History Series / TheWire

* NoodleIncident: 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 in order to keep him in line, other than that it seems to have involved skimming money.

* AbortedArc: [[spoiler: Bill Rawls being seen in a gay bar.]] The actor apparently told the showrunners to not pull any punches, but aside from some graffiti in season 5, it's never brought up again.

*** Among the drug dealers arrested when the police raid Hamsterdam is Bodie, [[spoiler:who manages to beat the charges simply by claiming that the Police entrapped him.]]

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** GoneHorriblyRight for Prop Joe in Season 5. After failing to convince Marlo Stanfield to join the coop, he sets up Marlo to get robbed by Omar. The result is Marlo changing his mind and joining the coop, [[spoiler: but it backfires. Marlo Stanfield begins scheming to destroy the coop from within by convincing Prop Joe's main drug contact, The Greek, to do business with him. He turns Prop Joe's nephew Cheese against him, which allows Marlo access to kill him. Afterwards, he disbands the coop and raises the price for the drugs he now controls.]]

* OldMediaAreEvil: Averted, as many of the staffers at the Baltimore Sun decry the death of traditional newspapers, and are just trying to make it through the day without getting hit with buyout offers or a lack of people to cover story beats.

** Sometimes you can hear Dominic West's British vowels, too, during the first season.

** The only exception to this really would have to be Marlo's crew, or at least his soldiers. They all have regular shoots in the woods outside Baltimore, emptying hundreds of rounds at makeshift targets. Chris Partlow even puts new recruits through training scenarios in derelict buildings with paintball guns, and Snoop in particular is a very good shot (with some theorizing that Partlow may have a military past).
--->'''Snoop:''' Fuck them West Coast niggas, in B-More we aim to hit a nigga, y'feel me?

* GoodAdulteryBadAdultery / SympatheticAdulterer: In season 1, D'Angelo hooking up with Shardene despite having a long-term relationship and young child with Donete (who he led Shardene to believe he was separated from) was depicted very sympathetically. His wife Donette hooking up with Stringer in season 2 wasn't depicted so sympathetically, especially since Stringer [[spoiler:was the one who arranged D'Angelo's death]].

** Drug gangs: Ambition and greed of power to control more of the drug trade will always drive the gangs to war with each other over territory, perpetuating the cycle of violence that imperils profits and cuts lives short.

"That whole area [Howard Street] is like Inner Harbor East ten years ago--New Westport is like Howard Street ten years ago." Andy Krawczyk's pitching sale to Stringer Bell in 2004 and to Marlo in the finale.

** When Prez likens the school district's announcement that all teachers will focus on preparing for the state tests, and that means that he, as a math teacher, must do language arts for part of his classes since the school needs to improve those scores, to the stats-juking he saw in the police department, a fellow teacher responds "[[Film/Film/TheAdventuresOfBuckarooBanzaiAcrossThe8thDimension Wherever you go, there you are]]"

* BatmanGambit: Subverted in Season 1. When Stringer and D'Angelo suspect that someone in the Pit crew is a police informant, Stringer recommends that D'Angelo invent a fake reason to withhold the crew's pay; he believes that the informant will be the one member of the crew who ''doesn't'' raise a fuss, since they'll be the one most eager to avoid attention and stay on the boss' good side. Of course, [[DramaticIrony the audience already knows]] that there ''isn't'' an informant, and that the police have been getting their information by tapping the gang's phones. Turns out that the person who doesn't complain about being denied pay [[spoiler:is actually StealingFromTheTill, not snitching]].

* WouldHitAGirl: Cutty, who despite seeming to be considering going straight has no problem striking one hopper's girlfriend in the face[[note]]In public, on the street and in broad daylight, no less[[/note]] to get her to admit that her boyfriend gave her the money for all the jewelry, money he took from the crew's take.

* ElectionDayEpisode: The episode "Margin of Error" centering in large part on the Democratic primary race for Mayor of Baltimore, including the campaigning and game-playing in both the Carcetti and Royce camps. Somewhat unusually, it extends out into other areas, showing the impact of the election on the police (specifically, how [[spoiler:Kima and another detective are forced to serve as uniformed officers for a day to monitor the polls so that they can't complete their investigation of a politically sensitive murder before the election]]) and the street (with Randy being given money to distribute flyers for a candidate). The actual mayoral general election is so uneven against the Republicans that it doesn't get any focus at all.

** Ziggy Sobotka is the Red Oni to Nick Sobotka's Blue Oni. Ziggy's a psychopath, while Nick is even-mannered.

* ATeamShooting: Most of the gangsters rarely hit each other when not firing at point-blank range ... TruthInTelevsion as their real-life counterparts rarely put a priority on marksmanship, and unlike Marlo's gang don't go out to the woods to practice their shooting. Lampshaded by one of the cops observing that the kids are more likely to hit a bystander than their putative targets; deconstructed when this actually happens in season 2, killing a nine-year-old boy.

* JerkassHasAPoint: Lampshaded in Rawls's speech to [=McNulty=] telling him not to beat himself up over Kima getting shot as it was not his responsibility. After [[TheReasonsYouSuckSpeech going over everything he doesn't like about]] [=McNulty=]] and admitting that he hates [=McNulty=]'s guts, he says that for that reason if it were in any way [=McNulty=]'s fault that Kima took two that night he would have long since let him know that he felt that way.

** Sometimes you can hear Dominic West's British vowels, too.