The Looming Tower is a 2018 mini-series on Hulu about the intelligence failures in the CIA and FBI that led to 9/11, starring Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg and Alec Baldwin.
Tropes in this series include:
- Artistic License – History: The boat that bombs the USS Cole is shown as having a child aboard along with the two adult bombers when there was just the two latter in reality.
- Cassandra Truth: O'Neill keeps trying to get his bosses and the other agencies to take Al-Qaeda seriously and aid their investigations. Schmidt, though hostile to the FBI investigation, also has problems getting his own bosses at the CIA to consider the threat.
- CIA Evil, FBI Good: Although not evil per se, the CIA is portrayed as either apathetic toward al-Qaeda or on the flipside, being too gung-ho, being cowboys that get lots of innocent people killed in reckless airstrikes on terrorist targets, and prevent the FBI from doing their jobs by refusing to share intelligence with them most times (despite them being obliged to). The FBI, on the other hand, is shown to be doing all they can to stop al-Qaeda despite this and Soufan angrily denounces them for it at the 9/11 Commission hearings.
- Culturally Religious: O'Neill is a lapsed Catholic but one of his girlfriends is devout and the weight of his sins is very heavy on his shoulders. He cares enough about it that rather than just divorce his wife (which could result in his excommunication), O'Neill pursues an annulment, but it doesn't work.
- Dark Is Evil: The CIA office is dull, grey and dark while the FBI office is well lit and gets sunlight.
- General Ripper: Schmidt believes the only way to stop al-Qaeda is indiscriminate missile strikes.
- Interrupted Intimacy: Vince is having energetic sex with a woman when he's called in for his work and has to leave, which displeases her greatly.
- Interservice Rivalry: The battle between the FBI and the CIA over information-sharing is the driving conflict of the entire show.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Martin Schmidt is a supreme asshole and consistently argues for military action based on sketchy intel, some of which has disastrous results. However, he is one of the few people in the CIA who treats al-Qaeda like the threat that it is.
- Kavorka Man: John O'Neill is a middle-aged, pretty unattractive man. He has not just one but two girlfriends (they don't know about each other), both younger and attractive. O'Neill doesn't really even seem extremely charming, yet they both want a committed relationship with him. Judging by how they act, he seems to be quite good in bed though, which may be one reason for it.
- My Greatest Failure: 9/11 is a massive failure for almost all the characters (Richard Clarke is the only one to make the trope explicit though).
- Present-Day Past: Many 2010s cars can be seen in scenes that take place in the 1990s. Sometimes it's so egregious it gives the show an almost alternate universe-y feel. Also a lot of the people are dressed in 2010s fashion and hair-dos.
- Pull the Thread: The Nairobi bomber claims to be a simple traveler, and that he has no ID because he lost all his travel belongings in the bombing. When Agent Chesney points out that his clothes are completely free of dust or dirt, the bomber claims that he cleaned the debris off of them. Not only is it not likely that he managed to get his clothes that clean, especially with the bloodstains he'd have had to remove, Chesney also catches that he wouldn't have laundered his also-spotless shoes and belt... the latter of which even still has the price tag on it.
- Stunned Silence: Clarke is dumbstruck when Condoleezza Rice says they're going to connect 9/11 to Saddam Hussein.
- The Remake: The show is essentially a remake of the 2006 miniseries The Path to 9/11.
