Characters / NCIS: Leroy Jethro Gibbs

Special Agent in Charge Leroy Jethro Gibbs

"Grab your gear."

Played By: Mark Harmon (seasons 1–19), Sean Harmon (young Gibbs)

"What have you heard? That suspects would rather confess than be interrogated by him? That his steely gaze can cool a room by five degrees? That he can only be killed by a silver bullet, like a werewolf? Well, it's all true, except the silver bullet part. Might give him indigestion or heartburn, but I don't think it'd kill him. Any other questions?"

— Tony

Not to be confused with Ludicrous Gibbs, though he does pull some pretty crazy stunts to get the bad guys.

A former US Marine Scout Sniper, he joined what was then called the Naval Investigative Service shortly after the First Gulf War in the wake of his first wife and daughter's murders. He rose up the ranks to become the Special Agent in Charge of the Major Case Response Team, responsible for investigating Navy and Marine Corps-related crimes in and around Washington DC, and has a rather hands-on approach when it comes to maintaining discipline amongst his subordinates.

He is a master interrogator and there are very few people who are brave/stupid enough to try and resist his death glare.

Also, he is a functional mute.

In Season 19, Gibbs retired from NCIS, preferring to stay in Alaska for an indefinite time. He made his final appearance in S19 E4 after 19 seasons.

