Fanfic / Arrow: Rebirth

Arrow: Rebirth is a series of Arrowverse fan fics by ArlyssTolero (FFN Profile). It's a Peggy Sue where Earth-1 Oliver Queen is sent back in time after dying defeating Shadow Demons on Earth-38 in Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019) to the night where he returned to Starling City.

The first story in the series is The Rise of the Emerald Archer, which depicts the events of the first half of Season One of Arrow after Oliver is sent back and starts making changes. The second story, The Age of Heroes, handles the second half of Season One and explores the aftermath of the events of Rise, including the beginnings of the Justice League.

The original third story, The Children of the Glades, covered the entirety of Season Two and deals with the aftermath of Age. It saw Oliver take a break from the Justice League and refocus himself on Starling as he tried to redefine his role as a vigilante in this new world while dealing with a series of cult killings and the return of Tommy Merlyn. Unfortunately, the author felt that it was too messy and failed to live up to the previous installments, and so elected to delete it after a forty-eight hour warning, with promises of a rewrite. A PDF of the original is currently hosted on the Lauriver Discord for the sake of posterity.

Unfortunately, the series was officially canceled not long after due to Arlyss determining that there were too many mistakes in the first two volumes to rectify in the later volumes, many of which strangled his writing. Instead, Forging a Better Future, a George Lucas Altered Version of the series, ended up replacing Rebirth. Rise and Age remained posted for a few months before Arlyss decided to deleted them as well so he could no longer be tempted to try and revive the series, with PDFs of both stories also currently hosted on the Lauriver Discord for posterity.

The series was briefly uncanceled and reposted, with all three stories combined together under the new title of The Agent of Change. Unfortunately, Arlyss found he still couldn't muster up the drive to continue it, leading to its re-cancellation. Agent was also deleted, and a PDF of it is now also hosted on the Lauriver Discord.

Official Summaries:

Overall Series

Oliver Queen is granted a second chance at life and, despite the dangers and pitfalls of changing the timeline from the world that he knows, he embraces this second chance and all that comes with it to become the hero he was meant to be rather than the dark avenger he once was. The changes he makes sees a massive ripple effect that destroys the timeline he remembers, leaving him to face the future with nothing but his grit and his bow. His stand against Malcolm Merlyn's tyranny and horrifying plans for the Glades inspires other heroes to rise up, and causes the President of the United States to ask him to helm a new initiative to bring together a team of government-sponsored heroes to do what one alone cannot.

The Rise of the Emerald Archer

Oliver Queen has been granted a second chance at life by Mar-Novu/The Monitor for his service leading up to the Crisis on Infinite Earths and for his sacrifice in the defense of Earth-38's fleeing citizens. Awakening in the hospital the night he returned to Starling City, Oliver begins making plans to become the hero that his city both needs and deserves in the coming years, but soon finds out that even the smallest of changes can have the most devastating of consequences for one unused to changing the timeline.

As the timeline spins further and further out of control, Oliver is forced to abandon his long-term plans and do what he does best: face the uncertainty of the future with his grit and his bow.

The Age of Heroes

A month after defeating the Dark Archer, Oliver Queen continues to protect his city as the Green Arrow while beginning to reach out to other heroes to begin forming the Justice League. Clark Kent continues to take to the skies as Superman while learning how to balance his life as a reporter, hero, and loving boyfriend. The routine the two have established for their lives is disrupted, however, when new threats emerge.

A pod containing a young Kara Zor-El crashes to Earth, dragging Fort Rozz in it’s wake, the infamous General Dru-Zod among the prisoners. The Council of Time Masters seek to correct the timeline and restore Vandal Savage as their champion. Ancient powers awaken, bringing with them a shifting world paradigm that will change the fabric of existence forever.

The world needs the Justice League, and the timeline needs its Legends.

The Children of the Glades

One year ago, Oliver Queen was given a second chance by Mar-Novu/The Monitor. Since then, many things have changed. Many of the foes Oliver faced in the future have been neutered or outright killed. The Justice League has been formed and now guards the world against extraordinary threats. Metahumans are rare but known. The Golden Age of Heroism has begun.

But as old threats fail to emerge, so do new threats rise to take their place. For the past five months, there have been mysterious murders in Starling City, murders that leave the victims drained of their blood and which have all the hallmarks of cult killings. Tommy Merlyn returns to Starling City under mysterious circumstances. Laurel Lance returns from training with Lady Shiva and seeks to find her own footing as a vigilante. Oliver Queen, still struggling with how little the world resembles the world that he knew, recommits to his crusade by taking aim at the corruption in the Starling City Police Department. And through it all, one question plagues his mind: is there still a place in this new world for a vigilante like him?

Tropes:

