The Expanse / Tropes F To M

A - E | F - M | N - Z |

F

• Facial Markings: Some OPA operatives have distinct facial tattoos to show which specific faction they belong to.
• Fainting: Holden passes out during the escape from the Donnager, which is justified in that they are going really fast without Inertial Dampening and only Alex the pilot is shown getting his coping drugs.
• Face Death with Dignity:
  • When Ashford is Thrown Out the Airlock, his last actions are to send a covert message to make sure his death isn't in vain, then calmly sing as he floats to his death.
  • Miller in "Home", when he performs his Heroic Sacrifice to make sure Julie steers Eros away from earth.
• Falling into the Cockpit: Alex is technically a trained Navy pilot, but in his career he only flew transports as a "glorified bus driver". When he is suddenly thrust into the pilot's chair of the Tachi he has to abruptly swing into flying a state-of-the-art gunship.
• False Flag Operation: By the end of "Remember the Cant", Earth and Mars agree the destruction of the Canterbury was one meant to start a war between them, with the OPA as the primary suspects. OPA leader Fred Johnson, however, doesn't know any more about the incident than they do, and in "Leviathan Wakes" it's revealed the real culprit is a mysterious faction from Earth so secret that only the highest levels of government even know it exists.
• False Friend: Chrisjen Avasarala really does view Frank DeGraaf as a friend, but she's so coldly pragmatic that she doesn't let that stop her from using their friendship to manipulate Frank into tricking Mars into revealing classified government secrets. Even knowing that it would destroy his life. Afterwards Frank can barely look at her, but it's hard to say if she even feels remorse.
• Famed In-Story:
  • Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala is this throughout the whole series. The Belter smuggler interrogated in "The Big Empty" says he's heard "many interesting tales" about her, and MCRN Ensign Sinopoli is awestruck to meet her in person in "Reload".
  • Holden becomes this after his face is put on the placards and graffiti of the "Remember the Cant" protests across the Belt. Amos snarkily offers to rearrange his face for him. The whole Rocinante crew, and Holden in particular, only becomes more and more famous as the series continues and their acts of heroism grow.
  • Anna Volovodov becomes this after she plays a crucial role in exposing Errinwright's treason and getting him arrested. When Monica needs to send out a broadcast to reassure the people in the Ring, she chooses Anna to be the one to speak because she's a known, trusted public figure whom others will listen to.
• Fan Disservice: Julie Mao crawling around naked is the opposite of sexy since she's covered in lesions from The Virus eating her alive.
• Fantastic Caste System: Aboard Ceres Station, the ruling class from Earth lives and works in clean, spacious environs with hydroponic parks and the most Centrifugal Gravity. The Belter middle class live in more crowded areas but still have a simulated sky and reasonable gravity. The poorest Belters live the furthest down, which is slummy and cave-like with relatively little gravity.
• Fantastic Racism: Earthers vs Martians vs Belters, each with their own derogatory terms. Though all still human, each faction has been separated long enough that there are distinct physical and cultural differences. Fred Johnson puts it best: "Our language has changed, the things we care about have changed, even our bodies have changed. We look upon each other as different, and we've grown to hate each other for that."
  • Earthers are effectively Heavyworlders simply because there are no heavier gravities than Earth. They have an intense attachment to land, especially land they've grown up on; this is a result of the 20th century's environmental damage, and the following two centuries they've spent repairing it. When they look at Outers, they see people surrounded by advanced technologies, while 90% of Earthers live in shantytowns. The common belief is that Earth is the only "real" planet and the rest of the system exists to support it.
    Chrisjen Avasarala: Earth must come first.
  • Martians have adapted to a lower-oxygen breathing mix, and are more resistant to radiation due to Mars' lack of an atmosphere. They are equally obsessed with the terraformation of Mars; as a result, they have an almost fascistic dedication to their government and chains of command, being willing to die without a second thought if ordered to. They also consider themselves superior to those who live on Earth, given that they have had to work and dedicate their whole lives to make their planet even mildly liveable, and deplore both Earthers laissez-faire attitudes and the fact that they receive "handouts" and "free drugs" to cope with their "aimless" lives. They hold Belters in disdain in turn because of their obsession with resources; filthy laborers who become insanely violent if a single drop of water is spilled on a floor.
    Franklin DeGraaf: ...an entire culture dedicated to a common goal, working together as one to turn a lifeless rock into a garden.
  • Belters have long, thin bones due to lack of gravity, numerous ailments due to inconsistent nutrition, and a fraction of the lifespans of Earthers or Dusters. They are 110% focused on survival - space is such an unforgiving environment that everyone who wasn't obsessed to that extent is long dead. This means they are for most intents and purposes Human Aliens. They look at Inners and see people whose lives are a hell of a lot easier than theirs — absentee landlords to the 22nd century equivalent of 19th century African colonies or Appalachia in Space -— a place where poor local people dig out their natural resources at the behest of distant outsiders who "own" the land, get paid a pittance, and spend it on manufactured goods made by the same distant outsiders. An Earther newcomer is bewildered by the riots triggered by the destruction of the Canterbury, but Miller is ambivalent — it doesn't matter if they didn't need it at that precise moment, someone fucked with their water supplies and that means someone is getting Thrown Out the Airlock.
    Miller: Belters don't take the long view when you screw with basic resources. That water was future air, propellant mass, and potables for us. We have no sense of humor about that shit.
• Fantastic Religious Weirdness:
  • Mormonism is still alive and well, with their proselytizing efforts having spread to the Belt. Advances in science have led the church to commission a massive ship designed for colonizing a far-off star.
  • Anna Volovodov is a Methodist pastor, and spends a lot of time dodging insults from non-religious people who condescend her faith in an era of space travel. She points out that she can tell the difference between religion and science, and tries to understand both.
• Fantastic Ship Prefix:
  • Earther and Martian warships use N for Navy instead of S for Ship in their acronyms, creating UNN (United Nations Navy) and MCRN (Mars Congressional Republic Navy) rather than UNS and MCRS.
  • The Mormon colony ship Nauvoo is prefixed LDSS (presumably for Latter Day Saints Ship). After the OPA convert the Nauvoo into a dreadnought, they rename it OPAS Behemoth.
  • Marco Inaros' Free Navy uses FN as their ship prefix, according to a Freeze-Frame Bonus in "Nemesis Games".
• Fantastic Slurs:
  • "Longbone" and "Skinny" are used as insults against Belters because of their much longer but weaker bone structure caused by childhoods spent in low-g. Boomerang Bigot Miller is the first character to use both.
  • Martians are known derisively as "Dusters" for the aridness of their home-world, though Bobbie Draper freely calls a fellow Martian "one of the toughest Dusters I've served with" in "Static". The term "Mickie" is also thrown around in reference to Martian Navy personnel, likely derived from the first two letters of MCRN.
  • Belters derisively refer to people from Earth and Mars collectively as "Inners" or "Inyalowda", and any fellow Belter who supports, imitates, or shows interest in them as a "welwala."
• The Farmer and the Viper: Despite all his talk about Just Following Orders and the Roci crew's decision to not simply have him Thrown Out the Airlock, Kenzo doesn't hesitate to reveal their location to his employers at the first opportunity.
• Fatal Family Photo: Subverted by Alex Kamal, who carries a picture of his family with him and prominently displays it on every ship that he pilots. Despite frequently showing him focusing on the picture in high-stress or dangerous situations, he always emerges fine afterwards.
• The Fatalist: Amos, when he talks about "the Churn":
  Amos: When the jungle tears itself down and builds itself into something new guys like you and me, we end up dead; doesn't really mean anything. Or we happen to live through it. Well, that doesn't mean anything either.
• A Father to His Men:
  • Fred Johnson is plainly apprehensive for his troops when preparing for battle in "Doors and Corners".
  • Lieutenant Sutton aborts his Martian marines' mission to land on Phoebe when he realizes Earth will get there first with ten times as many troops, not wanting to sacrifice them needlessly.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • Anderson Dawes is soft-spoken, articulate, and publicly prevents an assault on an innocent Martian in the wake of the Canterbury incident, but in private he has no qualms about ignoring Julie Mao's distress call or having Miller kidnapped, tortured, and Thrown Out the Airlock.
  • Jules-Pierre Mao presents himself to the world as a charming captain of industry but secretly has some truly nefarious plans.
