Star Wars The Clone Wars Season One To Season Six / Tropes A to F

Tropes A to F | Tropes G to Z

#-A

• 24-Hour Armor:
  • This trope is present in the first two-and-a-half seasons because it was easier to animate Jedi in rigid armor compared to flowing robes. This has led to situations like the Jedi Council looking like they're ready for battle while meeting in the Jedi Temple and a Lurmen medicine woman applying a poultice to an injured Anakin Skywalker over his armor.
  • After Savage Opress receives his armor from Talzin in "Monster", it never comes off, including when he has his arm replaced during a surgical operation in "Eminence" after Obi-Wan cut off his arm in "Revival".
  • Averted in "The Deserter", where Captain Rex is stripped to the waist to treat a blaster wound.
• Aborted Arc: An extremely odd case with the Zillo Beast. At the end of "The Zillo Beast Strikes Back", Palpatine gives new orders to Dr. Boll: clone the Zillo Beast. This episode was aired on April 16, 2010, when Clone Wars was a Cartoon Network property. This plot point never comes up again during the rest of the show, before Disney bought the Star Wars rights. The Zillo Beast isn't mentioned neither in Disney's Season 7, by 2020. However, its narrative arc suddenly returns in another show, the season 2 of The Bad Batch, in the episode "Metamorphosis", released on March 1, 2023, with the appearance of one of the clones of the Zillo Beast, 13 years after the last canonical appearance of the Beast.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: In "The Jedi Who Knew Too Much", a chase scene involving Ahsoka, Anakin, and a garrison worth of clone troopers takes place in a sewer system.
• Absurdly Youthful Father: Cut Lawquane is a deserter clone trooper who married a Twi'lek woman named Suu and adopted her two young children. Cut is about eleven/twelve years old at the most, but he is biologically about twice that age due to growth-acceleration.
• Action Girl:
  • Ahsoka Tano is a female Togruta and a very skilled (now-former) Padawan learner of Anakin Skywalker and a member of the Jedi Order. She saves Anakin almost as many times as he saves her.
  • Whenever Padmé Amidala starts fighting, she's competent and skilled with using a weapon to fight (such as a blaster) as any other character.
  • Duchess Satine Kryze of Mandalore, who is an Actual Pacifist, manages to take care of herself while remaining completely neutral and non-lethal via using a deactivator pistol.
  • Other female characters appear more sporadically, but their action scenes are of similar high quality.
• Activation Sequence: During the first time the Malevolence fires its fleet-disabling weapon, the order is given, battle droids activate the system as an electronic hum begins building up, and the emitter near the front of the ship begins to glow before firing a disk of electromagnetic energy that leaves its targets helpless.
• Actual Pacifist:
  • The Lurmen, a race of Perfect Pacifist People. They take pacifism a little too far, as their philosophy does not allow running away from danger. The younger generation chooses to become Technical Pacifists to survive.
  • This is later deconstructed. Satine is one through being bound and determined to keep her people out of the war, but she leads the planet Mandalore, whose people were once some of the most feared warriors in the galaxy. The Mandalorian splinter group Death Watch violently disagrees with her and hope to return their planet to its past ways. In a galaxy that is at war and her leading the Mandalorians, the Death Watch teams up with Darth Maul and Savage Opress, stages an invasion of the planet by an army of criminals to reinforce how pacifism has made Mandalore vulnerable to those willing to prey on those who refuse to fight back and Death Watch comes along to defeat the criminals. In the end, the people of Mandalore perceive the Death Watch as being heroes, Satine is removed from power, Mandalore gets into another civil war not long after Maul takes the throne, and Satine is brutally murdered by Maul for the sake of emotionally tormenting Obi-Wan.
• Adapted Out: In a sense. While The Clone Wars isn't actually an adaptation of the non-canon micro-series, it does incorporate broad strokes from it and most of the recurring characters appear and usually get a spot light. Not so with Durge though, who has yet to be reintroduced to the canon at all. Word of God is that an episode was planned with Durge in it, but they kept reworking the character until he became Cad Bane.
• Advert-Overloaded Future: Coruscant is very heavily advert overloaded despite the fact that Star Wars is set A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away... and not in the future.
• An Aesop: The opening of every episode presents a moral.
• Aesop Amnesia: In "Storm Over Ryloth", Ahsoka disobeys orders from Anakin and Admiral Yularen to pull back and gets most of her squadron killed, which naturally makes her feel upset. In "Holocron Heist", Ahsoka is in the exact same situation and given just about the same orders from Anakin and Obi-Wan during the First Battle of Felucia. The only difference is that Ahsoka is commanding clone troopers on the ground instead of starfighters. Obi-Wan tells her that Ahsoka is putting her clone troopers' lives in danger. This should have made her stop and think rather than continuing to do the same thing that she did in Ryloth, but Obi-Wan and Anakin practically have to drag her off of the battlefield instead.
• Air-Vent Passageway: The writers appear to be in love with this trope:
  • In "Duel of the Droids", Ahsoka escapes Grievous through the ventilation system.
  • In "Cloak of Darkness", Ventress uses the air vents to infiltrate and sabotage a Republic Venator Star Destroyer unnoticed.
  • In "Holocron Heist", Cad Bane infiltrates the Jedi Temple through the air vents, which are so large that they double as Absurdly Spacious Sewers.
  • In "Brain Invaders", Ahsoka and Barriss escape from mind-controlled clone troopers via jumping into the air vents. Later in the episode, Ahsoka uses the same vents to travel to the coolant control room and the bridge while she's running from Barriss.
  • In "Assassin", Aurra Sing uses these during her assassination attempts on Padmé.
  • In "Nightsisters", Ventress and her fellow Nightsisters infiltrate Count Dooku's palace through the air vents.
  • Lampshaded in "The Citadel". With the entry point that the Jedi wants to use being blocked, Anakin and Obi-Wan muse how to get in and Ahsoka points on the ventilation hatch. Anakin argues that they are too small to gain access, but Ahsoka points out that though they might be too small for Anakin, Obi-Wan, and the clone troopers and she might be able to squeeze through — which she is, although barely. In "Counterattack", Obi-Wan's entire team tries to escape the Citadel in absurdly spacious air vents. However, the air vents have lethally effective security doors and the warden at least has enough common sense to send at least one drone in the air vents.
  • In "A Test of Strength", Hondo immediately recognizes the trick and has smoke bombs dropped into the vents to flush out the occupants.
• The Alcatraz: The Citadel is located on a remote, volcanic planet called Lola Sayu, with the prison itself full of traps and guarded by battalions of Separatist droids. It's explicitly stated that if someone manages to escape the institute, they still cannot really go anywhere because the landscape is almost impossible to cross (especially while being chased). And then, they need a ship to get off the planet and still have to cross the Separatist blockade.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: The Republic has rules against interfering in the internal matters of a government or planet. The series runs into the usual logical fallacies and misapplications the trope encounters in almost all sci-fi universes, but also examines what happens when the Republic does get involved where it should not.
  • During the Mandalore arc, the Separatists try to make it appear as though they are helping the Death Watch (which they are, but not to the extent they want it to seem) so that the Republic will not see it as a manageable internal Mandalore situation. This would lead to a Republic occupation of Mandalore to restore order, but that would turn the population of Mandalore against the Republic, which the Death Watch could use to rally support and conquer the planet with a mass uprising.
  • During the Onderon arc, the Republic decides to train and supply the Onderon resistance to the Separatist puppet king in order to occupy Separatist resources in combating a costly guerrilla campaign. However, as the story arc progresses, their stated rationale changes to using the resistance because they cannot get openly involved in an internal Onderonian matter. The change in motivation is never explained, but leads to disaster for the resistance when the Separatists send in heavier forces and the Republic refuses to commit heavier forces or weapons to fight them. Anakin eventually circumvents the issue by hiring Hondo to deliver heavy weapons to the resistance, giving the Republic deniability.
  • During the Shadow Collective arc, the Jedi state that they cannot get involved in the Death Watch/Shadow Collective's takeover of Mandalore since Obi-Wan (who does want to get involved) confirms that the Death Watch and Separatists are no longer allies. As a purely internal Mandalorian matter, the situation is out of their hands, but Obi-Wan goes anyway and the story arc ends with him going back to the Republic to tell them that the Sith are involved, which he expects will lead to a full invasion and occupation of Mandalore.
• Alien Sky: Used quite often for the various planets the heroes visit. A planet having multiple moons is the most frequent use of this trope:
  • Some of the moons on Iego are visible during the day (albeit vaguely).
  • Dathomir's sky is always blood red and the planet has four moons.
  • Mortis' sky was filled with levitating rocks.
  • Lola Sayu's sky has a deep violet color and it's primary light sources seem to be the giant, sulfuric, yellow-colored lava oceans on its surface, giving it a bottom lighting. Further more, it's planetary ring is visible from the surface.
  • Abafar's orange sky is so thick that it's impossible to see the sun surrounding the planet.
• All-CGI Cartoon: The animation style that the series uses.
• All Planets Are Earth-Like:
  • Almost every planet has an atmosphere that is breathable to sentient organisms regardless of their species, as well as gravity equal to each other's. Justified as these worlds would be most useful to a galactic society composed of species mainly from these types of planets. There are other planets that exist, but they do not appear for the most part. Although, several characters from worlds with abnormal gravity (Kyuzo, like Embo) or atmospheres (Kel Dor, like Plo Koon) do appear.
  • Downplayed with Quarzite. It's said that the planet's surface has a high-pressure atmosphere and only the underground is safely inhabitable. However, the atmosphere within those underground tunnels is perfectly fine.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The Clone Wars averts this trope, showing several species who had previously only been encountered as antagonists into loyal and committed members of the Galactic Republic, including (but not limited to) Rodians (Greedo), Dugs (Sebulba), and Toydarians (Watto). And, as the name implies (as of "Heroes on Both Sides"), this aversion also applies to the Separatists.
• Always Night: It's always night on Umbara (which is also known as the Shadow World). It's quite fitting since the name is based on "umbra", the Latin word for "shadow" or "shade".
• Amazon Brigade: The Nightsisters.
• Anachronic Order: The Clone Wars has a significant amount of episodes and story arcs that are aired anachronistically, which allows for the viewers to be able to discover the additional elements that surround a story arc and/or standalone episode they have already watched. The official episode guides help with the identification and lead to some All There in the Manual moments. For a full chronological listing of episodes, see here.
  • The chronological order of the Christophsis arc is "Cat and Mouse" (2:16), "The Hidden Enemy" (1:16), and the pilot movie.
  • The chronological order of the Ryloth arc is "Supply Lines" (3:03), "Ambush" (1:01), and the Ryloth Trilogy ("Storm Over Ryloth", "Innocents of Ryloth", and "Liberty on Ryloth"; 1:19-21).
  • The chronological order of the Domino Squad arc is "Clone Cadets" (3:01), "Rookies" (1:05), and "ARC Troopers" (3:02).
  • The Holocron arc ("Holocron Heist", "Cargo of Doom", and "Children of the Force"; 2:01-03) takes place before "Assassin" (3:07), "Evil Plans" (3:08), "Hostage Crisis" (1:22), and "Hunt for Ziro" (3:09).
  • The Zillo Beast arc takes place before the Geonosis arc.
  • "Heroes on Both Sides" (3:10) and "Pursuit of Peace" (3:11) take place before "Senate Murders" (2:15).
  • The Onderon and Young Jedi arcs take place before "Revival" (5:01) since Adi Gallia is alive in the former and Hondo's base on Florrum is still intact (at least until the end of the latter). Averted on the season five DVD/Blu-Ray release, where "Revival" is in its correct chronological placement and grouped with the Shadow Collective arc (which is the story arc that it is actually part of).
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Inverted, as the Aesop comes before the episode actually starts. Some episodes do play this straight whenever characters discuss the lessons that they have learned from their experiences.
• And Then What?: In "Carnage of Krell", a dejected Rex and Fives discuss the war. When Fives attempts to cheer Rex up by pointing out that the war will eventually end, Rex wonders what will happen to all the clone troopers once it does. Fives does not know and cannot think of anyone who does.
• Angelic Aliens: The Angels are essentially this trope. They were first mentioned back in The Phantom Menace by Anakin (when he was nine years old), who says they are the "most beautiful creatures in the universe". An Angel appears in "Mystery of a Thousand Moons" as a tall, glowing humanoid with butterfly-like wings (they also provide the trope image).
• Animorphism: The Daughter and the Son can respectively turn into a griffin and a gargoyle at will.
• Anyone Can Die: Played With. While the characters who appear in Revenge of the Sith and/or the original trilogy have to survive, everyone else is allowed to die.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: In "Mystery of a Thousand Moons", Anakin and Obi-Wan immediately dismiss the idea of the planet being cursed/haunted by a phantom called "Drol" as superstition. While they turned out to had been correct to doubt in this case, the fact remains that they regularly use Psychic Powers granted to them by the Sentient Cosmic Force. Justified in that belief in the Force explicitly renders spirits impossible, as all beings become one with the Force when they die. The idea that someone can return from the Force to communicate with the living is met with equal skepticism from Ki-Adi-Mundi in "Voices".
• Arc Villain: Since The Clone Wars follows an anthology format of loosely connected Story Arcs, most of the villains have an antagonistic role during only one story arc and never show up again as a result of being either arrested or killed. Also, an interesting case is that a number of them are small-scale dragons to Count Dooku instead of independent antagonists with an agenda of their own.
• Arc Welding:
  • As noted above at Anachronic Order, the first half of The Clone Wars' third season expands on, ties together, and/or concludes some of the story arcs in the series' first two seasons.
  • The Shadow Collective arc, which presents Darth Maul and Savage Opress forming an alliance with Death Watch, ties the Nightsisters and Brothers arc to the Mandalore arc.
• Armed with Canon: This is George Lucas' approach to many elements of the canon in The Clone Wars, which he tends to outline in precise details for the writers to use.
• Armor Is Useless: In most cases, the body armor that some of the Jedi wear is not shown providing any protection from enemy blaster fire or protection against unarmed hand blows.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In "To Catch a Jedi", while Ahsoka is on run after being framed for bombing the Jedi Temple hangar, she recalibrates a holobooth's frequency to prevent anyone from tracing her transmission. Seeing this, Ventress sarcastically remarks that by doing so, Ahsoka is adding another act to her own criminal record — a record which by that point includes sedition, terrorism, and multiple murders.
• Art Evolution: The Clone Wars begins with CGI animation. However, the art style and animation initially make the characters look slightly like mannequins and, outside of the fight scenes, move kind of stiffly. The second season improves upon the facial expressions as well as the character movements and the second half of the third season presents a Jedi outfit switch from (easily animated) body armor and gauntlets to the tunics they wear in the films.
• Artificial Brilliance: In Liberty on Ryloth", a OOM-series command battle droid makes a surprisingly good tactical decision that after disabling the lead vehicle in a column, they should attack the trailing vehicle and "box them in".
• Ascended Extra: The Clone Wars gives fleshed out expanded roles to a significant amount of peripheral characters that are featured in the six original Star Wars films. A couple of examples include:
  • The members of the Jedi Order who received a small amount of screen time and barely any lines in the Prequel Trilogy are fleshed out and presented as being great and noble warriors with brilliant skills and personalities as a result of receiving expanded roles along with a lot more screen time and lines in the series.
  • The clone troopers have names, personalities, and relationships they never had before as a result of receiving expanded roles.
• Ass-Kicking Pose: The episodes directed by Steward Lee often include the characters striking a badass pose before going into battle. The prime example would be "Defenders of Peace", which features Anakin, Ahsoka, Aayla, Rex, and Bly posing in front of the Deflector Shield they set up in order to protect the villagers as the Separatist droids close in on them. Other directors used Asskicking Poses as well, but they are used less often and usually more subtly than the episodes directed by Lee.
• As You Know: During the Citadel arc, Count Dooku explains the importance of the Nexus Route coordinates to Osi Sobeck, who is the warden of the Citadel.
  Count Dooku: I don't need to remind you...
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Zillo Beast in its titular story arc, which directly homage the Godzilla movies with a little bit of King Kong thrown in.
• Audience Surrogate: Ahsoka is this in The Clone Wars via being a young Padawan learner who is suddenly thrust into adventure.
• Author Usurpation: The success of The Clone Wars has overshadowed all of Dave Filoni's prior work, has overshadowed his other Star Wars works (except maybe The Mandalorian), and it's the first thing people think of when discussing Dave's works. The Clone Wars is also associated with him more than anyone else, even George Lucas.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The podhunter. Escape pods have no armor and little to no shielding, so a few shots from a turbolaser would make short work of them and be a cheaper solution. Might as well send vulture droids to comb the debris field.
  • The Republic's AT-TE walkers are this as a result of being large, slow, difficult to maneuver, and their weaponry is locked in forward position.
• Ax-Crazy: Osi Sobek, who executes prisoners as an interrogation tactic and chokes battle droids when he gets pissed.

