to Nathan a few times due to his penchant for telling extravagant lies. He both figuratively and literally cried wolf in 1.2.
• Cult: The powers have caused a number of these:
  • Season 1 has the Virtue Group, brought together by a Compelling Voice
  • Season 2 has an unnamed group of worshippers led by a priest claiming to be Jesus Christ (aided by superpowers)
  • Season 5 has the "Agents of Satan"
• Cursed with Awesome: Kelly and Alisha largely resent the superpowers they've received, since the benefits are insignificant when compared with the downsides, and are quick to get rid of them once they find out it's possible. Curtis views his this way too, despite it having been proven time and time again to be the most useful.
• Dark Messiah: In the Christmas episode we get a false Jesus. He's not interested in any grandiose vision, though, but uses his powers for petty, personal gain, such as having sex with women or stealing from people.
• A Day in the Limelight: Each episode focuses mainly on a different character.
• Dead Man's Chest: In the first season, a rather hilarious version of this happens. The Misfits's probation worker goes crazy thanks to the storm and kills one of them, and to avoid blame (they're all juvenile delinquents) they bury the bodies under a bridge, transporting it using Alisha's dad's car. Then they find out the bridge is being demolished to make way for a wildlife centre, so they dig up the bodies, hoping to rebury them under the concrete of the new centre. However, Alisha and Curtis are arguing, and therefore not present at the crucial time, so the remaining Misfits steal the keys to their new probation worker's car to move the bodies. Then before they can move the bodies out of the car, Sally, their probation worker, appears and drives home. The next morning she comes into work, smells something in the back of the car, and discovers the bodies. Curtis rewinds time, and Nathan has to distract her by throwing a brick at her car to avoid her noticing the two corpses in her car boot.
• Deadpan Door Shut: During the zombie outbreak in episode 3.7, Rudy hears a scream in the community centre locker room and quietly cracks the door open to investigate. There's a zombie cheerleader melee inside. He watches for a moment, then quietly closes the door.
  Simon: ...What's happening?
  Rudy: Well, let's just say it's not good at all.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Nathan, in spades. Also Shaun, the probation worker from Series 2.
  • Simon also begins showing signs of this once he starts to come out of his shell.
  • Jess owns this trope.
  • Pretty much everything out of Alex's mouth in series 5 was this trope.
• Death by Falling Over: Sally. Simon pushes her away and she hits her head on a door handle.
  • In the first episode of Series 3 Tanya, the girl who could stop time, dies this way after Rudy kicks her and she cracks her skull on the floor.
• Defence Mechanism Superpower: Nathan. His immortality literally won't kick in until after he dies first, only then will he be able to heal from whatever killed him and resurrect himself. If it's not a fatal wound, he can't heal himself... which is exactly what the "Milk Guy" in Season 2 does. He incapacitates him in such a way that he's been turned into a vegetable, but still alive, so he can't heal himself.
  • Finn's telekinesis isn't strictly this, as he can always lift small things at will but it kind of is, as it is a lot stronger when he or someone else is in major danger, easily knocking back a fairly strong person or horseman of the apocalypse.
• Decon-Recon Switch: The idea of superheroes was mocked from the very first episode, with the show overall taking a very cynical view on the idea that anyone could actually be a superhero. However over time the show did reconstruct certain elements of the idea by showing characters like Superhoodie and how while not traditional superheroes, the Misfits gang are genuine heroes despite their many flaws and issues. In contrast to the first episode where Nathan laughed at Simon's suggestion that they could be superheroes, the last episode has Jess suggest the same thing with Finn at first disagreeing before changing his mind, the Misfits agreeing to become proper superheroes.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Alisha in Series 2.
  • Psycho!Rudy makes a friggin campaign out of doing this to Jess in 4.3.It kinda works, but she wasn't much of an ice queen to begin with, just bitingly reserved about her personal life.
• De-power:
  • Seth can remove people's powers (with or without consent), then put them in other people.
  • Alex is able to remove a person's power through having sex with them (which he does repeatedly).
• Depraved Homosexual: Greg the probation worker. He's creepy in general, but starts attempting to seduce Finn after he sees Alex having sex with him (long story). At one point he also mentions having beaten up a young man who rejected his advances.
• Determinator: The "villain" in episode 4.1. By the end of it he's had a hand chopped off, both testicles removed and his penis mutilated and he's just been thrown off a building, yet still somehow has enough strength left to open the case to have one last feel of his money before he dies. And that goes without saying all the stuff he went through from being hit by the storm to meeting the Misfits in the episode itself, some we only saw glimpses of.
  • His power seems to inspire this effect in those infected with it as well, such as Curtis, who was locked in a freezer for enough time for frost to form on his body, yet able to violently jump out after Jess and Finn opened said freezer before bolting away. Of course, the entire time his focus was completely on the case.
• Diegetic Switch: Played with in the Series 1 finale. Three characters wear iPods in and each one is given their own backing theme.
• Dirty Mind-Reading: Kelly doesn't always enjoy knowing what people are thinking.
• Disappeared Dad: Nathan's father. Implied to have been the "psychologically absent" type before leaving Nathan and his mother altogether. Apparently he cheated on Nathan's mother, walked out on her, and has another son he'd never bothered to mention. Oh, and he also left Nathan alone and unattended in Ikea for three hours on his eighth birthday, during which time Nathan ended up having lunch with a known pedophile.
  Nathan: That sick pervert cared more about me than dad ever did...he would've taken me to the zoo.
  • The father of the baby in 1.5. as well, which inspired the baby's power of making any man he comes into contact with want to be his dad. Kelly suggests his mother bring him to his real father at the end, so this could make him want to stick around.
• Discard and Draw: The apparent fate of most of the cast at the end of the Series 2 Christmas special. Alisha in particular, as her power presumably died with "Jesus". Not that Alisha wanted it back, though.
  • Curtis in 3.6 because due to getting his female body pregnant through messy masturbation, he gets stuck in the female form and has to go back to Seth for a power removal.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The third season finale has this in spades. The first five minutes imply the Medium might be the big bad of the episode, by halfway through we're sure it's Ghost!Sally but in the end it turns out they should have kept their eye on Ghost!Virtue Girl all along.
  • Although Sally was sort of a bad guy, as she had intended to kill Alisha to get revenge on Simon. It's just that she willingly gives up the campaign as soon as she's reunited with Tony. Unlike Virtue Girl, whose very reason for not being able to move on is she desires revenge against the Misfits.
• Disgusting Public Toilet: The toilet in the scuzzy club in 1.4, of which we get loads of unpleasant close-ups while Curtis is trying to flush away the cocaine. The toilets in the community centre aren't so peachy either.
• Disposing of a Body: Two have been buried in the concrete foundations of a building, one is kept in a freezer for a while and then dropped in the river.
  • All things considered, the bodies are disposed of pretty well. The two buried in the concrete foundations are unlikely to ever be found, and the frozen body - if found - will be a nightmare for forensics to decipher, thanks to all the time spent in the freezer.
    • The quality of disposal in Series 3 goes down. Most of them are dumped in shallow graves. With the number of disappearances that can be linked to the community centre, it's a wonder the police haven't found them by now.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Finn for Jess. Alex isn't that bad, until he gets his dick back.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male:
  • Lampshaded values dissonance with Alisha and Curtis in 1.3. Curtis calls her out in 2.7.
  • Disguised as Alisha, Lucy forces oral sex on Simon. Although he protests and appears very uncomfortable, he later asks Alisha out.
  • Finn's former "stepmom" starts giving him oral sex even when he says "no" repeatedly. Even he doesn't seem to realise this was rape, and no one else believes his protests that this wasn't what he wanted.
• Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male:
  • Alex has anal sex with Finn while the latter is unconscious in 5.1. Yes, it was to rid him of Satan, but even so. Finn is upset by it, naturally, but none of them call it rape. It is debatable, as offhand mentions show he is upset but he realised that it was the best option and it can be argued that he gave retrospective consent. Rudy later calls Alex "The Raper" though, so it is eventually called out just like the last one. Overall there seems to be a strong consensus that Alex taking their power through force is a perfectly acceptable way to deal with someone they can't otherwise beat, as it done again on Sam, in Luke's future and nobody bats an eyelid, despite having also killed the villain in question.
  • Averted in one instance, as Alex is clearly getting ready to fuck the power out of Leah before Finn tells him he's already talked her down and there's no need.
  • Averted with Sally's behaviour towards Simon. Convinced he knows something, she essentially seduces him knowing he has a crush on her. It's portrayed as a dark moment and Simon accidentally killing her in self-defence is shown as Laser-Guided Karma for her.
• Dramatic Drop:
  • Fin'Nazis!Kelly drops the plate of food she just poisoned in order to help rescue the Power Broker from a suicide attempt.
• Dramatic Unmask: The revelation that Superhoodie is Future!Simon.
• Drawing Straws: Curtis, Rudy, Simon and Alisha do this to determine who finally kills Mr. Miggles.
  • And again, when they determine who has to kill the new probation worker.
  • And again, when they determine who has to kill Curtis.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Power-reversed Curtis sees himself in a superhero costume with a girl he doesn't recognise yet.
• Dress-Coded for Your Convenience: Peter when he fights Superhoodie/Simon wears a variation on the Superhoodie outfit, except with evil-looking red lines, reminiscent of Marvel's Carnage.
• Dressing as the Enemy: In the Series 1 finale Nathan dresses up in a pale grey suit to fit in with the other brainwashed teens.
• Driven to Suicide: When drained by the life force vampire in 5.6, people completely lose the will to live, attempting suicide, with one succeeding.
• Drunk Driver: Alisha, even after getting banned from driving (hence her being sentenced to community service in the first place).
• Drunk on the Dark Side: The main villain in the Christmas Episode, a vicar who buys powers in order to fool people into thinking he's Jesus Christ reborn.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Jess gets quite upset when Finn tells her about how his uncle raped him as a child, then admits it was a joke to "lighten the mood". Naturally she doesn't find it funny at all.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma:
  • 3.2: Rudy goes down on Curtis who is in his female form and drugged.
  • 3.6: Averted by Simon telling Rudy in no uncertain terms "That's rape" when he suggests having sex with a sleeping woman.
  • 5.1: Alex has sex with an unconscious Finn to rid him of Satan.
• Early-Bird Cameo: All the Misfits, and Tony and Sally, are present in the club the night Curtis travels back to try and fix things for his ex-girlfriend Sam. Except Nathan, but he's in the bowling alley in the same building, doing the things that lead to him getting community service.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Simon's weirdness is toned down after the first series; after that his behaviour evolves into a he's-just-socially-awkward thing but in the first few episodes he genuinely appears to be a little deranged. ("I want to piss on your tits", anyone?) This is because the writers originally intended him to be the villain, but he was unexpectedly popular so they rewrote it, and eventually he is arguably the most heroic and noble character that has ever been on the show.
  • In the first season, Superhoodie seems to be far too short to be Simon, and gives the impression of being a much younger boy than the other characters. See the Trivia page for more evidence that his eventual identity was a later choice.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: In 1.4, Curtis uses his power several times, first to prevent his girlfriend Sam from being sent to prison, later to keep his friends from getting killed by Tony. He has to try it a few times before he gets it all right, but eventually he succeeds. Until he discovers that now he's still dating his ex AND Alisha.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Finn finds out that his mom's was "Anal Mary" due to liking a certain sexual act. This also rules out most potential men he thought might be his birth father, for pretty obvious reasons.
