Comic Book / X-Factor (2006)

Re-tooled Nineties as gritty noir.

The third volume of X-Factor by Peter David. It revolves around X-Factor Investigations, a detective agency run by Jamie Madrox, formerly known as Multiple Man, which was founded in his own miniseries Madrox. The name is taken from the government-sponsored group the three founders previously served in. The initial staff consists of Madrox's best friend and special enforcer, Guido Carosella (Strong Guy), and former teammate Rahne Sinclair (Wolfsbane).

Following the events of the House of M storyline, Madrox's new-found wealth from winning a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?-style game show allows him to recruit several of his former colleagues from the Paris branch of the now-defunct X-Corporation. New members include M (Monet St. Croix), a powerless Rictor, Theresa Cassidy (Siryn), and Layla Miller (Butterfly). Later on other members would also join, such as Armando Munoz (Darwin), Longshot, Gaveedra-7 (Shatterstar) and Pip the Troll. Lorna Dane (Polaris) and Alex Summers (Havok) also join the team in the final arcs.

After 50 issues, the title reverted to X-Factor Volume 1 and was renumbered starting with #200. The series ended with issue #262 in September 2013.

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X-Factor provides examples of the following tropes:

A-M

• Aborted Arc:
  • A lot of them surround Damian Tryp, who was built up to be the Big Bad of the story yet came to have less and less to do with the plot as the series went on.
  • Early on, Tryp claims Siryn will help resurrect her father, after his catching a bad case of dead. While Sean did eventually come back to life, Siryn played no part in it whatsoever.
  • Early on, a lot is made of the fact Damian Tryp and Madrox might not be mutants, but a predecessor to mutants who develops powers at birth referred to as "changelings". This is never elaborated on.
  • Vanora is build up to have a major confrontation with Rahne and has a partnership with Elder Tryp, but she's seemingly killed anticlimatically by Shatterstar without them even realizing she was Rahne's daughter from another universe. She's later seen fully recovering... but then never shows up again.
• Accent Relapse: When she starts getting angry, Siryn's accent gets increasingly Irish.
• Accidental Aiming Skills: In Issue #8, Siryn fires a "sonic lance" at a gunman's hand to disarm him. When Spider-Man congratulates her on her aim, she admits she was actually aiming for his head. Considering the sonic lance destroyed the gun and broke the man's hand, one gets the feeling she wasn't all that concerned about killing the guy.
• Accidental Murder: Actor Jack Vaughn roleplays rape fantasies with his girlfriend and even uses a loaded gun as a prop. This obviously goes fatally wrong when her sister barges in on them and the gun accidentally goes off, killing his partner. He then gets into contact with Singularity to have them pin the blame on the sister.
• Actually a Doombot: In issue 50, Madrox and Cortez get into a discussion, which eventually ends with Cortez apparently killing Madrox, only for him to reveal he's a dupe.
• Adaptive Ability: Darwin's mutant powers has his body "evolving" to survive, resulting in some horrifying transformations. Shot with a weapon that targets the nervous system, he becomes a sponge creature. Crushed beneath wreckage, he's reduced to an oozing mass that can speak. Decapitated by a headshot, a second head starts growing out of his torso, and so forth. Thankfully these are temporary changes, but made worse that he's got no control over what he'll become.
• A Day in the Limelight: Layla Miller gets her own one-shot exploring her time alone in Bishop's future, and how she helps kick-start the whole rebellion.
• Affably Evil:
  • The elderly senile Doctor Doom from Earth-1191 is amazingly polite (by Doom's standards at least) toward Madrox and Layla. Until his inevitable betrayal.
  • The Queenpin Guido meets in South America while on a mission to rescue Monet's father. She is fairly polite and friendly towards him and even encourages him to tell Monet of his feelings for her. She even says she might shed a tear or two for him if he died.
• All Gays Love Theater: Lampshaded when Rictor refuses to watch musicals with his TV-obsessed boyfriend, Shatterstar, because he "doesn't want to be stereotypical." Shatterstar asks Rahne about this, but she just says she has no idea what he meant.
• All Your Powers Combined: The Isolationist has every mutant power at the same time, and can't turn them off, making his life a living hell. He gets his name from living in the Arctic to try and dull the mental noise that comes with having the power of every mutant telepath. But when the Decimation occurred, it dulled his pain enough for him to be able to travel to the civilized world, so he can try to finish off the remaining mutants.
• Amazon Brigade: All three members of the SCARs program, Ballistique, Rococo and Sylvius, are female.
• Amazonian Beauty: The beautiful Monet has noticeable abs during her Full-Frontal Assault under Cortex's Mind Control, and many characters notice how toned her legs are.
• Ambiguous Syntax: A heavily pregnant Rahne walks in on Shatterstar and Rictor getting in on, and in the ensuing argument yells "you did this". Shatterstar thinks she means he got her pregnant, and gets confused as to how he could've done that without knowing. She actually means "turned Rictor gay."
• Amicable Exes:
  • Madrox and Monet. While she's furious with him when he reveals his dupes slept with her and Siryn on the same night, she doesn't hold a grudge and later becomes a Shipper on Deck for Siryn and Madrox.
  • Longshot and Dazzler.
• Analogy Backfire: While trying to reassure Falcone that their plan will work, Tryp brings up Joan of Arc and Ghandi. Falcone notes that the martyr theme is not reassuring him in the slightest.
• And I Must Scream: After he learns that his father Hector sold him out to Karma, Darwin visits him in the hospital where he is in a coma. Darwin says that he will forgive and forget about his father. As Darwin leaves, we see a single tear roll down Hector's eye suggesting he heard every word his son said.
• Anti-Hero: Darwin during the "Hell on Earth War" arc. He only opposes the protagonists because he wants to kill Tier and prevent The End of the World as We Know It.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: When Jamie tells Monet to read the mind of the comatose Hector Munoz for information, the nearby cop named Weiss assumes she is a Phony Psychic despite Psychic Powers being very common in the Marvel Universe. Justified since Weiss says that he has dealt with phony psychics who try to use missing persons cases to get media attention.
• Arc Villain:
  • Damian Tryp Sr. and Jr. for the "Singularity" arc.
  • Quicksilver for the "X-Cell" arc.
  • Josef Huber "The Isolationist" for the "Endangered Species" arc.
  • Arcade for the "Divided We Stand" arc.
  • Nogor the Talisman for the "Secret Invasion" arc.
  • Mr. Maru for the "Karma Project" arc.
  • Cortex in the present plot and Anthony Falcone in the Earth-1191 plot for the "Summers Rebellion" arc.
  • Mister Fantastic's Evil Doppelgänger for the "Invisible Woman has Vanished" arc.
  • Bolivar Trask and the Mutant Response Division for the "Second Coming" arc.
  • The Goddess of Death, Hela for the "New Vegas" arc.
  • Ballistique for the "SCARs" arc.
  • Agamemnon for the "Original Sins" arc.
  • Bloodbath for the "Bloodbath" arc.
  • Vanora, Deathlock and Earth-TRN196 Dormammu for the "They Keep Killing Madrox" arc.
  • Scattershot for the "X-Treme Measures" arc.
  • Morrigan for the "The Morrigan" arc.
  • Mephisto and Guido for the "Hell on Earth" arc.
  • Mojo (for Rictor and Shatterstar) and Elder Tryp (for Layla and Madrox) for the "The End of X-Factor" arc.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • Val gives this to Jamie in Issue #33 when he tells her to back off.
  Val: Oh, "I've got to", huh. Tell me Madrox: how do you think the rest of your crew would feel knowing that your independence is just an illusion? That the O*N*E has you in its back pocket?
  • Baron Mordo gives one to Guido when the latter castigates him for feeding on Monet's life force to put his cancer into remission. Mordo replies by asking if the lengths he is going to for his survival is any different from what Mutants do to stay alive. Guido doesn't have an answer.
• Aroused by Their Voice: Siryn's power allows her to manipulate her vocal cords to sound extra sexy, hypnotizing others into lusting after her. It can even happen without her noticing, although mutants are immune to it.
• Artificial Limbs: The future version of Cyclops has a robotic right arm and leg.
• Ascended Extra: Same as in the second series. Monet was the Alpha Bitch of an X-Men spinoff series that was canceled years before, Rictor was C-List Fodder who had lost his powers, Shatterstar is a Continuity Snarl '90s Anti-Hero, Siryn is a Distaff Counterpart of her father and Layla was a Living MacGuffin in a Crisis Crossover. It seems like Peter David's whole plan whenever he writes a series named X-Factor is to create as many examples of this trope as possible. And it is glorious.
• Ascended Fanboy: Jamie Madrox tries to treat his Mutant adventures as noir detective stories. Usually, he fails miserably.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Siryn becomes the Celtic Goddess Morrigan after the last one picked her as her successor.
• Ask a Stupid Question...:
  • In Issue #30, Rictor is strapped upside down while a pendulum swings down towards him. He barely manages to escape thanks to Monet having damaged it earlier. When Terry asks him if he is okay, an angry Rictor responds, "Does it look like I'm okay?!".
  • In Issue #32 when Jamie reveals he knows Theresa is pregnant.
  Theresa: You know I'm pregnant?
  Rictor: With a baby?
  Monet: No, genius, with a sperm whale.
  • This exchange between Monet and Layla from Issue #207 when the former is about to let Baron Mordo drain her.
  Monet: What the hell are you doing here, Layla?
  Layla: Me?
  Monet: No, the Layla behind you.
  • From Issue #213, when the team sees Monet sunbathing on the rooftop.
  Jamie: Working on your tan, Monet?
  Monet: No, I'm lecturing on string theory at MiT. Can't you tell?
  • In Issue #230, Monet refers to a soulless Guido as a freak. When he angrily asks she's talking about him, she sarcastically says she's talking about the freak behind him. Which leads to an awkward moment when Pip the Troll turns out to be standing right behind Guido.
  • In #231, Jamie is talking to the Tony Stark of another universe. When Tony asks if Wanda destroyed Jamie's world as well, Jamie asks if he means the Scarlet Witch. Tony responds, "No, Wanda the dog-faced boy. Of course the Scarlet Witch!".
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Layla's mutant power. She can bring people Back from the Dead!... unfortunately, they no longer have a soul and as such, always have something wrong with them.
  • Shatterstar's powers would be this ANYWHERE but X-Factor, since he requires one of three teammates as a psychic anchor to teleport and both the teleporting and his "sword energy blast things" need about as much recovery time as a Super Saiyan.
• Bad Future:
  • Bishop's Future of Earth-1191 shows up when one of Madrox's dupes is sent there. The government is oppressive, several major cities are outright abandoned, Mutants are practically extinct, and the few left are put in camps guarded by sentinels, and to Madrox's horror no-one has flight rings or jetpacks, or even heard of Inspector Clouseau.
  Madrox: The future sucks.
  • Tryp seems to come from one where the events of M-Day were undone, and Mutantkind went wild. He's determined to prevent it.
• Badass Longcoat:
  • Madrox seems to prefer one of these.
  • Shatterstar wore one when he first showed back up, but has since switched to a shorter jacket.
• Badass in Distress:
  • Siryn is captured and left Bound and Gagged by an ex-mutant Mad Doctor who wants to use her as a hostage to "incentivize" XF Investigations in their investigation on the Decimation. She's rescued by Rictor, but found the humiliation of becoming a Damsel in Distress much worse than her physical injuries.
  • Madrox is captured by Hydra who try to Brainwash him into being their Manchurian Agent.
  • Monet is captured by Baron Mordo so he can turn her into a Living Battery and cure his cancer.
  • Black Cat is captured by the SCARs members while attempting to track them. She's rescued by XF-Investigations, even though they had no idea she was even in danger.
• Badass Normal: Rictor, who lost his powers in the Decimation. Peter David describes him as the "moody former mutant who believes he's useless and yet keeps happening to save the day." Avengers: The Children's Crusade officially repowers him thanks to the Scarlet Witch herself.
• Bad Boss: Mordo kills one of his henchmen for accidentally shooting him in the arm. He leaves the remaining two to die after the Mutant Response Division decides to bomb their base.
• Bad Date: After becoming The Soulless Guido asks Monet out on a date. She accepts, but it ends disastrously when he ditches her to go pick a fight with a supervillain instead.
• Bald of Evil: Guido after he betrays the team and joins Mephisto.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Monet is completely nude when Cortex takes full control of her, but her body gets covered by some kind of form fitting purple circuitry skin that hides her genitals.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: The team fakes a bomb threat at Singularity HQ and then pose as a bomb squad to sneak inside.
• Beard of Sorrow: Jamie grows one after he accidentally absorbs his newborn son.
• Bed Trick:
  • Downplayed with Madrox, as he can be confused with one of his dupes or vice versa, but he never deliberately uses them to trick anyone in this fashion.
    • Madrox awakens one morning to find that one of his dupes got out accidentally and has been, uhm, enjoying himself. Later, Siryn and M separately tell him how wonderful the night before was, indicating that he slept with one while the dupe got with the other, pretending to be him. It later turns out they both slept with dupes, and that a dupe managed to get Siryn pregnant.