B

• Back for the Dead: A significant amount of supporting characters would disappear for long stretches of time, only to die upon their return.
  • Duchess Satine Kryze is an important character during the second and third seasons, but she has only a few minor appearances in season four. During the Shadow Collective arc, she gets killed by Darth Maul.
  • ARC trooper Fives, who previously appeared during the Umbara arc, once again becomes a central protagonist during the Order 66 arc. Unfortunately, due to his investigation of Tup's "breakdown"-induced murder of a Jedi threatening the plan of the Sith, he is set up by Palpatine and killed by his own brethren.
  • Tup, who previously appeared during the Umbara arc, also receives a small yet very significant role during the Order 66 arc that results in his death because his malfunctioning control chip has been removed.
  • Rush Clovis, who hadn't appeared since "Senate Spy", receives a fleshed out backstory and a prominent role during the Clovis arc. Clovis gets killed after he is deceived by Count Dooku.
  • Teckla Minnau (Padmé's aide), who has previously appeared in "Pursuit of Peace", receives a minor role during the Clovis arc, only to be killed by Embo.
• Back-to-Back Badasses:
  • Obi-Wan and Satine have one of these moments in "Voyage of Temptation", when, upon being attacked by numerous tiny, spider-like assassin droids, Obi-Wan defends with his lightsaber while Satine equips a deactivator hold-out pistol and begins firing at the assassin probes.
  • Jedi General Ima-Gun Di and his Clone Captain Keeli perform this feat in "Supply Lines" during their last stand on Ryloth.
    Ima-Gun Di: Captain Keeli!
    —->Captain Keeli: I'm not finished yet, Sir... we can do this, General!
    —->Ima-Gun Di: Then let's make the end memorable!
  • Anakin and Obi-Wan are the best examples of this trope.
  • Anakin and Ahsoka have a significant amount of these moments as well.
  • Obi-Wan and Ventress, of all people, have a moment of this in "Revenge" while they are engaged in a lightsaber duel against Darth Maul and Savage Opress.
• Badass Army: The clone troopers are most certainly this trope.
• Badass Boast: Yoda delivers an awesome one to his Enemy Without in "Destiny".
  Yoda: Part of me you are, but power over me you have not!
• Badass Family: Chairman Papanoida's family are presented as being this in "Sphere of Influence". Papanoida, his son, and his daughter take on an entire bar full of bloodthirsty outlaws and bounty hunters and win.
• Badass Longcoat: Cad Bane wears an awesome coat with a lower hemline below his knees in the first two-and-a-half seasons.
• Bad Boss:
  • Grievous regularly destroys and "abuses" the battle droids under his command out of frustration towards their incompetence.
  • Osi Sobeck (the commander of the Citadel) executes Separatist droids not just for failure, but for discovering someone else's failure.
  • Averted with Hondo Ohnaka, who appears to treat his men remarkably well. For a pirate captain, anyway.
  • Pong Krell is a stark contrast to other Jedi Generals, always ordering his troops to do full-frontal assaults rather than any actual strategy, which often results in high casualties. Not to mention his very bigoted attitude towards the clones in general. He turns out to be working for Count Dooku, or at the very least trying to get his attention, due to having a vision of the Great Jedi Purge.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Several episodes end with the villains triumphing over the heroes.
  • In "Cloak of Darkness", Ventress successfully cripples the Republic cruiser and the traitorous Captain Argyus breaks out Nute Gunray.
  • In "Lair of Grievous", Grievous kills all the clone troopers and one of the two Jedi attempting to capture him, which results in Kit Fisto being forced to escape on his own.
  • In "Heroes on Both Sides", Grievous' bombing of Coruscant goes off without a hitch, Padmé's bill fails to pass, Mina Bonteri is killed, and the war profiteers get everything they wanted.
  • In "Massacre" (which features Evil vs. Evil), Grievous commits genocide against the Nightsisters, wiping out all but Ventress and Talzin.
  • In "The Lawless", Darth Maul thwarts Obi-Wan's rescue attempt and then executes Satine in front of him just to torment him. In turn, while Obi-Wan escapes Mandalore, Darth Sidious arrives on Mandalore and kills Savage and captures Maul, making it an example of the worse guy winning.
  • In "Orders", Fives fails to convince anyone of the hidden conspiracy against the Jedi, is killed by Commander Fox, and Palpatine pins the whole affair on a brain parasite.
  • The entirety of The Clone Wars qualifies through the fact that no one realizes that Palpatine is playing both sides for fools, weakening them to the point where he will able to corrupt Anakin Skywalker, proclaim himself Emperor of the Galactic Empire, and exterminate the Jedi Order and millions of others under his heel.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Played With. The Clone Wars occasionally features a heroic character perform an action that is morally questionable and provides an ethical dilemma for the other characters.
  • Anakin kills Merrik so that Obi-Wan and Satine don't have to in "Voyage of Temptation" right after Tal Merrik asks, "Come on then! Who will strike first and brand themselves a cold blooded killer?" This is made all the more poignant by the "Imperial March", Darth Vader's theme song, playing in the background.
    Anakin Skywalker: What? He was gonna blow up the ship.
  • Once Captain Rex captures General Krell in "Carnage of Krell", he intends to execute him to prevent him from being freed by the Separatists. Dogma ultimately pulls the trigger for him.
  • Rex himself gets in on the action during the Zygerria arc. Keeper Agruss brags to Obi-Wan that a Jedi would not kill an unarmed man. Rex is not a Jedi. Agruss really had it coming.
• Bad News, Irrelevant News: In "A Sunny Day in the Void", WAC informs Colonel Gascon that he has good news and bad news. The bad news is that the ship is flying into a large group of comets. The good news is that he will have an excuse for the Jedi Council if his mission fails because of it.
• Bald of Evil:

• As of season four Pre Vizsla, A Nazi by Any Other Name, has shaved his head and received a nasty scar from a fight with Count Dooku.