#-F

• 100% Heroism Rating: Oliver post-Rise, who is now considered a bonafide hero by the public as a whole.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Malcolm Merlyn, as always. He tries to murder Thea for being related to Oliver after his plans are exposed to the public.
  • Emiko has no luck with father figures. Robert abandoned her, and Dante only cares for her as long as she is loyal and useful to the Ninth Circle.
  • While he's normally portrayed as a caring and loving father, when he's drunk Quentin Lance is verbally and emotionally cruel to Laurel. He was like this the five years after the Gambit sank and again when Laurel returns after Amnesty Bay.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • Laurel's relationship with Oliver is much better thanks to Oliver being open with her from the beginning and not putting up an act to push her away. It doesn't take long for her initial anger to fade, especially after seeing how much he's suffered and how much he's changed, and soon they begin tentative attempts to get back together. As a consequence, Tommy and Laurel never start a romantic relationship and remain friends (at least until Tommy exposes Oliver as Green Arrow), and neither do Oliver and Sara when Sara returns to Starling.
  • Similarly, her relationship with Sara after they're reunited is much better due to her learning about Sara's suffering before the woman herself can appear. When they finally do see each other again, Laurel's anger is long gone and she spends most of their first meeting comforting her younger sister and assuring her that she's home and that she's safe.
  • In deep contrast, Oliver's relationships with Thea and Tommy both fall apart even worse than they do in canon. Thea eventually runs away to Metropolis and willingly chooses to go live with Tommy after Oliver refuses to support her, while Tommy convinces himself that Oliver is mentally ill and needs psychiatric help, and then unveils him as the Green Arrow in an extreme attempt to make that happen. While Oliver and Thea's relationship begins to recover at the end of the story, Oliver and Tommy's is effectively ruined after Oliver allows him to be taken by the League, and, if Age is anything to go by, will see them eventually become arch-enemies.
  • Whereas his love for Thea was one of Malcolm's few redeeming qualities, here it's not enough for him to give up revenge against Oliver.
  • Initially played straight, then subverted. Thanks to the changed circumstances of their first meeting, Roy and Thea's relationship is not romantic. In fact, they barely have any relationship at all outside of being fellow students of Oliver and Sara. However, that bond allows them to grow closer over the course of Age and Children sees them tentatively beginning to date.
  • Oliver gets off on a much better foot with Rene due to his bond with the other man in the previous timeline and because this time he's a lot more open to help, especially since Laurel is still alive.
  • Kendra and Carter get back together much faster because Oliver's heroics woke up Kendra's Past-Life Memories sooner, allowing them to reunite and marry as quick as possible.
  • Barry and Sara knew each other in the original timeline and were friends, but didn't become close until after Oliver's death in Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019). In this timeline, they join the Legends together and thus their friendship develops much faster, especially after the visit to Starling City 2046, and The Reveal that Barry is Chronos, prompting Sara to try and break through his programming. A lot of their interactions also have hints of Ship Tease between them, which eventually sees a Relationship Upgrade.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Laurel starts her journey to becoming the Black Canary much earlier this time around, learning boxing from Ted Grant, ASIS CQC from Oliver, and eventually the League's style from Sara within weeks of Oliver's return home. However, her encounter with the Huntsman inspires her to learn even more styles beyond that, which will eventually lead to her more closely resembling her comics counterpart. This is further cemented when she awakens her Canary Cry during the Battle of Amnesty Bay, technically making her even more badass than Oliver and Sara already. Then she leaves to go train with Lady Shiva at the end of Age, which will make her an even better martial artist than both of them.
  • Barry becomes Chronos in this timeline.
  • Tommy is being trained personally by Ra's al Ghul and is slated to become a more dangerous Dark Archer that his father.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Rene Ramirez is a member of Ted Grant's gym (who is also an example himself). Both also end up joining Oliver's team in Age.
  • Ra's al Ghul, Nyssa al Ghul, and Sara Lance all appear early thanks to Oliver's public speech as the Green Arrow. As a result of that, Sara is released from her vow a year early as well, and eventually returns to Starling to reunite with her family.
  • Oliver meets Barry Allen and Iris West during his trip to Central City to assassinate Eobard Thawne, and makes a job offer to the former. Barry ultimately accepts after his father, Henry, is released from Iron Heights as a result of the latter, and the two move to Starling City. Joe West also makes an appearance at the Thanksgiving Episode for this reason.
  • Oliver spots "Dinah Drake"/Tina Boland during that same visit, talking to Beatrice, which makes him realize she was a deep cover agent for the Ninth Circle in the previous timeline.
  • Emiko Adachi appears years earlier due to Oliver deliberately choosing to reach out to her.
  • Curtis Holt and his husband Paul are saved from a hate crime by the Green Arrow while Oliver is on the run. Curtis later joins Q-Core.
  • Cisco is never hired by S.T.A.R. Labs due to Hartley being the new owner, so Oliver hires him for Q-Core instead.
  • Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane appear a lot earlier, though as their Earth-1 counterparts instead of the Earth-38 versions Oliver met in the original timeline.
  • The Legends are formed several years earlier and in response to the foiled Undertaking. As a result, the line-up is different: Captain Rip Hunter, Sara Lance, Kendra Saunders, and Carter Hall are from the original line-up, and Nate Heywood joins the team earlier as a part of that line-up. New members as a result of the timeline changes are Mari McCabe, Dick Grayson, and Barry Allen (pre-Flash).
  • Barry becomes the Flash at least a year earlier in canon and joins the Justice League alongside Sara, who has adopted her identity as the White Canary.
• Adaptation Expansion: Instead of just confining himself to characters that were introduced in the Arrowverse, the author also brings in characters from the wider DCU as a whole. He originally starts with those integral to the Green Arrow lore such as Henry Fyff and Jax Briggs, before expanding beyond that, referencing and eventually including the likes of Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Because Oliver managed to get to and build a relationship with Emiko sooner, this Emiko hasn't gotten really involved in the Ninth Circle's more morally questionable activities yet, and thus is still very against the idea of killing innocent people. This eventually causes her to side with Oliver after the Ninth Circle is contracted by the Time Masters to kill the 502 would-be victims of the Undertaking.
  • Helena Bertinelli gradually becomes more heroic like her comics counterpart thanks to the Positive Friend Influence of Laurel after they form the Birds of Prey. This culminates in her sparing her father's life and sending him to prison instead at the end of the first half of Children, cementing her status as an official hero.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Tommy Merlyn, because with Oliver and Laurel getting back together and his father not cutting him off, his canon Character Development never gets off the ground. This only gets worse when he joins the League of Assassins. By the time he returns to Starling/Star City he is as hateful of Oliver as his father, blames his former friend for all of his problems, and has developed a horribly elitist mindset with an added dash of misogyny.
