Comic Book / Preacher

Counterclockwise from bottom left: Jesse, Tulip, Cassidy, and the Saint of Killers.

"Don't take no shit off fools. Judge a person by what's in 'em, not how they look. An' you do the right thing. Be one of the good guys. 'Cause there's way too many of the bad."

— John Custer, to his son Jesse

Garth Ennis' Preacher tells the story of Jesse Custer, a down-at-heel Texan preacher whose life is turned around when he is cursed with The Word of God, which compels people to do whatever he commands. After finding out that God has abdicated His throne, Jesse sets out on a quest to bring Him to task, joined by Tulip, his ex-girlfriend-turned-hitman, and Cassidy, an Irish vampire.

Their quest takes them across the dark heart of America, from the streets of New York to the Louisiana swamps, and along the way they meet inbred hicks, serial killers, John Wayne's ghost, The Saint of Killers, the mentally-handicapped descendants of Jesus, an ancient religious conspiracy, a pair of perverted Sexual Investigators, Bill Hicks, the anti-Pope, fallen angels, voodoo children, psycho goths, The Klan, and a kid with a face like an arse.

The book enthusiastically denies the Christian concept of a loving God, satirizes various aspects of modern living and throws in a few good fistfights and explosions along the way. It was published by Vertigo Comics. The series lasted for 66 regular issues, running from April, 1995 to October, 2000. There were also a number of specials and a 4-issue mini-series featuring the Saint of Killers.

For the 2016 AMC television series adaptation, see Preacher (2016).

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This series provides examples of:

• Achilles' Heel: Jesse Custer's Word of God can only affect those who can hear it, so it can be defeated by simply plugging one's ears. It's also necessary to understand what Jesse is saying, and he only speaks English - kind of a problem as The Grail is a global Ancient Conspiracy which can draw on foreign fire support as easily as ordering pizza. Animals ignore it as well. On several occasions he is threatened into silence at gunpoint, though after the first time he figures out a simple counter to that;
  Jesse: MISS.
• Action Girl: Tulip, although it's clear that Jesse would rather she wasn't.
• Actually Pretty Funny: The one-shot special "Tall In The Saddle" has a scene where Jesse, Tulip and Amy, after being coerced into helping Texas Ranger Tom Pickett go after a horse rustler named Langtry, all end up getting captured by the same and meet his boss, the stereotypically French horse "connoisseur" Napoleon Vichy. When Ranger Pickett insults Vichy by making a joke alluding to how America saved France from Germany in World War II, even the murderous (but American) horse thief Langtry beams with a wide smile.
• Agent Scully: Lampshaded by Jesse when he decides to use a voodoo priest to help him find out what Genesis knows, and Tulip, highly skeptical, says she can't believe he's actually going to go through with it.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After the Saint of Killers gains his guns, everybody starts beging him for mercy, including the Devil and the Saint's predecessor, who realized that they were Hoist by Their Own Petard. Also, pretty much the entire town of Ratwater begs him for mercy, except for Macready (who lost touch with reality) and one old man. One of the most extreme cases of this is when one random man in Ratwater even offers to sacrifice his own screaming daughter to the Saint in exchange for his life.
  "Take her, mister! Kill her! Just leave me be!"
  "DAAAADDEEEE!"
• Always Accurate Attack: The guns of The Saint Of Killers-he literally, magically cannot ever miss.
• Almighty Idiot: Genesis — as its own father describes it, it has power and knowledge, but no will of its own without a host. It's basically a divine battery rather than a sapient being.
  • The latest "Messiah" (or "Humperdoo" after his catchphrase) is technically the most direct blood descendant of Jesus Christ Himself, and as such is revered by The Grail (most of them, at least). However, centuries of inbreeding only those individuals directly related to Jesus has led to massive intellectual deficiencies among His descendants, such as Humperdoo's father shitting in his hand and tossing it at Grail representatives or Humperdoo himself being under the impression that he can transubstantiate his urine into wine, which he can then use to water flowers. Starr's assistant Marseille is disappointed that none of Jesus' "Divine Essence" apparently made it down the line.
  Starr: Son of God or Son of Man, Marseille, you can't fuck your sister and expect much good to come of it.
  Marseille: (sees Humperdoo pissing on an old man) I think I'm going to be sick.
  Starr: I don't blame you. Can you imagine rushing THAT out when we make our move? "Behold, ye multitudes: the Messiah!"...shitting himself and throwing it at passerby.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The Grail.
• The Armies of Heaven: The Heavenly Host shows up, mostly at the end where they're slaughtered to an angel by the Saint of Killers. The story begins when one of the seraphim has sex with a succubus, birthing Genesis and starting the whole story.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: The Saint of Killers' revolvers. Anything he wants his bullets to go through, they go through.
• Armoured Closet Gay: Detective Bridges in the "Naked City" arc is vocally homophobic, but at the conclusion of the arc is found engaging in foreplay at a bondage club with two other men.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Inbreeding exaggerates genetic traits that are already in existence, which can include things like hereditary illnesses. It does not make future generations progressively dumber - to say nothing of turning them into cyclopses...
  • At one point Jesse and Tulip's friend Amy chats with a pleasant elderly bartender in an otherwise empty bar, and he mentions that he underwent chemical castration at a hospital by mistake on the staff's part. The problem is that the bartender consistently talks about it like it was a permanent and irreversible procedure without outright stating so. Chemical castration is a continuous treatment where the patient is given a drug which alters the body's hormone balance, with the most common method being an injection every three months. Plus, the bartender says he sued the city, got reparations and went through a divorce since this happened, all of which likely would have taken more than a year to go through the legal system, so the effect from the one treatment should be long gone by now.
• Artistic License – History:
  • In Cassidy's flashback sequence from "Proud Americans", which chronicles the failed 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, Patrick Pearse is shown dramatically quoting the famous refrain from William Butler Yeats' poem "Easter 1916", which was written about the Easter Rising a month after it happened.
  • In Cassidy's flashback, Dylan Thomas is shown suddenly and unexpectedly collapsing on the sidewalk outside of a bar. While Thomas did go on a bender before his premature death, his health declined over the course of several days, and he was taken to a hospital before he fell into a coma and died.
  • Jesse's father returns home from serving in the Vietnam War and gets spat on by Jesse's anti-war mother. It's widely believed that Vietnam vets were often spat on by hippies when they returned home, but this is actually an urban legend. There are no recorded instances of this ever happening. Even among those highly opposed to the war, the sentiment toward the veterans was largely sympathetic.
• Ass Shove. Jesse told Sheriff Root with the Voice to go fuck himself. So, he did...
• Attempted Rape: Foiled with a truck through the wall.
• Author Tract: Ennis is clearly talking through various characters when they get off on tangents about a particular subject.
  • Jesse makes a long tirade against political correctness, with a brief stop against body piercings, before undercutting it by saying that he might just need to get laid.
  • Jesse makes a short tirade about how much he hates people calling their girlfriend or boyfriend their "partner."
  • Jesse and Cassidy talk about how the worst thing a man can ever do is hit a woman (instead of serial murder, cannibalism, or betraying loved ones).
  • Jesse and Cassidy both share an immediate interest in whether or not someone prefers Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin. Which is a very specific like or dislike to have in an era where silent movies were barely relevant anymore.
• Awesome, but Impractical: In the early issues, Cassidy was completely indestructable and unstoppable (although rather stupid), and his powers were pretty much equal to those of the Saint of Killers (not to mention that he survived the Saint's bullet). However, as the story develops, Cassidy's weaknesses become more pronounced, especially his sensitivity to sunlight. Cassidy being a vampire therefore becomes a straight example of this trope (especially when it's a sunny day), whereas quite on the contrary the Saint becomes even more invulnerable.
• Back from the Dead: Played straight and literally for the most part, with several characters directly resurrected.
• Badass Boast: The Saint of Killer just lives off of these:
  • "There ain't worse than me in all of Hell. Go an' look." (Gunshot)
  • "Give me all the hell you got to spare."
  • *spits* "Not enough gun."
• Badass Creed: Jesse Custer learned his from his father, cribbed from John Wayne;
  John Custer: Don't take no shit off fools. Judge a person by what's in 'em, not how they look. An' you do the right thing. Be one of the good guys. 'Cause there's way too many of the bad.
• Badass Bookworm: Jesse mentions having read every book in the library while in Annville.
• Badass Family: The Custers.
• Badass Longcoat:
  • The Saint of Killers.
  • The Texas Ranger
• Badass Normal: Tulip out of the major three characters. She doesn't have Jesse's word or Cassidy's vampiric powers. She's just an excellent shot.
  • As for secondary characters, Detective Paulie Bridges' badassery is so renown it's said that Arnold Schwarzenegger should play him in a movie of his life. It's telling that outside of Jody, he's the only human in the series who gets the best of Jesse in a fight.
  • Before the world trembled at the thunder of his guns, the man who would become The Saint of Killers was already the most bloodthirsty soldier in the Confederate army, before becoming the most feared bounty killer in the West.
  • Jody, Jesse's sadistic mentor/twisted father figure is considered borderline superhuman due to his amazingly brutal deeds.
• Bar Brawl: Several. It's practically how Jesse and Cassidy bond.
• Based on a True Story: Arseface is a combination of two. There was at least one teen who committed suicide upon learning of Kurt Cobain's own; and there was a teen who attempted the same kind of suicide (though unrelated to the death of Cobain) that Arseface did with the same results (lived, but missing most of their face).
• Bathos: While the Allfather is delivering a dramatic speech in which he tells Starr how he knows all his deepest secrets (which causes Starr to shed tears), he is also sloppily eating huge cakes, and ends this important encounter by asking for a bucket to vomit in.
