History CobraKai / TropesIToR

* QuantityVsQuality: What Season 5 boils down to. [[spoiler:With Silver's influence, Cobra Kai has expanded all across the Valley, giving them an army of students. However, the three [[TheAce aces]] of the show, Miguel, Robby, and Hawk, are all in Miyagi-Fang at this point and no one in Cobra Kai save Kenny registers as more than a mild inconvenience to any of them in a straight fight, and even with Kenny's rapid growth, he's hopelessly outclassed by the three if they ever decide to take the fight seriously. While Cobra Kai has Tory, [[spoiler:she's really TheMole so it's basically InNameOnly (and she avoids fighting Miyagi-Fang at all during the season when she can avoid it)]]. However, the show makes it clear that despite the drastic ability gap, the sheer numbers of Cobra Kai make it nearly impossible for Miyagi-Fang to win a straight fight with them and they can only fight on an axis where CK is forced into 1v1s (eg. in a Tournament) or in a position where Miyagi-Fang only needs to hold out to win.

*** Season 5: [[spoiler:Miguel and Robby fight it out, "like men" to use Johnny's words. The sheer intensity of the situation is enough for both boys to make peace with each other. Later, Daniel gets demolished by Silver at Stingray's apartment -- which puts him in a HeroicBSOD.]]

* LoveTriangle: The Miguel/Sam/Robby triangle is a repeat of the Daniel/Ali/Johnny triangle. It gets more complicated when Miguel dates with Tory creating a love square because Miguel and Sam still have feelings for each other. So Sam/Miguel/Tory as a lesser extent. Arguably, when the triangle was Miguel/Sam/Kyler in Season 1, it was also a repeat of the Daniel/Ali/Johnny triangle given their social statuses.

** Amanda is much the same way. She initially writes off the bullying and karate as kids doing kid stuff, but after the school brawl and the injuries inflicted on Sam by Tory, she certainly supports Tory getting expelled...and once the dust settles, is not content with Tory getting a slap on the wrist, and pissed that Sam got suspended for defending herself. After a follow-up brawl in which Demetri's arm gets broken and Sam breaks down in tears, she goes marching into Cobra Kai to give Kreese a piece of her mind and slaps him, enough so to give him a justification to get a restraining order against her by describing the confrontation with {{exact words}}.

** At the end of Season 4, this happens to [[spoiler:Tory. Sure she wins the All-Valley Tournament over Sam, but thanks to Amanda helping her, she doesn't feel as satisfied with beating Sam as she would have before. She then overhears that Terry Silver bribed the judge to be biased in her favor and realizes she ''should'' have lost and the judge not seeing that foot go out of bounds wasn't just luck. Furthermore, John Kreese, the ''one'' person in the world she's actually willing to trust and rely on, gets sent to prison, meaning she once again has nobody to look up to.]]

* MoralDisambiguation: DoubleSubverted. At first, the series is very much based on GreyAndGrayMorality. Johnny has some {{Jerkass}} traits and gives his students the same Cobra Kai training he had, but he's doing it so that they'll become more confident, assertive, and able to fight back against anyone who bullies them. Daniel is understandably wary of the rebirth of Cobra Kai, but he grabs the JerkassBall and goes out of his way to antagonize Johnny even though Johnny couldn't care less about his former rival. By the end of the first season, the series {{Reconstruct|ion}}s the BlackAndWhiteMorality from the first ''Film/TheKarateKid'' film. While Daniel's teachings turn Robby into a better person who's willing to let go of his anger towards his father, Johnny's only end up leading his students into the very path that ruined his life. Although Season 2 generally has Miyagi-Do as the good side and Cobra Kai as the bad side, Sam and Robby have their share of {{Jerkass}} moments while Miguel and Aisha remain good people, and the season ends with Robby losing his temper and putting Miguel in the hospital. The following seasons become a fight between TheGoodTheBadAndTheEvil, with Johnny and Daniel eventually joining forces to stop the morally black Kreese. However, Season 4 still ends up with some grey areas, as one of Cobra Kai's students is Kenny, a nice kid who is being bullied by Daniel's own son, Robby remains noble despite having joined Cobra Kai, Sam starts to become the instigator in her rivalry with Tory, and Hawk, Bert and Nathaniel act like total jerks to Kenny just for being on the wrong side of a dojo rivalry he didn't even know about. Season 5 is mostly black and white, with Kenny turning completely to the dark side and most of the good characters ending up in the Miyagi-Fang alliance, though the morality is still slightly complicated by Tory's attempts to redeem herself while assisting [[EvilVersusEvil Kreese's revenge mission against Silver]], and Devon joining Cobra Kai out of convenience while [[NominalVillain not doing anything particularly villainous]].
* MoralityPet: Despite initially seeming like he only cared for the sake of gaining UndyingLoyalty, Season 4 shows that Kreese legitimately cares for Tory, going out of his way to check on her when her mood is off and threatening anyone that seeks to harm her. In the end [[spoiler:it's seeing Tory struggling with not wanting to cheat that has Kreese actually back off and allow her to fight as she wishes.]]

** Sam's introduction to Tory comes when the latter approaches her (and Aisha) at the country club with a stolen bottle of liquor (much to Sam's dismay). Later, when Amanda's wallet goes missing, Sam is quick to accuse Tory of stealing ''that'', as well. Tory is pissed off by the accusation both because her personal experiences (as revealed in later episodes) make getting accused of theft a sore subject for her, and because the wallet was actually stolen by Robby's delinquent ex-friends.

** Ironically enough in Season 4 [[spoiler:despite Silver being up to his old tricks and ordering Tory to take some cheap shot elbows to stay ahead, ''Kreese'' is the one to ultimately reassure her that she doesn't need to cheat and can fight how she wishes. She chooses not to.]]