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A-L

• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Only Gibbs could turn his repeated dope slaps to DiNozzo into this.
• Affectionate Nickname: Jack Sloane calls him "Cowboy" when she's feeling particularly playful.
• Always Gets His Man: Highlighted in Mind Games: The serial killer featured in that episode was the boogeyman of D.C. when he was active, evading metro cops and terrorizing the female populace. When explaining the case to McGee, Tony and Paula Cassidy finished by saying "[He] only made one mistake: He killed a Petty Officer."
• Amnesia Danger: In "Hiatus", a bomb blast knocks Gibbs back to his Marine days. He has critical information that he doesn't remember. Luckily, remembrance is just a Dope Slap away.
• Amicable Exes: Amazingly, Gibbs has managed to retain some level of friendship with all the women who have loved and left him, even when its looks like their relationships have been so badly torpedoed its a wonder they still talk to him. Very noticeable with his first ex-wife Diane, who is witch incarnate and also Fornell's ex (a fact which Gibbs and Fornell love to drive into the ground), but even more so with ex-wife number three, who is arguably Ax-Crazy and torments him on the day of their anniversary by drunk-dialing him so much he's forced to take his phones off the hook and even drown his cell in beer. Similarly, after Diane is killed and he blames himself for her death, he keeps avoiding his old flame Hollis Mann's attempts to be there for him because he doesn't want to put her at risk.
• Anti-Hero: He's one of the best agents NCIS has, and probably ever will have. He's also pragmatic, cynical, will take whatever measures he needs to ensure the safety of his team, and occasionally flies off the handle with unsanctioned work and arguably illegal actions if something truly personal comes up. He'll play his sympathies to those that deserve them, yet drop just about anyone else into hell feet first if they've crossed a line. His tenuous grasp of proper morality and conduct is legendary, but he's too damn good at his job to cut him loose over it. And this is before his Dark and Troubled Past as a government assassin during The Cold War.
• Arch-Enemy: Ari Haswari. He was the first major enemy to escape Gibbs, he killed Kate, and even years after his death his various associates keep coming out of the woodwork to torment Gibbs and his team. While Gibbs may have been the one to survive their final confrontation, he's never been able to lay Ari's ghost to rest, and probably never will.
• Basement-Dweller: He spends most of his spare time in his basement working on various carpentry projects, usually boats. As a sign of just how messed up his personal life is, he's all but abandoned the second floor of his house, preferring to sleep on his couch, with the bedrooms being reserved for the occasional guest or if he has a female companion over.
• Batman Gambit: There's more than a few episodes where Gibbs either knows who he's dealing with or specifically manipulates those around him into all the proper positions, sometimes both at the same time, while exploiting his expectations of their personalities and histories to get just about exactly what he desired for an outcome. It gets to the point that when he goes missing to investigate something without informing the rest of the team, they tend to clam up and stonewall others investigating after him — and then accounted for whoever was investigating inevitably succeeding so they'd be his insurance policy or backup anyway.
• Berserk Button:
  • Messing with his coffee, wasting his time, or making him put up with someone's fumbling stupidity. Sometimes all three at the same time.
  • Another big one is trying to hurt or threaten Gibbs's team, his family, or anyone he knows and loves; do this, and he will hunt you down, as several unlucky criminals learned the hard way. Examples include Pedro Hernandez and his two children, Paloma Reynosa (daughter) and Alejandro Rivera (son).
  • Also, getting in his way when he's angry. If you see Gibbs yelling at his team or somebody else, RUN.
  • On a work-related standard, messing with the crime scene in any way gets him annoyed as hell, interfering with his investigation will set him right off enough to chew you out, taking him off a case that he's invested in will get him to verbally backhand even Directors, and for the love of god, do not interrupt him while he's in the interrogation room unless it's part of The Plan. McGee had to learn these the hard way throughout the years, and everyone on the team will proverbially duck for cover when any of these happen.
  • Don't invoke Jurisdiction Friction or be an Obstructive Bureaucrat. He tends to get sour fast if someone doesn't play ball or, worse, go out of their way to hinder his team. Some of the rare cases he's genuinely cursing someone out is if a higher-up decides to cut a case off or worse, such as when the time Gibbs managed to warn naval command about a booby-trapped ship — only for them to ignore his warnings as "acceptable casualties" and send in Marines that get blown up for it. He outright screams You Bastard! before stomping off.
• Born in the Wrong Century: Fairly consistent throughout the series.
  • He exclusively uses hand tools in his basement workshop. The only exceptions are a single bare bulb and an old timey box-shaped TV set. ^note  Well, two of them. One is in the living room while the other is in the basement.
    Fornell: A 4K TV would look great on your wall.
    Gibbs: Already got a TV. [cue shot a tv set that looked like it literally came out from the '80s]
    Fornell: I'll alert the Smithsonian.
  • He once tried to get a USB drive to work by biting it.
  • Gibbs still uses a flip phone, even in 2021. Not to mention, he hates modern smartphones, smashing one that McGee gave him after he couldn't get it to work.
  • It's hard to keep track of how many cell phones he's destroyed during the run of the series, either because they malfunctioned or just generally annoyed him. One even wound up in a jar of paint thinner. His agents now keep plenty of spares in their desks, ready to hand to him at a moment's notice. When the stash ran out, the tech department went crazy.^note For the record, said phones are flip phones.
  • He also refers to computer chips and the like with terms such as "doo-da" and "deweywhacker."