• Being Good Sucks: At one point, Jesse complains that he's always tried his best to be a good guy, and asks if his recent misfortunes (getting battered, half-blinded and, as far as he knows, betrayed by the people he loved the most) are his reward. The Duke dryly points out that no one ever said that there'd be a reward, a point that Jesse reluctantly concedes.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Featherstone increasingly becomes this as Starr becomes more unhinged.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: During a flashback in the first issue, Jesse angers the local bar by getting drunk and blabbing secrets the patrons have confessed to him in his capacity as reverend. He claims one woman shot a "straight to video" porno with a piebald stallion.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The L'Angelles. Jesse remarks that the L'Angelles must have the "Devil's own piss" running in their veins instead of blood. It was something of a miracle that Jesse's own mother turned out as well as she did — which is probably why she fled in the first place (and taken even further when it's revealed that the L'Angelles and D'Aroniques are related).
• Bilingual Bonus: Jesse says that he met a friendly French bartender and repeats something the man said to him in French. It translates to "Americans are idiots." A few pages later, Jesse has picked a fight with the bartender.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Even God's a prick.
• Blemished Beauty: Billy-Bob's sister is a perfectly attractive young woman, except she (like her profoundly inbred family) was born with only one eye. She also doesn't really see the world as it is, i.e., some people as giant talking chickens, and the hideously deformed Arseface as a handsome young man.
• Blind and the Beast: Subverted by Lorry Bobs and Arseface. Both of them are The Grotesque who will Earn Their Happy Ending.
• Body Horror: Used as a method of torture - A paralyzed man is distracted by Eisenstein for several minutes until he is allowed to look to the side and sees Eisenstein's bodyguard eating his hand. He gives up the information.
• Bondage Is Bad: Jesus De Sade, Miss Oatlash and Herr Starr are all villains who are into bondage. The brutish Transparent Closet Cowboy Cop Paulie, who is presented as a headcase, is also into bondage. Jesse and Tulip's playing around with handcuffs is actually a ruse to entrap the other.
• Born in the Wrong Century: A major theme in the series is the fact that Jesse is basically a modern cowboy from a Western. In the end, when Tulip asks what he wants to become now, we get a two-page shot of Jesse riding into the sunset, and he says, "Can't you guess?"
• Born of Heaven and Hell: Genesis (an entity as powerful as God) was created by a male angel impregnating a female demon, the resulting child escaping from containment and implanting itself within Jesse Custer, giving him the power to force anyone to do his bidding as long as they understand English (a literal Word of God). Its entire creation was orchestrated by God (who already feeds on the love and faith of humans despite his making the Earth a Crapsack World), who wanted the love of a being as powerful as Himself.
• Bottomless Magazines: The Saint of Killers' revolvers. They were forged by Satan to have their hammers never fall on empty chambers.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Too many examples to count. Whether from fear, death or even magic induced, there are a lot of dirty britches throughout the story.
• Broken Pedestal: Subverted with Jody.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Over the course of the series we see the unfortunate genetic result of two sets of inbred families - Billy-Bob's family in "All In The Family" and the handicapped children of Jesus in "Crusaders". Lampshaded by Starr.
  Starr: Son of man or son of God, you can't fuck your sister and expect much good to come of it.
• Bungled Suicide: Arseface's origin story is that he was disfigured from an attempt to shoot himself in the face.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Subverted. When Hoover comes back from counting sand, Jesse does not remember him for a few minutes. When he does recognize him, he acknowledges that he was wrong and helps Hoover forget the worst of the trauma.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Hoover and Arseface are sympathetic examples, which is interesting since the former is technically an antagonist. Starr, on the other hand, just lives a never-ending Humiliation Conga from one page to the next.
  • Joe the bartender also counts, but he's still an optimist. He's been mistaken for a serial pedophile, medically castrated, unable to sexually satisfy his wife, gotten a divorce, and lost all the money he got from the state to compensate for destroying his balls.
  • Detective John Tool, "the unluckiest cop in the world"
• Calling the Old Man Out: Only it's the Father of all Creation.
• Cannibal Larder: One psychopath is found out when another character discovers a human head in the fridge.
• Captured Super-Entity: The Grail has a captured angel that they use for information in "Crusaders". It's the angel who fathered Genesis.
• Car Fu: Cassidy drives a pickup into the Saint in the first volume, to no effect.
  • Tulip does this with a truck in her teen years to scare off a group of gang rapists after her friend.
• Censorship by Spelling: In a flashback, Jesse's dad asks his mom if she's been missing him in front of little Jesse, and she says "Missing Ess Ee Ex", which little Jesse repeats in the next panel.
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • This being a Garth Ennis work, one shouldn't be surprised. To quote Sheriff Root: "SON OF A FUCKIN' WHORE WHAT THE FUCK IS GOIN' ON FUCK THIS FUCK"
  • Lampshaded with Saddam Hopper, because he's fucking lousy at it (Even using the Seven Dirty Words).
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • Jesse loves his Groin Attacks.
  • Starr's response to a sadistic hand to hand combat instructor demanding to know how Starr would defeat him in unarmed combat? Starr shoots him in the leg and responds that he never intends to be unarmed. Subverted in that over the course of the series, he frequently does find himself unarmed, and in big trouble - it would have been far more pragmatic to learn how to deal with such a situation, which is why militaries still teach unarmed combat.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting:
  • The Saint looks identical to the late Lee Marvin.
  • The Texas Ranger Tom Pickett seems to resemble Tom Skerritt.
  • Saddam Hopper resembles Saddam Hussein.
  • And Cassidy is pretty clearly Shane McGowan from The Pogues.
  • There seems to be a resemblance between Jesse Custer and Jim Morrison of The Doors.
• Compelling Voice: Jesse, due to the Word of God. Any command he gives can't be disobeyed. However, there are limits to the power. Among them, Jesse has to be able to speak, the target has to understand Jesse, and they have to be able to hear him. So, it doesn't work on animals, anyone who doesn't understand English, or - in one case - anyone who plugs their ears and shouts at the top of their lungs.
• Compensating for Something:
  • After losing his penis to an angry attack dog, Starr suddenly demands a much bigger gun than the one he already has. Which he then poses with in front of a mirror, muttering "Doomcock. Doomcock."
  • Odin Quincannon also has a Hand Cannon which breaks his arm when he fires it.
• Cool Chair: The Throne of Paradise. Even the Saint of Killers can't do anything to someone sitting on it.
• Cool Shades: Cassidy. Said "coolness" factor perhaps undermined by the fact that when Cassidy's eyes are revealed in a fight, Jesse says they look like he's been jerking off for a hundred years?
• Comes Great Responsibility: Jesse initially resists using his powers for his own gain...then decides to just say hell with it. By the end of the series, though, he learns some hard lessons about the unintended consequences of rash action.
• Corrupt Church: The Grail.
• Small-Town Tyrant:
  • Odin Quincannon in "Salvation". Also known as the Meat King, he is a corrupt hick who operates an inhumane meat plant, orders the death of a local sheriff, is a card-carrying member of The Klan, tries to blow up a nearby village with napalm, employs a Hitler fetishist as his PA and repeatedly has sex with a giant female figure made out of sides of ham. Seriously. He was so corrupt his fellow Klansmen started wondering if he was taking the whole racism thing a bit too far.
  • Sheriff Hugo Root, who's an alcoholic racist as well as an abusive father.
  • Sheriff Jim Bewley of Salvation is also one, being on the take from Quincannon before he hands his badge to Jesse, but he is also a considerably nicer version compared to Hugo Root, demonstrated by him sitting in the same car as his black female deputy Cindy Daggett without any problems (which would be unthinkable in Root's case). He's also racist and sexist, however, though in a milder, more laid-back way, as exemplified by referring to black people as "nigras" (which is just one step above the n-word, which he also used at least once, when Cindy was present), hiring Cindy as a deputy purely out of tokenism, and treating her like a glorified secretary rather than an officer of the law, which is a source of considerable resentment for her.
• Council of Angels: In "Gone to Texas"
• Covers Always Lie:
  • If you're new to the series, the cover of the very first issue might give you the impression that Jesse is the antagonist of the series, or possibly a Villain Protagonist, rather than The Hero. Hell, the first issue's cover is the page image for Sinister Minister!
  • A lot of covers show Cassidy drinking blood. While he does drink blood most of the time he prefers alcohol.
• Cowboy Cop:
  • Cal Hicks tries to be this, but he seems to embrace the stereotypes of Private Detective more. He has a fancy car (repossessed because he can't afford it on a police salary), hot girlfriend (leaving him, probably because he's a virgin with a ridiculously ludicrous idea of what sex is like), on suspension (you can only get away with this if you have a massively perfect arrest record and he doesn't), has a canine sidekick (Doofus, leaves after T.C. spends the night with the dog), and has a drinking problem (probably brought on by hard-drinkin' detectives on TV). Tries to fly a copter and crashes it. Tries to take charge and it's clear Jody has him outclassed. Talks tough and Jody feeds him to a gator. Really, one of the more inept wannabes.
  • Jesse becomes this in Salvation. Awesomeness ensues. No doubt inspired by:
  • Tom Pickett, the Texas Ranger Jesse and Tulip met when they were younger.
  • Detective Bridges is one (he once got a confession out of a guy by shoving his face into a gaping shotgun wound).
• Curbstomp Battle:
  • The Saint's encounters with pretty much everyone.
  • Supercop Paul Bridges manages to drop Jesse with one punch. Even Jody had to hit him a few times.
• Cursed with Awesome: Cassidy's view of being a vampire.
• Cuteness Proximity: The Saint gets a couple of moments of this with the girl he later marries, and then with their child, though of course it's largely played for contrast. Also, to his surprise, Tulip's manly dad (though it helps that she just burped).
  Aw, so you're a girl. That needn't be so bad.
• Dark Action Girl: That one chick. You know the one. With the action. And the dark.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • A whole lot of people. But Jesse and his family gets a special mention.