• The Federation: Deconstructed. The United Nations, while being at least partially democratic, maintains order on Luna and the Belt, but also has its share of corruption, and is strongly opposed to Belter independence in order to maintain control of the belt's resources, providing plenty of reason for others to see it as The Empire.
• The Fettered: Holden has the inflexible moral code of a Knight Errant.
• Fiction 500:
  • Jules-Pierre Mao is the richest man in the solar system.
  • Hillman's family own all the terraforming stations on Mars, and she is mentioned to have a hefty inheritance waiting for her.
• Fictional Accent: The Belters, in addition to speaking the Conlang Lang-Belta (a creole of several current languages, with English, Mandarin, and Spanish being the "base"), also speak English in a variety of different accents. This lack of uniformity, both in language and accent, is because the Belt is a collection of rocks, not one large land mass. This means there are Belter who speak Belter but cannot understand a Belter from another far away rock who is also speaking Belter. This is also noticeable in the accents. Several Belters having the Ceres Dawes accent (which kind of sounds like a white guy imitating a generic "African" accent). Others have accents that are similar to English speakers from the Caribbean.
• Fictional Currency. Plastic token have completely replaced paper money, at least out in the Belt.
• Fight to Survive:
  • The Sinking Ship Scenario in "The Big Empty", which requires a lot of MacGyvering.
  • The protagonists' escape from the Apocalypse How on Eros, both Naomi's MacGyvering navigation and Holden and Miller's struggle to reach the Rocinante while also slowly degenerating from radiation poisoning.
  • A protomolecule Hybrid stows away onto the Rocinante, and the crew end up in one of these as they try to get it out of their ship and destroy it in "Caliban's War".
  • The protagonists have to do this again in the Ring, especially in "Abaddon's Gate", where it's taken up to eleven: they have to stop Ashford from firing at the Ring Station, which will cause it to see humanity as a threat and not only kill everyone in the Ring (including nearly all the major characters), but destroy the entire solar system, killing all of humanity.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Being Locked in a Room during a Sinking Ship Scenario makes the Canterbury survivors somewhat hostile with each other during "The Big Empty", as does Lt. Lopez's interrogation in "Remember the Cant", but they come out the other side as this.
• First-Episode Twist: The Canterbury is destroyed in the premiere. The third episode is even titled "Remember the Cant".
• Fish out of Water: Havelock, a newly arrived Star Helix employee from Earth, serves as the Naïve Newcomer for all things Belter.
• Flashback:
  • "Back to the Butcher" has a flashback to a takeover of a mining station by the workers, ending in them being slaughtered by the UN, to establish the Backstory of Fred Johnson, "The Butcher" who slaughtered them.
  • "Critical Mass" starts off with a flashback that fills in the remaining gaps in Julie Mao's story up to Holden and Miller's arrival at her apartment on Eros.
  • "Paradigm Shift" goes back 137 years to show how Solomon Epstein created (and lost his life to) the Epstein fusion drive, as a demonstration of how a new technology changes everything going forward.
  • "Intransigence" reveals that Melba is actually Clarissa Mao, Jules-Pierre's daughter and Julie's sister. We see more of Julie's tempestuous relationship with her father, and how, despite Clarissa being the obedient daughter while Julie was the rebellious one, their father still preferred the latter, to the former's resentment.
• Flechette Storm: The shrapnel from the destruction of the Marasmus rains down on Miller and Diogo in "Godspeed", creating a hole in Miller's suit and damaging the timer on one of the bombs they were setting up.
• Flipping the Bird:
  • Naomi gives Lt. Lopez the "okay" circle that means "asshole" in some real-life countries when he demands to see her hands in "Remember the Cant".
  • Drummer playfully flips off Fred Johnson in "Home" by extending all four fingers with her index and middle finger crossed.
• Foreign Queasine: Though mushrooms aren't particularly taboo, a Belter technician eating one he found on some grey-water pipes in a maintenance shaft earns a slight sideways glance even from Miller. Lower-class Belters waste nothing.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Starting from the beginning of the series, multiple characters reference the looming danger of somebody using an asteroid to attack the Earth.
    • Early in Season one, Alvasarala and her grandchild lay on the roof, watching shooting stars - meteors burning up in the atmosphere.
      Alvasarala: I worry about people who throw rocks.
    • In "Rock Bottom", Mateo and Diogo are listening to an OPA firebrand after suffering abuse at the hands of a martian patrol. He says:
      Firebrand: Perhaps, the Inners will comprehend the hail of stones that will one day come crashing down through their precious blue skies!!
  • In the two-parter Season 1 finale, water is shown leaking all over Eros Station. Given how important water is as a resource to people in the Belt, this shows that the owners of Eros are up to something, since lack of maintenance on critical water infrastructure displays that they intend to write the whole station's population off.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Subverted in "Rock Bottom" when, after several episodes without mention, Holden and Naomi make toasts To Absent Friends for Shed Garvey and the Martian marines from the Donnager, though not for Ade Nygaard and crew of the Canterbury (who get a subtler And This Is for... in "Salvage" when the crew nukes the Anubis).
• For Science!: Dresden's main motivation. So much so, in fact, that he's willing to betray his own employers so long as his current captors permit him to continue his research.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: Season 4 starts with three plot lines that quickly split into four. Two of them interact extensively while the other two are almost completely self-contained.
  • Holden and Amos try to deal with the Earthers, Belters and Protomolecule structures on Ilus.
  • Naomi and Alex work to support them from orbit while trying to keep the expedition's ships afloat after the Protomolecule stops all nuclear fusion from working in the planet's vicinity.
  • On Mars, Bobbie struggles with her new life as a civilian before events force her to become part of a highly illegal black market smuggling ring.
  • On Earth, Avasarala is playing her usual political games as part of her reelection campaign, with some minor connections to the Roci's crew's adventures on Ilus.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: The Rocinante crew:
  • The Optimist: Holden, the charismatic and idealistic leader who doggedly does the right thing.
  • The Realist: Naomi, the caring but practical supporting leader.
  • The Cynic: Amos, the antisocial follower who prioritizes action and survival over discussion and morality.
  • The Apathetic: Alex, the laid-back non-action guy whose real love is just piloting his ship.
• Freudian Excuse: Holden was conceived specifically to keep the government from seizing his parents' land and so grew up seeing himself as meant to fight injustice.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Anna's "Reason You Suck" Speech to Clarissa/Melba in "Congregation" pretty much boils down to this:
  I keep looking for a way to care about you. I think, "Her father was a terrible person." But a lot of people have terrible parents, and...I think "Well, she's clearly a damaged person", but then...who isn't? So, I'm down to "Maybe she has a brain tumor?"...Do you have a brain tumor?
• Friends with Benefits: Jim Holden and Ade Nygaard had this kind of arrangement. He wanted it to escalate into a romantic relationship, but she was reluctant to let it do so. This was mooted by her death when the Canterbury was destroyed.
• From Bad to Worse:
  • The initial adventure of Holden's crew in four words. In four episodes, they survive the destruction of two ships, in between which they have to cope with a Sinking Ship Scenario, imprisonment, interrogation, and infighting.
  • Then there’s Ilus. “You’re going to experience 200 km/h winds, followed by a tsunami. Fusion appears to have stopped being a thing and our engines won’t start. ...and the shuttle we sent to rescue you vaporized. We have no explanation for that.” “What’s going on with the moon?” “Oh... it appears to be melting.”
• FTL Test Blunder: Downplayed. The series has a Sub-Lightspeed Setting, but it features so-called "Epstein drives", which allow rapid transit within Solar system that would take decades with modern tech. However, the first time an Epstein drive was test-run, its inventor and test pilot Solomon Epstein died from the resulting high-G acceleration and was forever lost in space (though he wisely left his designs and patents with his wife before taking off, hence why the engine bears his name).
• Functional Addict: Subverted with Miller. He thinks he's the tough Hardboiled Detective, but as the first season progresses it becomes clear that his alcoholism prevents him from being good at either his job or his personal relationships. He eventually admits that he's the guy who his superiors give a job when they don't want it solved. It's only when he cuts back on his drinking that he begins to make real progress on the Mao case.
• Future Food Is Artificial: Kenzo offers to show the Rocinante crew to a place on Eros that makes "ochre-infused tank-grown ribs".
• The Future Is Noir: Justified in exterior space and especially powered-down ships, where helmet-mounted lights are the main source of light.
• Future Slang: Belter speech is full of this, even when they're speaking English rather than full-on Belter Creole.