• Emergency Temporal Shift:
  • Curtis's ability to time travel is uncontrollable and triggered by guilt, so it's very common for it to activate when something's gone horribly wrong: it can be something as directly threatening as being cornered by a villain that's already killed one of his friends, or it can be indirect as evidence of the team's crimes being discovered. Whatever the case, it immediately sends him back in time and fix things.
  • After being sold Curtis's power, Seth the power dealer gives the freshly souped-up time-travel power to a guilt-ridden old German Jew who uses the power in an attempt to kill Hitler. Unfortunately, Hitler is still relatively healthy in the period selected and more than a match for an octogenarian without a single day of combat experience, so poor Friedrich ends up being forced to retreat back through time with a stab wound to the belly. Worse still, Friedrich dropped his phone at the scene, unwittingly giving the Nazis the technological advantage they needed to win World War II - kicking off a Bad Future.
  • In the same episode, Friedrich hastily returns the power to Seth before being executed; Seth can't use the powers he extracts, so he transfers it to Kelly - right in the middle of a shootout with Nazi security forces, allowing Kelly to zap herself out of danger. And then right back to the scene of the attempted assassination, where she snatches the phone off Hitler and kicks the crap out of him.
• Ensemble Cast: A true example now, with Nathan leaving after two series, Alisha, Kelly and Simon leaving after three, and Curtis' departure in series 4, with new cast members being brought in each time. Following Curtis' final appearance, the main cast is now entirely different from that of the first series.
• Entitled Bastard: Nathan, despite tormenting Simon and being warned by Kelly not to because of his fragile emotional health, expects Barry Simon to save him when they're both in trouble.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending:
  • Series 2, episode 6. At least until Curtis pushes the Reset Button on it all.
  • The series finale, kills off both Rudy One and all of Rudy's Two's 'Jumper Gang' until Jess plays a Thanatos Gambit to set things right.
• Everybody Has Lots of Sex: Graphic, superpowered sex.
• Everybody Smokes
• Everyone Went to School Together: Averted: Despite living on a relatively insular estate together and all being around the same age, most of the gang had never met each other before starting community service together. The exceptions are Alisha, Rudy, and Curtis - Alisha and Rudy were in Sixth Form together, and they briefly met Curtis there when he gave a motivational speech to their class. One episode in series 1 however reveals that they were all near each other when Curtis got arrested: Kelly, Simon and Alisha were at the same club as Curtis, while Nathan was nearby. Curtis changing the past means that retroactively they did briefly encounter each other prior to starting their community service.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Said verbatim by Curtis in reference to Kelly's new choice of power in the Series 3 premiere.
• Failed a Spot Check: Played with; after sneaking back into the community centre in episode 1, Nathan notices the bloodstains and hacked-open bathroom stall door, he just doesn't seem to care.
• Fake-Out Make-Out: Alisha with Shaun in the Fookin' Nazis! Timeline so Simon can sneak away with his stolen antibiotics. Although it's played with, in that Shaun had convinced himself that Alisha really liked him.
• False Prophet: In the episode "Christmas Special," a disillusioned priest buys himself several superpowers to inspire the masses but goes Drunk with Power. Naming himself the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, he fleeces money from the poor, uses women for sex, and forms a Cultlike mob.
• False Rape Accusation: Nathan accused one of his mother's boyfriends of sexually abusing him, because he's always hated every man she sees. This is Played for Laughs.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Plenty in Series 1. Both seem to revolve around Nathan; a middle-aged naked man running around naked, thinking he's a dog; and the revelation the Girl of the Week Nathan has sex with is really a 82-year old woman, as her true age is shown mid-orgasm. It's really as disturbing as it sounds, and Nathan's horrified reaction is...understandable.
  • Then there's Nathan's lotion scene; less Female Gaze and more Selfcestuous Gaze.
  • Same goes for the pregnant-sex in the Christmas special. Again, with Nathan.
• Fantastic Drug: Subverted in that standard pills (ecstasy) reverse the nature of powers as a side effect. Kelly begins announcing every thought that pops into her head, Curtis flashes forward in time, Alisha repels everyone she touches, Simon becomes the centre of attention and An Ice Person gets fire powers.
  • This is also the episode where Nathan learns he can also see the dead.
  • Subverted again in exactly the same way. This time Jess becomes blind instead of having X-ray vision, Alex puts all of the powers he removed from the people through sex into someone he has sex with and Mark (whose power is being a tortoise) just turns back into a human.
• Fate Worse than Death: Brian in 2.6 strangled Nathan's cerebral cortex with mozzarella, potentially leaving him in a vegetative state forever.
• Femme Fatale: Alisha, big-time, particularly when you consider her power. Not that she wasn't enough of one in the first place.
  • In Season 4, Lola has this as her "power", literally. It turns out that she was an aspiring actress playing a Femme Fatale character when the storm hit, leaving her stuck in character and having her past personality and memories completely overwritten, leading to the dramatic consequences that this type of character usually creates (hence the "fatale" in the name) for her and the several men she started using, including Curtis.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Let's be honest - the five of them wouldn't usually hang around each other any other day. But nothing like shared pain, murder, mayhem and fighting off mind control to get the team spirit going.
• Foreshadowing: Nathan's power is alluded to in 1.4. where he is the only one to be found alive after Tony's attack. The paramedics speculated that he was "just lucky" and he himself admits he has no idea how he survived.
  • Simon bonds with Alisha by letting her listen to "The Killing Moon" by Echo & the Bunnymen with him, a song about realizing one's own powerlessness in the face of the universe's will and fate. Despite the best efforts of Alisha and his future self, both of them end up locked in an endless loop where they both die young.
  • The opening credits are literal examples, as the kids' shadows hint at the powers they develop.
    • For Abby the opening seems to imply that her power is simply amnesia, as we had come to expect but hadn't been confirmed. This is a subversion, as the seeming foreshadowing of the obvious is a red herring. She's someone's imaginary friend.
• Forgot About His Powers:
  • When the main characters are trying to come up with a way they can break into a convent "full of evil bitch nuns" in 4.8, we get this exchange:
    Abby: You could use the special powers you got after being struck by that random, freak storm!
    (Beat)
    Abby: It's just a thought.
    Finn: You know, we really should use them more often.
  • Happened with Jess throughout series 5, though it was never more obvious then when, instead of standing a fair distance away from the door and using her x-ray vision to see if Leah-possessed Alex and her nail gun were outside, she went out of her way to use the peep-hole! Later, she doesn't bother to check whether psycho-Geoff is behind a door but moments later remembers about her power and looks into a car boot, finding main Geoff.
  • After discovering his power of immortality, Nathan never seems to remember that what would be lethal situations or threats to everyone else wouldn't really matter much if he was the one to step up or put himself in harms way instead. Until, of course, he gives up the power and immediately forgets he doesn't have it anymore in the very next dangerous situation he encounters.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Nobody mourns or even seem to remember Nikki after the Christmas Special. Rudy does allude to her in the season 4 finale, but at this point everyone who knew her are gone.
• For Want Of A Nail: Curtis was arrested and sentenced to community service after he was caught with drugs. When he turns back time to prevent this from happening, he realizes that because he wasn't there to turn back time in the first episode and confirm Kelly's claim that Tony was trying to kill her, Tony got in the building and successfully murdered Kelly, Simon, and Alisha, Nathan only surviving because of his immortality. When Curtis turns back time again to ensure he gets caught, he only keeps one pill instead of the large amount he had originally that his girlfriend Sam went to jail for. As she was never arrested for drug possession, Curtis and Sam are still dating in the present when he hooks up with Alisha.
• Four Is Death: The final member of The original Misfits (Curtis) dies in the fourth episode of the fourth series.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Kelly and Jen, in 3.5. Lampshaded by Simon, who calls it exactly that, correcting Rudy who misidentified it as Face/Off
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: You'd probably have to be a mad fan to find this in any way entertaining, but in the scene towards the end of episode 2 when Nathan and his mum have just reconciled, Nathan walks over to Jeremy and makes a comment. Freeze the frame, zoom in, and just look at the cup Jeremy's holding.
• Freudian Excuse: Nathan despises his father, and at one point suggests that his own problems are due to the fact that his dad was never around. Also, while Simon never actively blames his psychological issues on his past misfortunes, they do offer quite a solid explanation for his current fragile state.
• From a Certain Point of View: Although there is a little more to it, turns out Nathan's crime did start with him eating some pick-and-mix. Then it became petty assault and being a dick to a cop.
• Funny Background Event: Keep an eye out for facial expressions (usually from Simon) when another character (usually Nathan or Rudy) is saying something especially absurd.
• Future Badass: Superhoodie, aka Simon. Curtis' brief jump forward implies he's this, too, though it later turns out he's simply at a fancy dress party doing surveillance.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Although Kelly's new "rocket scientist" power doesn't seem too useful at first, it turns out that it can be applied to other kinds of machines, enabling her to fix a car's engine within seconds and easily deactivate a security alarm.
• Geas: A young Roma woman puts a curse on Alex after he refuses to help her retrieve something that had fallen in the water. It makes him help everyone who asks, or he'll have to feel like he's drowning. Finn quickly exploits this by making Alex lend him money. She takes it off after he shows contrition.
• Gender Bender: In season 3 episode 1, Curtis' new power is the ability to transform into a woman at will. This ability was only shown in season 3 episodes 1, 2, 5, and 6.
• Genre Deconstruction: Of superheroes by showing what happens when a Mass Empowering Event occurs to normal people who have nether the qualities or aspirations to be heroes or villains, placing the show firmly in the Capepunk genre.
  • The concept of Personality Powers is thoroughly explored in the show, explaining how this can result in useless and even dangerous abilities. Meanwhile the few who get genuinely impressive powers can rarely control them or use them in any meaningful way. Curtis gains the power to travel through time, but can only use it when he feels regret, while Alisha makes her sexually desirable through touch, but means that she can't touch anyone ever since her power is always active. Meanwhile many of the villains are in fact victims of abilities they literally can't control, from having their barely controlled tempers becoming violent rages to a video game player gaining the "power" of delusions that make him believe he's in a Grand Theft Auto game.
  • Very few of the "villains" of the show are unsympathetic or without redeeming qualities. For the most part, they're just like the Misfits themselves: ordinary people with abilities they didn't want and can't really control. As a result it's not uncommon for the Misfits to feel sorry for having to kill the villains, and in other situations being able to reason with them into stopping whatever they're doing.
  • From the first episode the show has mocked the very concept of superheroes and the idea that the Misfits gang could even become superheroes. While this idea has gone through a Decon-Recon Switch at several points, overall the show takes a very cynical view on the idea that anyone has the qualities to be superheroes. The closest to reach it is Superhoodie, but he was Simon from the future and only dedicated to protecting the Stable Time Loop he was in, making him willing to let certain characters die so everything happens as planned. Meanwhile the Jumper Posse was created by Rudy Two based on a prophetic jumper that led him to believe he was meant to help Sam, Karen and Helen to become proper superheroes. However within just a year the trio became supervillains who killed civilians over minor crimes like littering, unable to handle the selfishness and apathy of the people they were meant to protect.
