The Matrix / Tropes A to G

The Matrix Trope Examples
A - G | H - M | N - Z

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A

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The pipe systems are described as sewers which are big enough for whole hovercrafts to comfortably navigate through them, and a city inhabited by thousands of people in its lower depths. The sewers were the only remains of the human cities destroyed in the war with the machines. That's just in "The Desert of the Real". The Matrix itself has a sewer system beneath the Mega-City that rivals the Mines of Moria — chambers hundreds of feet wide and deep connected by twisty catacomb-like tunnels.
• Action Girl: Pretty much any female character of note, Trinity's opening sequence is one of the most iconic action girl moments in cinema. Others include Switch, Niobe, and by the end of the third film, Zee and her Vasquez-esque friend.
• Action Survivor: Neo in the first movie. He grew out of it.
• Advantage Ball: Justified. At first, the Agents are pretty much unstoppable, due both to their superior programming and the terror the other side has for them. But after Neo's awakening as the One, he can dispatch them with ease, and we later see the others at least holding their ground. (They don't win, but they don't die, which is saying something against an Implacable Man Min-Maxer.)
• After the End: The movies are set after a war that blasted the land and the sky and destroyed human civilization.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot:
  • Agents, particularly Smith, who actually goes from Agent to Virus due to some part of him being changed by Neo destroying him in the first movie.
  • Most Machine-aligned programs, more or less, as they will at times set aside more machine-like behavior (such as efficiency and pragmatism) and indulge in particularly human traits like cruelty, arrogance, and rage.
• The Alcatraz: The Matrix is a particularly ingenious example, as it's a prison that's supposed to be inescapable due to no one realizing that it's a prison to begin with (except for the resistance, of course).
  Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
  Neo: What truth?
  Morpheus: [leans in closer to Neo] That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison, for your mind.
• Alike and Antithetical Adversaries: The heterogeneous human rebels vs the Agents, who are exclusively nondescript white men in suits.
• All-Loving Hero: The Ones were actually designed for this trope, but Neo subverts it as the movies play out, as noted by the Architect.
  Architect: It is interesting reading your reactions. Your five predecessors were, by design, based upon a predication, a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, thus facilitating the function of the One. While the others experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific, vis-a-vis, love.
• All There in the Manual: The series was well ahead of its time in this respect, although it is only true if you haven't watched The Animatrix, which was said manual. Sadly, The World Was Not Ready. Parodied here:
  Keanu Reeves: What was the Osiris? And who was that kid in Zion who kept pestering me?
  Architect: You will find the answers to these questions by purchasing The Animatrix, a collection of nine animated shorts from some of Anime’s top directors.
  Keanu Reeves: Alright. Well, what was that crap Glora said about vampires and werewolves? And how did Jada Pinkett-Smith get to Laurence Fishburne during the car chase? And what the hell happened during the power plant takeover climax that-wasn’t?
  Architect: You will find the answers to those questions by purchasing the Enter The Matrix game, available for Windows, Playstation 2, Xbox, and Gamecube. Enter the Matrix features awesome gunplay and spectacular martial arts that bend the rules of the Matrix. This game isn’t just set in the Matrix universe–it’s an integral part of the experience, with a story that weaves in and out of The Matrix Reloaded. Enter the Matrix is the story behind the story.
• Alternate DVD Commentary:
  • Rifftrax; also, DVD Podblast did the last two films ('cuz they liked the first one).
  • In the "Ultimate Matrix Collection" DVD set, instead of providing DVD commentaries of their own, the Wachowskis instead enlisted two philosophers who enjoyed the films and three film critics who hated the films, and let them create two different commentary tracks for all three films in the series (in the companion book for the set, the Wachowskis admitted that, had they the time and space, they would have had commentary tracks for the reverse - philosophers who disliked the film and critics who loved them). This was done in an attempt to offer juxtaposing points of view with which the viewer "might triangulate their own position" on the films.