  • It's heavily implied Reed Richard's Evil Doppelgänger was planning to pull something like this on Susan. Doctor Doom actually found it so distasteful he had her kidnapped for the sole reason of keeping her out of the doppelganger's reach.
• Been There, Shaped History:
  • More recent than most, but according to Monet, she had a part in the Marvel universe's versions of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie getting together.
  • Layla helps start the Summers Rebellion, meaning she has a part in Bishop's origins. And since she's responsible for Trevor Fitzroy's supervillain origin, she's also indirectly responsible for Emma Frost's turn to good.
• Berserk Button:
  • Madrox completely loses his cool when one of their clients reveals he was a scientist trying to recreate the Legacy Virus that targets only mutants.
  • Monet hates being under the mental thrall of others due to her time under the control of her brother, Emplate, and transforming her into the identity of Penance. She punches Cortex through his chest after he takes control of her for a couple of issues and is furious with Pip the Troll when he transfers his mind into her body to escape death.
  • Trying to hurt anyone who Shatterstar sees as a teammate is a very bad idea, unless you fancy having two feet of sharp metal shoved through your abdomen. Double this if you're threatening his boyfriend.
  • It's a bad idea to threaten Monet whenever Darwin's around, even if she's very capable of taking care of herself.
  • Just seeing Rahne sends Vanora into a frothing rage.
• Betty and Veronica:
  • Early in the story a Love Triangle pops up between Siryn/Madrox/Monet, Siryn is the Betty while Monet is the Veronica. In fact, Monet is actually called Veronica Lodge at one point.
  • Shatterstar (Veronica) and Wolfsbane (Betty) to Rictor's Archie. It doesn't help that Rictor thinks he's the Baby Daddy and has previously stated he believes in having a wedding.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Darwin is normally the nice, quiet guy on the team. But when he finally gets angry? Yeah, you're pretty screwed.
  • As Jamie notes, every now and then Polaris does things that remind you she is Magneto's daughter, like making an alternate evil version of Steve Rodgers blow his own head off.
  • After going through Hell on Earth (literally and figuratively), Rahne makes her way to Reverend Maddox's church, just as a church shooting is happening, and violently attacks the men. John notes one of them might never wake up, but given the circumstances, he's not too bothered about that.
• Big Bad: Elder Tryp is this for the initial storyline. And for the Cortex arc as well. The rest of the time, the team doesn't really have one, only Arc Villains.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Layla manages to kick-start the Summers Rebellion by informing a few people that the government of Earth-1911 are planning to spy on everyone, not just what's left of mutantkind. And as an extra nod, the issue contains a few visual references to the 1984 movie.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: Polaris gets extra irritable on her birthday. Turns out it's because her memories of what really happened to her parents are getting to the surface. Finding out traumatizes her into a coma.
• Big "NO!": Theresa utters one when a woman who was feeding her information about Singularity is killed right in front of her.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Darwin's father, Hector Muñoz is introduced as a worried father who hired XF Investigations to find his son, but later it's revealed he wanted to find Darwin just to sell him to the Karma Project.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: An attempt on Pip's life doesn't quite work because his species don't keep their brains in their heads. Instead, their brains do double-duty with their hearts.
• Blessed with Suck:
  • One of XF Investigations' first clients is a woman whose mutant power is to become Wreathed in Flames when angry but without the Required Secondary Powers that makes her immune to fire.
  • The Isolationist has the power of every mutant on Earth, and little control over any of them. He lives in the Arctic because if he gets any closer to a telepath, his own telepathy increases. And even then, he can still hear thoughts from all over the world.
• Blood Knight:
  • Shatterstar is always itching for a brawl, and hopes things go wrong just so he has the chance to fight.
  • The SCARs team were meant to be a black ops Search and Rescue team, but the cybernetic upgrades also caused the members to become mentally unstable, with Ballistique and Rococo taking on mercenary jobs on the side just to allow them to kill more.
• Body Horror:
  • Darwin. His powers will transform him into whatever is necessary to survive — shoot his head off, and he'll grow a new head from his torso, drop wreckage on him and he'll become an oozing mass.
  • Mutant Town was filled with plenty of examples, especially of former mutants that still had their physical deformities.
  • Cortex's Mind Control powers manifest via energy tentacle protruding from his eyes.
  • An early issue has Layla direct two guys at Pietro, hoping they'd kill him. Instead, they accept his attempt to give them their mutant powers back, which just causes one to turn to X-Factor's doorstep, slowly melting.
• Bondage Is Bad: The first three issues deal with the case of Rachel Santiago. Her sister Gloria has observed some strange behavior from her ever since she started seeing movie star Jack Vaughn and suspects that Rachel is under mind control by a mutant. X-Factor investigates and sees that while Jack and Rachel enjoy participating in rape fantasies as part of their sex life, Rachel is most certainly not under any mind control. Where the Bondage is Bad trope comes in is when Jack accidentally kills Rachel with a loaded gun he was using as a prop in one of their fantasies and frames Gloria for it.
• Boom, Headshot!: Vera attempts to kill Pip the Troll by putting a bullet in his head, but he ends up surviving it by magically transferring his mind into Monet's.
• Boldly Coming: Heroics aside, Longshot's main contributions to Earth are making a LOT of women happy. Sometimes repeatedly.
• Born Lucky: Longshot's powers is the ability to affect probability fields through psionic means in order to give himself "good luck" in his activities, allowing incredibly unlikely events to happen in his favor.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Guido at first, is brainwashed into being a Manchurian Agent by Tryp, but it gets fixed.
  • Shatterstar and Monet later on, courtesy of Cortex.
• Brainy Brunette: Monet and Rictor. Madrox might also count.
• Breaking the Fellowship: The "Breaking Point" arc has various member quit the team, one by one for different reasons: Guido, Rahne, Siryn and Havok. After the end of the "Hell on Earth" war, X-Factor Investigations is officially closed down with the cast going their separate ways.
• Brick Joke:
  • One issue begins with Siryn telling her priest she's been coveting Monet's new iPhone (among other, slightly bigger sins). Later on in the issue, Monet reveals she's bought everyone phones because she'd noticed, and it was annoying her.
  • After their return from their run in with Hela, Pip bothers M while she's sunbathing, and she warns him if he doesn't buzz off, she'll pitch him off the roof. A few pages later, as the team realizes they need a tracker, they see Pip fall past the window.
• Broken Ace: Monet is a Superpower Lottery winner, beautiful, intelligent and acts as if nothing ever fazes her. But during her therapy sessions she confesses her "M" persona is mostly a front and she suffers from severe trauma due to what her brother Emplate did to her during the time she was stuck as Penance.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": Issue #20 has Jamie make an army of dupes. All of them carry trash can lids with the letter "M" on them.
• Buried Alive: Mister Fantastic is stuck inside a coffin and buried in Latveria by his Evil Doppelgänger from a Mirror Universe. He leaves him with an air breather so he'd suffocate slowly, but Madrox and the team rescue him.
• Bullying a Dragon: Future!Cyclops gets in the senile Future!Doom's face, despite Jamie trying to tell him to stop, concluding with telling Doom to stay out of his way. Doom blasts him a good distance away with a device he just cobbled together (hey, they're not in each other's way anymore).
• Butt-Monkey:
  • The story has a lot of fun putting the prideful Flying Brick Monet into a lot of comical situations, usually taking advantage of her Super-Toughness to take the brunt of attacks that would be fatal to other characters. She never ends up truly hurt, but it annoys her to no end and they often have comical side effects on her appearance, like leaving her hair a mess or ruining her clothes.
  • Jamie also suffers a number of misfortunes due to his dupes. The best example being when he unintentionally ends up in a love triangle with himself, Monet and Theresa.
• Call-Back:
  • Baron Mordo tries draining Monet of her life energy because there's something about her that makes her attractive to life-draining, as her brother Emplate did back in the Generation X days.
  • During World War Hulk, Darwin's powers made him teleport to safety rather than fight the Hulk. During the Second Coming cross-over, it does it again faced with a giant MRD killing machine.
• Came Back Wrong: Layla's mutant power can bring people Back from the Dead but leaves them with no soul. Trevor Fitzroy was originally a hero and prominent member of the Summer's Rebellion before Layla was forced to raise him from the dead. The resurrection transformed him into a soulless monster who would go on to murder Bishop's sister and travel back in time to murder the Hellions. Later on, this happens to Guido. Again, thanks to Layla.
• The Cameo: Guess who makes an appearance in issue 200, just off-page as Siryn's booty call? (Hey, it was a busy year!)
• Casanova Wannabe: Pip the Troll can't pick up chicks even when he had his human form.
• Catapult Nightmare: Ballistique is introduced doing this, after she has a traumatic PTSD nightmare.
• The Cat Came Back: During her fight with Cortex, Siryn blasts him into a disused elevator, and he falls down it. As Siryn looks down the shaft, he suddenly pops up behind her and hits her over the head. He is a teleporter.
• Catch a Falling Star: After a Wild Card dupe of Madrox shoves Rictor off a bulding, Monet flies in and saves him before he hits the ground.
• Catchphrase: Layla Miller is famous for her catchphrase "I know stuff", which is her explanation whenever asks her about the source of her comprehensive knowledge of future events.
  • Phrase Catcher: The team eventually starts using it more than her, whenever they introduce her to someone else.
• Category Traitor: The X-Cell (wrongfully) believe the government is responsible for Mutants losing their powers. As a result, they view X-Factor as traitors to the Mutant race for siding with the government. The Irony is that X-Cell is unknowingly working with Quicksilver who is responsible for M-Day.
• Chainsaw Good: The Dread-X, a massive Mutant-killing machine created by the Mutant Response Division, has large buzzsaws as one of its weapons.
• Character Development: Layla Miller was the Living Macguffin of House of M. This series actually gives her a personality.
• Charm Person: Longshot's power makes him irresistible to anyone that finds him attractive, be it male or female. However, he notes that after a while, they realize this and start to become repulsed in just as equal magnitude.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: The plot thread of Jamie's dupes, sent out into the world, first used in the Madrox miniseries. It becomes important several times throughout vol 3.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • The unstable and unpredictable "X-Factor" dupe who tries to kill Rictor in issue 1. He promises to come back later, and indeed does so, killing himself along with Tryp Sr. and Jr at the end of the "Singularity" arc.
  • During Messiah CompleX, Jamie sends two dupes into alternate futures. We follow one that goes with Layla into Bishop's future, but the other is completely forgotten about. He reappears a few years later, as villain named Cortex having changed, and understandably a little pissed about his treatment.
  • In the Second Coming crossover, one MRD officer is a ginger woman with a facial scar. She turns out to be one of the SCARs members, Sylvius a few issues later.
  • While the team is in New Vegas dealing with Hela, Monet is back at the office helping war veteran Noelle Blanc deal with her PTSD. She's later also revealed to be SCARs member Ballistique, who will become the Arc Villain of a later arc.
• Chick Magnet:
  • Madrox ends up attracting a lot of female attention, such as Monet, Siryn and Layla.
  • Longshot's DNA is hardwired to draw attention from the opposite sex. And sometimes even the same sex. However, he notes after a while people start to realize this, and become repulsed in equal measure.
• Civvie Spandex: Jamie Madrox no longer has to wear a full-body costume to keep his powers relatively controlled, just a shirt version of it. Siryn, Shatterstar, Longshot and Strong Guy also sport clothing that is a mix between regular civilian outfits and superhero costumes. Monet occasionally wears a long jacket over her Spy Catsuit.
• Clipboard of Authority: In issue #247, Jamie infiltrates a Civil War reenactment convention. He poses as a safety inspector and carries a clipboard for authenticity. A guard doesn't buy it and Jamie has to knock him out with the clipboard.
  Jamie: Usually clipboards command more respect than that.
• C-List Fodder: Somewhere between this and Ascended Extra for almost all the team. Best demonstrated in World War Hulk: X-Men, where Hulk comments that the battle was becoming ridiculous as he didn't even know who the members of X-Factor were.
• Clone by Conversion: The Karma Project's army of superhumans is made up of numerous people who were injected with Darwin's DNA and transformed into exact copies of him.
• Clothing Damage:
  • Guido is shot with a rocket launcher at one point, which barely hurts him, but ends up wrecking his shirt.
  • Rahne transformation often tears up her clothes, especially in her full wolf form. She's learned to stop caring about her nudity due to it.
  • In Issue #37, while investigating an abandoned warehouse the floor ends up collapsing and everyone but Monet falls in. Longshot thinks his luck powers ran out, but then the warehouse explodes and only Monet gets caught in it, which doesn't hurt her but end up destroying her clothes. She ends up having to wear one of Jamie's shirts for the rest of the mission.
  • At one point, when falling off a cliff, Darwin fights his body trying to grow wings because it'd ruin his coat.
  • Ballistique shoots an amnestic Rococo with a flamethrower to reveal her fireproof powers to her, incinerating her clothes but leaving her unarmed, causing her memories of S.C.A.R.S to come back.
• Combining Mecha: In Issue #50, Falcone's summons five Sentinels which he combines into one.
  Jamie: Great. We go from hard-boiled detective noir to Voltron.
• Comically Missing the Point: Longshot, in far too many occasions to list.
