Angel / Tropes P to Z

This page covers tropes found in Angel.

Tropes A to E | Tropes F to J | Tropes K to O | Tropes P to Z | YMMV

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P

• Pædo Hunt:
  • Marcus from "In the Dark" is strongly hinted to be a pedophile. This is one vampire you do not want to be impervious to sunlight.
  • It's more than hinted that Bethany, the telekinetic teen runaway in the second season episode "Untouched", was molested by her father.
• Painful Rhyme: In the series finale, Spike calls back to the Buffy episode "Fool For Love " where he was mocked for a poem he had written for Cecily. Now he gets to read the full thing - and the entire crowd loves it.
  My soul is wrath in harsh repose
  Midnight descends in raven colored clothes
  But soft, behold! A sunlight beam
  Cutting a swath of glimmering gleam
  My heart expands, 'tis grown a bulge in't,
  Inspired by your beauty effulgent
• Paint the Town Red: Holland predicts L.A. will be reduced to this by the time Darla & Drusilla are finished.
• Pals with Jesus: All of Angel Investigations' members are reduced to Jasmine's lackeys. One by one they manage to break free; Connor, however, elects to stay chummy with She Who Walks Among Us.
• Papa Wolf: Angel towards Connor. It took nearly an entire episode before anybody was allowed to even approach him. In fact, do not even think about possibly touching a hair on Connor's head — you will be a bloody pulp before you can get within a block of him.
• Parental Incest: Heavily implied with Bethany. Wesley concludes that her father's abuse is what triggered her telekinesis.
  • Not really, but Connor/Cordelia definitely comes close. Close enough to gross out a lot of fans.
  • Angel's relationship with his sire, Darla (to say nothing of Drusilla), has an air about it.
• People Puppet: Gregor Framkin, the creator of "Smile Time".
• Percussive Prevention: Doyle prevents Angel from performing a Heroic Sacrifice by punching his lights out, then sacrificing his own life instead.
• Perfect Poison: Justified (or maybe Hand Waved) by Dr. Meltzer injecting Angel with a paralytic intended for large animals. When used on a human, it induces heart failure. (Good thing he doesn't have one.)
• Perpetual Poverty: Running your detective business out of a moldy vintage hotel isn't as lucrative as one would think. This stops in the last season, where they get all the nigh unlimited wealth and resources of Wolfram & Hart's LA branch
• Persona Non Grata: Buffy is subjected to this after she tries to kill Faith. In the episode that it happens she is very much treated as the villain, as Angel wants to help people reform when Buffy just wants to kill them, especially Faith, and Angel thinks Buffy is Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
• Perverse Puppet: Polo, Groofus, and Flora in "Smile Time".
• Perp Sweating: Angel's a pro. Contrary to expectation, though, he does not partake in torture. (That's Wesley's department).
  • Except for poor Merle being hung upside down and dunked in water.
  • Wesley tries interrogating Angel when they're first reunited ("Parting Gifts"). Angel casually swats away his crossbow, leaving Wesley looking rather dejected.
• Physical God: Illyria and Jasmine definitely qualify.
• Pietà Plagiarism: The Teaser for "Orpheus" picks up after Faith's final bout with Angelus; Wesley carries Faith's bloodied body into the Hyperion Hotel in slow motion.
• Pin-Pulling Teeth: Wolfram & Harts' black ops unit tries to kill Angel, but are wiped out by Vampire Hunter Holtz, who ties Angel to a pillar to be tortured and murdered. Angel kicks a grenade (lying in the hand of a dead W&H mook) into the air so he can grab the pin with his teeth, then shakes his head violently to free the pin.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Angel claims to be a private detective/in private security. When actual detective work is required, he has at least once hired a real private detective to do it for him! He just tells people he's a detective because it's easier to explain than "I go around protecting people from hellspawn."
  Kate Lockley: (holds Angel at gunpoint) You're telling me you're an investigator?
  Angel: More or less.
  Kate Lockley: Where's your license?
  Angel: [beat] That's the "less" part.
• Pivotal Wake-up: Angelus pulls this move inside of Faith's mind.
• Play-Along Prisoner: Faith. She could totally somersault through that intercom glass divider if she wanted.
• Playing Drunk: Angel does this in his very first scene.
• Playing Possum: Penn does this after intentionally goading Kate to shoot him.
• Please Keep Your Hat On: The psychic hired by Lilah (Kal Penn) wears a fez at all times, to disguise his exposed brain.
  • The Vocah's mask conceals his maggot-ridden, moldering face.
• Police Are Useless
• Political Overcorrectness:
  Rieff: I thought all Brachen demons had a good sense of direction.
  Doyle: Yeah, we're all pretty good at basketball, too.
  • When Harrie calls out Richard's family for attempting to cannibalize Doyle's brain, his siblings indignantly shout "Racist!" She then calls them out on the hypocrisy of picking and choosing the 'sacred rituals' they want to keep doing and then acting pious when called on it.
  • "Sense & Sensitivity" is a giant lampooning of this trope. An Emotion Bomb affects Kate's co-workers so deeply that they start letting crooks go free, decrying the justice system for brutalizing the poor prisoners.
  • When Lilah mistakingly uses the phrase "handshake deal" when bartering with a demon assassin, Lindsay quickly jumps in to emphasize that she meant metaphorical hands. ("Sanctuary")
  Lilah: That was species-ist of me. I apologize.
  • Played for laughs in "Blind Date". Gunn creates a distraction in Wolfram & Hart's lobby by launching into a militant speech.
  "Y'all can cater to the demon, cater to the dead man, but WHAT! ABOUT! THE BLACK! MAAAN?!
  • Wesley reports of saving a pair of power-walking heath nuts from a Hacklar demon, and getting socked in the face for his trouble. By the health nuts.
  Wesley: Apparently she felt I disrespected the Hacklar's culture by killing it.
  Cordelia: This town sucks.
• Poor Communication Kills: You know, you could have just told Angel about the prophecy that he would kill his son. Nice Job Breaking It, Wesley.
  • A less arc-heavy example is the unclear nature of the visions from the Powers That Be. In the season two opener, Angel ended up killing a protector demon because neither he nor it knew the other was fighting for good.
• Popular Is Dumb: Cordelia in Season One, though she eventually grows out of it. Played straight with Harmony, though.
• Possession Burnout: In "Lonely Hearts."
• The Power of Acting: Although Cordelia's skill is usually Bad "Bad Acting", it does help her bluff Angelus when the chips are down. Cordelia is fairly consistently shown to be pretty good at improv acting, but horrible at following a script.
  • Also, when Wesley impersonates Angel he fools a wizard/businessman/mobster and his thugs.
  • Also, Angel when impersonating both Jay-Don and Herb Sanders
• Power Degeneration: Thorn.
• Power Glows When it's about to destroy a few city blocks via involuntarily exploding.
• Power Tattoo: Jhiera sports a black facial tattoo over her left eye.
• Power Trio: Angel, Cordelia, and Doyle (later replaced by Wesley). Note that this only applies to Season One.
• Powers That Be: The Powers That Be. And they border on being bad guys with some of the stuff they do.
• Prayer Pose: The final episode was advertised with a full page ad of David Boreanaz as Angel in this pose.
• Preemptive "Shut Up"
• Pro Wrestling Episode: "The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco"
• Prodigal Family: Subverted when Fred's parents show up in "Fredless". She runs and hides, and everyone assumes she has some reason to be afraid of them. Turns out Fred isn't running from them, but from having to face that if she hasn't seen them in five years, then she really did spend five years in hell. Her parents are, in fact, probably the kindest, most supportive parents in the entire Buffyverse.
• Profiling: Gunn and the zombie police in "The Thin Dead Line".
• Promotion to Opening Titles: Done with every one of the main characters added after Angel, Cordelia, and Doyle.
  • Wesley first appears in "Parting Gifts", but Alexis Denisof wasn't added to the main cast until the next episode, "Somnambulist", so as not to spoil the fact that he was replacing Doyle.
  • Gunn recurred throughout the last three episodes of Season 1 before J. August Richards was promoted to the main cast in the Season 2 premiere.
  • Fred's introduction was in the Pylea arc during the last four episodes of Season 2. Amy Acker officially joined the cast at the start of Season 3. Additionally, when Illyria took over Fred's body in Season 5, the credits eventually shifted to showcase Acker as the former instead.
  • Vincent Kartheiser took over the role of Connor for the last few episodes of Season 3 before being promoted at the start of Season 4.
  • Andy Hallett had appeared frequently as Lorne throughout Seasons 2, 3, and 4 before finally being added to the intro in Season 4's "Release".
  • James Marsters was made a main cast member for Season 5 after Buffy ended its run, marking a return to the show for Spike after he had appeared in "In the Dark" and "Darla".
  • Mercedes McNab was added to the show's intro near the very end of its run after appearing throughout Season 5.
• Prophecy Twist:
  • Spike turns out to be just as eligible for the Shanshu Prophecy as Angel. Or so it seems...
  • The half-demon clan of "Hero" tell of a prophecy which foretold a "Chosen One" who would save them from The Scourge. The obvious assumption is it's Angel. At the episode's conclusion, though, it's Doyle who sacrifices his life to save them all.
  • The Nyazian scrolls say that the child of the vampire will not be born. Darla stakes herself, leaving the child alive and technically never born.
  • The prophecy that "The father will kill the son" and all the other signs attending it are ... muddled at best. The prophecy was altered by Sahjahn from "the son of the vampire with a soul will kill Sahjahn", but no one who should have been able to tell Wesley about all of that actually did so, and all of those signs only ambiguously appear.
• Prophetic Fallacy:
  • In the first season finale, Wes translates a prophecy to say that Angel will die. In the end it is revealed that Wes mistranslated it, and the real prophecy said that he would "live and die" (the language of the prophecy uses the same word for both); in other words, become human. Of course, the prophecy only said "the vampire with a soul," so in the fifth season, a conflict is introduced that it could have been Spike they were talking about. At the time the prophecy was translated, Angel was not only the only vampire with a soul, but the only one that had ever existed, nobody had even considered the idea that it could refer to someone else.
  • Also the prophecy "the father will kill the son", which drove multiple episodes in the back half of the third season, was faked by the demon Sahjhan (who, upon revealing this, taunts "read any good prophecies lately?") because the true prophecy was "the one fathered by the vampire with a soul will grow to manhood and kill Sahjhan". When Wesley goes to one of the Loa for clarification, he is told that the vampire will certainly devour his child. Angel's blood supply from the butcher had been spiked with Connor's blood by Wolfram & Hart and at the season 4 finale, Angel 'kills' Connor: he destroys Connor's true identity, giving him a fake one to save his sanity by giving him a normal family life, one that carries no memory of his real lifel. Also Sahjan hearing only "the son would kill Sahjan" led him to causing Conner to be in the exact position to do just that.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: All of the regulars (with the exception of Fred) become borderline AntiHeroes once they take over Wolfram & Hart.
  • Though involuntary, Fred isn't entirely excluded from this either. Hey there, Illyria.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: You wouldn't guess it, but Lorne comes from a dimension full of these.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: The demon-possessed Ryan 'sleepwalks' into the middle of traffic, almost getting killed before Angel tackles him out of a car's path. The demon later confesses that he would have also died had the car struck. By leaping into a body of a remorseless child, the Ethros had unwittingly trapped itself forever, with death as the only escape.
• Psychic Link: Vampires and their sires share these, though only when they are in close proximity. Angel goes absolutely off the rails whenever his 'family' is nearby.
  • The Haxil demon of "Expecting" impregnates human women, then controls them via some sort of psychic umbilical.
• Psychic Radar: Wolfram & Hart uses psychics specifically to scan if a vampire has entered their building.
• Psycho for Hire: Marcus in "In the Dark".
• Psycho Rangers: Holtz's "groupies" (™ Sahjhan). They're vampire hunters, too; only in this case, they're beefing up to take out Angel's entourage: Wes, Fred, Cordelia and Gunn.
  • The Jasmaniacs could be considered this, seeing as they succeeded where Angel Investigations failed: exiling all of the demons underground forever, blowing Wolfram & Hart to smithereens, and bringing about world peace.
    Connor: All your talk of "saving the world". Well, now somebody's actually gone and done it!
• Punch-Clock Villain: Several hapless W&H employees, especially in Season 5.
• Punch a Wall: In the aftermath of Faith's first duel with Angelus (which Faith lost), the next episode opens with her taking a shower in Wesley's bathroom. Her body is battered, bruised and covered with blood. Without warning, Faith explodes into violence, repeatedly punching the shower tiles until her fists have driven through the wall. Needless to say, this is not played for Fanservice.
• Punny Name: As a Shout-Out to Horatio Hornblower, Ratio Hornblower, one of the demonic puppets of "Smile Time".
• Puppeteer Parasite: Talamour, a "Burrower" demon preying on the regulars at a singles bar.
• Puppet Permutation: Happens to Angel in "Smile Time." Within the episode, he fights other, demonic puppets. It also contains the line "You're a wee little puppet man!" from Spike. May or may not be a hint that Angel is being turned into a metaphorical puppet.
  • Spike and Lorne later get the same treatment in the comic Spike: Shadow Puppets when they travel to Japan where Smile Time is still popular.
• Putting on the Reich: The Scourge is an army of pure-blood demons bent on the extermination of all "half-breeds". They all dress up in faux-S.S. uniforms, making this a not-so-subtle allegory; Their leader even delivers a Hitler-style, genocidal speech to an audience of mooks.
  • For bonus points, from what we know of demons in general, the Scourge are about as pure-blood as Germans are Aryan.
    • Now proven In the comics, the Scourge get involved with one of Illyria's former pets named Baticus, who is also an Old One. Baticus incinerates the Scourge but the same attack doesn't scratch Illyira.