G

• Gaia's Lament: The result of 30+ billion people on Earth. Put most poignantly when Franklin DeGraaf laments that while the Martians are building a garden, "We had a garden, and we paved it."
• The Gambling Addict: Paj, the ice-hauler who loses in arm in "Dulcinea" is probably one, since his improved investment plan for his upcoming bonus is to avoid his prior mistake of visiting the casino before the brothel and offers to bet on who can load ice faster.
• Gatling Good:
  • Warships continue to use oversized gatling guns for point defense and close quarters combat alike. Since only cruisers and battleships appear to be capable of mounting the much more powerful railguns, any smaller class of warships lays down a dense hail of armor-piercing bullets instead that usually kills the target ship's crew without dealing critical damage to the ship itself.
  • The Arm Cannons Martian Marines wield integrated into their Powered Armor take the shape of ultra-compact, belt-fed miniguns chambered in a 6.5mm caliber that's available with a variety of bullet types.
• Gecko Ending: Inverted. The show ends after adapting the sixth book of a nine-part book series, in part because the Time Skip between the sixth and seventh books makes the final trilogy of books much harder to adapt.
• Gender-Blender Name: Julie Mao's code name is Lionel Polanski.
• The Generation Gap: An older Martian character laments that Mars will likely never be terraformed since the younger generation grew up under domes, rather than immigrating from earth like the older generation, and don't have the same yearning for the open sky.
• Generation Ships: The Mormon Church is funding construction of the colossal LDSS Nauvoo, said to be the largest and most complex ship ever constructed. It is designed to make a 100-year journey to another solar system in hopes of colonizing a new world. Since life expectancies commonly exceed 100 years in this setting, some original crew members may live to see their destination, but they'll still spend the majority of their lives on the ship.
• Genius Loci: The protomolecule basically turns a spaceship into this, scaring the hell out of both Julie Mao and Holden's crew. Then it's released on Eros and does the same thing with the entire asteroid.
• Get Out!: The co-pilot of The Weeping Somnambulist yells this at the Roci crew when their attempt to prevent her ship from being hijacked gets her husband killed.
• The Ghost: The UN Secretary-General is referred to but never shown in Season 1. He does eventually appear on-screen starting in season two.
• Ghost Ship:
  • The series' opening scene centres on Julie Mao escaping from a cell to discover a derelict ship inhabited only by empty, floating space suits and an Eldritch Abomination.
  • In the same episode, Holden's crew investigate a Distress Call from the Scopuli, but find no evidence of its crew except one creepy floating helmet. Its reactor is powered down, there's a huge hole in the side, and the Distress Call is actually coming from a module obviously left to draw in an Innocent Bystander.
    Amos: Pirate bait...
  • Holden's crew investigate another one in "Salvage", or rather the same one Julie Mao explored in the premiere.
  • The footage of the interior of the stealth ship defeated by the Rocinante in "Doors and Corners" looks like this when Avasarala sends a drone to investigate it in "Godspeed".
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Errinwright is introduced doing this when chiding Avasarala for using gravity torture.
• Global Warming: Anthropocentric climate change as a result of Earth supporting thirty billion industrialized humans is more than enough to raise Earth's sea levels several meters, producing changes in global geography.
  • The Statue of Liberty's base is now below sea level, so it — along with Manhattan Island — is surrounded by levees.
  • When Bobbie Draper wants to see the ocean, she's able to reach it without leaving Manhattan since, in the 23rd century, the East River is effectively part of the Atlantic Ocean.
  • The Hamptons is now a separate island from Long Island, and is the location of a UN Black Site.
  • The Yukon is now an archipelago, with the city of Anchorage (where Franklin DeGraaf and his husband later move to) now being situated on an island within it.
• Going Down with the Ship: Captain Yao scuttles the Donnager once it's clear the ship will be captured.
• Going Native: Holden is accused of this for being so pro-Belter, though he's actually adopted basically none of their language or culture. He instead describes his life as avoiding playing the Inner vs Belter 'game' at all, which people choose to interpret as him 'switching sides'.
• Gone Horribly Right: The prototype for the engine which allowed feasible interplanetary travel worked so well during its test run that it not only doomed its creator to death by aneurysm from continuous acceleration within minutes, it also rendered the craft unrecoverable - after 37 hours of constant boost at 7 Gs, it's still shooting out of the solar system at 5% of lightspeed.
• Good Feels Good: Sardonically invoked by Cotyar when discussing whether Chrisjen should turn in Errinwright in for his role in the Eros incident.
  I'd forgotten what it felt to be fighting for the good guys. It's nice. I like it.
• Good-Guy Bar: Holden's crew has a few drinks in one on Tycho. Moreover, Amos interviews a male prostitute because, "You can tell a lot about a place by how they treat their people," and ascertains the place is this trope because the answer is, "Better than most."
• Good Samaritan:
  • Why Holden logs the Distress Call that forces the Canterbury to investigate the Scopuli.
  • The Marasmus contains a crew of these who came to Eros to try to provide medical and humanitarian aid in "Godspeed". It gets them all killed when they learn of the protomolecule and Holden reluctantly blows up their ship to keep them from possibly spreading the protomolecule.
  • After the Ring drastically lowers the speed limit, killing hundreds of people and injuring hundreds more on all the ships that are inside it, Ashford offers that any of these ships who wish to do so may dock at the OPAS Behemoth for medical treatment, since it's the only ship in the Ring that's capable of creating Artificial Gravity, and gravity is necessary for the wounded to be able to heal properly.
• Good Shepherd: Miller meets a Mormon one on the transport to Eros.
• Government Conspiracy: The Conspiracy includes UN Deputy Undersecretary Sadavir Errinwright.
• Government Drug Enforcement: Lt. Lopez mentions "free drugs so you can forget the aimless lives you lead" as part of the decadent welfare state on Earth. It's unclear to what extend this is the truth; when we actually see Earth, some of the residents have trouble obtaining live-saving drugs to treat medical conditions. Whether or not recreational drugs are easier to obtain goes unexplained.
• Godzilla Threshold: In "It Reaches Out", having been framed for a crime they didn't commit and finding themselves on the business end of weapons by two different fleets, Holden orders Alex to fly the Roci into the Ring, counting on the decelerating field to stop the missile just fired at them while the ship does a hard burn at the last moment to keep them from being turned into paste.
• Grammar Nazi: Kenzo is mildly annoyed that Amos thinks "Anubis" is pronounced "An-you-bis".
• Gratuitous Latin: Ancient Grome provides many middle names in the 23rd Century: Juliet Andromeda Mao, Fredrick Lucius Johnson, and Josephus Aloisus Miller.
• Gravity Screw: In "Dandelion Sky", after Bobby's commander throws a grenade inside the alien space station at the heart of the slow zone, the station retaliates by suspending him above the ground, disassembling the commander's body, and then using his mass to repair the damage done by the grenade. It then adjusts the slow zone to a fraction of what it previously was, causing every ship within the slow zone to suddenly halt, killing hundreds and critically injuring many more from the massive g-forces.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Double Subverted. Dresden believes that someone deliberately steered Phoebe (and the protomolecule) into the solar system to wipe out Earth-based life, and that they will likely return to finish the job someday. He's right that it was sent by an intelligence, but wrong about the rest: those guys just wanted to create another Ring for their Portal Network, but now they're all dead, and it's hinted that whatever killed them may become a threat to humanity in the future.
• Grenade Hot Potato: In "Here There Be Dragons", a grenade is tossed through a door at the Roci crew. Amos instantly screams "Grenade!", scoops it up, pitches it back through the door, then slams it shut and ducks for cover. The grenade ends up releasing the protomolecule creature that was being held in the room, which proceeds to kill pretty much every one of the aggressors save a scientist, who remains alive just long enough to bitterly explain how karmic the whole thing was before bleeding out. The creature escapes through an airlock.
• Guile Hero: Being a Badass Bureaucrat means Avasarala can get her way in just about anything with a conversation or two.