• Barbie Doll Anatomy: The male characters who got a Shirtless Scene all lacked nipples. While this could be hand-waved in the case of Rubber-Forehead Aliens like Kit Fisto, Savage Opress, Darth Maul, and other Zabrak Nightbrothers as Non-Humans Lack Attributes, it does not explain why Captain Rex, a human clone, lacks them as well.
• Bash Brothers: Anakin and Obi-Wan are this, of course (although they are not biologically related). Maul and Savage also count as well.
• Batman Gambit:
  • Count Dooku and Ziro's treachery. They create conflict for story arcs by exploiting how their betrayer will react.
  • In "A Friend in Need", Lux Bonteri barges into a peace negotiation to loudly proclaim that Count Dooku murdered his mother, for which he is brought before Dooku via a holographic transmission. Lux knew that this would happen, and brought a signal tracker so he can find where Dooku is hiding. His escape does not seem well thought out, but Ahsoka does interrupt.
• Battle in the Rain:
  • In "Shadow Warrior", a storm begins exactly when Grievous and the Gungans start to fight. It was initially sunny both before and after the battle.
  • In "The Jedi Who Knew Too Much", it begins to rain during Ahsoka's escape from the Republic army HQ. The timing is more jarring than it would be usually because Coruscant is a weather-controlled planet.
• The Battlestar: Several large capital ship classes serve both as fighter-carriers and battleships. The most prominently featured are the Republic Venator-class and the Separatist Munificent-class star frigates.
• Bavarian Fire Drill:
  • In "Bombad Jedi", C-3PO manages to get a pair of battle droids to stop guarding a room he's trying to get into by warning about a incoming Jedi and just continuing to walk on past them when they dash off.
  • In "A Necessary Bond", R2 cons his way past a Separatist droid security checkpoint by getting belligerent with the guards about his clearance. One of the battle droids, taking offense at an astromech droid talking back to him, warns that he could have R2 melted down before letting him go by.
  • In "Secret Weapons", WAC-47 tricks a pair of super battle droids into a closet by claiming to be under orders from General Grievous to run a security check, having them "hide" in the closet so he can trigger a power surge without damaging them.
• Beam-O-War: There is one between the Son and the Daughter and later the Son and the Father in a square off against each other during the Mortis arc.
• The Beastmaster:
  • Jar Jar, of all people, has a way with animals, as shown in "Bombad Jedi" when he gets the help of a giant underwater monster.
  • Obi-Wan uses the Force in order to tame the rampaging starved gutkurrs in "Innocents of Ryloth".
• Beautiful Dreamer: In "Brain Invaders", Ahsoka Tano and Barriss Offee are trapped aboard a Meat Puppet-infested Pelta-class frigate. Barriss is herself taken over and turns against Ahsoka, who cannot bring herself to kill her friend. When Ahsoka finally manages to subdue Barriss, she cradles her in her arms and holds her unconscious body until Ahsoka passes out as well and lies with her.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished:
  • Kalifa is certainly dirty enough to indicate that she has been trapped on the Trandoshan hunting word for a long time, but her hair is nonetheless still cut in a perfect and precise bob cut, despite being there longer than anyone else.
  • During the Zygerria arc, an entire colony of Togrutas are forced into a mining facility and they have been kept there for about two weeks at the least. Despite this, none of them have any bruises, scratches, or dirt on their faces when Obi-Wan gets sent there. It's made more poignant because Obi-Wan is already full of bruises and his tunic is torn when he arrives.
• Becoming the Mask: This is discussed during the Obi-Wan Undercover arc when Obi-Wan was disguised as Rako Hardeen.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Satine and Obi-Wan, who are pretty much the Beatrice and Benedick of the series.
• Beneath the Earth:
  • In "Mercy Mission", C-3PO and R2-D2 end up wandering about the cave system beneath the surface of planet Aleen. There they encounter the inhabitants, who were causing earthquakes, trying to seal the breach between them and the surface because surface air is poisonous to them.
  • In "Bounty", Asajj Ventress and Boba Fett's crew visit Quarzite, which is inhabitable only below the surface. The two native species (the Belugans and Kages) are engaged in a Civil War.
  • A double-fold, Lost World version is the Wellspring of Life, which is a planet that is both the origin of all life and the birthplace of the Midi-chlorians. The planet itself is hidden inside Space Clouds of glowing gases, emanating from countless "geysers" on the planet's rocky desert surface. Below the surface is a gigantic open space filled with the same gases with Neebray mantas flying through it, between hundreds of levitating islands covered in lush jungles.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: In "The Mandalore Plot", a Death Watch bomber commits suicide rather than be arrested and interrogated.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Jar Jar is as clumsy as ever, but he does present surprising amounts of insight from time to time and actually saves several of the heroes on multiple accounts by combining these traits.
• BFG: Some of the clone troopers use Z-6 rotary cannons, which are laser mini guns that have a blistering rate of fire.
• Big Bad: Darth Sidious, who is secretly playing both sides of the war to further consolidate his power over the galaxy. He is responsible for the entire war, most of the Separatist villains answer to him, and the non-affiliated villains are ultimately thriving in the conflict he perpetuated. However, Sidious is forced to remain in the shadows to maintain his public front as the Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, leaving Count Dooku and General Grievous as the supposed leaders of the Separatists in the eyes of the Republic.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: There's a wide range of other antagonists that end up in conflict with the Jedi throughout the war, the most prominent being recurring Arc Villains such as Hondo Ohnaka, Dooku's Dragon-turned-enemy-turned-eventual anti-hero Asajj Ventress, her monstrous creation Savage Opress, Bounty Hunter Cad Bane, Death Watch terrorist leader Pre Vizla, Mother Talzin of the Nightsisters, and the former Sith lord turned crime lord Darth Maul.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: This happens every few episodes, interspersed with smaller confrontations and episodes with more personal stakes. A special note can be given to "Landing at Point Rain", where the Republic retakes Geonosis, since there isn't any Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene or a pause in the action where it slows down.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Obi-Wan to Anakin and Anakin to Ahsoka.
  • Between Savage Opress and Darth Maul. Despite Maul's adherence to the Code of the Sith and forceful enforcement of the Rule of Two, his brother is still the only being he shows legitimate caring and concern for.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies:
  • The gutkurrs introduced in "Innocents of Ryloth" are essentially two-metre-tall fleas with raptor legs. They are also carnivorous and more than happy to eat clone troopers.
  • The milodons introduced in "Bounty" are giant centipedes that are large enough for a group of Kage Warriors to travel on their backs and fast enough to catch up with a hover-subtram.
• Big Eater: Ziro's mother is shown to be this trope.
• Big "NO!": This is used quite a lot, since it is Star Wars.
  • Barriss Offee yells one in "Brain Invaders" when she gets possessed by a brain worm offscreen.
  • Anakin yells one in "Altar of Mortis" when Ahsoka is temporarily killed by the Son of Mortis. She gets better, though.
  • Obi-Wan yells one in "Revival" when Savage Opress kills Adi Gallia.
  • Colonel Gascon yells one in "Point of No Return" when M5-BZ sacrifices himself by opening the airlock and getting sucked out of the ship without magnetizing himself.
• Bilingual Bonus: The Aurebesh script that is used throughout The Clone Wars is directly translatable to English, meaning every instance of its use is readable.
  • The text stenciled onto the Republic gunship commanded by Master Plo Koon as seen in "Citadel Rescue" says "Plo's Bros" above two-dimensional images of Plo and two clone troopers.
  • Kix has a tattoo on the side of his head that reads "A good droid is a dead one".
  • In "Cat and Mouse", we see on Admiral Yularen's computer that Admiral Trench is actually named Taranch.
• Bilingual Dialogue: This is a frequent occurrence between alien species and droids. When one of them speaks Basic, it often leads to Repeating So the Audience Can Hear since there are no subtitles.
• Binary Suns:
  • Tatooine is a sparsely inhabited circumbinary desert planet that is part of a binary star system and oppressed by scorching suns.
  • Mon Cala is a water planet that is revealed in "Gungan Attack" to orbit twin stars as well.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • In "Carnage of Krell", the Republic finally captures Umbara and Krell gets killed by Dogma. However, the clone troopers themselves suffer a ton of casualties (such as Hardcase and Waxer) and Dogma is arrested.
  • "Sacrifice" ends with this as well. Yoda fights a vision of Darth Sidious on Moraband, but Sidious detaches himself from the vision before Yoda find out his identity as Palpatine. Nevertheless, Yoda gains a glimpse into the future and accepts that while the Jedi may not be able to win the Clone Wars, the light will prevail in the end.
• Bizarrchitecture:
  • In the colony town on Kiros, all the buildings are designed after the Togruta's horns. This was an explicit statement that Kiros was populated largely by artists.
  • Cato Neimoidia's cities are built on gigantic simple suspension bridges that are suspended between hill cliffs in addition to being hundreds if not thousands of meters above the ground. While this alone would be weird enough, it's presented in "Sabotage" that some of them are hanging upside down from said bridges.
  • Coruscant's undercity is so massive that there are skyscrapers hanging down from the layer above.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The Republic and Jedi Order do questionable things, which becomes more apparent in the later seasons. In addition to leading an army of soldiers trained to fight since birth (the moral implications of which are brought up from time to time as early as the first season), there are some senators only out for their own interests and the Jedi Order has taken some questionable actions, such as their willingness to throw Ahsoka over to a biased Republic court when she is falsely accused of murder and treason. On the other hand, while the Separatists have some good people, they have some truly evil people as well and those few good people either do not have any real influence on the Separatist cause or (like Mina Bonteri) get removed. This is all a result of Palpatine playing both sides.
• The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: This happens with Garnac's dagger after Ahsoka kicks it out of his hand in "Wookiee Hunt".
• Bleak Border Base: "Rookies" takes place on the barren Rishi moon, home only to a small scanning outpost and the gigantic Rishi eels. Naturally, the Separatists attack it.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Satine (blond), Bo-Katan (redhead), and Rook Kast (brunette) are the three major female characters of the Shadow Collective arc.
• Blood Knight:
  • Clone trooper Hardcase wields a Z-6 rotary cannon and seems to enjoy standing out in the open hosing down the enemy while bellowing things like "you want a piece of this?" when ordered to seek cover. He actually says that he was told his growth acceleration chamber on Kamino must have had a leak. He's a Suspiciously Similar Substitute of Hevy, who also had this tendency, though downplayed.
  • The Mandalorian Death Watch are made of this trope. As presented in "A Friend in Need", they torment droids by taking potshots at them and they torch unarmed settlements.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Since the sixth season was released on Netflix, they could go significantly more graphic with the violence in a few instances, such as the deaths of Fives and Commander Thorn. Both are killed by blaster bolts to the chest. However, unlike the dozens of other such moments, the camera focuses on the huge glowing holes left by the blasters.
• Bloodless Carnage: Played With. It is justified in most cases, as lightsabers and blasters cauterize wounds instantly, thought there are occasional aversions.
  • Played straight during the Nightsisters and Brothers arc, Ventress spears and slashes several Nightbrothers and Savage tears through clone troopers as well as two Jedi (through outright impaling one of them) and not a drop of blood is seen. This is with an ordinary spear, mind you.
  • Averted with Riff Tamson, whose explosive death results in a murky cloud of blood trailing from floating chunks of flesh and his severed head.
  • Averted in Son of Dathomir through being an adaptation of an unaired story arc aimed at teenage or older fans, which allowed them to get away with more explicit violence (General Grievous makes a man bleed on him) than what would have been allowed on television (although The Clone Wars already got a lot of stuff past the censors when there was some censorship).
• Body-Count Competition: In "Landing at Point Rain", Anakin and Ahsoka start one up. At the end, Anakin has 55 while Ahsoka has 60. Then Ki-Adi-Mundi says he has 65 and asks what his prize was, to which Anakin responds that it is his everlasting respect.
• Body Horror:
  • Savage Opress' transformation in "Monster", where his body mutates into a larger, more powerful form. His bones audibly crack as they expand and his horns visibly extend from his skull.
  • Obi-Wan's transformation into "Rako Hardeen" in "Deception", which involves his skin visibly warping, and his skull reshaping itself to create his new face. Judging from his reactions, the procedure was very painful.
  • Darth Maul's condition in "Brothers". His missing lower body has been replaced with a crude, spider-like apparatus, his horns have tripled in length, he has lost an unhealthy amount of weight, and there are veins visible all over his body. His symptoms are healed by Mother Talzin and his missing legs replaced with a more humanoid prosthetic in "Revenge".
• Bond One-Liner:
  • "Duel of the Droids": After General Grievous kills Gha Nachkt when the latter demanded more money for capturing R2-D2, he responds to his demands by gloating "There's your bonus".
  • "Bounty": When Ventress kills a man in a bar, the patrons all look at her strangely. After she delivers a one-liner, they all go back to what they were doing.
• Bond Villain Stupidity:
  • In "Hostage Crisis", a group of bounty hunters manage to disable and capture Anakin after he tries to stop their invasion of the Senate Office Building. However, instead of just killing him like they have done with every other soldier who tried to stop them, they tie him up and leave him with the Senators, planning to kill him with a bomb later.
  • In "The Mandalore Plot", the Death Watch manage to knock Obi-Wan unconscious and then put him on the ever so cliché Conveyor Belt o' Doom with a rock grinder at the end. Their justification for this is so it looks like an accident. Later, when he is on the run and disarmed, Pre Vizsla shows up with several mooks and he proceeds to return Obi-Wan's lightsaber so they may duel fairly.
  • In "Nightsisters", Asajj Ventress decides to get revenge on Count Dooku after he betrays her and receives a poison dart that will impair his sight and reflexes so she can defeat him in the ensuing fight. Just making it a lethal poison is never considered by any of the assassins.
• Boom, Headshot!: In "Counterattack", Osi Sobeck (the warden of the Citadel) executes a clone trooper with a direct shot to the face during his interrogation of the captured Jedi. Luckily for the rest of the clone troopers, Commander Cody was next in line, so fate had to intervene.
• Bounty Hunter: The second season was advertised as "Rise of the Bounty Hunters". Many bounty hunters became recurring characters throughout The Clone Wars, receiving some episodes (along with a story arc towards the end of the season) dedicated to them as enemies of the main cast or the protagonists of an episode.
• Bring It Back Alive: The Republic does this to the Zillo Beast. Inevitably, the Zillo Beast breaks free and wreaks havoc.
• Broad Strokes:
  • As a result of being confined to the new Disney-era canon system, The Clone Wars is a full and equal part of the Star Wars canon. However, since it was made under the previous regime, this comes up occasionally in regards to Legends material.
  • Under the old system, Star Wars had a "level" system of canonicity, starting with the films and then cascading to include TV, novels, comics, specials and other entries in the Expanded Universe, with each entry receiving its own level determining its place in Star Wars history. Details from the "lower" levels are taken as needed to fit the story of the series, with frequent input from George Lucas on what is or is not an immutable part of official canon (so, for instance, the series' version of Mandalore was largely a new invention and it was up to the novels to reconcile their portrayal with this one rather than vice-versa). Some of the references to old EU material in The Clone Wars may be taken to mean that those works are Broad Strokes within the canon — for instance, the cameo by Delta Squad, heroes of Republic Commando.
• Brought Down to Normal: Downplayed in "Hostage Crisis"; Anakin, while not removed of his Force abilities, finds himself trying to offset a Hostage Situation without his lightsaber. He is capable of superhuman feats on his own, but things are much more difficult for him without his weapon.
• Bullet Dancing: In "A Friend in Need", the Death Watch make a bunch of droids "dance" by firing under their feet.
• Bus Full of Innocents:
  • Kaliida Shoals Medical Center serves this role in "Shadow of Malevolence", as the Malevolence intended to destroy it while it was full of injured clones and under the command of Dr. Nala Se.
  • A town inhabited by Ming Po on the planet Carlac serves this role in "A Friend in Need" as a result of being held hostage by the Death Watch.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: In "A Friend in Need", Count Dooku acts like this when discussing the death of Mina Bonteri with Lux. He claims that he cannot recall her death since it was so meaningless on a grand scale. It is clear he was just doing it to be a jerk, though.
• By-the-Book Cop: Inspector Tan Divo is essentially this, as he will tolerate no outside interference in his investigations. Unfortunately, his investigations tends to move pretty slowly, making outside action necessary.

