Smallville / Tropes D to G

Tropes A to C | Tropes D to G | Tropes H to M | Tropes N to S | Tropes T to Z

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Smallville provides examples of the following tropes:

D

• Damsel in Distress: Lana is often in this position, especially in the early seasons, often being captured by several villains and needing to be rescued by Clark Just in Time. Played With in regards to the rest of the cast, every character gets put into this position a couple of times but they often assist on even manage to rescue themselves.
• Dark Action Girl: Several of the female Monster of the Week apply, of the main castm Tess Mercer is the most notable example. She's trained in hand-to-hand and has several fight scenes. She also notably does not use Waif-Fu like most other female characters. Most other girls on the show dance around their opponents and use a lot of kicks. Tess prefers to just punch you in the face.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Compared to the light-hearted Season 2, Season 3 definitely counts. Only in certain spots though. There are still a lot of episodes in Season Three that focus on one episode storylines that drove the first two seasons with the same mix of humour and actual peril. However, it is also the first season to focus more on big-picture elements, and it deals with the main characters going though a lot more turmoil. Clark starts off the season dealing with his dark side and living a very rough and rebellious lifestyle in Metropolis, Lex has a psychotic break (well, partly) and ends up institutionalized at Belle Reve, Chloe's life is turned into a living nightmare at times, and Pete starts to occasionally feel the bad effects of keeping Clark's secret under wraps.
  • The second half of Season 8, compared to the first half. Season 9 features it as well, largely as a result of the S8 finale's fallout. In general, from Season 5 onwards, the show was darker than the earlier seasons.
• Deadly Disc: "Savior", during the fight between the Kandorian woman and Clark.
• Deadpan Snarker: Lois, Chloe, Oliver, Lex, Lionel, Tess, and on a good day, Clark.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • Jonathan makes one with Jor-El to bring Clark (who's under Red Kryptonite influence) home in "Exile".
  • In "Reckoning" , Clark makes another one to save Lana's life. Jonathan dies instead.
  • In "Vessel", Lionel says Lex has done it, and the devil (Zod) will always come to collect.
  • In "Sleeper", Jimmy makes one with Lex to protect Chloe from government agents. He knows there would be a price. Lex comes to collect in "Arctic", Magnificent Bastard-style.
• Death by Origin Story: There was a comic book about Lex's childhood hero, the Avenging Angel, whose love interest became a victim of this trope. When the producers of a movie based on the comic decided to use the Spared by the Adaptation trope on her, it motivated the villain of the week to kill her actress while recording the scene where the character should die. When said villain learned of Clark's powers and how he uses them for good, the villain decided to kill Clark's love interest out of the belief a hero needs this element and a living girlfriend would be a weakness.
• Death Is Cheap: Practically everyone. Special mentions to Chloe Sullivan, who managed to die for no less than eleven times.
• Decomposite Character:
  • The show had two different, completely unrelated versions of Dr. Hamilton from the comics.
  • After they killed off Jimmy, they revealed that his real name was Henry James Olsen (with Jimmy as a nickname). This gave them an excuse to then establish a second Jimmy Olsen, the younger brother of the original.
• Decoy Backstory: One recurrer is Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen (full name Henry James Olsen). Toward the end of the show, Jimmy is unexpectedly killed off. Then, the show introduces his younger brother and replacement at the Daily Planet, the "real" Jimmy (full name James Bartholomew Olsen).