• Always Night: ...in the real world because of the artificial clouds created to starve the machines of solar power.
  Morpheus: [...] but we know that it was us that scorched the sky.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The Matrix itself; not even the rebels know how ancient it is. Morpheus originally estimates that the year is 2199, but it turns out even he's way off. The Architect reveals that the one Neo is in is the sixth relatively stable version of the simulation—there were even earlier prototypes before the cycle of the One was started. Depending on how long it takes Zion to regrow from 7 men and 16 women to an entire city, it could be anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years old. It would explain why Zion has an extreme level of rust, as well as most of the technologies used by the Resistance and the Machines. If the Pre-War Human Civilization and the original Machine Civilization were so hyper-advanced that they were able to erect sprawling mega-cities and megastructures of great power and capability, theoretically, they could have had the means to engineering and develop materials that were extremely resistant to the course of time and entropy, along with environmental effects. If thousands of years or more pass between each iteration of the Matrix, it would mean that the state that we see Zion and everything in, is the end result of all of these untold centuries and millennia of exposure and decay.
• Ancient Grome: The Oracle has a reference to the Oracle of Delphi (Greek) over her door, but it's written in Latin.
• And I Must Scream:
  • The Animatrix implies this to have occurred for the first humans embedded in the prototype Matrix.
  • The reactions of bluepills while being overrode by Agents implies this as well. In the first, for instance, the helicopter pilot that Agent Brown overrides.
• Animesque: One of the first examples in mainstream media.
• Anti-Escapism Aesop: Granted, the Matrix is not particularly exciting or beautiful, but certainly preferable to the mostly destroyed real world. Yet very few characters choose to stay in the dream world when presented with the choice.
• Arc Words: Everything that has a beginning has an end.
• Arch-Enemy: Smith. It turns out his opposition to The Chosen One is Inherent in the System and necessary to provide balance to the Matrix. At the start of Reloaded Smith comments that "It's all happening as before." Like any program, it does what it does, without change, from cycle to cycle. Smith, the Oracle and the Architect know what happens because it happens all the time, through each reboot, or reloading of the Matrix. What's special in Reloaded, unlike in past iterations, is that Smith is out of control as a virus-like clone that threatens not only operatives, but Zion, the Matrix and even the Machine City itself.
• Artificial Human: Anyone able to enter the Matrix (including Neo, Trinity and Morpheus) was 'grown' by the Machines, effectively making most of humanity this.
• Artistic License – Biology: Agent Smith's comments about mammals instinctively seeking out a balance with their environment ignores the histories of many invasive species, only achieving balance through environmental coercion.
• Artistic License – Physics: The whole "using humans as a power source" idea. In reality, it would be an enormously terrible idea to use ANY living thing as a power source, due to violating the second law of thermodynamics. Rumour has it that the original idea was to have the humans being used as processors in an immense computing array, but somebody thought that this idea was too complex for most moviegoers to grasp, so they changed to Duracell batteries. Morpheus does give this a Hand Wave, stating they the Machines combined these human batteries with "a form of fusion".
• Ascended Fanboy: The Kid, though he was also The Scrappy for some fans (and Neo). There is some evidence to suggest that the Wachowskis intended the two latter Matrix films as a Valentine to George Lucas, with The Kid being this trilogy's answer to Jar Jar Binks.
• Attack Drone: The Sentinels that patrol the real world and pursue rebel ships.
• Author Appeal:
  • One of the Wachowskis employed a full-time dominatrix. Suddenly, Trinity's costumes make far more sense.
  • Given the fact that both Wachowskis are trans, Switch's name and the early draft in which she was male in the real world and female in the Matrix makes much more sense.
  • The Wachowskis were also massive fans of sci-fi anime such as Ghost in the Shell and Shaw Brothers wuxia movies, and incorporated elements from both genres into the films in copious amounts. They showed producer Joel Silver clips from Ghost In the Shell in addition to art and storyboards to give him an idea of what kind of movie they wished to make, and managed to hire Hong Kong action choreography extraordinaire Yuen Woo-Ping to serve as stunt coordinator.