• Adaptational Job Change:
  • Oliver becomes CEO of QC after Moira commits suicide and Walter is murdered. He briefly gives up the position after he's exposed as Green Arrow, and resumes it after he's pardoned. He then quits it again to devote himself fully to the Justice League, and hands the position off to Emiko. It's subverted completely come Children, where he runs for mayor again to prevent Sebastian Blood and Ted Kord from taking the post.
  • Laurel becomes Director of CNRI after Eric Gitter's corruption is exposed and he is arrested. She's later forced to give up the position to Adrian Chase and permanently disbarred after she chooses to remain Black Canary. Instead, she takes up a position at Lance Floral, and after returning from her training with Lady Shiva, begins doing that part-time with plans to become a self-defense trainer at Ted Grant's gym.
  • Thea works at Lance Floral, since Verdant was never created in this timeline. Roy also works there with her as the shop's stockboy.
  • Barry Allen, Cisco Ramon, and Emiko Adachi are all employees of Queen Consolidated's Applied Sciences Division. Emiko is in fact the division's head, while Cisco is a member of Q-Core. Emiko later leaves the position to become the full-time CEO of QC.
  • Caitlin Snow quits her job at S.T.A.R. Labs to become an independent scientist. Later on, Oliver manages to recruit her as a scientist for QC by asking her to study Laurel's genetic structure, so she can discover the metagene.
  • After Barry becomes the Flash and moves back to Central City, Caitlin, Cisco and him start working at Q-Division, a subset of QC's Applied Sciences Division that also doubles as an offshoot of Q-Core. Sara also works there part-time as a security consultant.
  • On top of her work at Q Division as a security consultant, Sara is also attending Hudson University to become a doctor and doubling as a self-defense instructor there like Laurel.
  • Curtis Holt is also a member of Q-Core.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • While Felicty Smoak was a selfish Designated Hero in canon, she was still a hero. Here, it's revealed she knew Earth-1 Laurel had actually been murdered by Cayden James at the behest of Emiko Adachi but never told Oliver. This is because she wanted Oliver for herself and knew that as long as Laurel was alive, all she'd ever be was a consolation prize. Then, after Oliver leaves her for Laurel in this timeline, she plots to murder her unknowing rival in return.
  • "Dinah Drake"/Tina Boland is a deep cover agent for the Ninth Circle in this story.
  • The League of Assassins is even worse than it is in canon. Oliver reveals that women in the League are liable to rape whenever a male member demands sex of them. The only exception is Nyssa, as Ra's' daughter and Heir to the Demon.
  • Naturally, Tommy is hit with this hard when he's forced to join the League. The first look we have into his thoughts in Age show how much only a couple of months have caused him to slip. By the time of Children, not only has he become everything like his father, he might very well be worse.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Tommy begs Oliver to not let the League of Assassins take him. While Oliver is sympathetic, he ultimately allows it to happen because he cannot put an end to the League without speeding up the Crisis.
• Alternate Self:
  • Oliver has his (deceased) Earth-2 counterpart and Dark Arrow, his Earth-X counterpart and the Fuhrer of America.
  • Laurel, of course, has her Earth-2 counterpart Black Siren and her Earth-X counterpart Siren-X.
  • Clark has the Earth-38 Superman (aka canon Superman) and (possibly) an Earth-X counterpart who serves the Fuhrer of Earth.
  • Lois also has her own Earth-38 counterpart (aka the canon Lois).
  • Kara has the Earth-38 Supergirl (aka canon Kara, the lead of Supergirl (2015)), and the Earth-X Overgirl, Dark Arrow's wife. This is actually a major plot point; as it's unlikely Oliver and the rest of the JL are going to meet the Earth-38 Kara in this timeline, their Kara is probably going to be the target of Earth-X's invasion, for Overgirl's replacement heart.
• Analogy Backfire: On the topic of Green Arrow being Just Like Robin Hood, Commissioner Nudocerdo comments that people forget Robin Hood was ultimately a criminal. Oliver inwardly notes that the Sheriff of Nottingham (whom everyone compares Nudocerdo to) was one as well.
• Antagonist Title: The title of Volume III is The Children of the Glades, after the cult led by Sebastian Blood that acts as the main villain of Oliver's storyline and the main villain of the story overall.
• Anyone Can Die: Basically, if you aren't the counterpart to a major comics hero (or a decomposite of one, in the case of Laurel and Sara), you're free game. The author hasn't even made it to the equivalent of the mid-season finale and already he's killed off at least four major characters. At one point, he jokes that he's the George R. R. Martin of the Arrow fan community.
• Arbitrary Skepticism:
  • Zigzagged. While many people are willing to be more open-minded about things after Tempest is exposed and Superman makes his debut, there are some things that they have a hard time believing are real, like Aquaman. Of course, as the audience knows, the world is a much stranger place than any of the characters could ever comprehend.
  • Averted in Children. When the police start finding bodies drained of blood, Quentin points out the crazy world they're living in and asks if they could be dealing with a vampire. Oliver responds that he's never encountered them, but can't dismiss the possibility that they exist.
• Arc Villain:
  • Anatoli Knyazev for the Mob War arc in Rise and the Slabside arc in Age.
  • The Trench for the Amnesty Bay arc, with Black Manta as the Greater-Scope Villain.
  • Frank Bertinelli for the Bird of Prey arc, and thus the first half of Children.
• Arc Welding:
  • Tempest was partially responsible for Ted Grant retiring from vigilantism.
  • Emily Pollard and Gregory Kullens are members of Tempest.
  • Emiko Adachi and Cayden James murdered Laurel in the previous timeline.
  • During one of their past lives, Kendra Saunders and Carter Hall were members of the Justice Society of America.
  • The Mirakuru was secretly developed by H.I.V.E. as a possible alternative to the Lazarus Pit.
  • It's revealed that Wilhelmina Hollinger, the member of Tempest that specializes in human trafficking, was helping Division X secures slaves for the Dominators from Starling. Oliver taking down Hollinger forced Division X to open more facilities in other cities in order to meet their quota.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Oliver quickly re-adopts this dynamic with Malcolm in the new timeline. It isn't long until Malcolm returns the sentiment, to the point that he basically stays in Starling instead of booking it after he's exposed just to get revenge on Oliver. He even comments that they have a long rivalry ahead of them...and then Oliver cuts his head off.
  • Just like in the comics, Aquaman and Black Manta.
  • In 2046 Promtheus thinks he's this to Oliver, but Oliver and Laurel see him as a Goldfish Poop Gang member.
  • Tommy Merlyn is ultimately the one truly shaping up to become Oliver's greatest foe, especially since Oliver is committed to curing and redeeming the only other contender: Slade.
• Area 51: It's revealed that the main facility of Division X is located here, much to the JL's disbelief.
  Superman: So, I’ll end up at Area 51, after all. Lois is going to have a field day with this one.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: After being abducted by Rip Hunter, Nightwing groans about his head; Vixen, Carter, and Kendra all swear vengeance on whoever abducted them; and Nate...complains that his pizza will be cold when he gets home.