  • Cassidy's is so bad that it might qualify as a deconstruction of how artificially dramatic this trope usually is.^note There's also the fact that nearly all of it is self-inflicted: outside of being turned into a vampire, all of Cassidy's problems come from his own bad decisions and weaknesses of character.
  • Herr Starr's Starrt Of Darkness.
• Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: After young Jesse spends a week trapped in a coffin at the bottom of a lake, his eyes are hurt by the sun when he's let out.
• Dead-Hand Shot: A dead hand is all we see of God after the Saint of Killers shoots him.
• Deadpan Snarker: Starr is the outstanding case, but Featherstone does her best, and most others have their moments.
• Death Is the Only Option: Jesse Custer's plan near the end is to die so that God himself will return to Heaven thinking it now safe, only to find the Saint of Killers occupying the celestial throne. Jesse returns from the dead but comments that still being alive is an empty victory, like using a cheat code in a video game.
• Debating Names: The Serial Killer known as the Hacker-Slasher got his name due to competing newspapers calling him either the Hacker or the Slasher.
• Decoy Backstory: In the "Salvation" story arc, Jesse is aided as Sheriff of Salvation by Gunther Hahn, a German immigrant who tells Jesse he once worked for the Nazi party as a spy. He tricked them into sending him to the US on a mission, then simply never completed it and never went back, preferring to live in peace. It holds up until Jesse finds Gunther's name and backstory in a history book that says he was killed in combat; "Gunther" is actually Siegfried Vechtel, a Nazi policeman who rounded up and murdered civilians and worked in a concentration camp. When Jesse confronts him with the truth, Vechtel is Driven to Suicide.
• Deep Cover Agent: The Grail has slews of these around the world, set close to leaders and major power players to ensure they do what the Grail wants. When Starr tries to get the President of the United States to comply by threatening his daughter, he states "Of course I know she has men around her at all times, who do you think will be doing the shooting?"
  • This ends up working against Starr when he orders all Grail agents for the final assault on Jesse only to have barely a dozen show up. Hoover states that these agents are just so happy with being among the rich and powerful that they refuse to give it up.
• Deep South: A lot of the story takes place in the rural South.
• Defiant to the End: During the Saint of Killer's rampage through Ratwater, one old man is this, in contrast to the other townspeople who either scream in terror, cry for their dead loved ones while waiting to be killed themselves, or, in one extreme case, offer to sacrifice their own daughter to the Saint in exchange for being spared. The old man gives out a biting "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner before he's shot.
  "Go an' do it, mister, and God damn your black soul."
• Depraved Bisexual:
  • Jesus De Sade is a hedonist willing to have sex with everyone and everything, including animals and children.
  • Bill, Cassidy's old heroin supplier. When Cassidy can no longer get the money for his habits, he says that Cassidy or his girlfriend can give him a blowjob instead: "I'm not particular".
• Depraved Homosexual: All the queer characters in the series are more or less depraved.
• Devil, but No God: Inverted: The Devil is shot in the face by the Saint of Killers sometime in the 19th century but God is still running around (until he's shot by the Saint of Killers).
• Devil's Job Offer: The man who would become the Saint of Killers went to Hell for shooting through a hostage — but his hatred was so cold that it froze the flames to ice. The Devil couldn't stop his hatred — so instead, the Angel of Death, who was never really cut out for being The Reaper, makes a deal: the man will become the Saint of Killers, taking over the Angel's job, and leave Hell in order to serve as Heaven's enforcer. The Angel's sword is melted down and forged by the Devil into a pair of Walker Colt revolvers that will never miss, never inflict anything less than a lethal wound, and never have their hammers fall on empty chambers... And thus, the Saint of Killers is born. As he leaves hell, he kills the Devil himself!
• Determinator: Many, but special mention needs to be given to Herr Starr after his escape from the desert.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: Vampires are the setting's only supernatural entity besides demons and angels, but they have no noted connection to Heaven or Hell and we're never told what they are or where they come from, leaving us to just assume that God one day decided to make them on a whim (similar to Genesis) for some reason. They're also the only things that can survive a bullet from the Saint of Killers, because they're technically already dead.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The Saint of Killers shoots God dead.
  • In accordance with the transitive law, an even more extreme example of this would be when Jesse pacified the Saint of Killer using the Word, which makes Jesse more powerful than the man who killed God. However, this did occur in the early issues.
• Dirty Communists: Subverted. They're no longer Communists, but the Russians are still depicted as hard, crazy bastards anyway. Not to mention Jesse's father's famous "Fuck Communism" lighter.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Hoover, who is made by the Word of God to count a million grains of sand for slightly inconveniencing the main characters. And every time Hoover lost count or a wave washed away his pile of sand, he had to start all over again, and was unable to stop. Even Jesse later admits that this crossed the line.
  • Jesse's grandmother catches him cursing at Jody after he nails his dog to the fence. She responds by nailing him into a weighted box and dropping him in the river for a week with just an air hose to keep him from suffocating. Of course, that was probably more to tighten her control over him and "toughen him up" than anything else.
• Domestic Abuse: Both Jesse and Arseface are victims of this; Jesse was subjected to this by his grandmother and her henchman Jody, while Arseface was abused by his father Hugo.
• Dope Slap: When Cassidy gets sick of dealing with the pretentious younger vampire Eccharius, he sets him straight on what being a vampire really means and tells him he'll get a whack on the ear everytime he says something stupid.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Ms. Oatlash develops such an obsession for Jesse that she knocks him unconscious, ties him to a bed, and is prepared to sexually assault him before he escapes. The drama of this is somewhat undercut by the fact that she's dressed Jesse like Hitler, she appears in the bedroom in Nazi-themed lingerie and a helmet, and that she demands, among other things, that he call her Eva.
• Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male: Any male rape in the series is invariably played for comedy. Starr is raped by Bob, one of the Sexual Investigators in "Hunters".
  • In Ancient History, the crooked bayou fight promoter, with a baseball bat.
  • And in the Salvation story arc, when Jesse locks up some of Quincannon's unruly workers.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Jesse's mother being renamed after her greatest foe (Jody) because she shouted his name while being rescued is a minor but significant example of this.
• The Dreaded: The Saint of Killers absolutely terrifies everyone he comes into contact with, and with good reason. Up to and including The Lord God Almighty.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Cal Hicks is more or less completely useless and inept, but he's not wrong when pointing out to Tommi that Jody is not someone one should be romantically involved with.
• Dysfunctional Family: What with the religious loonies, the cannibals and the Texans, the closest thing Preacher has to a normal loving family is a bunch of swamp-dwelling hillbillies where the parents are brother and sister and the kids only have one eye.
• Eagleland: Somehow subverted. Warts and all - and they are very big warts - this series reads like Garth Ennis' love letter to America.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • By halfway through the series, the Saint of Killers is completely unstoppable and nothing can survive his guns. By the end of the series, he kills God. The fact that Cassidy is only mildly inconvenienced by being shot by the Saint is probably related to the fact that it happens in the first volume.
    • The Saint of Killers's weapons are instantly fatal. It's possible that Cassidy was only mildly inconvenienced because he's already dead.
  • To a lesser degree, the Reaver-Cleaver storyline that makes up the second arc, which introduces an antagonist and a bunch of supporting characters — one of them even acting as narrator — that never recur or have much effect on the rest of the storyline. It reads like a self-contained adventure in an ongoing comic.
  • Jesse is taken out in a bar fight rather easily in the first book. As the series progresses, he basically becomes unbeatable in bar brawls and the like.
  • In Jesse's defense, the "bar fight" was actually only Jesse giving a massive, collective "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the bar patrons, ended prematurely by one of them sneaking up behind Jesse and clocking him with a pool cue.
• Easily Elected: In the "Salvation" arc, Jesse wanders into the tiny town of Salvation, TX, which is rife with racial division and vandalism from the local meatpacking company. When the town sheriff asks if Jesse wants to be his deputy and help clean the place up, Jesse retorts that he'd rather be the sheriff. This causes the sheriff to immediately hand his badge and office over to Jesse and leave town; when an incredulous Jesse asks about an election, the sheriff quips that Salvation will get around to one eventually. In the end, Jesse does the same and gives the badge to his deputy when he leaves to complete his mission.
• Eldritch Abomination: Genesis is described as such by the angels, including its own father.
• Elvis Lives: One issue has Jesse picking up various hitchhikers while traveling to New York. One of them is an old, shadowy man with a very distinctive speech pattern that brings to mind a certain famous singer.
• Et Tu, Brute?: As cited on the trope page:
  "Gets ya to fuckin' love him and then stabz ya inna back. Love him so much ya don't believe he did it. Blood all over ya. Big fuckin' knife in ya back. An' ya don't believe he did it. Maybe hez sick. Maybe it wasn't him. Just looked like him. Maybe he made a mistake."
  "WHY THE FUCK DID YOU LET ME DOWN SO BAD!!!"
• Eyepatch of Power: Jesse gains an eyepatch after losing an eye.
• Eyepiece Prank: The 63rd issue has Herr Starr fall victim to the old "look through binoculars and wind up with black rings around eyes" prank.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Though you may feel no need to congratulate either Jody or D'Aronique for their selection.
  • Implied to be the case for Saddam Hopper and a partial freudian excuse for his terrorism, as he laments/rants about his father, who once "proudly herded anchovies to market" before winding up squirting "the ketchup in the Big Macs," while torturing Cal Hicks.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Odin Quincannon: So monomaniacally racist, other KKK members think he's exaggerating (or at least want him to tone it down a bit).
  • Arguably Starr, who is disgusted by D'Aronique to the point he considers seeking to usurp him as the Allfather of the Grail as the right thing to do.
  • The "Sexual Investigators" appear to be prostitutes, rapists and hired killers, yet they're both disturbed by our heroes trapping a cat in a toilet.