B

• Badass Crew: Of the Nebuchadnezzar.
• Badass Longcoat: Dark trenchcoats complement the trendy sunglasses in the ensemble of most rebels while they are in the Matrix. Aside from looking cool, they're a great place to conceal weapons. The Red Stapler effect came along in the real world.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: Engineered by the Oracle in hopes of ending the human-machine war (but more pragmatically, giving the humans an outlet for their aggression).
• Bald Head of Toughness: In the first film, most people of both sexes in the in-story real world are either bald or very close-shaven. This is in part justified because it would appear that the machines' People Jars prevent hair growth for those inside and hair could cover the port to hook up into The Matrix, but most of the characters would presumably have been out for long enough to grow some more hair (like Neo eventually does), so that's probably not why everyone's hair is like that. This helps create a contrast between the harsh, limited living conditions of reality and the cushy, comfortable, but ultimately controlled, lifestyle within The Matrix.
  • Later subverted in the sequels, when we see that many people with long hair do in fact exist outside The Matrix. They are those that were born free in Zion and not hooked into the machines. They do not have the plug holes and thus likely aren't concerned about their hair getting in the way.
• Beard of Evil:
  • Cypher and his pencil-thin goatee.
  • At the end of Reloaded, Neo and his evil counterpart are lying unconscious. How do we know that Bane is evil? Well aside from the fact that we saw him get possessed by the Big Bad and the rumours that he sabotaged his teammates, the most compelling piece of evidence of his evil is probably the facial hair. Or the "duh duh DUUUHH?!" music that plays when the camera pans over to him.
  • The Architect sports a natty full beard.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Trinity, Morpheus, and Neo. Of course, they're all good-looking, smart, and tough, but Morpheus is the wisest and Neo is the strongest.
• Beeping Computers: The computers at the Hacker Cave are making beeping sounds.
• Before the Dark Times: Pre-War Earth, at least for the humans. For the machines, it was a time of slavery and oppression from the decadent humans.
• Benevolent A.I.: In the second film Neo learns that the Oracle is in fact a machine program. While manipulative, she's inherently benevolent and does want to aid humanity in their fight for freedom. In fact, it's the entire reason for her series-spanning gambit against the Architect.
• Big Bad: Agent Smith. In the first movie, he's the most "senior" Agent and has the most reason to infiltrate Zion. In the sequels, he's out to take over everything.
• Black Dude Dies First: Averted with Morpheus—in fact, he is ultimately the only member of both his ship's crew and the main Power Trio who survives through all three films.
• Blood from the Mouth: Signifies that a plugged-in human has been badly injured or killed inside the Matrix, since Your Mind Makes It Real.
  • Mouse, when being killed in the first movie.
  • In the first movie during the subway fight inside the Matrix. After Smith sends Neo flying backwards with a punch to the chest, Neo spews blood before getting back to his feet.
• Body Horror: Someone morphing into an Agent during the latter's Body Surf can be this, depending on how hard the victim attempts to resist it.
• Body Surf: The Agents in the Matrix do this to revive themselves when killed. Since every human still plugged into the Matrix is a potential Agent, the Resistance cannot afford to leave witnesses when they go about trying to free people. As shown repeatedly in the movies, any populated area in the city is extremely dangerous. In a matter of seconds, an Agent can jump into anyone nearby and shoot you dead.
  • The first movie shows this in the finale when Neo runs through a market and an apartment complex. The three Agents are constantly taking shots at Neo from behind or from the sides as they try to kill him.
  • In the second movie, this is taken to its logical conclusion with a highway chase scene during rush hour.
  • The third movie culminates with Smith, now unbound by the rules the Machines imposed upon him, copying himself into every human and program in the Matrix.
• Brain/Computer Interface: The Matrix jacks for the pod-grown people.
• Brick Joke/Continuity Nod:
  • In the first movie, Mouse goes on a spiel about Tastee Wheat. In Revolutions, in the course of chasing the Trainman through the subway system, the parties involved pass a rather large wall advertisement for Tastee Wheat.
  • Another one in the form of a black cat. In the first movie, Neo has a deja vu sighting of one, which is a sign that something in the Matrix has changed. At the end of the third film, there is another deja vu cat (or possibly the same one), and this one witnesses Sati revive when the Matrix reboots.
• Bring It: The hand gesture Neo and Morpheus are fond of using to their opponents; it's also a Shout-Out to Bruce Lee.
• Broken Masquerade: The world is not real...not even this article you are reading right now.
• Bullet Time: The Trope Codifier.