• Artificial Limbs: In 2046, Oliver has a robotic right arm and Laurel has a mechanical left hand.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Kazumi Adachi didn't even have so much as a speaking role in Arrow. Here, she's one of the supporting characters, and replaces Donna Smoak as Quentin's new love interest.
  • Ted Grant disappeared after Season Three of Arrow, which was explained here as him dying after his ill-fated face-off with Danny Brickwell. Here, he's a member of Oliver's team and (technically) Laurel's boss after she starts working as a trainer at Wildcat Gym.
• Assassination Attempt:
  • During the diplomatic visit to Atlantis, a group of xenophobic Atlanteans with Xebelian support try to kill members of the group to sabotage the upcoming treaty.
  • Another one happens during the trip to D.C., this time aimed at Trumbull. The Justice League thwart it, and the perpetrator turns out to be Vice-President Robert Kinsey, who wanted to take over the administration so the integration of Atlantis could be attributed to his Presidency.
• The Atoner: Batman's crusade in Gotham and his harsh stance against killing is at least partially motivated by guilt from his tenure with the League of Assassins.
• Avenging the Villain: Felicity's Murder the Hypotenuse plot qualifies her as a villain, and her father Noah Kuttler (the Calculator) is planning on seeking revenge on Oliver for causing her death.
• Atlantis: Atlantis is introduced to the story with Aquaman. Aquaman's life's dream is to bring peace between Atlantis and the surface world, and sees joining the Justice League as a step in that direction.
• Barrier Maiden: The League of Assassins as whole is one for the Crisis — if the League is ever dissolved like it was in the last timeline, it will move up the date of Crisis like the last timeline. That means, as much as Oliver hates it, he has to keep the League intact.
• Battle Couple:
  • Once Laurel's superpowers awaken, she and Oliver officially become this. Despite not knowing either of them personally, Wonder Woman and Nyssa al Ghul both fully approve on principle alone.
  • Carter and Kendra Hall, as per comic and show canon.
• Becoming the Mask: As far Oliver is concerned, he is Green Arrow, and Green Arrow is him. That's why Tommy's claim of him being Green Arrow was so credible — it was obvious in hindsight after all the changes to his behavior when he came home.
• The Bermuda Triangle: The location of Xebel, Atlantis' rival kingdom. Upon learning about them and their Fantastic Racism, it doesn't take long for the Justice League to figure out the real cause of all those mysterious disappearances.
• Berserk Button:
  • Sara already has her canonical one of beaten and abused women, but she has another one in Russians, specifically the Bratva, after they shoot her and abduct Laurel. Her first outings as the Canary has her specifically targeting them to work out her frustrations since she can't get to Anatoli.
  • Sara also hates men who only see her as nothing but a sex object. She gives a pointed Groin Attack to Iris' date after he can't stop ogling her.
  • After all her experiences in Rise, Laurel quickly adopts her sister's stance on abused women.
  • Oliver is particularly vicious against perpetrators of hate crimes, especially those against the LGBTQ community, due to his fondness for Sara (bisexual) and William (homosexual).
  • Slade is furious when people start calling Oliver a hero after he exposes and defeats Malcolm. He reaches his Rage Breaking Point at the end of Age during the Battle of Metropolis and ends up slaughtering an entire bar full of patrons.
  • Aquaman naturally hates anything that harms ocean life. Oliver wins an audience with him by taking out some whalers.
• Betty and Veronica Switch:
  • For Laurel, Tommy, the Dogged Nice Guy best friend who stood by her and comforted her for the last five years, is the initial Betty, while Oliver, the vigilante ex-boyfriend who cheated on her with her sister, is the initial Veronica. Then it turns out Tommy is an Obliviously Evil and naive elitist who only cares about helping out his loved ones, while Oliver is a genuinely heroic and selfless individual who willingly risks his life everyday to better the lives of strangers. Laurel chooses Oliver, and her decision is only cemented after Tommy outs Oliver as the Green Arrow, putting everyone they care about in danger.
  • For Oliver, Felicity, his wife from the previous timeline who traveled back in time like he did, is the initial Betty, while Laurel, the Lost Lenore First Love who is still angry at him for what happened with Sara, is the initial Veronica. However, Laurel ends up forgiving Oliver and begins supporting him wholeheartedly due to sharing his vision for Starling City, while Felicity turns out to be an obsessive Yandere who is willing to Murder the Hypotenuse if it means keeping Oliver with her. Note that Oliver chose Laurel before he found out about Felicity's true nature, which he didn't learn of until after Felicity was murdered by the Huntsman. Once he did, however, he fully admits that marrying Felicity was a mistake.
• Beyond Redemption:
  • In general, this is how Oliver determines who is "deserving" of death (not counting those killed in open combat situations). Those who have killed innocent people and have proven they will continue to kill innocent people are beyond redemption, and if they cannot be stopped/held by the courts, he will kill them.
  • Malcolm Merlyn. Whereas Malcolm in the previous timeline was worth saving due to Tommy's death humanizing him, in this timeline he remains an irredeemable monster, something Oliver comes to realize after he sends the Huntsman after Laurel. This is fully cemented when he takes his own daughter Thea hostage with the intention of murdering her in front of Oliver to hurt him.
• Big Bad:
  • Malcolm Merlyn is, naturally, the main villain of the first story.
  • The Council of Time Masters for the second story, with the Ninth Circle as their intermediaries. However, they turn out to be a Disc-One Final Boss.
  • The true main villain of Age turns out to be Zod and his army of Kryptonians.
  • Sebastian Blood and the Children of the Glades for Children.
• Big Bad Wannabe:
  • Malcolm ultimately becomes in Rise. He's more dangerous to Oliver's loved ones than Oliver himself, and Oliver's foreknowledge renders him largely ineffectual for most of the story.
  • Age shows that without someone to keep him focused, Simon Morrison (Prometheus) is too crazy to be a real threat. By 2046, Oliver has deemed him Not Worth Killing and treats Simon frequently escaping Arkham to kill him as a mere annoyance. Though it's implied he used be a legitimate threat while under Damien Darhk's influence, with him having killed countless people during that time.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Even when their relationship is rocky, Oliver is still fiercely protective of Thea. He also genuinely wants a relationship with Emiko, and offers to make her head of Queen Consolidated's Applied Sciences Division and the right to take the Queen name as her own in hopes of making that happen.
  • Tommy also clearly cares for Thea even before he finds out they're half-siblings. Unfortunately, this misguided love for her eventually leads him to expose Oliver.
  • Inverted and played straight Laurel and Sara. Whatever remains of Laurel's anger gradually fades when Oliver suggests her sister might be alive, and after having confirmation of that and of learning how much her sister suffered, goes away completely. When Sara is seemingly killed in front of her, Laurel is enraged, and tells Anatoli she can't wait to watch Oliver kill him. In return, Sara is very protective of Laurel, and follows her to Metropolis to protect her during the Mob War arc. When she returns to find Laurel being beaten up by Bratva thugs, she goes postal, and in the aftermath, plans on exacting revenge on the Bratva for what happened.