R

• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits
• Rage Against the Reflection: Shortly after being re-ensouled, Darla is found lying amongst shattered glass in her apartment, having smashed all the mirrors.
  • Lorne punches his own reflection after it gets mouthy with him.
• Raised by Rival: Vampiric Angel's infant son, Connor, is kidnapped and raised by zealous vampire hunter Holtz, who escapes to an alternate dimension and raises him as his own, turning him into a Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb to eventually kill (and more importantly, hurt) Angel.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Both used with Angelus proving evil by a lot of rape threats to every woman in season four, and subverted with how much... dubious consent there is with the Whirlwind. Dru and Darla are Too Kinky to Torture (Drusilla thanks to abuse, which Spike can take advantage of no matter how much he takes care of her), Angelus is No Sense of Personal Space every time he interacts with the other three, and they're all still meant to be/come off as cool-fun super-evil.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Charisma Carpenter became pregnant during the fourth season, which required a lot of shuffling around of the intended story.
• Real Men Get Shot: And thrown from rooftops, and stabbed in the neck with their own stakes.
• Real Women Have Curves: In "Double or Nothing" when Gunn is fake breaking up with Fred she asks if there's another woman, and asks her name, to which he cruely respons "Her name is 'I'm-a-real-woman-not-a-stick-figure' get the picture?
• Recap by Audit:
  • "Bachelor Party": Doyle asks Angel to snoop around his ex-wife's new fiancée, leading to an awkward scene where Angel spots the beau with a knife and tackles him through a plate-glass window. The next day, Angel grouses that Richard belongs to a family of harmless restauranteurs "with some pretty expensive windows."
  • "Time Bomb": The episode has a suit, Marcus Hamilton, reading off a list of damages caused by Angel's flunky during a rescue mission.
  "Illyria destroyed 11 torture units before she found your man; 2 troop carriers, an ice cream truck, and 8 beautifully maintained lawns."
• Red Herring: "Lonely Hearts" goes out of its way to mislead viewers as to which character the Burrower demon has BodySurfed into. The opening half of "I've Got You Under My Skin" uses a similar trick to make Angel suspect the wrong man of being possessed, a demon that actually possessed a child and forced it to horrible things. In the end the demon reveals that the child was born with no soul, and the demon had been the boy's prisoner while he did the horrible things.
• Redemption Equals Death: Used straight and played with in a few instances. Angel refused to fight Faith when she wanted to be killed, Connor was "killed" and given a new life. Played completely straight when Doyle died, elevating himself from "weasel" to hero.
• Redemption in the Rain: Faith's complete breakdown at the end of "Five by Five". Also, Darla staking herself in the episode "Lullaby" to allow Connor to be born.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Spike is the Red Oni by being... Spike. Where as Angel is known for his brooding thus qualifying him as a Blue Oni. One could argue that this dated back to their days with Darla and Drusilla.
• Reformed, but Rejected: Faith's supposed reformation doesn't track with Buffy, who arrives in town with the sole purpose of killing her. Angel think she's acting like a spoiled brat, causing the former lovers to part on bad terms.
• Regularly Scheduled Evil: The undead warrior Tezcatcatl is damned to return every 50 years. In this case, however, it's a bonus; the curse grants him unlimited chances to find his talisman, which would render him invincible.
• Rejection Projection: In Season Three, Wesley becomes alienated from the other characters after, due to a prophecy preying on his mind, he abducts Angel's baby son Connor and hands him over to one of Angel's worst enemies, Daniel Holtz. In the following season, when Gunn challenges him over his decline in morals and affability and asks him what happened to him, his response is "I had my throat cut and all my friends abandoned me", which is a slight understatement of how much his own actions had to do with it.
• Relationship Reset Button: "I Will Remember You" is all about this.
• Relative Button: Holtz sets this one up for Connor.
• Reset Button: Rather frequently in the first season.
• Residual Self-Image: Cordelia has an out-of-body experience; Skip the demon remarks that her astral appearance works like this.
  Skip: "You're a remarkably self-confident individual, you know that?"
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Jhiera clashes with Angel over her willingness to sacrifice humans for the sake of protecting her refugee operation on Earth.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: The first mate on the ship ferrying the Brachen clan out of the country decides to rat them all out for money. The Scourge repay his help by testing their human-disintegrating Beacon on him.
• Revenge Before Reason: Despite hating demons and knowing they couldn't be trusted, Holtz jumps at the chance to travel over 200 years into the future to kill Angelus and Darla despite knowing he's making a deal with a demon who isn't sharing his own motives for wanting Angel and Darla dead.
• Revenge by Proxy: Holtz likes to go for the heartstrings.
• Revenge Through Corruption: Holtz does this to Connor.
• Right Behind Me: Cordy's wild fantasies about how rich they're going to get working for Rebecca Lowell — at the exact moment the star walks in ("Eternity").
• Ripped From The Phonebook
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Used twice with Angel: First, erasing Buffy's memories of their time together ("I Will Remember You"), and again when signing a deal with Wolfram & Hart, giving Connor a brand new family ("Home").
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Holtz takes out 378 vampires during his hunt across Europe for Angelus and Darla.
• Rod And Reel Repurposed: In "Guise Will Be Guise", Angel uses a fishing rod to ensnare a villain who is standing in the sunlight to avoid the vampire.
• Rogues Gallery: Angel and his allies at Angel Investigations have recurring villains to deal with across their show's five seasons and tie-in comic. Enemies include the agents of the Wolfram and Hart firm, the Circle of the Black Thorn (which serves as The Dragon to Wolfram and Hart), Daniel Holtz, the Beast, Jasmine, Lindsey McDonald, Sahjhan, and Justine Cooper, plus Drusilla and Darla hop over from the Buffy series to cause Angel trouble too. And, of course, Angel has to grapple with the presence of Angelus.
• Rooftop Confrontation: Buffy's face-off with Faith on the roof of Angel's building. The throwdown gets postponed when the rifle-toting Watcher's Special Ops Team arrives in helicopters and tries to pick off both Slayers at once.
  • The entire team facing off against The Beast in a sky lounge.
  • Wesley and Robo-Dad in a Mexican Standoff on Wolfram & Hart's roof.
• Room Full of Crazy: Lampshaded in "Somnambulist": Angel deflates one of Penn's evil rants by accurately describing the layout of his "killer shrine" wall, right down to the news clippings and candles — without ever having seen it with his own eyes. "Oh, you are so prosaic."
  • Angel's suite temporarily turns into one of these in "Darla": Wesley appears in the doorway and expresses his concern that Angel isn't exactly well. Angel, who is busily sketching Darla in various poses, brushes him off. Wesley steps inside, revealing pages upon pages of drawings blanketing the entire floor.
  • While imprisoned in Pylea, Fred wrote on the walls of her cave to stay sane. It didn't take. Once back in L.A., she immediately starts scribbling on the walls of her room in the Hyperion.
  • Even after her supposed 'rehabilitation' later in the series, Fred continues to cope with trauma or stress by writing on walls. Wesley and Gunn lampshade it in the fifth season.
    Wesley: (at Fred writing on the windows) That's never good.
    Fred: What? Oh, no, I— I just ran out of white board. I'm not crazy. Again.
  • Wesley's office after Illyria's arrival becomes one of these due to his obsession with learning everything he can about her. Lampshaded by Lorne when Gunn mentions having gone in there.
    "Oh, God! Don't go in there! That's where he keeps his full-strength crazy!"
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Jhiera is princess of another dimension, where she is fighting an ongoing battle to liberate the females of her species.
  • Averted with Cordelia in Pylea, where her attempts of using her power for anything meaningful are met with severe demonstrations that she is but a figurehead.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Prevalent throughout the first season, though the makeup effects improved dramatically by Season Two.
• Rule of Symbolism: The Season Five changeover to Wolfram & Hart. David Greenwalt likened it to Greenpeace taking hold of Shell Oil.
• Running Gag: "There's no such thing as leprechauns." Always spoken while dealing with the supernatural.
  • And Angel would like everyone to know that he is most definitely not a eunuch.
• Run for the Border: The Brachen demons in "Hero" charter a cargo ship to take them to Ecuador, where others of their kind are living peacefully.
• Russian Guy Suffers Most: Summer Glau's cursed ballerina in "Waiting in the Wings".