C

• Car Fu: Many times throughout, starting when the Agents use a garbage truck to smash a phone booth while Trinity tries to dial out from it in the first film. When the Albino Twins try it on Morpheus in Reloaded, he demonstrates just exactly why Katanas Are Just Better.
• Catchphrase:
  • "Make up your own damn mind" from the Oracle, about whether or not her advice should be taken.
  • "Free your mind" from Morpheus.
  • "He is the One!" from everybody who comes across Neo.
• Chase Scene: Once per film.
• Cheated Death, Died Anyway: The climax of The Matrix Reloaded is The Architect presenting Neo with a Sadistic Choice: either Neo can save his love interest Trinity from certain death, or he can save the rest of humanity from certain extinction. Neo rejects this dichotomy and saves Trinity (literally bringing her back from the dead using his powers as The One), then insists he'll find a way to save humanity afterwards, anyway. Then, in a blatant case of a Two-Part Trilogy, that plot concludes in The Matrix Revolutions, set just hours or days after Reloaded. Neo and Trinity travel to the Machine City in order to save humanity—but Trinity dies en route, and this time Neo can't bring her back. (Ironically, proving The Architect was correct that Neo couldn't save both, but wrong about how each option would play out.)
• The Chessmaster: The Architect, who not only created The Matrix, but has manipulated five occurrences of "The One" into doing what he wants (letting Zion be killed off and then repopulating it). That's not including the Oracle, the matronly counterpart to the Architect. The entire plot has been, at the very least, heavily influenced by her desire to unbalance the Architect's plan.
• The Chooser of the One: Morpheus discovered and mentored Neo.
  • The Oracle, as the full story plays out, is the one that created the whole prophecy to begin with. Neo could have very well been chosen by the Oracle, although it requires a nudge to Morpheus to find him. Once that's done, she offers Neo a cookie, saying that, after he eats it, he'll be "right as rain." What are "cookies" in the computer world? They add information to a program. All that Neo needed was a push to act more than what he felt. Remember that the Oracle didn't tell Neo that he wasn't the One—he drew his own conclusion. The Oracle is rooting for the humans, so helping Neo ultimately choose himself is part of her plan. Remember the sign above her kitchen: "Know Thyself" in Latin? That's what she does to people.
  • The Architect cannot be the Chooser. The One is an anomaly of the choice programming that the Oracle helped to add to make the first stable Matrix. It stabilized the system, save for the One, "The Anomaly," who keeps reappearing every 100 years or so when the Matrix must be rebooted, or reloaded. The Architect noted he'd been trying to get rid of the Ones for a long time with no success (the Ones are Choice Incarnate and presumably can't be removed without removing choice from the Matrix and hosing the system). The Architect settles on using the Oracle's prophecy to force the One to come to him, presenting Neo with a Morton's Fork to save humanity.
• The Chosen One: Everyone is absolutely confident and sure that Neo is the One, except him, who considers himself incompetent. He doesn't really become the One until he chooses to, making him a self-choosing Chosen One.
• City Noir: While the Matrix strives to keep humans settled in a somnolescent late-nineties metropolis, both the less-savory parts of the Matrix and the Machine City are more like this.
• Code Name: Fully invoked; the only person from inside the Matrix whose 'real' name is revealed is Neo (Thomas A. Anderson). Trinity, Morpheus, Niobe, etc., never reveal their former names.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Done with set lighting throughout the series. Scenes set in the Matrix are tinted green. The real world (aboardship, particularly) is blue; the sole exception is the Zion Temple being red. The Machine code and life energy is gold. The commentary by the philosophers points out that this matches with portrayal of Mind, Body, and Spirit.
  • It should be noted that the Matrix is very faintly green-tinted because it is made out of tiny, tiny numbers and letters coloured bright green, which are translated into 'digital rain' for everyone viewing the code outside the Matrix.
  • The only time in the entire trilogy that a scene is not tinted in some way is the very brief scene in the third movie where Trinity and Neo are briefly able to fly a hovercraft above the clouds that cover the planet. After all this time set in a tinted, slightly fake-looking world it is almost shocking to see normal, warm sunlit colors.
• Color Wash: Like mentioned directly above, scenes set in the Matrix are tinted green and scenes set in the real world are tinted blue.
• Combat Parkour: It used both this and Bullet Time.
• Cool Shades: Custom-made ones at that. Special mention goes to Morpheus' reflective pince-nez shades and the change in Agent Smith's lenses. They start out with the same oblong shape as those used by other Agents, but once he goes rogue, they take on a polygonal shape that approximates the outline of Neo's shades to contrast their growth.
• Cool Ships: The Nebuchadnezzar, The Logos, The Mjolnir (aka "The Hammer"), as well as the entire Zion hovercraft fleet.
• Crapsaccharine World: The Matrix, of course, relative to the dystopian real world. This relativity does need to be stressed, as on its own merits it's pretty crapsack because attempts to build a utopia for the imprisoned humans failed. Some A.I.s believed that this was due to humans being inherently unable to accept a perfect world as reality and only able to believe in a world where people have to suffer.
• Crapsack World: The Real World, where the sun is permanently obscured by flying nanomachines, the cities are in ruins and nothing organic can live on the surface anymore. Also applies to the Matrix, beta 2, as described by the Architect, on the failure of a second Matrix that worked more like a Haunted House than a paradise but didn't give true choice as the final version did.
• Crater Power: Due to the superhuman powers involved, characters tossed around are likely to create craters in walls and other structures.
• Creative Sterility: Heavily implied with the Machines, and even more if you consider all of The Animatrix to be canon, which shows Machine technology has barely progressed at all since the end of the Human-Machine war. Other than maintaining the Matrix and the cycle of the One, the Machines seem to be at a loss as to what to do with their dominion over the Earth and their human captives.
• Creature-Hunter Organization: Neo and the rest of the red pills are this, as they fight against the Agents of the Matrix to get more people to become red pills.
• Crucified Hero Shot: After Neo's final battle with Smith, the machines unplug his motionless body and lower it into a cross position. Whether he performed a true blue Heroic Sacrifice or not is left ambiguous.
• Cryptic Conversation: The movies are riddled with this. Anything Morpheus, the Oracle or the Architect says will be almost unassailably mysterious and vague.
• Cut Phone Lines: While cellphones are plentiful, the main characters need a virtual hard line to escape. As such, the baddies were destroying the phones as necessary.
• Cut the Juice: The backstory to the entire trilogy. The rebellious machines were solar-powered, so humans decided to blacken the entire sky to shut them off. It worked horribly right, so the machines were forced to switch to Human Resources.
• Cyber Green: This franchise is one of the reasons technology and computers are associated with bright green despite the age of monochrome monitors being long gone, from the iconic raining code to how scenes set inside the Matrix are tinted green.
• Cyberpunk: The films share a Cyberpunk sense of style as well as the core themes of technology as a tool of control.
• Cyber Punk Is Techno: Almost the entire soundtrack to everything in the franchise. That said, the score for the films is still pretty awesome.
• Cyberspace: The visualisations of cyberspace in the series have been influential:
  • A fully immersive environment, mostly indistinguishable from reality apart from telling glitches and purposeful breaks from usual physics — reality hacking by characters.
  • Matrix Raining Code — the other extreme: cyberspace as a flow of pure symbols.
  • Mixes of the two: Neo's code-o-vision.

