The Wire / Tropes M to R

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I'm a trope police. I work tropes. I don't jerk shit around. I catch a trope, and I work it.

M

• MacGuffin: Old Face Andre's ring in season 4. Marlo demands it from Andre after his stash is stolen. Omar steals it from Marlo when he sticks up a poker game. Officer Walker steals it from Omar when the latter is arrested for murder. Michael steals it from Officer Walker in retribution for breaking his friends' fingers. Marlo spots it on a chain around Michael's neck, but chooses to let him keep it.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Since all the other girls being trafficked via the shipping container saw the one girl^note the floater McNulty found get killed, the "shepherd" on the ship decides to kill all of them by hammering down the air pipe to the container so that they all suffocate from anoxia, making it seem as if it happened when one container fell on the other during transit. McNulty doesn't fall for it, noting that hammer marks on the nearby surface and the lack of smoothness with which the pipe was crushed compared to one from a genuine accident
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places. McNulty yet again; he is banging a random blonde in the hood of his car when he is halted by some passing patrolmen. He just pulls out his badge, flashes it and then continues about his business. The beat cops are not surprised to learn he is from CID (Investigation Dept.) Like it's nobody's business.
• Malaproper: Clay Davis brings a copy of Prometheus Bound to his court date to pass himself off as an erudite martyr. It's obviously on the advice of his lawyer, because he mispronounces both "Prometheus" and "Aeschylus."
• Malicious Misnaming: During a scene where McNulty confronts Stringer in his copy shop, Stringer refers to him as 'Officer' (i.e. Patrolman, etc.) when Jimmy's rank is 'Detective'. Stringer, having encountered McNulty several times (even once drawing a picture that read 'Fuck you, Detective') is fully aware of McNulty's rank and does this ostensibly to piss him off.
• The Man in Front of the Man: The crime lord known only as "The Greek" sits in on conversations with other gangsters by having his actual second-in-command Spiros do the talking and disguising himself as one of his lackeys.
• Manly Tears:
  • Omar fixing up and then walking on a broken leg. Ouch.
  • Seeing his boyfriend, Brandon's, mutilated corpse.
  • In the aftermath of Dante accidentally shooting Tosha during an ambush because he wasn't paying attention to where his gun was pointed in season three. In fact, Omar cries a lot, and yet he is still never less than manly.
• Married to the Job: Kima and McNulty, who gets a prophetic "Get a life" speech from Lester.
• Mayor Pain: Mayor Clarence Royce fits squarely in the Quimby camp, taking a purely superficial approach to the city's crime problem by pressuring the Baltimore Police to produce data which suggests the murder rate is falling, which in turn forces the department to "juke the stats". Carcetti starts off better when he replaces Royce, but he gradually puts the needs of the city on the back burner as he eyes a run for governor. However, Carcetti's arc reveals that it's the system rather than whoever is at the top which is responsible for the city's plight.
• Meaningful Echo: "Nicely done." McNulty to Stringer Bell in the Pilot, after D'Angelo has beaten the rap through bribery and witness intimidation; Stringer Bell to McNulty in the Season 1 finale, after most of the Barksdale players have been arrested
  • When Marlo's gang begins moving in on the Westside in season 2, some of the Barksdale gang suggest to Stringer that they take them out to get the locations back. "What the fuck we want with them off-brand corners?" he says, turning it down. In the season 4 premiere, when Bodie and his crew are trying to hang on as independents on a low-volume corner, Marlo's crew wants to take all of them out after Lex kills Fruit over a girl they're both interested in. Marlo says exactly the same thing (but approves the hit on Lex, and only Lex, all the same, to appease his men).
• Meaningful Rename: Stringer learns about rebranding in his college course, follows the example of World Com and strategically changes the name of the drugs periodically to create a sense of novelty and fake competition. Subverted in that it only takes him so far, the customers are not that stupid and even a dope fiend can wise up.
  Bodie: Same shit, new name.
  • When he makes up his mind to finally go straight, Cutty decides to go by his given name, Dennis.
• Men Can't Keep House: McNulty's apartment is just marginally better arrayed than the houses from the projects. A reflection on his wrecked life. Subverted with Daniels, his second house seems a mess but only because he recently moved in, he even apologizes for the disorder in the middle of a sexual affair.
• Mercy Killing: Cheese puts his dog out of its misery after it loses a fight, about the only time he feels any conflict about a killing.
• Miles Gloriosus: A bigshot at the FBI pops in on Kima and McNulty to casually brag about his role in the Unabomber investigation. After he leaves, McNulty notes that the Unabomber was only caught after his brother informed on him.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: A petty dispute between Frank Sabotka and Stan Valchek causes Valchek to start an investigation into Sabotka's large coffers. That investigation combines with a case of thirteen murdered prostitutes and ultimately reveals an international human trafficking and drug smuggling empire.
• Missing White Woman Syndrome: Discussed in "Unconfirmed Reports", inspiring McNulty to cross his Moral Event Horizon.
• The Mob Boss Is Scarier: The cops tend to have a hard time getting anyone to testify because of this fact. This is lampshaded by Carver to explain why the police can never win the drug war.
  Carver: They fuck up, they get beat. We fuck up, we get pensions.
• Mob Debt: In season 2, Ziggy gets into trouble because he owes money to Cheese, who takes Princess and threatens to kill him in a week if he doesn't pay. Ziggy's cousin Nicky manages to first get him a week's extension, and then uses his connection with the Greeks, and their relationship with Cheese's boss and uncle, Prop Joe, to have the debt settled.
• Mob War: In Season 3, between the Barksdale and Stanfield crews.
• Mobile Kiosk: In Season 3, Bubbles starts selling white t-shirts to the drug dealers and users around Baltimore from a shopping trolley. Later in the season and in season four he starts to expand his operation, offering cans of paint, pirated DVDs and other such assorted goods from his trolley. Later, he uses two trolleys, so we can say that he goes trolleys akimbo, right?
• The Mole:
  • Carver is Burrell's mole inside Daniels' detail in the first season.
  • Agent Koutris, who feeds information to the Greek about the joint BPD-FBI investigation into his activities in exchange for counterterrorism intel.