S

• Sacrificial Lamb
• Sadistic Choice: Allow Holtz to flee to Quor'toth, or he'll snap baby Connor's neck.
• Samaritan Syndrome: Cordelia, starting in Season 2 (and arguably as early as "To Shanshu in L.A.", the first-season finale) had this bad.
• Same Clothes, Different Year: Angel's wearing a black leather jacket in The '70s. It goes great with the striped pants, semi-unbuttoned shirt, gold necklace and gratuitously wide collars. ("Orpheus")
  • Likewise with Spike in "Why We Fight." He becomes so taken with a Nazi captain's leather trenchcoat, he kills him for it.
• Sand In My Eyes: Wesley tearfully blots his eyes after officially being hired at Angel Investigations, complaining of "allergies". Invoked again at the end of "Expecting".
• Same Story, Different Names: In Buffy's "Becoming", the heroine had to run a sword through Angel before he opened a portal and destroyed the world. In "Inside Out", Angel raises his sword to slay a loved one before she can bring forth a demon to enslave the world. (Interestingly, he fails.)
• Scary Black Man: Griff, the debt collector ("Rm v/a Vu"). Technically a Scary Black Demon but you get the idea.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Wes and Cordy pose as a police detectives in order to intimidate a wealthy couple outside the XXI fight club. The man counters by dropping the name of their "boss", the police chief - and a close personal friend of his. Cordy swoops in and improvises by pretending they're about to raid the club, and are giving the rich couple an opportunity to scram. They do.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Practically all of Wolfram & Hart's clientèle.
• Sealed Cast in a Multipack: Subverted; Illyria was a Sealed Evil in a Can, and had an army waiting for her in some kind of pocket dimension. But when she found her way to this pocket dimension, she found that the army had died while waiting in its "can," and she despaired that she was all alone, the last of her kind with no chance of reviving her army or finding any other Old Ones living on Earth.
• Second Love:
  • Cordelia would be Angel's second love - Buffy, of course, being his first.
  • Wesley would be Fred's second love - her first love having been Gunn.
• Secret Circle of Secrets: The Circle of the Black Thorn.
  Archduke Sebassis: The Circle does not abide secrets.
  Angel: Which is interesting for a "secret society".
• Secret Ingredient: Angel once drinks a cup of blood with an unusual taste. He's told "the secret ingredient is otter."
  • Another time, he finds that his blood supply has been intentionally tainted with his son's blood.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Oh, just about half of the villains. Drogyn's Deep Well is practically the Canned Evil aisle.
• Sealed Evil in Another World: When Illyria first manifests, the rest of Team Angel discovers that she is the leader of an army of fellow Eldritch Abominations who has been sealed away in another dimension and race to try to prevent her from releasing them so she will Take Over the World. They are unable to prevent the portal from opening, but in a particularly dramatic moment of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, the entirety of Illyria's army had long since died off and rotten away because their prison dimension had nothing for them to feed. Illyria spends the rest of the series trying to deal with the depression of having no purpose left.
• Seers
• Selective Condemnation: When a villain hands out fates worse than death, it's seen as awful. When Angel makes a guy immortal, but locked in a room, unable to move or look at something else or speak because he normally takes people to hell but got resurrected (ok, so the guy was evil in life and was only doing the hell thing to stay out of hell, but remember, he was doing it on Wolfram & Hart's property, so most people he did it to probably asked for it), it's never mentioned again.
  • Plus, Willow mind wiping Tara on Buffy was supposed to be awful, but Angel removing everyone's memories of Conner only is brought up again when Wes finds out, and is quickly dropped again afterwards.
  • To be fair, the terrible part about Willow's mind wipe was that it was violation of the worst kind; Willow was effectively forcing Tara to remain in a sexual relationship that Tara didn't want to continue, making her actions date rape at best. Angel, on the other hand, wanted to remove horribly traumatic memories from his friends' minds not for his benefit but for their own; wiping away Wesley's tragic betrayal, Connor's insanity, etc.
• Self-Defeating Prophecy: The visions sent to Angel's sidekicks are often of a monster killing a human, which Angel is then able to prevent.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Sahjan's action after hearing only "the son would kill Sahjan" part led him to causing Conner to be in the exact position to do just that.
• Self-Defenseless: Cordelia's "demon repellent". Not to be mistaken for a popular brand of breath freshener.
• Self-Deprecation: A meta example in "Fredless": Trish Burkle comments on how her husband likes "all those disgusting Alien movies... he just can't get enough of them. Except for the last one they made, I think he dozed off." Joss Whedon wrote the last movie in the Alien series, and is not proud of it.
• Self-Made Man: One of Angel's richest clients, David Nabbit, made his millions by inventing software which allows blind people surf the internet.
• Self-Restraint:
  • Faith's prison breakout in the fourth season makes it clear she could have escaped any time she wanted. Alluded to in "Five by Five" and "Sanctuary" where it becomes clear that Angel is helping Faith come round to the idea of wanting to turn herself in because the only way a human prison could ever hold a Slayer would be if the Slayer wanted to be held.
  • As dismissive, threatening and moderately destructive as Illyria is around the office, that's her being restrained. She kills everyone in about ten seconds flat when she actually decides to fight them in a possible future.
• Serial Killer: Penn is nicknamed "The Pope" by the L.A. press, due to his habit of carving crosses onto the faces of his victims (a quirk he adopted from Angel).
• Sequel Episode: Billy Blim, the freed prisoner from "That Vision Thing", turns up again to bring mayhem in "Billy."
• Shadow Dictator: The Senior Partners.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: Fred's parents, in a cast full of Abusive Parents, despite their frightening whispering and how Fred runs away when she sees them... are proved to be generous and balanced people who are just very suspicious and worried for their daughter and thus, difficult to meet after five years of separation.
• Ship Tease: "Provider" is made of this. Includes moments between Wes and Fred, Gunn and Fred, Angel and Cordy, Cordy and Gunn, and especially Wes and Gunn.
• Shoo Out the Clowns:
  • In the Season 3 episode "Couplet", Angel tells Cordy and Groo to take a long vacation. In the next episode, things start getting a lot darker.
  • In Season 5, Fred's death and Illyria's rebirth in her body not only eventually gave Angel a powerful ally, but also put a definitive stop on romantic subplots, adding gravitas to the series' final six episodes.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Averted - not when the Beast is concerned, to Wesley's misfortune.
• Show Within a Show: Angel's client in "Eternity" is Rebecca Lowell, former star of the much-adored On Your Own which was recently "canceled by the idiot network!"
  • Smile Time, and its Japanese counterpart in the comics.
  • Cordy! is a cheesy Friends-style sitcom in an alternate timeline.
• Schmuck Bait: The kidnapping of Alonna. Angel warns her brother that if he tries to invade the vampires' nest, it will turn into a bloodbath. Predictably, Gunn doesn't hear him - or care.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The last five seconds of "The Ring." Whoops.
• Shoot the Dog: Drogyn.
• Shout-Out:
  • Since Ben Edlund (of The Tick fame) was involved in the show through most of season 5, one of the characters even refers to themself as being "nigh invulnerable".
  • Cordy's reaction to a Geiger counter that Fred and Gunn were using.
    Shiny!
  • One of the demonic Sesame Street-esque puppets is a big purple animal thingy with a horn mouth named Ratio Hornblower
  • Weyland-Yutani and Yoyodyne are clients of Wolfram and Hart.
  • "Shut up, Wesley"
  • Spike suggests that a hollow tree, if it's not the entrance to the Deeper Well, could be the entrance to Christmas Land. Angel doesn't get it.
  • A drunk Wesley calls Illyria a smurf. She doesn't understand the reference but does realise it's an attempt to insult or disrespect her so she's offended all the same.
  • In "She", Angel follows Jhiera into an art gallery, siccing security guards on him in the process. So, he quickly removes his coat and proceeds to lecture on Édouard Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass to a group of people, who stand rapt at his expert dissertation.
  • It's been said that the scene with Connor saying his name is Stephen was a shout-out to or inspired by a somewhat well known made-for-TV movie called I Know My First Name is Stephen
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: The object of Dr. Meltzer's desire, Melissa Burns, delivers a stinging one when Meltzer comes for her in "I Fall To Pieces". Melissa reaffirms her refusal to be afriad, having been convinced by Angel that she has survived everything Meltzer has done to her so far. This causes Meltzer to (literally) fall apart at the seams.
  • Kate tracks her father's killers to an auto repair shop, dusting one of them like a pro. Her Roaring Rampage is interrupted by el jefe: a humongous, steroid-injected demon who lectures Kate on how she cannot comprehend the world she's entered into. Enter Angel:
  "A big ugly drug-running demon who thinks he's a lot scarier than really he is, maybe? Yeah, she knows."
  • Angelus tries to get under Cordelia's skin by ridiculing her total lack of acting ability. Cordy gets the last laugh when she bluffs Angelus into believing her thermos is full of holy water, resulting in his defeat.
  Cordelia: And the Oscar goes to...
• Significant Monogram: Several Wolfram & Hart lawyers have the initials "LM," much like someone else.
• Signs of the End Times: In "Apocalypse Nowish" there are birds crashing into buildings, snakes coming out of plumbing, rats everywhere, and eventually, all the phone calls they get about these things make an ancient symbol of destruction.
• Simple Solution Won't Work:
  • An invoked example. After a little while of trying to deal with Angel through the typical solution of sending assassins and demons to kill him (which did not work), Wolfram & Hart lawyer Gavin Park points out to his coworkers that Angel does not has any legal documentation because he's a vampire and they could just toss the IRS at him to make his life hell. One scene (and several In-Universe hours) later, fellow (and cut-throat rival) WR&H lawyer Lilah Morgan arrives to Angel's office and hands him all necessary papers to prevent this from happening and no strings attached, purely to spite Park.
  • In the final season, in order to be of help when Team Angel takes over the Wolfram & Hart law firm, Gunn makes a deal with a demon in exchange for superior law knowledge. The team discovers that he did this when it turns out the knowledge only stays on for a short time and the demon wishes to make a new deal (which Gunn eventually does secretly, which leads to a chain of events that end in Fred's death). Angel's attempt to help is to march right up to the demon and cut his head off, which leads to the demon just regrowing his head and insisting on the deal.
• Single Tear: Angel squeezes one out during his "date rape" at the hands of Rebecca ("Eternity").
• Single Substance Manipulation: Monster of the Week Ronald Meltzer, who is autokinetic: learning to detach his own body parts and manipulate them from a distance, allowing him to stalk a young woman by sending his eyes and hands to her bedroom. During a fight with Angel he attacks the vampire by detaching his own teeth as a flying weapon.
• Sinister Scythe: The Vocah.
• Sixth Ranger: The cast rotates these out after the core five of Angel, Cordy, Wesley, Gunn, and Fred are clearly established.
  • Lorne becomes one towards the end of Season 2 when he's forced to tag along with the Gang to Pylea. He picks it back up during Season 3 (especially after Caritas is ruined by Holtz), before graduating to something more along the lines of The Heart in Seasons 4 and 5.
  • Darla functions as this during the early half of Season 3 when she comes back pregnant.
  • Connor towards the end of Season 3 and throughout Season 4.
  • Faith comes back for an arc in Season 4 to help reign in Angelus.
  • Illyria once she decides to team up with Angel's group in the final episodes.
• Skyward Scream: Angel lets one loose after feeding on a murder victim during the 1970s.
• Sleep Cute: Angel and Cordy cuddled up with Baby Connor.
• Sleeps with Both Eyes Open: Exaggerated. Illyria appears fully awake, alert and aware even when sleeping.
• Slippery Skid: Angel squeezes a bag of whole coffee beans to test Cordelia's theory that he can effectively grind the coffee with his "vampire strength." The bag bursts, of course, scattering coffee beans everywhere just as Cordelia and Wesley come in the door; Wesley immediately slips and falls.