H

• Had to Be Sharp: There's little room in the Belt for weakness, as Anderson Dawes' deceased sister could tell you.
• Hand Wave: The source novels never explained why Ceres is perpetually water-starved. Astronomy-savvy readers noted that Ceres is one of the most water-rich bodies in the solar system; its subterranean ice reserves may outmass all the liquid water on Earth. So the series hurries to state in the first episode that most of Ceres' water was "stripped away" for the inner planets (mainly the Martian terraforming project).
• Happily Married:
  • Chrisjen Avasarala and her husband Arjun are shown to love each other dearly, even if the latter is a minor Satellite Character.
  • Frank DeGraaf and his husband Craig were this, before the former's death devastated the latter.
• Hardboiled Detective: Miller lives, acts, and even dresses like one in his dark coat and trilby hat.
• Hate Plague: The Protomolecule infestation that afflicts the battleship UNN Agatha King over Io acts like this. Sailors exposed to it lose their minds and begin physically attacking other crew members, howling incoherently as they do. Cotyar scuttles the ship by sabotaging the main reactor to prevent it from spreading further.
• Hates Small Talk: Holden's mother Elise and Avasarala have this exchange in "Windmills":
  Elise: Can we stop with the bullshit, now?
  Avasarala: Oh, I had a little left about how charming your home is.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: Captain Shaddid asks this of Miller regarding the secret files he found in Julie Mao's apartment. After confirming he hasn't, she confiscates the files and fires him, revealing that she's working with the OPA.
• Heavy Worlder: Earthers, by virtue of the fact humanity has yet to colonize a celestial body with higher gravity. This is most pronounced in the case of Bobbie, an elite Martian Marine who is accounted as the best fighter of all the main cast, but as a native Martian she can barely walk on arrival to Earth. The trade-off is that Earthers also require more food and oxygen in comparison to Martians and Belters.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Subversion: In "Cascade", Errinwright goes to Avasarala and confesses his involvement with Jules-Pierre Mao, providing plenty of evidence, all because between Eros and the apparent Super Soldiers on Ganymede, things have gone too far beyond what he was expecting when he signed up to the conspiracy. It's then darkly subverted when it soon becomes clear that he only intends to fan the flames of war between Earth and Mars in order to help cover his own tracks.
  • Played straight: Melba/Clarissa Mao is left feeling deeply remorseful for her actions in the second half of season 3, which include framing Holden and hurting or brutally killing numerous people in order to get revenge on Holden for her father, Jules-Pierre Mao. Her guilt, combined with a "Reason You Suck" Speech from Anna and overhearing a conversation between Holden and Naomi that makes her realize she was wrong about him, convinces her to give up on her revenge and change her ways, and even leads to an attempted Heroic Sacrifice as she saves the two of them from being killed by Ashford and stops him from firing at the Ring Station, essentially saving the day and all of humanity.
• He Knows Too Much:
  • Holden blows up a Good Samaritan medical ship which had come to provide assistance to Eros, only to learn of the protomolecule and intend to spill the beans to the entire system. Holden feared that more ships would come and inadvertently spread the protomolecule, and the medical ship had already lost a man due to their ill-advised attempt to help.
  • Cotyar kills Theo the electrician to keep Avasarala's location a secret, as he doesn't believe Theo would keep his mouth shut if the UNN put effort into making him talk. Admiral Nguyen even lampshades it, noting that Theo looked like the kind of guy who would talk, as opposed to the tight-lipped Cotyar.
• Hell Hole Prison: Alex mentions "breaking big rocks into little ones on Olympus Mons" as a likely punishment for not co-operating with the crew of the Donnager in "Remember the Cant".
• The Hero: Holden, though his Hero Complex has a depressing tendency of causing even more trouble in this Crapsack World.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Holden has a brief one in "Dulcinea" when the Canterbury is destroyed.
  • Miller suffers one upon finding the mutated corpse of Julie Mao and loses his moral compass for a while afterward, shooting a guard in the guts to use him as a ploy to get past other guards.
  • Holden goes into one after the Ring Station shows him visions of the past, including how it destroyed entire star systems that it perceived as a threat.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Deconstructed - The rest of the Canterbury crew clearly find Amos' capacity for violence terrifying, and only the fact that they are in a life-or-death situation and need him (as well as being scared) stop them from calling him out. As the series continues, it reveals more on more of his upbringing, which includes possibly being a victim of, but definitely witnessing, child prostitution and forced prostitution of adults. Amos himself understands that his mind does not function the same way as most peoples', and he realizes how detrimental this can be and takes measures to work around his limitations, such as relying on his friends for a moral compass. When they meet a character who has had brain surgery to remove his empathy, he is the only one able to understand his motivations well enough to interrogate him, and afterward quizzes him about whether the process might be reversible, and briefly spirals into a depression when the answer is "no".
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • The Martian marines battle the unknown Boarding Party to get Holden's crew to a shuttle so they can escape to Bring News Back. Only Lt. Lopez even makes it to the ship, and he dies from his wounds shortly after.
  • Subverted with Miller in "Godspeed", when he stays behind to man a Dead Man Switch until the Nauvoo rams Eros, only for the protomolecule to cause the asteroid to dodge the incoming ship.
  • Played Straight in "Home" when Miller stays on Eros to talk Julie—who's become the central brain of the protomolecule's Genius Loci—into hitting Venus instead of Earth by allowing himself to be infected and riding the asteroid down.
  • In order to maintain a target lock, the Rocinante crew agrees to do a very hard burn to keep Eros in visual range, fully knowing this will eventually create g-forces strong enough to kill them, though in the end it's subverted when an alternative presents itself and they can slow down before that happens.
  • Drummer attempts this on two separate occasions (once to save Ashford, and once to try to take Diogo down with her so he can't stop Holden and Naomi). The first one counts as a non-fatal example since she survives with serious injuries (though she didn't think she was going to), and in the second case, Naomi manages to take care of the problem before she goes through with it.
  • Clarissa also has non-fatal one that she didn't expect to survive in "Abaddon's Gate" to stop Ashford and his men from killing Holden and Naomi and firing the laser at the Ring Station (which would lead to it destroying the entire solar system); she takes a shot to the gut, but lives.
• Hero Stole My Bike:
  • The Martian frigate Tachi is repurposed as the Rocinante, although characters debate whether it's a legitimate salvage or thievery.
  • Done on a massive scale, twice over, when the generation ship Nauvoo is first taken from the Mormons to deal with the Eros crisis, and then, after it's retrieved by the OPA, they keep it instead of returning it and turn into their flagship, the Behemoth.
• Herr Doktor: He lacks the accent, but you don't name your Mad Scientist "Dresden" without this in mind.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Miller views Anderson Dawes as as a small-time crime boss, who uses his position in the OPA to recruit gullible kids and give himself the appearance of legitimacy. "Rock Bottom" shows a bit of his history and explains his motivations.
  • Errinwright supported The Conspiracy through some pretty nefarious stuff when it was developing a bio-weapon that could tip the Balance of Power in Earth's favour, but when events in "Home" turn it into a threat against Earth itself he has a serious freak-out.
    Errinwright: You call yourself "a man of the System", but I'm not: Earth is my home, so whenever you're ready I'd really appreciate it if you'd make a fucking appearance and rein in your goddamn science experiment!
  • Zig-zagged when Amos suddenly notes that a crushed muscle can result in fatal potassium poisoning. That's some detailed medical knowledge for such a bruiser, but Prax immediately notes that it's information about "hurting people."
• High-Speed Missile Dodge:
  • Subverted in "Dulcinea" when Holden's crew attempts to do this by ducking behind an the nearby asteroid, but it turns out the torpedo wasn't actually aiming for them.
  • In "Godspeed", this is done on an asteroid-sized scale when the protomolecule manages to make the whole of Eros dodge the incoming Nauvoo.
  • Bobbie has to attempt this very carefully with missiles from a UN ship working for Errinwright; if she goes too slow, the missiles will hit them, but if she goes too fast while trying to get away from them, the G-forces will give the elderly Avasarala a stroke and kill her. Luckily for them, the Rocinante shows up to defend them.
  • In "It Reaches Out", the Behemoth fires on the Rocinante after Holden is framed for a terrorist attack on a UN ship. On instructions from "Miller" (a manifestation of the protomolecule that only Holden can see), Holden has Alex enter the Ring at a slow enough speed to not trigger the "speed limit" to avoid the missile.
• High-Tech Hexagons: Space shipping containers are hexagonal instead of cuboid.
• Hired Guns: The Conspiracy recruits gang members from other stations to work as these for CPM on Eros.
• History Repeats:
  • Colonies crave independence - and will do anything to get it.
  • The Space Cold War between Earth and Mars has many parallels with the 20th century Cold War between the USA (Earth) and the USSR (Mars). The Vesta Blockade nearly caused a shooting war decades ago, much like the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • The conspiracy found the protomolecule and unleashed it on Eros to discover its purpose and hopefully harness it for their own. Instead, they gave the protomolecule the means to get back to its mission, as it is able to push Eros out of orbit and aim it at Earth.
  • When caught by the Rocinante crew, other members of The Conspiracy try to dispose of them via grenade. Amos immediately tosses it back at them allowing one of their protomolecule experiments to escape and slaughter them all.
  • Admiral Nguyen remotely launches pods containing protomolecule hybrids from the secret facility on Io. One of the pods collides with the Admiral's ship, infecting it with the protomolecule and ultimately leading to the deaths of everyone on board.
• Hollywood Healing: The cast frequently suffer from grievous injuries and diseases, including cancer, that are brushed off in an episode or two due to advanced medical technology.
• Honey Trap: Miller accuses Gia of being this in "Back to the Butcher". She's not and responds by yelling "Fuck you!" in Belter Creole.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Gia, the Belter prostitute Havelock visits to learn more about Belter culture and language. She even visits him in the hospital after he's wounded taking it on himself to patrol her district during the riots. She doesn't take it well when Miller mocks them and accuses her of being a Honey Trap.
• Hope Spot:
  • Someone picked up the Knight's signal! Oh wait, it's a Martian battleship, presumably coming to finish the job their stealth ship started.
  • Dr. Strickland has one of these when Amos stops Prax from killing him, thinking he is saving his life. In fact, Amos was preventing Prax from dirtying his hands, and does it himself.
• A House Divided:
  • Holden's crew don't exactly see eye-to-eye during their desperate situation in "The Big Empty", leading to some tense moments including Amos holding a gun to Holden's head. They get along much better afterward.
  • They have another case of this in "IFF" when they receive the distress signal sent out from the Razorback by Bobbie and Avasarala; Holden and Amos want to ignore it (since they're already on a time-sensitive mission to help Prax get his daughter back), while Naomi and Alex want to help (especially once they realize what ship it is). Their temporary fifth member, Prax, breaks the tie and decides they should respond to it.
• How We Got Here: The first half of "Critical Mass" is devoted to catching the audience up on what's been happening to Julie Mao all season.
• Humanity Is Infectious: In "Home", it's revealed that Julie Mao's consciousness became the keystone of protomolecule's Genius Loci on Eros. Miller even muses, "The protomolecule infected her; what if she infected the protomolecule back?"
• Human Resources:
  • The coroner Miller deals with on Ceres implies that most people who die on Belter stations are recycled as fertilizer unless they have contrary religious directives on file.
  • The entire population of Eros are turned into this for the protomolecule in "Leviathan Wakes".
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Miller resignedly declares, "The stars are better off without us," after detailing his plan to "commandeer" the Generation Ship that constitutes humanity's first attempt at interstellar travel.
• Human Shield: Amos puts Alex in a choke-hold and proposes using him as this when he accuses Naomi in "Remember the Cant".
• Hurl It into the Sun:
  • Understandably uncomfortable with storing the protomolecule sample in the container from the Anubis on their ship, Amos suggests they use a missile to fire it into the sun. Naomi vetoes the idea, as the sample may prove useful in formulating a vaccine. As a compromise, they instead stick it in a missile with proximity sensors and leave it free-floating at an abandoned asteroid mine, far from anyone who might think to look for it or even stumble upon it.
  • They later come back and retrieve the sample again to do this for real, but Naomi still disagrees, so she secretly hides it once more and gives its location to Fred Johnson, to make sure that the Belt has a sample of it. Needless to say, her crewmates are not pleased when they learn about this.
  • Miller gets the idea to use the Nauvoo to ram Eros and push it into the sun. It probably would have worked, had the protomolecule not constructed engines on Eros to push the asteroid out of its orbit and straight at Earth.
• Hyper-Awareness: Comes in drug form for Martian interrogators.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Inside the ring is a hyperspace bubble that stops anything moving above a certain speed, potentially lethally for the crew, destroys anything that breaches the bubble except at the ring, and has a strange construct in the center which draws things toward it. Then we learn something is living in there, and it wiped out the civilization that made the ring.
• Hypocrite:
  • The Mars government as a whole has a superiority complex compared to Earth, and Martians see themselves as the true future of humanity, but they look down on and oppress the Belt just as much as Earth does, even though Martians actually have quite a bit in common with the Belt themselves.
  • Jules-Pierre Mao. His daughter Julie calls him on it in a message found in "The Big Empty". He proves it beyond a doubt in "Critical Mass" when he wipes away a tear for his dead daughter, then immediately orders the same Mutagenic Goo that killed her injected into thousands of people.
  • Anderson Dawes's Cold Equation story about his life to Miller paints him as this in Miller's eyes, since he talks about the importance of sacrificing one's life for a cause and is heavily implied to have purposely never answered Julie Mao's distress call and allowed her to die, but is unwilling to make this sacrifice himself.
  • Dr. Antony Dresden describes what the protomolecule does to a human being as "incredible" and the victim as "fortunate" and "blessed"...while being very careful to make sure that he himself does not become infected by it.