• Comic Book Death: Explored early on in the series, when Siryn is informed her dad has died (over in Deadly Genesis). Siryn assumes, not unreasonably given da's an X-Man, that he might still be alive and refuses to even consider the possibility he might be pushing up the daisies, much to everyone else's discomfort (admittedly, Siryn is Genre Savvy enough to point out the Death Is Cheap tendencies of X-Men, but the rest of X-Factor seem to be incapable of even considering the possibility that she might be right. Which she eventually is, of course^note Though not for a few real-life years after this series ended).
• Compelling Voice: Siryn can use her voice to make people become attracted to her, regardless of gender, and they become susceptible to anything she orates. Mutants are immune to this power, but other supers aren't. Notably, she never used these powers before this run. It also requires people to be able to hear her, so deaf folk are immune, and only works on people who are attracted to women (so an entirely hetero woman or a gay man would be immune).
• Continuity Nod:
  • The evil Reed Richards the team faces is a leftover from the massive army of alternate Fantastic Fours that team faced over in Mark Millar's "Master of Doom" storyline.
  • Mention is made of Havok being a 'Nexus Being', meaning he's connected to every other version of himself in The Multiverse, as was established in Exiles.
• Continuity Snarl: The Nation X one-shot makes a mess of continuity. The team is depicted as completely reunited, which didn't happen until the Second Coming crossover, but events that take place there make it impossible for the issue to take place after.
• Could Say It, But...: When Rahne and Jamie go to the orphanage Layla's returned to, the director tells them they could try signing her out, but there's no way they'd manage to make a successful case for adoption. However, if Layla just happened to run away again, well, there'd be a lot of difficulty in finding her. Heck, in all likelihood, her case would fall through the cracks...
• Crazy-Prepared: In Issue #4, Siryn is ambushed by Damian Tryp, Jr who shoots her in the throat with a tranquilizer dart to neutralize her sonic powers. In Issue #12, Tryp attacks her again with a tranquilizer dart but Siryn reveals she learned from the last encounter and wore a kevlar collar to protect her throat.
• Creepy Child:
  • Layla Miller. Until she's stranded in the future, and returns as an adult.
  • Nicole, at least in Layla's opinion. But she's not actually a child.
  • The team also regards Valeria Richards as quite creepy, remarking on her similarity to Layla.
• Crisis Crossover:
  • The team takes part in the Messiah CompleX storyline, which results in Rahne going on a bus to join X-Force, and Layla being Put on a Bus to Hell, getting left stuck in Bishop's future. She came back eventually.
  • Secret Invasion sees the team briefly tussle with She-Hulk and Jazinda, daughter of Super-Skrull.
  • They also get a side-story in X-Men: Second Coming focusing on Bastion's attempt to kill them, via the Mutant Response Division and Bolivar Trask.
  • They play a small part in Avengers: The Children's Crusade, explaining to Scarlet Witch about her brother's attempt at restoring mutant powers with Terrigen Crystals. Rictor also ends up being Re Powered by Wanda.
• Cut Your Heart Out With A Spoon:
  • After being knocked out of the Baxter Building by Shatterstar, The Thing threatens to "shove his head so far up his rectum, he'll be wearing his colon for an easter bonnet.
  • Monet threatens to strangle the terrorists who kidnapped her father with their own spines. Longshot points out that this makes no sense before realizing she was speaking in hyperbole.
• Cure Your Gays: Rahne believes Rictor is only in a relationship with Shatterstar because he's been brainwashed, or something similar, and tries to pretend her child is his in order to get him back and "cure him". When confronted on this by an irate Rictor, she realizes how silly it sounds.
• Cyborg:
  • The elderly Cyclops from Earth-1191 is more man than machine which allows Doctor Doom to take control of him.
  • Cortex is a Madrox dupe that was heavily modified by Earth-1191 Doctor Doom.
  • All three members of SCARs are cyborg Super Soldiers.
  • The Steve Rogers of Earth-TRN 193 has become Deathlok.
• Dame with a Case: In #207, Hela disguises herself as a lovely, alluring woman to hire X-Factor's services. Longshot is shown to be very taken with her.
• Dark Horse Victory: Guido is the one who kills Tier and is the ultimate victor of the "Hell on Earth War".
• Dark Lord on Life Support: Baron Mordo who at some point contracted cancer and needs an oxygen tank. He captures Monet's father in order to lead her to a trap and then drain her so his body can fight back cancer.
• Dead Guy Junior: Jamie and Siryn decide to name their kid "Nate". Siryn thinks it's after Nathan "Cable" Summers, who'd just a few months prior gone on the run with the newborn Hope Summers, but Jamie names it after a guy he'd met that night, who'd died from smoke inhalation.
• Deal with the Devil: Pip the Troll made a deal with Hela to regain his original, non-troll form for a year, in exchange for being her jester. He reneged and hid himself, so Hela sends X-Factor to find him for her. It turns out Pip has made another deal with another entity so he'd be with X-Factor.
• Death Course: Arcade turns Mutant Town into one of his Murderworlds at the behest of one of the Purifier leaders.
• Death of a Child: Infamously. When Siryn gives Madrox their son, Sean for him to hold he inadvertently absorbs him just like he does with his dupes, much to everyone's horror.
• Deceptive Legacy: The Hangman, a supervillain, behaves heroically for the sake of his son, whose mother told him that his dad is a superhero.
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: The Hell Lords are the antagonists of the "Hell on Earth War" (Hela, Pluto, Satannish, Asmodeus, Satana and Mephisto) and the rulers of their own dimensions of hell. They get into a contest: Whoever kills Tier, the seventh billion soul born on Earth, gets to be the new ultimate ruler of hell.
• Demonic Vampires: Issue #215 has Jamie and Layla investigating the death of a man who was found drained of blood with two puncture wounds in his neck. His daughter believes her stepmother to be the culprit but the killer is revealed to be a Vandella, a vampiric demon spirit that possesses people while they are asleep.
• Depending on the Artist:
  • Monet's skin color changes hues a lot, most often leaning to lighter.
  • Also true for Darwin. Justified as his mutant powers of adapting for survival acting on racial prejudices.
• De-power: A substantial part of the early run deals with the aftermath of the decimation, where most of the mutant population lost their power, most notably Rictor who is the only member of the team with no powers (At least until Wanda gives him his powers back in Avengers: The Children's Crusade).
• Didn't Think This Through: While dealing with the demons and an active volcano, Rictor tries to open up a crevice to keep them at bay. Unfortunately, he accidentally opens up a lava fissure. He admits he didn't think that idea through.
• Deity of Human Origin: Theresa becomes the new Morrigan after killing the previous one in order to gain the power to cure Polaris's mental breakdown. The previous Morrigan herself was once an ordinary human before she killed the original and claimed her title and powers.
• Disability Immunity: In Issue #233, Siryn uses her Compelling Voice to make the members of an anti-Mutant hate group drop their firearms and surrender peacefully. Unfortunately, one of them is deaf and his attack makes Siryn lose her concentration starting a fight between X-Factor and the hate group.
• Destination Defenestration:
  • Happens to one of Madrox's dupes after he refuses to be bought out by Singularity, courtesy of Damian Tryp Sr.
  • Monet throws Madrox out of the window after he tells her about the Love Triangle situation between them and Siryn.
• Dissonant Serenity: After killing Dr. Henry Buchanan, Guido nonchalantly tells his controllers he has to get off the phone because of laws against driving while talking on the phone.
• The Ditherer: Madrox has a lot of trouble making decisions for himself or the team. Lampshaded by Val when she's trying to get him to work for the government again, he's much more comfortable taking orders than giving them.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Shatterstar dislikes guns, thinking they're not fit as a warrior's weapon, as he wants to get close and personal with his opponents.
• Dope Slap:
  • Guido does this to Longshot when the latter expresses interest in joining Hela just because he thinks she's hot.
  • Layla does this to Jamie when he loudly expresses interest in having sex with She-Hulk.
• Doppelganger Link: Jamie is killed by the demonic villain Bloodbath in issue #227. The next few issues show him returned to life and pulled into alternate universes where his counterparts are either dead or dying. This causes Jamie to ponder if his powers work by pulling other Jamie Madroxes from alternate universes.
• Doppelmerger: Prior to the events of the series, Jamie Madrox spawned several duplicates and sent them across the world to acquire a variety of skills and knowledge, then reabsorb them to acquire what they learned. Throughout the series, Jamie encounters a few rogue duplicates which he also has to reabsorb. This trope gets played for tragedy when Jamie involuntarily reabsorbs his and Theresa's son as he qualifies as a duplicate of Jamie's.
• Driven to Suicide: After absorbing his and Siryn's baby and already having been pushed towards the edge due to Layla being missing and Rahne quitting the team, Jamie tries to take his own life. It is only Layla's return that saves him.
• Drives Like Crazy: Shatterstar, teaching himself to drive in a stolen vehicle. He isn't BAD, per se, but he drives in the middle of the road and thinks the brake is "useless" because it makes them slow down. No-one is surprised when he crashes several pages later. Siryn's reaction causes this to double as a Funny Moment.
• Drowning My Sorrows: After the end of the "Hell on Earth" war and the team being split up, Polaris is shown in a bar getting drunk. When the bartender tries to cut her off, she threatens to destroy the bar. This results in the police and Quicksilver getting involved and a brief fight where she actually pulls a gun on Quicksilver before she is subdued. She is horrified when she sobers up the next morning and realizes the magnitude of what she almost did.
• Dude, Not Funny!: When Pip the Troll winds up hijacking Monet's body by necessity, Polaris and Rictor start laughing until Shatterstar points how what a horrible violation it is, prompting both to shut up. As a result, he's the only one Monet is not pissed at when she gets control back.
• Duplicate Divergence: In Issue 16 Jamie tracks down a dupe of his he sent out to study religion, only to discover that he's made a life for himself as a preacher and family man and renamed himself "John".
• Dying Declaration of Love: Guido gives one to Monet after he's mortally injured by Ballistique.
• Dysfunction Junction: As Rictor states, they put the "fun" in "dysfunction".
• Ear Ache: What happens when Siryn uses the phone while flying.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Madrox and Layla go through a lot of awful things, but by the end of the story, they've peacefully retired and are living in his old farm expecting their first child.
• EMP: Sylvius is able to emit a blast of EMP out of her hands, instantly frying any tech that comes in contact with it.
• Enemy Mine: Guido and Monet team up with Baron Mordo against the Mutant Response Division when they start hunting for both of them.
• Enfant Terrible: Rahne's son may be one of these. Especially when he disembowels someone moments after being born. Subverted, eventually, when he turns out to just be an ordinary kid.
• Engineered Heroics: In issue #246, Pip has an acquaintance of his pretend to mug a woman so Pip can swoop in and pretend to be a hero in hopes of getting her into bed.
• Erotic Dream: Madrox walks on Siryn having a wet dream about Star Wars, moaning about Ewan and Liam.
• Eternal Recurrence: In the "They Keep Killing Madrox" arc, after dying, Madrox is sent to various Mirror Universes right after the Madrox of that world died in there, each one worst than the last and he ends up dying in all of them only to find himself in a new one. Eventually, one has the Doctor Strange of that universe send him back... but the villains Madrox met also come back with him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Doctor Doom's involvement in the plot of issues 200-204 comes about because he finds Reed's Evil Doppelgänger's intentions toward Sue Richards to be distasteful.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Siryn, with her sexy hypnosis voice, seduces one of their female clients involuntarily.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Longshot, and to a lesser extent Shatterstar.
• Everyone Can See It: Inverted. Jamie was apparently the only one who was aware of Shatterstar and Rictor's attraction.
• Evil Doppelgänger
  • An evil Alternate Self of Reed Richards from a Mirror Universe and tries to pull a Kill and Replace on the real Reed and tries to ally with Doctor Doom.
  • Deathlok is an evil cyborg Alternate Self of (Steve Rogers) from Earth-TRN193.
• Evil Versus Evil: The Hell Lords fight each other as much as they fight X-Factor.
• Exact Words: During the "X-Cell" arc, Rictor is kidnapped and brought to Quicksilver, who tells him he can leave at any time, and Pietro won't try to stop him. He says nothing about X-Cell, who are waiting outside the door.
• Exposed to the Elements: Rahne's early outfit is a swimsuit (without legs or sleeves, because of the difficulties with full-body wear and fur). During the fight with the Isolationist, she, Jamie and Guido wind up dumped in the Arctic, and she stays human, refusing to go furry (because, in part, she thinks if she dies, she won't wind up killing Jamie).
• Expy: Anthony Falcone from Earth-1191 is one to Senator Kelly, a politician that hates mutants and has the Sentinels hunt them down.
• Extreme Omnisexual: Shatterstar. PAD has stated he's become "sexually curious about anything with a pulse", taking a cue from Torchwood's Captain Jack Harkness. Deconstructed when Rictor starts thinking he doesn't care about their relationship.
• Face–Monster Turn: Mephisto captures Madrox and turns him into one of his demons. Siryn-Morrigan rescues him and turns him back to human.
• Faking the Dead: In issue #246, a woman comes to Pip to ask him to do a séance for her so she can talk to her dead husband. Pip reveals that the man is actually alive and hiding out in the Bahamas, having faked his death.
