With This Ring / Tropes S to Z

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S

• Sacred Hospitality: Comes up a few times when dealing with the Olympians and those associated with them.
  • Paul realises after the fact that part of the reason why Wonder Woman didn't object to his dealings with the Sivana family was because he was their guest; remaining polite and non-hostile was to be expected according to her culture. (His reasons were actually more pragmatic.)
  • Lord Malvolio objects to the Justice League having attacked the remaining Sheeda. He accepts that they didn't realise that they were attacking his guests, but when the Flash resumes attacking them, Malvolio retaliates against the whole party.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Superboy's telepathic education basically gives him this, having patches of brilliance interspersed with gaps in "normal" knowledge. He plays chess at grand master level, but is learning social skills from scratch. He can make beef stroganoff and poached pears, in a semi-fugue state, and does them well, but has no idea how to make anything else.
• Sanity Has Advantages:
  • It's due to Paul's sanity he can function and utilize the Orange Light.
  • It's also why the Ophidian possesses him, OL can give the Ophidian needed perspective due to being able to prioritize. Unfortunately Paulphidian loses the ability once possessed, though arguably it still works to a degree- instead of becoming an all-consuming greed monster, it acts on his deep desires to improve the world.
• Sarcastic Confession: When they first met, Zeus told Doctor Helena Sandsmark, Cassie Sandsmark's mother, who he was. She thought that he was joking.
• Schizo Tech: Paul wants more commercial uses of it to improve the general tech level of the world. It infuiates him that there are things that people made decades or centuries ago that are considered pipe dreams now- he specifically mentions that T.O. Morrow made fully functioning artificial intelligences that have functioned pretty much perfectly since the 1930's, yet scientists struggle to create similar feats in 2011. Truggs holds a similar view, pointing out that Shaolin Robot is 2200 years old and is more advanced than Bozo, which was a contemporary of the Justice Society.
• Screw The Progress: The Pagan Nation espouses this, stating people should live with the land and reject technology. OL has little patience for them, with Word of God being that he has no interest in people who he considers "primitive" and reject modernity.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: A benign example; after getting rich from asteroid mining, Paul attempts to buy Alan Scott's personal lantern so he can charge his ring. He backs off when he thinks Alan will refuse.
  Alan: Colin here just made an offer on my lantern.
  Wonder Woman: An… offer?
  Alan: Half a billion dollars.
  Oh, so that's what Wonder Woman's does-not-compute face looks like. It's a lot like her normal face.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: Swamp Thing's actions during Bindings are ultimately excused because he's literally the equivalent of a god and they can't meaningfully punish him for it.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Terror Thing was trapped inside of the Stone Circle after the Ley Lines connecting it were severed. It couldn't get out unless the Stone Circle was damaged or the others were repaired. Now it’s trapped in a prototype artifact.
• Secret Test of Character: Eris tests Paul's mettle by having him cheer up Hera. He passes with flying colors when he successfully convinces her to divorce Zeus.
• Self-Insert Fic: OL is not infallible, and the existing world and characters are definitely done justice—even the ones that never appear in the show.
• Self-Mutilation Demonstration: Between his ring's healing and numbing capabilities, Paul is able to pull these several times.
  • His sales pitch to Soranik Natu, who wants to heal people, includes cutting off several fingers with a construct knife and growing them back.
    Paul: There is no greater healing tool in the universe than an orange power ring wielded by someone who genuinely wants to heal people.
  • He later force-feeds his own limbs to a Yellow Lantern from a carnivorous species, just to prove how scared he isn't.
• Separated by a Common Language:
  • Due to OL being British he faces some of these. For example, he refuses to call Kid Flash by his nickname because Wally means "Fool" and a "Rubber Wally" is a condom.
  • OL and Guy Gardner playfully have the football/soccer argument.
• Serial Homewrecker: Sonic Sally is a meta-human pornstar who takes great pleasure in breaking up marriages by seducing away their partners. This is just one troubling aspect of a person whom empathic vision confirms is a deep sociopath.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Nylor Truggs came back from the future to disrupt the Reach invasion of Earth. He ends up not being very effective, however, compared to Paul's work in building the Orange Lantern Corps to take the fight to the Reach.
• Shark Man:
  • The Nanauvians.
  • OL also encounters a villainous shape-shifting Shark Man gang called The Fearsome Fish-Eaters. They get sentenced to prison undersea, as the alternative is the Tower of London.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: Paul is this to the Justice League. According to Wonder Woman, OL had super-villain written all over him: no one is able to verify where he came from, he is literally powered by his own greed, refuses to tell anyone his name and tried to buy Alan Scott's lantern. Through a deal to get the lantern, OL works for them for a year and what she and the League find out about him? That he's very compassionate, very diplomatic and proactive. Even when given the power of a Physical God, all he does is help the League and try to make his friends happy. Oh, and make cakes, dance and sing, and turn the moon around because 'It was a shame that no one ever saw the other side.'
• Sherlock Scan: OL covers up his Male Gaze on Wonder Woman by examining her armor to figure out her capabilities. (It doesn't fool her, but she's apparently amused by the attempt, judging by how she tells Donna.)
• Ship Tease:
  • Paragon has a lot of romantic chemistry with M'gann, Superboy, Artemis and Zatanna.
  • The Renegade after breaking up with Jade, shows interest in various women, including Blackfire, Supergirl of Earth 50, and Luna (yes, that Luna).
• Shipper on Deck:
  • OL ships Batman and Catwoman. Sadly, Bruce is in a relationship with Talia al Ghul instead. Though Catwoman does agree that she (Catwoman) is better for Batman than Talia is.
  • The amazon Dyctinna really wants to see Wonder Woman find a happy relationship, and was gunning pretty hard for Diana and Big Barda, until she was informed Barda was already married to a male (and that yes, that counts).
  • Everyone supports the relationship between Philippus and Hippolyta, but the two won't act on it.
• Shoot the Dangerous Minion: Paul kills two of his Praexis Demons when they consume Hell-portals and start to either become corrupted or evolve.
• Shoot the Hostage: OL does this to a human shield in order to deal with Harm after he becomes the next Sabbac, banking on the fact that as long as he can heal the damage and avoid the brain, it would work out.
• Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?: Lampshaded by OL when he wonders what excuse M'gann and Kon will give to their school when they miss class for a mission.
• Shout-Out:
  • Throughout the fic, both Paragon and Renegade make various references to Discworld and Magic: The Gathering via quotes made by the author from the former, and using or referencing the names of cards from the latter.
  • Orange Lantern thought that Sportsmaster was Casey Jones.
  • He causes an In-Universe meme when he listens to There she is!! during the Rhelasia Peace Conference after stopping the missile attack.