  • In the last episodes it's revealed Gary Dipasqale, a Gambling Addict was the Grand Jury mole for proposition Joe
• Momma's Boy: D'Angelo shows some signs of this early on, but Namond fits this trope fully.
  Bodie: Your momma is what niggas call a "Dragon Lady".
  Namond: Yeah, she don't blink.
  Bodie: Give me some insight, though.
  Namond: To what?
  Bodie: Why you is, what you is.
• Money to Burn: Ziggy, in the bar after stealing the cameras, much to his father's disgust.
• Money to Throw Away: Subverted when Ziggy throws the money Niko's given him for his role in their drug dealing out the window of Niko's car, not because it's so much and he's exuberant but because he's angry Niko isn't letting him take a more active role^note For good reason on Niko's part in the operation.
• Montage Out: Each season finale ends with one.
• Mood Dissonance: Omar's sort-of leitmotif is "The Farmer In The Dell." On the other hand, Omar whistles it so that in resembles a marching music. Since he only whistles it, the tune resembles that of the very relevant 'A-Hunting We Will Go' or 'Bringing In The Sheaves' (sheaves being defined as any bundle, cluster, or collection, appropriate considering he often takes large sums of money or drugs).
• Moral Myopia: Discussed Trope in season 1. D'Angelo, a mid-level soldier in the Barksdale Organization (and nephew of the boss), in his attempt to school his underlings on a less violent means to run the drug trade, points out to one of them the absurdity of a drug dealer despising drug addicts. After all, they're directly profiting off the average fiend's misery and actively encourage it.
• More Hateable Minor Villain: There are several drug dealer characters on the show who are outright murderers, and yet they often get sympathetic traits or characterization. They are often contrasted against these characters: Rawls, Burrell, and Valchek who are commanders at the BPD; Clay Davis, Nerese Campbell politicians who are active in Baltimore; Thomas Klebanow and James Whiting who are head editors at the Baltimore Sun. All of the aforementioned characters are for more concerned with petty personal vendettas, furthering their careers, or furthering the institution's reputation rather than actually fixing the city's problems.
• Mother Russia Makes You Strong: Sergei points out that American prisons are not real prisons as he has been a 'guest' to the actually harsh Ukrainian ones.
• Motivational Lie: Stringer likes to use them to control how people will act, such as getting Brother Mouzone and Omar to fight each other. Later, after Stringer dies, Slim Charles uses Stringer's death as one to get the Barksdale crew ready to fight Marlo.
• Mr. Smith: When Monk passes himself off as a cop hunting for Omar, he introduces himself as "Detective Smith."
• Moving Beyond Bereavement: Near the end of season four, Bubbles accidentally gets Sherrod killed with a hot dose meant for the addict who keeps robbing him. He's so distraught that he tries to commit suicide in an interrogation room. Season five sees him attending rehab.
  Ain't no shame in holding on to grief, so long as you find room for other things, too.
• Murphy's Bullet: In "Stray Rounds", two drug gangs squabble over territory. At first it seems laughable, like the gang version of a Wimp Fight, as the two sides obviously have little to no experience with guns, and most don't even come close to hitting each other due to the fact that they're often firing without properly aiming or even looking at their target. The mood changes quickly when a mother in a nearby building finds her nine-year-old son dead in his room from a stray bullet.
• Mythology Gag: A character named Rock-Rock is often mentioned but never seen. The character is a call back to a season six Homicide: Life on the Street episode (at least partly written by David Simon), featuring a character named Rock-Rock who was witness to the murders of two priests.

N

• Nature Tinkling: The cops seem to like to do this when they're out drinking with McNulty at the old railroad tracks. Bunk does it in season one, and Kima is seen squatting in the weeds when commiserating with him over her difficulties with Cheryl in season three.
• Naughty Narcs: Downplayed. Half the police characters are narcos and presented sympathetically, but the anti-narcotics unit does have a reputation for more on-the-job corruption than say, the homicide unit. Herc and Carver steal money from a crime scene and even the otherwise-exemplary Cedric Daniels engaged in some unspecified Dirty Cop behavior in the past that is used as blackmail by his present-day superiors.
• Nepotism: Baltimore runs on this trope:
  • D'Angelo is soft and not really cut out for the game, but his kinship with of Avon (his uncle) gives him great leeway.
  • The same goes for Ziggy, who is repeatedly "fired" by his boss, Frank Sobotka, only for him to return the next day because Frank is his father.
  • The dangerously incompetent Roland Pryzbylewski owes his police career to being the son in law of the influential Major Valchek. Subverted, though—although prone to overreacting and panic when out in the field, Prez is actually frighteningly competent when analyzing data and working the paper trail. He'd probably have made a great analyst for the FBI or CIA, but he happened to marry Valchek's daughter...
  • Cheese is in a similar position, as his uncle Proposition Joe has to bear with him.
    Proposition Joe: I got motherfuckin' nephews and in-laws fuckin' all my shit up, all the time. And it ain't like I can pop a cap in their ass and not hear about it Thanksgiving time.
  • Another of Proposition Joe's nephews is Drac, who is so incompetent that he doesn't even speak in drug slang ("Cocaine, nigga!"). The MCU contemplates busting a dealer higher up the chain in hopes that Drac gets promoted.
  • Pushed by his mother, Namond Brice coasts on his father's name and street reputation, but everybody realizes he's not cut out to be a player. Everybody, that is, except his own mother, who seems to think Namond could build a street empire the way Wee-Bey did with Stringer and Avon—with disastrous results.
• Nerd Glasses: Glasses are occasionally used to make a character seem more academic or intelligent.
  • Stringer and Prop Joe are the only drug dealers to wear glasses, highlighting their professionalism and intelligence.
  • Brother Mouzone's glasses support this trope as does his reading habits^note Highbrow political magazines like The Atlantic, Harper's, The Nation and The New Republic, complemented by the jacket and bowtie he wears as a member of the Nation of Islam. This leads other characters on the street, particularly Cheese, to underestimate him.
  • Lester wears glasses as part of his generally "tweedy" look.
  • Shardeen has a pair of oversized spectacles that she uses while not on the job. They help portray her as someone with more going on than just stripping.
• Never Heard That One Before:
  • Implied when Mouzone asks, "You know what the most dangerous thing in America is, right?" Lamar and the other flunky look at each other wearily as the Brother answers, "A nigger with a library card," and laughs at his own joke.