• Genre Savvy: Simon appears to be aware of the tropes involved when it comes to superpowers.
  • Nathan has his moments as well.
  Simon: "So you're not Aquaman then?"
  Nathan: (emerging breathless and bedraggled from a large bucket of water) "Apparently not."
  • Curtis suggests that they should all watch more Sci-Fi in order to become more Genre Savvy.
• Ghostly Death Reveal:
  • In season 2, Nathan meets his half-brother Jamie, and the two of them bond over their mutual hatred of their father... right up until the two of them narrowly avoid getting killed in a fire. After this, Jamie seems curiously eager to get Nathan to reconnect with his dad, and Nathan reluctantly consents to a face-to-face meeting to clear the air; however, when they finally meet up, their father is uncharacteristically sorrowful - and doesn't seem to notice that Jamie is there. Turns out that Jamie didn't escape the fire after all - and Nathan has the power to communicate with the dead.
  • In another season 2 episode, the team end up getting on the bad side of an aspiring supervillain with the power to psychically control milk. Following a confrontation with said supervillain, we briefly lose track of Kelly and Alisha - up until the former bumps into Nathan, seemingly unharmed. However, this turns out to be Nathan's mediumship at work again: Kelly quickly reveals that she's been murdered and that the supervillain is now holding Alisha hostage; for good measure, we cut to a reveal shot of Kelly's body, having been drowned in milk.
• Girlfriend in Canada: This exchange from 2.5:
  Simon: Then what's her name?
  Nathan: Errrr... Mon...Eiiiik...Ka. Moneeka. She's French.
  Simon: Well, you should invite her to the party.
  Nathan: Oh well, she's in France, on account of being French.
• Girl of My Dreams: Curtis bumps into the woman from his Flash Forward at the end of the episode. Great first impression, breaking into her flat while your mate shits on her bed...
• Ghostly Goals: After Nathan's dead brother convinces him to reconnect with his father, he and Ice-girl do the usual wave-goodbye-and-walk-into-the-distance thing.
  • It's also the focus of the season 3 finale.
• Giving Radio to the Romans: More like cell phones to Nazis.
• Godwin's Law of Time Travel: Curtis tells Nikki that most would use his time-travel power to kill Hitler. In series 3 a Holocaust survivor tries to, after buying it off Seth.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Averted; Curtis quickly gets rid of his Gender Bender power after getting his female alter ego pregnant accidentally, effectively aborting that pregnancy. The word isn't used, though Alicia says "There are options, you know" when Melissa!Curtis is worrying over what to do.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Nathan once his immortality powers are revealed. He comments at one point while jammed on a pipe that yes, it's extremely painful, before dying.
• Grand Theft Me: It happens to Kelly in Season 3, and is one of the applications of Leah's power in Season 5.
• Hanging Around: In Series 3, Tanya sets Rudy and Alisha up to die by hanging. Rudy manages to knock her out, but falls off of his chair in the process. Fortunately, his duplicate arrives in time to save him.
• Harmless Freezing: Lily freezes Nathan's arm accidentally, but does him no damage beyond momentary pain. Averted however when Captain Smith gets her power in the Nazi timeline - he freezes poor Gary to death in seconds.
• Have We Met Yet?: Curtis faces this when he reverses time and meets several of his "present-day" companions, all of whom fail to recognise him.
• Here We Go Again!: The final episode ends with yet another storm rolling in.^note Which was supposed to lead to a movie that would unite the old cast with the new, but it never got off the ground.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Superhoodie takes a bullet intended for Alisha in 2.4, ending his mission.
  • And Simon later takes a knife in the gut to save Curtis, in order for Curtis to be able to rewind time to save the others.
  • Rudy attempts one to save Alisha from Time-Control Girl Tanya but they're rescued before he actually dies.
  • In the Nazi timeline, Peter, the guy who can direct the future via comics, presumably makes one when trying to escape, knowing the unimaginable damage his power could do.
  • Nadine later lets the Four Horsemen kill her rather than having the gang sacrifice themselves to save her.
• High Turnover Rate: Try to think of an episode where someone does not die, even if it's temporary? Having trouble? Well it's episode 3 in series 1. This trope even gets lampshaded a few times.
  • More specifically, they go through a lot of probation workers. The Misfits are forced to kill two, they kill Shaun in a reversed timeline and then he's finally killed by Jenn as Kelly. It's eventually Played for Laughs - we don't even learn one's name before she's mauled to death by a zombie cheerleader in 3.7.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Nathan's anecdote about his eighth birthday definitely qualifies - it involved him being abandoned in Ikea by his father, and spending the day eating meatballs with a paedophile. Similarly, Nathan's story about a camping trip where his mother's friend bad-touched him. It's possible that it's because he's such a pathological liar people assume he's just trying to get attention.
• Hit You So Hard, Your X Will Feel It!: Kelly:"If you call me that one more time. I'll kick you so hard in the cunt your mum will feel it!"
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Hitler overpowered the septuagenarian time traveler and took his phone, spurring advances in Nazi technology and winning them the war. At the end of the episode Kelly gains the time travel power and goes back and retrieves the phone. She also "kicks the shit out of Hitler." Kelly is the only one to remember the alternate timeline.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: "Jesus" is hit by the file cabinet he's trying to yank away with telekinesis from the gang and killed after they let go.
• Hollywood Genetics: Jess, a fairly light young Black woman (possibly mixed race) has a baby with a White man who is darker-skinned than her. This is quite unlikely, genetically, unless he had some Black ancestry too (which isn't shown as the case).
• How Do I Shot Web?: Simon seems to be the only one to learn how to invoke his initial power entirely voluntarily. Kelly and Alisha's are always on, and Curtis and Nathan's are Defence Mechanism Superpowers.
  • The new powers in series 3 seem to have averted this except for Rudy
  • Rudy is perhaps the best example of this considering it isn't even up to him when his clone decides to pop out. Not to mention that Rudy Three was actually able to take control of his body.
  • It's all Finn can do to make a plant shuffle off a shelf. In short: He can use weak telekinesis at will but anything stronger than moving a shopping trolley a meter forward has only been seen as instinctive.
  • Jess may have had trouble earlier but by the time we get to her she can voluntarily use her power.
  • Abby's power doesn't work that way, as we're initially meant to believe that it is amnesia, but it is actually being someone's imaginary friend. The power to make one's imaginary friends real is shown to be used accidentally, creating both Abby and Scary. and Alex's is unclear as it seems to activate whenever he orgasms but he hasn't been shown to be able to not use it.
  • It's understandably used and subverted with less significant characters. Notable in series 2 is Tim, who struggles with not using his power. Understandable, as it is thinking he is the main character of a GTA-esque game.
• Humanity Ensues: Bruno. The gorilla.
  • When Mark takes ecstasy, he turns back into a human.
• I Believe I Can Fly: Discussed when Nathan is trying to work his power out.
  Of course! There's always someone who can fly!
  • He can't.
  • Subverted in the "loads of people can fly" manner. Only Sam can actually fly.
• An Ice Person: Lily, a bartender whose power to freeze liquid or moisture came about from her 'frigid' nature when it came to intimacy.
• Iconic Outfit: The orange overalls.
• Idealized Sex:
  • Comically averted during any sexual situation involving Nathan - actually, very few sex scenes in the show play this trope remotely straight, but if Nathan's involved you know you're in for something particularly disastrous. He's been shown to suffer from premature ejaculation, has got his finger stuck in a girl's vagina during foreplay, and has displayed an o-face so off-putting and bizarre that his partner started laughing hysterically when she saw it. He also has a famous habit of "tripling" himself during sex - yes, kids, that's when you ejaculate, puke and shit yourself all at once - although luckily for everyone this one happens off-screen.
  • Some of the sex on the show can come across as horribly unrealistic, with no mentions of contraception, safety, etc. It gets really bad when one of the characters has anal sex, and doesn't even have to use lube. Any person that's had anal sex can attest that it is not that simple. To make it worse, it later happens again while actively flying through the sky!
• Idiot Ball: Gets tossed around quite a lot.
• If I Can't Have You…: Jealous zombie girlfriend variation.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Invoked by the tattoo artist with Love Potion-esque powers in 2.3. Nathan falls in love with Simon (which means incredibly sexually attracted to him).
  Nathan: It's just so hard when you're so cute, and I'm so horny, and there's only a couple of thin layers of cotton separating our genitals.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Nathan to his mother's boyfriend ^note whose "power" is believing he's a dog: "If you ever hurt her, I'll take you up the vet's and have you put down.", though in context it's a (literal, really) Pet the Dog moment for him.
• I Have Your Wife: Peter to Simon in 3.3.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Alisha, Kelly, Curtis, Nikki.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Nathan.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Nathan tries this with Kelly, and the brainwashed Virtue minions. It doesn't work.
• I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: "The siren call of the blowjob renders all men powerless!"
• Immortal Life Is Cheap: Nathan.
• Impairment Shot: Simon, after Nathan's younger brother Jamie slips a pill into his beer.
  • Melissa and Emma after the track coach roofied them.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Nathan is actually making a habit of dying this way.
• Improbable Aiming Skills:
  • Superhoodie, with a paper aeroplane. It's part of his power, which is later revealed to be a type of Spider-Sense.
  • Simon, who is able to throw a peanut into Vince's mouth, while lying on the floor while being strangled. Given that he and Superhoodie are the same person, it's possible that Simon just has REALLY impressive aim.
• Improvised Weapon: The Misfits regularly use these.
• Insane Equals Violent: Zigzagged. Lucy, a psychiatric patient Simon knew from his time in an institution, tries to murder them after mockery from the others and Simon ignoring her. However, he isn't shown as violent in spite of his own mental health issues (or no more than anyone else), nor do the other mental patients we see act this way. It may also be a case of her power allowing Lucy to strike out with more impunity than otherwise that leads to this.
• Inspector Javert: Series 2 features a cop who suspects the gang of murdering the probation workers. He can't prove it though.
• Institutional Apparel: Although everyone wears their jumpsuit slightly differently, to reflect their attitudes and personalities.
  • Curtis generally wears a vest or t-shirt on top, tying the jumpsuit's sleeves around his waist. This shows off his upper body, makes him look hardworking, and also reflects the fact that he doesn't feel like he really belongs in a Community Payback jumpsuit. He also always wears a medallion of a saint and a cross.
  • Alisha generally shows some cleavage and rolls up her sleeves, pops her collar and rolls her trouser legs into capris. She also always wears a belt around her waist, further showing off her figure. She usually wears make-up, jewelry and ballet flats, despite the fact that they're doing manual labor.
  • Kelly, like Alisha, doesn't wear a shirt under her jumpsuit. She keeps hers open at the collar, though doesn't undo as many buttons as Alisha. Kelly doesn't go to much effort to make hers more flattering or fashionable, more sort of surrendering to the ugliness. She does, however, keep on her jewelry and make-up and is (according to her twitter) devoted to Adidas, wearing them both for community service and civilian life.
  • Nathan's is worn open to about the belly button with a visible t-shirt underneath. His jumpsuit is also the most stained, covered in paint and blood. The word 'pay' in the phrase 'Community Payback' has been crossed off and replaced with 'blow'.