  • The Renegade encounters telepath and telekine Simon Jones, "Psimon", and tells him that, "Doctor Jones, I will show you that there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away." Then removes the brain alterations that give him his powers.
  • OL somehow convinces Artemis to wear a Sailor Moon costume.
  • Firebrand's password to activate M'gann and Paul's Memory Gambit is "your father smells of elderberries."
  • The Renegade eventually gets BFSes which he sometimes uses in combat. He calls them daiklaves.
  • A straight-up quotation of Hellsing Ultimate Abridged when OL summons a shade of Ophidian against a Kobra-possessed mortal:
    Orange Lantern: What's the matter, Kobra god? You were talking yourself up a moment ago. Come on. Muster your cultists. Call up your gods. Hit us! Fight us! Give us a hug.
  • John Constantine quotes Harry Potter in his protective invocation.
  • In Themyscira, OL references Vandread when he refers to the female parents as Oma and Fama.
  • One of Ambush Bug's battle cries is "Canon for the Canon God! Scribes for the scribe throne!"
  • OL calls the Purple Ray gun "a gun that shoots life".
  • In Resurrectionists Paul says:
    Orange Lantern: Where I'm from, people die if they're killed.
  • In Retribution, the team goes to Hell and OL shapeshifts into a rotund demon:
    Orange Lantern: He wants to make stew with my guts.
    Jason Blood: That's a lot of stew. You've got-.
    Orange Lantern: Huge guts, yes yes.
  • The mantra that Ambrose Bierce chanted when bringing them there was "Piscis magnus piscis minus carte tabula arca archa." Roughly translated? "Big fish, little fish, cardboard box."
  • Kid Flash is impressed to learn that Paul captured both Melmoth, former king of the Sheeda, and one of their scout ships, which will enable Earth to more effectively counter Sheeda magic.
    Kid Flash: Dude.
    Paul: Orange Lantern Corps. When only the lamentations of their women will do.
• Show Some Leg: Z'üm does the Martian equivalent of this to distract OL long enough to blow off the habitat M'gann and the others were in during Demeanour.
• Shown Their Work: Mr. Zoat utilizes many obscure DC comics characters, as well as showing a near-encyclopedic knowledge of more popular character (and their alternate versions) to create a much wider, expansive world.
• The Shrink:
  • Black Canary acts as one to the team, but as pointed out by Paulphidian she is not actually qualified to act as one. Word of God is that she had the training but never did it professionally.
  • Guy Gardner is a prison counselor in his day job. He notably inspires Paul to act as Warrior Therapist to reform supervillains by telling his own experiences with reforming criminals.
• So Bad, It's Good: In-Universe. When the Team can't agree on a movie to watch, Paul has the ring pick one at random. They get "Super Giraffeman Seven".
  The plot was threadbare, the sets were made of plywood, the acting was nonexistent and one guy tripped on his own wires and I don't think I've laughed that hard since a crazy woman phoned me at work and said that she'd kept her youngest child's placenta in her fridge for seven months but needed to arrange for it to be stored somewhere else because her children had mistaken it for ice cream and tried to eat it. Took our lab manager twenty minutes to convince her that it would be pointless, after I'd tried for half an hour.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Georgia Sivana isn't especially heroic, but as a Mad Scientist and omnidisciplinary genius, she's confident in all manner of dangerous situations — and she specialises in social science, of all things. None of that saves her from being tongue-tied, stiff-backed, and fidgeting when she finally meets Vril Dox in person. He's equally flustered to see her.
  Paul: (internally) I think I need to get out of here before they start holding hands or something.
• Something Only They Would Say:
  • The Team is very relieved when Paul refers to himself in the first person singular after he's freed from the Ophidian.
  • Paul figures out who the Time Trapper is after the latter calls the founders of the Green Lantern Corps the "Guardians of the Galaxy".
• Soul Jar:
  • Lords of Order and Chaos have to have anchors to remain on the material plane, such as Klarion the Witch Boy being anchored to Teekl. They don't technically put their souls inside, just a connection to their souls (which are actually in the planes of order/chaos respectively), but the "destroy object to banish them" aspect works similarly.
  • In "Triumph of the Will", Paul learns that Mister Schreiber was meant to be one for Hitler.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Red Inferno and Red Torpedo didn't sacrifice their lives in destroying Red Volcano due to OL saving them. While Torpedo hates that his life is strange now and wants to go back to the Nursing Home, Inferno is trying out her new life and becomes an important secondary character.
  • Dr. T. O. Morrow becomes an Orange Lantern construct thanks to Nylor Truggs. Though whether this counts as being "spared" is up to interpretation.
  • Marie Logan survives, when in canon she was killed around the time of the New Years' attack by Queen Bee. She's in a relationship with Red Inferno (who objected to Queen Bee with fire).
  • Match didn't actually die in canon, but he was a violent and near-mindless savage due to his genetic flaws. Both the main and Renegade timelines correct this (though not in the same way or at the same time) and allow him to be a full person.
  • The Renegade finds June Robbins when she's in a nursing home, having lost her mind to Alzheimer's disease, and heals her so that he can rent Challenger Mountain from her. Some time later, Paragon mentions to the Team that Challenger Mountain is on the market, implying that without intervention, June has passed away.
• Split Timelines Plot: There are two primary timelines in the story, with their initial point of divergence being whether they wanted Alan Scott along when they meet the Young Justice (2010) team.
• The Sponsor: Due to Guy Gardner's comments about positive connections preventing criminal recidivism, Paul aims to convince supervillains to reform by helping and encouraging them to pursue more positive or beneficial goals instead of senseless villainy.
  • When Cheshire is sent to jail, OL encourages her to keep her nose clean, get a GED and helps her get transferred to a nice prison. He hires Lex Luthor's defense team to get her a reduced sentence. They eventually become an official item after he returns from founding the Orange Corps.
  • OL promises to get Abra Kadabra a magic teacher if he doesn't commit any crime for a year and encourages him with a beginner's book for explaining magic. He teaches Abra a few spells when the latter defends the prison staff in the New Year's Belle Reve breakout.
  • OL regularly visits the Terror Twins in prison and explains to them how they make more money legally as opposed to robbing banks. OL encourages Thomas to get a GED to make his resume look better.
  • OL pays Holly Robinson via an installment plan and helps her find a good job so that she would stop stealing to survive.
  • He heals Fabiao, one of Bane's henchmen, when he surrenders himself over to the police.
• Stacy's Mom: Huntress, mother of Jade and Artemis, wasn't ugly by any means, but looked like you'd expect a 49-year old woman in a wheelchair to look like. When Paul healed her spinal injuries, the ring shaved about 15 years off her age as well, turning her into one of these. She gets even hotter when she begins working out again and returns to fighting fitness, something even Paul remarks on. In the Common Sense timeline, he starts dating her.