• Slipping a Mickey: In an effort to make Angel lose his soul and turn her into a vampire, Rebecca Lowell drugs his champagne with a bliss-inducing prescription drug.
• Slow-Motion Drop: Wesley's slo-mo knife drop at the end of "Five By Five". In the next episode, Faith breaks a glass upon seeing a TV news report declaring her to be a wanted fugitive. Played for Laughs when Spike drops the Cup of Perpetual Torment with a stunned expression after drinking from it because it contains soft drink.
• Slut-Shaming: As with Buffy, Angel has a tendency to punish sexual promiscuity. In this case, Cordelia ends up with demonic pregnancies. One client of Angel Investigations displays internalized shame with the question, "Does it surprise you? That I'm a giant slut?" after attempting to seduce Angel.
• Small Role, Big Impact: The entire premise of Angel's character as "a vampire with a soul" can be traced back to a gypsy girl that Angelus murdered in 1898, resulting in a curse being placed upon him by the rest of her clan. This girl doesn't even get a name, and yet it was her death that inspired the curse upon which the entirety of Angel's character concept is based — including the all-important clause that if he should ever experience a moment of happiness, he will once more lose his soul and revert back to his sadistic former self.
• Smithical Marriage: Wes and Cordelia as "Mr. and Mrs. Penborne".
• Smoke Shield: Jasmine, after getting zapped by a downed power line. Turns out once you've endured the Big Bang, electricity isn't a much of a hinderence.
• Smug Snake: Eve and Gavin. Also Lilah in the first couple of seasons.
• The Smurfette Principle: With the role of the Smurfette shifting between three different characters:
  • Played completely straight in Seasons 1 and 2, when Cordelia is the only female team member (and cast member) .
  • Season 3 is the only one with Two Girls to a Team after Fred joins the main cast, except for the very beginning, when Fred is still reeling from her years in Pylea, and a late-season arc, when Cordelia gets Put on a Bus.
  • Season 4 cements Fred as the new Smurfette of the team, with Cordelia first missing, then amnesiac, then secretly the Big Bad, and ultimately comatose.
  • The first half of Season 5 sees Fred keep the spot, with Cordelia removed from the main cast and appearing in only one episode. After Fred dies and Illyria inhabits her body, longtime recurring character Harmony joins the cast; whether this counts as her taking over as the Smurfette, a return to Two Girls to a Team, or none of the above depends on one's assessment of Harmony's allegiance and Illyria's nature.
• So Happy Together: Gunn and Fred, and later Fred and Wesley.
• So Was X: Followng Angel's (temporary) reversion to human, Cordy and Doyle suddenly find themselves out of work. Doyle is upbeat:
  Doyle: I'll finally be free to go out and make me own mark on the world.
  Cordelia: We had a cat that used to do that.
  • When Holtz starts fretting about the fact that Angel has a soul, Sahjhan snarkily remarks that Atilla the Hun had one, too.
  "Not to mention a heart as big as all outdoors when it came to gift-giving..."
• Soaperizing: In interviews before the show's premiere, Joss Whedon said the spin-off Angel would be a "case of the week"-type show, and not a soap opera like Buffy. It ended up becoming a bigger soap opera, with multiple love triangles, Shot Reverse Shots of people standing around in rooms and rehashing old plot points, Angel's son going from a baby to teenager and sleeping with Cordelia, etc.
  Fred: Who's Darla?
  Gunn: Angel's old flame from way back.
  Fred Not the one who died?
  Gunn: Yeah. —No, not that one, the other one that died and came back to life. She's a vampire.
  Fred: (confused) Do y'all have a chart or somethin'?
  Gunn: In the files, I'll get it for you later.
  • Lampshaded by Cordy herself: "Tell me we're not living in a soap opera."
  • Lampshaded by Gunn as well in "Players": "Listen, I spent most of this year trapped in what I can only describe as a turgid supernatural soap-opera."
• Soft Glass: Pretty much required given Angel's fondness for SuperWindowJumps. He IS a vampire, though.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Marcus ("In the Dark"). He sounds like the guy who sells you Chakra stones.
• Something Else Also Rises: Wesley's, erm, sword shooting out of his coat sleeve in Fred's presence ("Spin the Bottle").
• Sold His Soul for a Donut: In "Double Or Nothing", it's revealed that as a young man Gunn sold his soul for his pick-up truck. He was so poor at the time it seemed a good deal.
• Somewhere, a Mammalogist Is Crying: "Through the Looking Glass". Had Wesley simply used the term "hart" or "stag" in the layman fashion (to refer to any male red deer regardless of its age), it might not have been accurate but it wouldn't have been comment-worthy. Unfortunately, he goes into detail saying a hart is "a male red deer or staggard" indicating the script-writers may have attempted to research the proper naming convention that exists for male red deer (that or they thought a "stag" and "staggard" meant the same thing). A staggard is a male red deer in its fourth year of life. A stag is a male red deer in its fifth year of life. A hart is a male red deer over five years old (i.e., in its sixth year of life). The picture itself shows a 10-point deer (5 tines on each antler) which is a "great hart" (a stag over six years old, i.e., seven years old or older with 10-16 tines). By using generalised layman terms, it all could have been handwaved as an ordinary conversation or at least the "hart" being a contraction of "great hart" where the picture itself was concerned. The attempt to be clever by referring to "staggard" simply emphasised the writers had failed to do their research.
• Songs of Solace: Not only does Angel listen to sad music when he's depressed, his song of choice is Barry Manilow's "Mandy".
  • A throwaway line in the episode "Sanctuary" revealed that Angel tried to turn Faith on to the "healing power of the Manilow", and that while Manilow seriously wasn't Faith's thing, she had to admit she felt better sometimes after listening to "Weekend in New England"
• Soul Jar: Angel's soul is imprisoned in one in the fourth season, in order to temporarily release Angelus.
  • The "Ethros Box".
  • Justine traps her boss' boss, Sahjan, in a jar.
• Sound-Only Death: When the youngest runt in XXI is pitted against Trepkos in the next match, Cribb remarks, "That's not a fight, it's an execution." Trepkos ignores Angel's imploring him not to kill the kid, instead promises to "kill him quick." Indeed, the fight has barely begun before Angel hears a telltale Neck Snap sound.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Angel's flashback to a donut shop robbery, in which he witnessed the clerk get fatally shot. Angel drinks the corpse's blood as "Mandy" plays on a jukebox.
  • Fred manages to get one line into "You make me happy", a classic target for this trope, before coughing up blood and collapsing.
• Space Whale Aesop: Cordelia, in The Ring.
  This is why I don't gamble. You place one small bet, and then another . . . and next thing you know, albino Beetlejuice guys are knocking at your door.
• Special Edition Title: After Angel loses his soul in Season Four, the promo for "Soulless" modified the usual Angel logo to spell Angelus.
• Spear Counterpart: To Buffy.
• Spell My Name with a "The": The Conduit and The Beast. In "Habeas Corpses", the former is killed by the latter.
• Spanner in the Works: Sahjhan can't control Holtz as well as he'd like.
• Spikes of Doom: Angel gets to experience the full extent of Gunn's vampire-proofing in "War Zone". Upon chasing Angel into Gunn's own building, Gunn rams the wall with his spiked truck, narrowly missing Angel's head. Disoriented, Angel stumbles over a tripwire, triggering a hurricane of arrows as well as a falling spike trap.
• Spirited Competitor: Trepkos, who warmly congratulates Angel on "a good fight." ("The Ring")
• Spoiler Opening: Averted. One episode features Alyson Hannigan as a surprise guest star. The actor's name was removed from the opening credits to hide the surprise; instead they get top billing in the end credits. The same was done to hide Faith's first appearance.
  • James Marsters is in the opening credits of the first episode of Season 5, though he doesn't turn up 'til the last scene of said episode.
  • Another sort of aversion: Amy Acker's credit sequence for season five includes shots of Illyria ... but only after Fred dies.
• Squee: Cordy keeps giggling like a madwoman after being invited out shopping with TV actress Rebecca Lowell.
• Staking the Loved One: Gunn to his sister.
• Staring Down Cthulhu: You think a ghost is going to make Cordelia leave a rent-controlled apartment? Ha!
• Starter Villain: Russell Winters, whose defeat officially puts Angel on Wolfram & Hart's radar.
• Stepford Suburbia: For defying the Senior Partners, Lindsey and then Gunn are incarcerated in a Hell dimension modelled after this trope. At first, they have an idyllic suburban life with a perfect wife and children, except that after breakfast every day they are dragged down into a cellar to be tortured to death by a demon. The scenes also include direct visual references to Edward Scissorhands, which has a similar depiction of suburban life.
• Step into the Blinding Fight: Inverted in an episode where a blind assassin can sense motion including heartbeats and breath-falls. Angel, being a vampire lacks both a pulse and the necessity to inhale or exhale, so when he stands completely still, the assassin is incapable of seeing him.
• Stripperific: Cordelia's outfit when she's made a "princess."
• Sugar Apocalypse: What happens when Angel pulls the plug on Jasmine's enchantment over Los Angeles. It's a tough argument for free will when cars are exploding around you during your speech.
• Sue Donym: As a reward for rescuing their son from walking into oncoming traffic, Mrs. Anderson invites Angel in for some coffee. When probed about his name, Angel replies "Angel— Jones. Angel Jones."
  • At the hospital where Connor was brought after birth, he is officially registered as "Connor Angel," as Fred gave his father the alias "Geraldo Angel."
    • He's a pet psychiatrist with a small practice in Pacoima.
• Suicide by Cop}/Driven to Suicide: Faith's actions on Buffy drive her to this, attempting to use suicide by vampire. It doesn't work.
  • Kate Lockley.
• Sugar Bowl: In Angel's nightmare about being usurped by Spike, the view of Los Angeles is replaced by a matte painting of pink castles and rainbows.
• Sunglasses at Night: Jay-Don ("The Shroud of Rahmon"), a Las Vegas vampire who seems to be permanently stuck in the 1960s. Angel assimilates his identity and, in effect, this trope.
• Superdickery: In The Teaser of "Power Play", Angel charges in to rescue a good guy who's being beaten by Malevolent Masked Men, only to vamp out and chomp on his neck.
• Supernatural Elite: The Circle of the Black Thorn from the series finale.
• Supernatural Soap Opera: Lampshaded by multiple characters, particularly once babies enter into the mix.
• Superpower Meltdown: Narrowly averted with Illyira.
• Super-Senses: Angel and Spike (along with any other vampire) have these, as does Connor.
• Super-Speed: Several times in the series, Angel will be seen using his vampire speed in the form of a Flash Step or Stealth Hi/Bye. At one point, another vamp is seen going blurry with speed.
• Super-Strength: Angel, Spike, Illyria, Doyle in Demon form, and most of their foes.
• Supervillain Lair: In an inversion of this trope, Jasmine takes over the Hyperion Hotel, and Wolfram & Hart becomes Angel's base.
• Surprise Witness: Angel unexpectedly drops in on a courtroom proceeding with an eyewitness in tow — the same kid who was thought to have been intimidated by Lindsey into silence. His testimony effectively torpedoes Lindsey's murder case ("Five By Five").
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: From "Over the Rainbow" when Team Angel was facing down a whole village.
  Wesley: I think we're winning! (cut to Team Angel tied up)
• Suspect Is Hatless: When interviewing witnesses to a demon assault on the subway, the best Kate can glean from them is suspect is of 'average' height, 'average' build, and 'average' weight. Well, that was helpful.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  Partygoer: "Nice sweater. Hand-knit?"
  Wesley: Certainly not by me!"
  • In "Bachelor Party", Doyle is invited to a stag party for his old flame's new fiancée — who just so happens to be a demon, too. But something is amiss...
  Aunt Martha: Well, they're certainly not going to eat your ex-husband's brains. (Everyone stares) ...For instance.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: Wolfram & Hart.
  Lilah: Vampire Detectors my ass.
  • For such a high-security building, the roof is oddly unguarded.
• Sword Fight: Between Angel and Lindsey in the last season.
• Sword over Head: Pressed by Gunn's oncoming gang, Angel ends up violently disarming one of his attackers and almost stabs him with his own stake. He stops when he realizes that his prey is a mere kid.
  • Untwisted in the Season Four finale ("Home"). Angel finds himself raising a knife over Connor's neck, fulfilling Wesley's prophecy from long ago. Against all expectation, however, Angel brings the knife down with full force.