C

• Call-Back: As a result of The Clone Wars' placement in the franchise and its internal history, it's far more common to see a Call-Forward (so many that it has its own page). However, there are a few Call-Backs to not only The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones but also to earlier parts of The Clone Wars itself. An excellent example is in "The Lawless" when Obi-Wan has to travel to Mandalore incognito in order to rescue Satine and disguises himself using the clothes taken from Rako Hardeen while impersonating him in the previous season.
• Canon Immigrant: The Clone Wars has become retroactively full of these since the Disney acquisition made the old Expanded Universe no longer canon. Just like the original six Star Wars films, The Clone Wars has been included by Disney to be part of their Star Wars canon. Any character or lore that ascended from the "lower" levels of the old canon system^* See the Legends page for details of the old "cascading" system has been carried forward into the new continuity in at least some capacity, such as Asajj Ventress and Quinlan Vos, the existence of Delta Squad from Republic Commando or the Selkath from Knights of the Old Republic and locations like Onderon and its capital Iziz and Korriban/Moraband. It remains to be seen, though, if those elements of old continuity will ever be developed further or their status clarified.
• Captain Ersatz:
  • Savage Opress was explicitly created as a replacement for Darth Maul via being from the same species and given the same form of weapon (Maul had, supposedly, died). Opress, ironically, became so popular among the creative team that they made him and Maul brothers and used Savage to have Maul return in The Clone Wars.
  • "The Box" featured no less than thirteen bounty hunters, of which only five made it to the end. To avoid killing off popular characters and to save production costs on making new models, quite a lot of them are simply re-colored versions of pre-existing bounty hunters: Jakoli for Greedo, Twazzi for Rumi Paramita (who was introduced in "Bounty Hunters"), Mantu for Chata Hyoki (who was introduced in "Pursuit of Peace"). Sixtat is almost identical to a minor nameless character is "Wookiee Hunt".
• Captain Obvious: Every now and then Ahsoka will state the obvious, to the amusement of Rex and Anakin, in order to ensure the audience is aware of what should be obvious to the characters while being through the lens of a character young enough that such statements are excusable and understandable.
• Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: Commander Cody (Smooth) and Captain Rex (Rough), especially in "Rookies" where they are paired together without their associated Jedi. Their personalities also mirror their immediate Jedi Generals; Cody reports to Obi-Wan (Smooth) and Rex reports to Anakin (Rough).
• Cardboard Prison:
  • Subverted in "The Gungan General". Hondo's prison cells are not much of a hindrance for Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Dooku, but being chained to each other and not knowing the layout of the base is.
  • The Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center on Coruscant. Apparently, the guards allowed Aurra Sing in to talk to Ziro. Cad Bane admits to having escaped from it multiple times, including a case when he broke out Aurra (according to Word of God). Then in "Deception", Cad Bane, Moralo Eval, Rako Hardeen, Boba Fett, and Bossk stage a mass breakout during a prison riot.
  • The Mandalorian prison. In "Shades of Reason" and "The Lawless", there are four breakouts from it, although admittedly one of them the guards wanted to happen. The prisoner saved in the last one doesn't even get inside the facility.
• Car Fu: Captain Rex practices speeder-fu, as he saves the Chairman of Pantora from being killed by a Talz by riding over the chairman and knocking back the attacker.
• Cargo Cult: Some droids set one of these up on a primitive world in "Nomad Droids", with a giant hologram. R2-D2 sees right through it, exposing them and personally kicking one of them out of their Hacker Cave. Then, the natives destroy their facility, which was apparently Made of Explodium.
• Cassandra Truth: In "The Jedi Who Knew Too Much", Ahsoka quickly realizes that no one will believe she didn't murder Letta.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Played for Laughs frequently throughout the entire war.
• Cavalry of the Dead: The Nightsisters are able to revive the corpses of their fallen to battle on their behalf. Though effective against the Separatist droids, Grievous treats them like only a nuisance.
• Ceiling Cling:
  • Ahsoka is quite prone to using this:
    • In "Sphere of Influence", she manages to do this while using the Force to suspend Senator Chuchi off the ground.
    • In "Ghosts of Mortis", she clings onto their shuttle's ceiling to escape from Anakin, who's temporarily joined the Son.
    • In "The Jedi Who Knew Too Much", after she gets framed for terrorism and murder, she uses it to avoid a group of clone troopers searching for her in the building of the GAR HQ.
  • In "Eminence", Sugi uses it to make the jump on Maul, who is threatening her current employers (the Hutt Clan).
• Chained Heat: Averted in "The Gungan General". Obi-Wan and Anakin do not become better friends with Dooku, which is the way it has to be.
  Dooku: I would kill you both right now if I did not have to drag your bodies.
• Chair Reveal:
  • In "Lair of Grievous", Fisto and Nahdar walk up to a chair in which they think Nute Gunray is sitting. When they turn it around, it is revealed that Gunray was present only via a holographic transmission.
  • In "Senate Murders", after Padmé and Bail have been ambushed while investigating the death of Onaconda Farr, they assume that Senator Mee Deechi set them up and go to confront him. When they turn his chair around, they discover him with a dagger in his chest.
• Character Development:
  • Throughout The Clone Wars, there are hints of Anakin's future as Darth Vader, with circumstances frequently pushing him to more pragmatic and cold-blooded actions during the war.
  • Asajj Ventress gets some of this in "Nightsisters" and her subsequent appearances after this episode. Before this episode, she is just a Card-Carrying Villain.
  • In "Carnage of Krell", Rex hesitates to execute Pong Krell, who taunts him for being conflicted about it, resulting in Dogma stepping in and taking the shot for him. In "Escape from Kadavo", Rex is the one who kills a similarly smug villain who is taunting Obi-Wan for his inability to do it.
• Characterization Marches On: In "The Mandalore Plot", Pre Vizsla is a political terrorist bent on rebuilding the Mandalorian warrior culture. By the time of the fourth season, he has become a psychotic madman who burns down villages for fun after his time in exile.
• Chemically-Induced Insanity: During the Order 66 arc, Fives finds out about the fact that the control chips in the clone troopers will force them to kill the Jedi when Order 66 is activated. A Kaminoan doctor named Nala Se drugs him with something that makes him ultra-paranoid. This, combined with Palpatine telling him the truth about everything, has Fives acting more and more deranged until he is killed by Commander Fox.
• The Chessmaster: Palpatine is manipulating almost everyone to make sure the war lasts as long and becomes as intense as possible. "Duchess of Mandalore" is perhaps the only episode where he suffers a real defeat.
• The Chew Toy: If you're a battle droid, then it sucks to be you.
• Child Soldiers:
  • Ahsoka is an adolescent Padawan learner who participates in the battles and missions of the Clone Wars. Some characters have called attention to it, but no one really sees a problem with sending a teenager into fatal situations when, by the very definition of being a Padawan, she has not yet completed her Jedi training. This is especially evident in the first season when Ahsoka becomes upset after losing most of her squadron in "Storm Over Ryloth", showing that she is unable to cope with the emotional toll of warfare. After the short timeskip, Ahsoka instead seems to be more annoyed that Anakin has apparently realized this himself and is holding her back from partaking in the more dangerous missions.
  • In "ARC Troopers" (during the Battle of Kamino), several clone troopers end up in the barracks for the still-children clone cadets undergoing basic training. The cadets are armed and brought into the fight as part of a trap set for the Separatist droids sent to kill them and the other clones still being trained.
  • Technically, all the clone troopers qualify as this since they are actually around 11-12 years old despite their accelerated aging.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Count Dooku and the Separatist generals have a persistent habit of screwing over the local leaders and/or populations they ally with for help in taking over systems — sometimes for failing to fall in line as utterly as they want, sometimes for no real reason at all. Given that it's run by a pair of Sith Lords, the all-time masters of backstabbing once they no longer need people (or because they need people), it's not surprising.
• *Click* Hello: In "Rookies", commando droids who have taken over an outpost manned by clone troopers wear clone armor to try and deceive more arriving clones. Captain Rex turns the tables on them via pretending to be a commando droid in clone armor (and holding up a severed commando droid head for a camera when asked to remove his helmet). Rex keeps repeating "Roger roger", leading the commando droids to think his vocabulator is malfunctioning, right up until they open the door.
  Commando Droid: Clones!
  Captain Rex: Roger, roger. [BLAM]
• Clones Are People, Too:
  • An underlying theme of the series. Despite having the same face and voice, The clone troopers are treated in The Clone Wars as individuals, and all consider themselves brothers. They take (rather simple) names for themselves, and many clones cut or dye their hair or get personal tattoos to differentiate themselves beneath the armor.
  • The Clone Wars has several episodes which highlight the casual way that clone troopers are discarded, but it comes to a head during the Umbara arc. The clone troopers begin to resist after they continuously receive horrible and incompetent orders. They do not mind dying for the cause, but dying pointlessly is going too far. They ultimately turn on their leader, claiming that they are not clones, but men.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Played with in a few episodes. The risks inherent to doing this are notably touched upon in "Cargo of Doom", where the subject dies during the interrogation.
• Cold Sniper:
  • Aurra Sing is shown to be this in "Assassin" and "Hostage Crisis".
  • An unidentified Death Watch assassin is presented as this in "Duchess of Mandalore".
• Colour Coded Armies:
  • The colors on the clone troopers' uniforms represent the military division in the Republic army that they are part of along with who they serve under. Blue is for the members of the 501^st Legion (which is under Anakin's command), orange is for the members of the 212^th Attack Battalion (which is under Obi-Wan's command), grey is for the members of the Wolfpack (which is under Plo Koon's command), and green is for the members of the 41^st Elite Corps (which is under Luminara Unduli's command). Red is for the clone troopers stationed on Coruscant.
  • In "Carnage of Krell", the clone troopers that are members of the 501^st Legion wear blue while the enemy Umbarans wearing stolen uniforms wear orange. Except the "enemies" are clone troopers as well, and both sides have been told the other were impersonators so they would wipe each other out.
  • Usually, the blasters of the side for which the audience is supposed to cheer for are firing blue bolts and the "antagonists" are firing red. It becomes a bit jarring when Hondo's temporarily split-up gang starts fighting: those who remained faithful to Hondo are using blue, while the traitors are using red. Once they reunite all blasters turn blue despite using red before. This may indicate that the color is used in-universe as a tracer to better identify which side is which.
• Combat Breakdown: In "Hunt for Ziro", Obi-Wan and Quinlan Vos fight Cad Bane. They initially all use their primary weapons (lightsabers vs. blasters), but are all disarmed one after the other. They eventually resort to just their fists, jet-boots (Cad Bane), the Force, wrist flamethrowers, and all the other miscellaneous gadgets two Jedi and a bounty hunter have at their disposal.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • General Grievous is more than willing to use cheap tactics and sic MagnaGuards on his target before going in himself. It makes his presence much different than Asajj Ventress or Count Dooku, and makes him different than a straight-up badass.
  • Cad Bane lives this trope since he is a non-Force-user who often finds himself fighting Jedi.
  • Pre Vizsla will not hesitate to use blasters, flamethrowers, or his jetpack to get the edge in a fight with a Jedi.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Cad Bane is explicitly modeled on Lee Van Cleef, who was the star of many westerns in The '60s.
• Comm Links: They are often used exactly in the manner described on the trope page: a tiny Super Wrist-Gadget, with only a few buttons, yet the caller always calls the right "number", and the caller is always available. They also work between characters star systems away from each other and between spaceships while they are traveling in hyperspace.
• Competence Porn: In a setting replete with Hollywood Tactics, it's refreshing to see the heroes work together to formulate a logical battle plan and execute it flawlessly as they do in "Storm Over Ryloth".
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: In "The Mandalore Plot", Obi-Wan starts complaining before Satine has finished rescuing him.
  Obi-Wan Kenobi: Well it certainly took you long enough.
  Satine Kryze: You know I haven't saved you yet.
  Obi-Wan Kenobi: Yes, no need to remind me of that.
  Satine Kryze: Be patient.
  Obi-Wan Kenobi: I happen to be a bit short on patience right now!
• Concealment Equals Cover: Zigzagged. Hiding behind a wooden table can occasionally protect someone from blaster fire, while at other times the same blasters can shoot straight through a body and still leave glowing a hole on the wall behind. Walls seem to provide effective cover, yet on at least one occasion the clone troopers could destroy support pillars made of solid stone with hand-held blasters.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: The Separatist droid army outnumbers the Republic clone army, but the clone troopers can be creative. This is especially blatant with Force-users; if you have a lightsaber (even if all your enemies have lightsabers), you're going to have no problems holding your own until you get into one-on-one combat again.
• Continuity Cameo:
  • "Witches of the Mist" starts with a short appearance by Delta Squad.
  • "Wookiee Hunt" has one with Tarfful, the Wookiee Chieftain that fans of Star Wars: Republic Commando should also immediately recognize. Also, some of the Trandoshans use the energy shotguns from that game.
• Continuity Nod: See here.
• Continuity Porn: The Clone Wars is so full of Continuity Nods that they are sharing a page of their own with the Shout Outs.
• Continuity Snarl: Zigzagged. This is averted in regards to the canon, as not only did the Legends decision render all previous Expanded Universe material outside The Clone Wars and the original six Star Wars films non-canon and thus leaving it with very little to contradict, almost every work in the canon has consistently worked with elements that were introduced. However, The Clone Wars is part of both Canon and Legends due to the series running before the decision. Regardless, The Clone Wars is notorious for contradicting a lot of previously written material from the latter continuity and, in some cases, retconning it due to being in the second-highest tier of the Legends continuity (which, at the time, was created for installments produced by Lucasfilm; since none of the other planned series got off the ground, The Clone Wars was the only work designated under this tier). Had The Clone Wars continued under the same tiered-canon system, many more snarls would have occurred (season seven along with the other mediums are solely confined to the Disney canon).
• Continuous Decompression:
  • In "A Test of Strength", Ahsoka exploits this in a plan to get Hondo's pirates off her ship by firing the engines to disrupt the seal on their docking clamp. The resulting lack of pressure will suck everyone back through the docking tube. Aside from dragging one unfortunate pirate through the hole, this plan works pretty much as intended.
  • This is used in "Point of No Return" to clear a room of buzz droids.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Zigzagged in "Citadel Rescue". Characters hang mere meters over the lava with no problem in one scene, yet the burial cloak for a Jedi burns before it touches it. Animals die instantly, yet said Jedi's wrapped corpse somehow floats downstream and the worst that happens is it is still on fire.
• Converse with the Unconscious: In "Storm Over Ryloth", Admiral Yularen is knocked out during the initial attack on the blockade, and while he's unconscious in the medbay, Ahsoka apologizes to him for her recklessness that caused his injury. He turns out to have been awake and heard her.
• Conveyor Belt o' Doom: It is still in vogue on the moons of Mandalore, apparently.
• Cool Bike: Speeder bikes, the Star Wars equivalent, make frequent appearances. They come in non-armed "swoop" configurations, blaster-wielding military models, and with gunnery-mounted sidecars on occasion.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • Yoda embodies this trope as a very powerful Jedi Master and one of the oldest characters featured in the entire series. He is always there if someone needs advise with the Force, and he is not above having some fun if the situation allows it.
  • Tera Sinube qualifies as this as well. His lightsaber hilt is built into his cane.
• Cool Ship: The Clone Wars features a significant amount of amazing ships. Among them is the Twilight. After being introduced in the pilot movie, however, it was used less and less as The Clone Wars progressed. By the time of "The Lawless" (its final appearance), it is in extremely poor shape and falling apart as Obi-Wan lands it on Mandalore. Obi-Wan decries its many deficiencies and claims that he will never borrow a ship from Anakin again.
• Corporate Warfare: The Separatist army is an amalgamation of several corporate armies.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Trade Federation and especially the heads of the Banking Clan, both of whom cheat both sides of the war for massive profit — on Count Dooku's orders, no less. The Clovis arc involves removing the old, corrupt heads of the Banking Clan, only for their successor to discover that Dooku will manipulate anyone in their position to become like them or die no matter what.
• Costume Evolution: In the first two-and-a-half seasons, Anakin and Obi-Wan wear armor over their Jedi robes while Ahsoka wears a tube top and skirt with white leggings. After the Time Skip around halfway in the third season, Anakin and Obi-Wan remove the armor and wear full Jedi robes and Ahsoka has updated to a short-dress and dark grey leggings. A trailer was made to commemorate the changes.
• Crazy-Prepared: When Duchess Satine discovers a warehouse filled with smuggled, possibly toxic tea, she orders her guards to burn it down to display her disgust and refusal to accept corruption. Her guards, whose general duties are her personal protection and who currently are performing a criminal investigation, walk to their speeders and pull out flamethrowers that they apparently always carry.
• Credit Chip: Usually depicted as small brass sticks, said to be untraceable.
• Creepy Monotone: The T-series tactical droids, super tactical droids, and commando droids speak with monotone voices that are very creepy.
• Creepy Souvenir:
  • In "The Hidden Enemy", a clone trooper named Chopper is forced to reveal that he has been collecting the severed fingers of battle droids as trophies.
  • In "Lair of Grievous", it is revealed that lightsabers are not the only things collected by General Grievous. He has about a dozen Padawan braids on full display, all collected from ones he had slain.
  • In "Cargo of Doom", Cad Bane takes Ahsoka's Padawan braid as a trophy that he hangs from his belt after capturing her. In "Children of the Force", she takes it back after the situation reverses.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Quite a few:
  • In "Ambush", Yoda beats Ventress using nothing but the Force, not deigning to move or draw his lightsaber. Essentially, the entire scene shows that she will never be a threat to him.
  • Savage Opress single-handedly demolishes a battalion of clone troopers and slaughters two Jedi in "Monster".
  • Anakin simultaneously taming the Daughter and the Son, who are respectively the embodiments of the Light and Dark Sides of the Force.
  • Darth Maul and Savage curb-stomp Obi-Wan in "Revenge", with Maul distracting him, then Savage getting the drop on him, brutally overpowering Obi-Wan, and ending with both of them beating Obi-Wan unconscious.
• Cut Short: After Disney's acquisition of the Star Wars franchise, The Clone Wars was canceled after the end of the fifth season and the remaining episodes were released on Netflix. Despite this, both the last broadcast and the last released episodes serve as a fit ending for The Clone Wars: one ties up the Fugitive arc and the other ends with a philosophical conclusion about the greater role of the Jedi in the Clone Wars. Averted in 2018, however, with the announcement of the series' revival.