• Starfish Aliens: The Star Conquerors. They're an incredibly dangerous species of psychic aliens who superficially resemble Earth starfish, but their names have nothing to do with their appearance; it relates to their ability to assimilate and conquer entire star systems. The five-point shape that humans identify as a star is meaningless to most aliens.
• Static Stun Gun: OL has a construct that acts like this which he calls a ShockCrown. They work by shorting out the motor cortex with very small amounts of precisely applied electricity. He also has another one which he calls a StunCrown. This one non-fatally knocks out a person.
• The Stations of the Canon:
  • To make certain events from canon possible to happen, the characters have to carry some rather heavy-handed Idiot Balls from time to time (e.g. Homefront (S01E12), Auld Acquaintance (S01E26), Belle Reve mass escape, etc).
  • Sportsmaster and Cheshire are captured by the authorities, and instead Onyx and Bane participate in the attack on the Taipei summit. In Renegade, Cheshire is allowed to escape while Sportsmaster becomes OL's first construct.
  • OL saved Firebrand and Red Torpedo. Firebrand becomes a hero and is considered for the Justice League.
  • OL deprived Klarion of his familiar by assimilating Teekl and preventing him from existing in normal reality. However, Klarion still manage to get rid of the world of adults by making the genie Bedlam as his new familiar, and thus making him more powerful than before.
  • The battle against the Injustice Gang ends with the first Black Adam, Teth Adom, regaining control of his body from Theo Adom, who then rips off one of Wotan's arms, and Poison Ivy is made powerless by Swamp Thing.
  • OL stops Black Adam, by helping free Teth Adom in the Paragon timeline or breaking the amulet in Renegade. In the Renegade timeline, Word of God says that with the amulet broken Teth Adom and Theodore Adam are duking it out for control while the body is catatonic in prison. In the Paragon timeline, Teth Adom is freed and becomes a superhero.
  • Wotan is incapacitated and under Atlantean custody, and is replaced by Dark Druid, who is implied to have a connection to the Black Light.
  • Martian Manhunter is browbeaten by Paul into stepping down as Miss Martian's telepathy teacher when his carelessness causes the disasters that was Contingency and Reordered. Henry King/Brainwave II is M'gann's replacement teacher and M'gann is implied to become more careful with her telepathy.
  • The story further deviates from canon by having no Time Skip.
• Status Quo Is God: Literally. The Mind of God was actually an entity called Boss Smiley that wanted to slow the advancements of humanity to avoid them wiping themselves out. Or so he claims.
• Stupidity-Inducing Attack: By putting together a human brain and a Thinking Cap Truggs is able to build a machine that, when active, reduces the target’s IQ by some 20–30 IQ points.
• Submersible Spaceship: The Team finds an intact and functional spaceship at the bottom of the ocean, built by the Guardians of the Universe. It's been down there for so many thousands of years that it's almost entirely out of power, but otherwise has suffered no ill effects, and once Paul recharges it a bit, it's able to fly back into space and even go to warp speed.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: OL wants this done to advance magic and bring it to the public.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Used multiple times thus far.
  • When the Injustice League attacks, Paul attempts to summon Swamp Thing to quickly take care of the problem. While Swamp Thing doesn't get there in time to stop the attack, he does show up to take away Poison Ivy's powers, rendering her normal.
  • He summons Swamp Thing again to help seal up a portal to hell under London and heal a Dryad.
  • During the training exercise, Paul summons the Ophidian, which has since become somewhat of an ace in the hole for Paul.
  • John Constantine is trying to stop Sabbac from delivering power to summon his demonic masters... so John redirects the energy to their master, The First Of The Fallen, also known as the most powerful demon in hell.
  • The Guardians originally ordered Malvolio's execution, so asking them to now order a ceasefire is a risk, but it's the only way Paul can see to stop Lantern Gardner's independent attack. He's successful in persuading Guardian Broome Bon Baris that Malvolio should be preserved For Science!.
• Superpower Lottery: Lia Briggs possessed a number of psionic powers and then became a vampire, retaining those powers and gaining a whole slew of others. The only downsides are that she is bound to the vampire who bit her, must drink blood, cannot go outside in the sun, and has an aversion to all religious or religious like icons that she can recognize as such. Paul is working on ways to get around those.
• Super Serum: Paul comes across several reliable and not-so-reliable options for human augmentation.
  • The Danner formula gives Super-Strength, Super-Toughness, a significant Healing Factor, and poison immunity, as well as slower ageing (although it hasn't been around long enough to be sure of life expectancy). Unfortunately, Paul can't use it himself, and it can normally only be administered in utero, but he uses his ring to infuse quite a few other people with it.
  • The Garrick formula gives Super-Speed, but can't be used in conjunction with the Danner formula. Due to its highly dangerous combat potential and lack of broader benefits, Paul is less interested in mass producing it.
  • Venom Buster causes massive growth, which naturally results in greater strength and toughness, but also tends to wreck the person's skin (which can't keep up with the growth, and tears apart), and has side effects like reduced physical sensation and increased aggression. The Renegade uses it, but considers it to be a cheap knockoff of real Super-Strength.
  • Compound V gives superpowers, but not the Required Secondary Powers, and is therefore left on the reject pile. It's also a bit of a Superpower Lottery.
  • Devil Jizz temporarily transforms humans into demonic forms. It's implied to have consequences for their afterlife destination (namely, it constitutes selling their souls to the demon who provided the magic), but it becomes popular as an alternative to hard drugs (and Jizzers sometimes eat other drug users and peddlers).
• Super-Soldier: The Alignment creates "War Hounds" by transferring the adaptable brains of young orphans into enhanced bodies — several metres tall, with corresponding Super-Strength and Super-Toughness — and indoctrinating them with a strict sense of duty and honour so that they'll be obedient. They often deploy via drop ships, because even if shot down, they can survive the landing, and Xalitan Xor was able to fight several Justice League members at once including Icon, Plastic Man, and the Flash.
  The standard weapon for soldiers expecting to fight Warhounds is a one point eight metre long high pressure plasma beam projector that's completely impractical for shipboard operations but is just about the only thing that isn't another Warhound they've got that can hurt them.
• Super-Speed: There are a variety of different forms of super speed around. The Garrick Formula, the Prayer that Rush Hours use, the Speed Formula, Magic Enhancement, and the potion that Max Mercury gained.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • When OL asks M'gann whether she's wearing clothes since she was able to shape-shift her shirt, M'gann tells him "YesIwearclothesofcourseIwearclothes!...I'm not naked." (Although it later turns out that she does in fact possess shapeshifting clothing; she presumably just wasn't wearing it at the time.)