T

• Tabloid Melodrama: According to The Inquirer, Rebecca Lowell once slept with Ernest Borgnine, and is bulimic.
  Angel: [supportively] I hear Borgnine is a very skilled lover.
• Tailor-Made Prison: Billy Blim is imprisoned in a cube of fire.
• Take It to the Bridge: Angel tracks the depowered Jasmine to an overpass, where she proceeds to Motive Rant as the city erupts into chaos.
• Take That!: At Gallagher. Cordelia comments that the comedian has changed his act more times than Penn has in two centuries of ritual killings. (Wesley seems to like him though.)
  • When Dennis starts to misbehave, Cordelia threatens to blast the Madonna version of Evita around the clock.
  • "[I]f Julia Roberts ever makes a realistic movie about being an escort, it should be called Pretty Skanky Woman."
  • Fred's mom mentions that her husband, Roger, can't get enough of those Ridley Scott movies with the slime and the teeth.
    "...Except for that last one they made. I think he dozed off."
    • This could be Self-Deprecation, depending on whether or not she meant Alien: Resurrection.
  • Gunn says the devils controlling Smile Time have a very distinctive M.O. "You seen the last few seasons of Happy Days?"
  • Lorne's dislike of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Diane Warren. Playing the latter will result in your death.
  • Angel toys with the idea of finally seeing Les Mis while in England. "Trust me," Spike warns, "halfway through the first act you'll be drinking humans again."
  Joss Whedon: I'm usually not that snarky, I don't like to diss things. But Les Mis went down.
  • Much eyebrow wagging at Knox's Rick Springfield screen saver. Interestingly, this works as Gallows Humor if one considers his plans for Fred. ("I wish I was with Jesse's girl")
  • In the related "Spike: After The Fall", after L.A. goes literally to Hell, someone comments, 'No new movies have come out for months, the internet is down, the televisions only play that awful show about the witch sisters.'—-"Charmed" is considered highly derivative of "Buffy" and "Angel", and the show followed "Angel" in reruns for at least three years.
  • From Lorne: "Turns out massacres are a lot like sitting through Godfather 3: Once is enough."
• Take a Third Option: In "The Ring", Angel implores the other fighters at XXI not to cooperate in the matches. Cribb eventually releases the prisoners, who mob the entire ring and bring the club to a halt.
• Taking the Bullet: Doyle sacrfices himself in order to shut down The Scourge's beacon in order to prevent Angel from doing it.
• Tap on the Head
• Tattooed Crook: In "Five By Five", Angel mentors a street hoodlum in his own distinctive style. Cordelia snarkily vocalizes her doubt that "a guy with that many tattoos" can be reformed.
• Teach Him Anger: While the pair is hunting for Angelus, Wesley devises a number of tests to determine whether Faith has gotten too soft. He goads Faith with memories of how she tortured him, then mocks her apparent reformation, calling her a rabid animal who should have been put down long ago. As expected, Faith lunges for the limey's throat.
  Wesley: There, that wasn't so hard was it? ''It's what you'll need to beat him.”
• Team Killer: Angel attempting to smother Wesley in his hospital bed. Before he does, Angel very calmly puts Wes' mind to rest that this is not Angelus talking.
• Team Power Walk: A flashback to 1900 AD shows Angel and his posse (Darla, Spike, and Drusilla) walking amidst the flames of the Chinese Boxer Rebellion.
• Tears of Awe: Upon learning that they're attending a ballet recital, Gunn bemoans the fact that it isn't a hip-hop concert. By the end of the first act, he's literally weeping because it's such a moving performance.
• Technobabble: Fred's technobabble always comes off as kind of cute.
  • Fred has made homicidal rage look cute. Technobabble is as nothing.
• Tempting Fate: Cordelia and Doyle commiserate over drinks, wondering if they're out of a job now that Angel's human ("I Will Remember You"). Doyle figures that if Angel's no longer working for the Powers That Be, that must mean he's off the hook, too. Cue another vision, causing poor Doyle's head to slam into the bar top. ..Guess not.
  • Before departing L.A., Buffy makes a passing laceration at Angel by comparing to her new boyfriend (Riley), whom she "knows" and "trusts" ("Sanctuary"). As we later find out on Buffy, she doesn't know the real Riley very well at all.
• 10-Minute Retirement: Angel quits the hero business in Season Two (though it lasts considerably longer than ten minutes), firing his team and devoting all his energies toward crushing Wolfram & Hart. Once he finds that the Senior Partners don't exist to be beaten, only fought, he comes to his senses and reunites the team.
• Terse Talker: Played for Laughs in "In the Dark", when the reigning kings of stoicism greet each other.
  Angel: (deadpan) Oz.
  Oz: Angel.
  Angel: Nice surprise.
  Oz: Thanks.
  Angel: Staying long?
  Oz: Few days.
  (long pause)
  Doyle: (to Cordelia) ......They always like this?
  Oz: No, we're usually laconic.
• Thanatos Gambit: Holtz giving Angel a note to give to Angel's human son Connor. It explains that the two of them should be together. He also tells Angel the same thing, seemingly having finally made peace with Angel for Connor's sake. Then he has his accomplice stab him twice in the neck so it looks like Angel killed Holtz out of spite. This pretty much destroyed the relationship between Angel and his son forever, especially given the vicious cycle that resulted.
  • In After the Fall, this is how Angel gets L.A. out of Hell.
• Theme Initials: A disproportionate number of Wolfram & Hart lawyers have the initials L.M. - Lindsay McDonald, Lilah Morgan, Lee Mercer and Linwood Morrow.
  • Initially justified; Lindsay McDonald's, Lilah Morgan's, and Lee Mercer's first appearances were all written to be the same person.
• There Are No Coincidences: When Kate catches her father lingering around a crime scene, she assumes he's been craving "action" and listening the police scanner at home again. It didn't escape Angel's notice, though; he soon learns that Trevor removed a piece of evidence from the scene.
  • Invoked on a mammoth scale in Season Four, when Skip reveals the accidents that brought Team Angel together were no accidents.
• There Are No Therapists: The following people did not receive therapy: Gunn, who spent much of his life on the streets fighting for his life, and had to kill his sister. Wesley, whose father was verbally abusive and used to lock him under the stairs. Fred spent five years living feral in a dimension where humans were enslaved, and came back babbling and hiding in her room for weeks. And Connor, who was brought up in a hell dimension by a fanatical vampire hunter from the 18th century who taught Connor that his father was pure evil. The one time Angel went to a guru to talk about his problems, the guy turned out to be an impostor. It might have worth tracking down a psychiatrist who catered to the supernatural, particularly for the last two.
• There Was a Door: Gunn isn't too receptive to the idea of a noble vampire at first. When Angel suggests an alliance, Gunn expresses his skepticism by locking him in a meat locker. Angel spends the next few minutes trying to punch his way out, only for Cordelia and Wesley to unlock the door.
• These Hands Have Killed: Angel being forced to execute Baker during a cage fight. As the crowd cheers, Angel just stares at his blood-stained hands ("The Ring").
  • Faith goes a little nuts after slaying a demon assassin in Angel's basement. With what she's gone through, the last thing Faith needed to see was her hand holding a bloody knife.
• Third Party Stops Attack: Tricked by the Big Bad into killing Angel before he could be converted back to good, Connor raises the stake and finds out the hard way that Slayers are much stronger then he is when Faith seizes his arm, followed by tossing him across the room.
• This Is Gonna Suck: After Faith drugs Angelus he is forced to relive the good acts he's done. He actually freaks out to Faith when he realizes what's coming.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Cordelia in "Rm w/a Vu". Within a few hours, Angel's basement is covered wall-to-wall with Cordelia's trophies, there's peanut butter on his bed, his leather chair is ruined, and Cordelia is busily cutting up his linoleum floor to examine the hardwood.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: In Angel's "Smile Time" episode, from one muppet to another: "I'm gonna tear you a new puppet hole, bitch!"
• This Means War!: Kate Lockely in "To Shanshu in L.A". Subverted in that Kate can't quite make up her mind about this; she and Angel share quite a few "This Means War" moments in Season 2, but always manage to bury the hatchet some way or another.
  • After what Angelus did to his family, the only hatchet Holtz wants to bury is the one he can plant inside Angel's head.
• Three-Way Sex: In addition to reportedly having a herculean physique, the Immortal has the stamina of a racehorse, as Darla and Drusilla can attest. (To Spike and Angel's vast annoyance.)
• Throwing the Distraction: Inverted against the heroes in "War Zone". Gunn issues the evacuation order when vampires firebomb his base. Gunn realizes only too late that it's a distraction, and that he's just sent his little sister outdoors to get chowed down on.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Played straight. Angel sure is handy with a scythe. Lindsey, on the other hand....
• Thou Shalt Not Kill Muggles: Further deconstructed with each passing year. So, butchering hundreds of demons is okay, but a professor who feeds his students to wormholes = the angels weep?
  • Subverted by Angel leaving a whole pack of Wolfram & Hart lawyers to be fed on by Darla and Dru.
  • Same goes for Jasmine's pod people. Angel dutifully reminds the viewers at home that these people are under a spell, but it comes down to us vs. them... Gunn injects, "Believe me, I'm there."
  • An interesting footnote to Season Five: Nina winds up deeply disturbed by the lives she took while a werewolf, regardless of how depraved those people were. Angel? He's cool with it. This highlights the differences between them, as well the gradual darkening of Angel's team.
• To Create a Playground for Evil: Seemingly the Beast's motivation for blocking out the sun.
• To Hell and Back: All of L.A. in After the Fall.
• Tomes of Prophecy and Fate: The Shanshu Prophecy.
• Too Happy to Live: A textbook example with Wesley and Fred, who get to spend approximately ten minutes of one episode as a happy couple after seasons of Will They or Won't They? before Fred is slowly and painfully killed so her body can host Illyria.
• Took a Level in Badass: Good Lord, Wesley. He could be the Trope Codifier considering how he started out on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
  • Lilah too. It's easy to forget in the later seasons that she was a largely ineffective Smug Snake for the first two and half years of the show, ultimately getting a promotion only because Lindsey turned it down. It's only from season 3 on that she emerges as a genuinely dangerous and capable figure.
  • Gunn as well via a mental upgrade became the go to guy in court. Able to speak multiple demon languages and knowledgable in Demon diplomacy, while still able to take multiple vampires hand to hand. Cordelia from cheerleader to Katana wielding Seer and Fred from crazy Survivor slave to flame thrower wielding bad ass scientist. Angel Investigations, you didn't need to be a badass to work there, but it helped.
• Took a Level in Kindness: When Faith first appeared on the show she thought if she did enough damage she'd get someone to kill her. When she failed to get even Buffy to put her out of her misery Faith goes to prison for murder, where she could have easily broken out but chose to stay to get her head together. When we next see her she's a much calmer, civil chosen one, even going as far as to send Conner home rather than have him try and kill Angelus.
• Torture Always Works
• Torture Technician: Marcus the vampire is alleged to have "invented some of the classics", but he's closed-mouthed about which. ("In the Dark")
  • Faith has a cute system for separating torture into five groups (àla the Food Pyramid), which Wesley gets to experience firsthand ("Five By Five").
  • Angelus was pretty handy with torture devices in his day. By and large, Angel gave that habit up. In "Forgiving", though, he comes very close to torturing a captive Linwood with stuff he finds lying around the office. (This is a special case, as Angel is desperate to recover his son.)
• To Serve Man: All part of a balanced breakfast for Jasmine. Gunn lampshades this word-for-word.
• Touched by Vorlons: Happens twice to Cordelia.
• Trade Snark: As Wesley is reading aloud from the owner's manual for Cordy's new security system, he actually recites the "TM" at the end.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The themesong montages have a habit of spoiling that someone will be promoted to main cast, most notably Spike in the season 5 opener when he doesn't appear until the end of the episode.
  • The british dvds have a habit of doing this. The Making of Smile Time was on the disk just before Smile Time.
• Transplant: Cordelia originally. Later to be followed by Wesley, whose arc had concluded in Buffy Season 3. Spike, who 'died' in that show's finale, promptly reappeared on Angel in its final season. (Can't keep a good Fonzie down!)
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: "Untouched": Bethany, the girl with telekenesis, had it awakened when she was abused physically and sexually by her father. It also flared up when someone threatened her in an alley early in the ep.
• Trash the Set: Angel's Season 1 office gets dynamited, Caritas in season 3 and the Wolfram & Hart offices in seasons 4 and 5.
• Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Wesley is manipulated into kidnapping Angel's son, Connor, believing Angel was going to eat Connor. This act of betrayal causes a big schism between the two and other members of the team. Not even having Wesley being in the hospital with his throat slit stopped Angel in attacking him. There's also a mention of Hell having a special place for traitors.
• True Love Is Boring: Outright stated in regards to Fred and Gunn. Possibly the case for Angel himself.
• Try Not to Die: Illyria to Gunn in the final episode.
• Twerp Sweating: Angel giving the third degree to Pierce, a day trader and Cordelia's date ("Bachelor Party").
  • Cordy refuses to bring her next date to meet Angel, convinced he'll act like a forbidding father. But she didn't count on Phantom Dennis! When Cordy brings Wilson over to her apartment, Dennis kills the mood by slamming the front door, brightening the lights she dims, and adjusting the radio dial to blast jaunty polka ("Expecting").
  • A flashback to the 18th century shows Darla introducing her beau (Angelus) to the Master. Darla tries impressing him with her boyfriend's killing record, but Angelus doesn't warm to his new father-in-law ("Darla").
• Twisted Eucharist: Jasmine eating her worshippers in a blasphemous parody of Communion.
• Two Guys and a Girl: The original dynamic, with Wesley taking Doyle's place mid-season.
• Two Lines, No Waiting:
  • Season 2 indulged in this a fair amount midway through its run, as Angel would fire Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn from Angel Investigations so he could fight off Wolfram & Hart, Darla, and Drusilla by himself without being tethered down by their objections to his underhandedness. As a result, several episodes feature plots of Angel dealing with whatever the law firm had planned while Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn continued to help the helpless without him, with the two groups rarely intersecting outside of a single scene at a time. This is rectified in "Epiphany" when Angel realizes that he had been going at things in the wrong way and sets out to make amends with his friends.
  • The latter portion of Season 3 would dip into this after Wesley gets kicked out of the group for stealing Connor, with much of his screentime spent on the developing relationship between him and Lilah Morgan. He begins to interact with the group again at points in Season 4 (as seen when he rescues Angel from the bottom of the ocean or helps Fred in her vendetta against her old professor) before he rejoins the team officially midway through the season.
• Two Roads Before You: Lindsey undergoes a crisis of conscience when asked to facilitate the deaths of three children. (Hey, Even Lawyers Have Standards.) In the end, he is faced with a choice of either taking Holland's bribe, or walking out the door. Lindsey winds up shutting the doors in front of him.
  • During the S2 Darla arc, Angel tries to redeem Darla out of a misplaced sense of filial loyalty. Eventually, even Lorne warns Angel that he's about to jump the track.
  • Angel is offered a choice between preventing Darla and Drusilla from killing a roomful of Wolfram & Hart employees, or simply walking away. Angel decides the lawyers made their own bed and leaves them.