I

• I Always Wanted to Say That: Amos feels this way about, "Bombs away!" in "Godspeed".
• I Choose to Stay: In "Here There Be Dragons", Naomi chooses to stay on Ganymede to help people escape before its inevitable collapse. Amos joins her, while Holden, Prax, and Alex go hunting for the protomolecule creature that was made there.
• Iconic Item: Miller's trilby hat.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every season finale is a Title Drop to whichever book that season was dramatizing.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Miller to Julie at the end of "Home".
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: How Miller feels after finding Julie's body in "Salvage".
• Imaginary Friend: Miller starts hallucinating about Julie Mao in "Leviathan Wakes". While at the time this could be seen as a side effect of the radiation poisoning he's suffering, the hallucinations continue into Season 2.
• Imaginary Love Triangle: When Holden enters a romantic relationship with Naomi, he fears that Amos will react poorly due to his own closeness with Naomi. However, when he finally reveals their relationship status it turns out that not only did Amos already know, he and Alex had a bet going as to when the relationship had started.
• Immigrant Patriotism:
  • Fred Johnson is an Earther who's taken up the Belters' cause as a major OPA leader.
  • Travis is a Martian marine who immigrated to the red planet from Earth when he was 5.
• Imminent Danger Clue: Amos notices Kenzo's restlessness and the suspicious bystanders in the lobby of the Blue Falcon and begins slowly reaching for his gun. When Kenzo runs for it, a full-on gunfight breaks out.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Some angry Belter thugs shoot Havelock through the chest with a piece of rebar in "Remember the Cant". Thanks to advanced medicine, he gets better.
• Important Haircut: Miller shaves off his Beard of Sorrow and gives himself a more Belter-style haircut in "Static".
• Improvised Microgravity Maneuvering: When the Donnager's engines cut out and leave them free-floating in "CQB", Holden quickly tethers himself to Naomi and kicks off her to get down to engage his mag-boots and pull her back down as well, all while under fire from the enemy Boarding Party.
• I'm Standing Right Here: Naomi jokingly chides Miller for being "weird and chatty under pressure" just like Holden while Holden is right beside her. He just smiles.
• Inappropriately Close Comrades: Holden notes that accepting a promotion to XO of the Canterbury would mean he'd have to stop fraternizing with navigator Ade Nygaard, even though it's a civilian ice trawler and the ship's captain doesn't seem particularly concerned about it.
• Incurable Cough of Death: The protomolecule infection starts out like this.
• Indy Ploy: Holden's crew basically make everything up as they go.
  Prax: Are your plans always this vague?
  Amos: This is about average.
• Inertial Dampening: There is none.
  • Ships' engines are powerful enough that they can cruise at 12- or 13-g and accelerate up to 15- or even 20-g. In order to help cope, crews and passengers have to strap into crash couches (some ships' couches rotate and lean to try and lessen the load on people's bodies), put on mouth guards, and be fed large doses of "acceleration drugs". But no matter how many precautions people take, blood vessels will start popping at high enough g and the drugs are lethal once you pass a certain dosage level.
  • Lampshaded and discussed when the protomolecule is able to accelerate Eros at a rate beyond what any human can survive while maintaining such a stable internal gravity that Miller is amazed that he's unable to even feel it.
  • In Season 3, a ship flying through the protomolecule Ring is stopped dead and the pilot, who isn't given the same treatment, is reduced to a smear on the windshield and a partial ribcage sticking out of his harness.
  • It's implied that whoever built the rings and the protomolecule had this capability, as why else would they build the above system.
• Information Wants to Be Free:
  • Holden believes this, and so broadcasts an account of his crew's travails at the end of "The Big Empty" as insurance against the Martian navy simply making them disappear, over everyone else's strenuous objections, which has the unintended consequence of sparking major anti-Inner violence on Ceres.
  • Miller ridicules Holden for this belief in "Godspeed": "Well, I guess we could just broadcast everything we know, and wait for Earth, Mars, and the OPA to all rally together and start singing "Kumbaya" and do the right thing." Then near the end of the episode, Holden himself is forced to destroy a ship of Good Samaritans who refuse to respect the quarantine and information blackout around Eros on these grounds, even after he identifies himself in an attempt to prove he knows where they're coming from.
  • Holden tries to makes this case again after the Eros situation is dealt with, but Fred Johnson talks him out of it because all three sides are looking for an advantage and none of them are particularly interested in peace right now.
• Innocent Bystander:
  • Exaggerated when the entire population of Eros are diabolically sacrificed so the protomolecule can be Tested on Humans in "Leviathan Wakes".
  • The Inner-born refugees who get Thrown Out the Airlock because of Fantastic Racism in "Pyre".
• In Space, Everyone Can See Your Face: Space suit helmets have lighting strips around the actors' faces.
• Inspirational Martyr: Diogo elevates Miller to this status for the OPA at the beginning of "Paradigm Shift".
• Instant Death Bullet: Sematimba gets one courtesy of Amos in "Leviathan Wakes".
• Insult of Endearment: Holden just smiles affectionately when Naomi accuses him of being "weird and chatty under pressure."
• Intergenerational Friendship: Miller and Diogo, albeit a rather odd one.
• Internal Reveal: Subverted in "The Big Empty" when Naomi nixes Holden's attempt to come clean about logging the distress call. He eventually does make the reveal in "Rock Bottom".
• Interrupted Intimacy: Holden and Ade's Zero-G Spot sex is interrupted by the return of gravity and an intercom call for Holden to report for duty.
• ...In That Order: "On any other day this discussion would get us shot for treason then thrown into a lunatic asylum."
• Intoxication Ensues: Played With when Alex's hypoxia manifests like drunken ramblings. Truth in Television if this demonstration of actual hypoxia is anything to go by.
• In Vino Veritas: Amos and Alex open up more about themselves over drinks on Tycho Station.
• Irony: The various "I'm not going," and, "I don't want to be here," statements in "Dulcinea" given that only the crew of the Knight survive the destruction of the Canterbury.
• Irrational Hatred: The Belters in charge of the refugee ship in "Pyre" space all the Earth- and Mars-born refugees because, "Inners wreck Ganymede." Because clearly these dirty, frightened refugees are to blame.
• Irrevocable Order: The hybrid pods can't be stopped once they're launched, though their course can be altered.
• I Should Have Been Better:
  • Naomi tells Amos she could've been a nicer person in "CQB" and decides she should've done more to save the people of Eros in "Leviathan Wakes".
    Naomi: We saved a few; we should have saved more.
    Holden: We will.
  • Alex spends "Static" angsting over his failure to protect one of the Boarding Pods in the previous episode, as well as how they should have saved more people from Eros. He channels this into obsessive training using a simulated recreation of the battle.
    Alex: Point is, next time I'm gonna save them all.
• It Can Think: The protomolecule is able to imitate people with glowing spores, which suggests an emerging intelligence. Then it's discovered that the protomolecule has somehow built engines into Eros and is directing the asteroid at Earth, presumably to finish the task it was sent for. In Season 3, Katoa, who has been infected by the protomolecule and is able to access its Hive Mind, mentions something called "the work" and indicates it will soon be ready.
• It Gets Easier: Lampshaded by Naomi in "Cascade", who notes that every morally dubious thing they rationalize to themselves only makes doing the next one that much easier.
• It Never Gets Any Easier: Miller essentially tells Octavia this when she's struggling with killing two people to be his Big Damn Hero in "Rock Bottom".
• I Told You So: Avasarala can't resist noting that it's a good thing Errinwright's assassin's failed to kill Holden when the Rocinante become central to saving Earth in "Home".
• It's Personal:
  • When Errinwright questions whether Avasarala's taking an investigation into the OPA personally because they caused her son's death, she puts those concerns to rest by confirming, "You're damn right it's personal."
  • Holden clearly has more on his mind than bio-hazard containment when he orders the Anubis destroyed.
    Holden: Remember the Cant.
• It's the Only Way to Be Sure: In "Salvage", Holden opts to destroy the Anubis from a safe distance rather than risk letting the Eldritch Abomination on board fall into the hands of the UN, the Martians, or the OPA.