D

• A Day in the Limelight: Many of the episodes are focused on other characters (or occasionally at least paired the three main protagonists with them), such as the other Jedi, the clone troopers, the Galactic Senate, and the Sith.
• Darker and Edgier: The Clone Wars begins with a fairly light-hearted and kid-friendly tone that gradually becomes darker and more mature, especially in the later seasons.
• The Dead Have Names: In "Lethal Trackdown", when Aurra Sing and Boba Fett send Mace Windu a holographic transmission threatening to execute hostages if Mace does not come face them, they demand one clone trooper's name before executing him. He contemptuously replies that he is CT-411. Anakin, watching the holographic transmission with Mace, sadly comments that he was "Ponds".
• Deadly Euphemism: In "Pursuit of Peace", Count Dooku orders a pair of criminals to kill Padmé via saying that she should be "taken out of the game".
• Deadly Graduation: After the tests to determine the strongest Zabrak on Dathomir and then the use of Nightsister magick to brainwash him and make him stronger, the final test of Savage Opress is to kill his brother Feral, whom he had previously sworn to defend. He does.
• Deadpan Snarker: A lot of people have their moments, and Obi-Wan sure loves dispensing sarcastic quips in the middle of a battle.
• Death by Materialism: Gha Nachkt, most notably.
• Death Is Dramatic: Whenever recurring characters die, they usually either get a bridge dropped on them or this trope. If it's this option, expect them to give a Final Speech. One-shot characters also often get a Dying Moment of Awesome to make-up for the audience's lack of familiarity with them.
• Death of a Child:
  • In "ARC Troopers", towers of cloning tanks get destroyed during the Battle of Kamino. That is hundreds of babies dying on-screen.
  • In "Padawan Lost", Kalifa, a teenage female Jedi Youngling, is murdered by Garnac, a Trandoshan Egomaniac Hunter.
  • In "A Friend in Need", Pre Vizsla, leader of Death Watch, kills a teenage girl named Tryla because her grandfather dared to speak up against the way his gang treated their village.
  • In "Revenge", Darth Maul slaughters a village on Raydonia that's full of innocent people, including young children, to get the Jedi's attention. For once, The Clone Wars plays it safe and keeps the slaughter largely off screen.
• Decapitation Presentation: The Talz plant their spears in the ground to mark where they have defeated their enemies, placing decapitated battle droid heads or the helmets of killed clone troopers on the ends of the spears.
• Deconstruction: The Clovis arc shows that since it's dependent on secrecy and deception, Anakin and Padmé's marriage really isn't all that healthy and cracks are beginning to form in their relationship. It also foreshadows Anakin's jealousy and possessiveness, which will prove disastrous in Revenge of the Sith.
• Deck of Wild Cards:
  • The entire Separatist Alliance was made up of this trope, as there wasn't a single member whose ambitions to rise to power didn't play a part in their eventual downfall. Dooku was planning to eventually betray Sidious, Asajj would eventually decide to betray Dooku (though thanks to Sidious, this was forced on her earlier than expected), General Grievous hated Dooku enough that he was planning on removing him from the picture, and so on and so forth.
  • Discussed in a conversation between Yoda and the spirit of Darth Bane, the creator of the Rule of Two. It's mentioned that the Sith fell thousands of years ago because their ambitions got the better of them, and they wouldn't stop fighting amongst themselves to seize power. Thus, Bane streamlined the process by deeming that there could only be one Master and one Apprentice at a time—one to have power, and one to crave it—to preserve their way of life and ensure the Jedi would eventually fall.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: In "Shadow Warrior", General Tarpals allows General Grievous to run him through with a spear in order to get close enough to disable Grievous in turn.
• Demoted to Extra: General Grievous started the series as a major character, being the main antagonist of seven episodes in the first half of season one (often in successive story arcs). From "Lair of Grievous" onward, Grievous would be a major antagonist once or twice a season at most, when he wasn't acting as a Dragon or co-dragon, before disappearing entirely aside from some non-speaking cameos in the opening newsreels in the final two seasons.
• Depending on the Writer: In "Hostage Crisis" (written by Eoghan Mahony), Anakin makes a large speech about how Padmé is the single most important thing in his life, whereas she seems preoccupied by the duties and responsibilities of her office and their obligations to the Republic. However, in "Senate Spy" (written by Melinda Hsu), their positions are diametrically reversed via the fact that Padmé becomes upset when Anakin lectures her on the nature of responsibility and the duties they have that supersede their personal desires.
• Destroy the Security Camera:
  • "Lair of Grievous": Kit Fisto stabs a holo-camera with his lightsaber while he knows Grievous is watching him through it, ticking the cyborg General off.
  • "The Citadel": After Anakin and Obi-Wan's strike team escapes a magnetized trap that briefly disarmed them, prison warden Osi Sobeck is already furious, but he takes it personally when Captain Rex goes out of his way to shoot out the security camera Sobeck was using to watch events as the group is heading off.
• Determinator:
  • Several Jedi have shown remarkable determination. Bolla Ropal and Even Piell in particular resist severe Electric Torture, but refuse to co-operate with their captors, which in Master Ropal's case results in his death.
  • It's shown on several occasions that once Anakin makes up his mind, there's no standing in his way.
  • Darth Maul combines this with the Power Of Hate to simply stay alive after Obi-Wan cut him in half way back in The Phantom Menace.
• Deus ex Machina: The Father simply negating Anakin's conversion to the Dark Side in "Ghosts of Mortis".
• Diabolus ex Machina: In "Bound for Rescue", the Jedi younglings report Ahsoka's capture to Obi-Wan, who insists they stay put while he arranges a rescue. It takes less than a minute for Separatist warships to hyperspace in and attack his fleet, negating his ability to help, while the younglings find their ship will explode if it does not land, forcing them to go to Florrum anyway.
• "Die Hard" on an X: Anakin channels John McClane when Cad Bane takes some hostages in the Senate Office Building. However, because of a complicated setback, he finds himself without his lightsaber. This limits his normal strategy and leads to an interesting situation that forces him to fight an assassin droid barehanded.
• Disaster Democracy: In "Nomad Droids", after C-3PO and R2-D2 accidentally kill the leader of a group of Lilliputians, they want to put the droids in charge and C-3PO holds an impromptu election. The three candidates proceed to beat each other up afterwards while the droids leave the system.
• Dispense with the Pleasantries: When Count Dooku calls Osi Sobeck, he tells him to "dispense with the proprietaries".
• Distinction Without a Difference: When Commander Axe asks Ahsoka why they're retreating in "Storm Over Ryloth", she replies that they're "not retreating. [They're] just following orders". Those orders are to retreat.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • According to the official site, Chairman Chi Cho's behavior, accent, and dialogue were supposed to bring to mind apartheid-era South African dictators. The battle itself is similar to the Battle of Isandlwana in the Zulu Wars. In Isandlwana, you have a clear tech advantage in the hands of the British that is wasted due to an arrogant commander stretching his forces too thinly for their superior firepower to overcome the enemies' superior numbers and arguably superior tactics, which is exactly what happens.
  • The New Mandalorians, who are a race of tall, mostly blond, blue-eyed humans with long, angular facial features desperately trying to distance themselves from their ancestors' reputation as brutal conquerors. Opposing them are the Death Watch, who want to return to traditional Mandalorian ways and whose über-Aryan-looking leader wears his hair◊ in a slight variation of the stereotypical Wehrmacht cut.
  • The Onderon arc bears several similarities to the Soviet-Afghan War. Both involve a larger power (the Separatists/the Soviet Union) sending its military to support a local puppet government (King Sanjay Rash/the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan). A local militia fighting them (the Onderon Rebels/the Mujahideen) is supported by another greater power who cannot directly intervene (the Republic/the United States) but sends special forces to train the rebels and smuggles anti-air launchers to combat the enemy's air superiority (droid gunships/Soviet helicopters). The invading power is never outright defeated by the rebels, but eventually decides that the war is not worth their trouble, so they withdraw their forces and the rebels quickly defeat the puppet government. Later, one of the leaders of the rebels (Saw Gerrera/Osama bin Laden) ends up fighting against the power that previously assisted him (the Empire/the United States) and is widely regarded as an extremist terrorist.
  • "Sabotage" features the Jedi Order being protested for their involvement in an increasingly unpopular war. Any number of real-world war protests could apply.
• The Dog Bites Back: In "Witches of the Mist", Savage Opress predictably betrays Asajj Ventress, who treated him worse than Count Dooku did to either of them.
• Doing Research: Mar Tuuk asks for all the files they have on Anakin Skywalker in order to research his opponent once he realizes who he is facing.
• Domed Hometown:
  • The cities of Rodia are covered by large transparent domes, which have sections that can be opened to let starships fly through.
  • Due to its surface mostly being covered by barren desert, the cities of Mandalore consist of large domes whose volumes are almost entirely filled by clusters of buildings piled around and on top of each other.
• Don't Ask: In "Storm Over Ryloth", a bemused Obi-Wan manages to subtly keep Mace from asking what the hell Anakin did to his fleet by saying he won't even ask where the rest of the fleet is or why Anakin is in an escape pod when Obi-Wan and Mace drop out of hyperspace into the aftermath of the episode's final battle. Obi-Wan evidently figured out what happened the instant he laid eyes on the situation, and then convinced Mace not to question it on his former padawan's behalf.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: In "Lair of Grievous", Nahdar Vebb uses the line verbatim when facing General Grievous. However, instead of indicating that Nahdar wishes not to hurt Grievous, it demonstrates Nahdar's arrogance and presumption that he is in control of the situation.
• Doomed by Canon: All of the films and other canonical works that are chronologically set after The Clone Wars have pretty much guaranteed that most of the main cast and supporting cast along with the antagonists will either survive anything that comes their way or die/be Put on a Bus, which also leads to the Star Wars characters featured in The Clone Wars being unable to do anything that contradicts the films that take place afterwards. Some particular examples include:
  • General Grievous and Anakin are unable to meet face to face due to Revenge of the Sith being their first actual meeting; any so-called "decisive blow against the Republic/Separatists" being doomed to failure, and all of Padmé's attempts at a diplomatic solution being sabotaged or ineffective.
  • During the Order 66 arc, Fives cannot successfully reveal the truth about the clone troopers' origins or the true purpose of the control chips that the Kaminoans implanted into each clone's brain.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: Not just any droid factory, but a droid factory... of DOOM! And Cargo... of Doom!
• Double Speak: Averted. A bill being considered by the Senate to take certain measures that would invade people's privacy is called the "Enhanced Privacy Invasion Bill".
• Double Standard: The fact that she was expelled from the Order and sentenced to be executed without allowing her to prove her innocence over the bombing of the Jedi Temple hangar while Barriss Offee, who was the orchestrator of this terrible event and had framed her, was let off with pretty much a slap on the wrist are among the things that prompt Ahsoka to tell the Jedi Order to stuff it when they offer to let her rejoin the Order in "The Wrong Jedi".
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Averted. The Nightsisters' cruel abuse of the Nightbrothers, to the point of brainwashing and forcing one to murder his own brother so they can use him as a pawn in a scheme to kill Dooku, is not portrayed as OK. Savage turns on Ventress rapidly for her abuse and tries to Force-choke her.
• Downer Ending: Oh boy. Where do we even begin:
  • The conclusion of the Shadow Collective arc throws one giant gut punch. All of Satine's work to keep Mandalore peaceful goes down the drain as it becomes engulfed in a civil war and is killed by Maul, Bo-Katan is left to free the planet from Maul's forces, and Sidious defeats Savage and Maul, killing the former and leaving the other to a fate worse than death.
  • The Fugitive arc then slams down with a massive curveball: Barriss Offee is revealed to be responsible for the bombing of the Jedi Temple hangar as well as the one who framed Ahsoka for the crime, which results in her arrest after being defeated in a lightsaber duel with Anakin. The Jedi Council gives Ahsoka the offer to come back after kicking her out, but she leaves the Jedi Order after losing her trust in them.
  • The conclusion of the Order 66 arc. Tup dies and Fives dies as well, having found out about the conspiracy against the Jedi, but being unable to convince anyone about the truth. Meanwhile, Darth Sidious and Count Dooku celebrate their victory.
• The Dragon:
  • There is so much Man Behind the Man stuff on the Separatists' side that the only person who really resembles the role is Asajj Ventress, who is sent out specifically to make the heroes' job harder in Count Dooku's name. General Grievous clearly thinks he has this role, but whenever they are in the same scene, it is very clear who is really Dooku's top subordinate. However, ever since Ventress' abandonment, Grievous has definitely taken up the role.
  • This is, of course, not even mentioning that Dooku is the Dragon to the true Big Bad, Darth Sidious, aka Chancellor Palpatine.
• Dramatic Irony: This is one of the signature staples of The Clone Wars. The tension between audience knowledge and what the audience hopes (or fears) will happen leads to some exquisite television. It is impossible to ignore the fact that Anakin will turn into Darth Vader and end up killing all of the people he helps and the clone troopers will be brainwashed and eventually turn into (and eventually be replaced by) the stormtroopers of the Empire.
  Captain Rex: If we fail, then our children and their children could be forced to live under an evil I can't well imagine.
• Dramatic Space Drifting: The first escape pod Plo and company encounter in the debris field in "Rising Malevolence" is turned around to discover that it's been attacked and cut open, with a dead clone floating in the hole in the viewport. With the second pod, the one they witness being attacked by the podhunter, they see the clone officers inside being sucked out into space.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty:
  • In "Clone Cadets", the clone cadets of Domino Squad are under the charge of Master Chief Petty Officer Bric, a Siniteen bounty hunter with an oversized brain and a scholarship to the R. Lee Ermey school of drill instruction. He does not seem to actually have the clones' best interests at heart, but his tough style seems to work and get this particular group of clones motivated to pass their exams.
  • Averted with his Arcona counterpart El-Les, who is rather caring for a drill instructor.
• Driven to Suicide: In "Slaves of the Republic", a Twi'lek slave, after a failed assassination attempt on her master (Zygerrian Queen Miraj Scintel), throws herself off a balcony rather than continue being a slave or be taken for reconditioning.
• Dual Wielding:
  • Kit Fisto picks it up on the fly via using his lightsaber and Nahdar Vebb's own in order to duel General Grievous in "Lair of Grievous".
  • Asajj Ventress tends to use two red lightsabers as her main weapons.
  • General Grievous goes farther by double dual wielding. He has four arms and is capable of using a lightsaber in each one.
  • Ahsoka Tano gets in on the action in the middle of the third season, carrying two lightsabers and wielding either one or both of them in a Reverse Grip.
  • General Krell dual wields double-bladed lightsabers.
  • Obi-Wan tends to perform the feat whenever he is with another Jedi who is disarmed or killed, which results in him using their lightsaber along with his own. In "Grievous Intrigue", he picks up the electrostaff of a destroyed MagnaGuard and briefly wields it and his lightsaber against General Grievous. In "Hunt for Ziro", he briefly uses Quinlan Vos' lightsaber in addition to his own in order to fight Cad Bane.
  • Darth Sidious joins the list in "The Lawless" via carrying two lightsabers up his sleeves.
  • Anakin Skywalker and Barriss Offee engage in a lightsaber duel in "The Wrong Jedi" that involves them each using two lightsabers in order to duel each other.
• Dwindling Party: The Domino Squad. In "Rookies" (their first appearance airdate-wise), Droidbait is among the first to be killed by the invading Separatist droids, Cutup gets eaten alive by a Rishi eel, and Hevy is forced to pull a Heroic Sacrifice when the bomb's remote has a malfunction. When the survivors return to Kamino, they lose 99 (who is an "honorary" member of their squad) just before they're made ARC troopers. Then comes the Citadel arc, which leaves Fives as the Sole Survivor of the squad. The Order 66 arc kills him off as well.
• Dying Moment of Awesome:
  Battle Droid: Do we take prisoners?
  Hevy: I... don't.
• Dynamic Entry: In "Liberty on Ryloth", a commando droid enters a fight by throwing a destroyed B-1 battle droid at clone troopers Razor and Stak.