  • Simon wears his jumpsuit buttoned up to the chin: precise, neat, and respectful. This, of course, makes him "look a bit like a paedophile" according to Nathan, but fitting his shy personality it also looks like he's trying to hide in it.
  • Rudy wears his with popped collar, rolled up sleeves and partly unbuttoned.
  • Third Rudy wears his buttoned straight up, contrasting with Rudy.
  • There's less variation in later members. As of series 5, all 5 of them unbutton it to reveal fairly large sections of neck and chest with shirts underneath, with some individual exceptions. The variation mostly comes from the shirts they (obviously) wear under them.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence:
  • Alisha's trick with the bottle is intercut with Kelly running away from an Ax-Crazy Tony.
  • Done again in the third season finale, although this time it's Ghost!Virtue Girl trying to get herself off on Curtis while Kelly once again, runs from Tony.
• Interrupted Suicide: Abbie tries to kill herself by overdosing with pills when Laura rejects her, while Jess stops it.
• Interspecies Romance: Bruno's interest in Kelly probably applies. Played somewhat more straight when Abby starts having feelings for human-turned-tortoise Mark, though nothing sexual occurs between them while he is still in tortoise form.
• Intoxicated Superpower Snag: Early in the second season, the Misfits and their newest friends are out partying when they decide to try some Ecstasy pills (Simon attempts to abstain, but Jamie drops a pill in his drink anyway). After some One Eyed Shots of the team's pupils rippling, they find that the drugs have temporarily reversed their abilities: Alisha induces instant revulsion in everyone she touches, Curtis accidentally catapults himself forwards in time, Kelly is unable to stop voicing her inner monologue, and Simon is noticed and adored by everyone around him. Less amusingly, the cryokinetic girl that Jamie's been romancing finds herself with uncontrollable pyrokinesis and suffers a fatal Superpower Meltdown that nearly kills the temporarily mortal Nathan and ends up killing Jamie for real.
• In the Hood:
  • Sort of. In the series 2 episode with the Lactokinesis kid, Simon pulls up his hood (for some reason he'd been wearing a hoodie along with his Ian Curtis-looking attire throughout series 2 in distinctly badass fashion as he goes looking for his friends' murderer. Subverted in that he's invisible anyway, so it's not like he needs his face to be hidden, but it fits in line with British perception of the hoodie culture: serious shit is about to go down.
  • And, of course, Superhoodie. Naturally, since they're the same person.
• Invisibility: Simon. He apparently also becomes inaudible... although they might just be ignoring him.
  • This is more likely a Perception Filter effect. In 1x05 we see from Sally's POV that while Simon is standing in an open doorway, she doesn't even register that the door is open. This is supported by Simon's reversed power when everyone can't help but notice him.
  • A girl in series 5 can camouflage, which is essentially this.
• I Reject Your Reality: This is Tim's "superpower", his personal reality being that of a popular videogame franchise.
• I See Dead People: Nathan, as a later side effect of his power. Namedropped, of course.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Played with - Nathan mentions this to Curtis as a laugh, who uses this line seriously to try and break up with Sam. It works - but only because Sam recognized it from Spider-Man and got angry.
• I Was Quite a Looker - Ruth/old lady Ruth, who was more of a self-only age changer than a shapeshifter, and doing so apparently overtaxed her body.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Nathan at the end of the day, though he does tread the line into Jerkass territory at times.
  • Played completely straight with Kelly, who is a genuinely nice person despite being a bit...confrontational.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • As of the series 3 finale, all of the probation workers (Tony, Sally, Shaun + his unnamed replacement), Nikki, Alisha and Simon are all dead.
  • Curtis, the last member of the original gang, kills himself at the midpoint of Season 4 after having been infected by a zombie virus, to save the rest.
  • Tim, Rudy Two's friend who is trapped in a GTA-sytle hallucination is killed in the next-to-last episode of the series.
  • Since Nathan and Kelly were both Put on a Bus (at the beginning of Series' 3 & 4, respectively) they are the only members of the original gang still alive.
• Killed to Uphold the Masquerade:
  Kelly: What do we do if he finds out [about our powers]?
  Simon: We kill him. [horrified silence] ... Just kidding.
  • It's never clarified but Simon might well have been serious-he's already aware that they've killed quite a few people already.
• Knight of Cerebus: Dark Geoff is the darkest villain the entire series. A majority of the villains were depicted as sympathetic and having tragic pasts. Dark Geoff is a manifestation of Rudy's father's Dark and Troubled Past and his abusive behavior is disturbingly realistic with very little humor.
• Lamarck Was Right: A bit of a variation. Nikki inherits Ollie's ability to teleport after receiving his heart from a transplant. Alex later gets his power through a lung. The reaction of the girl who approaches him implies that the transferal of powers through transplants is common knowledge at that point.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Abby appears to suffer from this It turns out she's actually someone's imaginary friend come to life.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • The trailer for season 2 featured Nathan recapping the group's powers, and spoiled Nathan's death & immortality. Likewise, trailers for the third season make it implicitly clear that Superhoodie is actually Simon, spoiling a major season two arc.
  • Considering that season 3 ends with Simon & Alisha being Killed Off for Real, it's hard to see how season 4 can be marketed without spoiling, at the very least, their actors not being around anymore.
  • When playing any episode on Hulu (all the way back to the first episode), it would start out showing the logo for a few seconds with a shot of the main cast as of season 5 - a completely different cast from the start of the show. This seems to have been thankfully removed now.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Courtesy of Nathan, naturally; "You mean, after all these weeks of buildup, we're not even gonna have sex?"
  • In plenty of episodes, the characters will refer to the events of the previous episode as "last week". It goes further in episode 2.3, when Nathan points out he hasn't died this week, this being the first episode since 1.5 that he doesn't die, and Simon says it's only Thursday - Misfits airs on Thursdays.
  • The first episode of series 3 ends with this glorious exchange:
    Curtis: Why do we need catchphrases?
    Rudy: You know, for when shit goes down, man! C'mon, do you really think we're just gonna spend the next seven weeks amblin' about pickin' up litter?
    Simon: He's got a point.
    Alisha: Well, maybe it'll be different this time. Maybe there won't be any shit going down.
    Rudy: Trust me, there'll be shit. I can smell it.
  • In episode 3.3, when the group is upset that Superhoodie turned on them and they were on the receiving end of an ass-kicking. Rudy replies: "I'm fucking new! I don't know anything about this shit!"
• Le Parkour:
  • Superhoodie.
  • The Christmas Episode and the beginning of series three show Simon starting to learn this.
• Lethal Harmless Powers: Brian, the guy whose only power is to manipulate milk, uses it to drag up the stomach contents of those who had recently consumed dairy products into their trachea, choking them to death or in the case of Nathan, who's immortal, wrapping it around his brain to put him in a permanent vegetative state.
• Letterbox Arson: Simon did this to the house of a boy who had been bullying him at school, but had a sudden change of heart when he realised it would burn an innocent cat alive, and with no other means to put out the fire, he peed through the mail slot to put it out. He was caught and sent to a psychiatric unit until they determined he wasn't crazy and sentenced him to community service, setting in motion the events of the first episode.
• Lightning Can Do Anything
• Literal Change of Heart: Nikki gets Ollie's heart in 2.4.
• Literal Split Personality:
  • Rudy's power. He can manifest himself into two separate personalities at times of self-doubt and stress. There's a minor aspect of Evil Twin in that when the split happens, one side of him acts even more socially unacceptable while the other acts in a much more sensitive manner. As of season 4, there's an actual Evil Twin triplet Rudy too.
  • His father gets the same power but we only see the original and a very evil twin.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: Parodied.
• Loners Are Freaks: Simon, though he gradually reveals his intense and introverted nature as his Character Development progresses.
• Long List: When Simon rattles off every insult Nathan has ever directed at him.
• Long-Lost Relative: Nathan's half-brother Jamie.
• Loony Friends Improve Your Personality: Although they almost helped to push him off the deep end at first, Simon came a long way from his emotionally-fragile Series 1 self, thanks to the group.
• Love Potion: Alisha causes violent surges of lust in anyone who touches her skin.
• Lower-Class Lout: Kelly is one of the most realistic examples of a chav, portrayed sympathetically. Don't ever call her that, though-or a slut.
• Luke, You Are My Father: Finn tracks down several men with whom his mother Mary was intimate around the time of his conception to determine which of them is his biological father. To Finn's continuous embarrassment, most of the men rule themselves out by claiming to have only engaged in sexual activity with Mary that could not result in a child. He finally does find his birth father, but unfortunately he's dying of cancer. They still bond, and he gets to know his half-sister as well.
• Magical Abortion:
  • Curtis gets Seth to take back his power to change sex in exchange for taking on the Back from the Dead power Seth just acquired, which undoes his self-impregnation.
  • Abby later gets impregnated after a nervous pregnant woman accidentally transfers her baby to her, who then transfers it back in the end.
• Major Injury Underreaction: After discovering his immortality, Nathan becomes more annoyed than frightened when someone tried to kill him. When the gang calls him out for not sacrificing himself to save someone, Nathan states "Dying still hurts!"
• Make Way for the Princess: Alisha gets one of these moments in the nightclub at the start of 1.3, with a Sex Montage thrown in for good measure. Averted in 2.2 where her power is reversed due to drugs, and everybody is repelled by her.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Lots of people have sex in bathroom stalls.
  • Alisha does it with Curtis, though this was actually rape since she used her power (that makes her irresistably attractive) on him. He is not happy at all, as you'd expect, after coming to his senses afterward.
  • Alex does this repeatedly to take the powers of women away who don't want them (which requires sex).
  • Jess does this to insure that her son's conceived with his abusive father before killing him.
• Male Frontal Nudity:
  • We get a glimpse of Curtis's when he shakes off the roofie he was given while in his Melissa form just in time for him to punch the track coach in the face for attempting to rape Melissa.
  • Rudy's penis is hidden behind increasingly daring Scenery Censors throughout the series...until episode 5.5.
  • We get a close-up on Alex's penis at one point, though it's not attached to him at the time.
• Male Gaze: 3.7 - Cheerleaders practicing bends, and splits, right up to the camera.
• Manipulative Bastard: Of all people, Sally, who gets pretty ruthless in trying to get justice for her dead boyfriend.
• Mass Super-Empowering Event: The Storm.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Surely the writers didn't name the immortal character Nathan Young by accident. Also, "Nathaniel" translates as Gift from God, which certainly sums up his cocky attitude.
  • It is also a hilarious coincidence that the entire series was created by one "Howard Overman".
• Mental Shutdown: The villain of 2.6 circumvents Nathan's Resurrective Immortality by telekinetically stuffing his brain with cheese, reducing him to a vegetable. He's only saved by using time travel to undo the events of the episode.
• Mental Time Travel: Curtis.
• Mercy Kill: The coma patient in 3.5 gets unplugged at her request.
• Messianic Archetype: It may be the absolute height of irony, but ultimately, Nathan arguably meets the criteria by the end of the series, losing his life in his attempt to free the others from the "Virtue Girl", and being resurrected some time later.
• Meta Guy: Slacker Nathan and nerd Simon take turns in Lampshade Hanging tropes, dropping Shout Outs, and generally Leaning on the Fourth Wall.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Kelly's relationship with her fiance ended because she could hear what he was thinking about her. She is constantly being hurt by the unflattering snap-judgments people make based on her appearance, or startled by their unsavoury thoughts (sometimes both at once). Plus, she tends to react aggressively, which makes her look completely insane and irrational:
  Nathan's Inner Voice: Would I..? I think I would. Oh my God, I'm thinking about shagging a chav...