  • Sergei's plight.
    Bunk: Not gonna give us your name? How 'bout we just call you Boris, then?
    Sergei: (sighs) Boris. Why is it always "Boris"?
• Never Going Back to Prison: This is Avon's stated attitude immediately after his stint in prison, and Omar's older brother Anthony tried to commit suicide rather than go back.
• Never Hurt an Innocent: One of Omar's principles — and the one that earns him the limited respect of McNulty and Bunk — is that "the Game" should never spill over into killing civilians.
  Bunk: So, you're my eyeball witness, huh? (Omar nods) So why'd you step up on this?
  Omar: Bird triflin', basically. Kill an everyday workin' man and all. I mean, I do some dirt, too, but I ain't never put my gun on nobody that wasn't in the game.
  Bunk: A man must have a code.
  Omar: Oh, no doubt.
• Never Suicide: D'Angelo's death is made to look like he hanged himself, and while suicide remains the official verdict McNulty's investigation suggests otherwise.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Major Crimes Unit is so preoccupied with bringing down Avon Barksdale throughout season 3 that they manage to bust his gang just as they were about to win their turf war with the Marlo Stanfield gang. That Evil Power Vacuum is then filled up by Marlo, who proves to be far worse than Avon.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Frank's realization that the police are onto the smuggling/diversion operation results in a changeup to it that frustrates their investigation for a while ... but not without giving them a lead to the Greek's inner circle.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Tommy Carcetti is obviously based on Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley. Like Carcetti, O'Malley was a white Baltimore city councilman who ran for mayor as a dark horse and defeated two black challengers in the Democratic primary on a "law and order" platform. Also like Carcetti, he had his eye on the governorship, as he won the gubernatorial election in 2007, the year before the show's final season.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • Before Season 1 started, Lester Freamon had been forced to work in the pawn shop unit for, well, doing his job investigating a homicide.
  • McNulty gets a similar treatment at the end of season 1 for getting people in his homicide unit involved in the drug case that Season 1 was all about; he is forced to work in the loathed Baltimore Marine Unit for half of the second season as revenge from Rawls.
  • Haynes and Gutierrez also find this out the hard way in Season 5.
  • Bunny Colvin's reward for cutting the felony crime rate in his district by 14% and improving the general quality of life for its citizens is to be busted down to lieutenant, fired in disgrace, blacklisted and vilified to the media as an "amoral" and "incompetent" man who "buckled under the pressure" of his command.
  • Senator Davis invokes the quote regarding himself during his demagogue defense.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Chris Partlow delivers a gruesomely fatal one to Michael's stepfather, Devar.
• No Honor Among Thieves: A recurring problem in all the criminal operations shown: underlings like Orlando and Ziggy are dissatisfied with the money they're making and try to supplement it with side hustles, both getting in tragically over their heads; more than once we see street level dealers get caught Stealing from the Till, and customers like Bubbles and Johnny try to rip off the dealers by giving them fake money, while Omar just flat-out robs them.
• Non-Indicative Name: "The Greek" isn't actually Greek. Little Man and Little Kevin are not exactly little either, much to the confusion of the police.
• Noodle Incident: It's never made exactly clear what Daniels and his first wife did while he was out at the Eastern District as a sergeant that resulted in the abortive investigation he is occasionally threatened with disclosure of in order to keep him in line, other than that it seems to have involved skimming money.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: The presence of a thick "Bawlmer" accent tends to give away who on the cast is actually a Baltimore native compared to the more neutral Mid-Atlantic accent used by most of the other actors; Donnelly and Mello are the only two notable white characters to have it, while Snoop's dialogue is far less intelligible than the likes of Omar or Avon because of it. Domenick Lombardozzi stuck out to such a degree than Herc was later written to have moved from Mew York to justify his natural accent.
• Not Hyperbole:
  • In Season 3, all the police majors are rounded up in a meeting and dressed down by their superiors for letting the crime rates spike. On their way out of the meeting, the majors all exasperatedly discuss mundane ways of getting their stats down, while Bunny Colvin, in a moment that sounds like a joke but is actually foreshadowing, says:
    "Me? I thought I might legalize drugs."
  • When Daniels rebuilds the Major Crimes Unit in Season 4 with Lester bringing up the rear, Daniels jokingly (?) tells Lester "you can pick your own boss, for all I care." Lester ends up doing exactly that, installing Asher as head of the unit, because Asher is a do-nothing who is solely focused on planning his imminent retirement and demonstrably will let the MCU investigate whatever and whoever it needs to, however it wants to, a much-needed return to smart police work after the Marrimow debacle.
• Nothing Can Stop Us Now!: During the heyday of the Barksdale empire, while Avon is still flying under the radar, Stringer explains to D'Angelo that crazy as it is, the drug business is forever. If the merchandise is strong, they sell it, and if it's weak they sell twice as much because they are dealing in a captive market where the clients are addicts and the supply is about the same for everybody. Stringer doesn't anticipate that a competitor with a much better product can undermine and destroy his credibility and profit, which is what Proposition Joe ends up doing in the second season.
• Nothing Personal: No matter how much the war on drugs takes from everyone, it's just "All in The Game".
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • During Bird's trial, Omar destroys Levy's attempt to discredit him as a witness by pointing out that his description could very easily be about himself.
    I got the shotgun. You got the briefcase. It's all in the game though, right?
  • A minor story arc has Kima realizing she's following in Jimmy's footsteps—even to the point of becoming Bunk's partner in Homicide.
    Don't tell me we're the same kind of asshole...
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: As has been said, many considered Marlo Stanfield to be a wannabe punk who wasn't worth much trouble, especially compared to Avon Barksdale. This includes both gangbangers and cops. However, by the end of the fourth season, they all see just how wrong that assumption was, as he proved himself to be far more ruthless than Avon ever was.
• Number Two:
  • Various characters in the drug trade, including Stringer Bell in the first season, Spiros Vondapolous, Chris Partlow and Slim Charles.
  • In the legit society: Rawls to Burrell, Mello to Colvin, Carver to Mello, Norman Wilson to Carcetti and Rhonda to Rupert Bond.

O

• Obfuscating Disability: Omar is able to get into a Barksdale stash house by pretending to be an old man in a wheelchair (with one of his crew pretending to be a nurse).
• Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: In season 5, Detective McNulty starts leaving strangulation marks on fresh bodies of homeless men who have died of overdoses to make it look like there is a serial killer in Baltimore, as a way to get more funding to the police department, who are operating in a serious budget crunch, as well as using the supposed investigation into the killer to secretly surveil and investigate Marlo Stanfield.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Seemingly a dime a dozen in Baltimore, and they make life hell for those on the side of the law. Most of them aren't malicious, just lazy or more interested in protecting themselves than in accomplishing anything worthwhile. Lieutenant Charles Marimow is a notable exception; he is given command of the Major Crimes Unit specifically in order to put the brakes on them so they won't continue to embarrass political bigwigs.
  • The various city permitting officials Cutty has to deal with in opening his gym get their own montage sequence.^note Fortunately for him a local minister with connections smooths it all over
• Office Golf: Burrell does a lot of this.
  • Played with by having Marlo swing a club, without a ball, when he softly tells Bodie that he is to get his crew off the other side of the street as the two first meet.
• Officer O'Hara:
  • The Baltimore Police Department is known for having many Irish traditions, such as Irish wakes for fallen officers at Kavanaugh's Pub and everyone engaging in a passionate sing-along to The Pogues' "Body of an American." This even though more cops seem to be black or Polish than Irish. As explicitly stated in David Simon's book Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets, on which the show is partially based, no matter your origin, when you join the Baltimore PD you become an "honorary Irish".
  • McNulty has very distant Irish ancestry, but still seems to identify closely with Ireland. He's obviously Catholic, drinks Jameson Irish whiskey and sneers at Bushmills as "Protestant whiskey."
• Offscreen Villainy: Barksdale commits a number of heinous crimes onscreen, but most of the body count has already happened at the beginning of the story, losing some of its impact. This contrasts with Marlo, who in no small part comes off as more ruthless because his racking up is contemporary and shown to the audience.
  • All the same, Lex's death is not shown onscreen.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: When Stringer begins one of his speeches about economics, his challenged minions immediately show apprehension and sigh, obviously tired of the lectures.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations:
  • Bunk and McNulty think they have Cheese confessing to a murder on tape, and again when they confront him with it while interviewing him in person. However, the whole time, Cheese was talking about having to shoot his dog after it was seriously injured following a fight it lost.
  • When Bunk and Lester hang out in an after work bar, Bunk quickly starts talking about women, while Lester keeps talking about the case against Marlo, and the dialogue still flows naturally.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Very common considering many of the characters are criminals who only go by their street names. Lampshaded by Omar during this exchange at Bird's murder trial:
  ASA Ilene Nathan: And do you see the gunman who killed Mr. Gant anywhere in the courtroom today?
  Omar Little: (calling out) Ay, yo, what up Bird?
  Nathan: For the record, you are identifying the defendant, Marquis Hilton.
  Omar: He just Bird, to me.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • While trying to listen to Shardene's bug over the music, the usually soft-spoken Freamon raises his voice and swears at Herc and Carver when he tells them to stop their conversation about chili dogs so he can listen more clearly. Not only do they shut up immediately, they have awkward looks on their faces.
  • Lampshaded by Delores in Season 2 when she asks Niko what's up as he's acting like a normal person that day instead of his usual over-the-top self. He tells her he just made some money^note by stealing the cameras
  • Omar faces what he thinks might be his own impending death at the hands of Brother Mouzone in the calm and laconic way he faces everything else, but after Barksdale's hitmen try to take him out on a Sunday morning while he's taking his grandmother to church he is livid.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Several actors do this in their more emotional moments. Idris Elba manages to avoid it as Stringer Bell. Michael K. Williams as Omar affects a pretty good Bawlmer accent for the most part, but slips a couple of times into his natural Brooklyn, particularly noticeably when he's acting across from Ernest Waddell, also from New York (and who uses his real accent). In the scene were Carcetti is pretending to make a phone call he sounds very Irish.
  • Sometimes you can hear Dominic West's British vowels during the first season. In season 3, he mentions "Ocean City" in one sentence, then asks Daniels "You ever been down the Ooo-shen?" (as opposed to Oh-shin) in the next. During his conversation with Bunk in the interrogation room in season 5, he also drops his r's when saying "murder" a couple of times.
• Orphaned Punchline: Doubling as a nod to Lewis from Homicide: Life on the Street, one scene has Landsman telling a raunchy joke about a bear wherein only the final part is heard: "You didn't really come here to hunt, did you?"
• Outclassed at the Gym: After the first batch of kids at Dennis' boxing gym start getting cocky about their abilities, he deliberately organizes a sparring bout for them with some younger, but well trained boxers from another gym to knock them down a peg. But despite being outclassed, Justin shows commitment by standing for the full round.
• Outdated Outfit: Fresh off a 14-year stint in prison, Cutty shows up to a job interview in a double-breasted suit jacket, having obviously not updated his old wardrobe since he got out.
• Outside-Context Problem: The smugglers and human traffickers in Season 2. The cop protagonists are very experienced in the customs and economy of the drug trade in Baltimore, but most are life-long Baltimore natives and not particularly worldly, with almost no knowledge of how the smuggling world operates.

P

• Pac Man Fever:
  • Michael's little brother is clearly playing Pokémon Red in a Game Boy Advance, yet the sounds it makes are beeps and boops.
  • Namond is shown playing on his X-Box, without the TV in view, and, despite showing him playing Halo 2 in other episodes, we hear random stock ninja sounds playing over and over.
• Pants-Positive Safety: In getting ready for what he and the gang expect to be their frontal assault on Marlo's crew at the rim shop,^note they get busted before they can even leave the safe house, Avon is seen tucking his gun into his waistband.
• Parental Neglect:
  • Jimmy is not a favorite to win the father of the year award: he loses sight of his children when they are made to play-tail Stringer in a market, and on another occasion leaves the kids alone in the house to have a quickie in a hotel, in the middle of the night.
  • Frank Sobotka, who ignores his wayward, attention-seeking son Ziggy until it's too late.
• Passed-Over Promotion: Several examples, the carrot and stick approach to appointments is a traditional weapon used by the higher-ups.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Whenever Obstructive Bureaucrats like Burrell or Valchek get shit done. One especially memorable instance happens in season 2, when the dirty work is done to Burrell by Valchek.