• Decon-Recon Switch: Smallville does this to the Jor-El AI from Superman: The Movie. Jor-El and his attempts to force Clark down a specific path are portrayed less as him helping his son become a hero, but instead a detached and seemingly all powerful Abusive Parent attempting to control his son. As a result, Clark often feels a mixture of fear and hatred towards his biological father, to the point that Brainiac is able to convince Clark that Jor-El was a warlord who destroyed Krypton since it matches what Clark has seen of his father. The reconstruction comes in when episodes focus on the original Jor-El, which show him to be a far more conflicted individual who like Clark once struggled against the destiny his father had picked for him and actually cared deeply about the ethics of his experiments during a war. It was these "flaws" that he saw in himself which led him to make his AI copy more cold and logical, believing that it would be better because of it. Even with that, later seasons do show that the AI does genuinely love Clark and is at times willing to accept Clark's choices, which helps Clark become more accepting of him by Season 10 especially after learning what the original Jor-El was like.
• Denser and Wackier:
  • Season Four's Lois episodes. In fact, that entire year is almost a retelling of Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane — right down to Lois becoming a witch.
  • Season 10, much like Lois & Clark, seemed to be channeling Adam West's Batman in spots.
    David Uzumeri: My favorite part of the episode comes with Slade and Hawkman, actually, when Slade is like 'Look, when I named this project Icarus, I never expected an actual dude with flaming wings falling from the sky. This is totally awesome. I love life.'
• Designated Girl Fight:
  • Action Girl Lois ends up fighting a lot of female villains after her introduction, such as Tess, Athena, Roulette, Maxima, Alia, Linda Lake and Victoria Sinclair.
  • Dark Action Girl Tess also ends up fighting several girls, such as Lois, Lana, Chloe, Mad Harriet.
• Destructo-Nookie:
  • A Deleted Scene in "Heat", shows Desiree and Lex in a Post-Coital Collapse at the wine cellar in the mansion, with bottles broken all around them.
  • In "Wrath", Lana temporarily gains superpowers identical to Clark's. This means they can finally have sex without him destroying her. Earthquakes ensue. Results in a funny moment as the entire town—including Chloe—feel the quakes, and Chloe later arrives at the Kent Farm and discovers (to her supreme awkwardness) the source of the quakes when she finds an obviously Sex Dressed Lana in the kitchen, only wearing Clark's shirt.
  • Downplayed in "Instinct". When Clark and Maxima are making out in the Daily Planet elevator they start hitting the walls so hard it causes the whole building to shake. But they're interrupted by Lois before they go any further than making out.
  • "Requiem": In the first act, Clark and Lana's again have super-powered sex, but this time they only break the bed.
• Deus ex Machina: Lois Lane's "military connections" sure solve a lot of problems.
• Diabolical Mastermind: Lionel, Lex, Morgan Edge, Earth-2 Lionel, and Alexander all show aspects of this.
• Differently Powered Individual: Called "meteor freaks", because most of them get their powers from the meteor rocks that came with Clark from Krypton. Chloe coined this phrase; ironically, she later discovers that she herself is a "meteor freak" and rails against use of the term, much to Jimmy's bewilderment (he wasn't in on this secret yet).
• Disappointing Heritage Reveal: Lionel Luthor fabricated a story about being descended from Scottish nobility, and propped up this lie by claiming that the Luthor mansion was their ancestral home which he moved from Scotland to Smallville. Lex was surprised to find out that his grandfather was actually a petty criminal that was arrested for armed robbery in Smallville. Downplayed, since Lex never thought much of his family, and as such this reveal about his grandfather isn't much more disappointing than what he already knew about his father.
  Lex: You always said your father was a hard-working entrepreneur descended from Scottish nobility.
  Lionel: Well, not all entrepreneurs have the luxury of being both successful and honest.