** Let's be clear, while Kreese is not exactly a saint, good luck finding anyone that wasn't cheering when [[spoiler: he threatened finger amputation on Tory's landlord who was essentially trying to coerce her into selling her body to him so she can avoid eviction (reminder that she's a minor as well). While he was doing it for the real purpose of gaining Tory's unconditional and absolute loyalty, it was still very cathartic to see.]]

** In Season 3, we finally see the other side of the puzzle. Before we saw how Cobra Kai itself could find a home for many students. But how could a psychopath like Kreese when he's given full rein to do as he pleases? [[spoiler: He weeds out the ones he knows won't stomach his worst tendencies, actively recruits teenagers with a nasty mean streak, but he makes sure to provide the right amount of positive reinforcement at the perfect times to gain his students' UndyingLoyalty. With how he treats Robby and Tory it's very easy to see why Johnny viewed him as a potential father figure.]] And how does he manage to keep operating when so many people outside the dojo know first what a toxic monster he is? [[spoiler:By PlayingTheVictimCard ''every'' chance he gets and selling the image of a humble veteran trying to help his community.]]

** In Season 4, [[spoiler:Terry Silver]] is initially reluctant to join Kreese in his renewed crusade against Daniel and Johnny, and when he does rejoin him as co-sensei of Cobra Kai, he uses his influence to try to keep the Cobra Kai students from antagonizing Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang until the All-Valley Tournament, while even making an ambiguous but seemingly sincere apology to Daniel for [[Film/TheKarateKidPartIII his previous actions]]. However, as the season goes on, [[spoiler:Silver]] becomes increasingly unhinged, deploying more psychological warfare techniques against his opponents, ambushing Johnny with physical brutality as a way to torment Miguel and Johnny's other students while getting revenge for their defection from Cobra Kai, attempting to force his own students to cheat and purposefully injure their tournament rivals (while bribing the tournament referee for good measure), and ultimately [[spoiler:framing Kreese for his assault on Stingray to usurp control of the dojo from him]]. Meanwhile, Kreese begins the season wanting to be more directly and physically confrontational toward Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang even before the tournament, but seemingly mellows out over time, preventing [[spoiler:Silver]] from going further with his NoHoldsBarredBeatdown on Johnny in favor of focusing on the tournament itself, unsuccessfully attempting to reconcile with Johnny at the tournament while diplomatically expressing concern for Miguel's well-being after the latter [[spoiler:temporarily reinjures his back]], and encouraging Robby and Tory to win the tournament on their own terms without being pressured to cheat.
** In Season 5, a poignant scene after [[spoiler:Terry Silver beat up Daniel [=LaRusso=]]] is Daniel realizing exactly why Mr. Miyagi always tried to run away from fighting even though he's such an accomplished martial artist. Everyone around him keeps getting hurt even if he's able to win against his opponent's through his superior strength and Miyago-Do skill. They both just [[Creator/JackieChan "don't want no trouble."]]

** Johnny is shown as a xenophobic, sexist, alcoholic jerkass at various points throughout the series, not to mention completely insensitive to Hawk, who has a cleft lip and is on the autism spectrum. With that said, it's shown that his attitude is born out of ignorance rather than true hatred, and he does become more open-minded as the show goes on (correcting people about the Diaz family's country of origin and fully opening Cobra Kai to female students). In Season 4, Johnny seems to have embraced UsefulNotes/{{feminism}}, and tries to recruit a girl in his Eagle Fang dojo, telling her how he intends to empower women and help "tear down the neo-masculine hierarchy to confront internalized sexism". Once the girl joins [[ThugDojo Cobra Kai]] instead though, he angrily and dismissively says he had to learn feminism, implying he doesn't really believe in the words he said.

* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Kreese is dismissive of Miguel, referring to him as "that Mexican". At the same time, he's also progressed in some other ways, as he has no problem having female students in Cobra Kai and even lets a female netball player try out for a spot in the dojo when he's talent-scouting for new recruits in Season 3.

** Season 3 has a bloodied, exasperated Nathaniel yell "they kicked the fucking shit out of me!" when he shows up at Sam's front door after being beaten up and robbed by Hawk's gang.
** Season 4 has two: Johnny tells a bartender to "shut the fuck up" in episode 5 and Eli saying that he is "the guy who's gonna win the whole fucking" tournament.

*** [=YouTube=] ends up playing a '''huge''' role in the FinalBattle as the key to exposing Terry Silver as the fraud that he is. Certainly helps that it was uploaded on the Cobra Kai dojo's [=iPad=] that Anthony uses to cast it on to the TV screens.

** Cobra Kai sells Jack Link's Jerky in their tabling event [[spoiler:which becomes very important later on in the season, especially when it involves a traitor eating them]].

** Over the course of the first season most of Johnny's students (particularly Miguel and Hawk) go from being bullied outcasts in need of help and guidance to being a hyper-aggro GangOfBullies themselves. Hawk is arguably the worst to suffer from this trope, as he becomes an outright psychopath who terrorizes his best friend, Demetri, just for the heck of it (at least until his redemption in the Season 3 finale).

*** It took three seasons, but Tory has tamed ''heavily'' from an outright psychopath to a far more sympathetic character, thanks to Amanda [=LaRusso=] empathizing with her rough upbringing. Season 5 is when she fully redeems herself and joins the protagonists when they go out to stop Terry Silver.

* RevengeBeforeReason: Tory in season 3. Despite being on probation for trying to maim Sam, she repeatedly goes after Sam with the intent of terrorizing her, knowing full well that she could end up in jail for it.