J

• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
  • Earth's gravity is used to torture native Belters, who are such Light Worlders that they struggle to even breathe, let alone move, under the pressure.
  • When Bobbie Draper wants answers from the MCRN chaplain, she just beats the crap out of him until he shows her what she wants to see.
• Jerkass Has a Point: After angrily telling Miller to get off Tycho Station, Fred Johnson has to concede that the former detective was right to kill Dresden, as the scientist was beginning to convince them that they should keep studying the protomolecule.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Miller is very abrasive and cynical, but has more limits than some and occasionally shows a gentler side.
  • Amos is a violent man who claims to have a Lack of Empathy, but he slowly shows the vestiges of a moral compass and a genuine desire to be a better person.
• Job-Stealing Robot:
  • The Rocinante has an automated engineering system that aggravates Naomi in "Back to the Butcher" because, "There's nothing to fix!"
  • Automation in general has advanced to a point where 50% of the Earth population is unemployed (and of those listed as "employed", doubtless many are underemployed) and reliant on government subsidies.
• Jump Scare:
  • There are a couple of times the characters are startled by an empty spacesuit or helmet floating in zero-g.
  • Holden gets grabbed by a wounded member of the Boarding Party he mistook for dead in "CQB".
• Just a Kid: Diogo is considered this by Miller and acts a lot like the New Meat while storming Thoth Station.
• Just in Time:
  • The Rocinante crew manage to get to the secret codes just in time to call off the MCRN Scipio Africanus in "Windmills".
  • Holden and Miller make it to the Rocinante in time in "Leviathan Wakes'', though Amos notes that the Auto Doc keeps switching to palliative care.
• Just Following Orders: Kenzo describes himself as "just a guy trying to do my job" when the Roci crew catch him sabotaging their ship in "Windmills".

K

• Karma Houdini: Defied by Miller. He kills Dresden because he accurately assessed that Dresden would be able to talk himself out of punishment under the circumstances.
• Kill It with Fire: This seems to be the only reliable way to destroy the protomolecule. Usually in the form of a nuclear explosion. In "Here There Be Dragons", Holden uses an incinerator to vaporize a protomolecule-infected child. And in "Caliban's War" Alex roasts a hybrid with the Roci's fusion drive.
• Killed Mid-Sentence:
  • Ade Nygaard is blown up along with the rest of the ship right after saying, "Jim, there's something you should know."
  • Shed Garvey is trying to calm down a panicking crew mate when his head is taken off by a railgun projectile.
  • Dresden was about to say something more when Miller's bullet takes him in the forehead in "Doors and Corners".
• Killed Offscreen: Early on in Season 6, Marco offhandedly mentions that he had Anderson Dawes executed during his consolidation of dictatorial power within the Belt.
• Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: The medical relief ship Marasmus is destroyed by the Rocinante when they tried to broadcast what they saw on Eros, since Holden knew that would draw more people to Eros and spread the protomolecule.
• Kill Sat:
  • Earth has five Rail Gun satellites in orbit which can destroy a starship in one shot using a heavy bullet which breaks apart into a buckshot-like spread of shrapnel that will shred anything it hits. The drawback is that, like all inertia weapons, there's no way to change the projectile's course once it's fired so the targets need to either be stationary or be close enough that they don't have time to maneuver. In Season 3, these satellites are used to destroy Mars' first-strike launch platforms.
  • Mars has a network of stealth satellites loaded with missiles intended for a theoretical first-strike against Earth. When used together, they can launch enough missiles and decoys to overwhelm Earth's defenses. They are destroyed in season three by Earth's Rail Gun defenses, but one manages to get off a shot before it is hit which results in a nuclear strike in Brasil.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Hand-held firearms haven't changed much by the 23rd century, and warships like the Donnager rely on nuclear-warhead torpedoes and Rail Guns for ship-to-ship combat.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Miller is extremely bitter and cynical, but also committed to a strong sense of justice. He is in many ways a futuristic descendent of film noir detectives such as Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade.
• Knowledge Broker: Miller finds out the dead guy who met with Julie Mao was a "data broker", and eventually he finds out this data broker sold Julie info on what happened on Phoebe Station, which set off the whole plot.