• Distracted by the Sexy: A very common occurrence whenever something makes a girl Not Herself, but there are also other times.
  • In "Heat", Clark keeps glancing back at Desirée during class and she actually gestures for him to pay attention.
  • "Visage"
    • Lana gets distracted upon seeing Clark in a Sexy Soaked Shirt for a few minutes.
    • Tina Greer while disguised as Chloe, is visibly shaken when she sees Lana in only a Modesty Towel fresh out of the shower, which weirds out Lana.
  • In "Freak", Clark is briefly distracted when he is trying to X-Ray Vision Chloe.
  • "Warrior":
    • Chloe gets a bit distracted when she finds Alec shirtless.
    • Clark and a whole queue of guys get distracted by Lois, who just changed into a Wonder Woman outfit.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: In "Roulette" Oliver is put through a series of life and death games. Who could be responsible? Chloe Sullivan, of course.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?
  • Clark and other Kryptonians emit their heat vision when they are aroused. He first discovered this in "Heat" when checking out the new Hot Teacher and accidentally activates it. It's pretty much played as a case of Jizzed in My Pants.
  • Red Kryptonite is often used as a stand in for drug use; when Clark comes into contact with it, he looses his inhibitions, and as he's fully aware of what's responsible for such, he will refuse to let go of the Red Kryptonite, almost like a drug user refusing to give up drugs. After being unintentionally exposed to it a few times, when Clark was dealing with feeling depressed after causing his mother to lose her unborn baby, he began using it to deal with the pain of guilt. Also, he starts mistreating his friends. There's more drug-related comparisons, but they'd take forever to write out.
  • During Season 8, Davis Bloom would blackout and turn into Doomsday at random, but found a way to stop it by killing people, leading him to becoming a Serial Killer to avoid turning into the monster. For those who don't know the psychology behind compulsive serial killers, when a serial killer doesn't kill for a certain amount of time, they feel psychologically compelled to kill, sort of like they're being taken over by a metaphorical monster. In Davis' case, he was being taken over by a physical monster.
• Domestic Abuser: Lionel was physically abusive to both Lex and his wife Lillian.
• Doomed by Canon: If you weren't in the comics and your name isn't Chloe Sullivan, you're probably going to die before all's said and done.
  • Lex in the first couple of seasons makes sincere efforts not to be the Corrupt Corporate Executive his father is, or if he must be one of those, to at least work towards noble goals and help his friend Clark. It reached the point where they had to forcibly change his obsession from I want to be special which he had let go of, to control freak. Everything quickly spiraled down hill from there.
  • It should be pointed out that a significant one is any type of romantic relationship with someone not Lois Lane.
  • Chloe and Oliver's romance looks like it might end up as this in the last season, especially as Oliver had previously had some Ship Tease with his comics-accurate Love Interest Black Canary. Instead, the series ends with Chloe reading a bed-time story to a child who's [1] implied to be her and Oliver's son.
• Downer Ending: There are a LOT of them...
  • "Ryan": The specialist Clark used his powers to get fails to save Ryan, and he still dies. The final scene shows Clark leaving Ryan's hospital room, looking back on the now empty bed, and he stands in the corridor, the hospital staff walking around Clark, oblivious to his grief.
  • "Exodus": Clark destroys his ship and the shock wave from the explosion kills Martha's unborn baby. Jonathan rails at Clark for this, and Clark leaves his parents in their grief. Chloe, jealous of Clark and Lana's growing romance, agrees to spy on Clark for Lionel. Lex wakes up midair in his private jet to find his bride gone, the pilot gone, the control consoles smashed, and his jet crashing into the ocean. Overcome with grief and guilt, Clark deliberately puts on a Red Kryptonite ring, reverting to his Jerkass Kal persona to avoid feeling any more pain. As Kal, he leaves Smallville, Lana, and his adoptive parents, seemingly for good.
  • "Shattered": Lex is committed to a mental asylum despite Clark's best efforts to help him, and Lana's in the hospital.
  • "Truth": Chloe, after being inflicted with a truth gas made from meteor rocks, goes to retrieve her voicemail which has Lionel's confession over how he killed his parents. However, it is not Lionel's confession, but a recording of Lionel saying that he has erased the voicemail, leaving Chloe heartbroken.
  • "Memoria": Lex recalling the truth of what happened to his brother Julian and confronting Lionel with it after an episode of flashbacks showing how their relationship began to break down from bad to terrible and increasingly destructive.
  • "Covenant": Kara, the Kryptonian girl Clark met, is really Lindsay Harrison, a pawn of Jor-El. Jor-El takes Clark away, Jonathan goes into a coma, Lex is poisoned, and Chloe's safehouse blows up.
  • "Pariah": Alicia Baker, who had done a Heel–Face Turn, is murdered.
  • "Onyx": Lex's good and evil selves are merged, but not before Evil!Lex goads his father Lionel into giving up his conversion to good. The smirk on Lex's face at the end as Lionel announces the end of the charity he founded suggests that Lex's halves merged with his evil side dominant which suggests Lex's Face–Heel Turn began here.
  • "Ageless": Evan, the rapidly aging boy Clark and Lana grew to love, ages to the point of being an old man and dies. Lex's final line, just a few episodes after "Onyx" indicates he's now well and truly become evil.