U

• Unseen Evil: The Wolf, Ram and Hart (AKA the "Senior Partners").
• Undercover When Alone: Knox acts puzzled when a large sarcophagus gets delivered to his lab. Turns out he not only knew it was coming, he ordered it, for it contained the essence of his god.
• Unexpectedly Real Magic:
  • Fred accidentally got transported to Pylia after reading some words out of what turned out to be a magical spell book.
  • Angel interrupts some Wolfram & Hart mooks preparing a ritual which they don't know what it's for. They're just following the recipe their supervisors gave them.
• Unholy Ground: In the backstory, Wolfram & Hart de-consecrated the grounds of the Los Angeles branch office with the spilling of a serial killer's blood in the foundation. The ghost of that killer continued to haunt the offices until Angel & Co brought him back to life, after which they locked him in a sarcophagus for the rest of his eternal life.
• Unpredictable Results: A giant egg that apparently might do anything, but... turned Angel into a puppet?
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Between Cordelia and Doyle. Though they did come close to resolving it. (Stupid demon Nazis.)
  • And later Angel/Cordelia and Wesley/Fred. Both women die at the point of resolution.
• Unstuck in Time: Illyria in "Time Bomb."
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Ryan Anderson's reaction to Angel shoving him out of the path of a speeding car. Noticing the bloody scrape on Angel's shoulder, Ryan, who seems completely unfazed by his brush with death, asks Angel if he's going to cry. This is an early sign that this kid belongs in a padded room.
• Unwitting Pawn: Pretty much everyone as far as Jasmine's concerned.
  • Angel inadvertently beats up a few Knight Templars in "That Vision Thing".
• Useless Without Powers: There's an episode in the first season where Angel becomes human. He has to push the Reset Button in the end because he believes he's become The Load.

V

• Vader Breath: Cyvus Vail.
• Vagueness Is Coming: The Beast's arrival in season 4 of Angel is foreseen in vague implications of blood, and fire from the sky, and all that good stuff.
  • In Season Five, Lindsey reveals that Wolfram & Hart are laying the groundwork for the upcoming apocalypse by, um...not telling anyone about it.
• Vampire Detective Series
• Vampire Hunter: Both good and evil varieties.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Most prominently seen in "The Old Gang of Mine", in which Gunn's old vampire-hunting crew begins hunting anything non-human.
• Villainous Demotivator: The head vampire in "War Zone", Knox, claps his buddy Ty on the shoulder and says its not his fault for getting ambushed by Gunn's crew. Right before he stakes him.
• Villains Never Lie: Angel and co. take the guy responsible for Fred's infection by Illyria at his word when he says Fred's soul was destroyed and she can't be resurrected. As the comics show, he was lying. Or at the very least mistaken.
• Virgin Sacrifice: Magnus Bryce has this in mind for his daughter, Virginia. It didn't work because he didn't watch her closely enough—she'd lost her "purity" a long time ago.
  • Connor crosses his Moral Event Horizon when he agrees to slaughter a female virgin, furthering Evil Cordy's goals.
• Viva Las Vegas!: "The House Always Wins" from Season 4, filmed on location in Sin City.
• Voice Changeling: The Ethros demon possessing Ryan displays this ability. It taunts Wesley in a voice identical to his own, reminding him of his unceremonious sacking from the Watcher's Council; then it strikes out at Angel by channeling Doyle's voice, playing on Angel's guilt. And also makes him angry.
• Volleying Insults:
  Spike: Never much for small talk, were you? Always too busy trying to perfect that "brooding block of wood" mystique. God, I love that.
  Angel: Not as much as I loved your non-stop yammering.
  Spike: The way you always had to be the big swingy, swaggerin' around, barkin' orders—
  Angel: Never listening.
  Spike: Always interrupting.
  Angel: And your hair, what color do they call that? "Radioactive"?
  Spike: Never much cared for you, Liam, even when we were evil.
  Angel: Cared for you less.
  Spike: Fine!
  Angel: Good!
  (long pause)
  Angel: There was one thing about you.
  Spike: Really?
  Angel: Yeah, I never told anybody about this, but I liked your poems.
  Spike: You like Barry Manilow!
• Vomit Discretion Shot: During the acid trippy sequence of "Spin the Bottle", the camera cuts to Fred, who is petting a potted fern with fascination. Right before she vomits off to the side.
  • Following the rooftop showdown in "Lineage", Wesley expresses shock at shooting his father by shambling over to a nearby air conditioning unit. This is followed by the sound of him retching.
    • Connor conveniently makes it out to the sidewalk and behind a wall before spewing his guts in Soulless.