  (Kelly looks outraged, snarls and pushes him over)
  Nathan: What was that for?! Jesus!
  • Also, she's starting to see her dog in a whole new light.
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: Peter, the guy whose comics control the future. There are no limits shown to what he can do, and all he uses it for is to make Simon his friend, and then effectively kills himself.
• Mistaken for Gay:
  • Subverted in 2.3, when Nathan appears to fall in love with Simon. Kelly and Simon first assume Nathan is messing with Simon, and then later conclude that something is wrong.
  • In 3.3, Simon's sudden strong affection for Peter is mistaken for sexual attraction by Rudy, who argues with Alisha about it.
  • Alex is initially assumed to be gay by Tess due to his reluctance to have sex with her, as well as some Ambiguously Gay tendencies (like having a color-coordinated wardrobe). He's actually just self-conscious about having his genitals stolen.
  • Greg the probation worker assumes that Finn and Alex are a couple after walking in on them having sex. It Makes Sense in Context.
• Mistaken for Transformed: In the series 2 pilot, the ASBO 5 find themselves up against Lucy, a shapeshifting Yandere out to get Simon away from the rest of the team and back to the psychiatric unit where they met. While trying to stop her, the team ends up mistaking their probation worker for Lucy and beating him to death - thankfully undone by Curtis' time-travel powers; later, after seeing Lucy transform into a mouse, Nathan finds a mouse in the locker room and squashes it in the belief that it's her, even presenting it to Simon... only to realize too late that it's the wrong mouse and he's actually talking to a disguised Lucy.
• Mr. Fanservice:
  • Played for Laughs by Nathan.
  • Simon becomes this in Series 2, following Future!Simon's ID reveal with a Shirtless Scene.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Alisha's bit with the bottle in the first episode, which inspires a stunned look from all the boys (Curtis, Nathan and Simon). She's quite pretty, and definitely the most keen to flaunt her sex appeal of the female cast. In fact, her power is based on this-anyone who touches her immediately has a strong urge to have sex with her.
  • The Cheerleaders from 3.7. Subverted when the zombie virus kicks in.
• Mortality Ensues: Nathan sells his immortality on the black market.
• Motive Rant: Subverted Trope in 1.6, where the villain's speech is drowned out by Nathan's iPod - all the audience catches is "they were teasing me for being a virgin."
• Mouthy Kid: Nathan.
• MST3K Mantra: With a little in-universe lampshading from Nathan. "It's not as if this is all backed up by a wank-load of logic!"
• Mundane Made Awesome:
  • Peanut fight! In slow mo!
  • "That cheese shit won't work on me, dickhead. I'm lactose intolerant."
• Mundane Utility: Nathan suggests (possibly jokingly) that he could use his power to make himself a popular circus attraction. In 2.6, he does exactly that, blowing his brains out on national television for money.
• Mundanger: One of the villains of the week in series 3 is a date-rapist unrelated to the storm
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Proposed by Simon regarding a new character who discovers their secret, parodying the fact that so many people had thus far been Killed to Uphold the Masquerade. He gets some horrified looks from the others before he clarifies he was joking.
• Murder Simulators: Tim's "power."
• Mysterious Watcher: Superhoodie. Turns out to be a Future Badass Simon, who's come back to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
• Mythology Gag:
  • When Finn uses his telekinesis to spill a cup of tea, both he and Abby joke about how lame it would be if that was all his power was limited to. Guess Curtis never told them about Brian, aka "Monsieur Grande-Fromage".
  • When Abby wonders if Nadine ran out of the Community Centre because she didn't want Rudy to know she might be a Werewolf? Makes you wonder if Jeremy is still waking up naked at the Centre?
• Naked First Impression: Inverted as Super Hoodie is met fully clothed and masked in 1.6. However, his Secret Identity is revealed when Alisha walks in on him showering.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • Discussed in 2.6, with Nathan coming up with names for him, Curtis, and Simon. Respectively, they are Captain Invincible, Mr. Backwards, and The Invisible Cunt.
    Curtis: I sound retarded.
  • Played straight with Brian in the same episode, who turns out to be a villain and ends up being really happy with his moniker 'Monsieur Grand Fromage (Mister Big Cheese)..
• Neat Freak: Simon.
• Necessary Fail: Curtis ultimately realises that he has to get arrested and robbed of his athletic career, in order to save the lives of Alisha, Simon and Kelly when Tony tried to murder them.
• Negate Your Own Sacrifice: Subverted by Nathan.
  Nathan (RE: a virtual stranger who's just been killed in front of the group): Better him than me!
  Curtis: You're immortal.
  Nathan: Better him than one of you!
• Never Trust a Trailer: Not the worst example ever, but the trailers are normally misleading. For example, the trailer for 2.4 made it appear as if newcomer Ollie would be an important character in the episode, probably getting his new teammates in some kind of evil mafia-run game and lots of generic danger. What actually happened was that Ollie died in the first fifteen minutes or so, with the rest of the episode dedicated to the others trying to defeat Tim, his killer who lives in a Grand Theft Auto-esque video game fantasy, and Nikki's emerging superhero powers after she was given Ollie's heart.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the third season finale, Rudy tells Ghost!Virtue Girl how the probation workers passed on after one of them first mistakenly thinks the reason they were brought back was revenge. This makes Ghost!Virtue Girl realise that that is the reason she's back. Which eventually results in the death of Alisha.
  • The elderly Jewish man's attempt to go back and kill Hitler just makes the Nazis end up winning
• The Nicknamer: Nathan, naturally. Poor Simon (a.k.a "Weird Kid," "David Atten-wanker," "Panty Sniffer," "Melon-Fucker," "Barry" etc) definitely ends up with some of the more random monikers.
• No Bisexuals:
  • When Nathan suddenly starts showing attraction to Simon (because of a guy using his power, who he pissed off), Kelly asks incredulously whether he's gay. He'd only showed interest in women before, but no one thinks he might be bi.
    Rudy: All I'm saying is that maybe your boyfriend is a proud, beautiful gay man who likes to-
    Alisha: He's not gay! He's the best shag I ever had!
  • Averted in 3.2 with Emma, who appears to find both Curtis and 'Melissa' attractive, and one of the girls Rudy thought he slept with in 3.6.
  • Averted in the Season 1 finale where a girl in Rachel's circle confessed her sinful life dating lots of guys and other girls.
  • Finn and Jess never assume that Alex may be interested in both men and women. Then again, neither does Alex.
  • When Abby becomes attracted to (and then has sex with) a woman, she (and everyone else) assumes this means she's a lesbian, even though previously she only had sex with men (due to Laser-Guided Amnesia making her forget everything prior to the storm). No one appears to think that she could just be a bisexual, or is even aware of the idea. This could be explained though, in that Abby had been searching for a connection in all of her sexual encounters and had found zero sense of fulfillment by being with any of these men.
• Nobody Poops: Entirely averted. Almost everyone gets a turn and, half the time, they don't wash their hands.
• No Dead Body Poops: Averted; one of the more mundane problems with immortality.
• No Ontological Inertia: If it's at all plausible, killing someone with a power (or taking their power away) will reverse the effects of that power.
• No Periods, Period:
  • Averted in 3.2. Poor Curtis...
  • Simon awkwardly tries to support Alisha's excuse for Kelly by saying "she's got period pains."
  • Abby lamely claims the blood dripping onto the floor from the chicken that she's hiding behind her back (long story) is due to her period. In another case she says she's got to change her tampon before excusing herself.
• No Pregger Sex: Averted. Nathan immediately hits it off with the heavily pregnant Marnie, although he does reference the reason for the trope:
  Nathan: I don't wanna poke the baby's head with my dick, or anything.
  Marnie: Just...do it gently. Fuck me Santa!"
• "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization:
  • Alisha's defense for using her powers against Curtis is that he enjoyed it.
  • Simon tells Lucy, disguised as Alisha, to stop several times as she gives him a blowjob in 2.1. Curtis later tells him he should have tried harder to stop it on account that Alisha is Curtis' girlfriend, prompting Nathan to say the following:
    Nathan: C'mon, man. Be serious. That requires an inhuman level of self-restraint that no man is capable of. The siren call of the blow-job renders all men powerless.
  • Rudy defends himself for going down on a drugged Melissa!Curtis in 3.2 by saying she liked it. Curtis calls Rudy out for this argument.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Subverted in 2.6, thanks to Curtis' superpower, and then played straight in episode 7.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Alisha says the gang is better than an evil preacher because at least they don't use their power to rape and murder. Curtis points out Alisha raped him and that they've killed heaps of people. That's right the misfits "Not So Different" themselves. This is in a Christmas episode.
• Not Wearing Tights:
  • Superhoodie wears a mask, a hoodie, trainers, light body armour and sometimes night-vision goggles. His costume focuses on practicality, for his parkour, rather than style.
  • Lampshaded in series 2. The main cast go to a fancy dress wearing superhero outfits of lycra etc., and just look odd.
  • The heroes on the jumper don't seem to be wearing costumes either, although the image is vague enough that you can't be sure.
• Not What It Looks Like: Played for Drama in 3.8, as Sally sets Simon up by pushing him onto the bed and straddling him, all while secretly recording the events.
• Odd Friendship: Nathan and Simon.
  • Curtis and Rudy have become a lot closer by series 4.
  • Alisha and Kelly have become good friends by season 3.
  • In series 5, Alex and Finn become a lot less antagonistic towards each other, though "friends" may not be the proper word.
• Obliviously Superpowered: Nathan in series one.
• Of Corpse He's Alive: Once it's decided that Gary and Tony's corpses have to be buried under the flyover, the bodies are cleaned up as best as possible and sat in wheelchairs for the journey.
• Oh, Crap!: The ending of 3.7. The crew raises beers in a toast.
  Alisha: Are you actually saying we saved the world?
  Simon: We saved the world.
  Kelly: That's proper superhero shit.
  Rudy [vulgar comment about cheerleaders]
  Curtis: Wait -- what happened to Mr. Miggles?!
• Older Than They Look: In Season 1: Ruth
• One Head Taller: Both the Nathan/Kelly and Curtis/Alisha pairings. The girls are both around 5' 1" ^note Despite Seth claiming in one episode that Kelly is 5' 5" while the boys are both over six foot tall. Averted with Simon/Alisha, as Iwan Rheon is only 5' 8".
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Jess gets pregnant this way after she's sent back in time, having sex with her son's father before killing him to insure he's still born.
• One Person, One Power: Subverted. Although it appears at first that everyone only got one power, Nathan and Simon got secondary powers. Some characters also gain multiple abilities as a result of another power, such as Seth's power that allows him to transfer them and when Sarah gains several powers at once when Alex fucks her when his power is reversed.
• One Phone Call: Nathan ends up in prison and tries to call Simon, saying he only gets one phone call.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • A somewhat sad aversion: the guy who texted Simon and asked him to come to the club to hang out in 1.4 was actually trying to text a different Simon.
  • Jess and Finn, two main characters in the new cast who share their names with the girl who took Simon's virginity and the baby who basically mind-raped Nathan into being his dada respectively.