  • "Reckoning": Jonathan dies.
  • "Vessel": Lex is possessed by General Zod, Clark is trapped in the Phantom Zone, Lionel and Chloe are being attacked by a mob, and Martha and Lois' plane crashes.
  • "Persona": Lana is forced to admit she's been far happier in the past month with Bizarro than she's ever been with Clark...just before she kills Bizarro. Even as he knows he's dying, Bizarro tells Lana he loves her. Brainiac drains the mind of (and most likely murders) his kindly creator Dax-Ur, giving himself the information he needs to become more powerful. Lex has Grant Gabriel, the clone of his dead brother Julian, murdered before Lionel's eyes just as Lionel and Grant were starting to bond.
  • "Arctic": Lex finally discovers Clark's secret and uses the Kryptonian Orb to bring down the Fortress of Solitude.
  • "Bride": Doomsday literally crashes Jimmy and Chloe's wedding, killing at least one person, brutally beating Jimmy into a coma, and abducting Chloe. Lois is left grief-stricken and confused, wondering why these horrible things keep happening to all of them, and left crushed when Clark, her date for the wedding who is at this point over Lana enough that this evening could be considered their first REAL date, ends up rushing right back to Lana when she shows up. Chloe is possessed by Brainiac (again). And the whole thing's being monitored by Lex Luthor.
  • "Requiem": Lana leaves Smallville forever due to being irradiated with kryptonite and being near Clark could kill him.
  • "Doomsday": Jimmy dies, Davis dies, Clark declares himself dead, and Zod returns as a younger, previously cloned version of the original. Not to mention Lois is accidentally transported one year into the future after a violent tussle with Tess and nobody knows what happened to her.
  • "Salvation": Clark is able to send Zod and all the Kandorians away, saving Earth. However, Clark has a dagger made of blue kryptonite stabbed into him and is falling to his death off the building. He gets better, though.
• Dressed Like a Dominatrix:
  • In "Instinct", Maxima's original outfit is a Hell-Bent for Leather and Stripperiffic outfit that gives her an dominatrix vibe. She soon changes into a dress to stand out less.
  • In "Stiletto", Lois briefly assumes the identity of the eponymous superheroine "Stiletto", dressing up in a black Spy Catsuit with Combat Stilettos that makes her look like a dominatrix.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • In "Reaper", Tyler, a meteor freak with a Touch of Death, uses his power on himself after realizing his attempts at Mercy Kills have been doing more harm than good.
  • In "Relic", Mayor Tate tries to shoot himself to avoid going to prison for his exposed crimes, but Clark quickly snatches the gun.
  • At the end of "Crisis", Lionel sticks a gun in his mouth after he is diagnosed with a terminal illness but he reconsiders.
  • Lex collapses the Fortress of Solitude down over him and a depowered Clark in an attempt to do this.
  • After learning about his fate as Doomsday, Davis drowns himself in a Kryptonite shower, but this just ends up making him immune to Kryptonite.
  • Oliver tries to blow himself up with a Death Trap someone was already trying to murder him with. He gets better.
• Driven to Villainy:
  • Played With with Sean Kelvin in "Cool". He was mutated by a combination of Kryptonite and hypothermia and gained the power to drain heat from others. But his powers would kill in if he didn't keep draining people's body heat. A case could be made that he wasn't truly villainous, and was forced to kill people in order to survive, however the guy was made such a self-centered, vindictive psychopathic Jerkass that the point became moot.
  • "Craving" had a girl who was afflicted with sudden weight loss due to Kryptonite and had to regularly eat human flesh to keep from starving to death (regular food didn't work). She never actually killed anyone, just sucked their marrow and left them near death from the damage to their bodies. This was clearly a case of Horror Hunger, and in at least one instance, she urged a potential victim to run away.
  • For real tragedy, see Davis Bloome in Season 8. A Nice Guy paramedic, Davis suffers from constant blackouts and discovers that he has alien Serial Killer and Person of Mass Destruction Doomsday trapped inside him, and that the only way to keep the monster from taking over and slaughtering dozens of people is to kill individual victims. He thus becomes a Pay Evil unto Evil-type Anti-Hero, murdering those he considers to be deserving of it in order to keep his inner monster trapped. This eventually drives him completely insane, and results in his descent into true villainy.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Margot Kidder had a falling out with the producers over the writers' idea to have her character announce the death of Christopher Reeve's character. Her character was killed off.
• Dysfunction Junction:
  • The mothers of most main characters are dead before the series begins. Partially justified in the first season, as the effects of the meteor storm on Smallville are still being felt.
  • Clark and his cousin Kara are the Last Of Their Kind after Krypton exploded.
  • Chloe Sullivan's mother ended up in a mental institution and both mother and daughter have psychosis-inducing meteor infection.
  • Lex Luthor probably has it worst. His mother murdered his younger brother. She soon died afterwards. And he is definitely not on friendly terms with his father. Both he and his father are Self Made Orphans.
  • Lana Lang's parents were killed by a meteor.
  • Lois Lane's mother died when she was six, and her army general father is not very nice. She also has a manipulative, backstabbing sister.
  • Jimmy Olsen's father is a huge drunk and he never met his mother.