L

• Lack of Empathy:
  • Cortazar, the sole survivor of the raid on the secret facility observing the protomolecule's consumption of Eros, was purposefully given this by Protogen to make him a Morally Ambiguous Doctorate. It also makes him really hard to interrogate. Scary part; it's based on a real technology.
    Holden: So someone waves a magnet at the right side of my head, and suddenly I can watch 100,000 people die in agony and not give a shit?
  • Amos has emotional detachment as a result of childhood abuse, and so cares little for anyone outside of his social circle. This makes him just the right man to know how Cortazar thinks and how to get him talking. Intriguingly, he's rather unhappy with his condition; he follows Naomi and Holden because he recognizes they have functioning moral compasses, and when he hears that Cortazar's condition is artificial, his first thought is to ask if it's reversible in an awkward manner that implies hope that his own condition could be healed.
• La Résistance: How the OPA see themselves.
• Large Ham: Diogo becomes this after joining the OPA in Season 2.
• The Last DJ: Holden got dishonourably discharged from the UN Navy for swinging at an immoral superior, and has since been in self-imposed exile in the Belt. As he himself describes it, "I stopped playing."
• Last-Name Basis:
  • Holden and Miller are referred to as "Holden" and "Miller" far more often than "Jim" and "Joe", which is justified by the Mildly Military nature of being a ship's officer and a police detective.
  • Likewise, for Havelock and Capt. Shaddid of Star Helix and Capt. McDowell of the Canterbury.
  • Soldiers such as the Martian marines correctly use this along with ranks. Lt. Lopez's first name in particular is unknown.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Just one season in and it's kinda hard to discuss the show without mentioning the protomolecule.
• Law Enforcement, Inc.: Policing on Belter stations is in the hands of private contractors, with efficiency rates ranging from "at least trying" to "just another gang".
  • "Star Helix Security" serves this function on Ceres. It's common knowledge that the superiors care more about profit margins, such as when Miller is called off of his normal duties to find a woman — who just so happens to be the daughter of one of the richest men in the system. However, individual members like Miller, Octavia, and Havelock all care somewhat about actual protecting and serving.
    Miller: No laws on Ceres, just cops.
  • "CPM", responsible for security on Eros, is much worse and has recently recruited actual gang members from other stations to fill its ranks as Private Military Contractors.
• The Lancer: Naomi Nagata is always there to tell Holden when he's wrong, and provides a pragmatic female Belter foil to Holden's idealistic male Earther.
• Leave Behind a Pistol: When Clarissa Mao calls Amos from prison in the Season 4 premier, she thanks him for giving her minor mechanical tasks to perform aboard the Roci on the way back from the Slow Zone. She also mentions that at one point, he sent her to the airlock where she found the safeties overridden—meaning she could have spaced herself with the push of a button—and asks if that was done on purpose. Amos confirms that it was, but unusually for this trope, there was no implied demand. As he puts it, "If I was staring down a life sentence, I'd want to at least have the option." Amos knew she recognized that she was motivated by severe Daddy Issues, was genuinely remorseful for everything she had done, and had nearly gotten herself killed helping them aboard the Behemoth, and he believed that at least giving her the option of a quick suicide was the decent thing to do for her.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Discussed and averted when Rocinante's crew finds Anubis. Amos says, "I kinda want to blast it." Alex softly replies, "Easy, partner. These things tend to shoot back."
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: In "Critical Mass", Holden and Miller go off to find out what's happening while the rest of the crew start heading back to the Rocinante to prepare for takeoff.
• Letters 2 Numbers: Several of Julie Mao's online dating matches in "The Big Empty" use this in their greetings.
• Libertarians IN SPACE!: The Belters are a hard-hitting Deconstruction of this; the no-margin-for-error conditions of deep space have produced that bizarre combination of civic pride and steadfast independence prized by this philosophy; Belters instinctively look out for each other and don't go crying to the authorities when something breaks, they fix it — by any means necessary — as it happens. However, the nasty side of this is that they're prone to vigilantism; heroic actions like aiding in the assault on Thoth Station, grey actions such as the summary murder of administrators who won't keep the air filters clean, and villainous ones such the indiscriminate spacing of "Inner" refugees.
• Light Worlder:
  • Ceres is artificially "spun up" to maintain a Mars-normal Centrifugal Gravity of 0.3g, but most Belters never experience anything stronger and the poorest of them spend their lives as "rock-hoppers", moving from asteroid to asteroid hoping to harvest enough to make a living. This leaves them with long, brittle bones and other adverse health effects unless they can afford costly supplements to assist bone and muscle development, and there's no guarantee the supplements will even work properly, as shown by the spurs on Miller's spine from "cheap bone-density juice." As such, subjecting Belters to even 1.0g is considered Cold-Blooded Torture.
  • Growing up under only 0.3g leaves Martians with a significantly lower body-mass and physical strength than Earthers, but also makes them more oxygen efficient. Avasarala notes with apprehension that this doesn't stop their Space Marines from training at a full 1.0g. Even so, when a Martian delegation has to visit Earth, all of them need to take daily doses of drugs designed to supplement bone growth, blood flow, and respiratory function to cope with the gravity, and they're severely disoriented upon arrival.
• Like Brother and Sister: Parodied when Jim and Naomi disclose their romantic relationship to the other two members of their crew. Jim was especially worried that Amos, who blindly follows Naomi's every word, might take issue. However, Amos assures him that Naomi is like a sister to him before immediately noting that he'd still have sex with her given the opportunity. Jim just has this brilliant "wtf?" expression on his face.
• Limited Advancement Opportunities: Holden took a job as a Space Trucker on an ice-hauler because of this. When he's offered a Rank Up to executive officer, he adamantly refuses.
• Limited Wardrobe: Holden's crew only wear their Pur-n-Kleen coveralls before slapping on Beratnas Gas patches on top of the Pur-n-Kleen logos halfway through Season 1. Holden himself is shown wearing a Pur-n-Kleen t-shirt up through season three.
• Living Lie Detector: "Focus drugs" are a common tool used by Martian Navy to heighten perception so that their officers can notice the minor twitches and reactions that indicate a person's state of mind. Lt. Lopez takes such a drug before each session that makes him hyper-aware of the micro-expressions of those he interrogates in "Remember the Cant".
• Living MacGuffin: Julie Mao is primarily the focus of the missing persons case Miller is determined to solve, at least until the beginning of "Critical Mass" spends roughly half the episode filling in How We Got Here to give her more characterization.
• Locked in a Room:
  • The cramped quarters of the Knight and their desperate situation in "The Big Empty" forces the Canterbury survivors to work together despite their minor animosities.
  • Miller and Holden spend some time bonding while taking cover in a pachinko parlor in "Leviathan Wakes".
• The Lost Lenore:
  • Subverted by Ade Nygaard, who has the potential to be one, but ends up closer to Forgotten Fallen Friend.
  • Julie Mao seems to have become a Dulcinea-style one for Miller in "Leviathan Wakes", as he starts hallucinating about her.
• Lovable Coward: Shed Garvey is slightly dorky and unabashedly has no interest in any Call to Adventure such as exploring the Ghost Ship Scopuli.
  Shed: Well: we came, we looked, we... uh... left.
• Love Before First Sight: Miller develops this for Julie Mao, despite Dawes' declaration that she'd spit in his face if they actually met. When they do meet, he declares his love for her and they kiss before dying in each other's arms, but by that point he's no longer a representive of the institution she hated. And she's no longer really human, for that matter.
• Ludicrous Gibs: In "Delta-V," Maneo flies through the Ring so fast that when it activates and stops his ship, his entire skeleton flies out of his body and splatters against his windshield, leaving nothing but an unrecognizable shredded mess in his seat.
• Lured into a Trap: The Canterbury when it answers a Distress Call in "Dulcinea".