  • When a Roomba vacuum cleaner was about to suck up some of the evidence from a crime scene, he didn't even bother picking it up or trying to turn it off. He stomped it to pieces.
  • And he is not familiar with the Internet slang. At one point, he had no idea what the word "meme" means ^note No, really, we're not making this up. In a different episode, he asked, "What the hell's an e-vite?", and in another, "What's a hashtag?". And in one season 16 episode, he said "Chappysnat" when he meant Snapchat.
    • Kudos to Abby, when she starts talking excitingly about #LivingRocks. And guess what Gibbs said? "#GetToThePoint"...and he even said "hashtag" correctly. Well played, Gibbs.
  • At one point, Fornell tried (and failed) to contact Gibbs via Snapchat. Apparently, Gibbs doesn’t have any social media accounts, nor is he really familiar with social media in general. He doesn't even understand the concept of it.
  • Gibbs seems to barely understand the concept of the Internet, and isn't really familiar with websites or how they function. At one point, Bishop asks Gibbs "You know what Amazon^note the website is, right, Gibbs?". His response? "Yeah, the big one", thinking she meant the rainforest in South America.
  • Weirdly, he has e-mail. Most of the team questions this since Gibbs has not kept up with the modern technology. Though It's fairly obvious he barely uses it and he seemingly phased out using email.
  • Being born in the 1950s, before cell phones, social media, and the widespread existence of computers, probably makes it harder for him to understand modern technology. Although some people (like Fornell) his age or at least close to his age is tech-savvy.
  • He does own a laptop......from the 1990s and it seems he barely uses it.
  • At one point, in one S17 episode, Phineas gave him a modern-day laptop so Gibbs can communicate with Phineas. Let's just say he seemingly barely using it and probably stashed it somewhere at his house.
  • At one point, Phil (one of Gibbs's friends besides Tobias) give Gibbs an iPhone so he can help Gibbs get into online dating. And yes, in a typical Gibbs way, Gibbs throws a iPhone into a fireplace.
  • He even mixed social media names up like "Instachat" or "Facegram".
  • He is very tempted to dispose of a tablet that Kasie and Ducky purchase for him in his fireplace, since he's absolutely confused about how to use the videochat settings.
• Broken Bird: He has never fully recovered from the murder of his wife and child. Three ex-wives and dozens of girlfriends that didn't go anywhere are what remains of his love life.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: He's starting to develop this dynamic with Jacqueline "Jack" Sloane, the Navy Yard's forensic psychologist. Jack has her own demons to contend with, which is probably why she can coax him out of his dark moods — she understands his pain, and he knows she understands it. Her warmth, understanding, and lack of judgment help him open up to her when he wouldn't with anyone else.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: In a more dramatic than comedic fashion. He has some serious quirks that if not for the fact he gets the bad guys and never gives anything but his best, he wouldn't be employed. For instance, in early seasons, he once interrogated some people by talking with them in autopsy as Ducky was working on their alleged victim. It's acknowledged that except for his impatience for dealing with politics, he could be the Director.
• Byronic Hero: He's troubled and broody, but still definitely a hero.
• Cartwright Curse: With his first wife Shannon, Jenny Shepard, second wife Diane Sterling, and fiancée Ellen Wallace.
  • Even women he's merely attracted to aren't safe—Kate, possibly Lara Macy (their interactions in the Back Door Pilot for NCIS: Los Angeles heavily imply a prior relationship or some strong feelings at the very least), and flashbacks to his basic training days show that he had a crush on a female recruit who was killed in action before he ever got a chance to tell her how he felt. Even though it never went beyond flirtation, he clearly felt enough to be devastated by her death as well and to still remember her years later, indicating that she is the first example of this trope for him, rather than Shannon.
• Catchphrase: "Ya think?", "What's the point, McGee?", "Yeah, Gibbs" (default phone answer), and "That's a good question, [Character]. Why don't you find me an answer?", "Grab your gear.", "Got a dead [insert military position here].", "Talk to me, Abbs.", "Is that a fact, _______?"
  • Abby once boiled down Gibbs' catchphrases into a remote that played them back on cue. She, of course, affectionately gave it to Gibbs, who got a kick out of it.
• Character Development: He eventually starts to open up after all of the losses he witnessed over the years, becoming more comfortable with talking to people on a personal level; even going as far as to talk to McGee in the Season 17 finale about the horrors he witnessed during Desert Storm. He also starts to loosen up quite a bit, not quite losing his stoicism per say, but becoming more accustomed to showing more emotion other than deadpan annoyance.
• Characterization Marches On: Season one and general early series Gibbs was more a touch more jovial and light-hearted in between his serious job work, more talkative altogether, and usually played as a man with a spring in his step and a penchant for a little Black Comedy of his own. Plus he had a habit of driving off with some new redhead at the end of every other episode, and had a fair amount of Ship Tease with almost any female that wasn't Abby as the story portrayed him as something of a Silver Fox. Then Kate died, and Gibbs' later Crusading Widower portrayal started to settle in as his (now limited to former) romances were portrayed as always being a set of emotional failures, becoming more cynical, more his age, and more of a quiet Anti-Hero in general. Within a couple seasons Gibbs transformed from a laidback Deadpan Snarker to one of the most serious characters on the show.
  • Perhaps less subtly, his Hopeless with Tech nature was barely emphasized in season one. If it was military hardware, odds were Gibbs knew how it worked, and anything from the 90's and even early 00's was stuff he could work with. Once Gibbs became more solidified as a man of his age and a hardened veteran of a bygone era, combined with the series shifting with the growing tech of the world in real-time, Gibbs became somewhat comedically incompetent, and potentially violently inpatient, with anything newer than a flip phone or mandatory NCIS tech.