E

• Early-Installment Weirdness: Several early episodes make it sound like the Luthors have been the royal family of Metropolis for generations. Later seasons would establish that Lionel Luthor was the son of Scottish immigrants and that he was born into poverty and went from Rags to Riches.
• Easy Amnesia: Occurs more often on this show than most people have hot dinners.
  • The real test is when Clark does become Superman and how that will square with a substantial number of people knowing he is Clark Kent. Nearly no one knows what "The Blur" looks like, but everyone will know Superman's face.
  • Used to a ridiculous grade in "Finale", when Tess simply smudges a neurotoxin in Lex's face making him forget everything, not just Clark-related stuff; every single thing that ever happened in his life is completely and instantly erased. So much for a Freudian Excuse now.
• Eco-Terrorist: Aquaman first appears as an eco-terrorist trying to stop a sonic weapon created by Lex Luthor from going into production.
• Eldritch Abomination: This is Darkseid's natural form.
• Election Day Episode: The class president election is the main focus in "Drone", and several episodes in season five revolving around the senatorial election, coming to a conclusion in "Reckoning".
• Electrified Bathtub: At the beginning of "Red", a rogue federal agent murders new girl Jessie's ex-boyfriend this way.
• Empathic Healer:
  • Chloe. She lost the ability later, due to a bizarre encounter with Brainiac.
  • And Freak of the Week Cyrus Krupp in Season 2.
• Enemy Mine: "Nemesis"
• Engineered Heroics: "Obscura" featured a policeman who kidnapped Chloe in an attempt to get credit for finding her. When that failed due to him and Lana having a telepathic connection, he decided he'd rather get the credit for solving the latter's murder...
• Engineered Public Confession: In the Season 9 finale. Zod, did you forget that your followers have Super-Hearing?
• Enhance Button: Chloe pull this one in "Void". And the pic came from one of her "sources" so its quality is pretty questionable.
• Everybody Hates Hades: In episode 10X05, Lois got possessed by Isis and tried to bring Osiris back into the world — which, despite him being the just ruler of the dead, was treated as a very bad thing. Though it wasn't treated as a bad thing because Osiris himself was bad, but because calling him up would bring the Underworld into the real world.
• Everybody Lives: A semi-regular trope of the show, actually, thanks in part to Clark's Thou Shalt Not Kill policy. While a majority of episodes feature deaths, there's a substantial minority of episodes (on average, about 7 per season) where no one dies and Everybody Lives.
• Evil Is Hammy: Yes. Dear god, yes. Lionel, Lex, and Zor-El all run with this trope. It's Callum Blue's performance however, as the scenery chewing Major Zod that really proves it.
• Evil Orphanage Lady: Granny Goodness uses her cover as an orphanage manager to brainwash and train girls for a future assault on Earth by Darkseid.
• Evil Twin: Bizarro and Ultraman to Clark, Earth-2 Lionel to the real one.
• Expy:
  • Chloe Sullivan originally started as an Expy for Lois Lane (the actual Lois was introduced later), as well as the Silver Age version of Lana Lang. As she began to grow apart from Lois, her journalism career was downplayed and her computer skills evolved to their current levels — making her an expy for Oracle.
  • Tess Mercer, in her first two appearances, was referred to as both "an obscure regional VP" (unfit for her job of taking over for Lex Luthor) and a "pitbull in Prada." The first was said to her while they were up in the Arctic. The second, after she had firmly assumed control of her bald boss's former position. That's right, it's Sarah Palin. Of course, she's intended as a fusion of Mercy Graves and Miss Teschmacher (tending much more toward Mercy.)
  • The episode "Warrior", turned the in-universe fictional Warrior Angel into a Captain Marvel Expy.
  • This version of Booster Gold has quite a significant Captain Amazing vibe.
  • There are some sharp similarities between Green Arrow's characterization and relationship with Clark, and that of Batman. Throw in the fact that The Dark Knight Trilogy meant the writers couldn't use Bruce, and that makes a lot of sense all of a sudden. Appropriate, given that initially Green Arrow was very much the poor man's Batman in the comics, with his earliest stories featuring Speedy as a blatant Expy of Robin, as well as an Arrow-Mobile and even an "Arrow Cave."
• Exposition of Immortality: "Dr. Curtis Knox" is never implicitly referred to as Vandal Savage, but that's pretty much who he is. A Civil-War era photo of a bearded Knox which Lex shows Clark confirms he's immortal, or at least older than he looks. He also tells Chloe that he was once Jack the Ripper himself. According to Smallville: The Official Season 7 Companion, Dr. Knox was indeed created as the creative team couldn't get the rights to Vandal Savage.
• Everyone Can See It: Lana saw immediately that Lois and Clark were attracted to one another from the start of their friendship, even though Lois and Clark deny it (Clark insists that he and Lois are merely Vitriolic Best Buds and Lana notes "the best ones always start that way"). One episode later, Chloe notices a spark of attraction between them during the dunk tank event at Smallville High, Jimmy repeatedly notices their Unresolved Sexual Tension, Oliver makes his share of observations, and Jonathan and Martha both have their own bemused suspicions that Clark and Lois's Vitriolic Best Buds routine is masking something else. By Season 8, the Unresolved Sexual Tension gets to the point where neither Lois nor Clark can deny it much longer.

