History Series / Manhattan

* NerdsAreVirgins: One of the scientists in Frank's group is still a virgin. Helen tries to fix that by [[JustForPun hooking]] him up with the local prostitutes, but he still doesn't sleep with them.

* YourCheatingHeart:
** [[spoiler: Frank Winter has an affair with his housekeeper, Paloma.]]
** [[spoiler: While suspecting Charlie of cheating on her, Abby sleeps with her neighbor and coworker Elodie. He hadn't cheated on her, but does so later on with Helen.]]
** [[spoiler: Robert Oppenheimer has an affair with a woman named Jean in San Francisco.]]

* AcceptableBreaksFromReality: Callie Winter, singing with her fellow girl scouts, sneaks away with a soldier before the songs are even over. This goes unnoticed by the audience and the scout leader. It's good for their story, showing them sneaking off, but in reality Callie leaving the group mid-song and her absence would be brazenly obvious and noticed by the song leader and the audience.

* ClassifiedInformation: Figures strongly into the story. The scientists can't even tell their wives what they are doing.

* KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler: Sid Liao and Reed Akley die in Season 1. In Season 2, Mr. Fisher is murdered by Jim Meeks's contact while interrogating Meeks.]]

** As of the first season finale, the real culprit is revealed to be [[spoiler:Meeks, who is later shown in "The Threshold" to very likely be working with the Soviets. He's also joined by another mole, Nora.]]

* KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler: Sid Liao and Reed Akley.]]

** Averted again in "The Second Coming" , when news of the Holocaust starts to trickle in. Abby mentions that over a million people in Minsk are missing, before she breaks down saying she doesn't even know how to imagine that many people.

** As of the first season finale, the real culprit is revealed to be [[spoiler: Meeks, who is later shown in "The Threshold" to very likely be working with the Soviets. He's also joined by another mole, Nora.]]

* DirtyCommunist: Babbit is suspected of being one because he knew a physicist who defected to the Soviet Union. [[spoiler: He turns out to have had a romantic relationship with him, but turned down an opportunity to defect with him]]
* DrivenToSuicide [[spoiler: Reed Akley [[AteHisGun shoots himself]] in "The Gun Model"]]

%%* LoveHurts

** As of the first season finale, the real culprit is revealed to be [[spoiler: Meeks, who is later shown in "The Threshold" to very likely be working with the Soviets]].

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech:
** Charlie, sick of the ribbing he's been getting over his mathematical work on the diffusion and transport of neutrons in a material, proceeds to correct everybody else's math on their boards, proving that he is legitimately smarter than them.
** Frank dresses down a doctor whose specialty was obstetrics, pointing out that he's not qualified to treat cases of accidental radiation exposure (which in the 1930s and 1940s was still very much terra incognita in many respects).
** Charlie [[spoiler:imagines Reed Akley giving him a rather nasty and harsh one after he mentions the spontaneous fission problem with plutonium-240.]]

** [[spoiler: While suspecting Charlie of cheating on her, Abby sleeps with her neighbor and coworker Elodie. He hadn't cheated on her, but does so later on with Helen.]]

*** He reappears in the season finale.

** A couple to UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks, especially DC Comics. Including a few of the scientists trying to discern just how high Superman can leap based on the radio show's intro and Fritz's girlfriend comparing his [[spoiler:inhalation of plutonium]] to [[Character/TheFlash Jay Garrick's]] origin.[[note]]The episode where she does this ironically enough aired the same week as [[Series/TheFlash2014]] TV show premiered beating ''them'' to making a reference to Garrick[[/note]].

* CoitusEnsues: Charlie and Abby Isaacs, at times, find their sex drives peaking to the point of engaging in sex in some risky places. Narratively, though, the sex seems more about the {{Fanservice}} than anything else.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Yes, people who sat and did busywork math all day were called "computers" - they ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin computed]]''.

* NotSoDifferent: Despite despising each other, Frank and Charlie are really [[JerKass not that]] [[InsufferableGenius different.]]