    Miss Martian: I mean, you don't seem to care but some people would probably find it really strange if I wasn't wearing clothes.
    ...
    Paul: You are fully clad. The matter is resolved.
  • Paulphidian denies that the song, "Invite Them In" has any significance to them or their situation, despite the fact the ring plays the song constantly contrary to their desire.
• Symbiotic Possession:
  • Zigzagged with the Ophidian's merging with Paul. Paul gets the power of a god and the freedom to do what he wants. The Ophidian gets freedom from the Orange Lantern Central Power Battery and a needed intelligence boost. Paulphidian still acts benignly, helping the League and helping his friends. However Paul loses his ability to feel any emotion besides Greed, any understanding of empathy and most of his sanity.
  • Guy briefly fuses with Ion, the Willpower Embodiment, during the battle with The Light on New Years Eve. Unlike the Ophidian, it quickly leaves once the fight is over. They later fuse again to prevent a Titan-made tidal wave from drowning part of America.
• Sympathetic Magic: Constantine is especially fond of using it. Donna Troy was made using this; Cronus wanted a minion who was equal to the champion the gods were putting together. Donna was supposed to be raised by his cult, but a gas explosion meant that she was adopted and raised by normal parents.

T - U

• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Invoked by Paul when choosing how to deploy the Team to fight Kobra at Santa Prisca. Superboy wants to fight Mammoth himself, believing himself to be stronger. Paul points out that Miss Martian's telekinesis or his own constructs could make Mammoth's Super-Strength useless.
  Paul: Superboy, you beat rock with paper, not with more rock.
• Take Over the World: Deconstructed by Capo Al Scott/Power Ring Yellow. In Earth -14, he and the Crime Lodge made a bid on world domination but soon realized how massively difficult it would be to govern an entire planet. They only took control of New York City for less than a month, doing very poorly at civil administration, as some of them severely lack the skills or simply don't care for running the city at all.
• Take That!:
  • Renegade!OL dismisses "Young Justice" as a team name, but offers the reasoning that the "Young" part would imply inexperience, which is something that all the members of the Team rebelled against.
  • Whenever the Joker comes up, Paul is extremely dismissive, repeatedly lambasting the idea that he should be considered one of the world's greatest boogeymen when all he is amounts to a pasty-skinned serial killer in a world full of super-powered thugs of the "smash a planet in half with one temper tantrum" variety, and asserting that in any halfway sensible world, he'd have been killed off either by the law or by another crook. Most tellingly, he absolutely refuses to call him "The Joker", instead using his powers to prove he is Jack Napier and calling him exclusively by that name. In the Renegade timeline, the Renegade also permanently cripples the Joker, to cement how powerless and unimportant he is.
  • When Poison Ivy and the Swamp Thing come face to face, he gives her a short but vehement "The Reason You Suck" Speech, essentially refuting all of her belief in her status as "The Green's Champion" before unceremoniously depowering her, permanently.
  • The episode about finding the second Kryptonian Clone (Match) is about half story and half "The Reason You Suck" Speech towards Cadmus, ranging from the obvious (not knowing about a whole clone of a Kryptonian is a pretty huge misstep), to the legal (the Genomorphs are basically slaves), to the practical (the labs are strangely dirty for such a high-tech area, with people still wearing street clothes, no clean rooms, and no special protective gear).
  • When Thana mentions that the she was burned by angels for communing with the dead of the Silver City, it serves as a reminder that not all gods are as merciful as hers. Note she's talking about the Greek Gods, who have a less than stellar history with mortals.
    OL: Oh, snap! Take that, Abraham!
  • And there's this gem when he goes to the Greek version of Hell to find it mostly empty, the Dead of Ancient Greece having long since served the punishment Hades believed due to them for their crimes.
    Finite torment for sinners. Because anything else would be barbaric. Suck it, Jehovah.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: The Renegade gives a lecture in Equestria about how cutie marks aren't actually a positive thing and aren't necessary in order to have special talents, and in the process, encounters Starlight Glimmer, who wants to erase them all and make everypony equal by making them all mediocre. She's stunned by his suggestion that there are other options, like giving every talent to everypony and making them all alicorns.
• Tangled Family Tree: Cassie Sandsmark is the natural daughter of Helena Sandsmark and Zeus. Hippolyta is the daughter of Ares, making Diana Ares' granddaughter and Zeus' great-granddaughter. Since Ares' is Cassie's half-brother, this makes Cassie Diana's great-aunt.
• Tankard Of Moose Urine: Guy's terrible beer is terrible. According to Paulphidian's chemical analysis, it literally almost tastes like horse urine.
• Taught by Experience: The reason that OL managed to beat the First Citadelian is because unlike him, OL knew that feeling any sort of emotion other than Avarice would cut the power to the ring. So he riled him up until he felt anger and then blasted him.
• Team Mercy vs. Team Murder: When the Renegade and Artemis are flung into the distant future and end up taking over the Sheeda civilisation, they compare notes on how they each governed the factions that they were leading. Artemis went for painstaking diplomacy, which involved dealing with lots of setbacks due to backstabbing and disobedience, while the Renegade simply went full conquest-mode, capturing city after city and crushing all obstacles. Ultimately, neither can be sure which approach was better.
  Renegade: I just killed anyone who disobeyed me. Saved a lot of time...
  Artemis: I wanna say that's bad... But I know how many people died every time one of the Highborn on my side decided to act up.
  Renegade: That's politics at the national level. People die whatever you do. I like the way I do things but I can't tell you I'm objectively right. Your way might have been better.
  Artemis: Or it might not have worked.
  Renegade: And you won't ever know for sure because you can't do both.
• Technically Naked Shapeshifter: After Paul sees Miss Martian shapeshift her shirt, he curiously asks her if she's actually wearing clothing, or just imitating it. Her embarrassed Suspiciously Specific Denial ("YesIwearclothesofcourseIwearclothes!") suggests that this trope is in effect. He later learns that she does own shapeshifting clothing, but probably wasn't wearing it at the time.
• Technician Versus Performer: Tula (Technician) vs John Constantine (Performer). Atlantean magic requires a lot of prior study and Tula trained hard to attain her skill, but John is more reliant on the power of intention and clever use of the little power he does have.
• Temporal Mutability:
  • When Paul meets the Time Trapper, the universe changes from one that has a Rubber-Band History to branching timelines.
  • Dana Dearden tells Paul that she's come back from the future to "fix" history and put it back on the proper track. He tells her that they already took care of it.
• Tempting Fate:
  • In Contingency, OL expresses his concerns to Martian Manhunter about the safeness of the training simulation and his fear of accidentally using constructs while sleeping. Manhunter tells him that his fears are unnecessary and the simulation is perfectly safe...yeah, about that...