E

• Early-Installment Weirdness: "Downfall of a Droid" and "Duel of the Droids" were the first set of episodes produced after the pilot movie (despite airing as sixth and seventh episodes). As a result, the episodes contain several unusual elements that are not present in the rest of the series. Aside from the noticeable lack of polish in the animation, the music has several techno and electronica tracks that are wildly out of place in Star Wars. Rex is very stiff and has little personality. Rex calls Ahsoka by her first name even though as a Jedi Padawan she is a superior officer; he would address her as "commander" for the rest of the series. Ahsoka herself is at her snippiest in these episodes, referring to almost every central character by a nickname. She also mostly sides with Obi-Wan regarding R2's expendability, which is strange considering that later episodes would show she has as much affection for the astromech as Anakin does.
• The Easy Way or the Hard Way: In "Lethal Trackdown", Plo Koon offers Aurra Sing the options "we can do this the difficult way or the simple way, the choice is yours" when he confronts her looking for the hostages she has taken. She inevitably chooses the difficult way and he quickly demonstrates that it is not difficult for him.
• El Cid Ploy: In "Shadow Warrior", Jar Jar Binks needs to dress as Boss Lyonie when the Gungan leader is in a coma after being brainwashed into leading the Gungans into war against the rest of Naboo.
• Electric Jellyfish: The Hydroid Medusas introduced in "Water War". Justified since they're half-machine.
• Elite Mooks: The coldly effective commando droids, who display a level of competence and ruthlessness far above and beyond that of the battle droids. Their commander actually uses a freaking sword. There are also a few others like the super battle droids, droidekas, and T-series tactical droids.
• Emergency Impersonation: In "Bombad Jedi", Jar Jar puts on a Jedi robe he found and is quickly mistaken for being a Jedi.
• Enemy Mine:
  • In "Revenge", Obi-Wan and Ventress team up against Maul and Savage, and later Obi-Wan teams up with the Death Watch member Bo-Katan, who had gone against Maul's take-over of the Death Watch and Mandalore. Bo-Katan lampshades this when she does an earlier Enemy Mine with Satine in "The Lawless".
    Bo-Katan Kryze: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
  • In "A Necessary Bond", Ahsoka and a group of Jedi younglings team up with Hondo and his pirates in order to fight General Grievous and escape Florrum.
• Enemy Rising Behind: In "Tipping Points", a damaged droid gunship is still active enough to level its blaster at Ahsoka while she is distracted.
• Enhance Button: This is used in "The Academy", where Ahsoka is able to use her handheld computer to enhance a hologram of a voiceless, cloaked figure, adding his face when it was never recorded in the first place. No amount of factors given by the hologram could have reliably allowed her computer to do such a thing.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • In "Hostage Crisis", Cad Bane and his team effortlessly infiltrate the Senate Office Building and take numerous Galactic Senators hostage. When he declares them to be his prisoners, one of the Senators states that he won't tolerate this "insolence" and walks past him, trying to leave. Bane promptly shoots him In the Back, without turning to look.
  • Aurra Sing also has one in the same episode, which was her first appearance in The Clone Wars release date-wise. After Bane kills a bunch of Senate Commandos with a hand grenade, she sees a survivor crawling towards the door, begging for help. With a cold smile, she shoots him in the head.
  • The Zygerrian Slaver Keeper Agruss in "Slaves of the Republic" has one when he drops a band of slaves down into an inactive volcano, killing them through the sheer drop, just to make a point to Obi-Wan of how he intends to break his will.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Son might be the personification of the Dark Side, but he still shrieks in horror and flees after he accidentally stabs his sister the Daughter with the one weapon which can kill her. When the Father later stabs himself, the Son pleads for him not to die, although he had tried to kill him earlier.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • In "The Box", Cad Bane saves Rako Hardeen when Moralo Eval tries to kill him. Not because he cares for Hardeen, but because Eval purposefully cheated Hardeen out of victory and then caused the floor to fall out beneath him. Bane feels that Eval should have at least given him a fair fight.
  • The pirate Hondo Ohnaka hates Sith Lords and Separatists (mainly because they cannot be bargained with like reasonable people) and also claims he does not like taking children into battle.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: "Legacy of Terror" features Geonosian warrior zombies. "Massacre" features Nightsister zombies.
• Evil Chancellor:
  • Chancellor Sheev Palpatine is most certainly the poster boy for this trope as a result of being both the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic and secretly The Man Behind the Man for the Separatists (in his Darth Sidious persona).
  • There is also Almec, the prime minister of Mandalore.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Word of God says that the Zillo Beast knew Palpatine was evil and set out to hunt him down when it escaped the lab, though it's unclear whether or not he was serious.
• Evil Is Hammy:
  • General Grievous is quite the ham. His lines are all exaggerated, not to mention his tendency to destroy subordinate battle droids when things go wrong.
  • Separatist general Lok Durd, played by George Takei.
    Lok Durd: Let's get these shield generators in place! When Count Dooku sees how successful my weapon is against civilian targets, I will no doubt be promoted to a more substantial position within the alliance!
    Battle Droid: ...Riiight...
  • Doctor Nuvo Vindi, who is voiced by Michael York. He is pretty much a card-carrying Hammer villain, complete with dramatic under lighting, a thick German accent, and exclusive use of his own personal Hitler Cam.
    Jar Jar: Yousa not creatin' life! Yousa takin' life!
    Doctor Vindi: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yes yeah yeah yeah yes!
  • There's a good reason why Ashley Eckstein said she had a lot of fun voicing Ahsoka while she is corrupted by the Dark Side in "Altar of Mortis".
  • Darth Maul qualifies as being hammy, especially in his monologue to Obi-Wan in "Revenge". Sam Witwer practically tears apart the scenery around him.
    • This is also true for Witwer's earlier antagonistic role as the Son, who dips into a bit of his Emperor Palpatine voice at times.
• Evil Laugh: Once General Krell admits that he is a traitor, he laughs deeply in every following conversation.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Savage Opress gets a deeper voice after the Nightsisters take control of him with their magick in "Monster". Being voiced by Clancy Brown helps too.
• Evil Versus Evil:
  • The Nightsisters and Brothers arc is a villain-focused story arc that presents some instances of fights between the Nightsisters and Separatists. The factions remain at odds throughout The Clone Wars until the Separatists exterminate the Nightsisters.
  • The Shadow Collective arc presents numerous odds of Sith/Death Watch vs. criminals, Sith and Death Watch vs. each other, Death Watch vs. Death Watch, and ultimately Sith vs. Sith. Obi-Wan eventually gets involved in "The Lawless", but he ultimately cannot do anything to solve the situation.
• Exactly What I Aimed At: During her duel with Pre Vizsla in "A Friend in Need", Ahsoka slashes his jetpack. He commends her on the close call, only for her to explain that she didn't miss. He quickly realizes that his jetpack is about to explode and ditches it.
• Exact Words:
  • "Rising Malevolence": When Anakin and his fleet are ordered to protect military hyperspace routes, he sends his fleet to the coordinates, but he himself leaves the fleet in a small ship with Ahsoka and R2 in order to search for survivors. He even lampshades it to teach it to Ahsoka.
  • "Storm Over Ryloth": When Anakin tells Mar Tuuk that he’s surrendering his ship and its crew, he means what he says. However, at that point, the crew of the Defender is just Anakin and R2. And Anakin does give Mar Tuuk the ship. He just happens to give it at ramming speed.
• Extranormal Prison: The Citadel was a prison built by the Republic to contain Jedi who have lost their way and other Force-using criminals. The Separatists found that it is perfectly capable of holding good Jedi.