  • Parodied with Agent Hoover of the Grail, who, despite being an operative for a mass-murdering Ancient Conspiracy, dislikes swearing. At the very end of the story, this recurring joke sees a very dark punchline - his last word is "motherfucker," directed at Starr, who kills him in response.
• Evil Counterpart: Inverted at the very end of the story, when Odin Quincannon's good brother Conan Quincannon is introduced to give Arseface his happy ending.
• Evil Matriarch: Marie L'Angelle really takes this trope to a whole new dimension.
• Evil Uncle: Jesse's grandmother Marie L'Angelle was Allfather D'Aronique's aunt.
• Evil Versus Evil: In The Good Old Boys, Jody and T.C. take on a bunch of goons and their leader, a No Celebrities Were Harmed rendition of Saddam Hussein.
• Face–Heel Turn: Cassidy.
• Face–Heel Revolving Door: Cassidy. Made more complicated by the shades of gray in his ongoing characterization.
• Female Angel, Male Demon: Inverted. Genesis is the offspring of a male angel and a female demon.
• The Final Temptation: A trigger away from finishing the being who made him the monster he is, the Saint of Killers is offered the one chance he can ever get to see his wife and daughter again, to regain his humanity, anything he can wish for. All he needs to do is stay his hand, allowing his target to sit upon the throne and gain the power needed to accomplish those promises...Of course, such power means even the Saint will no longer be of consequence.
• Foreshadowing: It's easy to miss on a first reading when we have no reason to view everything he says with suspicion, but what Cassidy tells Jesse of his encounter with God does not actually match what God says to Cassidy.
  • When the Sexual Investigators talk about Jesus de Sade, Freddy tells Bob how it is rumored that Jesus "likes little kids." The rumors turn out to be true.
• Forgot About His Powers:
  • After the first quarter of the series or so, Jesse stops using the Word of God almost completely. He at first rationalizes it as not wanting to use it for petty or selfish reasons, then states that he just doesn't want to rely on it, given that its Achilles' Heel makes it useless against prepared opponents. As a result, he often neglects to use it when he and his friends' lives are in danger, preferring instead to just fight it out and hope for the best.
    Jesse: Wouldn't do to get too reliant on a thing like that, Cass. Like I found out to my cost a while back.
    • Invoked for laughs when Tulip asks him about his neglect to use the word after Jesse beat the entirety of les enfants du sang with his bare hands, prompting him to pause in-between smacking someone's face repeatedly into a tombstone:
    Tulip: "Why didn't you use the word?"
    Jesse: "... shit, I clean forgot all about it."
  • Cassidy is so hard-up for smack that he's reduced to sucking dick for hits. Surely someone with his superhuman abilities could think of a less humiliating way to get cash.
    • This can partially be explained by Cassidy's fluctuating power level, which changes so much during the series that at times it's like not even the authors know what his powers are. However, even with this in mind, such behaviour makes very little sense. Though Cassidy's tendency to ignore his vampire powers and instead behave like a humble man does get invoked by another vampire.
• French Jerk: The French are very acceptable targets in the series.
  • Jesse's mother comes from the L'Angelles, a line of evil French-Americans. She tried to escape from them by running away, but his evil maternal grandmother dragged her whole family back.
  • The D'Aronique family is the French bloodline that leads the Grail. The L'Angelles are a splinter from their line. Allfather D'Aronique is the monstrously fat and evil current Allfather. Jesse's grandmother is his aunt.
  • Jesse talks about meeting a French bartender who pretends to be friendly but is actually insulting him in French. At the end of the issue, he's apparently caught on and isn't happy.
  • In the prequel issue on Jody and T.C., Napoleon Vichy. "I 'ave come to eat your horses." So absurd that in any other series it would qualify as a parody of the trope.
• Friend in the Press: Darkly Subverted. Cassidy meets up with his old friend Simon "Si" Coltrane, now working as a freelance journalist to help him investigate a Serial Killer dubbed the "Hacker-Slasher" and the "Reaver-Cleaver" by the press. But when Cassidy goes into the apartment, he learns not only said friend is the Hacker-Slasher, he set up Cassidy to take the fall. Cassidy only escapes the cops by stabbing himself in the neck with a scalpel and feigning death until he breaks out of the body bag.
• Funetik Aksent:
  • Arseface (Indecipherable)
  • Sexual Investigators' Bob Glover, mostly through their use of "fookin'"
  • Cassidy's Irish lilt is most notably expressed when he says "Jaysis!" and "Eejit!"
  • When Cassidy pretends to be Jesse Custer, his dialogue shows that he's hazarding a pretty cartoonish Southern accent. When Jesse hears it, he remarks "Good thing ol' Starr's a Kraut".
• Gilligan Cut:
  • Cassidy talks about hanging around Irish poet Brenand Behan to listen to his witticisms. In the next panel, Behan is shown drunkenly cursing someone out and vomiting on himself.
  • When Hoover starts getting worried about Starr's behavior, Featherstone reassures him that he's as stable and rational as ever. Cut to Starr throwing a computer through a high-rise window, with a scream of "FUCKING COMPUTERS!"
• God Is Evil: While arguably not as bad as God in Spawn, God, as depicted here, is a selfish, love-obsessed malicious prick who deliberately engineers suffering and mayhem because people loving him despite all the sadistic tortures he inflicts fills him with joy.
• God Is Flawed: It is eventually revealed that all of the world's problems are caused by being created by a guy who grew up in total solitude (because there wasn't any universe yet!) and thus developed what could be considered a narcissistic personality disorder as well as any number of related mental problems.
• Go-Go Enslavement: Rare male example: Jesse is enslaved in "Salvation" and dressed in a Nazi outfit by Odin Quincannon's Neo-Nazi secretary. And is then rescued by his black deputy.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: As an old-fashioned kind of hero, Jesse prefers to solve his problems with his fists.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Herr Starr's scar is evil, especially since it makes him into a walking Gag Penis. His "star for Starr" scar is what turned him into a bald, gruff-voiced calculating killer in the first place.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Cassidy is a magnet for grievous injuries. He takes mortal wounds within moments of meeting several people, revealing his true nature. It's implied that he simply never had the need to learn how to protect himself. Various characters also take advantage of the fact that he can heal to do more damage to him than they otherwise would.
  • Mafioso eunuch hitman Frankie Toscani gives Cassidy ample opportunity to prove the effectiveness of his healing power; under the orders of Herr Starr, Toscani, over the course of several days, uses a high powered sniper rifle to shoot away at various parts of Cassidy's anatomy. After destroying Cassidy's penis(!) with a well-placed shot, Toscani asks: "Think THAT'LL grow back, friend?" To which Cassidy understandably replies: "Jaysis, I sure hope so." Fortunately for Cassidy, it does.
  • Cassidy's somewhat muted response to having his head cut off, when Jesse picks up his head; "Can ye sew?" (Apparently, somebody could, because his head is back on his neck and the wound is healing up when next we see him.)
• Gory Discretion Shot: Rare throughout the series.
  • Billy-Bob's fatal wounding in "How I learned to love the Lord" in the second volume.
  • The very last death of the comic, though perhaps that's just for artistic nuance.
• The Grim Reaper: The Saint, as well as the previous Angel of Death.
• Groin Attack: Oh so very many. Male genitalia is destroyed in pretty much every possible fashion.
• The Grotesque: Arseface and Lorie Bobbs. Noteworthy in that they are some of the only legitimately morally centered characters and get the most overtly happy ending, in contrast with the rest of the cast, who are all pretty much jerkasses and sick fucks (even our heroes). In Preacher, everyone is a grotesque freak, except the guy with an arse for a face and the one-eyed girl.
• Guns Akimbo: It's not enough that the Saint's gun could kill in one perfectly accurate shot; he just has to have a pair of them too.
• The Gunslinger: The Saint of Killers is essentially the angel of death reimagined as a classic gunslinger.
• Hand Cannon:
  • Herr Starr's enormously oversized revolver fits the traditional model.
  • The Saint of Killers' Walker Colt revovlers are actually an Infinity +1 Sword.
  • Tulip carries a Desert Eagle. Before buying it, she asks if there is a .50 caliber version available, but she's told that they're not practical, so she's apparently using a .357 or .44 caliber.
• Happily Failed Suicide: Arseface tried to kill himself because he was sad and lonely, and his idol and his only friend had both just killed themselves. After the failed suicide attempt, he does all he can to turn his life around, but can never get away from his face being horribly disfigured by the shotgun blast that so fortunately missed his brain. This may be inspired by the real-life botched shotgun suicide of James Vance after supposedly hearing a subliminal message in a Judas Priest song.
• Hated by All: Sheriff Hugo Root is feared and loathed by everyone in Annville, his wife left him and it's heavily implied that even his deputies despise him. Seeing as the man was basically just a thug with a badge, this comes as no surprise. Ironically, the one person who doesn't hate him at the start of the series is his biggest victim: Arseface, his own son, whom he mercilessly abused until the latter's failed suicide attempt.
• Have You Seen My God?: The key plot element is Jesse searching for God in hopes of confronting Him over the poor state of the world.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • The Saint Of Killers. It certainly says something about the series that that character's decision to kill God Almighty marks his Heel Face Turn.
  • To a lesser but no less profound degree, Hoover and Featherstone.
• Heteronormative Crusader: Discussed, with the main characters taking a very negative stand on this kind of behavior and certain villains being homophobic along with racist. Yet, at the same time, as mentioned throughout this page, homosexuals certainly aren't portrayed in a very flattering manner. But since almost no one is portrayed in a very flattering manner, this is pretty much par for the course.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: The series' portrayal of Patrick Pearse, the Irish revolutionary responsible for the 1916 Easter Rising, is unflattering, to say the least. Naturally, reader opinions will differ on how accurate this portrayal is.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: God created and then alienated beings more powerful than himself. Satan, too, as he had a hand in making the Saint of Killers.