• Chest of Medals: Played With. He's badass enough to have earned numerous medals and citations to be this if he wanted but he doesn't care for medals. Tony keeps track of his accomplishments. He even gave away his Silver Star which is the second highest honour that a US serviceman can get for valour in the face of the enemy.
• Cold Sniper: Marine sniper previous to his 30-year NCIS career until his retirement in early Season 19. And as many episodes show, he can still be just as deadly despite his vision and age.
• Cool Old Guy: He's up there in age, but he's still kicking ass like there's no tomorrow. Then there's the fact that he's still able to snipe people despite his age and his vision problems.
• The Comically Serious: On-the-job Gibbs has no time for anyone's BS. Ever. Off-the-job Gibbs is as mellow and affable as can be and even willing to engage in some joking around... but he still doesn't care for really stupid antics.
• Cowboy Cop: But he always gets away with it. He's Gibbs. And "he only uses his powers for good". Amusingly, he has no real patience for if his team starts practicing the same ideas.
• Crazy-Prepared: In oh so many ways.
  • He keeps a bag stocked with three cameras, Band-Aids, food, and clean socks for emergencies.
  • He always carries a knife, in keeping with Rule #9 ("Never go anywhere without a knife").
  • In addition to his duty sidearm, he often wears a backup revolver in an ankle holster.
  • He keeps a Smith & Wesson Model 66 revolver under the workbench in his basement, and the M40 rifle he used as a Scout Sniper is stored down there too.
• Crusading Widower:
  • He didn't rest until he hunted down and killed the man who slaughtered his first wife and their eight-year-old daughter. Actually, he didn't rest after that either.
  • He went pretty ballistic when Jenny and Diane were killed too, despite his relationships with them having long since ended.
  • He's also determined to be involved in the investigation of his late fiancée's murder, despite how inappropriate it would be, plus the fact that he's briefly a suspect.
• Cutting the Knot: Due to his ever-present lack of patience and no-nonsense personality, Gibbs always takes the shortest path to an answer even if nobody has managed to give him one- after which Gibbs complains for the others taking too long, leading to much friction. He also does things that would be undesirable outcomes to others, like smashing stuff to stop it from malfunctioning, although sometimes this approach is infinitely more effective in a life-or-death situation.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Gibbs being treated like shit at his hometown by some of the others wasn't this, as he barely cares for it. Going to Paris to murder Russian assets, and his Dark Secret below, on the other hand, combined with the aftermath of losing his wife and daughter have set into motion a man that is haunted his entire tenure for it.
• Dark Secret:
  • Gibbs murdered Pedro Hernandez, the man responsible for the death of Gibbs' first wife and daughter, by sniping the killer from a dune as he drove through the badlands in a truck- something that, if revealed, would instantly spell the end of his career at NCIS and cause an enormous scandal. When Ducky remarks that the bullet ricocheted in Pedro's skull after exhuming him, Gibbs is visibly haunted- though the body of the man he killed being presented in front of him for the first time is enough to do that on its own.
• Deadpan Snarker: More than half of what he says is pure snark.
• Death Glare: Has one that is very effective in breaking a suspect or stopping Tony when he was being an idiot. This is his default look when his buttons are pressed.
• Dented Iron: Severely wounded during Desert Storm (permanently damaging his eyesight). Later caught in an explosion that caused temporary memory loss. In addition, he's been shot and stabbed several times and nearly drowned once, but recovered no worse for wear. His shooting in the Season 12 finale resulted in some permanent damage, though. His knee was obliterated (necessitating replacement surgery) and he admits, in a rare show of vulnerability, that he's experiencing chronic pain. He also survived from a bomb explosion on his boat he worked on for seven years.
• Determinator: Few things will stop him from getting Justice for those harmed. He will even break some laws if need be.
• Don't Call Me "Sir": Largely because he was enlisted, not a commissioned officer. In one notable instance, Abby called him "ma'am" in response, with him showing an amused reaction.
• Dope Slap: Aka the "Gibbs Slap" done to all of his agents, but to Tony the most. He's even self-inflicted when he knew he was doing something he'd slap any of his agents for. The only people he never, ever slaps are Abby or Ducky.
• Drives Like Crazy: When Gibbs needs to get to an investigation ASAP, he weaves in and out of traffic like a bat out of Hell. Kate at one point describes his driving as "Apparently Gibbs is trying to kill us." He's also the only one on the team unfazed by the motoring antics of Ziva, another crazy driver.
• Embarrassing First Name: Though it's never stated that he's embarrassed by it, no one except his parents, residents of his hometown, or his ex-wives call him 'Leroy'.
• Everyone Has Standards: As of "Watchdog" in Season 18, animal cruelty combined with his stress over his growing age and Fornell's fresh loss of his daughter drives Gibbs to a breaking point where he tries to murder a man with his bare hands for having cages filled with tortured dogs and drowned canines in the local pond. Notably, this isn't just another dramatic moment: Gibbs' refusal to apologize for the attack puts him on extended suspension followed by what seems to be permanent retirement.
• Experienced Protagonist: Gibbs has been an agent for over a decade as of the pilot, and was a Marine sniper before that.
• Facial Dialogue: Gibbs can hold entire conversations with squints, glares, smirks, and Gibbs slaps.
• Fair Cop: Even in his 60s he's still quite attractive.
• A Father to His Men:
  • Ziva directly calls him "the closest thing she has to a father". (Note that her father is very much alive—or, at least, he was at the time.)
  • Later, he explicitly refers to his team as his "kids."