  • There's two Sams, Curtis' girlfriend and Rudy Two's flying friend.
• Only Sane Man: This is how Curtis (who compared to the others is a relatively normal, polite and well-adjusted individual) appears to view himself in 1.1. He is initially horrified by the group of anti-social, dysfunctional and aggressive delinquents he is being expected to mingle with, protesting that his conviction was unfair and that he shouldn't even be there. He does gradually loosen up, but not because his opinions of the group change radically - he simply gets used to them.
• Open the Iris: When the effects of the Fantastic Drug take hold.
• Orifice Evacuation:
  • In "Vegas", Nathan attempts to use his new ability to do actual "close up magic" to make a $1000 casino chip emerge out of Marnie's... well, take a guess. Except it then gets lost until she goes to the bathroom.
  • Later used as a distraction by Nathan, on himself.
    Nathan: Have you ever seen a man shit a rabbit out of his anus? Prepare to be amazed... and disgusted.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: They can do drugs, have sex, and kill people with ordinary implements. Also, they learn that there's no God (despite having an afterlife, strangely enough). They seem to come back for revenge or reuniting with loved ones.
• Our Time Travel Is Different:
  • Curtis' Time Travel power works thusly: a) User feels an intense guilt or regret over an incident; b) User mentally time travels back to that incident and has the opportunity to change it; c) once done, he either snaps back to the present or, if he's already at the present, time keeps moving on; d) user remembers how history used to be, but doesn't remember the alternative history unless he experiences it himself.
  • There's another kind, which is a simple backwards jump. Simon uses it to become Superhoodie.
  • The final episode gives us a third variety, which allows the user to jump forwards into a possible future and then jump back if they don't like it, in order to work to change it.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The zombies in 3.7 appear, for all intents and purposes, to be act and function perfectly normal even when they themselves are informed that they are zombies until their hunger for flesh takes over.
• Papa Wolf: Nathan, of all people, twice. Once with Finn (the baby from season one, not the regular character in season four, due to Mind Control), and again with Marnie's baby genuinely.
• Parental Abandonment: Nathan's mum kicked him out of the house rendering him homeless, and before that his dad apparently wasn't there for him or his half-brother Jamie.
• Parent with New Paramour: The situation with Nathan's mum and her new partner Jeremy. Notable in that it averts the "evil step-parent" cliche entirely. Jeremy is portrayed as a sweet, sensitive (if slightly odd) guy who is upset by his step-son's constant tirade of abuse. Nathan does ultimately accept his mum's new relationship and try to make amends though.
• Patrick Stewart Speech: Nathan (of all people) on the glory of misspent youth.
• Peek-a-Boo Corpse: When the gang find Gary's body in the locker.
• Performance Anxiety: At first, Simon has difficulty using his power in front of people - becomes pretty funny given that his power is turning invisible.
• Personality Powers: All of the people who get powers have them relate in some way to their personality. Averted sometimes - later powers still run along the same lines of being appropriate to the person but are not actually personality powers.
  • For example, ignored Simon gains invisibility and regretful Curtis gains time-travel.
  • Promiscuous Alisha gets the ability to make any man she wants have sex with her.
  • Kelly's very self-conscious, and she can read minds.
  • Nathan's power is he's immortal, which was earlier foreshadowed by nothing anyone says hurting him.
  • Even though Nathan chose it, it's telling that his second power (doing close-up magic for real, usually involves a lot of distraction, misdirection, and patter to pull of tricks and sleight of hand. Basically, bullshitting people while being the center of attention.
  • Seth, a former drug dealer, gets the ability to store and transfer powers to other people, although he cannot use them himself. Instead of dealing drugs, he starts dealing powers. He's also the first person to notice this trope applies.
• Pet the Dog: In spite of his obvious flaws, Nathan has a fair few redeeming moments over the course of the series, largely in his treatment of Kelly and later Simon.
• Phony Psychic: The spirit medium used to be a fake, but after the storm he really could speak with the dead.
• Phrase Catcher: Nathan sure is a prick, and gets called on it frequently.
• Picture-Perfect Presentation: Peter the fanboy draws a comic of Superhoodie beating up the Misfits. It occurs shot-for-shot, with the final shot of them laid out under a vent dissolving into the action shot of Curtis, Kelly, Rudy and Alisha lying there after Superhoodie has gone.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Seth's enforcer, a short, slim young man whom the gang initially scoffs at before he hurls them out effortlessly.
• Power Incontinence: It could simply be a bad case of How Do I Shot Web? at this point, but four out of five protagonists (plus most of the supporting characters) have absolutely no idea how to summon their powers at will, or restrain or mitigate their effects. It is a pretty common occurrence all the way through to series 5.
• Power Perversion Potential: Several of the group's powers potentially lend themselves to abuse.
  • Simon uses his Invisibility for sneaking into the women's locker room and then sits there watching them changing. Later he uses his power to rob a bank van, and Nathan lampshades this by noting how odd it is that a bunch of young offenders didn't think of using their powers to commit crimes earlier.
  • Alisha's first power makes anybody who's touched her be overcome by lust for her, and she used it to have sex with many men, including Curtis. He gets very angry at this afterward, and says she raped him later.
  • Discussed by Nathan regarding Curtis' Time Travel ability: "If I had your power, I'd wait til I came, then go back a couple of seconds and just... hover."
  • Curtis later gets a Gender Bender power. He has sex with the same woman as both his male and female selves, without her knowing he'd done this.
  • Alex can remove someone else's power through having sex with them. Once, after Finn gets brainwashed into a murderous Satanist, Alex has to rape him for removing this.
• Powers as Programs:
  • Apparently, getting a heart transplant gives you the donor's powers- albeit in an almost uncontrollable form. In addition Seth can remove others' powers, store them in his body and then grant them to a buyer.
  • If someone with powers takes ecstasy, then their power gets reversed temporarily. For example, Curtis travels forwards in time instead of back, and Alisha inspires revulsion rather than lust.
  • When Alex's power is reversed, all previous powers he has shagged out of people are given to anyone he is having sex with.
• Powers in the First Episode: Four of the five protagonists, plus Tony, get their powers in the first episode during the storm. Nathan is also granted powers, though it's not revealed what it is until later on. Technically every single person who has one got their power during the storm as well, it just happened off-screen.
• Potty Failure:
  • Marnie can't help herself when the baby's on her bladder. According to Nathan, that's OK because it happens to him all the time too (off-screen, mercifully).
  • Jess' small bladder didn't exactly work well with being trapped in a freezer.
• Pregnancy Scare: Seth finds a used pregnancy test — positive — and freaks out because he thinks he's gotten Kelly pregnant. He hasn't. Curtis has gotten his female-self pregnant.
• Primal Scene: Rudy confesses that his pathological fear of cheerleaders stems from when he walked in on his parents mid-act while his mother was dressed in a cheerleading uniform.
• Prison Rape: Nathan references this trope in the second episode.
  Nathan: If they actually knew anything, they wouldn't be dicking around sticking notes on our lockers. They would have gone to the police, and we'd all be banged up in prison getting gang raped in the showers!
• Put on a Bus: Nathan.
  • And as of Series 4, Kelly.
• Questionable Consent:
  • Averted with Sally and Simon, twice. The first in Series 1, when she is his probation worker and he is a teenager, but she has no real intentions of sleeping with him. The second in 3.8, when she uses his guilt over him murdering her to convince him that her spirit can only move on if she proves her feelings for him are real, but he is unable to go through with it.
  • Nathan confesses to Kelly that he usually gets girls drunk in order to sleep with them.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Well, duh.
• Railing Kill: In the finale of series 1, Nathan and Rachel. Nathan, at least, got better.
• Raising the Steaks: In 3.7, Mr Miggles the zombie killer cat.
• Rape as Drama: Alisha and Melissa!Curtis' attempted rapes.
• Reality Warper:
  • Peter the fanboy in 3.3 who can make things happen by drawing comic book pages of them.
  • Nathan after he sells his immortality. But it seems to be limited to doing magic tricks for real, so all we seem him do is create or alter small objects.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Robert Sheehan, who plays Nathan, left Misfits after the second season and went on to star in mostly films. At the time his decision was interpreted by some as "jumping ship to Hollywood". In-universe, Nathan's absence was explained by the cast in season 3 as "he went to Vegas to be a magician", made explicit in the webisode "Vegas Baby!".
  • Even more ironic and doubling as a Take That! is the case of Lauren Socha, who plays Kelly. She was written out of the show after season 4, when the actress was arrested after punching and hurling a torrent of racial abuse at a taxi driver, drunkenly threatening to "have his family deported". In-universe justification? "She went to help the children in Africa."
• Really Gets Around:
  • Alicia is shown to be promiscuous at the beginning of the show, which her power reflects, and in school was dubbed the "Cock monster". Later she's settled down into a relationship with Simon.
  • Nathan too is quite like this, and catches an STD in one case. After he meets Marnie though, this changes him and the pair go off to raise her baby together.
  • Rudy, too, is quite promiscuous. This comes back later to bite him when a woman uses her power on him, making his penis fall off when he leaves her after they have sex.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • Tony, the probation officer (well, White Eyes Take Warning).
  • Played straight with the killer in 2.5. When his rage kicks in, his eyes turn a shade of red and his cheeks start to...ripple. It's scarier than it sounds.
• Red Shirt: Ollie, who now has the distinction of being the shortest-lived Misfits character.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain
• Reset Button: Curtis' powers, especially in the premier and 2.6.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Curtis, when he travels through time and changes history.
• Room Full of Crazy: Super Hoodie resides in a room plastered with photographs of the group (and possibly others), as well as huge LED clocks.
• Romantic Runner-Up:
  • Ben the charity worker from episode 3.
  • Also, Samantha. Although she got a reasonable amount of character development.
• Running Gag:
  • Nathan deliberately calling Simon "Barry".
  • "I really want to shag her... oh shit, she can hear that!" "WHEN WILL I LEARN?!?!?"
  • The group have their more quiet bonding experiences, usually when disposing of dead probation workers.
    Nathan: Can we please stop killing our probation workers!
  • Series 2 is having Nathan repeatedly refuse to do something dangerous or confront the villain because it might kill him, leading to one of the others (usually Curtis) exasperated reply of "You're IMMORTAL!". Nathan often points out that it still hurts.
  • And then subverted when Nathan finally stands down a gunman in the Christmas episode.
    Nathan: You can't kill me... I'm immortal!
    Simon: No you're not!
    Nathan: OH SHIT!
  • Nathan forgetting (well, not bothering to remember) someone's name, and Simon reminding him. Gets to the point where Nathan leaves a pause for Simon to fill in the name.
  • "Prick!"
  • The death of their probation workers becomes this. In Season 1, killing a probation worker is a major deal. In Season 3, a probation worker is introduced just so she can get eaten by a zombie cheerleader.
  • Whenever Nathan says, "These are my friends.", it is immediately followed up by Alisha saying "I'm not your friend."
  • 5.3 has a single-episode one:
  Rudy: Can I just say, in my defence...
• Sacrificial Lamb: Gary.
• Sanity Slippage: Simon, oh Simon. He constantly teeters on the brink of mental breakdown.
• Scary Black Man:
  • Tony, after the lightning gets to him.