• Big Brother Worship:
  • Thea originally adored both Oliver and Tommy, but her opinion of the former began to flip-flop due to her inability to reconcile with how much he's changed. While she does manage to reach an accord with him, her affection for Tommy dies in Children after seeing how much the League has changed him.
  • Emiko clearly adores Oliver as well after he effectively gives her everything she ever wanted with no strings attached. By the time of Children, she's completely and utterly loyal to him.
  • Donna idolizes her older sister Diana, who she only knew through stories. When Diana returns to Themyscira, allowing them to finally meet for real, Donna is practically spellbound by all the tales Diana has of Man's World.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Roy Harper helps Oliver escape Tempest's attempt kill him during his Slabside transport.
  • Laurel saves Oliver with her newly awakened Canary Cry, and becomes the deciding factor in the battle against Amnesty Bay.
  • Batman, Robin, and Nightwing show up to save the Birds of Prey from Zsasz and his men after they attack the Clocktower.
• Birds of a Feather:
  • One of the things that allows Laurel to forgive Oliver and resume her relationship with him is seeing that he's developed the same kind of idealism and vision for Starling City that she has.
  • This becomes the basis for Barry and Sara's romantic relationship, after Barry is freed from his Chronos programming. They were both formerly happy and optimistic people who were forced to do horrible things against their will. In fact, it was this similarity that allowed Sara to break through to Barry.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Rise. Oliver kills Malcolm, stops the Undertaking completely, and is pardoned by the President himself and made a government-sponsored hero, charged with the creating the future Justice League. He's also finally reunited with Laurel, and the two make love for the first time since his return from the island. However, his mother and Walter are dead, his identity is exposed (forcing William and Samantha to go into hiding), and he's forced to let Tommy be taken by the League of Assassins.
  • Age. Zod and the Council of Time Masters are defeated, and the Justice League has been full established as the protectors of the world. Laurel leaves Starling City with Lady Shiva to continue her training. However, Oliver is despondent after learning that a total of 502 people, the same amount that died in the Undertaking in the original timeline, were killed in total between the Battles of Gotham and Metropolis, and wonders if there's still a place in the world for a vigilante like him.
• Brain Bleach: Wonder Woman notes the First-Name Basis Oliver shares with Amanda Waller and asks if they were "close". Oliver turns green at the very thought and says he did not need that image.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Poor Barry.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Thea, as always. This behavior does not subside after she's forced to go under vigilante training. While she's subservient to Oliver, she's an absolute bitch to everyone else.
• Brick Joke:
  • When confronted by Bertinelli thugs wearing long coats and wielding Uzis, Oliver dismisses them as walking cliches and sarcastically asks if carbines weren't available. Later that chapter, as the Green Arrow, he's attacked by Bertinelli thugs...wielding carbines. Oliver can only sigh.
  • Laurel is outraged that Sara was originally recruited to the Legends because she was "unimportant to the timeline", and expresses a desire to break Rip's nose for saying that. In 2046, she gets her chance.
• Broken Bird: Sara. Despite Oliver begging her to come home with him to see her family after she's released from her vow, she refuses because she believes her family could never accept the person she's become now. Oliver has to trick her into meeting Laurel again to finally get her to come back.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Laurel grows gradually disillusioned with her father after learning about the deal SCPD has with the criminal underworld, especially after she nearly becomes a victim of that corruption. While she still loves him, she no longer shares his view of the law and it shows.
  • Laurel's already shoddy relationship with her mother is destroyed after Dinah finally admits to her that she told Sara to betray her and go on the Gambit with Oliver.
  • After Sara learns about how her parents have been treating Laurel while she was with the Legends, she's furious at them, and it ultimately breaks her perfect image of the family completely, leading her to give up on the dream of them reuniting. While Quentin manages to get himself back together after rehab and becomes a Rebuilt Pedestal, Dinah refuses to admit her fault in the situation, causing Sara to cut her off for good.
  • Oliver similarly lost his remaining esteem for Robert, to the point of Calling Parents by Their Name. Which is probably why he's not holding his death against Emiko, who Robert, quite frankly, treated terribly. He later on tells the truth about Dave Hackett's death to the man's son Sam because the truth will be published in Lois' biography for him, and fully admits he has no intention of covering up Robert's faults anymore.
  • Oliver is also not too fond of Moira for her treatment of Emiko and her general compliance with the Undertaking. While he does recognize that his mother genuinely loves Thea and him, he also recognizes that she's not a good person.
  • Malcolm Merlyn becomes this for Thea, Tommy and, indeed, all of Starling City after he is exposed as the leader of Tempest. By that point, he doesn't really care and is too intent on getting revenge on Oliver.
  • Tommy is also this for Thea after his time with League of Assassins has caused him to become as twisted as their father.
• Broken Tears: The entire Lance family after Oliver gives Laurel the note Sara left behind, revealing her Rape as Backstory past. It's obvious that they don't care about whatever she did during her time away — they just want her to come home.
• Bullying a Dragon: Effectively anyone who antagonizes the Justice League, even the Badass Normal members.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Averted. When Malcolm shows Brick a picture of Rebecca, Brick quickly recognizes her saying "You never forget your first".
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Thea. Especially in Rise. If something bad is going to happen in Starling, chances are it's going to happen to Thea.
  • Laurel was this in Rise due to her habit of being a Damsel in Distress. She eventually got sick of it, committed herself to training, and grew out of it completely during Age.
  • Alexi Leoniv, who is basically the Russian Criminal Thea. Nothing goes right for Alexi.
• Calling the Old Man Out: After Quentin gives Laurel a cruel "The Reason You Suck" Speech, she tears into him over his crappy treatment of her. Followed by a slap.
• Card-Carrying Villain:
  • Damien Darhk, as usual.
  • When Malcolm's actions are exposed, Thea denounces him as a monster and terrorist. He immediately replies "And a murderer."
• Cardboard Prison: Arkham Asylum has yet to actually appear, but dialogue makes it clear its security is as terrible as ever.
• Chastity Couple: Despite Laurel and Oliver dating again and regularly sleeping together, they actually haven't had sex since his return from the island until the end of the first story.
• The Commissioner Gordon:
  • The Trope Namer himself appears in the first chapter of the second story, mediating the meeting between Batman and Green Arrow.