  • For a wedding gift, he gives McGee the watch his father​ gave him on his wedding day.
• Friend to All Children: Probably has something to do with Kelly. If there's a child involved, he will take the case very seriously. His Establishing Character Moment from "Ice Queen" saw him comforting a Cub Scout who happened upon a corpse and giving him his NCIS hat and telling him he could come visit their headquarters sometime with his friends.
• Guile Hero: Just as guile as a Magnificent Bastard is magnificent.
• Gut Feeling: It's legendary. Some fans consider his gut an extra character. His gut has Memetic Badass status in-universe.
• The Hero: The main character who does everything in his power to get his man.
• Has a Type: Redheaded women. His four past wives, and Jenny Shepard (who the two had a past relationship) are all redheads. Even Hollis Mann is a very reddish shade of strawberry blonde.
  • When Tony learns about Gibbs flirting with a suspect, his immediate response is "Is she a redhead?" She is.
  • He asks M. Allison Hart if she ever used to be a redhead, apparently bewildered by his attraction to her, given that she's a brunette.
  • There might be a Freudian Excuse for this—in "Life Before His Eyes", we see that his beloved mother was also a redhead.
  • Averted with CGIS Agent Abigail Borin. Despite a genuine mutual respect and their virtually identical personalities, there's no hint of an attraction. Even the team fails to note that she's a redhead when debating the possibility of fixing the two up.
• Hates Small Talk: Functional mute, remember?
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Ducky.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He apparently plays racquetball and wanted to be a painter when he was younger (wanting to specialize in watercolors). "Beastmaster" reveals that he likes horses (treating them with the same gentleness that he does with kids) and knows a lot about them.
  • A testament to the fact that he's just bad with newer technology is when Samantha Ryan bugs his home and, on a call with McGee, he recognizes signal interference, and immediately goes to grab a handheld radio to find the bug through its own signal. It shows that between his field experience and old assassin work, he knows how old tech and methods, particularly Cold War era, work perfectly fine.
• History Repeats: Just like protagonist Harmon Rabb from parent series JAG, Gibbs possesses some form of visual impairment. However, unlike Harm, Gibbs's condition is caused by injuries and irreversible, while Harm's was just a defect that developed with age and was later corrected through laser surgery.
• Honorary Uncle: To Fornell's daughter (who calls him Uncle Gibbs) by their mutual ex-wife. Also with Mike Franks' half-Arab granddaughter (who is also his goddaughter).
  • He also becomes one to Phineas, long after he's been Happily Adopted.
• Hopeless with Tech: Gibbs is so bad with modern technology he defaults to really abusive solutions like they're the only way of fixing it.
  • Ironically enough, 20 years ago Gibbs went undercover as a computer technician. The team finds this hilarious when they find out. (Of course, that was when MS-DOS was the standard for computers. He hasn't kept himself caught up since.)
  • Even in 2021, Gibbs still uses a flip phone.
    • McGee and Phil once gave Gibbs a smartphone. It didn't work out well.
    • Ducky and Kasie gave a iPad to Gibbs. He's pretty confused about videochat settings when they FaceTimed him and even was tempted to throw it to the fireplace. Surprisingly, he kept it and Marcie once showed Gibbs how to zoom in a photo with a tablet.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Not always, but employed whenever he gives a Death Glare.
• Informed Flaw: The injury that damaged his eyesight did nothing to impair his shooting skills, including sniping a terrorist through a window from a mile away.
• Irony: Infamously known for being a Cowboy Cop that will do whatever he needs to to solve a case. Not only does he actually blow a gasket if his own team does as he does rather than what he says, but he firmly stays within the law so long as his perp isn't a complete bastard or otherwise immune to said law. This reaches the point that when Gibbs is targeted for his loose cannon tendencies by court or politics, he has to firmly tell his team to stop trying to cover up for him which will only land them all in trouble too — to which they continuously ignore and get in trouble for.
• It's Personal: He has a tendency to do this. As said, anything involving children (or otherwise reminding him of Shannon and Kelly) automatically becomes this. Hurting anyone from his team also pushes him to this point. But every criminal that is disgusting enough to him can trigger this.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While he can be quite rude towards his teammates and others, for the most part his "heart of gold" aspect far outweighs his "jerk" aspect.
• Knight in Shining Armor: To the women in his team, especially Abby.
• Last-Name Basis: To everyone under his direct supervision, who are basically intimidated into calling him by last name, and Leon, whom Gibbs likewise calls Director (unless they're engaging in personal conversations). The only people to break this trend are his late wife Shannon, his late father, who obviously called his son by his first name, Ducky and Director Shepherd, who prefer to use Gibbs's middle name, and his late mentor Mike, who affectionately called him "Probie." Some military personnel have also referred to Gibbs as "Gunny", referencing his military rank.
  • Agent Callen from NCIS: Los Angeles also calls him Jethro.
• Layman's Terms: Does this at least once an episode, mostly to Abby, Ducky and McGee. Abby uses a lot of scientific and medical terms and takes a while to get to the meat of a conversation because she loves theatrics and retorts that she needs a big windup to get to the point or else Gibbs would be bored, Ducky has a habit of going off on tangents with reminisces, and McGee's IT jargon goes right over Gibbs' old-fashioned head.
• The Leader: Of the Major Response Team.
• Living Legend: He's one of the most famous agents in all of law enforcement, and many criminals have referred to him as some version of "the legendary Leeroy Jethro Gibbs."
• Long-Runner Cast Turnover: He was a constant presence for almost 19 seasons, 18 years and 418 episodes before leaving the show in early season 19.