  • The gaggle of criminals Nathan eggs on for the sake of his brother and his dad in the boot of the car.
  • Curtis occasionally puts on this face to freak Rudy out.
• Scooby Stack: Rudy, Simon, and Curtis do one when trying to figure out why the Power Broker is in the Community Centre.
• Screw Yourself:
  • One of Rudy's copies worries the other will do this, although he may just have been teasing.
  • Curtis manages this... kind of. He ends up pregnant because of it.
• Second Coming: On the Christmas Episode, an evil priest manages to acquire an array of flashy superpowers, including the ability to walk on water, in order to convince the local population that he is the second coming of Jesus (so he can steal vast quantities of money from the poor and sexually abuse women without repercussions).
• Series Continuity Error:
  • A photo of Curtis touching Alisha during a photoshoot in 1.4. Obviously he shouldn't be able to due to her power or else the photoshoot would inevitably be far more interesting.
  • Another in season 3. Curtis' power has always been Mental Time Travel, but after he sold it to Seth, it turns into physical time travel to anywhere, allowing an old Jewish man to go back to try and kill Hitler by appearing in his office as an old man, and Kelly to go back decades before she was even born. Curiously enough, this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened when Seth got involved: Nikki's teleportation power was almost impossible to use voluntarily, and often activated when she didn't want it to-hence why she sold it to Seth. When "Jesus" bought the power off Seth, he was apparently able to use it without any of Nikki's old problems.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong:
  • The catalyst for triggering Curtis's power.
  • As of series 2, Superhoodie has travelled from the future to fix the present.
  • Holocaust survivor Friedrich tries to do this by assassinating Hitler. Sadly he fails, and when Hitler finds his mobile phone, the timeline changes so that the Nazis win the war using technology which they got by reverse-engineering it.
  • Kelly later in the episode goes back in time to just after the assassination attempt to steal the phone back from Hitler.
• Sex Shifter: Curtis gets this as his second power, having the ability to become a female version of himself at will, who he names Melissa.
• Shapeshifter Baggage: Lucy turns into a mouse. Or so they think.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The entirety of the Superhoodie arc due to a nasty Stable Time Loop.
• Shout-Out: Verging on Reference Overdosed, especially Nathan's dialogue.
  • Word of God suggested that Simon's style and persona was deliberately evocative of Ian Curtis. A Joy Division song plays in the background at one point while Simon sits at his computer.
    • Not only is it a Joy Division song, it's "Atmosphere", the last song released by Joy Division while they were still together, and the one with the repeated line "Walk In Silence". Simon also listens to "Killing Moon" by Echo and the Bunnymen in one episode, suggesting a more than brief flirtation with post-punk.
  • He was also modelled after the 1980's German synth-pop outfit Kraftwerk.
  • There are quite a few joking references to Spider-Man, usually made by Nathan.
  • The scene where Nathan goes bowling in 1.4 contains a major nod to The Big Lebowski.
  • The beginning of this clip is a big Shout Out to American Beauty.
  • Nathan has a lot in common with a certain other wise cracking jerkass who never shuts up.
    • Or another unkillable Irish parasite with a big mouth.
  • Nathan references Kill Bill when he comes back to life in a coffin and tries to escape.
    "Uma Thurman did it and she's just a girl..."
  • "We're like the Mitchell brothers! Only not bald, ugly and shit!"
  • "I See Dead People!" - you just knew he was gonna say it eventually...
  • Superhoodie's lair and a musical motif common throughout the second series call to mind The Dark Knight, while his outfit strongly resembles a League of Shadows ninja from Batman Begins.
  • When a fugitive in a gorilla costume says he's finally found the right girl, you know it won't be too long before he's carrying her up the nearest tall building...
  • 2.6 has a handful of characters being killed off inside The Grand Hotel, as well as the carpet running the length of the hallways being identical to those in The Overlook Hotel.
  • Interestingly, juvenile delinquents gain comic book super powers at the Wertham Community Centre.
  • 3.3 has a guy draw out comic book plots which later happen in real life.
  • The zombie episode, as you'd expect, has several. Things kick off when a run-over cat gets brought back to life.
  • Simon worries that they'll end up the only humans left, hiding in a shopping mall. And of course there's the only way to take them out. Rudy has to confront a zombified version of his worst nightmare. And then there's his ludicrously oversized hammer that he has to drag along the corridors inch by inch... They even remember to use the shrieky howling music riff of Zombies feeding.
  • The Cornetto, as well as Rudy's suggestion that they should wait for the whole thing to blow over.
  • "I don't have a brother, I'm the classic example of an only child" is (aside from a pronoun switch) an exact quotation from The Young Ones, which shares a good few tropes with Misfits.
  • 4.1 has one to The Usual Suspects, with Rudy even mentioning the Unreliable Narrator trope.
• Shrinking Violet: Simon is a rare male example.
• Slipping a Mickey:
  • Nathan's brother does this to Simon in 2.2. It's ecstasy; nothing more exotic.
  • The track coach at the community center does it to Melissa and Emma.
• Sitting on the Roof: A surprising amount of action takes place on the Community Centre roof.
• The Slacker: Nathan.
• The Slow Path: Averted for Curtis, who after Setting Right one epic flash-way-back gets sent back forward to his present, with no memories of his alternate history.
• Slut-Shaming: The plot of 1.6. Inverted by Nathan's speech.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Nathan
• Smarter Than You Look: Kelly upon trading in telepathy for the intellect of a rocket scientist.
• Soapbox Sadie: Ollie, an environmental activist sentenced to community service for vandalizing a nuclear power plant.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: Kelly can hear her dog's and Bruno in gorilla form's thoughts, as well as humans'.
• Speculative Fiction
• Spiritual Antithesis: The show is this for Heroes, with its working-class, local, setting, deliberate avoidance of world-threatening storylines, mockery of high-flown philosophy or grand gestures and open contempt for any idea that people with powers have a moral responsibility to become superheroes.
• Spit Take: Finn's reaction to finding out Stuart (the gay guy from the power support group) is a probation worker.
• Spoiler Opening: see Foreshadowing above.
• Stable Time Loop:
  • Superhoodie seems to be in one of these. Alisha falls in love with him and he dies shortly after he reveals his true identity of Future!Simon to her, saying it was meant to be this way. She starts warming up to Simon as a result and his curiosity eventually gives him the truth. In the Christmas special, Simon is seen learning Le Parkour.
  • The loop finally gets stabilised in the third season finale. Poor Alisha.
  • There's some evidence it may not be exactly "stable"; see Temporal Paradox below.
• Stalker with a Crush: Lucy. Dear God, Lucy...
• Stealth Pun:
  • "The new boy will save you more than once. He has heart." Oh, god, Superhoodie, really?
  • The guy they go to in the Christmas Special is a Power Broker.
• Stepford Smiler: Good lord, kids being nice and polite and talking about self respect. Something is very wrong...
• Stood Up: Seth, by Kelly... who did have a good reason. She was quite literally not herself at the time.
• Story-Breaker Power: Curtis' time travel. So much it had to be written out at the end of season 2.
• Straight Edge Evil: The season 1 finale features Rachel who through commanding powers of suggestion turns the local youth into a sinister abstinence cult.
• Stupid Sacrifice: Future Simon had prior notice of their death by gunshot yet went to it anyway despite no obvious reason (at least at the time) it had to happen that way. Would it have killed him to make his armour bulletproof?
• Super Loser: All of them really. Bless them.
  • Summed up by Rudy in 3.7 after seeing he has to kill the latest probation worker (who only just arrived and doesn't even get a name): "We just want you to know this isn't our fault. We're in the wrong place at the wrong time. A lot. We're really not bad kids."
• Superhero Capital of the World: Being the center of a Mass Super-Empowering Event, Wertham falls under this.
• Superpower Lottery: 'Powers' granted by the storm range from making people bald and believing you're a dog at night, to telekinesis, mind control, time travel and limited reality warping. Not that any of the powers seen so far are at comics' power levels. Specifically invoked when one character says he wants a super power too, "something from the A-list."
• Superpower Meltdown: The death of Jamie and Lily, when sex makes her ice-to-fire reversed superpowers go out of control.
• Superhuman Transfusion: Nikki inadvertently gains the ability to teleport through a heart transplant from Ollie. She was able to use it over longer range than he ever did (i.e. more than a few feet...) but never learned to control it like he could. This seems to be a subtle but consistent theme when the powers get transferred, either by organ transplant or via the Power Broker; the recipient tends to have a stronger version and/or much better control of the power.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: All main characters from the first two series have been replaced over the course of series 3 and 4 by characters who occupy similar roles in the ensemble, but have different enough personalities.
  • Nathan left after Series 2, and was replaced by Rudy, an equally mouthy character who, like Nathan, has the habit of saying outrageous things. Subverted slightly in that Rudy is a more complex character with multiple facets (made literal different people by the Storm).
  • Simon, Alisha and Kelly left after Series 3. Series 4 introduced Finn (another socially awkward guy with hidden depths), Abby (another promiscuous party girl with hidden depths), and Jess (Another no-nonsense, rude girl). Note that despite being Kelly's Spiritual Successor, Jess takes Alisha's place romance-wise, and, just like Alisha, starts dating the handsome/athletic guy in the gang (Curtis and Alex, respectively), before ending up with the apparently weirder one (Simon and Rudy, respectively).
  • Series 4 introduced Alex, the handsome barman, and then killed off Curtis the athletic barman. Alex joined he gang full-time for series 5.
• Sympathetic Murderer: When the gang's killings aren't in self-defense or defense of others, it's either accidental murder or really hard to feel bad about it (generally due to an asshole victim).
• Talking the Monster to Death:
  • This is how Simon convinces Lucy not to turn him in to the police.
  • Fails utterly when Ollie tries it on Grand Theft Auto guy Tim and gets drilled before he finishes his first sentence.
• Take That!:
  • The series had a couple of pretty overt jabs at ''Heroes. Very early on there's a scene where all of the characters break down laughing at the idea that they should all start fighting crime and saving the world (although that could just be superhero stories in general). But S2 has a wimpy Soapbox Sadie champagne socialist rich-boy who jumps to the conclusion that he might become the most important of the characters...and instantly gets killed off. And the villain of the S2 Christmas episode is a handsome dark-haired guy who wants to be the most powerful person in the world, collects other people's powers but mostly uses telekenesis...and is an utterly pathetic douchenozzle who dies ludicrously well before the end of the ep through stupidly misusing one of his own powers. Anyone get the idea that the writers don't like a certain trustafarian male nurse or a certain guy named after a watch brand?
  • Nathan's quip that only "the ugly kids" didn't get molested by priests when he was growing up in Ireland may be one, given the scandal there.
• Technically-Living Zombie: The Misfits breed of zombie.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork
• Telepathy: Kelly.
• Teleporters and Transporters: Nikki experiences her semi-controllable teleporting ability as suddenly being thrown in one direction or another, and having the world shift on the way. No word yet on what might be able to come along for the trip.
• Temporal Paradox: Several Plot Holes could be explained if the Time Loop isn't totally stable, but more like a recurring event in multiple Alternate Timelines. Specifically, the photo of Simon and Alisha in Las Vegas and Future!Simon possessing TV footage from the ASBO-5 timeline. Alternatively, these could be artifacts from alternate timelines that happened, but didn't become part of the Stable Time Loop.