  • Also in Contingency OL spends the first half of the training scenario complaining of the plot holes in said scenario. The death of the League? He complains that the death of three Green Lanterns would have at least had Oa investigating. OL is asked to take the scenario more seriously.
• That Came Out Wrong: Paul has a tendency of not thinking how his words could be interpreted. For example, after terrifying Holly, she threatens to destroy the painting she stole to get him him to back off. He tells her what are her chances whether or not she succeeds, and promises to keep quiet and give her a lot of money if she does something for him. Holly thinks that he's blackmailing her into sex. The implication horrifies Paul, since that was the opposite of his intention. He was trying to sponsor her out of a life of crime.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry:
  • A rare justified case. Since OL needs to feel sufficient Avarice to perform tasks, and sometimes he doesn't care enough about certain targets, he sometimes resorts to this to try to "Convince" himself.
  • After achieving Avarice Enlightenment, Paul no longer has to do this as enlightenment makes him aware of his desires all the time. However, those who aren't enlightened still need to do this.
• That Was Not a Dream:
  • In Clueless, an amnesiac OL believes he's having a lucid dream when he is stuck in the Bialyan desert with M'gann. So he proceeds to act on dream logic and make a huge, indestructible nude statue of himself, only to find out afterwards that it wasn't a dream.
  • And when it says "Indestructible", it means it; the thing is massively tall, has a foundation that goes over a mile underground, and is harder than diamond. Eventually, it's revealed that the only way that Bialya could deal with it was to throw a massive tarp over the thing.
• There Are No Global Consequences: Averted. The events of Displaced have massive consequences for the story, as the world learns that magic is real and is a legitimate threat. The event is treated as global tragedy and genocide on a massive scale with all the world powers scrambling to do something about it. In the Paragon timeline, there are calls to action to try to prevent magical threats and Atlantis is increasingly recognized by the international community, being the the only country known to have magic. In the Renegade timeline, the conspirators are executed by the Chinese government.
• There Are No Therapists:
  • Mostly played straight, although the Renegade has some off-screen anger management classes.
  • An interesting aversion with Paul's classes for Orange Lanterns, which sometimes verge on therapy, since they emphasize self-knowledge and an integrated personality.
• There Can Be Only One: The Renegade's impersonation of Grayven eventually brings him into conflict with the original Grayven of universe 16. The Renegade would be content to co-exist, but Grayven 16 is not so tolerant. They eventually fuse together under the influence of the orange light (a desperate tactic by the Renegade when losing their fight), resulting in both sets of memories but the Renegade's personality.
• These Hands Have Killed: OL is horrified when he believes that he killed Clayface (he baked him alive to stop him from attacking). As he becomes more accustomed to combat, however, and especially post-Enlightenment, this is inverted; although he still prefers diplomacy, he becomes notable for his willingness to kill when necessary to achieve his goals.
• This Is Gonna Suck: OL's reaction when he has to fight Klarion after he discovered that he has a crippling weakness to magic. He tries keeping his hopes up by thinking his constructs might help. Only for Kent Nelson to immediately confirm that they won't.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill:
  • Orange Lantern gets a lot of flak from Hal Jordan from killing Ra's, as up until that point, no one knew that Power Rings could be used to kill.
  • The Renegade calls out the heroes on this mentality multiple times, pointing out that the original Justice Society participated in World War II, where yes, they did kill people. And he doesn't make distinction between killing in a war versus killing outside of a war.
• Threesome Subtext: In Clueless an amnesiac OL mentions wanting "Kryptonian beef with Martian greens". When Kon and M'gann later get together, OL mentions before catching himself that them dating makes them more attractive.
• Three-Way Sex: Karon and Holly offer Paul the chance for a three-way in Spring in Blume. He ultimately turns the offer down since there were too many unpredictable emotional variables and it could mess with Holly's rehabilitation.
• Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Prince Ragnar resents Paul's assertion that Ragnar's mostly self-taught usage of a power ring has room for improvement, and promptly challenges Paul to a duel to prove who knows best how to use a ring — with both of Paul's rings as stakes. Paul agrees, with his own condition being that Ragnar will join the Corps as a rookie if Paul wins.
• Time Dissonance: Often noticeable when fighting against powerful entities — even in an accelerated mind state Paul sometimes has to strain to keep up with his opponents.
• Time Travel for Fun and Profit: Truggs traveled to the past so he could exploit his future knowledge to make a name for himself. And then it's averted when it's revealed that he came back to avert the Bad Future that has Earth being little more than a Thanagarian Protectorate.
• To Hell and Back: Several times.
  • In "Carpe Tempus", Paul needs to go to Tartarus and have an audience with Hades to get evidence for a rehabilitation project he's working on. Queen Hippolyta and Philippus are leery of it, not because they don't think he can get there and back, but because he tends to destabilize the pantheon when he talks to the different goddesses. Like with Hera....
  • Paul later visits the monotheistic hell, in Episode 73: Retribution. It goes badly; Satanus sets a trap to have Paul's soul infused with so much demonic magic that it alters his outlook and makes him want to stay there.
  • And there are a couple of short visits in Episode 66: Resurrectionists (where he's ambushed by a demon and pulled through a portal), and Episode 77: Clarion Call (where he travels there seeking protection from the Silver City).
• Tomato in the Mirror:
  • This ensues with Red Inferno and Red Torpedo. The former accepts herself as a robot and still goes by her name as Danette Reilly, while the latter tries to resume his human life of James Lockhart to the point of wanting to remove his water control system.
  • OL discovers that James Harper is one, directly referring to the term. He even explains the term to James later.
    Paul: You're a tomato. You're a tomato. Of course, why not?
• Toon Physics: Some of Klarion's constructs operate on this, only able to be harmed by similar effects.
• Training from Hell: OL training to use his power ring under Guy Gardner.
  Guy Gardner: Oh, that's it! On Saturday, we're doin' orbital bombardment practice!
  • The Renegade has this with his anti-psychic training with Manchester Black.
• Training the Gift of Magic: Atlanteans and Zatanna are naturally magical, but they need training to properly utilize it.
• Transferable Memory:
  • J'aarkn offers some of his memories to M'gann. M'gann is hesitant to take him up on it, but he assures her that he didn't include any of his adult film work.
  • The g-gnomes can copy knowledge from one person to another, including properly integrating it as if it were naturally learned.
• Undead Tax Exemption: The trope is played back and forth.
  • OL doesn't have any documentation due to the fact he comes from another dimension. The League try to provide him with some when they attempt to enroll him in high school, but he refuses and makes a point of erasing all traces of it. He is noted to not even have a passport.