M-W

• Married to the Job: Particularly in early seasons. The job is pretty clearly a substitute for his late first wife and daughter, and he pursues it doggedly and near-obsessively. He expects the same of his team.
  • Unfortunately, this killed marriage number four, when he became viciously obsessed with catching a serial killer and alienated his then-wife sometime around 1995, and the marriage finally went kaput in 2001 when Gibbs was negotiating with his wife and a divorce lawyer right around the time he recruited Tony to the team. Gibbs hasn't been married for real in nearly twenty years since.
• Memetic Badass: In-universe. Whenever The Team sets up an Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, they give him the edge.
• Military Maverick: He has a slew of incident reports under his belt and came under investigation in later seasons.
• Must Have Caffeine: In the form of coffee.
• My God, What Have I Done?: A couple kills, Gibbs did regret in the end. However, the one that hits him hardest is in Season 17, when he ends up shooting Sahar in the face. As in, the real Sahar, not the Body Double, after finding out she was the mother of a young boy named Phineas that he was personally watching over because she had gotten close to target both him and Ziva. Having orphaned another child that he actually knew rattles him something fierce and sets him on a warpath once Phineas is manipulated to run off afterwards.
• My Greatest Failure: Downplayed example, in that his murder of Pedro Hernandez doesn't even remotely bother him. Didn't mean he was satisfied given his wife and child were still lost to the man, but he didn't lose a wink of sleep over going rogue to put a bullet in the guy. What ends up troubling him is when Pedro's children come for his head in their own vengeance, and Abby learning the Awful Truth has her shaken to the bone and bordering on Broken Pedestal for Gibbs, as he comes to realize his own actions have major consequences too.
• Never My Fault: Completely averted. Whenever he screws up, he takes full responsibility and never tries to pin it on his subordinates.
• Noodle Incident: Nothing was known about his second ex-wife until halfway through season twelve. Nor that he had yet another fiancée until towards the end of season sixteen.
• Old Soldier: Specifically, an old marine. He's well into his 60's and still going strong.
• One True Love: His first wife, Shannon, whose death he has never managed to fully move on from. According to his first ex-wife, Diane, Gibbs still loved Shannon when they were together, and will only ever really love her for the rest of his life. Judging by the string of failed marriages and relationships he's had throughout the course of the show and prior, she's probably right.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Treated this way whenever he is notably happier or moodier than usual once his team gets used to how he usually is. If Gibbs is happier than normal, it's probably because he's working with a friend or a woman he's particularly close to, to the point of Ziva making a big deal about a "bounce" in his step. If he's faster to get angry or just plain aggressive and hostile, stay out of his way and do what he says unless he needs to be talked down: whatever's going down is likely not going to end well.
• Outliving One's Offspring: His daughter died along with his first wife. Unfortunately, Pedro Hernandez shot an NCIS agent driving a car they were in. When the agent was killed, the car went out of control, wiped out, and the resulting wreck killed Shannon and Kelly.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Do not endanger "his kids", especially Abby. Being older than them just means you have to fatherly fury in addition to a boss' fury.
  Abby: (telling Gibbs why she didn't tell him about an ex she got a restraining order on) "I wanted him restrained, Gibbs, not beaten to a bloody pulp."
  • He extends these tendencies in the episode "Requiem" to his deceased daughter's now grown friend Maddie. Twice he's asked if he's her father. He shrugs it off. But ultimately, it's evident he views her in the same light as the rest of his team...as family.
• Parental Substitute: In "Bears and Cubs", Palmer calls Gibbs one of his two father-figures, with the other one being Ducky. DiNozzo is all but stated to consider Gibbs his father and has a very big case of "Well Done, Son" Guy with him.
• Percussive Maintenance: Among his favorite solutions for electronics that piss him off are drowning them in booze, smacking things that won't turn on until they break (he once suggested this as a way to deal with an ornery PDA), and shooting computers.
• Perp Sweating: A master of interrogation.
  • Especially when applying his Death Glare.
  • Don't make Gibbs slap the table. You wouldn't like Gibbs when he slaps the table.
• Phrase Catcher: "On it, Boss."
• Put on a Bus: In season 19, now unsure what he wants in his life, Gibbs decides to leave NCIS to travel the world in search of adventure. The last time we saw him, he's staying in Alaska indefinitely, enjoying his peaceful retirement.
• The Quiet One: Remarkably reticent for the lead character of a TV show. There are entire scenes where he doesn't say a word but is clearly in control and directing the conversation through facial expressions alone.