• Perp Walk:
  • Invoked by Valchek, as the whole purpose of the case for him was to ruin his rival Frank Sobotka. While the rest of the suspects are taken in a carefully synchronised dawn raid, the ones tasked to take Sobotka are told to wait until he's at the union office, and once they've gone in they wait until a suitably sizeable press gang has assembled before Valchek personally walks him out to the car.
  • Discussed by the Baltimore Sun staff after they miss Clay Davis' perp walk.
• Personal Effects Reveal: Stringer's refined and "non-gangsta" apartment. McNulty is completely puzzled by it, he finds the book The Wealth of Nations and utters "Who the fuck I was chasing"
• Pet the Dog:
  • Rawls telling his nemesis McNulty that Kima's shooting wasn't his fault.
    "You, McNulty, are a gaping asshole. We both know this. Fuck if everybody in C.I.D. doesn't know it. But fuck if I'm gonna stand here and say you did a single fucking thing to get a police shot. You did not do this, you fucking hear me? This is not on you. No, it isn't, asshole. Believe it or not, everything isn't about you. And the motherfucker saying this, he hates your guts, McNulty. So you know if it was on you, I'd be the sonofabitch to say so."
  • After Kima gets shot, Burrell asks the Police Commissioner to say a few words to her "roommate." The Commissioner refuses, so Burrell does it himself.
  • Wee-Bey Brice instructs tells his baby-momma to let Bunny Colvin take custody of his son so he could have a chance at an actual future.
  • Omar showing affection to the adorable baby of a dope fiend hitting him up for a free fix is the first sign that he's more than just a criminal. In season three, it's revealed that he also takes his grandmother to church once a month.
  • Herc apologizes sheepishly to Bodie's grandmother for the inconvenience after the police come blazing into her house
  • McNulty goes out of his way in the case of the thirteen "Jane Does" (unidentified dead women) and involves himself in a personal, humane level when nobody from Homicide gives a damn about them. This shows Beadie that deep down, Jimmy is a decent guy.
  • Landsman letting Bubbles off after he confesses to accidentally killing Sherrod, knowing that his guilt is a far worse punishment than anything that the legal system can dole out. When his deputy asks him about the clearance rate, he just says "fuck the clearance."
  • Mayor Royce's consideration of Hamsterdam.
  • Cutty opening a boxing club in Hamsterdam, and Avon and Slim Charles seemingly dismissively laughing off Cutty's request for some funding for the gym. It turned out they were laughing because the amount of money he was asking for was too low, and Avon donates $5,000 more than Cutty asked for.
  • The only time Chris Partlow isn't seen scowling is when he discusses his love of club music. Also with his kids.
  • Even Marlo Stanfield gets one. Despite repeatedly demonstrating that he's the coldest motherfucker in the series, he also keeps good care of a coop of pigeons, even hiring someone to take care of it.
  • Carcetti assigning random tasks to the municipal services, which scramble in a massive cleaning spree of the city to curtail the undetailed problems.
  • In the finale, McNulty taking care of the vagrant he abducted.
• Phrase Catcher: People describing McNulty as an "asshole."
• Plot Archaeology: McNulty's FBI buddy gives him the results of an unfinished investigation that showed Lt. Daniels was dirty when he was on the Narcotics task force. McNulty doesn't trust him for most of the first season, but eventually the men grow to respect each other. This is not mentioned again until the series finale, when now-Commissioner Daniels is forced to resign rather than be manipulated by the threat of revealing that very same investigation.
• Plot Armor:
  • The cops and politicians justifiedly have it easier than anyone on the street. Nobody in the game knowingly shoots a cop. Through the course of the series, the number of officers to die in the line of duty amounts to only one, and that officer was not a character until his death to friendly fire at the hands of Prez.
  • Highlighted effectively by the Barksdale crew's panic after accidentally shooting Kima. Also shows the consequences, as the police then kick in every damn door they have a lead on the very next day. Shooting a cop is VERY bad for business, and it's understood by everyone in the game that it's just not done, period.
  • Avon calls Stringer out when the latter is considering offing Senator Davis, the Clay Davis from downtown. All hell would break loose. Even the hitman of choice - Slim Charles - is reluctant to go through with it.
• Plot Parallel: In season 3, Major Colvin and Stringer Bell are seen as simultaneous attempts to reform the game from opposite sides of the law, with mirrored outcomes when they fail: "Get on with it, motherfucker", which is said by Stringer when Omar and Brother Mouzone kill him, while Colvin says it when Burrell is relieving him of duty at COMSTAT.
• Poirot Speak: Omar's boyfriend Renaldo.
• Police Are Useless: Zigzagged to say the least, the trope is played with in every possible way.
• Police Brutality: Most officers on the show at least one incident of brutality towards suspects in their custody, and this is simply considered part of the Game.
  Ellis Carver: (yelling out to find a hiding suspect) So I'm only gonna say this one time: If you march your ass out here right now, and put the bracelets on, we will not kick the living shit out of you! But if you make us go into them reeds for you, or come back out here tomorrow night, catch you on a corner, then I swear to fucking Christ we will beat you longer and harder than you beat your own dick!
  • Of course, brutality is only acceptable when it's against criminals in the game. It's not acceptable when it's inflicted on an innocent civilian, like Herc's roughing up of a black church minister due to bad information, or Colicchio attacking a school teacher who just asked him to move his car.
• Police Brutality Gambit: When Bird is arrested, Jay Landsman snaps a Polaroid of his existing injuries so he can't claim they were inflicted in custody. This does not stop Daniels, Landsman and Kima from beating him after he launches too many vulgar insults at them. While he is handcuffed to a table, no less, and Daniels ceremoniously tears up the Polaroid before they do it, just so Bird knows what's about to happen.
• Police Procedural: In this case a huge Deconstruction.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Any time a gangster refers to Omar using an anti-gay slur instead of his name, take a shot.
• Porn Stash: Sergeant Landsman is more often than not casually inmersed in his porn magazines while he retorts with his fellow detectives and subordinates in the last seasons.
• Prequel: Omar, Proposition Joe, McNulty and Bunk's backstories were shown in short vignettes before the premiere of the fifth season, to heighten speculation about who would die.