F

• Failure Is the Only Option: For Lex; for Clark/Lana's relationship; for Clark's desire for a normal life; for Chloe's unrequited love for Clark; for a great many things.
• Fake Shemp: Michael Rosenbaum left the show after Season 7, so Lex's brief appearances in Season 8 were actually played by a body double named Kevin Miller.
• Faking the Dead:
  • Tina Greer pull this off and escape Belle Reeve insane asylum, by murdering a woman and burning her corpse and make it look like it was Tina's and then using her Voluntary Shape Shifting powers to look like someone else and escape.
  • In "Shattered", Lionel fakes the death of one of Lex's security guard as part of a plot to make it look like Lex is losing his mind.
  • In season 3's witness protection fakes Chloe's death by blowing up her house and burying her coffin, although we only find this out in season 4's "Gone".
  • "Reunion" shows that in the past, Lionel faked the death of Duncan (a Childhood Friend of Lex) while in actuality, he kept Duncan alive using a Kryptonite formula which gave Duncan powers.
  • Lana Lang fakes her death in season 6 by substituting the body of one of her clones in place of herself.
  • In "Roulette", as part of her Deadly Game, Roulette fakes her own death and has Oliver take the blame for "murdering her", which sets the cops after him.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Metallo. He's a Walking Shirtless Scene... with hideous tubing protruding from his ribs.
  • The fangirl from "Fanatic" sneaks into Lex's place in just a trench coat, head shaved like Britney Spears to resemble Lex. Yep. She's batshit crazy.
  • In "Prey", Davis Bloome gets a Shower Scene... to wash off all the blood from his latest kill.
  • In "Conspiracy", Vala and her Kandorian friends are kidnapped by a Mad Doctor who strips them down to their underwear while leaving then Strapped to an Operating Table. Any titillation one might have gotten from [ala in her underwear is gone as she's Forced to Watch Dr. Chisholm experiment and dismembers her friends.
• Fanservice: The show features plenty of equal-opportunity fanservice, with plenty of Head Turning Beauties and Hunks on the cast and they're often under Male Gaze or Female Gaze. The plot also puts the characters into a lot of fanservice situations or states of undress, including several Shower Scenes, Shirtless Scenes and many Fanservice Costumes. But while there's plenty of skin showing, the show doesn't feature any explicit nudity. Tropes like Censor Shadow, Scenery Censor, Shoulders-Up Nudity or Toplessness from the Back are used to cover up a character anytime they're naked.
• Fantastic Racism: Kara Zor-El dropped a few rungs on the likeability ladder when she called Martian Manhunter "Red-Eyes." As seen here.
• Faux Action Girl: Played With. While many of the main female characters like Lana and Tess are repeatedly shown to be Action Girls, their fights are generally reserved for the Designated Girl Fight or only on men when it is convenient to the plot. Otherwise, all of their skill instantly disappears. In "Power", Tess is suddenly attacked, and instead of using her martial arts, she resorts to the typical girl-in-distress montage. She grabs a statue and plugs the guy, potentially killing him despite (if she knows aikido) knowing a way to incapacitate him with pressure points and uncomfortable postures once the gun is gone. Then she gang initiation kicks him until her face is covered in blood, and the show takes pains to romanticize her rubbing it from her lips in slow motion.
• Females Are More Innocent: The show has a problem with this from time to time. However it was taken to absurd levels in "Bound", where Lex, a man who every woman he was ever in a relationship with had betrayed, being portrayed as less sympathetic than a crazy suicidal stalker and a woman who cheated on her fiancé for a one night stand. It reaches the point that the main characters were so disgusted by Lex’s actions that they were more willing to trust Lionel over Lex.
• Femme Fatale:
  • In "Noir", all the characters are in a Film Noir and Lana takes the role of the Femme Fatale, having an affair with Clark Kent, an undercover cop, killing her husband, Lex, and framing Jimmy for the murder.
  • Tess Mercer from Season 8 onwards. She's mostly a Well-Intentioned Extremist, but she still has a lot of ulterior motives.
    • Downplayed in season 10. While she still has ulterior motives, her Ship Tease with Clark and Oliver all but disappears as they settle into long-term relationships. She also becomes more pre-occupied with her own character arc as well, meaning that she is much less manipulative. The team comes to view her as a friend and ally.
• Fetal Position Rebirth:
  • The final shot of Season 3, "Covenant", has a naked Clark in a fetal position during the process where he's being "reborn" as Kal-El. Fittingly in "Crusade", he's back on Earth while Naked on Revival.
  • Davis in "Plastique", after his transformation back into a human.
• The Final Temptation: In "Labyrinth" a phantom takes over Clark's mind and tries to bend him to its will. It used an illusion of Lana to persuade him to stay in the dream state and believe it was real, while the phantom maintained control over Clark's body. When Clark tries to resist, Lana questions why he is so eager to return to a reality in which they are apart and he is an alien who has caused so much pain.
• Finale Season: The words "The Final Season" appear above the title in the commercials for season 10. In fact, the Previously on… segment at the beginning of the season premiere ends with Tom Welling's voice saying "And now, the final season of Smallville".
• First Girl Wins: Averted; despite Lana being hyped as the designated love interest, she and Clark ultimately separate.
• First Gray Hair: Spoofed in "Spell". The Wicked Witch, Isobel, has taken over Lana's body and needs the hair of a virgin for a potion she's brewing. When Lois has her back turned, Isobel plucks one of Lois' hairs out, but frowns upon realizing that Lois isn't a virgin. Lois, who is unaware that Lana is being possessed by Isobel, angrily asks Isobel why she would pluck one of her hairs out. Isobel lies and says "It was gray", to which Lois insists "I don't have any gray hair". Isobel shrugs and looks innocent. Lois gets a nervous expression on her face and says "I'll... be in the bathroom using your mirror," and hurries off.