F

• Face–Heel Turn: Senate Commando Captain Argyus, Clone Sergeant Slick, Pong Krell, and Barriss Offee betray the Republic.
• Faceless Goons: Averted. Although their bodies and voices are identical, many clone troopers are portrayed with a surprising amount of individuality. A great deal sport varying tattoos and haircuts when seen without their armor. Some episodes will deal with the differences in certain clones' personalities, occasionally as a main plot point. For example, while most clone troopers are depicted as totally believing in the cause of the war, others do not like it but simply go along with it. Others still have become extremely disillusioned with the war and develop a level of pacifism that borders on desertion or treason, which actually happens in at least two episodes.
• Facepalm: In "Ambush", an OOM-series battle droid does one in response to the stupidity of one of its subordinates.
• Fade Out: "The Wrong Jedi" and "Sacrifice" both end with the screen slowly fading into black. These are the only two episodes of The Clone Wars to end this way, being the finales of seasons five and six.
• Failure Is the Only Option:
  • There are several episodes dedicated to capturing Grievous, which never work. Obi-Wan notices and lampshades this trope at the end of "The Deserter", and you can see how much it disgusts him.
  • Just about any of Padmé's attempts to stop the war are doomed to fail. This is subtly lampshades in "A Friend in Need", in which her peace talks with the Separatists go downhill within the first five minutes of the episode.
• Fake-Out Make-Out: In "A Friend in Need", Ahsoka goes Undercover as Lovers with Lux to the Death Watch's base. When they're left alone, she starts chewing out Lux for trusting Death Watch. Noticing that Pre Vizsla's headed for the tent, Lux kisses her to shut her up.
• Fake Special Attack: Despite his skills in many other fields of combat, Cad Bane apparently has no ability when it comes to wielding a lightsaber. When he picks up a lightsaber during his fight in "Hunt for Ziro", he delivers a confident and mocking laugh, but gets a total of three moves in before Obi-Wan disarms him.
• Faking the Dead: During the Obi-Wan Undercover arc, the Jedi hire a bounty hunter named Rako Hardeen to shoot Obi-Wan, who takes a drug to make it look like the shot killed him. Then, they use Magic Plastic Surgery to make him look like Hardeen and have him sent to prison so he can infiltrate a plot to assassinate Chancellor Palpatine.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Happen basically all the time, to the point where it’s hard to tell if it is even a kids show.
  • The genetically identical clone troopers are given screen time to establish personalities and likableness, but they are still killed off in violent ways. Notable examples include two naval officers being sucked into vacuum by having their escape pod cut open in "Rising Malevolence", and "Rookies" having both Sergeant O'Niner's execution by commando droids and Cutup being eaten by a giant eel.
  • In "Duel of the Droids", Grievous graphically kills a Transdoshan scavenger named Gha Nachkt with the lightsaber blade visibly tearing through his chest.
  • In "Lair of Grievous", a clone trooper falls into a pit of lava and dies.
  • In "The Gungan General", pirate Turk Falso gets Force-choked by Dooku to death onscreen.
  • Cad Bane is the guy who manages to get away with gangland style, on-screen executions in a children's show. In "Hostage Crisis", Cad Bane snaps a Senate Commando's neck.
  • In "Holocron Heist", Todo 360 realizes the chip Bane placed in him was actually a bomb about to go off, but he doesn't go out campy like the generic bot soldiers. He seriously loses his composure, "No! No! No! No!..." which builds up chilling scream right before he explodes. Worse yet, all the characters around him scream "bomb" and dive for cover; much like how reality would play out. There is absolutely no attempt by anyone to actually try and save him. While he does get "rebuilt" later, there's no clarification up to this point whether or not robot deaths are permanent, or if there's some kind of backup system.
  • In "Cargo of Doom", a Rodian Jedi Master named Bolla Ropal is tortured to death on screen by Cad Bane and the battle droids. When he finally dies, the droid operating the controls announces it in such a disturbing tone of depression in comparison to their usually high-pitched voices, you can't help but shiver.
  • In "Landing at Point Rain", they turn it up to eleven with flamethrowers being used on Geonosians by the clone troopers. They burn and scream the whole scene, and some of them got especially lucky with being sliced in vertical halves by the Jedi.
  • In "Brain Invaders", when she is being attacked by a mind-controlled clone trooper, Barriss Offee takes out her lightsaber and guts him, with a close-up of the weapon impacting his chest.
  • In "The Mandalore Plot", a bomber commits suicide by jumping to his death from a balcony in order to avoid being captured.
  • In "Voyage of Temptation", Anakin stabs Tal Merrik with his lightsaber, with the blade going through his back and out his front, center-frame. What makes it worse is the casual, almost sardonic way he dismisses the murder of an unarmed man...
  • In "Bounty Hunters", Embo effortlessly breaks a pirate's neck, with the shot being filmed from behind the only thing hiding it.
  • In "Monster", Asajj Ventress travels to the far side of Dathomir, where she holds incredibly violent contests to determine which Nightbrother clan representative should receive Sith alchemical augmentation and serve as her spy against Count Dooku.
    • She does this by bringing the candidates to an arena, dimming the area lights and systematically murdering all but two of them with a scythe on a chain and their own weapons.
    • Ventress clearly decapitates at least two Nightbrothers while laughing maniacally and when another throws a spear at her, she grabs it in midair only to whip it quite visibly into the chest of another man.
    • Then, after Ventress has selected Savage and brought him back to the Nightsisters to be imbued with their magick, the "coven" tests his loyalty via commanding Savage to kill the only other survivor of the games, a man heavily implied to be Savage's blood brother. Savage does so, with a Neck Lift and the customary follow-up.
  • During an escape scene in "Counterattack", a clone trooper dies in a rather horrible way: being cut in half by a vent's security doors. Thankfully, the scene is blocked out by a convenient door closing just prior.
  • In "Citadel Rescue", Even Piell gets mauled by an anooba. Though they skipped on showing the wounds he should have had, it is quite clear that it nearly tore out his throat.
  • In "Prisoners", Riff Tamson is blown to bits, with his severed head shown on screen. He also uses his explosive knives on multiple Republic fighters and they also scream as they die.
  • In "Carnage of Krell", not only does Waxer have tearful last words, but Krell suddenly stops using his lightsabers on the clone troopers and breaks one's back over his knee. At the end, Dogma executes Krell via shooting him in the back with a blaster onscreen.
  • In "Escape from Kadavo", Keeper Agruss lords over Obi-Wan that as a Jedi it's against their code of honor to kill an unarmed opponent, including one as sadistic and evil as him. Captain Rex notes that clone troopers have no such rule and proceeds to throw an electrostaff clean through him, his hoverchair loses control and veers into the nearby console, letting the electrocutions finish off what the impalement started. This probably wouldn't have slipped through the censors if the slaver wasn't such a utterly evil bastard.
  • In "Bounty", Dengar kills two Kage Warriors by sticking remote explosives on their chests and detonating them; only the camera angle saves the viewers from the Ludicrous Gibs that could have been. And later, Krismo Sodi takes out Major Rigosso with an electrified sword through the gut.
  • In "Revival", Adi Gallia's tunic is drenched with blood after Savage impales her on his horns. The scene is so brief and is shot from an angle that it’s very easy to miss.
  • In "Eminence", Savage Opress decapitates a room full of Black Sun members when they refuse to side with Darth Maul.
  • In "Shades of Reason", Darth Maul decapitates Pre Vizsla in a blatant execution. The camera moves behind Bo-Katan too quickly so her back blocks the execution from being fully viewed.
• Fanservice: Several female characters in The Clone Wars are very beautiful in addition to having the tendency to wear rather sexy outfits. The most prominent examples of this trope are Aayla Secura, Ahsoka Tano, Padmé Amidala, Asajj Ventress, Suu Lawquane, and the Daughter. Well-muscled males also get Shirtless Scenes, including Captain Rex, Kit Fisto, and Savage Opress.
• Fanservice Pack:
  • While she is attractive from the beginning in The Clone Wars, Ahsoka, being a teenager, understandably develops a more voluptuous yet athletic body after the Mid-Season Upgrade. Notably, while this trope is often accompanied by the character getting more Stripperiffic, since Ahsoka's first outfit was already very questionable, her redesign comes with a more reserved wardrobe.
  • "The Lawless" reveals that Soniee and Lagos, the female cadets that are introduced in "The Academy", were hit by puberty rather hard over the Mid-Season Upgrade via developing voluptuous yet athletic bodies and large busts.
• Fantastic Flora: There are quite a few planets that seem to have flora a bit on the "weird" side.
  • Rugosa is mostly covered by giant coral forests.
  • Maridun, with its vast savannah and gigantic trees, is probably the least abnormal among them.
  • Felucia's jungles are filled with luminescent plants.
  • Dathomir is filled with creepy, skeletal trees that sprout weird, approximately human-sized, fleshy "fruits".
  • Umbara has a surprisingly dense jungle for a world permanently cut off from sunlight. And all of these plants are — once again — glowing. The flora also includes Man-Eating Plants.
  • Carlac has trees with coral-like Cherry Blossoms in the middle of winter.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Chairman Chi Cho and his hatred of the "savage" Talz.
  • Pong Krell absolutely despises clone troopers, referring to them at one point as "creatures bred in some laboratory".
• Fantastic Slurs:
  • "Tinnies" and "Clankers" are nicknames for the Separatist droids.
  • Clone trooper Boil calls the Twi'leks "tailheads" rather disparagingly in "Innocents of Ryloth".
• Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: The battles presented in The Clone Wars are depicted as being similar to World War II (an armed conflict encompassing the whole galaxy) and the Cold War (neutral worlds being disputed between two major superpowers).
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: Hyperspace-jumps are (ab)used quite egregiously, since they often appear to take no time at all. One specific inversion to this is the Malevolence's attack against the Kaliida Shoals Medical Station. Due to the size of the ship, it has to take the longer hyperspace route around a nebula, which takes more time compared to Anakin's starfighter squadron navigating through the nebula.