• Fantastic Slurs: After the Decimation, Mutant Town starts using "Pans" and "Rems" to refer to it's mutant citizens. Pans stands for Pass As Normal, who are former mutants that now appear completely human (Like Rictor and Jubilee). Rems is short for Remnants, former mutants left with some artifact of their former powers such as horns, bone crests, or odd tentacles (Like Marrow and Blob).
• Fate Worse than Death: Cortex is thrown into a vortex to an unknown reality and are never seen again. Falcone was thrown into one, and since they're Fitzoy's time portals, he probably ended up somewhere...
• The Fellowship Ends: The conclusion of the "Hell on Earth War" sees the team split up permanently and X-Factor Investigations being closed down.
• Femme Fatale: Hela when pretending to be a human-looking to hire X-Factor. Jamie's narration notes that it plays the trope to the hilt, complete with a very revealing outfit.
• Fiery Redhead: Both Siryn and Rahne are temperamental redheads, usually quick to anger and always ready for a fight.
• Finger Firearms: Ballistique fires deadly cyber-bullets from her fingertips and has a tendency to mimick a gun with her hands.
• Flight:
  • Siryn can fly in the same odd manner her father can, by manipulating sound waves to propel herself through the air, and sometimes even carries some of her teammates.
  • Monet can do this and doubles as a Flying Brick. She's often seen casually levitating around the office.
• Flirtatious Smack on the Ass: Monet does this to Madrox during a mission, which weirds out Rahne.
• "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: Rictor (accidentally) gets temporary use of Quicksilver's Terrigen crystals.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In Issue #7, Guido is informed of the death of Theresa's father Sean Cassidy and assumes everyone is talking about Shaun Cassidy the actor. When Guido is revealed to be a Manchurian Agent, this mistake is sited as the first clue something was off with him as he would have known who Theresa's father was.
  • During "They Keep Killing Madrox, part 1", Jamie stumbles upon alternate Rahne and alt!Siryn talking about how Valerie Cooper has just left alt!Jamie and Layla's wedding reception completely sloshed. This turns out to be pertinent at the end of the issue, when she manages to run into Jamie in a literal sense.
  • In Issue #32, Jamie's subconscious in the form of Layla tells him that his and Siryn's baby will be "one of us". When the baby is born, Jamie absorbs him.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: Darwin to his father after learning he sold him to Karma who experimented on him.
  Darwin: Considering the depth of your treachery, it would seem impossible to forgive and forget. But it's not impossible. I forgive you, father. And now... I will do my best to forget you. Goodbye, father. May you rot in hell.
• For the Evulz: Siryn uses her hypnotic voice to make a concert-goer at a hate rally go and buy the most expensive rug he can find. Monet approves of this, and neither of them feel slightly guilty for it.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • Despite "knowing stuff", Layla is afraid of changing things too much only to make them worse later, specifically referencing to the Butterfly Effect. And later, Guido's resurrection starts screwing up her predictions.
  • Jamie's multiversal trip, naturally demonstrates some examples.
    • In the first (Earth-7153), Rahne's kid with Hrimahri was a girl, named Vanora, and Rahne tried to raise her, which didn't work terribly well. Also, among other things, Jamie and Layla didn't get an "m" brand on their face, Shatterstar still has his 90s outfit and attitude, he and Longshot are apparently brothers, Banshee is still alive, Peter Parker is apparently a police chief, and Jamie's dupes all have different powers.
    • In the second (Earth-TRN193), Wanda Maximoff said "no more humans". Almost everyone human got turned into a warped monstrosity, even Captain America, becoming a villain called Deathlok. Iron Man avoided this because, for unknown reasons, he was off in space with some other heroes. Apparently the Registration Act still happened. Here, Jamie's dupes also have superpowers, but they can only exist for between five and twenty seconds before disappearing.
    • And in the third (Earth-TRN196), there's been a "Hell on Earth" war going on for some time. This reality's Jamie is a mage, and served as Doctor Strange's apprentice and was murdered by Dormammu.
• Frame-Up: One of their first clients is framed for killing her sister by Singularity. They even mess with her mind to make her not remember what really happened, but Monet finds out the truth with her Telepathy.
• Full-Frontal Assault:
  • After being captured by the Karma Project, Darwin awakes to find he's been stripped naked and is being kept in a tank full of liquid. Later, his body evolves into giving him enough strength to break the glass and attack his captors completely starkers, with some Censor Shadow or Scenery Censor covering his crotch.
  • Monet under Cortex's Mind Control strips naked in front of Darwin to seduce him, but when he doesn't fall for it Cortex had Monet try to kill him and Lenore instead, leading to several issue with Monet fighting completely nude (Cortex's Mind Control gives her some purple techno skin that makes her have a Barbie Doll Anatomy). When the Mind Control is eventually severed, Monet is so furious at Cortex she attacks him without bothering to put some clothes back on.
  • Rahne's clothes are destroyed after transforming to fight the Sin-Eater and she dons a bloodstained coat to get back home.
  • When Madrox visits the morgue to investigate Sally Roland's body, she gets possessed by Bloodbath and attacks them, with a Modesty Bedsheet being glued to her body for most of the fight.
• Future Slang: Some characters in Earth-1191 use the expletive "shock", previously seen in Marvel 2099 (which, not coincidentally, Peter David did some writing for).
• Fun with Acronyms: S.C.A.R.s, Strategic Capture And Retrieval, is a cybernetic update the Super-Soldier program acting as black ops for the United States Army.
• Genre Savvy:
  • Monet tries to seduce Darwin who is obviously attracted to her. Darwin suspects something is wrong because it is "too easy" and he is right - Monet is being controlled by Cortex who wants to kill X-Factor's client Lenore.
  • Monet suffers a psychic attack in the hospital which is actually Cortex taking over her mind. No one suspects anything until Val Cooper hears about this from Theresa who tells her that she is now likely a threat. When Cortex asks how she figured it out, Theresa claims she came to that conclusion all on her own because she is a detective.
  • In Issue# 216, it is revealed that before re-opening the New York office, Jamie met with J. Jonah Jameson in person to make sure Jameson would not use the powers of his mayoral office to drive X-Factor out of business. Jameson agrees to back off in exchange for X-Factor doing a favor for him in the future.
    • Jameson decides to cash in his favor by asking X-Factor to help solve a murder. Jamie says that if Jameson thinks Spider-Man is involved he will eventually be proven innocent.
• Get Out!: Guido's last words to Monet, after becoming the new king of Hell.
• Give Me a Reason:
  • In the first issue, Siryn chases and corners an assassin of Singularity Investigations who has killed a mole that was feeding X-Factor information about the company. Theresa is not subtle about just how much she wants to do some damage to the assassin.
  Theresa: Oh, try it! Please! Don't surrender! Aim at me! I dare you! Try to shoot me! It'll be funny! C'mon! C'mon!
  • In Issue #19, the team have captured the Blob who is a member of the terrorist group known as the X-Cell. When the Blob says he won't tell them anything, Monet says he hopes he doesn't because that means she can use her telepathy to rip the information out of his head while leaving him a catatonic husk.
  • Monet again in Issue #219 to the SCARs team. Pretty understandable as she is angry at one of them for killing Guido.
  Monet: Go ahead! Take a swing at us! I'm begging you.
• Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex: Layla and Madrox get it on after she manages to bring him back from his Death Loop.
• Godiva Hair: The Vanity Fair spread cover Monet did has he nude from the waist up with her long hair covering her chest. Another Vanity Fair photo Guido carries with him also has her toplessness covered by her hair.
• Godwin's Law: In the Quick and the Dead one-shot, Quicksilver rails against his own actions up to that point by bringing up a certain Austrian dictator. He is then berated by a hallucination of Magneto for it.
• Godzilla Threshold: Cortex can't directly act against his targets because doing so would cause unbelievably bad things, like reality bleed-through. Eventually, the situation going so badly has him decide "screw it".
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: When Theresa reveals she is pregnant with Jamie's child, Monet suggests abortion. Theresa refuses because of this trope.
• Good Shepherd: One of Madrox's dupes, Father John, is a respected preacher in his community with his own family and later on manages to talk Siryn and Rahne out of their depressions.
• Groin Attack:
  • Rictor does this to a Mutant who picked a fight with him in Issue #28.
  • She-Hulk kicks Guido in the crotch during their brief crossover fight, hard enough that he even lets out Blood from the Mouth.
  • Pip the Troll does this to a mugger in issue #246. Subverted when it turns out the guy was working for Pip as a scheme to make himself look like a hero.
  • Pip does this for real to Thanos in issue #248.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Jezebel / Mephista betrays her father and temporarily aids X-Factor in opposing the Hell Lords in the "Hell on Earth War" arc.
• Harmless Electrocution: When Monet is electrocuted by one of Arcade's Death Traps, it causes her to lose consciousness for a small period of time but no real damage, but more amusingly, it leaves her hair a wild mess for a while.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Hela gets this reaction from Longshot when she shows up in Issue #207 wearing a very revealing dress.
  Jamie: Whenever Longshot enters a room, women are taken with him. It's hardwired into his genetics. This time around, he gets to see what it's like.
• Healing Factor:
  • All the SCARs members can heal from nearly fatal wounds, with Ballistique surviving a bullet to the head, as well as aging much slower.
  • Cortex has one which allows him to survive Monet's punches and one of Longshot's knives impaling him in the back of his neck.
• Heartbreak and Ice Cream: Both Rahne and Monet are prone to eating a lot of ice cream when they get depressed.
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: While listening in on a phone conversation between Monet and Guido, Noelle assumes they are dating. Monet is quick to correct her.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Jamie Madrox has a mental breakdown after he absorbs his son and ends up quitting the team for a while.
  • Polaris has a massive mental breakdown after she learns the truth about her parents.
• Heroic Sacrifice: After being mortally wounded by Ballistique, Guido still strains himself to save a crowd from being crushed by a falling robot mook. The effort puts too much strain in his heart and ends up killing him.
• Hero Killer:
  • Ballistique fatally wounds Guido with one of her cyber bullets. He does come back, but without his soul.
  • Bloodbath kills Madrox by impaling him In the Back with his sword. He comes back due to multiverse shenanigans
  • Pluto gives Monet a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that causes her a brain injury. She succumbs to it later while fighting Guido. She's brought back to life by Guido when he becomes one of the Death Lords.
• Hero Stole My Bike:
  • Shatterstar steals a taxi cab in order to escape from the animal gods and demons pursuing him and Rahne in Issue #221.
  • In issue #246, a cab driver makes the mistake of mocking Pip's height. Pip knocks him out of the cab and drives it to his destination himself.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Polaris uses her Magnetism Manipulation to aim Deathlock's Arm Cannon at his head, killing him.
• Holier Than Thou: Quicksilver, who actually says the phrase in his narration in issue #19 (he is, at this point, quite nuts).
• Home Nudist: One issue shows Monet in the privacy of her room, shrugging off her robe and dancing to the tune of "I'm Too Sexy". Naturally, Rictor barges in at that moment and gets an eyeful.
• Honey Trap: Vera, a girl who seems to be into Pip the Troll turns out to be a demon trying to kill him.
• Honor Before Reason: Subverted. Mordo abducts Monet's father Cartier to lure her into a trap so he can drain her energy and put his cancer into remission. When they are attacked by the Mutant Response Division, Mordo agrees to create a portal so they can escape but notes that doing so would be taxing on his body. Monet offers to let him drain her in exchange for saving them. Despite Guido, Darwin and Cartier pointing out that Mordo had kidnapped her father and would likely never keep any promise he made to her, Monet seemingly still insists on fulfilling her end of the bargain. However, Monet doesn't actually let Mordo drain her and uses her telepathy to make him think she did. Guido thinks that Monet got the idea from Layla when she mentioned the old and weak Dr Doom from the Bad Future she and Jamie went to but Monet insists she came to the idea herself.
• Hopeless Suitor: Darwin crushes on Monet, but she has absolutely no romantic interest in him.
• Hope Spot: Rahne finds her son, Tier, and vows to look after him. Cue Hell on Earth, and Guido killing him to rule Hell.
• Hot as Hell: Jezebel/Mephista is a red demoness with curly horns, an hourglass figure, and a very Stripperific outfit.
• How We Got Here:
  • Issue #7 opens with two Jamies being thrown out the window and then flashes back to how that came to be. When the story catches up to what happened in the opening, it is revealed the two Jamies are actually dupes Madrox Prime sent to collect DNA samples from Tryp Sr and Jr.
  • Issue #18 begins with Nicole smashing something with a rock on a bridge in Central Park. At the end of the issue, it turns out to be Siryn's pregnancy test, after having knocked Layla out and over into the water on the Isolationist's orders.
  • Issue #215 opens with a close-up of something clawing at Jamie's face. The story reveals it to be a Vandella, a vampiric demon spirit that is possessing Jamie's client, Adina Malcolm.
  • Issue #235 opens with Madrox and Shatterstar talking to Lord Defender, the leader of the amateur superhero team known as the X-Ceptionals. The following pages explain how X-Factor came to be involved in investigating the murder of one of the X-Ceptionals.
  • The first page of #239 has the Morrigan dangling Theresa over a balcony and then cuts to Theresa and Havok investigating the murders that led them to that point.