• First Injury Reaction: Multiple times, even. Oftentimes, the first indication that a villain is an actual threat to Clark is when they hurt him enough to draw blood. Clark will almost always touch the wound and look at his blood with shock.
• The First Superheroes: The show's original premise was to depict Clark Kent's early life in rural Smallville as he is still growing into his powers, but is not the legendary superhero he will become. The premise is kept for the first four seasons - and he is the sole major hero to appear on screen, until other heroes begin to appear by season 5.
• Flanderization: Chloe went from someone who was okay with computers to being able to trace a bug's point of origin, discover anything about anyone, and she even had a shot at decoding a Kryptonian virus on her PC... when all the power on Earth had been shut off. Basically she filled in any plot holes where the writers couldn't think of a way to get Clark to the place he needed to be. Brainiac downloads its intellect into her, pretty much super-Flanderizing her computer skills; it turns out he was responsible for her intelligence going out of control and she was losing more and more of herself as time went on.
• Forced Prize Fight: The Live or Die Fight Club in "Combat" posts these fights on the Internet.
• Foregone Conclusion: The show has drama, suspense, and Shipping even though we already know that Clark becomes Superman, ends up with Lois Lane and his friendship with Lex Luthor will dissolve as they become ArchEnemies later in life.
• The Foreign Subtitle: In Brazil, the series is known as Smallville - As Aventuras do Superboy. That title means "Smallville - The Adventures of Superboy".
• Foreshadowing: Ironic references to the Superman mythos. So God damned many.
  • On a separate note, in the prologue of the "Pilot" episode, we see a newspaper headline mentioning that the head of Queen Industries is missing presumed dead. This foreshadows Oliver's eventual appearance on the show.
  • When Lex proposes to his girlfriend, the song playing in the background becomes recognizable as an acoustic cover of Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper"... needless to say, things don't end well.
  • One of the biggest long term foreshadowing, apart from Clark's destiny, comes from the season 1 episode "Hourglass" when Cassandra sees Lex's future: He is in the White House, with white clothes and a black glove on his right hand. This foreshadows stuff that we only find out in the finale, almost ten years later: the glove is to cover his imperfect cloned hand, in 2018 he is elected U.S. President and he wears the same white clothes in the presidential inauguration.
  • After finding Infant!Clark in the "Pilot", Martha says that she and Jonathan didn't find Clark, he found them. She's speaking poetically, but Season 3's "Relic" would reveal that Jor-El did indeed send his son to the Kents on purpose, having known Jonathan's father.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Smallville has always been very bad about this.
  • In the early seasons, the "Freak of the Week" would often be a a longtime friend the main cast would've known for years prior to Kryptonite radiation turning them evil. More often than not, they'd die. The main cast would spend absolutely no time mourning their loss or what they had become even in the episode where they died.
  • In later seasons this would extend to recurring characters and several cases of series regulars Whitney Fordman, Jason Teague and Davis Bloome who'd be Killed Off for Real, might be mourned in the episode they died, and then either never mentioned again or mentioned in only the briefest most casual way for plot purposes.
  • In "Skinwalker", Clark had a passionately romantic attachment with Kyla Willowbrook a Magical Native American shapeshifter with a meaningful bracelet and prophecy saying she was his soul mate, and in the end of the episode she tragically dies. Next episode it was like it never happened, except she had been the device for the 'caves' setting to be introduced, and those stuck around. What was her name, anyway? Kyla Willowbrook.
  • Alicia Baker was another Temporary Love Interest of Clark. In a two-parter she and Clark fall deeply in love, she is 'the one' but thanks partly to Clark not believing she was innocent of attacking his friends, she is killed by the actual baddie. The very next episode opens with Clark excited about getting a football scholarship.
  • Grant Gabriel. Lionel does mourn him. For one episode. He is a clone of his biological son. Which is one more episode than Lois ever mourned for him, even though she knew him longer.
  • Gina. Granted the only one who'd care would be Lex, and it's Lex were talking about here. Still, you'd think he'd spend at least a moment wondering who the Hell murdered his most loyal and devoted assistant.
  • Downplayed with Lionel Luthor, who's mentioned quite a bit after his death. However most of his mentions are of the devil bastard he was at the start of the series and not as the ally he became in the show's second half.
  • Also averted, somewhat with Jimmy Olsen. His death sends Clark into a dark spiral, and Chloe isn't much better off, if at all, and Clark refusing to go back to save him, citing the example of what happened when he averted Lana's death and lost his father instead, is a key point of tension between the two of them for much of the first third of the Ninth Season.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: The four-member Justice League team up in the episode "Justice": Oliver aka Green Arrow (choleric), Victor aka Cyborg (melancholic), Clark (phlegmatic), and Bart aka Impulse (sanguine).
• "Freaky Friday" Flip:
  • Clark and Lionel swap bodies in "Transference" thanks to the Crystal of Water.
  • Played With in "Hex". Zatanna uses her magic to put Chloe in Lois body when Chloe becomes envious and wishes she was had Lois life. In the morning Chloe finds herself in Lois's body and she and the audience think they switched bodies, but when Chloe calls Lois, she discovers Lois is still in her own body, Zatanna just made Chloe look identical to Lois.
• Friendless Background: Lex Luthor as a child.
• Freudian Excuse: Lex's hyper-manipulative, borderline-sociopathic, power-obsessed dad really did a number on him. Then again, in the finale absolutely all his memory is erased, up to and including all his childhood memories, rendering this pretty much pointless. Well, presumably, his personality is still intact, so he is still the bitter, angry, cynical bastard we've all come to know, even if he doesn't remember why.