  • OL finally averts this when he's given Themysciran citizenship and a diplomatic passport.
  • Red Tornado and Firebrand don't have any citizenship due to being robots and not considered people to the U.S. government despite the both of them living in the U.S. for years.
  • J'aarkn's co-worker points out that M'gann is technically an illegal immigrant that's only there due to her connections to Manhunter.
  • J'onn J'aarkn's arc is an aversion of this: the Department of Homeland Security is trying to deport him back to Mars and needs the help of the Team to make it stick.
• Underworld River: The river Lethe is used by Hades to remove the memories of souls who choose reincarnation. However, during one of Paul's visits to Erebos, he finds Hecate and Eris hosting a pool party to celebrate finding a way to purify the water — with the byproduct being a potent mind-wipe residue.
• The Unfettered: Post-Enlightenment, Paul is always aware of his goals, and how they relate to each other. This doesn't precisely make him a sociopath, because there are many people whom he cares about, but he tends to brush aside social norms that don't suit him, and acts in a way that others see as extreme; he's capable of planning and committing genocide without regret if he believes the situation calls for it.
  Paul: (asked about when he genocided an Evil Empire) I don't think much about them at all. I'd rather not have to deal with situations like that, but I'd rather deal with it than have it not dealt with.
• Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway: OL takes Sephtian's untested prototype containment vessel for a way to contain Siskin without Nabu escalating the situation.
• The Unmasqued World:
  • Despite the fact that places like Atlantis and heroes like Doctor Fate were around, very few people believed in magic. Then Klarion became responsible for hundreds of thousands of death and they couldn't ignore it.
  • OL reveals to the world that the afterlife and gods are very real in an interview with Cat Grant during Black Reign, citing how Teth Adom was resurrected from the dead and given his power. This is notable after Wonder Woman (made from Olympian Gods) had been around for ages and a literal Hell on Earth scenario.
• Unobtainium: Radion is a metamaterial known only to New Gods and Qwardians.
• Unwanted Assistance: In-Universe, this is everyone's reaction to Paulphidian attempting to help them by giving them stuff. The various things Paulphidian did in the name of helping:
  • Turn the moon around so people could see the dark side of it.
  • Make a humongous cake for the people of New York.
  • Give the Danner Formula to Robin and Artemis.
  • Take down the League of Shadows by scanning the entirety of Earth in an attempt to give Kon ninjas... by the means of creating enough floating eyeballs to literally see all of Earth.
  • Transmute a suit of Nth metal armor, which nearly took out Mount Justice.
  • Give storage cases of fruits and vegetables to the Amazons. Though this one was actually appreciated, since he gave them things that they didn't have on the island. Several botanists on the island are planning on how to incorporate bananas into the crops.
• Unwinnable Training Simulation: In the story's version of Failsafe, the Renegade and Paul have very different reactions to it:
  • The Renegade immediately figures out something was wrong when his Willing Suspension of Disbelief broke over Robin and Kid Flash's emotional response to Artemis' death and breaks out the scenario.
  • Paul believed the training scenario to real and was truly seeing his friends die in front of him. He becomes so desperate to turn the situation around that he resorts to drastic methods to win and ultimate wins by simply overwhelming the scenario.

V - Z

• Varying Competency Alibi: The team is inclined to suspect Lex Luthor of being responsible for many of the situations that they encounter, like the mutated guard animals in India, but Paul repeatedly opposes the idea, because he thinks Lex would have been cleverer about things like that, e.g. he wouldn't have allowed himself to be so easily connected to the facility.
• Vertical Power Play: In Paul's audience with Zeus, who can essentially take on any form he wants, Paul notices that all the furniture in the room is sized for Zeus' current nine-foot-tall form. Paul sees it as just more evidence of pettiness, though.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Paulphidian breaks down when Father Mattias deconstructs their motives for releasing the Ophidian and merging with it. They recollect themselves when Father Mattias makes the mistake of telling the Embodiment of Avarice, "that they don't want this."
  • Paulphidian has a major one, breaking down in a gibbering mess when the Green Lanterns refuse to give in to their desires and refuse its help. They futilely try to feel something by hugging the Star Sapphire in order to feel the emotions their friends want them to have.
• Villainous BSoD: After transformation into a love elemental, Chantinelle becomes horrified of her past deeds.
• Villains Act, Heroes React:
  • One of Orange Lantern's biggest complaints about the Justice League is that they're not proactive when it comes to threats or innovation. Often they just wait for the threat to make itself known and let a lot of Schizo Tech collect dust in warehouses. OL seeks to avert this, often by disabling the supervillain permanently, but also by stimulating innovation, reverse-engineering supervillain technology, and increasing awareness of other resources for the world (such as magic, or that there are whole nations that don't receive nearly the attention they want or deserve).
  • Paul also does this by reforming super-villains that have a chance or least could be persuaded into reforming.
  • This is Truggs' reasoning for becoming and siding with supervillains. Although he admits that Paul breaks this paradigm.
    Truggs: Why a supervillain? Why didn't I go see Wayne or Kord, someone like that? Simple. Villains act. Heroes, those paragons of stasis, react. I wanna change the world, change history. You think they'd.. let me? Or try an' send me back to my crummy future? No, I needed ruthless, determined, aggressive. I needed people who'd plow through every law and social convention to get what they want.
• Villain with Good Publicity:
  • Prince Orm was this as he often served as Regent for his brother, Aquaman while the latter was on the surface world. So it was extremely devastating for Atlantis to find out that he's Ocean Master, a racist extremist supervillain, when he's arrested by the Team.
  • Paul and Zatanna consider Nabu to be this — yes, he's a member of the Justice League, but he's technically a lich who has stolen Giovanni's body and is using it like a puppet.
  • It's surprisingly difficult to prove the Reach's villainy to those who don't already believe it, because they employ long-term plans and Mind Control rather than direct violent invasions. That doesn't stop them from exterminating one civilisation after another, breaking up their bodies for parts, radically altering their DNA to make them near-mindless slaves, or just wiping them out and colonizing their worlds, though; after all, dead men tell no tales...
    Negotiator: We are a peaceful.. trading empire. We're trying to help this world advance. To meet its full potential.
    Operative Phil: Just like all of the other places you wiped out.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Guy Gardner and OL often trade barbs when training, and often criticize the other's limitations when it comes to Power Ring usage, but they eventually form a friendly rapport with each other, and show concern for each other's well being. This leads to Guy being the only active Green Lantern on Earth that OL actually gets along with.
• Vocal Minority: In-Universe. During the candidate selection meeting for the Justice League, the majority were in favor of voting Paul into the league. However, admittance requires a unanimous vote, and Nabu and Lantern Jordan dissent. It's one reason that Paul recommends that their recruitment policy needs to be changed; if just one person out of a hundred says no, then the person is gone, no matter how useful they would be.
• Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World:
  • Averted. Donna Troy gives up superheroing for a year to focus on her senior year at high school.
  • Defied by OL. he refuses to go to school, since he already went to school when he was younger (longer ago than anyone realises).
  • Averted by the Green Lanterns. Since being a Lantern is a full time job, they quit whatever job they had before they were recruited.
• Weapon of X-Slaying: The Ace of Winchesters for slaying demons, The Sword of the Fallen for killing even god-tier entities, The Ace of Chaos to disrupt Order-aligned magic, and, after the Earth is blockaded by Heaven, the anti-angel "Hellblazer".
• Weather-Control Machine: Ted Kord is working with Io, Dubbilex, and Sephtian to make weather control drones. They make a pretty good showing against Oceanus.
• Wham Episode:
  • For the Paragon timeline, Paragon gets so desperate to save his friends from the Alien Invasion that he frees the Ophidian and Fusion Dances with it to become the Ophidian's Host.
  • For both timelines, the episode Displaced where Klarion's "distraction" turns out to be genocide.
  • For the Renegade timeline, when the Renegade and the Team are investigating the downed plane near the end of the first season, it's not an ambush by the Light — it's an ambush by Apokolips. And one of Darkseid's servants has come to Earth to investigate why, exactly, "Grayven" is going against his Father's wishes...
  • Falling Actions in the Paragon timeline, which is when Orange Lantern begins his plan to get rid of Nabu.
  • Later on in the Paragon timeline, Paul meets the person who created the Lantern ring that he gained at first: Hinon Hee Hannanan. She lost her connection to the Orange Light in the process and Paul restores her.
  • Further on in the Paragon timeline, Paul ends up getting the Archangel of War sent after him with flocks of angels descending onto those he knows. He has to side with the forces of Hell just to have a fighting chance, only for him to get his head cut off in the end and his soul dragged up to Heaven.
• Wham Line:
  • When OL learns just why Abra Kadabra, who is from the future, was frightened nearly to death upon meeting him: ring-users taking everyone over in the future...
    Orange Lantern: Yes, Black Lanterns can be a bit of a handful, can't they?
    Abra Kadabra: Black? No, not Black. Orange.
  • There is another in the episode, Preparations.
    Detective Bullock: Where were you last Thursday night?
    Orange Lantern: What sort of time?
    Detective Montoya: Midnight.
    Orange Lantern: Is this about the gun? Because I got a receipt-
    Detective Bullock: No, it's about the murder of Jennifer Gordon-Hewitt!
  • And then there's THIS little line from when Paul summons his ring back...
    Larfleeze: No! You can't have them! They're mine! My shinies! His head swings left and right. Find him! All of you, go! Find him!
• "What Do They Fear?" Episode: Essentially the second-half of Episode 38: Hullevow.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In-Universe, Paul doesn't want Nabu to capture Siskin/Terror Thing because no one knows what happened to Onomatopoeia, Blackbriar Thorn, Wotan and Felix Faust after Nabu took them.
• What If?: The Renegade sections. In them, OL takes choices that, normally, in the main fic he would have never made.
  • Such as turning Sportsmaster into a construct and using the Venom-Blockbuster on himself.
  • In the Paragon timeline, OL asked for Alan Scott to come with him for his introduction onto the Team and they have a much closer relationship. Meanwhile in the Renegade timeline, OL didn't ask and he and Alan have a distant relationship. Alan later dies in the Renegade timeline because he wasn't warned to carefully ration his ring charge, which was keeping him healthy.
  • Another difference is OL's reaction to M'gann's telepathy. The Renegade distrusts telepathy in general and learns how to block her while Paul is the first to accept M'gann's telepathy and sells the team on its usefulness in team cohesiveness.
  • There's a major one in Episode 16: Contingency: in the Renegade section, Artemis died first as in canon. Renegade!OL mourns her death but finds it uncharacteristic for Robin and Kid Flash to be so distraught over her when they weren't that close and didn't show any emotion over their mentors' deaths. Renegade figures out that it was a simulation and uses his anti-psychic training to break the simulation. In the Paragon section, Robin died first and OL and the team are lured further and further into the scenario. To the point that Paul uses desperate measures to save his friends and the remaining survivors.
  • The Forever People never show up for Sphere in the Paragon timeline because Paulphidian was running rampant. And considering their reaction to the Renegade's use of the orange light (they think he's Apokoliptian), their reaction to sensing an unleashed Avarice Elemental is (quite properly) to turn around and run away.
    • Given what's seen in the canon episode, and combining it with their admission they fled from orange light, what happens next is obvious- they picked a fight with people using Apokoliptian Technology, but without Superboy, were horribly defeated, captured, and brought to Apokolips.
  • Aberrance shows a major one on the mission the Team takes. In the Renegade timeline, the Renegade is able to win brownie points with Dr. Cranius, leading to the doctor's cooperation and the success of the mission. Paul is unable to do this, leading to numerous deaths and injuries because Cranius denied any form of aid the Team offered.
  • Due to the Renegade being able to infiltrate the Light, he eventually helps kill almost all of its members.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • Paul attempts to prevent his team-mates from killing Mister Twister, since he appears to have comparable intelligence to a human. This becomes moot when Mister Twister self-destructs.
  • He similarly stops Black Canary from killing the Duke of Oil, another sapient robot. This time, the robot survives and goes to court.
    Paul: Before you say anything: Red Tornado. Are we killing people now?
  • Robot-Man, a man whose only human component is his brain, was denied his humanity in a Supreme Court ruling, meaning all robots, regardless of how intelligent they are, are not legally people. Which is a problem to people like Red Tornado or Firebrand.
  • Notably, the female Cadmus scientist treats Superboy's liberation as if he were an escaped experiment — to Superboy's face. Superboy is not impressed.
  • The G-Gnomes, despite being a telepathic and intelligent species, are treated as no better than animals by Cadmus. Dubbilex can't defend them because Cadmus owns them and he has no one to turn to. Paul attempts to fix this by making a deal with Lex Luthor: OL will help him salvage Cadmus in exchange for Lex fighting for the rights of the Genomorphs, which would likely overturn the Supreme Court Ruling.
  • The Justice League's policy allows for the killing of Elementals, Demons, and presumably The Undead.
  • By the time of Zigzag, the US has given rights to beings that can pass a Turing Test, including Demons, Elementals, AIs, Robots, and so on. While OL pushed for the policy, he occasionally moans that he wishes he had planned it out better, as it makes dealing with demons much more complicated.