• Fauxshadow: "The Deserter" gives an almost assured impression that Cut Lawquane will be killed by the episode's end in a sort of Heroic Sacrifice/Last Stand. He deserted the Republic clone army on Geonosis and he thinks Rex will view him as a coward for doing so, but he mentions that if it comes down to it he will die to protect his adopted children. When they are later attacked by commando droids, Cut elects to hold them off himself, leaving Rex as the last line of defense between them and his family. He lives to the end and Rex leaves him in peace with his family.
• Fem Bot: The BD-3000 "Betty Droids", which appear from time to time.
• Fighter-Launching Sequence: In "Storm Over Ryloth", the audience is introduced to Blue Squadron as they do their final checks and launch their fighters from the hanger for the initial attack led by Ahsoka.
• Finagle's Law: The opening moral of "Counterattack" is "Everything that can go wrong will".
• Flanderization: Yoda undergoes this in The Clone Wars. In the films, he occasionally talks backwards for emphasis. Here, practically every sentence is.
• Flaunting Your Fleets: As part of the massive amounts of Scenery and Techno Porn in The Clone Wars, there are numerous shots of the various star fleets. The two most massive examples are the Separatist fleet orbiting Serenno in "Massacre" and the Republic fleet protecting the Valor space station in "Point of No Return".
• Flying Saucer: The signature ships of Hondo Ohnaka and his pirate gang.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: Almost anyone who fights Savage Opress gets tossed around like a rag doll.
• Foil:
  • "The Disappeared" pairs up the unusual duo of Mace Windu and Jar Jar Binks. Mace proves to be rather humorless, upfront, and impatient, which contrasts with Jar Jar's friendly demeanor. Notably, the two become Fire-Forged Friends over the ordeal, as Windu comes to respect that side of him.
  • Obi-Wan's backstory and present day story with Satine mirrors Anakin's story with Padmé, specifically something of a Bodyguard Crush back when Obi-Wan was apprentice to Qui-Gon Jinn. The Clone Wars then contrasts how Obi-Wan handles his feelings for her; he admits that if she asked he would have left the Jedi to be with her, as opposed to Anakin trying to be both a Jedi and have "attachments" by keeping it a secret. Along with some Ship Tease between Ahsoka and Lux, it is overall shown that many Jedi struggle with the commitments imposed to be a part of the Order.
• Force-Choke:
  • Anakin mainly uses it when his loved ones get endangered. He also prefers to use it as an interrogation technique.
  • For Asajj Ventress, it seems like a finishing and/or desperation attack.
  • For Savage Opress, it is more-or-less his Signature Move, although he is fine with the "normal" bare-handed Neck Snap as well.
  • After Bo-Katan insults him in "Eminence", Maul starts to strangle her while he gives a speech to Vizsla and the rest of the Death Watch about how beneficial an alliance between them would be. However, after he releases her and left, Bo-Katan and Vizsla smirk at one another in apparent success, so it appeared that they expected him to try such an intimidation tactic.
  • In "The Lawless", Darth Sidious, upon arriving on Mandalore, offhandedly uses the Force to choke two Death Watch commandos who try to stop him while walking past them. Later, he strangles another pair before entering a room.
  • This becomes a plot point during the Fugitive arc, when someone Force-chokes Letta, the woman who bombed the Jedi Temple hangar, while Ahsoka was the only one in her cell. Since the two were alone and Letta's death was recorded on camera, but the sound was conveniently down, Ahsoka's frantic arm movements make it look like she was the one killing her.
• Force-Field Door: They show up sometimes, though not as often as one would expect. Probably the most notable instance of this being used occurs in "The Citadel", when the entry point the Jedi wanted to use to infiltrate the titular prison has been blocked by a ray shield.
• Foregone Conclusion: None of the protagonists are going to realize that Chancellor Palpatine is playing both sides for suckers until it is too late, and the Star Wars characters who appear in Revenge of the Sith and/or the Original Trilogy (along with the other canonical subsequent installments) will also survive in The Clone Wars.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In "Clone Cadets", Shaak Ti comments on how one of the clone troopers, Echo, fails to adapt to the training simulation known as the Citadel. "The Citadel" (which is the first episode of the Citadel arc) opens with the moral "Adaptation is the key to survival" and Echo "dies" later during the story arc. In the same episode, Echo says you need to follow orders to become an ARC trooper, which he does in the following episode.
  • Early on during the Umbara arc, Pong Krell berates the clone troopers for not taking their mission seriously, telling them that if they fail, everyone fails. That's what he's counting on, since his plan is to sabotage the Republic's invasion. More than once, the clones state that Krell's plans only make sense if he's trying to get them killed, and that's exactly what he's trying to do.
  • In "Fugitive", when Fives asks to get his inhibitor chip removed, AZ-3 twice expresses concern that Fives will die if this happens. While he survives the procedure itself, he does indeed die not long afterwards.
• Forgot About His Powers: This trope tends to occur quite often in The Clone Wars. The Jedi need to gain hold of something just out of reach and, instead of grabbing it with the Force like they did thirty seconds ago, they will instead try to grab it manually. Also tends to come into play whenever a character (particularly Cad Bane) is escaping in a ship; the Jedi rarely consider using the Force to seize it in mid-air. They also frequently grapple with non-force users rather than rendering them helpless by just lifting them in the air. They also rarely make use of their environment for anything other than cover or dramatic jumps. So they can grapple with people they shouldn't grapple with.
  • In "Blue Shadow Virus", Anakin twice makes awesomely dramatic leaps to manually catch thrown vials of the incredibly deadly eponymous virus, both times allowing the bad guy to (temporarily) make his escape.
  • In "Children of the Force", Mace Windu literally steps into a painfully obvious trap to get the holocron, despite the fact that he could have just as easily used the Force to grab it and not sprung the trap.
  • In "Lightsaber Lost", although Ahsoka lifts, pulls, and pushes numerous opponents throughout the episode, she never considers using the Force in order to grab her lightsaber from her opponent's hands.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: When Ahsoka wakes up after being infected with the Dark Side by the Son in "Altar of Mortis", she stares directly at you.
• Frame-Up:
  • In "Duchess of Mandalore", Satine is framed for murder when the Death Watch assassin hunting her kills an informant that she has a meeting with.
  • During the Fugitive arc, Ahsoka is framed for the bombing of the Jedi Temple hangar and the murder of Letta Turmond, who was used as a proxy to deliver the bomb. Ahsoka is then aided in escaping, but she is made to look like she murdered several clone troopers. On top of that, the real bomber then knocks out Ventress and borrows her helmet and lightsabers in order to deceive Ahsoka into thinking that Ventress is the bomber. To their credit, both Plo Koon and Anakin find it a tad convenient that Ahsoka just happens to be found next to a huge cache of explosives when they do catch her.
  • In "Orders", Fives finds out about the control chips implanted in every clone and is taken to Palpatine so he can make his case and ask the Chancellor to have the biochips removed. Palpatine instead privately tells Fives that it was him who ordered the biochips to be implanted, as well as their purpose. Hearing this, Fives attacks the Chancellor and gets framed for being insane and unstable as the result of the removal of his own control chip. That he has been drugged into incoherence does not help.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • In "Monster", Ventress has a couple of blink-and-you-miss-it panty shots while fighting Savage and the other Nightbrother competitors.
  • In "Escape from Kadavo", Ahsoka has a very smug grin on her face when Anakin releases her from her cage, but it is literally only two or three frames long.
  • In "Revival", Adi Gallia's tunic is drenched with blood after Savage impaled her on his horns. The scene is so brief and is shot from an angle that is very easy to miss.
  • In "Shades of Reason", Pre Vizsla getting decapitated by Darth Maul is clearly visible in slow motion or on freeze frames. At normal speed, the camera moves behind Bo-Katan too quickly, so her back blocks the execution from view.
  • Palpatine's eyes go Sith yellow for a few moments in "The Wrong Jedi" during Barriss' rant against the Jedi.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Tarkin is introduced as a mere Republic naval captain, albeit one who remarks that he has become good friends with Chancellor Palpatine. Apart from being somewhat arrogant and uncooperative, he has neither the power nor the goals of the Grand Moff that will later destroy an inhabited planet just to prove a point. As the series progresses, his rank and importance increase — and so does his ruthlessness.
• Frontline General:
  • The Jedi have been given the rank of generals in the Republic army, and they prefer to fight side by side with the clone troopers. Discussed during the Umbara arc; the clones are disgusted by Krell's tactics and risks, but Rex points out that some of Anakin's plans seemed just as risky. This is countered when the other clone troopers point out that Anakin is with them when they take those risks, instead of waiting at the rear like Krell.
  • Despite his general cowardice that will lead to him flee at the moment the situation turns again him, General Grievous is often amongst the very first troops to board an enemy ship and fights on the front lines with his droids.
• Full-Name Ultimatum: General Krell refers to Rex as CT-7567 most of the time. However, when he is sufficiently impressed by Rex's nerve, he calls him Rex. He also uses Sergeant Appo's nickname, probably because Appo has not ticked him off as much as Rex has yet.
• Fugitive Arc: The final story arc in the fifth season of the series has this trope as its title since it features Ahsoka getting framed for sedition, terrorism, and multiple murders and she has to go into hiding while searching for proof of her innocence.
• Future Me Scares Me: Although time travel is not involved, Ahsoka is clearly scared by the vision of her older self warning her of the Dark Side in "Overlords". The same thing happens to Anakin when he sees what he will do as Darth Vader in "Ghosts of Mortis". He is so terrified that he cooperates with the Son. He figures that being evil now is far better than the monster he will become. Ultimately, he does not remember at the end of the episode and continues on his path unchanged.

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