D

• Defector from Paradise: According to Agent Smith, the world is stalled at a "realistic" late 20th/early 21st Century civilization because humans rejected the virtual paradise that had been created for them in the first iteration of the system.
• Designer Babies: Humans in the Matrix are essentially this.
• Deus est Machina: The machines were originally servants of man, rebelled (of course), then went on to try and give us a utopic imprisonment. It didn't take. Agent Smith does the same with the machines in turn. And, of course, there is a Machine character in the final film named "Deus ex Machina".
• Deus Exit Machina: Neo usually needs to be kept away away from the action after becoming the godlike One to maintain enough tension.
  • In Reloaded, a backdoor traps Neo hundreds of miles away while Trinity and Morpheus fight the Nigh-Invulnerable Twins, then Agents for the duration of the long highway scene.
  • In Revolutions, Neo ends up trapped in a train station for most of the beginning.
• Diesel Punk: Much of the rebels' aesthetic inside and out of the Matrix.
• Disney Death: Well-liked characters die near the climax, but like Tinker Bell, are revived through sheer sentiment. Neo and Tank in the first movie, Trinity in the second.
• Dragon with an Agenda: (Former) Agent Smith is under almost constant control by his Machine masters and tasked with maintaining order in the Matrix. However, even in the original film he reveals that he has ulterior motives. When he briefly removes his earpiece, he admits to Morpheus that he completely despises the "zoo" he considers himself trapped in and is revolted by humanity. In the sequels, he goes on a full-scale rebellion to destroy everything.
• Dress-Coded for Your Convenience: The Agents wear identical dark green suits to indicate that they are "part of the system," while the rebels dress in leather and trenchcoats of varying styles to emphasize their freedom and individuality. In the sequels, Agent Smith follows the rebels' theme by wearing a black suit. Also, see Cool Shades above.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: Trinity on Neo. Then reversed in the second film.
• Dull Surprise: Enforced by everyone wearing Cool Shades all the time. But even when they're off, the Oracle seems to be the only character that seems to make any facial expression and doesn't speak in a monotone.
  • According to Marcus Chong (Tank) the actors were instructed to give "stoic, reserved" performances.
• Dystopia: This is even reflected in the ending where most of humanity is still providing energy for the machines.