• Prison: Season two, more briefly in season three, still more briefly in seasons 4 and 5.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • In Season 1, even as he has witnesses killed to prevent prosecution of his underlings, Avon demotes D'Angelo from the towers to the Pit because he is displeased that D'Angelo intemperately shot the guy in front of the elevator in the first place, and later has Little Man killed offscreen due to him having, equally impulsively, shot Orlando's "girlfriend" who turned out to be the undercover Kima, thus bringing considerable backlash from the police to every drug dealer in the city. He also tells Wey the two of them should have just dropped the plan altogether when Orlando showed up with her as they could have set up another, cleaner hit on him later.
  • In Season 2 Stringer, running the operation while Avon is doing time, chastises Bodie for his rash decision to take a corner from some rival dealers to improve the Barksdales' desperate position, since the ensuing shootout resulted in the death of a nine-year-old boy watching from a nearby window and that will bring the police out in force.
  • Later that season The Greek and Vondas contemplate killing Frank Sobotka, not out of genuine malice but rather because police are using damning evidence of his corruption in order to turn him for the prosecution against them. Vondas convinces The Greek it would be more pragmatic just to buy Frank's loyalty (and silence) by manipulating Frank's son Ziggy's murder trial and preventing a conviction. Unfortunately, Frank had already made a deal with the FBI by then, and both The Greek and Vondas find out from a "friend" in the FBI while Frank is on his way to meet with them. After The Greek tells that him that "Your way... it won't work", Frank is shown with his throat sliced open in the beginning of the next episode. Also, it turns out that the efforts to get Ziggy out would've been for naught since Ziggy gave a pretty detailed confession that included admitting to where he purchased the gun used to murder Glekas.]]
  • In Season 3, once Stringer Bell takes over Avon Barksdale's drug empire, he negotiates with other Baltimore players to create a co-op; his period of control marking what was almost certainly a low point in violent drug-crime, since it wasn't in the best interests of any of the dealers. Stringer had also been taking economics courses, and so this pragmatic course of action was a solid application of coordinated action to avoid the "tragedy of the commons". Unfortunately for them, Marlo's refusal to join their cartel and continued use of violence also solidly illustrated the free-rider problem and "prisoner's dilemma".
  • Avon calls Stringer out when the latter is considering offing Clay Davis from downtown, who is currently sitting Senator Clay Davis. Avon says that any possibility of killing a sitting United States Senator should be dismissed out of hand as impossible. And even if they did manage to pull it off by some miracle, all hell would break loose across the entire city of Baltimore.
  • A point in one of the last scenes. Slim kills Cheese for betraying and getting Prop Joe killed and gets berated by fellow drug lord Shorty for ruining a transaction.
    Cheese: When it was my uncle, I was with my uncle. When it was Marlo, I was with him. But now nigga...
    [Boom, Headshot!]
    Shorty: What the fuck you do that for? Now we're short the nine!^note $900,000
    Slim Charles: That was for Joe.
    Shorty: This sentimental motherfucker just cost us money.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Michael Lee gives several:
  Michael: Hey, do y'all terrace niggers know that boy who go by the name "Deez"?
  Bully: Deez?
  Michael: Yeah, Deez Nuts! (punches bully in the face and steals his bike)
  • Later on:
    Other Bully: You ain't gonna stand by no rat, are you?
    Michael: No, I ain't standing with no rat (hits bully with schoolbag)
• Pretend Prejudice: This backfires in an episode when McNulty and Kima visit an out-of-town Sheriff, and McNulty makes some off-hand racist comments as he hopes it will endear him to the Sheriff, figuring him for a small-minded hick. When the Sheriff's black wife (and deputy) walks in, he quickly changes his tune.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: The white dealers the undercover Herc is making buys from in Season 2 dress and talk like the black dealers in the projects, if not more so, leaving Carver to observe to Kima that white people will steal anything from blacks.
• Pretty Little Headshots: One of the few Guns Do Not Work That Way tropes the show indulges in. Jelly's death is particularly notable, in that he clearly has an exit wound that apparently bleeds very little.
• Price on Their Head: Avon Barksdale puts a bounty of $1,000 each on Omar and his crew after they rob his stash-house. He doubles it upon learning that Omar is gay.
• Product Placement:
  • A subversion: Verizon pops up with great frequency, especially in the early seasons. This is because Verizon handled most of the payphones and inner-city telecommunications in Baltimore at the time, not because of paid consideration.
  • Likewise, a lot of the computers at police headquarters are running Windows XP, which is only because a lot of computers worldwide were at the time.
  • Season 1 features quite a bit of Heineken beers being tossed around. Dunkin' Donuts and 7-11's coffees also get a lot of visibility.
  • Under Armour apparel is featured a lot and very visibly, but then again it's a Baltimore-based firm. Given that many of the drug dealers are shown wearing other then-popular brands like Ecko and Fubu, this is probably more Truth in Television.
  • Likewise, the dealers are shown eating a bag of Utz potato chips, a brand very popular in Baltimore as it's made in nearby Hanover, Pennsylvania, out on the corner at one point
• Professional Killer: Brother Mouzone, on loan from New York to bust some heads in Baltimore. Member of the Nation of Islam.
• Properly Paranoid: Avon and Stringer go to considerable lengths to keep their organization impenetrable from the outside. They kill witnesses and informants without hesitation, require all their associates to use not only use payphones and pagers but communicate in code, order them not to discuss business while in cars, and leave as minimal a personal official paper trail as possible so they can't be connected to anything they control. Even when the police do start getting on to them, it slows them down considerably.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Various individuals of the Barksdale organization would qualify; D'Angelo pretty much treats his criminal actions as a profession.
• Putting the Band Back Together: What Daniels spends most of Season 2 doing when he's picking and choosing men for the Sobotka. He ends up eventually getting everyone from the original Barksdale detail except for Sydnor. The hardest one to get back is, of course, McNulty, due to Rawls' personal vendetta.

R

• Rabid Cop:
  • Anthony Colicchio in the fourth and fifth seasons; he becomes so exasperated by the actions of the street dealers in Baltimore that he takes out his frustrations on a middle-school teacher driving to work.