• Homage: The character and backstory of the Saint of Killers is a homage to the characters of William Munny in Unforgiven and the unnamed gunfighter in High Plains Drifter.
• Humiliation Conga: Starr's whole life from the first page of the series on.
• I Always Wanted to Say That: Jesse quoting King Lear in a thunderstorm.
• I Am Spartacus: When Starr has Tulip at gunpoint and demands to know where Jesse is, Cassidy says he's Jesse so she won't be killed.
• Idealized Sex: Sexual perversion is a major theme in the series, so anything that strays a bit from the norm is ratcheted up and made into a characteristic of a psychotic villain.
  • Pretty much every sadomasochist in the series is psychotic. Even when our heroes use a pair of handcuffs in their lovemaking, it turns out to actually be a way for Tulip to get revenge on Jesse and punish him.
  • Homosexuality is always associated with mental illness, rape, exploitation or depravity. There are no healthy homosexuals and only one healthy bisexual in the whole series.
• Identical Panel Gag: Starr looking at his new (literal) dick head in the mirror for nine identical panels. Later repeated twice with only his wigs and then his hats changing.
• Idiot Ball: Given that they supposedly have the resources of every government on Earth at their fingertips, you'd think the Grail could come up with some more subtle way of dealing with Jesse than sending guys with guns at him. At the very least, you'd think they'd give the guys with guns some earplugs.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Sally is implied to be the beautiful blonde girl in the picture she gave to Jesse.
• Ignored Enamored Underling: Featherstone to Herr Starr.
• I'm Going to Hell for This: After finding out that Arseface is a virgin, Jesse and Cassidy set him up with a prostitute. As they listen outside, Jesse says that they're going to burn in Hell for it.
  • Invoked when Jesse is asked why he doesn't use The Word on Tulip to get some sex; Jesse replies that forcing Tulip to commit a carnal act against her will would be a sin that he would rightfully burn in hell for.
• Immigrant Patriotism: A recurring element, with Irish Cassidy, British Bob and German Gunther all praising what America has to offer, and how they all saw it as a second chance.
• Immortal Breaker: The unique properties of the Saint of Killers' guns, due to their origin, means they are instantly fatal to any being. Such as deities.
• Implacable Man: The Saint is thwarted once in the whole series and only because he didn't know that Jesse's Word of God could affect him, and even then, he very nearly makes Jesse repeat himself; he stops pulling his gun halfway, but doesn't put it back in the holster as ordered, at first. He makes it very clear in his next appearance that it will not work again.
  • This encounter happens early in the story, and quite strangely, due to Early-Installment Weirdness, it was actually Cassidy at that time who was being depicted as completely indestructable and unstoppable. Although Cassidy could not kill the Saint, the Saint could not kill Cassidy either; so Cassidy would merely treat being shot by the Saint as a minor inconvenience, and he wouldn't even notice being shot by regular people. However, afterwards the Saint Took a Level in Badass.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Angel of Death's sword, which is melted down and reforged into a pair of Colt Walker revolvers which: cannot miss, cannot be empty, and cannot fail to kill their target. Hence why they can kill the Devil and God.
• Informed Attractiveness: Tulip versus Amy. They look exactly alike but with different hair colors.
• In Medias Res: Issue 8 begins this way.
• Instant Death Bullet: Usually played straight (especially with the Saint of Killers, specifically mentioned to have a gun of instant-death - his bullets are shown to tear people in half at some points), but subverted at least thrice. Cassidy survives one, but only because he's undead. Their instant death is crucial to killing God.
• Intentionally Awkward Title: Averted by The Story Of You-Know-Who, which was meant to mention Arseface, being his backstory and all.
• The Juggernaut: The Saint of Killers. A pickup truck to the face won't stop him, an entire base full of soldiers won't stop him, a battalion of tanks won't stop him, a direct nuclear strike won't stop him. All this is overshadowed by the entire angelic host of Heaven being mobilized against him, which of course fails to stop him.
• Just a Flesh Wound: When Jesse storms Masada, he stabs Starr in the abdomen with a knife. Starr collapses, but soon has enough strength to start fighting again. A few issues later, which only span about an hour, and Starr's injury is completely forgotten.
• Karma Houdini:
  • After all of the skeletons in his closet are revealed at how much a monster he is, Cassidy pulls it off making a deal with God to capture Genesis. The last pages show him alive, with his curse removed.
  • The Saint of Killers, too, gets off more or less scot-free despite murdering, what, thousands of people? Granted, lots of those people had it coming, but many were just unlucky bastards in the wrong place at the wrong time.
  • Amy mentions to Tulip that if she tried to press charges to the men who tried to rape her, they'd just get their rich dads to bribe off everyone, and she'd be told she was asking for it. As it is, all they get is a hole in their wall (and pissing himself in the case of one of them.)
• Laughably Evil: As the series progresses, Starr is increasingly played for laughs.
• Laser Sight: One shows up on Jesse's side to show Klansmen that he's got them covered.
• The Last DJ: Colonel Holden, and Jesse qualifies too, considering how much easier his own life would be if he sold out his integrity.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: In the Salvation arc, Toby and never-seen girlfriend Turleen aren't even thinking of having a baby (Or much else, for that matter) when he tells Jodie that he thought she was pregnant because she'd missed her period. They're not worried, because it happened once before, last month. God, these two are such idiots.
• Law of Inverse Recoil: Subverted in "Salvation". When Odin Quincannon fires a gun that's way too large for him, the recoil breaks his wrist. Also a cute subversion with a very young Tulip driven backwards into a snowbank, with only mittens and boots left visible.
• Light Is Not Good: Angels are all jerks, and God is the villain of the series. Even the mother and father of Genesis, implied at first to be freethinking lovers, are revealed to have been unwilling participants and just as bad as their brethren.
• Literal Genie: Jesse's choice of words with the Word of God sometimes has... unfortunate consequences. Like the time he told Arseface's father to "go fuck yourself", which resulted in him tearing off his own penis and sodomizing himself with it.
• Loser Deity: God is a narcissist with an obsessive need to be loved by people despite the Crapsack World he made for them, and gets gunned down while begging for his life.
• Love at First Sight:
  • Tulip and Jesse. While Jesse was on a date with another girl.
  • In a non-romantic sense, all of Tulip's father's apprehension about raising a daughter alone vanished the moment he saw his baby girl's face.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Mother, in this case.
• MacGuffin: The tape that supermodel-turned-lawyer Tommi Ryder has with her in The Good Old Boys. Its only real function is to facilitate the confrontation between Saddam Hopper's group and Jody and T.C. The tape's nominal function, as incriminating evidence of Saddam Hopper and his terrorist activities, is rendered useless by the end of the story when Jody literally pulls off Hopper's head from its socket. Without its leader, Hopper's organization presumably dissolves soon thereafter.
• Made of Plasticine: Human beings are ludicrously fragile in this series. Every bone broken will immediately sprout forth from the skin- even breaking someone's finger does this. Kicks to the chin can pop eyes out, punches to the throat are fatal, blood spurts from every single wound, etc.
• Madness Mantra:
  • Near the end of the series, Herr Starr holds a gun and looks in the mirror while chanting "DOOM cock, DOOM cock!"
  • Odin Quincannon chants "Smear the cheese, smear the cheese... Pluck the hairs, pluck the hairs... Say the name, say the name..." while schtupping a pile of meat made to look like a woman.
• Magic A Is Magic A: The rules of the Voice of God are that it can only work on listeners who speak the same language Jesse does and every instruction Jesse gives with it is followed literally.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Jesse Custer, apart from the meaningful initials, is also a dual references to frontier legends Jesse James and George Armstrong Custer.
  • Napoleon Vichy's name is a dual reference to Napoleon Bonaparte and the puppet government of Nazi-occupied France.
  • Jesus DeSade's name indicates his high opinion of himself and his sexual perversity.
• Meaningful Rename: Arseface and the female "Jody", who was unfortunately renamed after her greatest enemy because she shouted his name while being rescued.
• Mighty Glacier: Jody. Jesse's mother lampshades it before taking advantage of it.
• Minor Living Alone: After yet another vicious beating courtesy of his father, Arseface takes up his friend Pube's offer and moves in to live with him. However, because he is not yet 18 (he's 17) he's still a minor and hence his father has every right to come and literally drag him back home.
• Mook Lieutenant: Marseille.
• Mooning: After Cassidy loosens up fellow vampire Eccharius with a night of drinking and fun in the Preacher Special: Cassidy - Blood and Whiskey one-shot, they both moon Eccharius's followers, yell "Wankeerrrrs!!" and run away. The Enfants Du Sang are understandably confused.
• Mondegreen Gag: When Jesse, Tulip, and Cass sing along to "What a Feeling" by Irene Cara in "Dixie Fried," they sing the line "got me reelin'" instead of "bein's believin'"
• More Dakka: Starr has a tank unload its shells directly into the Saint. And when that doesn't work, well, he's got a backup plan too...
• Motive Decay: Demonstrated by Herr Starr, who goes from wanting to engineer the apocalypse and set Jessie up as the new Savior for the remnants of mankind, to wanting to kill Jessie and not giving a rat's butt about the apocalypse at all.
• Nasal Trauma: Jesse Custer, ever the Combat Pragmatist, inflicts this on an opponent. Not only does he ram his fingers up the guy's nose, but rips them out through the sides, practically shredding the damn thing.
• Neck Lift: Cassidy grabs someone by the neck during a Bar Brawl.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: Cassidy tries to attack the Saint of Killers by ramming him with a pickup truck. The Saint doesn't even flinch, the truck crumples like paper, Cass gets flung through the windshield, past Hugo Root, to land practically on his head next to Jesse. He clearly thought that plan through.