  • Quentin becomes Green Arrow's official SCPD liaison at the behest of Commissioner Nudocerdo. He doesn't like it. After he starts treating Laurel terribly, he gets stripped of this position and sent to rehab. He returns to this position with a more positive attitude after some time with rehab and reconciling with both Oliver and Laurel.
  • After the battle of Amnesty Bay and subsequent meeting with the President, Oliver is given one of these with virtually every government agency.
• Composite Character:
  • William Clayton takes on the name Connor Hawke at the end of the story after he and his mother are forced into hiding. Similarly, his mother Samantha takes on the name Sandra Hawke.
  • Chronos is Barry Allen.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Emiko is torn between Dante and the Ninth Circle, who got her on her feet and gave her a family when she had nothing, and Oliver, the brother who gave her everything she ever wanted from her father, no strings attached. In the end, she chooses Oliver.
• The Corrupter: The League of Assassins might be dedicated to ridding the world of 'evil', but that doesn't change the fact that they're a murder cult with patriarchal traditions that trains its members via torture. Both Malcolm and Tommy would've never become as bad they did if it hadn't been for the League's influence, and even Sara, one of the few to leave the League with both their life and a working moral compass, is a much harder and harsher person who's prone to violent solutions, even those with potentially fatal results.
• Crimefighting with Cash: Oliver and Bruce, of course. One of the benefits of Oliver being a government-sponsored hero is that he no longer has to hide where the cash is going.
• Cult: The titular villains of Volume III, the Children of the Glades. They're a cult secretly led by Sebastian Blood who oppose the upper class of Starling City. Among their practices including kidnapping members of Starling's elite and ritualistically murdering them by cutting them up and draining out their blood, representing how the wealthy 'drain away' the life of the city.
• Cynicism Catalyst/Start of Darkness:
  • As in canon, Rebecca's death for Malcolm.
  • After the first time Laurel is kidnapped, Malcolm considers that her death could serve as this for Tommy, and bring him around to Malcolm's worldview. He considers that to be a good thing, and a major reason to let her die. Ultimately, it doesn't happen, but Tommy does get his own in the form of Oliver effectively abandoning him to be taken by the League of Assassins.
  • Oliver sincerely believes that losing Laurel again would push him over the edge.
• Damsel in Distress:
  • Laurel, alas. To the point that the readers joke that Laurel needs training just to survive Starling, let alone become a vigilante. Eventually, she gets sick of it after she's attacked by the Huntsman, beats the crap out of him, and dedicates herself to eventually learning as many fighting styles as she can.
  • Thea replaces Laurel in this role for China White's plot to resurrect the Triad in Starling. She's later also kidnapped to draw out Oliver, and again by Malcolm at the end of the story to be killed in front of Oliver.
• Dark Fic: Unlike the series, this story does not shy away from describing the darker aspects of criminality in Starling City.
• Dating Catwoman: Bruce Wayne/Batman and Talia al Ghul are confirmed to have had a previous relationship, judging by how Talia still addresses him as "Beloved" in her thoughts.
• Dawn of an Era: The premise of Volume II, The Age of Heroes, which sees the formation of the Justice League and a series of world-shattering revelations to the public, including the existence of aliens and gods, and the reintegration of Atlantis.
• Deadline News: Invoked in the Battle of Gotham. Zod orders his forces to let news crews film the early part of the battle, but then kill the reporters but not the cameramen to ensure the footage spreads fear. Among the casualties is Vicki Vale.
• Death by Adaptation: Walter Steele, Joanna de la Vega, Felicity Smoak (if one discounts the previous timeline).
• Decomposite Character:
  • Laurel and Sara. They share traits with each other but divide up others from the comics Black Canary: Laurel has the name, the costume, and the general idealism and personality, while Sara has the physical appearance and the bisexuality.
  • Children reveals Diana to be this with her younger sister, Donna Troy, who received Diana's classic origin story of being a clay figure given life by the gods. Considering the notorious Continuity Snarl of Donna's origin story in the comics, this is probably for the best.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • John Diggle and Felicity Smoak. Diggle does join Oliver's crusade initially, but leaves it early due to disagreements in methods and a dislike of A.R.G.U.S. Felicity sticks around for a little bit, only to be killed by the Huntsman.
  • Eobard Thawne. The Big Bad of Season One of the The Flash is assassinated by Oliver a third-way into the story.
  • A number of villains that got to be the Villain of the Week or even entire arcs devoted to them (the Royal Flush Gang, Firefly, Helix), are instead easily dealt with offscreen by Oliver, with little more than a sentence or two detailing their defeat.
  • Ricardo Diaz appears in a single scene in Age, and is killed in that same scene.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • Discussed. Oliver muses that by giving control of his company to Laurel and taking steps to prevent Sebastian Blood from becoming mayor, he's denied Slade the main ways he attacked Oliver and the city in the original timeline. This however just means that Slade will have to think of new ways to do so, and Oliver might not be able to anticipate what those will be.
  • Even people who were aware of Atlantis' existence did not expect the lost city to actually be thriving as the most the advanced civilization on the planet.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Tommy finally realizes the consequences of exposing Oliver when the police bring in Laurel and charge her.
  • After learning that Felicity was planning on killing Laurel, Oliver doesn't try to avenge her death. This is fair, but it means that a cannibalistic Serial Killer/Psycho for Hire is still running around. He managed to kill several more women before Laurel stopped him, and Oliver is appropriately horrified when he learns that. He had (foolishly) assumed that the Huntsman would've skipped town instead of sticking around in Starling.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • Eobard Thawne dies via a gunshot wound three years early instead of being erased from existence thanks to Eddie killing himself.
  • Moira Queen commits suicide a year early instead of being killed by Slade via a stab to the heart.
  • Malcolm Merlyn is stabbed and beheaded five years early instead of being blown up by a landmine.
  • Ricardo Diaz gets his neck snapped by Oliver five years before the Ninth Circle killed him.
  • The Count is shot in the heart with a bullet, instead of several arrows before falling off a building a few months before Oliver killed him in the show.
  • Brick gets his head blown apart by a shotgun, instead of being stabbed. Also a little more than five years early.
• Dinner and a Show: The Thanksgiving Episode, due to differing opinions over the Green Arrow.
• Dirty Cop: It turns out Tempest brokered a deal between the SCPD and city's major criminal element, where the former ignores the latter's crimes as long as they're not too overt and they get a cut of the take. This is why Quentin Lance (and presumably McKenna Hall) are in the Major Crimes Unit — because that is the only place where they can book someone and have a good chance of making the charges stick.
• Disappointed by the Motive:
  • Just like in canon, Barry is disgusted to learn that the reason why his mother died and his father was framed, indelibly ruining his life in the process, is because his Arch-Enemy from the future was a "bitter and deluded fanboy" who couldn't get over the fact that he couldn't be Barry. Oliver also admits he had a similar reaction when the original Barry told him, and considering the enemies he had to deal with, that's really saying something.