  • Eddie Walker decides that the most reasonable response to Donut's constant car thievery is to break his fingers. The boys get their revenge on him for this.
• Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits: The MCU.
  Lester: Same fuck-ups in the same shit detail, workin' out of the same shithouse kind of office. You people lack personal growth, you know that?
• Real Men Wear Pink:
  • Omar is so tough that he can walk down to the corner grocery store in a turquoise silk bathrobe and drug dealers will still toss their stashes to him out of fear.
  • McNulty pokes fun at Bunk and comments it takes guts to wear a pink in shirt on BPD... guts or a familiarity with alternative lifestyles.
• Reality Has No Soundtrack: The show has no background music beyond whatever songs the characters happen to be listening to & end of season montages.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Between David Simon's career in the Baltimore Sun's crime beat, Ed Burns' esperience on the police force, and consultants from ex-kingpin Melvin Williams and ex-stick up artist Donnie Andrews, many details of the story are based on real events that might seem fantastical to people removed from the world. Even some critics and opinion writers have criticized the show for going too far in the direction of institutional determinism to the point where it is more bleak than reality.
  • Possibly falls under Acceptable Breaks from Reality—the message "Sometimes our institutions fail us and other times they don't, depending on the individuals and circumstances involved", if more realistic, doesn't exactly make for compelling drama or social criticism.
  • Some fans complain about Brother Mouzone being unrealistic and out of place, but he, and the service he provides to Avon in season two is based on real life involvement of religious group Nation of Islam in both patrolling high-crime areas to prevent gang violence and open drug trade, as well as acting as hitmen for the underworld.
  • Omar's Super Window Jump had to be toned down because of this trope. It was inspired by a real life incident, performed by Donnie Andrews, which happened from a higher altitude and resulted in lesser injuries.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Quite a lot of them considering the cynical nature of the series, though none are without flaws.
  • Cedric Daniels is shown to be a good cop at heart and while he's at first very cautious because he is not willing to antagonize his superiors and has a somewhat corrupt past, he's protective of his subordinates and is concerned about doing real police work, unlike the rest of the brass.
  • Major Colvin is a father to his men, but he risks everything on a poorly conceived gambit that inspires some angry tirades from cops.
  • Carver learns from Daniels and Colvin's advice and becomes a reference in the neighborhood, a competent policeman close to the citizen as opposed to a perpetual antagonist to the street felon
  • Frank Sobotka does everything he can to save the docks, but essentially sells his soul to do so.
  • Carcetti seems to be one during his early career and political campaign, but his ambition causes him to go down the same roads as everyone else.
  • Prez turns into one over the course of season 4, though he'd already shown himself to be a truly incompetent and even violent cop.
  • Judge Phelan is almost always willing to help the police and to prosecute the drug dealers, shaming the obstructive chiefs if necessary, but he panics and halts his crusade when he fears he is being punished for it after he is initally excluded from an electoral ticket.
  • FBI agent Fitzhugh is a friend and major ally of McNulty and goes out of his way to help the struggling BPD. The overwhelming resources and prowess of the Bureau make him a real law enforcer working for a real agency.
• Reassigned to Antarctica:
  • McNulty, at the end of the first and third seasons (the latter being used to allow Dominic West to be Written-In Absence while filming several feature film roles).
  • Daniels, when he's assigned to Evidence Control.
  • D'Angelo is stuck managing a bunch of hoppers in the Pit after he returns home from jail.
  • Santangelo is demoted to beat cop following the end of the Season 1 Barksdale case, but ends up liking it way more than being a Homicide detective.
  • Lester Freamon, stuck in the pawn shop unit for thirteen years. And four months.
  • Alma at the end of Season 5 to the bureau in rural Carroll County after backing up Gus when he revealed to the bosses that Templeton was making up stories.
  • Colvin defies it, since he is months away from his retirement he no longer fears the usual retaliations. In the end he is forced to retire as a lieutenant, with a lower pension.
  • Agent Fitz fears that he will end in "fucking Montana" if he's ever found out providing extraofficial, alegal help to the BPD.
• Reassignment Backfire: To a certain extent the MCU was at first designed as a dumping ground for useless "humps", but the MCU turns out to be a elite unit that grows beyond mere buy-and-bust corner arrests meant to appease the higher-ups and juggle the statistics and its great diligence starts to generate problems on its own to the rigid system.
  • Daniels is initially assigned "humps" to send a message from Burrell that Daniels needs to find a charge against Barksdale and close it down fast. Some of them (such as Polk and Mahon) live up the reputation, but two of the detectives so dismissed are Lester Freamon and Roland Pryzbylewski, both of whom prove instrumental in turning the case into both a major threat to the Barksdale organization and a major headache for Burrell. Notably, even as he thinks he's hamstringing the investigation, Burrell remains clueless that this trope is in play.
    (Burrell is reassigning people from Daniel's unit)
    Burrell: What's the name of that old detective from pawnshop? And that young one, Valchek's brain-dead son-in-law?
    Daniels: Freamon, Pryzblyewski.
    Burrell: Keep 'em. Send back Sydnor and Santangelo.
    (Daniels smiles quietly)
  • Prez gets justifiably relieved of his gun and stuck running the office. Turns out his intelligence and skill at pattern-recognition mean he's much more effective as a desk jockey than he was as a beat cop.
  • Santangelo gets busted back to patrol for refusing to be Rawls' spy. When McNulty and Kima run into him in season 3, he tells them he loves his new post since he keeps the same pay and pension without having to work with people like Rawls.
  • McNulty is exiled to the marine unit. Through painstaking police work McNulty single-handedly manages to pin a waterfront related case of 13 dead women back to Rawls' homicide unit, aggravating the workload of such unit. McNulty is so low on the career ladder that the infuriated Rawls can't do anything meaningful in retaliation anymore.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Kima is assigned to a murder of a State's witness in an alley. There's quite a bit of backroom scheming because it's a mayoral election year, so she under pressure from one side to solve the case quickly and from the other to bury it. It turns out, a pair of drunken knuckleheads two blocks away were shooting at beer bottles and hit the guy by accident.
  Det Norris: So our guy's dead because a bullet misses a bleach bottle and this fuck Carcetti gets to be the mayor behind the stupidity. I fucking love this town.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Several.