G

• G-Rated Drug: "Rush" unintentionally (victims get stung by an alien parasite), but "Witness" is one of several cases of meteor rocks being used as such. "Void" comes with the overdue Lampshade Hanging.
• Gambit Roulette: Quite early in the series, in Season 1, there was a Roulette involving Lex Luthor, his father, and an old lover named Victoria. Victoria came to the Luthor mansion and led Lex to believe that she was playing on Lex's dislike for his father so that her own father could buy out LuthorCorp. Lex convinced her that they should play their fathers against each other and bring them both down. Lex cultivated a romantic relationship with Victoria and when they went into business talks with Victoria's father, he said that he was poised to buy out LuthorCorp thanks to Victoria's intelligence she gathered from Lex's computer. However, Lex had already made sure that Victoria's father's endeavors would be useless and unfruitful. Lex and his father bought out Victoria's father's corporation, but in a surprising twist, it was revealed that Victoria was a lover of Lex's father and working for him the whole time.

• Gaussian Girl: The first appearance of Kara -alias Supergirl- shows her blurred and in a flowing white dress. Underwater. When she saves Lex Luthor and flies away, he is convinced she is an angel who is there to make him repent his sins.

• A Glass of Chianti: The Luthors, constantly. Major Zod too.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom:
  • Clark gets these on occasion when he's on red Kryptonite.
  • Martian Manhunter, although he's one of the good guys, so it's not really "of doom".
• Gory Discretion Shot: This occurs more and more as the series gets more mature, and non-discretion shots start appearing in later seasons.
  • "Visage": When Tina!Whitney is (almost) exposed by a Marine lieutenant who shows up to inform Mrs. Foreman that the real Whitney died in combat, Tina!Whitney bludgeons the guy to dead with a baseball bat. His death is never explicitly shown; we only see Tina!Whitney covered in blood and Mrs. Foreman screaming.
  • "Hidden": Chloe and Gabriel struggle for a gun, and it fires, out of view, and blood splatters on the window. For a few horrible moments it seems that Chloe was shot (won't be too much of a difference because she couldn't stop the missile anyway and Clark was also shot by Gabriel just before) but then Gabriel went limp.
  • "Static": A few during the rampage of Alder. Unfortunately subverted by some scenes. Kindly keep your Brain Bleach handy.
  • "Trespass": The blood under the door version. Subverted later.
  • "Committed": At the crucial moment, Clark sets off a steam pipe that clouds the whole chamber and prevents Lois from seeing how he owns Macy. Unfortunately, neither do we.
  • "Power": When Regan prepares to shoot Tess, she disarms and fells him and then kicks him to death his blood splatters on her face.
  • In "Turbulence", when Doomsday apparently kills Chloe in front of Jimmy, her blood is splattered all over a window.
• Government Conspiracy: Checkmate is one; the Suicide Squad is the remnants of one. The government went above board with the Vigilante Registration Act and General Slade Wilson spearheading it, although the public is still in the dark about the government constructing concentration camps for the superheroes.
• Grand Finale: The last episode, "Finale" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.

• Green Rocks: Trope Namer. The kryptonite fragments left all over Smallville have had dozens of different effects, not including individual powers bestowed, depending on what else is present in the immediate area when an individual is exposed. Which is how the human "freak of the week" in the first two seasons got their powers, usually them having to be at the point of death when exposed.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: "Reckoning": Subverted in that the loop only repeats once and the only thing Clark's able to change is which person he loves dies that day. Originally it was Lana. In the loop, it's Jonathan.

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