• Never Found the Body: The first hint that Jesse's mom didn't die.
• N.G.O. Superpower: the Grail. Allfather D'Aronique says he makes every president in the world call him every evening and say "Thank you".
• Nigh-Invulnerable: The Saint of Killers, to a degree that's extreme even by comic book standards. Nothing anyone does to him so much as scratches him. He takes the "nigh" out of the trope.
• '90s Anti-Hero: Jesse Custer, the two-fisted, cigarette-chomping, stubble-chinned preacher with a grudge against God. While he has a certain code of honor, he's certainly no choir-boy and is often forced to admit his moral failings.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Duke and The King.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Although Jesse is clearly weirded out by Jesus de Sade's party, he tells de Sade that there's nothing wrong with "excess" as long as no one's getting hurt. But when Jesse sees that a child is involved, he beats de Sade so badly he's unrecognizable.
• Noodle Incident: We are told at least twice that Gran'ma made soup out of Jesse's grandfather before Jesse was born, but precisely why and how she did that remains a mystery for the ages.
• No-Sell:
  • The Saint of Killers never sells anything. The most clear example of the trope is when Cassidy punches him on the chin with his Super-Strength, and the Saint just stares at him.
  • When Jesse is a teenager, Jody no-sells his punches. When Jesse is grown, he can do a little more damage, but even so Jody can shrug off a lot. When Jesse hits him with a fence board that gets stuck to Jody's cheek with the nails, Jody just smirks and says, "Kinda diff'rent."
  • Jesse punches Detective Paulie Bridges, who takes it without blinking and then drops Jesse with one punch to the gut.
  • Jesse catches a blow thrown by Cassidy, who is a supernaturally strong vampire in case you were somehow unaware, and stands there emotionless and unmoving until Cassidy meekly backs off and leaves. Then he asks to be taken to the hospital immediately, because he thinks he just broke every bone in his hand.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: No one ever says the word "vampire." When Jesse realizes what he is, Cassidy only confirms that he's "the 'V' word."
• Not With the Safety On, You Won't: One of Quincannon's goons points a gun at Jesse, only for Jesse to inform him that the safety's on.
• Odd Job Gods: The Saint of Killers, the Angel of Death's replacement. Whenever you're about to kill someone, pray to him, because he's the one pulling the trigger.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The Saint of Killers takes on the entire Heavenly Host. We only see the aftermath.
• Old Soldier: The Saint of Killers was old BEFORE he became immortal, but you wouldn't want to have messed with him then, either. He was a master of his craft.
• One-Hit KO: Jesse is every bit the accomplished technical fighter Cassidy isn't, but when the two engage in their showdown brawl, all it takes is one solid hit from the vastly more powerful vampire to disable Custer and end the fight.
• One-Man Army: The Saint of Killers is just one man, but is capable of causing a lot of damage and bloodshed all by himself.
• One-Sided Arm-Wrestling: Cassidy, soon after arriving in the US.
• Only Sane Man: Played with - Starr, for all his own issues, is fairly clearly this relative to the Grail in general.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Hoover's Precision F-Strike after Starr kills Featherstone.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
  • Starr notices that Cassidy's accent is slipping while he's impersonating Jesse.
  • Meta, with Ennis' dialogue for the mostly American cast. While he tries to be authentic with southern accents, Americanisms and such, his Irish roots in certain turns of phrase and syntax are noticable.
• Our Angels Are Different : As a Take That!, the only angels we meet are either pricks or weak-willed slobs.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Cassidy has all the urges and appetites of a human. He needs to drink blood to stay alive, but not all that much, and he has no fangs. He lacks all typical vampire weaknesses except direct sunlight, which sets him on fire. He has superhuman strength and speed, regenerates just about any damage over a period of days and weeks, but lacks any other supernatural abilities. Lampshaded in a story where Cassidy meets another vampire, who tries to act according to cliches of vampire fiction, because he feels this is expected of him.
• Out of the Inferno: The Saint takes a direct hit from an atomic bomb. Several scenes later, we cut to him standing amidst the nuclear fire, his perfectly undamaged duster still flapping in the breeze, with a contemptuous look on his face.
  Saint of Killers: "Not enough gun."
• Papa Wolf: John Custer, who would have won against Jody. Seriously, John hit him like a train!
• Pedestrian Crushes Car: The first volume has Cassidy attempt Car Fu on The Saint of Killers. It doesn't work.
• Period Piece: The series is inexorably tied to the time of its publication, with the looming year of 2000 being a major plot point, Kurt Cobain's death to Arseface's origin and Jesse's father serving in Vietnam.
• Perma-Stubble: Jesse usually has some stubble.
• Person of Mass Destruction: The Saint of Killers, which was realized far too late by an unfortunate tank battalion. How dangerous could a guy who looks like he walked out of a Western set be?
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • One of the first obstacles faced by Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy in the series is Sherrif Hugo Root, a racist and homophobic conspiracy theorist who especially likes to ramble about the threat of "Martian niggers".
  • During one of his rants, Herr Starr refers to Irish vampire Cassidy as "an unkillable mick".
  • Odin Quincannon is such a racist that even The Klan are annoyed that all he wants to talk about around them is how much he hates black people.
• The Power of Legacy: Deconstructed, then averted. When Jesse is hanging on to Cassidy from a plane, he tells Cassidy to tell Tulip he loves her, then orders him to let go. Cassidy then reveals himself by telling Tulip that Jesse didn't say anything. But at the very end, Cassidy's goodbye letter explains to Tulip what Jesse had really told him.
• Precision F-Strike: One is visible from space.
  • Throughout the comic, people swear like mad, and it's even frequently Lampshaded by Hoover, who finds it all horribly sinful. He gets one, too, and it has the full impact as if the comic never dropped the bomb before it.
• Pretender Diss: Cassidy to Les enfants du sang (a cult of people who want to be vampires) and various badass characters to Heroic Wannabes.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Highly averted, perhaps excessively.
• Profane Last Words: Herr Starr's last words, on having most of his head blown off: "Shit."
• Prosthetic Limb Reveal: When facing off against his former employer, his dog and his bodyguard, Starr holds his leg out in front of him. The bodyguard contemptuously grabs it, and is surprised long enough that it comes off that Starr is able to dispatch him. Unfortunately for Starr, the dog is still able to get him.
  Starr: My cock is in the bitch's mouth. And not in a good way.
• Pure Is Not Good: The Grail is filled with this. Whether they realize it or not (honestly, they look at their captive lineage of Jesus's badly atavistic descendants, and they still think that because the line has never had new blood, it's automatically good?!).
  "Humperdido!"
• Purple Prose: In the one-shot "Blood and Whiskey", the vampire Eccarius speaks this way. It's revealed that he's a self-important poseur dimwit who just followed what was in the books and movies on vampires without question.
• Quick Draw: The Saint of Killers can draw his guns faster than a man can see. He uses this to shut down Jesse's Word the second time they meet.
  Saint of Killers: "I'm bettin' I can clear holster 'fore your words hit the breeze, preacher. First twitch I see...that's what I'm gonna do."
• Rage Against the Heavens: It's the whole point of the story.
• Rape Discretion Shot: Herr Starr's rape by "sexual investigator" happens entirely off-panel.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Jesse delivers a couple of these, including to Cassidy.
  • Right after his Happily Failed Suicide, Arseface's best friend's sister asked him why he and her brother were Driven to Suicide. Arseface answers (writes) ''Nobody cared''. To the only person who cared enough to visit him in the hospital. She angrily screams before leaving in tears:
  What do you mean, nobody cared? You mean nobody coddled you and wiped your asses for you? Your lives didn't turn out the way you wanted them to? Well, FUCK YOU, you and my asshole brother both! You self-obsessed whining little shits, I bet you never gave a good goddamn about the pain you'd cause! You say nobody cared about you, but I'll tell you one thing: If you´re enough of a prick to take a gun and try to blow your own head off… YOU DIDN´T FUCKING CARE EITHER!
• Redemption Failure: Since he's something of an Expy of Clint Eastwood's characters, the Saint of Killers gets a backstory about his life as a Civil War veteran, retired outlaw and gunslinger. Things rapidly go awry in a fashion very similar to what befalls Eastwood's character in Unforgiven.
• Resurrection Gambit: At the end, the vampire Cassidy does a deal with God whereby he will distract Jesse at a particular moment, in exchange for God resurrecting him as a living human being.
• Resurrection Revenge: Back when the Saint of Killers was still a man, he was killed mid-Roaring Rampage of Revenge by a band of outlaws who'd also killed his family. His hatred was such that it extinguished the fires of Hell, and he made a Deal with the Devil and the Angel of Death. He would be brought back to kill his murderers, and after that take over the Angel of Death's job. He does so (winning a pair of always-accurate, always-lethal, never-empty revolvers made from the Angel's sword), killing not only the murderers but the entire town they'd taken over and the Devil (for insulting him as he left Hell, allowing him to test the always-lethal nature of his guns).
• Retired Gunfighter: The Saint, back when he was a man...
• Retired Monster: Gunther Hahn, the Angel of Death and, at the end of the story, the Saint of Killers.
• Ridiculously Alive Undead: The vampire Cassidy has no fangs, eats human food (but with lots of rare steak) and drinks vast amounts of alcohol. The only traditional vampiric weakness he displays is that direct sunlight ignites him, and in the comic version he always wears shades due to, it's finally revealed, having red irises and very bloodshot whites.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Herr Starr got his scar, voice, and baldness from a childhood incident where a gang of schoolboys cut his eye out with a piece of glass. They ended up dead before his tenth birthday. This incident got him the job as the Grail's Sacred Executioner, the leader of the Grail's private military known as the Samson Unit and as such answerable only to the Grail's formal leader, Allfather D'Aronique, and ultimately to the Elite Council at Le Saint Marie.