M

• MacGyvering: Naomi is an expert at this, whether it's repairing ships with minimal supplies or using a bit of dirt to measure Centrifugal Gravity to navigate a station build inside an asteroid.
  Lt. Lopez: Based on the desperate condition of your shuttle it clearly required extraordinary improvisational expertise for you and your crew members simply to survive let alone repair your antenna array.
• Made of Plasticine: The ice incident in "Dulcinea" shouldn't have severed Paj's hand like that. Even a mauled hand would’ve been a more likely outcome than a clean cut like that.
• Madness Mantra: Holden finds the Canterbury's XO muttering names of flowers to himself in his cabin.
• Mad Scientist: Dresden; Miller even calls him one in "Godspeed".
• Magic Antidote: Downplayed, Miller and Holden spend "Leviathan Wakes" in a race against time to get to the Rocinante's "radiation meds", which are administered through the ships Auto Doc that wraps around their upper arm. They require repeated treatments and are left permanently infertile and in need of lifelong medication (to be administered via an implant) to ward off future cancers.
• Magnetic Weapons: The Donnager has turret-mounted railguns while the stealth ships have spinal-mount railguns, and are apparently the smallest ships to have them. It's mentioned that the Donnagers' railguns draw so much power that most of the battleship's reactor output needs to be rerouted to actually deploy them, which is one of the major hurdles real-life magnetic weapons are facing today.
• Major Injury Underreaction: During the shootout in Season 2 finale, Cotyar doesn't notice he's been shot in the stomach until Bobbi points it out to him.
• Make It Look Like an Accident:
  • Captain Shaddid implies no questions will be asked if her officers find the attempted Cop Killer Filat Kothari:
    Shaddid: If he resists take him down, if he runs shoot him, and if he "accidentally" falls out an airlock... that's life.
  • Errinwright notes that even blatantly gunning down Holden's crew will pass for "random street violence" on Eros because of it's astronomic murder rate.
• Mars Needs Water: Earth is the last place they're trying to take it from, but the Martians are hoping to create an ocean as part of their Terraforming, so they're taking tons of the stuff from the frontiers of the system, putting them in contention with the Belters who need that water just to survive. The riots in "Remember the Cant" are sparked by the destruction of an ice-hauler. The OPA speaker in the pilot claims that Earth and Mars have stripped away Ceres' sub-crustal seas, which in real life is bigger than the Earth's supply of fresh water (200 million cubic kilometers).
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Hillman is mentioned to have over 40 brothers and sisters. However, she is from a very wealthy family that owns the entirety of Mars' terraforming equipment, so it is likely they are able to be supported. It's implied that Martians are encouraged to procreate but that Hillman's family is an outlier.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": The War Room of the UN does this in "Home" when they learn Eros is on a collision course with Earth.
• Mathematician's Answer: When asked who he was guarding, one of Dresden's thugs answers, "The scientist? He was a scientist." Miller isn't amused.
• Mauve Shirt:
  • Ade Nygaard and Captain McDowell are killed as part of the Doomed Hometown in the series premiere, "Dulcinea".
  • Shed Garvey, Capt. Yao, and Lt. Lopez all die in the Space Battle in just the fourth episode, "CQB".
  • Julie Mao ultimately turns out to be this.
  • Bobbie Draper's whole squad, plus her CO up in orbit get built up just to be wiped out when the shooting starts on Ganymede.
• May It Never Happen Again: At the end of Season 6, James Holden uses Loophole Abuse to put Camina Drummer in a legitimate position of power within the new Earth-Mars-Belter coalition, whereas Avasarala wanted to maintain Drummer as a sympathetic figurehead to quell any further Belter rebellions. Holden points out that the "Inners" will have to give the Belters some real concessions in the future, as their constant abuse of the Belt colonies has already resulted in one devastating interplanetary war and gave terrorist warlords like Marco Inaros the ability to gain so many supporters.
• Meaningful Echo: Julie's line, "you can't take the Razorback", is repeated during her final scene with Miller, and spoken as a frightened refusal to stop flying toward Earth. Before this, the line is a boast about being unable to catch the Razorback in a race.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Events on Eros are centered (literally and figuratively) around the Blue Falcon Hotel. "Blue Falcon" is the US Military's "polite company code phrase" for buddy-fucker. Sure enough, Kenzo deliberately leads Holden's crew into an ambush by a UN wetwork team, which only fails due to Amos's Sherlock Scan and Miller's Big Damn Heroes moment. Then they discover that, after barely surviving an operation that went horribly wrong and still trying to complete her mission, Julie Mao was abandoned and left to die alone upstairs by Dawes and the OPA.
  • At the end of "Leviathan Wakes", Dresden orders all the information from Eros transmitted to Thoth Station, named after the Ancient Egyptian god of wisdom (the one with the ibis head).
  • "Marasmus" is a medical term for severe malnutrition and therefore a fitting (if rather morbid) name for a ship full of Good Samaritans seeking to bring humanitarian aid to Eros in "Godspeed".
• Meaningful Rename: In "Back to the Butcher", the gunship Tachi becomes the Rocinante (after Don Quixote's horse), but only after rejecting "Screaming Firehawk" and "Flying Alamo".
• The Medic: Shed Garvey.
• MegaCorp: Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile, to a ridiculous degree; Jules-Pierre Mao owns the entire thing, and his daughter Julie is described as "the richest bachelorette in the System." The entire "protomolecule" plot - the research station on Phoebe, the fleet of stealth ships, the Eros incident, the secret observation post staffed with surgically apathetic researchers, even the protomolecule-enhanced Super Soldiers - was just a sideline of Protogen, which represents just one third of one percent of MKM's revenue.
  Chrisjen Avasarala: So, these "rogue" employees managed to make a profit and a war without even going over budget? God, maybe we should get these people on our payroll.
  • Deconstructed in that things have gone so far beyond the Moral Event Horizon that Avasarala is ready to torpedo her newly-enriched career taking down the entire company and family if they don't deliver JPM's head on a silver platter:
    Chrisjen Avasarala: Please let them know that if they can’t… I will rain hellfire down on them all. I will freeze their assets. Cancel their contracts. Cripple their business. And I have the power to do it, because I am the fucking hero who helped save Mother Earth from the cataclysm that Jules-Pierre Mao unleashed.
    Tell his children that government is more powerful than any corporation. And the only reason they think it tilts the other way is because we poor, public servants are always looking for some fat, private-sectors payoff down the road. But I’m not looking. And by the time they can pull the strings to force me out, it’ll be too late. Their family will be ruined. Their mother, the children, their children, all of them, pariahs! Outlaws! Hunted and on the run for the rest of their days until we find them, and nail each and every last one to the wall.
    Make sure you tell them that.
• The Metric System Is Here to Stay: Distances are usually measured in kilometers ("klicks").
• Mexican Standoff: Holden and Fred Johnson have a metaphorical one in "Rock Bottom", with Holden even noting that they both "have a gun to each other's head".
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: In the second season, Julie Mao gains control over the protomolecule infesting Eros, but is confused by her new situation and thinks she's back on her old racing ship. She starts flying the asteroid to Earth out of a desire to go home (not knowing that the impact would kill billions), and keeps accelerating when the crew of the Rocinante almost kill themselves trying to keep up with her, as she thinks it's a friendly race. Miller is eventually able to convince her to divert course to Venus, which is still uninhabited.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Invoked quite literally by Dresden. When confronted with the massacre he helped orchestrate, Dresden cites Genghis Khan killing or displacing a quarter of the global population to forge his great empire, which by 23rd Century terms would be 8 billion people (just on Earth). He considers 100,000 "hardly a rounding error" by comparison, and believes the benefits of his work will justify the atrocity.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Miller is initially assigned a simple case of "rebellious rich kid runs away from home" with the assignment to track her down and ship her home. However, it leads him to a conspiracy involving one of the richest, most powerful men alive and one of the most influential politicians, with the fate of the solar system at stake.
• Miranda Rights: Holden attempts to invoke these as a Martian marine shoves him roughly into a holding cell in "Remember the Cant".
• Misaimed Fandom: In-Universe. According to his mother, Holden loved Don Quixote growing up, but never figured out it was a tragedy. Of course, given the immense Applicability of Cervantes' work, Holden isn't necessarily wrong.
• The Missionary: Though based on Earth, the Mormons have a large and active presence in the solar system, with missionaries at least as far out as Ceres.
• Mission Control: As the pilot, Alex often stays on the Rocinante and fulfills this role.
• Mistaken for Terrorist: Holden's crew is assumed to be OPA terrorists by the crew of the Donnager. Played With in that ethnically Middle Eastern Alex Kamal is the one treated to a shower and clean clothes because he's ex-Martian Navy while his companions are imprisoned and interrogated.
• Mister Big: Captain Yao of the Donnager is noticeably shorter than Holden even when she's standing on a raised platform, but she's absolutely in charge of their conversation and her massive warship.
• The Modest Orgasm: Ade Nygaard during her introduction scene with Holden.
• Mole in Charge: Sadavir Errinwright is a high-ranking UN official, and also a key member of The Conspiracy.
• Money Is Not Power: The adversaries during the initial seasons of the show are mysterious organizations financed by rich and powerful private corporations. However, once the various governments become aware of and involved in what's going on their money cannot stave off the retribution or dismantling of their power structures.
  Chrisjen Avasarala: Tell his children that government is more powerful than any corporation. And the only reason they think it tilts the other way is because we poor public servants are always looking for some fat private sector's payoff down the road. But I'm not looking, and by the time they can pull the strings for force me out, it will be too late.
• Momma's Boy: Holden technically has three mothers, but Elise carried him to term and urged him to get free from Earth, and he still kept in contact with her every month or two until the start of the series.
• Mooks: Of course.
• Morality Pet: Naomi is a combination of this and The Conscience for Amos, since she's basically the only person who can subdue his fury with just words, and he mentions "Naomi wouldn't like it" as his only reason for not doing some pretty heartless things.
• Motive Rant: Murtry gives a truly mustache twirling, Good Needs Evil one to Holden at the end of "Saeculum". Holden immediately responds with a Shut Up, Hannibal!.
• Motor Mouth: Holden orders Kenzo to shut his word-hole when he becomes this on Eros in "Salvage".
• Mugging the Monster:
  • The Scopuli was originally trying to hijack the Anubis's secret cargo, assuming it was just some lightly-armed science vessel. Too late do they realize that they've come across an advanced gunship, and the Scopuli is boarded and left derelict in no time flat.
  • Some Belters try to extort money from Amos. He tells them that he will not pay and they are better off just walking away. They foolishly think that their numbers will give them an advantage over the muscled Earther. Amos proves them wrong by beating the crap out of the entire gang. He considers them such a low threat that he leaves them alive.
• Multinational Team:
  • As of the end of Season 1, the Rocinante carries two Earthers (Holden, Amos), two Belters (Miller, Naomi), and a Martian (Alex).
  • As of the end of season six, the Rocinante carries three Earthers (Holden, Amos, and Clarissa), one Belter (Naomi), and a Martian (Bobbie).
• Multiple Gunshot Death: The Rocinante inflicts this on the enemy stealth ship at extremely close range in "Doors and Corners", averting Explosions in Space. However, the Roci herself suffers nearly as bad, as Drummer excitedly points out to Alex and Naomi in the next episode.
  Drummer: There's multiple PDC and railgun impacts [...] Oh ho ho, that one just missed puncturing your reactor, see? You guys would have melted, instantly! [...] Wow, if that had gone through to the inner hull your core would have snapped in two. Most ships would have been blown to scrap after that kind of beating!
• Murder Is the Best Solution:
  • Amos feels this way quite strongly after catching the stowaway Kenzo fiddling with the Rocinante.
  • Errinwright decides in "Windmills" that "taking Holden off the board" is the best option, regardless of the lack of concrete evidence against him.
• Must Have Caffeine: A minor subplot concerns Holden's quest for a decent cup of coffee. He finally finds a stash aboard the Tachi and indulges himself. His expression says it's Better than Sex.
• Mutagenic Goo: How the protomolecule spreads.
• The Mutiny: In "Triple Point", Admiral Souther mutinies against Fleet Admiral Nguyen when he's given proof of the conspiracy surrounding the protomolecule. He sends a message to the rest of the fleet concerning this before Nguyen's loyalists manage to turn the tables, ending with Souther being shot. The result is a shooting match between the local UNN ships, which prompts Nguyen to launch the protomolecule hybrid pods at Mars to make sure the pods can never be stopped.
• Mysterious Past: We learn a fair bit about the rest of Holden's crew, but the only hint at Amos' past in the first season is his enigmatic solidarity with a prostitute in "Rock Bottom" because he grew up familiar with The Oldest Profession, perhaps as the Son of a Whore. When a reporter digs into his past in season three the only records she is able to find on him at all are a birth certificate and a win in the job lottery that got him into space. When she speaks to people from the area that he supposedly hails from, the only 'Amos Burton' they can remember is a mob boss. It is revealed in season five that 'Amos' killed the mob boss Amos Burton to protect is friend Erich, and then assumed his identity to escape offworld.

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