  • Malcolm is horrified to learn that his Cynicism Catalyst, Rebecca's murder, was done simply so Brick could join a gang.
• Disappointed in You: Oliver is greatly disappointed in Thea when, after the press conference where Emiko was publicly acknowledged as a Queen, she made an angry and callous comment to one of the reporters that Robert must have abandoned the Adachis because he was ashamed of them. Oliver then reveals to her the real reason Robert abandoned them, and points out that by making such a comment, she's proven herself to be the daughter of the woman responsible for almost all their suffering.
• Does Not Like Guns:
  • Sara has an inherent dislike of guns due to her time in the League. This dislike only grows after she gets shot while trying to protect Laurel.
  • Tommy also comes to hate guns after he joins the League. He even monologues about it to the first snatch team Blood sends after him while he's killing them.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Zigzagged. The people Oliver is interacting with (with the exception of the Monitor and Felicity) are the same people he knew, just at the start of the timeline during his first return home, before all their Character Development set in. While Oliver is aware of this, he can't help but see them in light of the people they would come to be instead of the people they are now, and it causes him no end of problems.
  • He admits that one of the reasons why he made a job offer to Barry is because the latter was one of his closest friends and he wanted him back in any way he could have.
  • This isn't really much of an issue with Laurel, because when it comes down to it Laurel always had that strong, innate sense of justice and desire to help people. The problem she had was her (not unjustified) anger at Oliver and Sara. With Oliver being more open with her about what happened to him and to Sara on Lian Yu and beyond, and how that changed both of them, it doesn't take long for her to move past that anger and be more like the Laurel he knew her to be before her death in the previous timeline.
  • Nor is it much of a problem with Sara. Oliver recognizes that it will take time for Sara to really gain that drive for heroism because he had been in the same place as her at one point in his life. So he entrusts her with the tasks he knows she'll be comfortable with first and remains patient with her.
  • With Thea, Oliver keeps on expecting her to be more mature like she was in the future, instead of the Bratty Teenage Daughter she was in the beginning of Season One. This attitude is what drives Thea to run away to Metropolis after the deaths of Moira and Walter. Even after Thea returns and is being protected by Oliver from the League of Assassins it persists. Laurel (after learning of the original timeline) eventually calls attention to it, and forces Oliver to tell Thea the truth about the alternate timeline to explain his treatment of her. It improves their relationship considerably.
  • It backfires massively with Tommy. Oliver can't help but keep on seeing Tommy as the good man he became before his death, the man that Oliver mourned for almost a decade. This Tommy is nowhere close to that man because he never got together with Laurel or got cut off by Malcolm, the circumstances that forced him to change into that person. Thus, he is elitist, selfish, and incredibly naive — traits that ultimately lead him to exposing Oliver as the Green Arrow.
  • Oliver berates himself for having this attitude towards Emiko after learning that "Dinah Drake"/Tina Boland was an agent for the Ninth Circle. Originally he didn't want anything to do with Emiko after that, but then he realized that Emiko hadn't done any of those things yet and right now was just a girl who wanted to be a part of the family.
  • Malcolm Merlyn. Post-Undertaking Malcolm in the previous timeline was still a bastard, but Tommy's death humanized him, and he did love Thea, which meant he was more willing to work with Oliver and co. when deemed necessary. This Malcolm never lost Tommy, and ultimately his love for Thea does not outweigh his desire for revenge against Oliver, making him Beyond Redemption.
  • Oliver shoots Hank Henshaw in the leg for calling Earth-1 Kara a 'thing'. This is because he can't help but see her as a younger version of the friend who he gave his life to save.
• Don't Celebrate Just Yet: Comedic version. Many, many criminals are elated when Oliver is seemingly killed by Trenchers...only for his girlfriend to randomly develop superpowers and save him with a Sonic Scream. They're appropriately horrified.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap:
  • Sara getting shot hampers Oliver from having some extra aid on the streets after Tommy exposes him and he's forced on the run.
  • Oliver's injured ribs prevents him from ending his Final Battle against Malcolm quicker.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Frequently, which is only natural as a Peggy Sue fic. However, perhaps the most ironic is Tommy convincing himself that Oliver is mentally ill and that the "Tempest" organization he's fighting against doesn't exist. Not only are the readers well aware that Tempest does, indeed, exist, but that the leader is Tommy's own father.
  • Tommy is thoroughly convinced that he can get Oliver into a psychiatric facility if he tries hard enough. He's almost oblivious to how everyone else in his social class would prefer him in Slabside or dead.
  • While Oliver is aware of Emiko's ties to the Ninth Circle, he is completely unaware that in the original timeline she hired Cayden James to sabotage Laurel's life support system; and as such is Laurel's true murderer. And unlike the above two examples, he'll likely never find out because the only person who knew, Felicity, is dead.
  • Slade believes Laurel's decision to forgive Oliver and Sara means she has no self-worth. In reality she forgave them because what they went through is far more than what they deserved for betraying her. In fact, she made the decision not to forgive Dinah because it compromised her self-worth. At least Oliver and Sara had their excuses, as poor as they were. Dinah had none.
  • Pretty much anything involving Clark and Lex's 'friendship'.
  • Noah Kuttler is disgusted and outraged that Felicity was killed by the Huntsman due to her work for Oliver, and Oliver then did not try to avenge her. He didn't try to avenge her because she was planning on murdering Laurel, and as such did not deserve to be avenged.
• The Dreaded:
  • Ra's al Ghul. Even Oliver, who's dealt with everything from immortal priests, to aliens, to Nazis from a parallel earth, to the closest thing the multiverse has to a god, is still scared of him. This is because Ra's is the only enemy he has who isn't driven by selfish aims, but by duty — the same kind of thinking Oliver has. Tellingly, Oliver allows the League to take Tommy, his best friend, with them instead of defying Ra's at the end of the story.
  • Chronos, a temporal assassin and mercenary that works for the Time Masters. Rip is visibly uneasy when Oliver mentions him.
  • Oliver himself becomes this to the criminal element of Starling City after he's exposed.
  • Sara is terrified when she learns that Slade is still alive.
  • Laurel becomes just as, if not more, feared than Oliver after she awakens her Canary Cry on live television and kills dozens of Trenchers with it in one blast. Frank Bertinelli immediately makes it a priority to never get sued by CNRI while several minor criminals ditch Starling altogether. Even Slade realizes he now can't attack Starling on his own, and will need assistance to seek revenge.
  • Diana turns the entire world on its head after she publicly reveals herself to be a demigoddess.