  • The "Saint of Killers" has a couple during his origin story, including the entire town of Ratwater.
• Running Gag: Featherstone snarling, "Motherfucker!" and a shocked Hoover chastising her, "Featherstone!"
• Say Your Prayers: One of the outlaws who kept the Saint from reaching his family with medicine does this when he sees that the Saint is Back from the Dead.
• Sanctuary of Solitude: Cassidy does this. (And no, it doesn't hurt him, either).
• Scope Snipe: Eisenstein's bodyguard almost kills a sniper this way. It's not a scope snipe because the bodyguard's bullet hits the sniper in the center of the sniper's forehead, not the sniper's eye. In a preceding panel the sniper is looking through his scope at the bodyguard- there was no reason for the sniper, seeing the bodyguard aiming at him, to stop looking through the scope and raise his (the sniper's) rifle to where the scope would have been pointing above his eye level.
• Secret Identity: Subverted in "Naked City".
• Selective Obliviousness: Cassidy does this repeatedly, causing much grievous harm to other people. When Jesse calls him out repeatedly, Cassidy gets self-righteous.
• Self-Deprecation: Jesse gets predictably pissed off by some conservative right-wing radio he's listening to and goes on another of Garth Ennis's Author Tracts. He immediately shuts up when he realizes that In-Universe, his only audience is a dog who doesn't know what he's talking about. Cue Jesse chuckling about how he needs to get laid.
• Serial Escalation: The Saint's accomplishments keep getting more impressive.
• Serial Killings, Specific Target: Herr Starr is given the task of murdering a man in an insane asylum in such a way that the authorities do not investigate his death too deeply. Being a pragmatic man, Starr simply blows up the entire asylum, so that investigators will have several hundred potential targets to sort through. Rather than a serial killing, it's a mass murder, but the intent is the same.
• Serial Prostheses: Starr. From a fake leg to a fake dong.
• Sexual Karma: Jesse and Tulip who after some initial tension reignite their teen romance with gusto. In contrast, her eventual fling with Cassidy following Jesse's apparent death is regarded as being synonymous with rape due to how Cassidy was willing to supply a grieving Tulip with both alcohol and drugs. There's also Herr Starr who is a complete degenerate always seeking new and more sordid activities to sate himself with. And don't even ask about Jesus DeSade's parties and the things that go on there.
• Shooting Lessons From Your Parents: Tulip was taught to shoot by her father. This was part of her father, without actually challenging her biological gender, bringing her up to have stereotypically masculine talents because he'd have preferred to have a son.
• Shout-Out Theme Naming:
  • All Cassidy's old drinking buddies in New York are from 'The Irish Rover'.
  • Saddam Hopper looks like Hussein but acts like Dennis Hopper.
• Significant Anagram: Jesse Custer = Secret Jesus. (also, Uses Rejects.)
• Significant Monogram: Jesse Custer = J.C. = Jesus Christ. Lampshaded by Tulip toward the end.
• Sir Swears Alot: If The Devil had a swear jar, his entire realm would soon be put on mortgage...as a first installment!
• Sliding Scale of Divine Intervention: Class 1. The entire point of the series is that God has abandoned His flock and Reverend Jesse Custer seeks Him out to demand to know why He hasn't done right by His creations.
• Slipping a Mickey:
  • Happens with Amy in the past, and it's strongly implied it could have happened to Tulip as well had she chosen an open bottle.
  • In the final arc, Jesse drugs Tulip to keep her from following him when he goes to fight Cassidy.
• Small-Town Tyrant:
  • Odin Quincannon in "Salvation". Also known as the Meat King, he is a corrupt hick who operates an inhumane meat plant, orders the death of a local sheriff, is a card-carrying member of The Klan, tries to blow up a nearby village with napalm, employs a Hitler fetishist as his PA and repeatedly has sex with a giant female figure made out of sides of ham. Seriously. He was so corrupt his fellow Klansmen started wondering if he was taking the whole racism thing a bit too far.
  • Sheriff Hugo Root, who's an alcoholic racist as well as an abusive father.
  • Sheriff Jim Bewley of Salvation is also one, being on the take from Quincannon before he hands his badge to Jesse, but he is also a considerably nicer version compared to Hugo Root, demonstrated by him sitting in the same car as his black female deputy Cindy Daggett without any problems (which would be unthinkable in Root's case). He's also racist and sexist, however, though in a milder, more laid-back way, as exemplified by referring to black people as "nigras" (which is just one step above the n-word, which he also used at least once, when Cindy was present), hiring Cindy as a deputy purely out of tokenism, and treating her like a glorified secretary rather than an officer of the law, which is a source of considerable resentment for her.
• Smoking Is Cool: The heroes are constantly lighting up. Jesse proudly bears his father's lighter, which is emblazoned with the message, "Fuck Communism."
• Social Services Does Not Exist:
  • One of the reasons why the L'Angelles are so fucked up, passing on the increasingly psychotic tendencies to succeeding generations. Also, why Billy-Bob and Lori come from an increasingly inbred family.
    • Undoubtedly the L'Angelles' Grail connections (Allfather D'Aronique, the most powerful man in the world, was Marie's nephew) kept their multitude of crimes - such as kidnapping John Custer and his family, his murder and all the other crap that Jody and T.C. pulled - from being investigated.
  • Social services seemingly do not exist in Annville or its environs, as at no point in Arseface's backstory is there any indication that he could have sought help from them to escape his horribly abusive father; his only attempt at escape involves him attempting to resort to Staying with Friends. As he's still a minor, he winds up being dragged back home and beaten up yet again.
• Spirit Advisor: Jesse is guided on the path to become a Real Man by John Wayne.
• Start of Darkness:
  • For the Saint, though not very straightforwardly.
  • Also, "A star for Starr"
• Stay in the Kitchen:
  • Probably the key source of conflict between Jesse and Tulip. Zig-Zagged in that Jesse is not as bad as 99% of the examples; initially he's completely appreciative of Tulip's skills and grateful for her support in their adventures, essentially thinking of her and Cassidy as the muscle of their trio - Guys Smash, Girls Shoot - while he's the brains. This changes after his family catches them in "Until The End Of The World" - and shoots her in the head to assert their authority over him. It doesn't stick, but afterwards the trope comes into play in earnest...
  • Played straight by Sheriff Root on his wife.
• Staying with Friends: Arseface tries to resort to this to escape his hellish home life by moving in with his best friend Pube; it doesn't work, as his father promptly shows up and drags him back within the hour.
• Storybreaker Power: As if the Saint of Killers wasn't bad enough, he wields a pair of Colt Walker revolvers forged with the steel of the sword of the Angel of Death. They fire bullets that are completely impossible to avoid or survive. Even worse is that they never run out of ammunition and never misfire.
• Straw Character: Ulysses Gett, a hilariously offensive conservative who is openly critical of the feminists and liberals.
• Straw Feminist: Martha Moore, a panelist who frequently gets into squabbles with Ulysses Gett, is a feminist professor who rants about women being oppressed by the phallocentric society.
• Sub-Par Supremacist:
  • Jesse unmasks a bunch of Klansmen and finds that they're almost all scrawny, balding, unattractive middle-aged losers, one of them even lacking a chin, their leader has a fetish for sniffing seats, and the only one with actual muscles is taken out in a Curb-Stomp Battle before he can even take a swing at Jesse.
  • And then there's Odin Quincannon, a scrawny weak little man with huge glasses that even the other Klansmen find annoying to be around, like his constantly repeating "Boy do I sure hate niggers". The only reason he's tolerated is because he runs the meatpacking plant that keeps most of the town employed, and is later shown to have built a "meat-woman" out of animal carcasses, which he talks to and has sex with.
• Suicide by Sunlight: After making peace with Jesse, Cassidy decides that only thing he can do to make up for what he's done is meet the sun, though he's already made a pact with God to ressurect him.
• The Svengali: Gene Sergeant, Arseface's manager
• Take That!:
  • One long trainride of it against Christianity.
    • Jesus is stated to have married Mary Magdalena and died at 50 when he was run over by a dung-cart.
  • Plus a generous helping of it for certain historical Irishmen. Michael Collins for one is given a good hard kick, and Cassidy expresses a very poor opinion of Padraig Pearse.
  • A character who is clearly meant to be Neil Gaiman has a sheaf of rolled-up poetry forced down his throat by Cassidy. Later in the same arc, he is mentioned as having achieved great success as a writer by "blending genres".
  • One of the "sexual investigators" has a trophy for blowing the "entire English rugby team," as well as winning the Navy... blowing championship 3 years in a row.
  • Cassidy states that Red Hot Chili Peppers is a crappy band.
  • There are more than a few shots taken at the music industry, media commentators, media watchdogs, political correctness, psychiatrists and psychology buzzwords, the French, liberal and conservative extremists, Goths, Anne Rice, racists, Margaret Thatcher, child molesters, self-loathing homophobes, and hypocrites of every variety.
  • In contrast to Cassidy's loving tribute to New York City, the gang spend a lot of their time in Los Angeles talking about how much they hate it.
• Tank Goodness: Subverted epically in the "War in the Sun" arc.
• Technician vs. Performer: Discussed Trope when Jesse and Cass contrast Chaplin (technician) and Laurel and Hardy (performers), coming out in favor of Stan and Ollie.
• Tell Me About My Father: Jesse finds out a lot about his father from his old war buddy Space.
• The Sheriff: Hugo Root is massively the corrupt hick variety of this trope, as well as a supreme Jerkass. Jim Bewley of Salvation is also a corrupt hick, but a nicer one. Jesse becomes the Cowboy Cop version of this in Salvation.
• The Starscream: Starr, to d'Aronique, who knows about it but still thinks he can use him to his advantage.