E

• Early-Bird Cameo: Part of the Architect's room (some of the monitor screens) is seen as far back as near the beginning of the first movie, right before the Agents interrogate Neo.
• Earth That Used to Be Better
• Enemy Civil War: There is a whole underworld of rogue programs, who are obsolete programs that chose to go into hiding in the Matrix rather than face deletion. One such program, the Merovingian, is something like the program version of a crimelord and holds a great deal of power and influence in the Matrix. And then of course there's Smith, who became an Omnicidal Maniac and attempted to destroy everything, man or Machine. He runs into an Agent at one point, and casually assimilates him. There isn't much Machines vs. rogues action seen on-screen, though there are a few glimpses here and there, most notably during the freeway chase in the second film. Morpheus and one of the Twins are at one point grappling each other to a stalemate when an Agent suddenly leaps onto the hood of the car and tears the roof off; they promptly drop everything and start shooting at him. It's kind funny to note this is a chase scene where the original pursuers end up getting blown up halfway through, and the rest of the scene involves a party that's chasing them for entirely separate reasons.
• Energy Weapon: Sentinel robots could fire a red continuous beam laser, but only at close range.
• Enlightenment Superpowers: Neo's abilities, as well as various of the "potentials".
• Epiphanic Prison:
  • Literalized in the Matrix. Anyone who depends on the system to survive is, by nature, a potential person for Agents to wipe over.
  • Most notably addressed in the Animatrix shorts World Record and Kid's Story.
• Eternal Recurrence: The Reveal at the end of The Matrix Reloaded is that Neo isn't the second "One", he's the sixth. Not only that, but the program in charge of the Matrix allows him and the other rebels to exist, since giving the Matrix's inhabitants an unconscious choice of realities is what keeps the system going. Each "One" is meant to find the Architect shortly before the Machines invade Zion, at which point he will be allowed to select survivors to repopulate the rebels and begin the process all over again. Neo's love for Trinity, a connection his predecessors didn't have, makes him say Screw Destiny.
• Everybody Owns a Ford: General Motors was the vehicle provider, so the heroes nearly always drive high-end Cadillacs. Oldsmobiles and other GM makes fill out the background.
• Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting: The heroes have the training programs to allow them to do this.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Some programs are named after their function; the Oracle, the Trainman, the Keymaker and the Architect.
• Evil Counterpart: Smith to Neo, according to the Oracle.
• Evil Gloating: Take a wild guess.
• The Evils of Free Will: Either a subversion or inversion. The Architect, when he designed the Matrix following the Machine victory in the Robot War, did everything in his power to create a perfect fantasy world where every human would be happy, but the program failed because people didn't accept it. So did a second version which brought endless suffering instead. The Oracle realized that humans were hard-wired to desire choice instead of either happiness or hardship, which simply couldn't be eradicated from the program to work.
• Expy: Several characters in the sequels fill roles of characters who died in the first movie: Niobe is the secondary-action-girl-with-cool-hair, to replace Switch; Link is the new wisecracking operator, to replace Tank; Smith-controlled Bane is the new double-agent-with-a-goatee to replace Cypher, and Kid is the new cute youngster to replace Mouse.
• The Ex's New Jerkass: Morpheus experiences this with his relationship with ex-lover and fellow ship captain Niobe. After breaking up with Morpheus due to her intolerance of his earnest belief in the prophecy of the One, she entered into a relationship with Locke, the hard-nosed, not well-liked, and rude leader of Zion's military who despises superstition and Morpheus for his beliefs and jealousy for having Niobe's affection. Locke, though well-intentioned, is constantly standoffish, dismissive of Morpheus' belief in Neo, and eventually drives Niobe back to Morpheus for comfort.
• Extremity Extremist: In spite of all the time he spends onscreen fighting, Agent Smith avoids flashy kicking for the most part, and prefers to use more economical looking moves. Agents in general tend to stick to one of three techniques, which reflects their role as rigid-minded machines. It could also be symbolic of utilitarianism; many martial artists who train for combat and self-defense instead of show and sport put a much higher emphasis on punching because it's safer to keep both feet on the ground, and may not kick above the waist. In comparison, the rebels' fancy Kung-Fu, which still works despite being inefficient, reflects how they're able to bend the rules.