  • Jimmy McNulty is the Red Oni to Bunk Moreland's Blue Oni. On occasions when he's paired with them, Lester Freamon and Kima Greggs fill the Blue Oni role as well. He's gung-ho, while they are more practical.
  • Avon Barksdale is the Red Oni to Stringer Bell's Blue Oni. Avon is a street warrior, while Stringer is a businessman.
  • Bodie Broadus is the Red Oni to Poot Carr's Blue Oni. He's always worked up about something, but Poot seems more interested in getting laid.
  • Ziggy Sobotka is the Red Oni to Nick Sobotka's Blue Oni. Ziggy's very exuberant and loud, while Nick is even-mannered.
  • Snoop Pearson is the Red Oni to Chris Partlow's Blue Oni. She's always eager to bust some caps, but Chris is methodical.
  • Barksdale's soldiers Chipper and Country. Chipper is loud and reckless while Country is cautious but has no backbone. Their inability to get along gets them killed in a failed driveby shooting.
• Reformed, but Rejected:
  • Ultimately subverted. Cutty Wise is shocked at the state of the world after his release from prison (he's held up at gunpoint by a dealer soon after getting home); most of the third season chronicles his unsuccessful attempts to find work and go straight. He eventually joins the Barksdale crew, but realizes "the game ain't in him no more" and opens a boxing gym instead, which flourishes with young trainees.
  • Potentially played straight with Michael's stepfather in Season 4, although the entire arc is shrouded in ambiguity.
  • Bubbles' sister lets him stay in her basement, but is unwilling to believe he's reformed enough to let him into the house. Subverted in the season five finale.
• Reformed Criminal: Cutty, Shorty Boyd, Poot, the flower store owner from season 2 and Bubbles.
• Revealing Cover Up: The whole season 5, ending up with a Treachery Cover-Up + local Government Conspiracy scheme on top of it
• Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony: In season 3, Senator Clay Davis and a few other public officials take part in a golden shovel ceremony to inaugurate a new construction project. This also appears in the opening credits for that season, and given how corrupt Davis really is, it's meant to show his hypocrisy.
• Riddle for the Ages: The origins of Howard "Bunny" Colvin's unusual nickname go entirely unaddressed.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Valcheck is motivated to investigate Sobotka purely out of spite for outbidding him on the donation of a stained glass window at a local church, but he's not wrong that Sobotka's union has more money than it should, and something fishy really is going on.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: A defining theme in the series. Organizations and the people within them fail to work together because of personal ambition, poor communication, outright malice or simple incompetence. People on the same "side" are constantly working at opposite ends, from the police to politicians to the pushers. This is symbolized early in the series when several cops are failing to get a desk through a doorway until they realize that the people on both ends are trying to push the desk into the opposite room.
• Right in Front of Me:
  • Day Day, the bagman and driver of Clay Davis engages in criminal talk with Daniels, who replies, "Cedric Daniels, but I mostly go by Lieutenant".
  • Late at night, Major Colvin goes for a drive through his district in uniform and driving an unmarked but obvious police car. A clueless pusher named Justin tries to sell drugs to Colvin. Colvin is so baffled he can only say "What?" Justin asks again, so Colvin turns up the volume of his police radio, and finally has to put on his peaked cap, at which point Justin finally gets it and lets Colvin go, while his friends break out in hysterical laughter.
• Road-Sign Reversal: Played for lots of drama during an undercover operation.
• Robbing the Mob Bank: Proposition Joe manipulates Omar into robbing a poker game attended by Marlo Stanfield. This kickstarts a major feud between them.
• Roman à Clef: At times, The Wire is largely a fictional account of events that occurred in real life Baltimore. Most characters are based on real people known, chronicled or researched by the authors -or based on the authors themselves- and many stories actually happened in some fashion or another.
• Running Gag:
  • Herc's issues with surveillance, including his tendency to get surveillance equipment lost or broken.
  • Valchek's surveillance van touring around the world.
  • Omar's attempts and failures to get Honey Nut Cheerios.
  • Donut's intermittent, and hilarious, appearances in various high-priced SUVs.
  • A subtle one with Stringer's obsession with non-closed doors.
  • Stringer and his underlings living in two separate worlds is played for laughs with a pattern. Every time he begins one of his lectures, the reaction shots say it all. Sometimes the mooks are just confused by the business-studies jargon he throws around. Eventually when String starts at it, they sigh and their faces show apprehension as they quickly recognize what is coming.
  • In season 2, McNulty apparently being the only person in Baltimore who knows absolutely nothing about boats, (even Bunk, who practically has a phobia about boats due to his inability to swim, corrects him on terminology at one point) and especially McNulty's inability to tie up a boat properly, which is mocked by several people you wouldn't expect to know the first thing about it.
    Jimmy: Here, Bubs, tie this to that thing, will ya?
    Bubbles: The cleat? Ain't you know nothing? [ties it off perfectly, then looks at McNulty's knot on the other cleat in disgust] What the hell is that?
    Jimmy: [Dismissive hand wave] Baltimore knot.
    Bubbles: Baltimore knot? What the hell is a Baltimore knot?
    Jimmy: I don't know, but it's never the same thing twice.
  • McNulty picking up the daily paper without buying one, even from a newspaper rack before the previous customer closes the box.
  • When a homicide detective is caught sleeping on duty, he gets his necktie cut and pinned to a board. There is a necktie mausoleum.
  • The cops at the Western District throwing their empty beer cans on the station house roof.
  • The fact that no one in the police can properly type or even spell is a recurring joke throughout the series.
    Bunk: Well, would we be police if we could?
  • Poot's inability to keep it in his pants leading to his many trips to a clinic for treatment of venereal diseases.
  • Bunk responding to the outcome of Jimmy's antics, (which generally just get Jimmy and Bunk in deeper trouble) by asking "You happy now, bitch?"
  • Littering seems to be Baltimore's most common non violent crime.
• Rustproof Blood:
  • Subverted: at first, it appears that Michael has shot Chris and Snoop, but it turns out that it was a training exercise with paintball rounds.
  • Played straight, however, with the blood of the store clerk left to frame Omar.
• Ruthless Foreign Gangsters: The Greek. While Baltimore's drug gangs rule over petty kingdoms and fall apart almost as soon as they rise, the Greek's empire is a serious international crime syndicate.