• Rage Breaking Point: In Season 18's "Watchdog", he's effectively at the end of a Trauma Conga Line of having to confront that he's getting damn old enough to be well beyond the average retirement age, not helped by Jack Sloane's fresh departure from the team, and Fornell's daughter Emily dying in the previous episode, with the both of them unable to do a damn thing about her drug overdose besides hunt down the people that spread it. Ignoring all advice to take a temporary leave to clear his head as he threw himself back into work immediately, his team ends up encountering a man that was abusing and killing dogs blatantly. It's at this point that Gibbs becomes so enraged and stressed out he utterly snaps, forgoes reading the suspect his rights and tries to outright murder the man with his bare hands, all this caught on McGee's bodycam. The consequences of this cost Gibbs his job and forces him to make his own early (and eventual permanent) retirement.
• Real Award, Fictional Character: He earned a Silver Star when he was with the Corps.
• Riddle for the Ages: It's never revealed just how he gets the boats he builds in his basement out of there.
• Right Behind Me: Tends to evoke this reaction from his agents. Season 13 reveals he's made a habit out of eavesdropping on the skylight reverberations in the main office, which lets him pop in on their conversations already informed.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • His reaction to Ari murdering Kate was to kill the bastard and stop at nothing less than that. Eventually, he decided killing him was less satisfying than watching him be killed and allowed Ziva to take him out.
  • Gibbs blatantly committed an act of cold-blooded murder by taking out Pedro Hernandez. Then, he left behind his spent shell casing as a message to those who were close to him. Gibbs paid a steep price for that crime much later, and he deeply regrets what he's done, and how badly it hurt Abby when she found out about it.
  • When Sergei Mishnev murders Diane, Gibbs proceeds to shoot several of his mooks and dishes out a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Sergei himself — which only ends when one more mook shows up and KO's Gibbs from behind.
  • Abby herself being severely wounded on the onset of leaving the NCIS teams, and Clayton being killed protecting her. Gibbs is past devastated and angry, simply broken and forlorn. This is not the typical reaction he has when a loved one gets hurt. This one sent him over the edge... and God knows what fury is coming afterward. He destroys a door trying to go after the hitman who shot them, but doesn't get to unload on him because the man has been killed for failing to take out his target and so the mastermind can make a clean escape by getting rid of his loose ends. In trying to pinpoint the mastermind, Gibbs goes off to interrogate Alejandro and coldly and menacingly threatens to kill him if he finds any connection to the hit on his team. The team later discovers the culprit is Robert King, who has escaped prison. Gibbs holds himself in check, letting Abby pay King back by making him think he's been poisoned and offering to trade the antidote for his confession. The team moves in to arrest King, who taunts Gibbs with a threat to escape again and keep coming after them. Gibbs doesn't say a word, but punches him in the face then and there.
• Rule #1:
  • "Never let suspects stay together," or maybe it's "Never screw over your partner." There's a lot more "Gibbs Rules". The ones shown tend to be consistent: Never let suspects stay together, Never go anywhere without a knife, Never involve lawyers, Never get personally involved, Never screw over your partner. Rule 44 was sent to Mike Franks to get him away from his house before he was attacked. We only see 15 out of 51 rules for the most part.
  • Tony mentions that any situation that requires Gibbs to invoke any rule in the 40s is serious business. The forties are emergency rules, and Abby reacts to them with strong distress when she hears they are in play, because it almost always means Gibbs is knee-deep in a life-threatening situation.
  • There were originally 50 rules, but Shannon snuck an additional one in prior to her death. Rule 51: "Sometimes, you're wrong."
  • The list of 51 expanded with the years after Shannon and Kelly's demise, and the true number may be poking near the hundreds.
    • He later adds a ninety-first rule at the end of season 18: "If you decide to leave, don't look back."
• Semper Fi: And Gibbs always remembers it.
  "There's no such thing as 'ex-Marine'."
• Sergeant Rock: Gibbs is a retired gunnery sergeant but still displays characteristics associated with the trope; He's stern but treats his men with respect and is willing to die for them. In turn, his men return the favor.
• Serial Spouse: A part of his background is that he went through three short-lived marriages and three messy divorces (getting cleaned out each time). This is later explained as his attempts to fill the hole left behind by the loss of Shannon and Kelly and that there is no one alive who can come close to making him feel the way they did.