  • Rahne's final issue has her being told by someone to whip herself. It turns out to be Reverend John Maddox, who's doing it to prove she won't.
• Humans Are Morons: The general crux of a lecture Future Doom gives to Madrox, as to why the government hates and fears Mutants, yet gladly give people like Doom free reign (with a mix of Ungrateful Bastard).
• Hypocritical Humor: While watching a bunch of cat-themed gods fighting each other rather than chasing Rahne and Shatterstar, the ghost of Feral mutters about their low attention spans. Then she gets distracted by a piece of string.
• I Die Free: Bolivar Trask, during the Second Coming crossover, after Monet frees him from Bastion's control.
• I Gave My Word: Monet agrees to help Baron Mordo in exchange for his saving her, Guido and Monet's father from an MRD attack, and keeps her word when everyone points out he's Baron Mordo. Monet states that she's keeping her word because it proves she's better than him.
• I Have No Son!: Rahne's response to her son after he violently murdered her attacker after coming out of her mouth. She would later come to regret the way she reacted.
• I Have Your Wife:
  • Monet's father is kidnapped by terrorists, forcing her and Guido to go to his rescue in South America.
  • Bloodbath kills Hangman's ex-wife and kidnaps his son to force Hangman to keep reaping souls for him.
• I Lied: Nogor disguised himself as Longshot, a person he knew Darwin trusted and lied that he would help him find Professor X. When Nogor's disguise is revealed, he confesses that he has no idea where Professor X is and only said that to deceive Darwin.
• I'll Kill You!: Guido, normally the nicest guy around, tells Rictor early on that if he keeps haranguing Layla, he'll kill him.
• Immortal Assassin: Cortex seems like this. He shrugs off getting punched through the chest by Monet, recovers instantly from getting dropped down an elevator shaft, getting his arm chopped off just annoys him. About the only person that can threaten him is Trevor Fitzroy, which is why he takes him out instantly. Then Layla brings him back.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • Bloodbath impales the real Madrox In the Back while he's distracted while possessing one of his dupes.
  • Tier dies being stabbed In the Back by Guido.
• Inferred Survival: When told by Cyclops about her father's death, Siryn refuses to believe it because X-Men come back from the dead all the time, but it's clear she is just in denial at that point.
• Insane Troll Logic: Jamie tells Monet to put down Stefani, one of the guys involved in Darwin's kidnapping. She drops him violently and knocks him out. When Jamie chastizes her for it, protests that she would have put him down gently if he had given her a few minutes to calm down even though Jamie told her to put Stefani down because she was threatening to get violent with him.
• Interrupted Intimacy: When Rahne comes back, she ends up walking on her previous Love Interest Rictor while he's in bed with Shatterstar.
• Interrupted Suicide:
  • Rictor is Driven to Suicide after losing his powers on M-Day, and stands on a rooftop trying to work up the courage to jump, until Madrox and Rahne intervene.
  • Jamie eventually decides to kill himself after absorbing his son. But just when he's about to do it, Layla returns from the future, and takes him with her.
  • Issue #240 story "Run, Layla, Run" has Layla running across New York to cause one of these. Between one thing and another, she doesn't make it early enough to talk the woman down with a reassuring speech, but she does manage to stop her going splat.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Theresa, who is a recovering alcoholic, finally gives in to temptation after her first encounter with the Morrigan. She is stopped by the ghost of her father.
• Ironic Echo Cut: Used very frequently.
• Irony: Dr. Anthony Falcone's parents were supposedly killed in a "mutant-related incident" when he was a child. This left him with a fanatical (even by the standards of his timeline) hatred of mutants. He would eventually institute an elaborate and convoluted plot (involving Time Travel) to wipe out mutantkind. But in attempting to suck all the mutants into the time vortex, it turns out that he and his giant sentinel robots get sucked into his own past, crashing into his childhood home and killing his parents. He was really the one responsible for their deaths all along.
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople): In Bishop's future, JFK Airport has been renamed BHO Airport.
• It Amused Me: An elderly Doctor Doom's reason for assisting Tryp and Falcone in creating Cortex. It's also the reason he creates a device he used to blast Cyclops.
• It Only Works Once: Tryp Jr. uses a Tranquillizer Dart on Siryn, which is extra effective on her, since it not only incapacitates her but leaves her vocals cords weakened for a while. When he tries it again a second time, he discovers she started using kevlar collars.
• Jaw Drop: When the team teleports back from a job onto the roof, they find Monet there sunbathing in a bikini, and Guido can be seen doing a jaw drop in the background.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Alex is angry at Monet's Lack of Empathy towards Lorna after the latter realizes she was the one who killed her parents when her powers manifested. Monet reminds Alex that she only unlocked Lorna's memories because Lorna threatened her into doing it and Alex did nothing to stop it. Alex concedes that Monet is right.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Monet's attitude causes her to come off as a jerk at times, but she still has her heart in the right place when it matters, such as her empathy towards Gloria Santiago after Singularity screwed with her mind and made her think she killed her own sister.
• Karma Houdini: Several of the team's villains tend to get away scot-free. Sometimes it's because they're above the team's weight-class, but in a few cases, such as the SCARs, they don't think it's worth the effort.
• Kick the Dog: At the start of Day 5 of "Breaking Points", Madrox explodes at Havok over the departures of roughly half the team, eventually asking him " Isn't there a beloved teacher you should be killing?" (Referencing then-current events in Avengers vs. X-Men.)
• Lack of Empathy:
  • In Issue #2, a Mutant who has lost his powers chews out Monet for showing off hers. Her response, as usual, is arrogant indifference.
  • After he becomes The Soulless, Guido loses his empathy for others and starts doing odd things such as making jokes about innocents dying.
• Lamarck Was Right: Ruby Summers, the Earth-1911 daughter of Cyclops, has a mix of his powers (eye beams) and Emma Frost's diamond form (though, as her name might hint, she's a different type of mineral). She also has blond hair, despite both parents being natural brunettes (Emma dyes her hair).
• Large Ham: Everyone on the team has probably had a Large Ham moment at one point or another.
  • Jamie Madrox, especially early in the series when he hasn't grown up as much.
  • Rictor, when he's undercover.
  • This is how Jamie knows when Guido is lying.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia:
  • After their cybernetic implants made Ballistique and Rococo unstable the SCAR program was disbanded and they were both mind-wiped and given civilian lives. Sylvius, the only member who wasn't affected, was allowed to continue her military career and was told her former teammates were killed in action. When they learn this, they team up go into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the former heads of the program.
  • Mastermind erased Polaris' memories of when her powers first awakened, which caused the plane crash that killed her parents.
• The Leader: Madrox is the leader of X-Factor Investigations, a position he struggles with a lot due to his indecisiveness. When Havok and Polaris rejoin the team, Havok and Madrox end up splitting the leadership, with Madrox leading the civilian jobs while Havok leads the ones given by Valerie Cooper and the X-Men.
• Leg Focus:
  • After a Clothing Damage accident, Monet is forced to wear Madrox's shirt which leaves her legs exposed. Both Guido and Madrox start Eating the Eye Candy and compliment her toned legs, she icily tells them My Eyes Are Up Here, but when Longshot starts doing it she doesn't mind and says he's sweet to notice.
  • Madrox describes Hela's legs as making up eighty percent of her body.
• Leeroy Jenkins:
  • When arriving in Latveria to rescue Invisible Woman, a pissed-off Monet, Shatterstar and The Thing simply decide to storm Doom's castle from the front door. Mister Fantastic later points out how insane the idea of a frontal attack on Doom's castle is.
  • The alternate Shatterstar seen in "They Keep Killing Madrox". His response to armed police showing up to investigate a murder is to charge them, while Longshot tries to get him to stop. Cue muttering from that reality's Wolverine and Rictor about how much they hate him.
• Legacy Character: Happens twice with Siryn/Terry:
  • After she accepts her father's death, Siryn takes on his name — Banshee. She also has a Lampshade Hanging moment saying that she was never quite sure why he named himself after a female spirit in the first place.
  • Much later, Morrigan reveals to Siryn that her name is actually a title that was passed down from one woman to another in Ireland and that she was tired of being the Morrigan and picked Siryn to be her successor. Siryn accepts, mostly to help Polaris with her mental breakdown.
• Let's You and Him Fight:
  • During a crossover that ties into the Secret Invasion, Monet and Guido end up in a brawl with She-Hulk event when She-Hulk goes after Longshot who is actually a Skrull in disguise.
  • In Issue #200, the team is hired by Franklin and Valeria Richards to find their missing mother. They go to the Baxter Building where Guido and Shatterstar end up in a brawl with the Thing.
• Literal-Minded: Longshot and Shatterstar take things very literally. When Monet advises Shatterstar to "mark his territory" (concerning the Rahne/Rictor/Shatterstar Love Triangle) he thinks she's suggesting for him to urinate on Rictor. She almost lets him do it.
• Living Macguffin: Rahne's unborn baby with Hrimhari is sought by many of the Gods in the Marvel universe for the part he's supposed to play in a future war, and they end up sending mythic creatures to attack her even before her baby's born.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Siryn's Compelling Voice power requires people to be able to hear her. So deaf folk, or anyone with earplugs, are immune.
  • Monet has Super-Toughness but she still needs to breathe, so chloroform works on her the same as anyone else.
• Loophole Abuse: The Isolationist possesses the power of every other mutant on the planet, but is psychologically unable to directly kill any mutants as a side-effect of his abilities, forcing him to find loopholes to try to kill them such as using Forge's knowledge to create a teleportation system that would allow him to send some X-Factor members to a frozen land where they would eventually freeze to death, or manipulate others into setting up a mutant rally in a location where he had planted bombs that would go off and kill the gathered mutants later.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: While held captive by Dr Doom, Sue Storm is strapped to a machine that makes her think she is with Namor. Monet is able to break the illusion by telepathically entering Sue's head and telling her of the potential danger her family is in.
• Lust Object: Monet to Darwin and Guido, who both have her Vanity Fair spread. Guido is later revealed to have a photo of her topless that he carries with him.
• Mad Doctor: After being attacked and knocked out by Damian Tryp, Jr, Terry is abducted by Dr. Timoty Leeree, a former Mutant who has been driven mad by the loss of his powers and wants X-Factor to find out what caused M-Day and undo it. He admits to having serious anger issues and mentions that his powers, whatever they were, were triggered by his anger which caused quite a scene in the E.R. once.
• Make Me Wanna Shout:
  • Terry/Siryn's mutant power is sonic screams, much like her father but she can also channel them into more focused sound vibration she calls a "sonic lance".
  • Morrigan can emit a sonic scream that easily overpowers Siryn's.
• The Man Behind the Man: Damian Tryp is the one behind Anthony Falcone and Cortex's actions in the "Summers Rebellion" arc.
• Manchurian Agent: Damian Tryp turns Guido into one for Singularity, with the trigger being a phone call. Madrox even lampshades the trope by directly comparing it to The Manchurian Candidate.
• The Man Behind the Man: The Isolationist mentions having supported Singularity Investigations and X-Cell as part of his attempts to kill the mutants.
• Me's a Crowd:
  • This is Jamie Madrox's power (triggered via physical impact). His duplicates are also independent and can develop their own personalities the longer they remained separate from him. Any personality trait can be literally embodied in one of his "dupes"; as well, he sent out dupes to master certain occupations and skills, which after the dupes are reabsorbed, he learns as well.
  • Played With in regards to Damian Tryp who exists in all points in his own lifetime, being a "true multiple man". He can even pull versions of himself from the past.
• Mind Control: Cortex is able to mentally dominate and control several people at once. He can gain control of individuals either through physical contact or even from psychic contact through one of his already possessed minions.
• Mistaken for an Imposter: When the real Longshot shows up, Guido assumes he is Nogor in disguise. Longshot points out that if he were a Skrull he wouldn't use the same disguise to fool them twice.
• Mistaken for Prostitute: In Issue #18, Monet and Terry are standing at a street corner per Layla's instructions. A car pulls up to them and the driver asks how much he'd have to pay them for a threesome. Monet bends a telephone pole and the man wisely drives away.
  Monet: Remind me to kill Layla.
  Theresa: Not if I get to her first.
• The Mole: Pip the Troll joined XF Investigations to keep a tab on Rahne's child, under Agamemnon's orders.
• Moral Pragmatist: In the Alternate Timeline of Earth-1191, Doctor Doom has become old and unsound in mind and body. He chooses to help the heroes simply because it allows him to stretch his still-impeccable intellect and retain mental lucidity for greater periods of time. He makes it clear, however, that if he ever became healthy again, he'd probably go back to his old ways.
• More than Mind Control: Discussed in Issue #13. During a therapy session with Dr Samson, Guido talks about how as a kid he once saw a hypnotist make another boy act like a chicken. When Guido asked the hypnotist how he did it, the hypnotist told him that you couldn't make someone do something they didn't really want to do. Guido believes that this is why Tryp was able to turn him into a sleeper agent and make him kill Henry Buchanan but Samson states that Guido is only saying this because he doesn't want to confront the fact that he was a victim.
• Ms. Fanservice: Monet shows plenty of skin during the story, either with revealing outfits or by getting naked.