** Even darker is when [[spoiler:Liza discovers that everything in town, even the [[InfantImmortality newborn babies in the base's maternity ward]], is irradiated and poisonous. Subverted by the reveal that this might have been a hallucination.]]

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: The first words out of Private Dunlavy's mouth after he [[spoiler:shoots Sid Liao]] is "What did I do?"

* HeroicBSOD: PFC Dunleavy isn't really firing on all cylinders after shooting [[spoiler: Sid Liao]]

* IntimateHealing: A WAC invites PFC Dunlavey into her house for this, being attracted to him due to the stories floating around the base about his alleged heroism in shooting a "spy". However, he's been suffering from a form of PTSD over it.

*** He reappears in the season finale.
* YourCheatingHeart:
** [[spoiler:Frank Winter, with the maid who barely speaks any English.]]
** Worked almost to death in "The New World", with Charlie and Abby both shown in situations that test their marital commitments. It does not help one bit that in both cases, the would-be partner in an affair knows about the Isaacses being married.

* BiTheWay: [[spoiler:Abby and Elodie.]]

* NobodyOver50IsGay: Averted with [[spoiler:Glen.]]

** Fritz is testing the plutonium, and because in the 1940s, its properties were not well-understood he did not know that under certain conditions, it is pyrophoric in air. He accidentally causes it to "poof" into the air when he uncovers the heated sample, leading to the line below. [[spoiler:It's later discovered he breathed in and swallowed the vaporized plutonium.]]

** Fritz is testing the plutonium, and because in the 1940s, its properties were not well-understood, he did not know that under certain conditions, it is pyrophoric in air. He accidentally causes it to "poof" into the air when he uncovers the heated sample, leading to the line below. [[spoiler:It's later discovered he breathed in and swallowed the vaporized plutonium.]]

** The Tennessee plutonium breeder reactor starts warming up even after it's been taken offline due to an unplanned shutdown. [Charlie starts seriously considering that the reactor might explode and contaminate the town. It turns out that a fission product, iodine-135, decays into xenon-135, which swallows up neutrons[[note]]it has a large neutron-capture cross-section[[/note]]. The resulting radioactive decay was generating the excess heat, so paradoxically, adding ''even more'' fuel rods solves the problem, by "burning up" the xenon-135 with the sudden burst of neutrons from the extra uranium[[note]]xenon-136 is a stable isotope with a much smaller capture cross-section[[/note]].

** The Tennessee plutonium breeder reactor [[spoiler:starts warming up even after it's been taken offline due to an unplanned shutdown. Charlie starts seriously considering that the reactor might explode and contaminate the town. It turns out that a fission product, iodine-135, decays into xenon-135, which swallows up neutrons[[note]]it has a large neutron-capture cross-section[[/note]]. The resulting radioactive decay was generating the excess heat, so paradoxically, adding ''even more'' fuel rods solves the problem, by "burning up" the xenon-135 with the sudden burst of neutrons from the extra uranium[[note]]xenon-136 is a stable isotope with a much smaller capture cross-section[[/note]].]]

* AlternateHistory: For people familiar with the actual Manhattan Project, the series is this. The broad strokes of the Manhattan Project and WorldWarII seem to all be correct, but different people were involved in the details in this timeline. The policies regarding the project are also altered to reflect modern interpretations of military policy and government secrecy.

* ShellShockedVeteran: Frank Winter is a veteran of [[WorldWarOne The War to End All Wars]]. This explains at least some of his over-the-top behavior.

It was picked up for a second season to air in 2015.

** A black man, Dr. Theodore Sinclair, has been shown to be relegated to fetcher-and-carrier for a white man who knows little about nuclear physics compared to him.

** In fairness, this remark might be interpreted as merely emphasizing how bad FDR looked.

** J. Robert Oppenheimer so far has been depicted as cold, aloof, and something of a JerkAss. In reality he was quite friendly and tender-hearted. He was the one who made arrangements for [[RichardFeynman Richard Feynman's]] first wife, Arline, to stay in a hospital in Albuquerque while he was working on the Manhattan project.

** As of the first season finale, the real culprit is revealed to be [[spoiler: Meeks]].