  • The most obvious example being early in series 2, when the group learns that Nathan is alive and buried underground, via a note from "Superhoodie", aka Future!Simon. So we see Present!Simon learn Nathan's whereabouts indirectly from Future!Simon.
  • There is a big one in the series finale when Jess from a alternate future timeline is able to leave a video message on her iPhone to be discovered by her in the present - a message made right before Future-Jess commits suicide to force Luke to take her back to before they met. It may be an iPhone, but even it can't send a text message and save a video to a date for Future-Jess is now in the past.
• Terminator Twosome: Friedrich goes back in time in series 3 to assassinate Hitler, but fails and accidentally creates a present where the Nazis rule. So Kelly goes back in time to the same moment to fix the damage he causes (and kick Hitler in the balls a few times).
• There Are No Adults: Played with. The probation workers are always around, we meet Nathan's parents, and people mention their parents, but apart from that they're completely absent. Even though it's repeatedly stated that none of them have enough money to live on their own, none of them seem to live with their parents, and even when they die or disappear by going back in time, their parents don't seem to be bothered.
• There Are No Therapists:
  • Simon in particular could really do with a bit of counselling. Although it's later revealed that he was in fact briefly admitted to a psychiatric ward after the attempted arson, no mention was made of him getting any follow-up therapy (which he is very clearly in need of).
  • Averted with Rudy in 3.5, showing that there is in fact a therapist. Although she appears to be in need of some therapy herself.
• They Would Cut You Up: Simon's response to Alisha's inquiry of what will become of them once the public knows of their powers.
• This Was His True Form: Bruno in 2.5 is a gorilla whose power in the storm was to become human. He still has violent instincts left over though. Gorillas really aren't that violent, however.
• Those Wacky Nazis: 3. 4 concerns an alternate timeline where they win the war.
• Time Master: Curtis, though apparently it only extends to reversing time (and only works when he's feeling guilty about something that's just happened). He can even rewind time to before he should have had the power. Other people using the power can even travel to before they were born and to wherever they want to be in that time.
• Token Evil Teammate:
  • Early in series 1, it appeared as though Simon was headed in this direction, especially when you consider how creepy he was when he killed Sally it seemed as though this would be his journey to villain. However this was averted as it became obvious later on that he was actually the most noble of the group. ^note As seen in storyboards, the initial plans involved Simon going Ax-Crazy in the finale, so there was good reason for the hints.
  • Nathan is a more hurtful than harmful one, but (being a most likely literal sociopath) still definitely qualifies.
• Token Minority: Curtis is Black, the only man of color in the original group.
• Token Minority Couple: Initially played straight with Alisha and Curtis, who are both Black, but averted after they split up. Later Curtis dates Nikki, who's also Black, though she was killed off pretty quickly. However, he was also attracted to and slept with a young white woman, though it didn't work out (she was far more into Curtis as Melissa).
• Tom the Dark Lord: Almost everyone the misfits meet, villains included, was a normal person before the storm. They tend to keep their original names with a couple notable exceptions. E.g. Monsieur Grand Fromage.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Kelly and Alisha.
• Too Dumb to Live: Nathan is all over this trope (it helps that he's immortal. But he tops even himself, in "Vegas, Baby!". He's winning, and winning, and winning in the casino. The house gets suspicious of his luck, and then goes to arrest him because he rolled an 11: a seven on one die, and a 4 on the other. Dice never have more than six pips. Nathan remarks to Marnie as he tries to run from the police that someone should've told him that.
  • Doubles, as most fans are eager to point out. Someone able to bend reality can, within reason, walk out of any jail cell easily enough that being in prison shouldn't be an obstacle, contrary to what Nathan seems to think.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Nathan in the finale.
  • Simon's development over the course of the series:
  Nathan: Did you just grow a set of balls?
  Simon: I've always had a set of balls, it's just you've never seen them.
  Nathan: That is about the gayest thing I ever heard...
  • Even more so in Series 2, where the mysterious Superhoodie is revealed to be Future!Simon
  • Finn gets a minor one when saving Abby from one of the Four Horseman, slamming him off of her and into a door.
• Too Much Information: Simon's rather distressing reaction to Alisha's power, although it was hardly his fault. And then there's Nathan and his "special" sock.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The 'next week' trailers at the end of each episode (common to many British series) many times kill major plot points to the upcoming episode. If you're binge-watching, it's best to skip them entirely.
  • The keyart, as well as the small pre-episode promos that advertise the series on Hulu all feature the final season cast, so anyone who starts watching the show knows immediately that none of the original cast featured in the first two series are still in the show by the end.
• Transatlantic Equivalent: One has been in Development Hell for years.
• Transformation Discretion Shot:
  • In the first episode of season two, Lucy gets one big scene to demonstrate her shapeshifting powers, featuring Transformation Horror, flickering electric lights, and some effective CG. For the rest of the episode, however, all of her transformations occur in cutaways: in one scene, she becomes a mouse by ducking out of sight, the only indication that she's just transformed being the signature light-flickering; in another, she reverts back from her Kelly disguise before turning into Simon, but we only see her manifesting Black Eyes of Evil as each transformation begins before the camera cuts to the real Simon's reaction.
  • Season 3 features Curtis swapping his uncontrollable time-travel power for the much more controllable ability to become a woman at will; none of these transformations are ever given a full Transformation Sequence, instead occurring in cutaways or behind closed doors.
• Trust Password: An ineffective one when the shapeshifter appeared, since it involved one word instead of an exchange and who said it was basically arbitrary. The first character who actually encounters the shape-shifter (Nathan) immediately blurts out "the password is ____", rendering it completely useless. Her momentary confusion doesn't even give him enough time to realize she doesn't know the password and run away.
• Tsundere: Kelly borders on this, and is notably aggressive at times - assault was the crime for which she was given community service in the first place. She seems to particularly enjoy hitting Nathan, though in all fairness he usually deserves it (at one point he even admits to liking her violent temper and the fact that she isn't afraid to slap him).
• TV Teen: Averted, like Skins but more so.
• Twofer Token Minority:
  • Alisha is Black, the only woman of color in the original group.
  • Jess is Black too, with the same position for the second group.
• Two Girls to a Team:
  • Alisha and Kelly in the original group.
  • Jess and Abbie in the second group.
• Two Girls and a Guy: The Jumper Posse has Helen, Karen and Sam.
• The Unintelligible: Kelly is perceived as this by the others at first. For some fans, she still is this.
• Ungrateful Bastard: How do you respond when a heroic stranger dives in and rescues you from a very dangerous situation? Why, you gripe at them for dropping you on the floor of course!
• Unreliable Narrator: Rudy in the series 4 premiere. He even name drops this trope.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension:
  • Nathan and Kelly's tentative flirtation. He frequently thinks about having sex with her, only to berate himself when he realises that she can obviously hear his thoughts. It's possibly the embarrassment of this (and their general social ineptitude) that has prevented them from taking their relationship any further thus far...
  • As of 2.3, this has been solved after they attempt to have sex and it doesn't work out so well. Nathan voices what some of the audience was probably thinking.
• Video Games Are Evil: A guy believes he lives in some GTA-like game, casually murders people (including one of the main cast) and hit-and-runs a granny for extra points.
• Visionary Villain: Rachel the "Virtue Girl", while being decidedly sinister, seemed to genuinely regard herself as a nice person acting in accordance with the greater good. She seemed to honestly believe that she was helping people and ultimately making the world a better place. She could have used the power to set straight criminals who couldn't be reformed any other way. But she went and tried to use it on the whole world.
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • Although none of the group are openly affectionate (or even vaguely respectful) towards each other for the most part, it does become apparent that they genuinely care for one another. Nathan even eventually admits to being fond of Simon, despite spending most of his time belittling the poor guy.
  • In the ASBO-Five timeline, where powers are now public the first person Simon considers asking for help is Nathan, who doesn't even bat an eyelid about letting him kip on his sofa for as long as he wants. This could in fact be because Nathan is a Cloud Cuckoolander, whereas the others would notice that Simon was up to something.
  • Simon even goes to Nathan after a bad first time with Alisha, and the latter is all too happy to give him sex tips.
• Voices Are Mental: Averted a bit too much. When Jen Freaky Friday Flips with Kelly, she still speaks with Kelly's accent. Although since we never hear Jen's real voice it's possible that she had the same accent to begin with.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting:
  • Lucy, Simon's friend from the psychiatric ward.
  • Curtis' new Gender Bender power.
• Weaponized Allergy: In series 2, episode 3 the villain has an allergy to peanuts, and Superhoodie conveniently gives the Misfits of bag of them.
• Weirdness Censor: In the Christmas Special.
  Woman: Our lord Jesus Christ has come again.
  Nathan: Oh... Good for him.
  Marnie: It's nice of him to come just in time for Christmas.
• Wham Episode:
  • 2.3. Holy moly. Superhoodie reveals himself to Alisha to be Simon from the future, who's travelled back to protect the Misfits, and enters a relationship with her.
  • The Christmas Special. Nikki dies after the Misfits sell their powers, so they buy new ones.
  • 3.8. Tony, Sally and Virtue Girl return from the dead as spirits. Virtue Girl ends up cutting Alisha's throat in revenge, causing Simon to buy new powers and travel back in time to become Superhoodie.
  • 4.4. Curtis is bitten by a zombie he resurrects, so he shoots himself to protect those around him.
  • 4.6, Alex reveals he's lost his penis due to a transsexual's power, explaining his hesitance with Jess. Also, and just as important, RUDY FALLS FOR A GIRL.
  • 5.8, the series finale: Jess is pushed forward a year into the future into a new timeline where she has a baby, and the gang is forced to write her off as missing and where Rudy Two's 'Jumper Gang' have turned into apathetic psychopaths who try to kill Finn and later try to kill the whole gang.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • In the third season finale, the medium (played by Mark Heap) brings back Ghost!Virtue Girl, leaves to let the gang 'catch up' with them and is never seen or heard from again.
  • Subverted with Mr. Miggles. We initially don't know what happened to him, but series 4 later reveals that the gang killed him.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: The cast often run into people with powers that aren't much use or have limited value.
  • Some end up as Heart Is an Awesome Power, such as lactokinesis being really useful for murdering people who aren't lactose intolerant, future-knitting bringing up some fairly useful visions and hypnotic breasts being good for distracting people so you can satanically posses them.
• Window Love: Alisha and Curtis technically hold hands in a club through a glass table.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?/Living Forever Is Awesome: Nathan argues for the latter once he's had a chance to get used to it, while the others point out all the downsides.
• With Great Power Comes Great Perks: Anybody who has powers that can actually be used to improve their lives does so with enthusiasm.
• Wrong Guy First: The first series spent a great deal of time setting up the main couples as Nathan/Kelly and Curtis/Alisha. Who could've predicted that by early series 2 both of these couples would be discarded and the only romance amongst the main five misfits would be Alisha/Simon?
• You Already Changed the Past: Simon as Superhoodie
• Younger Than They Look: Season 5 has Rudy Two and Abby throwing a birthday party. Rudy Too points out that they're one year old, having been created in the storm.
• Your Head A-Splode: This happens to Nathan in 2.6 by gunshot. Of course, he gets better.

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