• Multilayer Façade: After the team captures Arcade, Rictor punches him, making his face falls off and revealing it's actually a robot. But once everybody leaves, the Arcade "robot" gets up and takes off his robot mask revealing he's the actual Arcade, who makes a note to just use an actual robot next time - getting punched in the face hurts.
• My Future Self and Me: The Tryp "family" are all Tryp using his Time Travel powers to snatch them from their own timelines.
• Mystical Pregnancy: Rahne's child with the Wolf God Hrimhari is much quicker than normal pregnancies, leaves her with Nigh-Invulnerability and she births him by vomiting him out of her mouth.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In Issue #9, while trying to make sense of how Tryp, Sr and Tryp, Jr have identical DNA, Jamie wonders if they are clones and that maybe Spider-Man was cloned at one point since he is often in so many places at once.
  • During an inner monologue about how the lines between good and bad have become more and more blurred, Jamie jokes that "Brotherhoods of evil are so 1960s".

N-Z

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Invoked by Guido and Rahne in Issue #4 to scare off police officers who arrived in Mutant Town because of a riot.
  Guido: Evening, gentlemen. My code name is "Can Crush You With A Glance" Man. And she's "Once Disemboweled A Man Just To Watch Him Die" Girl. Let's take ten seconds to consider why we're called that and what it can mean for your long-term health prospects.
• Navel-Deep Neckline:
  • Monet's outfit◊ from issue #200 to #232 has a plunging neckline that can reach down to her stomach. She wears her outfit zipped starting from issue #233.
  • Hela wears a ludicrously threadbare outfit when the team tussles with her, until she gets serious and dons her typical outfit.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands:
  • In the third series and the miniseries preceding it, Jamie explained that for the past several years (after the end of the previous series, apparently) he has been sending out dupes to lead independent lives. When they return to him and he reabsorbs them, he gets all their knowledge and skills, such as martial arts, lockpicking and lawyering. Additionally, both the Madrox mini and some early X-Factor issues make a big deal out of how Jamie has to absorb his dupes before they die, or else lose their memories. Dead dupes get the ability to be absorbed automatically right around the time Jamie needs to send some into potential future timelines.
  • The terrigen crystals in Quicksilver, which then move to Rictor, and give him the ability to defend himself from Huber... somehow, before disappearing with none of the characters ever once dwelling on it for a moment. (In fairness, many comics over the years have hinted the terrigen crystals are sort-of alive and capable of predicting things, which might have something to do with it).
• Never My Fault: Guido, once he loses his soul.
• Nigh-Invulnerability:
  • Both Monet and Guido can take an enormous amount of physical damage.
  • Darwin's Adaptive Ability makes him very hard to hurt, since his body will shapeshift into whatever it needs to survive an attack, such as turning his neck into rubber if someone tries to slash his throat.
  • While pregnant with Hrimhari's child Rahne becomes impervious to any damage.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • In Issue #17, Rahne and Julio interfere in what they think is a mugging. However, the "muggers" are actually FBI agents and their "victim" is actually Elijah Cross, the leader of the ex-Mutant terrorist group known as X-Cell.
  • In Issue #38, Rictor starts a gunfight with Val Cooper's men in order to get Siryn to the hospital so she can deliver her baby. Val ends up getting shot by a ricochet.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In Issue #28, Rictor tries to rescue a teenage girl from prostitution. For his troubles, she tases him in the back and stand's by as her pimp and his men beat him up.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Siryn falls victim to one early on at the hands of Damian Tryp, Jr. A doctor giving her a medical examination notes afterwards that despite the injuries, it was done in such as way as to not be fatal, just hurting her bad enough to serve as a warning.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Lorna mentions she had a psychotic episode at a Comicon once, but doesn't elaborate.
  • Whatever happened to Shatterstar before he reappeared under Cortex's control.
• The Nose Knows: Rahne figures out that Guido's story of Buchanan "disappearing" is false when she smells the man's scent on his hands.
• No-Sell:
  • As part of the terrigen crystals defending him, Rictor manages to survive a point-blank shot from Huber using Cyclops' eye-beams (which at full strength can demolish tanks). And by "survive" we mean "doesn't even wobble slightly".
  • When Bloodbath stuns the team by draining their souls, Guido is completely immune since he lost his soul after Layla revived him.
• Not Helping Your Case:
  • During a meeting with the X-Men at Utopia, Jamie points out their current actions make them look pretty suspicious. Cyclops tries defending their actions, when Magneto comes in and unironically says "welcome to our brotherhood". Layla tries not to fall over laughing.
  • In Issue #217, Monet, angry over Guido being shot, tells Jameson that she knows he has something to do with the murder X-Factor is investigating and threatens to "rip it out of his mind". This only serves to make her look bad in front of a crowd that was protesting both Mutants and immigrants, of which Monet is both.
• Not So Harm Less Villain: The old senile Doctor Doom from Earth-1191 doesn't seem like a real threat at first and recruited as an ally for the Summers Rebellion until he inevitably betrays them, bringing Cortex back and taking control of the cyborg Cyclops.
• Not Wearing Tights: Strong Guy, Wolfsbane, Rictor and Monet. Monet and Strong Guy start wearing uniforms from issue 200 onwards.
• Not With the Safety On, You Won't: In issue #247. The morning after their wedding night, Jamie wakes up to a knock on his and Layla's bedroom door and assumes someone is trying to kill them, having been informed of this happening in at least one alternate universe. Jamie pulls out a gun he had under his pillow but Layla points out he still has the safety on. Fortunately, it is the police requesting Jamie and Layla's help to solve a murder.
• Number Two: Siryn is this for Maddox in XF-Investigations, she's a natural leader and sometimes Maddox even thinks she may be better fit for the job than him. When Maddox has his Heroic BSoD and leaves the team, she steps up and takes charge for a while.
• Oh, Crap!: Tryp Sr. and Jr. have this look on their faces when a Jamie dupe reveals he's planning on blowing them up as revenge for killing Jamie's parents.
• Only Sane Man: Whenever a fight between two heroes start, Monet is the one to stop it and point out how stupid both parties are acting. It helps she's usually strong enough to physically restrain them too.
  • Not So Above It All: But once when Monet was trying to stop a pointless fight with She-Hulk, the latter splashed her with water, pissing off Monet who then attacked her.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Siryn's attempt to tell Jamie she's pregnant by him is stymied by him presuming she's telling him she's going to quit and they both argue without clarifying what they're talking about. Lampshaded by M as something out of Three's Company.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Get Siryn mad enough, and this starts to happen.
• Oracular Urchin: Layla Miller. She knows stuff. But not because she has any oracular power, but because the future version of her upload her memories into her.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Monet starts flirting with Darwin. As it turns out, she's under mind control.
• Our Vampires Are Different: One case has Madrox and Layla dealing with a Vandella, a North African vampiric demon spirit that possessed one of their clients.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Rahne Sinclair / Wolfsbane mutant power is being able to shapeshift into a werewolf. Aside from its obvious combat application, she uses her enhanced sense of smell to track down targets for XF Investigations.
• Paper-Thin Disguise:
  • Subverted in Issue #36. Jamie and Guido go to the owner of the van that was used in Darwin's kidnapping and pretend to work for a guy named Xander Forbush. When they leave, he tries to alert his accomplices but it turns out that Monet was actually in the room telepathically cloaking herself and was waiting for him to call them.
  • Sylvius mocks the Black Cat for thinking that a coat and glasses would make it impossible for her to recognize the latter's platinum blonde hair.
• People Jars: Once they capture him, Project Karma keeps Darwin contained fully conscious in a huge jar full of liquid. Darwin can only watch on in horror the experiments they're doing to their other captives.
• People Puppets: Anyone controlled by Cortex.
• Pet the Dog: Guido's first act as The King of Hell is to bring Monet Back from the Dead. He even mocks her, throwing at her face how "souless" he is.
• Playing Possum: Black Cat pretends to have been defeated in a single hit by Rococo in order to get the drop on her later.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: A de-powered Blob calls Julio, who is Latino, a "dumb tamale tosser". Julio understandably does not take this kindly.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Just narrowly avoided by Jamie and Siryn when she's pregnant. The two aren't on the same wavelength, but still having what they think is the same argument. Monet eventually weighs in by pointing out they're acting like something out of Three's Company.
  • Played With during the Secret Invasion crossover with She-Hulk. When it looks like a fight is about to break out between She-Hulk and X-Factor, Monet tries to play ambassador and gives Jen a chance to explain the situation. But Jen finds Monet's tone so condescending that she starts a fight with her anyway.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: Madrox makes pop-culture references all the time, no matter the situation. When he gets stuck in a Bad Future, he's dismayed no one gets them.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: At one point, Rictor gets taken in for questioning by government goons. When asked to describe a suspect, he gives them a description of Robert, who has yellow skin and lives in a pineapple under the sea. The guy doesn't get it, but Val Cooper does, and angrily mutters that she's going to have "that damn song" stuck in her head all day.
• Portal Cut: Happens to the Evil Doppelgänger of Reed Richards when he gets punched in the face by Guido, throwing his head into Shatterstar's portal just as he happens to close it, which instantly severs his head.
• Possessing a Dead Body: Bloodbath can posse dead bodies, which he does to attack the team. He even does it with one of Madrox's dupes and even his own original dead body after Guido kills him once.
• Post-Final Boss: Elder Tryp has a final petty rant against Layla and Madrox, arranging for the police to find the Demonized Madrox so they kill him. His plan is foiled by The Siryn-Morrigan who reverts Madrox back to normal just as the police arrives. Tryp is then seemingly killed offscreen by an Alternate Self of his.
• Power at a Price: Quicksilver is able to restore Mutant powers with a touch. Unfortunately, the subjects either die or have their powers became too unstable for them to control.
• Power Loss Depression: The very first issue opens with Rictor attempting suicide due to losing his powers after M-Day. He is talked out of it but still has his moments of sadness and volatility over it. He regains them via Terrigen Crystals provided by Quicksilver only to lose them again and become even more depressed leading to him having Sex for Solace with Rahne. He almost quits the team because he feels useless as the only one without powers.
• Power Perversion Potential: Both Siryn and Monet wonder at different points if Jamie ever used his Self-Duplication to gangbang a partner and though he never did it with them, they ended up having sex with dupes on the same night. That said, Layla did later end up having a threeway with Jamie and a dupe.
• Power Source: Morrigan's raven Familiar, Branwen is the source of her powers. Siryn defeats her by destroying him.
• Precocious Crush: Played With. Layla didn't act like she had a crush on Jamie Madrox, but several times told him, that they eventually going to get married. After she got much older, this indeed happened.
• Pregnant Badass: Siryn and much later, Rahne. Don't count on what you think a hormonal WMD will do, indeed.
• Preserve Your Gays: Word of God has explicitly stated that killing either Rictor or Shatterstar would be too obvious, and he'd rather find more interesting ways of creating angst.
• Pretender Diss: Morrigan doesn't think too highly of Siryn taking the name "Banshee" and tries to kill her over it. Subverted in that she's actually testing if Siryn is worth of taking her place as the next Morrigan.
• Private Detective:
  • X-Factor Investigations is a private detective agency run by the protagonists. They became known for being "mutant detectives".
  • Singularity Investigations, run by the Tryp family, is a rival agency that becomes the direct competition to XF Investigations in many cases.
• The Protagonist: While the run focuses on the team, Madrox often takes center stage and is the main character, being the one in charge of X-Factor Investigations.
• Properly Paranoid: During a phone conversation in Issue #217, Felicia Hardy warns Jameson that using his phone to communicate with her is dangerous as his line is not secure. Jameson dismisses her as paranoid, citing his bodyguards and the impossibility of anyone wanting to kill him. As it turns out, not only are the SCARs team after Jameson for their next target but one of them has indeed tracked down Jameson by tapping his phone.
• Proud Beauty: Monet is hot, and she knows it. A lot of her ego seems to come from her beauty.
  Rictor: [about the X-Factor Investigations office] What a dump. Kind of a come-down for a high-toned girl like Monet St. Croix.
  Monet: Actually, I've done wonders with beautifying the interior. To begin with, I moved in.
• Psychometry: Longshot can get a psychic read out of objects, getting visions of their previous history, which comes in handy in quite a few cases.
• Pun: Arcade: "Why be timid when you can be boulder?"^note  For context, he is saying this while Guido has been embedded into a boulder.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Solo and Clay, who Siryn and Monet tussle with during the Isolationist arc, are defending a pair of hate singers not out of any real prejudices. They're just being paid as part of a distraction.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Quicksilver is a secondary character in the early parts of the book, until he gets his powers back around 2007, and leaves to be a part of Mighty Avengers.
  • Layla gets stuck in Earth-1191 during the Messiah Complex crossover.
  • Rahne quits the team in Issue #28, partly in order to try to prevent the Bad Future Tryp showed her and partly to join Cyclops new X-Force
    • The Bus Came Back: She returns in #207 after leaving X-Force.
  • Darwin quits the team and goes on a Journey to Find Oneself after surviving Hela's Touch of Death changes him.
  • Havok quits the team in the "Breaking Point" arc, feeling he doesn't know his place in the new world and amicably parts way with Polaris.