W

• Wainscot Society: Vampires, demons, and other supernatural beings run a society of sorts in parallel to the humans on whom they prey, mostly preserving a Masquerade.
• Walk-In Chime-In: When Angel warns his buddies about how Buffy would react if she found out he'd been stalking her in Sunnydale, Buffy pops into his office to finish his thought. "A little upset." Oh boy.
  • Happens quite a lot in Season 4, when the main arc requires the cast to reunite and spout exposition quickly.
  • Pretty much a Running Gag with Angel throughout the series.
• Wall of Weapons: Angel's basement in Season 1. After he joins agrees to run Wolfram & Hart, Angel's office comes furnished with one.
• Was Once a Man: The end of season five episode, Damage; after Dana the insane slayer has been carted off, Angel and Spike have a sombre discussion in the latter's hospital room about the nature of evil:
  Spike: The tingling in my forearms tells me she's too far gone to help. She's one of us now. She's a monster.
  Angel: She's an innocent victim.
  Spike: So were we, once upon a time.
  Angel: Once upon a time.
• Watching the Sunset: Angel allows himself to watch one last sunset before smashing his Ring of Power.
• Watching Troy Burn: Heroes and villains alike look on with fear as The Beast rains fire on Los Angeles.
• Waxing Lyrical: Cordelia wonders aloud why anyone in their right mind would try dating in L.A. You'll just end up being stalked by a surgeon with anatomic limbs or impregnated with demon spawn.
  Doyle: People need people. And people...who need people...are the luckiest peo-- (Cordy glares, Doyle shuts up)
  • A Call-Back to this line occurs in "The Magic Bullet", via Connor of all people. Cue incredulous stares from everyone in the room.
  Lorne: You been sneakin' peeks at my Streisand collection again, kiddo?
  Connor: (defensively) It just kinda popped out.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Doyle, who at least got to go heroically.
  • Kate Lockley just disappeared, despite a promising run on the first season, when her actor left for Law & Order.
• We Help the Helpless: Angel's agency slogan.
  • Originally, it was "We help the hopeless", which let Doyle have the hilarious fumble on picking up the phone: "Angel Investigations, we hope you're helpless..."
  • A list of Fan Fiction spoofs on the line can be found on this page.
  • And on Buffy, when Spike (and everyone) loses his memory, he thinks that "Maybe I'm a good vampire...I help the helpless...on a path of redemption...I'm a vampire with a soul!" (which Buffy, of course, immediately waves aside as being ridiculous and "lame")
• We Used to Be Friends:
  Wesley: I have no idea where Angel is, Lilah, or what happened to him. And I really couldn't care.
  Lilah: Wow. That was cold. I think we're finally making progress. Come on. Doesn't it bother you just a little bit? The not knowing?
  Wesley: That part of my life is dead. Doesn't concern me now.
• Weakened by the Light: The "Beacon" is a weapon which emits a light deadly to humans and demi-humans alike. The Scourge intend to use to annihilate every half-breed demon within a quarter-mile radius.
• Welcome to My World: Darla's first words to Angel following his 'rebirth' as a vamp.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Trevor Lockley was always cold to Kate, having shut down all emotion following his wife's death. Despite this, Kate is deeply distraught at the murder of her father. In response to Trevor's death, she begins to hate all paranormal creatures (especially vampires) and turns openly-hostile towards Angel.
  • "The Prodigal" is interspersed with flashbacks to Angel's upbringing in Ireland, revealing a not-dissimilar relationship with his own father.
  • Roger Wyndam-Pryce manages to wear down his son's spirit every time he opens his mouth.
• Wham Episode:
  • "Hero": In case you forgot that this is a Joss Whedon show, Doyle sacrifices himself to save the world.
  • "To Shanshu In L.A.": A demon named Vocah is summoned by Wolfram & Hart to steal a scroll from Angel to resurrect the Beast. To do this, he burns down Angel's headquarters, kills the Oracles, and causes Kate to turn against Angel. His plan suceeds, and Wolfram & Hart resurrect the Beast, who turns out to be Darla. In addition, Angel learns that he is prophesied to earn the right to live as human again, and Lindsay loses his hand when he turns against Angel.
  • "Reunion": Angel locks the entire Wolfram & Hart Special Project Division in a room with a pissed off Darla and Drusilla, then returns home and fires Wesley, Cordelia, and Gunn.
  • "Happy Anniversary": Downplayed, but Angel reveals to Lorne that he fired his team to keep them away from that kind of dark territory, as he thought it would do more damage to them than firing them and staying away from them, despite the fact that they would've rather prevented Angel from doing anything as horrible (or more horrible) as what he did to Wolfram & Hart's lawyers.
  • "Reprise/Epiphany": Angel kills one of the Senior Partners of Wolfram & Hart and learns that its Home Office isn't hell. The Home Office of Wolfram & Hart is actually Earth, implying that he can't save humanity because humanity itself is evil. Depressed, he ends up having sex with Darla, only to not turn into Angelus, but instead have an epiphany that convinces him to rejoin Wesley, Cordelia, and Gunn. Meanwhile, Kate gets fired and attempts suicide, and Wesley and Virginia break up.
  • "Lullaby": Holtz reveals himself to Angel and obliterates Caritas in order to kill him and Darla. Darla stakes herself so that her son may be born.
  • "Birthday": Cordelia becomes part-demon so that she keep the visions without dying.
  • "Sleep Tight" takes the status quo that had been built up in Season 3 and straight up murders it. Wesley kidnaps Connor in a misguided attempt to keep him safe, only to get his throat slit and left to die as a reward. A four-sided confrontation goes down between Angel, Lilah, Sahjahn and Holtz over what happens to the boy, and Holtz winds up taking Connor with him through a portal into a hell dimension. Cue two months of reruns.
  • "Forgiving" in Season 3. The ending scene when Angel visits Wesley in the hospital, where he's recovering from having his throat cut. Angel has what starts out as a normal, calm conversation, assuring Wes that it was Angel talking, not Angelus. cue Angel's face contorting with rage, not vamping out, but even scarier, and doing his level best to kill Wes in his hospital bed!!
  • At first, The Price" seems like a normal Monster of the Week episode about a slug infestation, until the last ten minutes or so. First, Gunn asks Wesley for help dealing with the slugs only to learn that he has become incredibly tortured and depressed after the events of Forgiving. Then, Cordelia ends up eradicating all of the slugs by using some mysterious demon power that no one knew existed. And finally, an adult Connor returns from the hell dimension, only to point a gun right at Angel's face.
  • "Tomorrow": Angel and Cordelia realize that they have feelings for each other, but before they can do anything about it, Connor traps Angel in a cage at the bottom of the ocean, and Cordelia is taken off to a higher plane of existence. And if that's not enough, Wesley sleeps with Lilah, Lorne and the Groosalugg leave, and Fred and Gunn are left at the hotel unable to contact anyone.
  • Season 4 had several of these back-to-back:
    • "Apocalypse, Nowish": As usual, Angel Investigations try to stop an appcalypse. But this time, they fail.
    • "Habeas Corpses": Wolfram & Hart is destroyed, and everyone but Lilah is slaughtered.
    • "A Long Day's Journey": Just in case things couldn't get worse, The Beast has managed to blot out the sun.
    • "Awakening": Everyone decides to turn Angel into Angelus so they could ask him for information on The Beast. Before they could go through it, however, they learn about a magic sword that could destroy him. They retrieve the sword, destroy The Beast, and save the day, with Angel and Cordelia finally getting back together. But then it turns out that it was all a dream that was part of the process of Angel turning into Angelus.
  • "Home". Angel and crew are offered the LA branch of Wolfram & Hart, with Angel as CEO. They take the deal.
  • "Lineage" reveals just how drastically Wesley's changed from his introduction in Buffy. He's gone from a stuttering, smitten, stickler for rules to a man whom his father points out is working for the enemy, and who ends up gunning down his father without hesitation when the man threatens Fred, to Wesley's own horror. When Fred offers up that Wesley must've known deep down that his father was a robot, Wesley corrects her, saying he was absolutely certain he was killing the real deal. In a lesser series this would've meant Fred realized the depths of his affection for her, but not on Angel. Wesley spends the final moments of the episode awkwardly trying to reconcile with his abusive father, who angrily and dismissively admonishes his son for calling him at such an early hour.
  • "You're Welcome": Pretty much every plot thread from this first half of Season 5 culminates in this episode. Cordelia recovers from her coma and helps Angel Investigations discover the truth behind Eve and Lindsey's plans. By the end of the episode, Eve has been fired, Lindsey has been thrown through a portal, and Angel has finally been set back on the right track. However, Cordelia reveals that she actually never managed to recover from her coma, and that she just made a selfless deal with the Powers That Be to help out Angel. Since Cordelia's work is pretty much done, the episode ends with her saying goodbye to Angel, and being declared dead by the hospital.
  • "A Hole in the World". A primordial evil known as Illyria devours Fred whole, and takes over her body; Gunn's actions in the previous episode turned out to be the cause of these events happening, so he takes his anger out on Knox; and the cute stuffed animal Higgenbotham introduced at the start as Fred's security blanket, when at the end she tearfully begs that she needs Higgenbotham, but Illyria has devoured so much of Fred's soul that Fred realizes that she no longer remembers who Higgenbotham is, and throws a third Chekhov's Gun onto the heap with Lorne, whose behavior the rest of the ep seems out of character: He threatens Eve, and tells her to run away after sensing her grim future.
• Wham Line: "And yet somehow, I just can't seem to care."
  • Cordelia's line after killing Lilah: "Why'd you think I let him [Angelus] out, you stupid bitch?"
  • After trying his best to find out the secrets of the Senior Partners, and finally trying to invade their home dimension in Heroic Sacrifice, Angel finds out their homeworld from Holland Mathers: "Welcome to the home office."
  • "Hi, dad"
  • "Cavemen win. Of course, the cavemen win." - Fred's dying words
• Whammy Bid: Played with: The item for sale: Cordelia's visions, or more specifically, her eyeballs. To stall for time, Cordelia incites a bidding war by claiming to be able to see the locations of buried treasure. This escalates until one of the two highest bidders kills the other one. Finally, a female attorney for Wolfram & Hart closes the auction with a ridiculous low Whammy Bid of $30,000.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never clarified as to whether the whole Universe-going-all-whackadoo-due-to-two-vampire-champions-with-a-soul-existing thing was a legitimate calamity, or just some hoodoo that Lindsey pulled off to put on a show. Then there's also the part where the Senior Partners were only able to stabilize the effects "temporarily". It's never mentioned again.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The rest of Angel Investigations calls Angel out after he lets Darla and Drusilla massacre a lot of Wolfram and Hart lawyers.
• Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: Have fun waiting around for an explanation, because there isn't one. Angel ditches most of his cool accessories in the second season, though a few random ones still pop up now and again.
  • Gunn's original street crew included one guy who's armed with a flamethrower. Where did they get that?
  • Wesley's collapsible wrist-swords came from an Arms Dealer who specialized in esoteric weaponry (seen in "Lineage"). Presumably Angel ordered from the same guy.
• White Void Room: The Conduit room.
• Who Shot JFK?: A conspiracy theorist is informed by Jasmine that there was no second gunman.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?
• Whole Episode Flashback: The heroes relocate to the defunct Hyperion Hotel in "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been". In the process, they must uproot a demon who held some connection to Angel in The '50s.
  • Darla's eponymous episode shows her rise from syphilis-stricken prostitute to big-league vampire.
  • And in "Why We Fight", Angel and Spike punch some Nazis.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Angel says "Why did it have to be stakes?" in "Awakening" (an episode with some blatant Indiana Jones homages) and when entering a nightclub in Rome mutters, "Dancing. Why did it have to be dancing?"
• Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Harmony is not to be trusted with ancient books.
• Wicked Cultured:
  • Most of the high-class baddies on this series are fond of classical music — even Lindsey. In their first scene together, he and Darla shoot the breeze about Frédéric Chopin.
  • Marcus the vampire plays a Broken Record of Mozart's Symphony #41 to interrogate Angel.
• Wife-Basher Basher: The Cold Open for "In the Dark" follows Angel saving a woman from her drug addict boyfriend, who Angel proceeds to pound unconscious. Ouch.
• Wilhelm Scream: Heard at the beginning of "The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco", when the redshirt is tossed into the air.
• Willfully Weak: It's established that Angel is stronger in Game Face, and that he sometimes holds back rather than scare off the people he's trying to save. Occasionally, a character will punch him repeatedly in order to make him vamp out. This happened once with Buffy (in "Graduation Day"), and again with adult Connor.
  • "Guise Will Be Guise" hints at Angel's inner fear. In a stick-fighting match with a hermit, Angel repeatedly gets beatenback while his opponent asks him why he's holding back. "Because if I let it, it'll kill you."
  • The Season Two finale puts Angel on Pylea, an alternate dimension where his Game Face manifests as a crazed, spiked monster. He accidentally switches over while trying to protect Fred, and doesn't revert back until he catches his reflection in a pool of water. The sight of it traumatizes Angel so much that he has a nervous breakdown, and refuses to fight anyone else.
  • Doyle has much the same problem: He's ashamed of his demon half and will even allow himself to be beaten to a pulp rather than transform. This despite Doyle being practically invulnerable in demon form.
• With a Friend and a Stranger: Initially, with Angel and Cordelia as "friends", and Doyle as the stranger.
• With Due Respect: At Wolfram & Hart, no one dares contradict a senior manager. Except Lindsey.
• Withholding Their Name: "The Host of Caritas" was not given an official name (even to the other characters) until late into the second season. The explanation, when their name is revealed, is that it's too embarrassing. Krevlornswath of the Deathwok Clan.
  Host (who is a green-skinned demon): It's Lorne. I don't like to mention it because, well...
  Angel: Lorne Greene!
  (Cordelia and Gunn stare blankly)
  Angel: Bonanza? Fourteen years on the air doesn't mean anything?
  (They are still blank)
  Angel: Okay, now I feel old.
• With or Without You
  Wesley Wyndam-Pryce: I thought you'd like to know that we're keeping the agency open. With or without you.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Connor by the end of Season 4.
• Worf Had the Flu: Faith's big fight with Angelus in season four. Angel finally wins a fight with a Slayer... who's previously injured and high on magic heroin.
  • Wins? Try lost. As Faith said, "Kicked his ass."
  • Somewhat brilliantly applied in-universe by Hamilton. Hamilton completely avoids Illyria until she (partly at Hamilton's instruction) gets zapped with a depowering weapon. He then mocks and unloads on a extremely depressed, Crash Bandicoot-playing "big scary Old One" and chalks it up. Notable here because the last time Illyria was around, she was at least two tiers higher in power, was presumably feeling a hell of a lot better, and would have eaten the Senior Partners themselves.