• Sherlock Scan: A good idea of his eye for detail, even with his age making his vision not as good as it used to be? When he visits Shepard's abode and instantly notices a bottle of Scotch on the table from across the room — something Jenny would never drink, as the both of them do Bourbon. Whether it's the grunt work on the floor or the clues pieced together in the forensics or medical examinations, Gibbs has an eerie sense of deducing clues before someone else spells it out, or noticing clues no one else does altogether.
• Silver Fox: Abby even calls him this to his face once, by accident.

• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Gibbs can be cold and ruthless with his team, especially when they're working on dangerous cases, and they know better than to push him, but for all his standoffishness, he genuinely cares about his team and always goes into Papa Wolf mode whenever any of them are in danger.
• Sympathetic Murder Backstory: He killed the killer of his first wife and daughter.
• Team Dad: To most of his agents^note Sloane is the exception; he cares just as much for her, but she is much more his equal, but especially to Abby, she's more or less the Daddy's Girl of the NCIS family.
• Technologically Blind Elders: It's a Running Gag that he doesn't know how the digital gadgets work.
• 10-Minute Retirement: Took a little longer than most but he had one.
• Terse Talker: Outside of the interrogation room, Gibbs's sentences generally don't exceed ten words. Very much enforced, and the result of a lot of bottled lamentations. Gibbs is a man of few words, and once the man enters the room, he makes everyone present knock off their idle chatter and give him clear and simple information. Occasionally, he will speak at length, but only very rarely- or when in the presence of a family member or someone he grew up with. This is because Mark Harmon didn't care for a lot of the lines Gibbs was given and started paring them down, causing the writers to start hedge-trimming his dialogue.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Gibbs started out as a no-nonsense hardass and a functional mute. While that has somewhat held up over the years, he's also become more willing to open up and show actual affection.
• Ultimate Job Security: The man is a maverick and doesn't have the patience to play nice when it would be prudent to do so, but he gets results, meaning that his job is safe.
  • Vance and Gibbs become friends of a sort, and Vance knows that Gibbs has the unaltered copy of Vance's personnel file - even if he's never opened it. Yet. Gibbs has yet again armor-plated his job security in adamantium.
  • When Gibbs "retired" at the end of season 3, it later was revealed that Director Shepard had "neglected" to file his retirement. His job security is so great he can't quit even if he wants to!
  • It has been implied on occasion that before Vance, and possibly even during Vance's tenure, Gibbs would be Director if he ever decided he wanted the job; the sheer havoc he could cause if denied means only a fool would try to stop him. It has been implied more than once that Gibbs knows how to deal with politics and how to act as a proper Director. He just doesn't care to do so. The one time Gibbs acted as Director while Jenny was away, we found out he doesn't have the patience for the politics.
    Director Shepard: Jethro's a great field agent, a great team leader, and he deals more efficiently with difficult politicians than I do.
    Captain Todd Gelfand: Then why isn't he the...
    Director Shepard: He shoots them.
  • It ran thin now that he's indefinitely suspended for assaulting an animal abuser in season 18 and later retiring and residing indefinitely in Alaska ten episodes later.
• Tsundere: Type A. He's usually harsh and imperious but has a softer side.
• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: invoked The team has had discussions pitting Gibbs vs. the likes of The Terminator, Godzilla, Mothra, and himself. They tend to give the edge to Gibbs.
• The Unapologetic: As per Rule #6: "Never say you're sorry. It's a sign of weakness."
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • Has this vibe with Vance. Despite their animosity, there is a sincere mutual respect—and mutual tragedy of having their wives murdered. Indeed, their friendship develops because of this—Vance seeks his advice, knowing that Gibbs knows exactly what he's going through.
  • With Jack Sloane, the Navy Yard's forensic psychologist. He avoids discussing his emotions as a matter of course, whereas her entire job is to get people to discuss theirs; this unsurprisingly leads to them butting heads on a fairly regular basis. But as an Army veteran and former prisoner-of-war and longtime NCIS agent, she understands him in ways very few people ever will, and he is often seen turning to her when he's troubled because he knows she'll always tell him exactly what she thinks and won't break his confidence with anyone.
• Working with the Ex:
  • Once had to deal with one of his ex-wives, his ex-lover, and his current lover at the same time. All he could do was awkwardly stand there as the three women took pot shots at him.
  • Diane, the ex-wife he shares with Fornell, has become a recurring character. Most of Diane's venom is directed at Fornell, though, so Gibbs is free to silently snark as they argue. Any episode that features Diane is titled "Devil's Tri-". Until the events of Season 12, where Diane is murdered.

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