• Race Lift: Monet, big time which has caused a lot of controversy about her race. Originally, she was Ambiguously Brown. In Generation X, she was clearly black, ranging from her original caramel to chocolate in complexion◊. Here, at first, she's not black or even Ambiguously Brown. She just appears to be white. Word of God says fans complained, asking why Monet was white all of a sudden. He says in response, they started gradually making her darker again, resulting in this◊. But this still got complaints. Eventually, she was changed again, and went to tan European-looking◊. Confusion possibly caused by her mother being said to be from Algeria, which black Africans are an extreme minority, as thus her race & complexion was changed to be that of a more typical Algerian.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: XF-Investigations has a very odd crew for a detective agency, even for a mutant one, filled with characters who have a Dark and Troubled Past and with a least two members being weirdos from the MojoWorld.
• Ready for Lovemaking: Layla texts Madrox that she wanted to chat about something in his room, but he gets distracted and lets her wait, figuring its not important. Cut to Madrox’s bedroom filled with lit candles and roses, where a bored and naked Layla lies in the bed, seductively covered only by a Modesty Bedsheet. Sighing at Madrox’s lack of presence, she remarks that she should’ve brought a book.
• Recruiters Always Lie: Darwin has this complaint when bits of sentinel fall on him.
  Darwin: "Join X-Factor, she said. We're low-key. No giant robots..." Riiiight...
• Redhead In Green: Siryn is a green-eyed redhead with green as a predominant color in her costume. Even in her civvies she's usually wearing green. Once when she started bleeding on her clothes, she made a dark joke about how "red goes with her outfit".
• Red Herring: Early in the series (Prior to Civil War (2006)) we see that Wolfsbane will kill Madrox & Layla on their wedding night. Fast forward to 2011, and it turns out that it's actually Rahne's daughter Vanora who kills them as she can morph into any wolf form, including her mother's. Oh, and that it doesn't take place on Earth-616, either.
• Red Skies Crossover: The Civil War (2006) tie-in, which largely consists of Siryn complaining about the Super Registration Act, and a Madrox dupe coming to make them sign up.
• Reforged into a Minion: What happened to the second dupe Madrox sent into the future, he was captured and turned into Cortex by Doctor Doom.
• Relationship Reveal: Rictor and Shatterstar, after years of subtext, finally got that on-panel kiss. After issues of dealing with an unrelated crossover, they finally score their second on panel kiss, and eventually their first on-panel love scene. Well, almost anyway. A certain wolf had to just show up and accidentally ruin it for the poor guys.
• Retcon: Two, with Layla. The first is a scene involving her at the end of House of M implying she lived happily with a family, which is revealed to be not true (just one last bit of the warped reality). The second is the nature of her powers, with her "zapping people so their memories come back" ability being completely abandoned, in favour of "knowing stuff".
• Retgone: What Tryp and Falcone try to do to members of the Summers Rebellion, by killing their ancestors via Time Travel. Interestingly, the fact that people are disappearing is noticed.
• The Reveal:
  • The Tryps are actually one person, just at different points in their timeline.
  • Cortex is one of Madrox's dupes.
  • One of the last issues finally, finally answers just what the connection is between Star and Longshot (along with one or two other questions, like what happened to the baby Dazzler had way back when). He is the biological son of Dazzler, a human mutant, and Longshot, an Artificial Human who also happens to be genetically based on Shatterstar himself, due to a Stable Time Loop.
  • Guido's Unexplained Recovery is actually Layla going against destiny and using her resurrection powers to bring him Back from the Dead, but he ends up without a soul.
  • Monet and Longshot help Polaris find out what really happened in the plane crash that killed her parents: A nasty fight between her parents awakened her mutant powers and the resulting Angst Nuke caused the plane to crash.
• Reverse Cerebus Syndrome: The title starts off pretty gritty, with the first issue alone revolving around an attempted suicide which nearly turns into murder. After the first dozen issues, while it doesn't become completely light and fluffy, the art style changes, and the grittiness eases off a little.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Darwin's father Hector sells him out to the Karma Project for the promise of half a million dollars. Unfortunately for him, they have no intention of paying him and shoot him instead leaving him in a coma.
• Riddle for the Ages: The murder of alternate Jamie and Layla. Apparently Layla wanted it to happen for some reason, begging and even paying Vanora to do so, but in typical Layla fashion she didn't say why, and Vanora doesn't especially care.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • The SCARs members go after the head of the program who is responsible (including Jonah Jameson) for ruining their lives. They only managed to kill one before they're stopped by XF-Investigations.
  • Monet goes on one against Ballistique for mortally wounding Guido, doing a Mind Rape on her that leaves her on a coma.
• Robotic Reveal:
  • Nicole, the orphan Monet and Terry meet in Paris and later bring to the U.S., is revealed to have just been posing as an orphaned ex-mutant and was actually a robot created by The Isolationist to infiltrate XF Investigations.
  • In Issue #231, Deathlok aka Steve Rogers of Earth-TRN 193, shoots Tony Stark's secretary. It turns out she isn't a human but a robot and she returns fire.
• Rules Lawyer: Hela agrees to let Thor and X-Factor leave her domain with Pip the Troll. Unfortunately, they cannot leave through the entrance and the only way out is to battle through Hela's endless hordes of undead soldiers. Anyone who falls in battle ends up in Hela's servitude for all eternity.
• Running Gag:
  • Once Shatterstar shows up, it becomes a running thing that there is clearly some connection to Longshot, but which the audience doesn't get to hear.
  • People making TRON jokes at Havok, who doesn't get it.
• Sad Clown: Guido almost always joking and smiling, despite having quite a Dark and Troubled Past and being in near-constant physical pain because of his powers. When he loses his soul, his humor becomes much more disturbing due to his Lack of Empathy.
• Science Fantasy: Keeping in mind that the protagonists are Mutants, whose superpowers have a scientific, genetic basis (if in a Hollywood Evolution sort of way). But many of their antagonists, especially later in the series, are fully supernatural beings.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!:
  • Rictor almost does this after Rahne leaves the team and he loses his powers again.
  • Havok eventually gets fed up with everything that's happened and leaves.
• Selective Obliviousness: Theresa is informed of her father's death in Issue #7 by Cyclops but refuses to believe he is truly dead due to the X-Men's habit of coming back from the dead. It is not until Issue #39 that she finally accepts his death.
• Self-Duplication: Jamie has this as his power. Issue #22 sees the return of Clay, an assassin from Jamie's 2004 miniseries who also has this power.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Falcone thinks that he's doing this with Operation: Clean Sweep.
• Sex for Solace:
  • Rahne and Rictor end up sleeping together after going through a lot of traumatic ordeals (Rahne getting a glimpse of a Bad Future, Rictor losing his chance at getting his powers back).
  • After she comes Back from the Dead, a drunk Monet aggressively corners Darwin and tells him that she needed to feel something after her experience with death and they end up sleeping together.
• Sex God:
  • Siryn and Monet both shower Madrox with compliments after sleeping with him. Or at least his "libido dupe".
  Monet: Now I know why they call you "Multiple Man."
  • When prompted about Rictor about which one of the girls is better in bed, Madrox admits it's Monet.
  Madrox: Theresa's like... like ocean waves washing over you. Monet's like a monsoon.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Used every time a character has sex, usually we only see them kiss or starting to undress and the next time we see them they're post-coital under a Modesty Bedsheet.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Rahne's transformation often destroys her clothes, so she eventually got used to being seen naked. But she's still disturbed when she's left naked after a fight and notices Shatterstar (her ex-boyfriend's boyfriend) Eating the Eye Candy. He explains that it's because he's never seen a pregnant woman naked. She ends up flashing him more just to sate his curiosity.
• Sherlock Scan: In Issue #201, Jamie deduces that Mister Fantastic (or rather, his counterpart from another universe) was the one at the cemetery since the set of footprints found at the scene were more than two and a half feet apart while still maintaining even weight distribution, something that could only make sense if the person could literally stretch his legs.
• She Is All Grown Up: Layla, after her trip to the future resulted in her returning to the present an attractive young woman instead of the tweenager that left.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Noelle Blanc (aka Ballistique) is a veteran from Iraq that hires Monet to try to get rid of her PTSD with her telepathic powers. Only to find out her memories are fake and she was actually part of the S.C.A.R.s program and got mind-wiped and given a civilian life after she was dismissed. The revelation makes her go into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Ship Tease: Between Monet and Guido during the latter half of the series.
• Shirtless Scene
  • Madrox gets a few gratuitous ones, showing his toned physique.
  • Guido whenever he suffers from Clothing Damage.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Pip up and leaves before the beginning of the Hell on Earth arc.
• Shout-Out: When you have many sarcastic characters written by Peter David, it happens. There are many references and jokes to things such as Star Wars, Harry Potter,Spongebob Square Pants and even the X Factor show.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Monet comes off as being incredibly vain and self-centered. At one point, she's shot by an assailant. She's perfectly fine, due to her Super-Toughness, but she's pissed that he's ruined her shirt, and wants to break several of his bones for it. During the beginning of Hell on Earth, she would much rather attack her teammates for not being any help when Pip took over her body, even as Polaris points out there's a combination of volcano eruption/ demon attack going on.
  • In the mutant concentration camp of a Bad Future, Layla mentions how 80 years ago, China blasted a satellite in space into millions of pieces that were scattered across Earth's orbit. Some of those pieces then begin falling into the camp. Layla mentioned that there was a department focused on monitoring these types of issues but it was shut down when the government reallocated funds to focus on mutants as a threat.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Rictor and Rahne. Madrox and Layla.
• Sleeps in the Nude: When Ballistique wakes up in shock after a Catapult Nightmare, she's shown to be sleeping in the nude.
• Smash Sisters: Monet and Siryn often end up pairing and fighting together. When Siryn disbands the Detroit branch of XF, Monet is the only one to accompany her to Ireland.
• Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Tier goes from a newborn to looking like somewhere in his preteens in less than a year. His part-Asgardian wolf biology has something to do with that. This was apparently true for Vanora Sinclair as well, which was not a good mix with uncontrolled rage issues.
• The Soulless: Layla's mutant power is to be able to bring people Back from the Dead, but she doesn't bring back their souls and while they preserve their personality, they become devoid of any empathy.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Layla joining XF Investigations ruined Damian Tryp's future predictions regarding them.
  • The "X-Factor" dupe retained the memory of Tryp killing Madrox's parents and when he kills himself, Madrox absorbs him and gets that memory back.
  • Quicksilver is this to the Isolationist on two levels. First, he saves Layla after Nicole tries to kill her which allows Layla to alert Jamie about Huber's intentions^note Layla actually didn't know who Huber was. She only knew his name because Nicole mentioned him as her master and when Layla told Jamie about it, he realized Huber was untrustworthy. Second, the Terrigen Crystals Quicksilver gave to Rictor during the X-Cell arc made him immune to the Isolationist's powers allowing him to defeat the villain.
    • Quicksilver also ended up saving Layla from Nicole's attempt to kill her. In fact, the entire reason the Isolationist tried to have Layla killed was because he feared she'd be this to his plans.
  • Cortex gets hit with two of these when he's trying to kill Lenore Wilkinson, who is the ancestor of one of the members of a Mutant rebellion in the future. First is when the future Trevor Fitzroy sends three Omeganoid Sentinels into the past to battle Theresa and Monet. Then there is Longshot whose incredible luck results in Cortex taking a knife to the back of his neck severing his control over Monet.
• Spit Take:
  • Issue #14 has a double example. Madrox and Rictor are having a drink and catching up, and Rictor makes Madrox spit out his drink when he jokes about sleeping with Quicksilver; Madrox gets his revenge by mentioning that Shatterstar would be jealous.
  • In issue #33, Guido does this in response to Jamie's joke about mutants have rights protected under the constitution.
    Guido: "Rights". Jeez, what an imagination.
• Spotting the Thread:
  • Meeting with Rahne, absent Rictor and Shatterstar after they were apparently traveling with her, Madrox and Havok note something is off. Then Jamie asks about her cross necklace, which "Rahne" casually dismisses as not important. This clues both in that something is massively off.
  • When Lorna has M telepathically probe her memories to see how her parents actually died, she's shown Magneto declaring If I Can't Have You…. Lorna quickly calls BS on Magneto, even at that time when his powers were making him insane, acting like something out of a cheap romance novel, and accuses Monet of fudging things.
• Stable Time Loop: Forms various subplots within the series, which is not surprising given the amount of Time Travel involved.
  • Jamie and Layla get caught up in this, Layla in particular.
  • Doctor Anthony Falcone attempts to overcome the normal laws of The Multiverse in order to achieve this in his goal of exterminating mutankind. The one he ends up creating is one that that will make his entire life suck.
  • Shatterstar's finally-revealed origin story. He's the genetic progenitor of Longshot, who is his father via Alison Blaire.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: Very strongly implied to be what happened to Cortex.
• Suicide by Cop: One dupe does this after being Driven to Suicide in order to prevent Madrox from reabsorbing him.
• Super-Toughness: Rococo has some sort of protective metallic armor under her shallow skin which allows her to withstand direct blunt attacks and even makes her immune to flames.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • When the team are dealing with an erupting volcano, at one point Jamie shows up late to the party and tries yelling something to Polaris, Rictor and Star. Then it shifts to their point of view, trying to figure out what the hell he's saying, because he's too far away for them to make out.