• What Would X Do?: OL asks himself what would John Constantine do when he has to confront Klarion while injured. The answer was take away Klarion's source of power, i.e. Teekl.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • OL calls out Hal Jordan for never giving Abin Sur's family any condolences for his death.
  • Kon is furious when he finds out that OL knew that Lex Luthor was his 'father' the whole time and never told him.
  • Multiple members of the Team give OL this when he kinda acts like a jackass to Artemis.
  • OL makes sure that Martian Manhunter realizes that the events of Contingency and Reordered were all his fault due to his carelessness and neglect of his student's needs.
  • OL and Zatanna are horrified that the Justice League accept Nabu despite him enslaving and kidnapping Giovanni Zatara and doing nothing to help him.
• Why Did It Have to be Orange Lantern: Abra Kadabra starts gibbering in sheer terror when OL attempts to interrogate him. In Kadabra's future, Orange Lanterns are considered extremely bad news to say the least.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?:
  • Discussed in Titanfall that the Light had all the heroes and side-kicks' identities and could easily just kill them in their sleep. Paul thinks that they just don't want to escalate things while Zatanna believes that Can't Kill You, Still Need You is in effect and they need them for something.
  • Apparently, the reason that some supervillains can't be executed is that there are laws on the books preventing the execution of mentally unstable individuals. OL is trying to get these laws changed to permanently deal with people like the Joker.
• Wiki Walk: Mentioned as "TV Tropes disease", which caused the SI to lose two hours on the internet.
• Wizards Live Longer: Danner formula enhanciles can live a really long time. To the point that it's odd if one starts to grey when they hit 90 — although the formula hasn't been in use long enough for anyone to know what their life expectancy actually is.
• Worf Had the Flu:
  • When Red Torpedo and Red Inferno hold the team hostage, OL couldn't do anything to break out because they deliberately attacked when he had taken off his ring (to use the bathroom).
  • In his second fight with Klarion, OL had to take off his ring because Klarion put a powder on it to draw power from the ring to himself. So he couldn't save Zatara from Nabu.
• Workaholic: Even when he tries to take a holiday, Paul has a hard time stepping back from trying to uplift civilisations wherever he goes. Fairly well justified by the fact that the very nature of his ring means his work has to be composed of things that he enjoys and wants to do.
  Paul: I.. know. Everywhere we go, I try working. Um. I just-. It's a habit I've gotten into, and basically everywhere I've gone is a place where I've had work to do. I don't really… I don't really know other places.
  Jade: You like being a superhero.
  Paul: I like doing what I do.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit:
  • As per canon, Miss Martian pretends to be Red Tornado in order to lure Mister Twister closer.
  • During the investigation of Jennifer Gordon-Hewitt's murder, Orange Lantern comes across Bane and his thugs holding a man hostage. Orange Lantern goes in to rescue the man, only for the man to use a telepathic disruptor on him and turn out be the man that hired Bane.
• Wound That Will Not Heal:
  • Klarion's chaos magic continued to inflict damage on Paul’s body because Paul had zero natural resistance to magic at the time. It goes away after Cornwall Boy thoroughly cleans the lingering magic.
  • Captain Marvel’s abilities could not counteract and heal his wounds because they were inflicted by the Twin Blade.
• Wretched Hive: Gotham used to be this. Thanks to the efforts of Batman and his allies, Gotham is, as Jade puts it in Date Night, almost a normal city.
  • Mr Zoat later confirms that the crime rate has gone way down ever since Batman became active.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • OL initially refuses to go near a Zeta Beam fearing being Telefragged or ending up in the wrong place.
  • He later is attacked by a man (Sportsmaster) wearing a hockey mask and wielding a javelin, and thinks it must be Casey Jones. When it turns out that the Ninja Turtles are fiction on Earth 16 as well, he has a hard time explaining the mix-up to his teammates.
  • Uns Al-Wujud steals Alan's power ring and then tries to command the djinn of the ring to smite him. Alan is momentarily baffled.
    Why does he think-? Middle East, right.
• The Wrongful Heir to the Throne: King Orin thinks that Ptra is the rightful heir to Venturia; she's not been back to the city since she was abducted as a small child, and is thus not really prepared to rule it, but she's Queen Clea's only child — and she's likely to support Orin's goal of centralising authority in Poseidonis. He's perturbed to learn that the Venturian crown is only hereditary by custom, and that Queen Clea, before her death, nominated another successor, who is selfless and competent but will continue her isolationist policies.
• Xanatos Gambit: Paul offers to help Blaze become an angel, despite knowing that the process is highly experimental and could kill her. As he sees it, she's been preying on humanity for millennia and killing her — which would mean learning a lot about demon magic in the process — is a decent second best option.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: After Renegade!OL's become disillusioned with the idea that the Justice League could ever help at all, he's very tempted to work alongside the Light instead. Then M'gann comes along, and tells him that he has the power to help people without relying on the aid of unrepentant murderers.
  Renegade: Well... that's me told.
• You Can't Go Home Again: OL has currently no way to get back to his home dimension and his hometown does not exist in the DC universe.
• You Cloned Hitler!: The premise of Triumph of the Will. Wolf Krieger tried to clone Hitler 94 times until he finally succeeded. However, the sole surviving clone was raised by loving parents and became a well adjusted man (Helmut Schreiber) who married a black woman and had a family. Although Krieger is not so pleased by the results, he sees the clone as the means of bringing back Hitler's broken soul from Hell and then putting that soul inside the clone to create a god that embodies the ideal of Aryan fascism.
• You Didn't Ask: The Time Trapper is annoyed that Paul didn't mention his contact with Ambush Bug up front, but Paul points out that Time Trapper is the one with the expertise.
  Paul: You came to me, having met me before. You didn't ask. I don't know how this works.
• Your Head A-Splode: How several people are killed by the enemy speedster in Zigzag.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Ghost Fox Killer, one of the Chinese Superfunctionaries can take the souls of evil to use for herself. She kills Bane like this, and it's strongly hinted that she did the same to those responsible for Roanoke in Renegade timeline.
• Young Future Famous People: While web searching, OL found out that there are some very young people who have yet to become either heroes or villains. For example: Victor Stone is eleven and is completely organic. Lonnie Machin is also eleven, but is already fighting the forum wars as 'moneyspider'.
• Younger Than They Look: Many examples.
  • Superboy and his brother are a few months old, justified as they are clones.
  • Red Inferno/Dannette Reily was three years old when she "died" or she's technically a few months old if one considers reactivation her rebirth.
  • Discussed when Paul doesn't go to the World of Adults. Kid Flash initially believes that Paul was lying about his age and is actually a teenager.
  • Danner Formula enhanciles are this incarnate- it's considered strange if they start going grey before they're in their nineties.

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