Y

• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • The happier Angel is, the worse things are going to turn out.
  • Every single attempt at a Relationship Upgrade between Angel and Cordelia fails right when it looks like it is finally going to happen: first a heavily pregnant Darla arrives on the scene; once Darla is dust and Connor is born, the Groosalugg crosses over to Earth to pursue Cordy; after she dumps him and admits she loves Angel, she gets yanked to the Heavens, while Angel gets sealed in a box and dropped underwater; after both of them are saved, Cordy ends up first amnesiac, then possessed by Jasmine, then comatose, while Angel temporarily reverts to Angelus; and finally, after Cordelia wakes up from her coma and has The Big Damn Kiss with Angel, it turns out that she never woke up and has been Dead All Along.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: After coming back from the Oracle's realm, Doyle assumes the incantation never worked as Angel only appeared gone for a moment.
• You Are in Command Now: Lawson is briefly put in charge of a captured German submarine following the murder of his captain by Spike. Once aboard, Angel assumes control of the sub thanks to the command codes provided for him by the U.S. military.
• You Are Too Late: Invoked in the very first episode, for cripes' sake.
  • The same thing happens to Angel again in "The Prodigal": Realizing Kate's father is in danger, Angel rushes over to his apartment, but is unable to convince Trevor to invite him in. Angel is then forced to watch as Trevor is killed by his vampire associates, who were invited inside a mere minute earlier.
  • The good guys seem to be constantly running late in Season Four. Angel and co. fail to catch The Beast before he blots out the sun, prevent the deaths of the Ra-Tet (one of whom is massacred right under their noses), or stop Cordelia from birthing Jasmine. In the case of the latter, Angel makes it in time to stop Cordelia and raises his sword to kill her, but hesitates for a crucial moment.
• You Are What You Hate: In the end, Holtz was engaging in actions that were the reason he hated Angelus and Darla in the first place.
• You Can Keep Her!: Jack McNamara steps a bit too close to the red line in "The Ring", giving Angel an opportunity to grab him without disintegrating. When Jack's brother (Darin) shows up, Angel demands to be set free or he'll break Jack's neck. Darin casually pulls a gun and shoots his brother, and Angel is knocked out by a barrage of cattle prods.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Both played straight as a key point of the Myth Arc, and subverted when a baddie makes up a fake prophecy to screw with Angel.
  • Sahjhan learns it the hard way, despite his relentless chessmastering.
• You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: A skinhead vampire gets in Angel's face for proposing a truce between his pack and Gunn's street gang. Without so much as blinking, Angel jams a stake through him ("I wasn't actually talking to you.") and proceeds with the rest of his speech.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: A rare heroic example: Angel has Lorne do this to Lindsey.
• You Killed My Father: Adopted father in this case, but Holtz kills himself to deliberately set Connor against Angel because of this reasoning.
• You Know I'm Black, Right?: Cordelia calls up Willow (from Buffy) to inquire about Harmony's weird behavior... before learning that Harmony's been turned into a vampire during her absence. Along with some other developments.
  Cordelia: (on the phone) Oh! Harmony's a vampire! All this time I thought she'd become a great big lesbo! (beat) Oh. Really? ...well, that's great! Good for you!
  Willow: Thanks for the validation.
• You Look Familiar: Harriet Doyle's rebound boyfriend, Richard Straley, is played by Carlos Jacott. He previously played Ken, another (seemingly) milquetoast villain on Season 3 of Buffy ("Anne") and would later appear in the first two episodes of Firefly as Lawrence Dobson.
  • The guy who played Knox previously played Holden in Buffy ("Conversations With Dead People") and Kal Penn played an obnoxious college student in "Beer Bad" before appearing in Angel as a guy with an exposed brain.
  • The "Mustard" guy (executive producer David Fury) from "Once More With Feeling" reappears on "Smile Time" as the human puppet.
  • Weatherby, of the Watchers' Council's Special Ops members, later played a similarly ruthless agent as one of the "Hands of Blue" in Firefly.
• You Need to Get Laid
• You Remind Me of X: Penn selects his victims based on their physical resemblance to his family members. Like Angel says, he's "been getting back at (his) father for over 200 years."
  • Holland delivers this spiel to Lindsey in "Blind Date", implying that he once had an Ignored Epiphany of his own.
  • Faith's journey is an obvious parallel to Angel's, even moreso when she becomes The Atoner. Angel's rehabilitation of her is a Call-Back to his earlier (thwarted) attempt to do so in the third season of Buffy.
• You Said You Would Let Them Go: Wesley's reaction to the Watcher Council's Ops Team after they go back on their word to protect Angel from harm. Ha ha....no. ("Sanctuary")
• You Will Be Assimilated: Despite his non-threatening appearance, Barney is an auctioneer of stolen body parts from demons and other empowered beings.
• You Taste Delicious: Lorne, after he's obliged to swill down some of Sebassis' favorite beverage.
• Your Head Asplode: Illyria dispatches Cyvus Vail in this manner.
• Your Magic's No Good Here: When the gang goes to Pylea, Angel is surprised to find out he can be under the sun without bursting into flames. Less good is that putting on his vampiric "game-face" is replaced by a uncontrollable berserker monster, thus his combat potential is actually a bit lower than on Earth (unless he risks hurting innocents).
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: This is the gist of Season Four. By episode 16, Angel and co. have bested Wolfram & Hart, the demon hordes, the Beast, and Angelus, and it's looking like the job is finally sewn up. — O hai Preggo Cordy.
  • As Angel later learns, the heroes didn't really accomplish anything. Jasmine was busy snuffing out every supervillain in L.A., because she wants to be the only game in town.
• Your Vampires Suck: Angel's irate reaction to anyone who mentions coffins.
  • After Angel confesses to being a vampire, Rebecca reacts in true Hollywood fashion: by listing off famous actors who have played vampires (Bela Lugosi and Gary Oldman). Angel remarks under his breath that "Frank Langella was the only performance I believed..."

Z

• Zombie Apocalypse: In the fourth season, Wolfram & Hart becomes a Zombie Apocalypse in a single building: Security Voodoo to hit anyone after a major attack.

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