  • In Issue #237, a petty drug dealer named Alfonse shoots at a Mojoworld assassin named Scattershot. It doesn't kill him but gives Shatterstar an opportunity to strike. Lord Defender, the leader of the amateur superhero team called the X-Ceptionals, offers Alfonse a spot on his team. Alfonse refuses in disgust not wanting to risk his life.
  • Monet suffers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown at the hands of Pluto which causes a brain injury. She refuses to tell anyone about it and gets into a fight with Guido resulting in her death.
  • Monet having her mind or body taken over by someone else is a huge Berserk Button for her. When Pip accidentally jumps into her brain, she is pissed at him and threatens to kill him if he stays. Pip leaves the team to avoid Monet's wrath.
• Take That!: Issue #8 has Layla reading Atlas Shrugged, which creeps out Jamie and Guido.
• Taking You with Me: The unstable dupe blows up Singularity Investigations, killing Tryp Sr. and Tryp Jr.
• Talking in Bed: Layla comes clean with Madrox about her secrets while laying in a morgue bed post-sex (Madrox just came Back from the Dead and they had some Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex).
• Talk to the Fist: Facing Cortex, Jamie decides to just punch him.
• Teleportation:
  • Shatterstar can create X-shaped teleportation portals via his swords, as long as he has someone to use as an anchor that knows know about the location they're teleporting to.
  • Pip the Troll can teleport via his magic.
• Thanks for the Mammary: When Jamie is transported into the future and lands on top of Layla.
  Layla: Madrox, you're kind of squishing my, y'know, things.
  Jamie: Sorry...
• That Thing Is Not My Child!: Rahne has this reaction upon giving birth to Tier, who viciously murders Agamemnon moments after being born. She later greatly regrets having rejected her child.
• They Killed Kenny Again: At one point, Madrox dies and ends traveling to several alternate realities where he's been killed. The end of each issue tends to have him die again.
• Thinking Up Portals: Shatterstar can create X-shaped portals through space, time and into other dimensions by focusing energy through his swords. He also needs an "anchor" to help him do this, which is a person with whom he has a special relationship. Shatterstar also has to be outside when he opens up his portals because the energies released could destroy whatever structure he is inside of.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Rahne, when Wolverine comes to visit the office during the "Regenesis" mini-event, mainly because she believes it means something horrible is going to happen, specifically to her, again.
• Thought Caption:
  • Jamie Madrox manages to monologue over just about everything, including himself.
  • Darwin gets to do this for an issue as well, having been told by Madrox that internal monologues help.
  • Cortex has one as well. Not surprising, given that he's one of Madrox's dupes.
  • Tier gets these during the "Hell on Earth War" arc.
• Time Skip: After the team moves to Detroit we skip a couple of months into the future, with Syrin going from early pregnancy to the late stages.
• Tonight, Someone Dies: Apparently Jamie Madrox in #227, but not everything is as it seems.
• Too Dumb to Live: Issue #2 has Rictor coming to the aid of a woman who's being threatened by her Psycho Ex-Boyfriend. Rictor sprays the guy with a fuel pump and the idiot still tries to fire his gun which results in him being immolated.
• Too Much Information: In Issue #33.
  Theresa: Your kid's still using my gall bladder as a trampoline, Madrox.
  Monet: Why does Siryn feel the need to announce these things?
• Toplessness from the Back:
  • Rahne when she takes off her shirt just before having sex with Rictor.
  • The reader only sees Monet's bare back when Rictor walks in on her naked.
• Touch of Death: As a Goddess of Death, Hela's touch itself is fatal. She tries to dispose of Maddox with it, but then Darwin gets hit with it instead and "evolves" into a god of death himself.
• Tracking Device:
  • In Issue #213, Jamie is able to track Darwin through a GPS in his belt buckle. Darwin discards the belt buckle so he can leave the team as he doesn't feel it is safe to be around him after he became a death god.
  • In Issue #219, the Black Cat tags Rococo with a tracer during their fight. Sylvius discovers it and uses it to lure the Black Cat into a trap.
• Training the Gift of Magic: After Layla returns from the Bad Future, she briefly allies with Doctor Doom becoming his adviser in exchange of him mentoring her in magic. This proves to be a controversial issue for the team, especially Monet and Rictor.
• Tranquilizer Dart:
  • In Issue #4, Damian Tryp, Jr neutralizes Theresa by shooting her in the throat with a tranquilizer dart and then beats her up. He tries to tranq her again in Issue #12, but reveals that she learned from the last time Tryp ambushed her and wore a kevlar collar.
  • The SCAR team tranq the Black Cat after using the tracer she tagged them with to lure her into a trap.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Lorna discovers her mutant powers first activated when she was a pre-teen, watching her mother and her husband arguing over Lorna's real father. She reacted like any little kid would to seeing her parents fight, and then her magnetic powers activated. In a plane, which was in flight. Lorna is the only survivor of the resulting crash, and Magneto has her memories wiped.
• Trojan Horse: The Sentinels whom the Summers Rebellion had been fighting and destroying with ease where loaded with specially-charged hadron particles that clung to any nearby Mutants. Falcone's plan was to open a time vortex that would suck in every Mutant loaded with hadron particles. Fortunately, Fitzroy and Ruby are able to stop that plan by distracting Falcone and opening up another portal to send Falcone and Cortex to the past.
• Two-Timer Date: Downplayed. After sleeping with both Monet and Siryn on the same night without the other knowing (admittedly, one was a dupe that Madrox didn't realize he had made), Madrox is hesitant about telling them the truth and keeps the pretense of being in a relationship with both for a while, although he does half-heartedly try to reject their advances and he eventually tells them the truth.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: When not white and furry, Vanora is almost a dead ringer for her mother, Rahne.
• Unfortunate Name:
  • Jamie's first choice of name for his business was XXX Investigations. Everyone keeps telling him it sounds like he investigates porn.
  • During the Second Coming crossover, an MRD mook notes to Trask that maybe they should've gone with a name that, when said out loud, doesn't sound like the French word for "shit".
• Unreliable Expositor: A lot of details given about Layla early on are given by Layla, and over time many of them turn out to be lies.
• The Un-Reveal: During the Cortex arc, he starts probing Longshot's brain, noting on his similarities to Shatterstar. Just as his inner monologue is about to say what the connection is, one of Longshot's discarded knives recoils off a wall and stabs him in the brain.
• Vampiric Draining: Baron Mordo kidnaps Monet's father in order to lure her into a trap so he can drain her life essence and put his cancer into remission. Monet's father even lampshades that her life energy seems to attract "parasites" like Mordo. Monet herself directly compares Mordo to a vampire.
• Video Will: After Sean Cassidy's death, Cyclops delivers his video will to Siryn, explaining that Cassidy Keep is now hers and he wanted to leave her something else, something special his father left him: an old pipe.
• Villain Ball: Cortex is capable of time travel and is tasked with taking out X-Factor. Rather than going the most efficient route of killing them in the crib, he'd much rather leave them a fighting chance in the present because an easy victory is boring and he's sadistic (that, and he doesn't have much of a choice).
• Villain with Good Publicity: While en route to Doom's castle, Reed and the X-Factor team are decried as invaders by the citizens of Latveria who believe Doom is a hero. Jamie's inner dialogue makes it clear he is very much unhappy about this.
• Villainous Rescue: Hangman ends up saving the team from Bloodbath at the request of his son (who thinks he's a super-hero).
• Villain Takes an Interest:
  • Damian Tryp took notice in Madrox when he learned of his powers when he was young. He tried to convince his parents to let him take him under his tutelage over Xavier's, but they refused.
  • The Skrulls are interested in Darwin due to his Adaptive Ability being similar to their own powers.
• Waif Prophet: Layla comes off as one, being a small child that can apparently tell the future.
• Weirdness Magnet: One of the side-effects of Layla resurrecting Guido is that it attracts the attention of demons.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Madrox awakes hungover one morning to find both Siryn and Monet acting very amorous to him and saying how amazing he had been the previous night. Played With in that he didn't actually do anything as they both slept with his dupes. He does get their memories when he absorbs them.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • After the renumber, Valerie Cooper almost disappears from the story, with only a brief appearance when she warns Monet about her father's kidnapping. She doesn't reappear until the Regenesis cross-through.
  • After Ballistique is defeated and captured, Rococo and Sylvius manage to escape, but are never seen again.
  • Jezebel / Mephista's first appearance is trying to recruit The Isolationist to her cause, and she seemingly succeeds... yet he never shows up ever again.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Early on, Monet adopts a French orphan ex-mutant named Nicole. A few issues later, she gets thrown in front of a subway train by Layla and turns out to be a robot. The precise amount of time spent acknowledging this at all (or indeed, that Nicole's gone at all)? 0.00 seconds.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Jamie gives one to Rahne when she decides to leave the team without telling them why. The reason for that is Tryp the Eldest showed a vision of her murdering Jamie and Layla on their wedding night.
  • Monet gives one to a soulless Guido for actually daring a villain to kill a civilian he was using as a Human Shield.
  • After Pip is forced from his body into that of the nearest psychic, who happened to be Monet, Polaris and Rictor start laughing about Monet being forced to share her body with the perverted troll. Shatterstar doesn't see what's so funny and calls them out on it. Later, when Monet regains control, she promptly attacks Polaris over it.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?:
  • When Madrox tries to have a fistfight with Cortex, the latter just pulls out a gun and shoots him.
  • Arcade crucifies Rictor upside down and sets a pendulum to slice him in half. When his employer insists on just shooting him, Arcade argues that there is no artistry in killing him that way.
• With Great Power Comes Great Perks:
  • Madrox used his powers to help him win a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?-style game.
  • The very premise of X-Factor Investigations is of mutants using their powers to run a detective agency.
• Weather Manipulation: Damian Tryp can create and control high-powered winds, including tornadoes.
• Wild Card: Madrox has an "X-Factor" dupe that likes to act in an unpredictable manner for amusement, doing things such as pushing Rictor off a roof or strapping a bomb on himself and blowing up Tryp Sr. and Jr.
• Wham Episode:
  • Issue #39 has Siryn and Jamie's son being born and then absorbed by him like a dupe the moment he touches him.
  • The "Breaking Points" arc advertised itself as one and it has Guido pulling a Face–Heel Turn and joining Mephisto, Rahne finding her son and quitting the team, Lorna finding out she accidentally killed her parents as a child, Syrin becoming the new Morrigan
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The final arc, "The End of X-Factor" shows where the protagonists ended up after the "Hell on Earth War":
  • Guido: Had a Face–Heel Turn, murdered Rahne's son and became King of Hell.
  • Darwin: Gave up on trying to revert his "death god" status and ended up having a one-night stand with Monet in Vegas.
  • Rahne: Son murdered by Guido. Has left the hero game to become a minister in Reverend Madrox's church.
  • Monet: Brought Back from the Dead by Guido thanks to his Hell lord powers. Having a little trouble coping with it, ended up having Sex for Solace with Darwin.
  • Rictor and Shatterstar: Last seen on Mojoworld, working to ensure that Shatterstar's past plays out correctly.
  • Siryn: Ascended to godhood, becoming the new Morrigan, reverted Madrox back to human.
  • Polaris: Broke up with Havok, got her team scattered to the four winds after the Hell war. Got drunk and into a fight with her half-brother Quicksilver. Bailed out of jail by Harrison Snow and became leader of the new corporate-sponsored X-Factor.
  • Jamie and Layla: Living happily ever after on Jamie's farm after The Morrigan (formerly Terry), cured Jamie's having been transformed into a demon. They're expecting their first child.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Layla often acts more mature than her grown-up teammates, constantly helping them with personal issues.
• The Worf Effect: To show off how stronger the Hell Lords are compared to the previous villains they've faced, Pluto defeats the entire team on his own. Then Tier kills him with a few strikes.
• World of Snark: It's Peter David. Everyone snarks. The mutants, the humans, the Asgardian goddesses...
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Madrox is usually pretty good about this, but he sometimes needs to be reminded that he's in a Shared Universe Fantasy Kitchen Sink and not a Film Noir.
• You Can Always Tell a Liar: Guido claims that he turned down Val Cooper's offer for him to become the sheriff of Mutant Town. In actuality, Val withdrew the offer since with the dwindling Mutant population, not to mention so many Mutants and former Mutants leaving Mutant Town, the post would be meaningless. When Guido asks Jamie how he figured this out, Jamie points out that Guido makes really big hand gestures when he lies.
• You Can't Fight Fate:
  • Played with. Normally, you can't change the timeline, as it just creates a new timeline instead, but if one has a Doomlock, then you can re-write time.
  • Trevor Fitzroy appears as part of the Summers Rebellion, for the most part. Jamie and Layla are more than aware of what he's going to do in the future, but neither of them wants to kill him. Then Cortex shows up...
  • Layla also tries this when she resurrects Guido. It... goes badly.
• You Fight Like a Cow: Shatterstar mocks The Thing for his lack of technique during their fight.
• You Killed My Father: Damian Tryp killed Madrox's parents with a tornado in the hope he would fall into his custody as a child.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: To become the next incarnation of the Celtic Goddess Morrigan, one has the kill the previous one.

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