• The Unfair Sex: Cassidy is a horrible person for confessing to Tulip that he's in love with her, but in a flashback issue, Amy openly acknowledges her feelings for Jesse, but he is understanding and they decide not to do anything about it because they both "love her (Tulip) too much". Eventually, some shadier details about Cassidy's past begin to surface to justify this sentiment, but not until after Cassidy has been vilified.
• The Western: Oh, so many examples.
• There Are No Therapists: The option is mentioned, but disregarded because "Shrinks are for assholes". Jesse also goes into an amusing rant about the overuse of the word "insecure" and other pop-psych buzzwords and phrases in conversations (and is later asked whether he's insecure about his fear of psychiatrists).
• Third-Person Person: Odin Quincannon refers to himself in third person.
• Those Wacky Nazis:
  • In Salvation, this leads to a rather intense case of Mood Whiplash. Jesse somehow draws the eye of Ms. Oatlash, a would-be neo-Nazi Baroness^note who apparently sincerely believes that Nazism isn't racist who wants to do all kinds of squishy things with him involving leather and chains. He ends up leaving the nutcase chained to her own bed, but is forced to exit the building and speak to his black deputy while fully dressed in a decades-old yet perfectly preserved Nazi uniform.
  • Then immediately subverted with Gunther.
• Token Motivational Nemesis: Grandma Marie L'Angelle. Also Jody, who claims to have been doing this intentionally ("Try'na toughen you up, boy").
• The Dog Bites Back: Featherstone turns on Starr when she realizes how far gone he is. He just shoots her. This causes the same reaction from Hoover, with the same result. Lot of room in that stairwell.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After being a Butt-Monkey for most of the series, Arseface finds a place he can call home, a job, and a new love.
• To Hell and Back: The Saint of Killer's backstory involves going to Hell and then returning to the mortal plane.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Arseface's best (and only) friend Pube (real name: Craig). As The Story of You-Know-Who progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent that he is this to Arseface. He shows up and ruins the Root boy's best chance with his crush (right after he had successfully apologized to her for ogling her in class, and just when they seemed to be getting along well), talks him into stealing his father's shotgun (which results in him getting the worst beating in his life) and ultimately talks him into the suicide pact as a response to Kurt Cobain's suicide and their own shitty and miserable lives.
• Trampoline Tummy: Disgustingly subverted. The handicapped kid who is the last surviving descendant of Jesus apparently amuses himself by taking flying leaps into the copious fat-rolls of Allfather who rules the Grail. Rather than just bouncing hilariously off of it, however, it also makes the Allfather puke by the bucketload, which suits him fine since he's bulimic...
• Tyrannical Town Tycoon: A late arc involves Jesse living in a small backwoods town, where the corrupt owner of the large meat processing plant that is the backbone of the town acts in this manner. Jesse becomes the town sheriff and acts to counter the would-be petty tyrant.
• "Uh-Oh" Eyes: Cassidy looks to be a pretty average man in his mid twenties. The only hint of his condition is the horribly bloodshot state of his eyes.
• Underling with an F in PR:
  • Subverted when a young Starr is tasked with eliminating two journalists who managed to get info on the Grail and are currently being held in a mental hospital. Starr justifies his blowing up the entire hospital by pointing out that killing just the journalists would posthumously prove them Properly Paranoid.
  • He also spends his time at an upper-class party being unflinchingly insulting to various world leaders, culminating in asking a Prime Minister how much it would cost to piss in their mouth. It's implied said Prime Minister is Margaret Thatcher.
  • The Grail intends to use the powerless, inbred and mentally-retarded descendant of Jesus Christ's children as the Second Coming. Starr's main reason for taking over the Grail is that he's just about the only one to see that the kid is not and will never be a credible Messiah.
• Undying Loyalty: The closest thing to a redeeming feature Jody ever displays. He is genuinely upset that Miss Marie will die of old age soon and hates Jesse for giving her trouble. He even has a kind of truly sick loyalty to Jesse in his dogged determination to be the father figure from hell.
  • Jody also seems genuinely fond of T.C., in spite of the former's... quirks. He immediately steps in when someone threatens or hurts T.C., and when Jesse announced that he'd beaten T.C.'s brains out, Jody stopped ranting and just stood there with a stunned look on his face before being sucker punched by Jesse.
• Unfriendly Fire: Jesse's dad iced his racist, sadistic commanding officer during the Vietnam War.
• The Unintelligible:
  • Because of his deformity making his mouth look like an anus, Arseface can only speak in unintelligible mumbles. He has translations provided in text boxes beside his dialogue, most of the time.
  • One of Quincannon's subordinates becomes unable to speak properly after Jesse breaks some of his teeth up.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Cassidy has Super-Strength, but doesn't know how to fight well because he never needed to learn how.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Herr Starr.
• Vampire Episode:While one of the main characters is a vampire (an Irish one), other vampires are only encountered once, when Cassidy runs into a Classical Movie Vampire (all an act, as Our Vampires Are Different and he had no idea he wasn't supposed to act differently, but Cassidy kills him when it turns out he needlessly kills his fans instead of drinking animal blood like Cassidy).
• Vampires Sleep in Coffins: Averted: Cassidy has never slept in a coffin, as vampires here have no connection to religion (they burn in sunlight and need to drink blood, but animal blood is fine). He later runs into a fellow vampire who invokes as many of the Classical Movie Vampire traits as he can despite none of them being actually necessary (and some of them aren't possible, like turning into a bat).
• Villainous Breakdown: Experienced by Starr near the end.
  Grail Elder: This is about mankind's salvation.
  Starr: This is about my genitals.
• Volleying Insults: Happens whenever Martha Moore and Ulysses Gett appear. Sometimes happens with other people.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot
  • Most notably, Grail Allfather D'Aronique who, as a Villainous Glutton taken up a notch, is often shown making himself vomit, in front of his inferiors.
  • At least a couple of incidental characters throw up at the sight of Arseface.
• Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: "Improper use of inverted commas, Hoover!"
• War Is Hell: Billy Baker, AKA "Space", a Vietnam Veteran who owes Jesse's father his life. He shows up in "Texas and the Spaceman" and "The Land of Bad Things" - both times he waxes poetic on the horrors of war and the humanity of solders.
  (sadly, to the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial wall:) So tell me somethin'. How come you shitheads never write?
• Watering Down: Custer starts off his massive "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the whole town by telling the bartender he can almost taste the beer through all the water.
• We Have Reserves: How the Grail attempted to deal with the Saint at Masada. Afterwards, they no longer have them - they lost 90 percent of their forces in the incident (either killed by the Saint or in the explosion that blew up Masada). The nuking of Monument Valley took out the bulk of the Grail's remaining Samson forces, after which the Grail is reduced to a fragment of its former self, forcing Starr to summon the Grail's deep-cover agents from all over the world to boost his forces for the final showdown with Jesse - and only a scant few show up.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Subverted to hell and back with Jody's attempts to cast himself as this to Jesse. Even when he's a hallucination he pulls this: "Git on about yore vision, boy."
• Wham Episode: War In The Sun.
• Wham Shot: Not long after Jesse and Tulip first meet Cassidy, the group get into a bar brawl with some belligerent hillbillies. Cassidy takes a knife to the eye, and Jesse and Tulip are greeted to the sight of the Irishman casually pulling the blade from his eye socket, grabbing the offender and proceeding to bite open his throat and drink the blood gushing from his throat. Cassidy's response to their horrified expressions? "Somethin' the matter?" It's at that point that the rest of the group kip to the fact that their Irish companion is a vampire.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never explained what happened to Genesis after it's forced out of Custer's mind at the end. Nor what happened to the Angel of Death, the Saint's predecessor.
  • There is no indication of what happened to Tommi after she left with Jody and T.C. at the end of The Good Old Boys. It likely wasn't good.
• What Have I Become?: It's implied near the end that the Saint of Killers is disgusted, if not outright horrified, at the atrocities he has committed since becoming who he is.
  • Cassidy, after first being turned into a vampire.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Frequent. When Jesse rashly or irresponsibly uses the Word, it often comes back to bite him in the ass. A big part of his Character Development comes from realizing that he can't just throw his weight around whenever he wants to.
• Would Hurt a Child: The "Saint of Killers" was damned when he killed a non-combatant prostitute. But the darkness of his full transformation is emphasized when he blows away innocent children during his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the town of Ratwater.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?:
  • Jesse's first remark after Cassidy tells him of his origins is "So I got kind of a question. 'Proinsias'?"
  • Also, for that matter, Tulip? Her mom had a thing for flower names, according to her dad.
  • Kind-of-lampshaded for Jody, by Jody, while chatting up Tommi.
• Will They or Won't They?: Jesse and Cindy. The story dances around the possibility of their coupling for some time. Keep in mind that at this point Tulip thinks Jesse is dead and Jesse thinks she's moved on to a relationship with Cassidy and is not sure that dropping in on her life again is fair.
• World of Badass
• The Worf Effect: Jody gets beaten up by every member of the Custer family to show how tough they all are.
• Written Sound Effect: Mostly averted.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Cal Hicks in The Good Old Boys, where he thinks he's the hero in an 80s action movie type of story. Unfortunately for him, he is nothing but the designated Butt-Monkey in an Evil vs. Evil story pitting Jody and T.C., the actual protagonists, against a bunch of goons and their leader, a No Celebrities Were Harmed rendition of Saddam Hussein. He never really cottons on to this fact, even after witnessing Jody and T.C. alone taking down every one of their enemies, which ultimately results in him being fed to a gator.
• Younger Than They Look: Eisenstein has "looked over a hundred" since he was 12.
• Your Head Asplode: Oh, so many examples, usually involving the Saint or Tulip.
• Your Vampires Suck: Directed against the Ricean tradition.
• Zen Survivor: Played with (not for laughs) in the case of Sally, and subverted all sorts of ways for Cassidy. Also the Saint, temporarily.

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