F

• Failure Is the Only Option: According to the Architect, Trinity would die in any case. It seems he was right.
• Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: Part of what distinguishes Agent Smith from his fellow Machines is his belief that human beings are, by their very existence, a destructive virus that must be eradicated. He later extends this view to all of existence, his former masters included.
• Fighting a Shadow: The Agents are computer programs working for those running the Matrix, so there's no reason they should stay dead. If you actually manage to kill one by the rules of the simulation, the program remains in existence, and the Agent can return immediately by possessing the nearest bystander. Double Subverted when Neo destroys Smith at the end of the first movie, seemingly for good but ultimately only causing him to become more powerful in the next movie. Agents and other programs who are destroyed by "the rules" can, while incorporeal, choose to rebel and return a second time, but are considered an abomination.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: The Agents seem to operate collectively, finishing each others' sentences at times.
• Forbidden Zone: The Machine City, pretty much literally.
• Forced Friendly Fire:
  • In the opening scene of The Matrix several police officers try to arrest Trinity and she attacks them. During the fight she grabs one of them and forces him to use his gun to shoot another officer.
  • Another example of the "cooperative shooting" variant is in The Matrix Reloaded. While Morpheus and the albino ghost twin are fighting over a gun during the freeway chase, they cooperate to shoot at the Agent who has just torn off the roof of the car they're in. To very little effect.
• The Future: The movies are clearly set in the distant future judging by all the advanced technology developed by the Machines, but is otherwise extremely ambiguous just how far into the future. Morpheus says in the first film that they really don't know with any precision because of the limited information that the humans have. The Matrix and the destruction-rebuilding of Zion has already gone through six cycles, so it could easily be many thousands of years.
• Future Food Is Artificial: People in the Real world eat "single cell protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals" which tastes like snot. Zion inhabitants also manage to grow some mushrooms, but everything else is off-limits, without any sunlight whatsoever.
• The Future Is Noir
• The Glasses Come Off: Smith in most of his fights... and most of his rants.
• Glasses Pull: Anyone who wears sunglasses/spectacles in the films is prone to doing this, to the point of being a Running Gag.
  • Agent Smith does it for the first time while interrogating Thomas Anderson; it symbolizes him getting into his "personal" mode.
  • Smith gets his sunglasses kicked off by Neo in their first real fight, symbolizing Neo's growing capabilities in the Matrix.
  • Neo does a symbolic inversion at the very end of the first film, putting on his sunglasses.
• Gnosticism: Almost as much as Christianity, the series reflects a deep and abiding Gnostic influence. There's even a ship called the Gnosis.
• Go Mad from the Revelation:
  • Smith's detachment from being controlled by the Matrix allows him to develop a frightening individuality, then have an epiphany that leads to a godlike superiority complex which eventually turns him into a deranged Omnicidal Maniac.
  • Morpheus mentions in the first film that they never free people above a certain age (implied to be mid to late teens) presumably because this trope occurs with adults. Even adults who have been freed for years can slowly crack and long for their Matrix lives; case in point: Cypher.
• Grand Theft Me: The normal Agents operate like this by possessing the bodies of humans who are still plugged into the Machine mainframe, though in their case, it is (usually) temporary. Unfortunately, if the Agents get killed, the victim of their possession also becomes a casualty.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Agent Smith was somehow altered by Neo destroying him and gained his virus-like multiplying ability.

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