  • Lady Shiva, as par the course. The one woman in the League of Assassins to have never been subjected to the League's misogynistic practices, she is a warrior that even Ra's al Ghul is respects and fears. Laurel is almost immediately apprehensive of her when they meet for the first time, even though she didn't know who Shiva was, and when Oliver learns about her offer to train her, he practically begs Laurel to take it, because he knows it'll make her a better fighter than even him.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Sara comes off like this to Thea, but that's only because the girl's attitude leaves much to be desired. With more eager and obedient students like Roy and Laurel, she's much kinder.
• Driven by Envy:
  • Felicity plots to murder Laurel after Oliver leaves her for the latter. She's killed before it can happen, however.
  • Laurel speculates that Tommy unmasking Oliver is partially motivated by his lingering feelings for her. Tommy denies it however, and seems to be sincere.
• Driven to Suicide: After Moira is brought in for questioning about the Queen's Gambit, she kills herself so she can't say anything and draw retaliation from Malcolm onto Oliver and Thea.
• Dumb Blonde:
  • Discussed and defied. Laurel notes that after seeing Sara practically revel in the dumb blonde stereotypes, she decided to dye her hair brown to invoke Brainy Brunette. After her fist kidnapping, Laurel decides to return to her original honey blonde hair color to effectively taunt her opponents by metaphorically saying that they lost to a blonde woman.
  • Sara herself can still act like one at times, but is very intelligent, thanks to the stress of the last five years making sure she Had to Be Sharp. By the time of Children, she's already studying to become a doctor, which is arguably an even more difficult career path than the one Laurel went on.
• Dysfunctional Family: The Queens. Robert was a philanderer that put a lot of undue pressure on his son and abandoned his illegitimate daughter for the sake of his name and fortune, Moira is obsessed with the family's image and has Lack of Empathy for everyone outside of her husband and her own children, and Thea is a Bratty Teenage Daughter. It's telling the Only Sane Men of the family are Oliver and Walter — who's only related to them all as Moira's second husband.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • The "Perspectives" chapters and others like it show the reactions of several people, both heroes and villains, to the ongoing events of the story, before they become proper characters in their own right. This includes Diana, before she joined the Justice League in the latter half of Age; Slade Wilson, showing the gradual progression of his decision to delay his revenge against Oliver and join H.I.V.E. to facilitate it; and Damien Darhk and the aforementioned H.I.V.E., and their own growing contingencies against the Justice League.
  • It's mentioned in Children that Kara has managed to befriend a classmate: Samantha Arias, the future supervillain Reign.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After the complete hell they both go through during Rise, Oliver and Laurel finally reunite at the end of the story and make love, fully solidifying their relationship.
• Easily Forgiven: Discussed regarding Laurel forgiving Oliver and Sara for betraying her. Alex Danvers tells Oliver she has no idea how Laurel could forgive him, as she would never forgive a boyfriend who did that to her; and Slade Wilson concludes that she must have no self worth to forgive them both so easily. In truth, while she is a very forgiving person, she forgave them both due to their clear and sincere regret over it, and that they clearly suffered more than deserved.
• Emo Teen: Thea, after she runs away from Oliver, and then gets cut off from the Queen fortune. Sara quickly gets sick of it.
• Enforced Cold War: Between Atlantis and Xebel. Xebel is furious that Atlantis elected to reveal themselves to the surface world and make ties with the surface-dwellers, but are also scared of drawing on the surface world's wrath. Thus, there's currently an uneasy truce between the two powers, but only just so.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Malcolm's attempts to manipulate Oliver are amusing when you see how off he is on his assumptions. Especially about how he's intent on avoiding League attention, completely unaware that Oliver has already informed the League of what he's doing and been given the task of taking down Malcolm.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • As twisted as Malcolm is, he views his insane plan of destroying the Glades as a way to help the city. When Tommy tells him that he doesn't give a damn about helping out the people of Starling, he's visibly shocked and horrified, genuinely wondering where he went wrong when he was raising his son (ignoring the fact that he had minimal involvement in Tommy's upbringing after Rebecca's death).
  • Noah Kuttler (the Calculator) wants revenge on Oliver for setting Felicity on the path that got her killed by the Huntsman, which he then didn't even try to avenge (with a good reason). He briefly considers killing Laurel so Oliver will know his pain, but then decides against it as she's done nothing wrong.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Diana, as always. Even Laurel, who is straight, can't help but feel attracted to her, and tells Oliver it's okay when he tries to apologize for staring, since she was doing the same thing.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Quentin is visibly sickened with the idea of killing Oliver after he's exposed as the Green Arrow because Oliver is Laurel's boyfriend and Sara's friend. Not to mention the fact that he's known Oliver since Oliver was eight, and Quentin can't help but occasionally see him in that light. This leads to him trying to talk Oliver down and convince him to turn himself in during their confrontation while the latter is on the run. While he fails, it's the thought that counts.
  • Once Malcolm's plot is publicly revealed, the world is appropriately horrified and in the aftermath, the public demands a pardon for Oliver, which is granted by President Trumbull.
  • When Oliver confronts Quentin over his treatment of Laurel, the entire squad room just stands by and watches, even after Oliver pins him to a desk. While this is in part because they know they can't take him, it is also because they know Quentin is in the wrong and deserves to be called out.
  • The Justice League are understandably horrified that a place like Earth-X exists, with even Batman and Superman considering suspending their Thou Shalt Not Kill rule just to deal with their forces.
  • After reading Oliver's book, a great number of people are more sympathetic to him and absolutely disgusted by Malcolm Merlyn. Thea flat-out disowns Malcolm and the Merlyn name for good while Quentin feels dirty about the fact that he was ever friends with Malcolm and heads over to the Quiver to work out his rage at the shooting range.
  • It's revealed what initially caused Helena to turn against her father was walking downstairs one night and accidentally spotting him beating an innocent man to death with his bare hands for failing to pay his protection fees. Helena started talking to the FBI the very next day.
• Evil Is Petty: Isabel Rochev is enraged when Oliver makes Emiko CEO of Queen Consolidated, preventing her from getting it as her (already petty) revenge; and decides to close a random company (and as such fire all its workers) to make herself feel better.
• Evil Power Vacuum: The events of the first two stories, including Oliver driving out the Bratva and the Triad and killing Malcolm and exposing Tempest, inadvertently allow Frank Bertinelli to take over as the new 'godfather' of crime in Starling City.
• Exact Words: Oliver turns himself into the police secures a pardon for Laurel for helping him, which is dependent on him confessing to everything and leading the police to his base of operations. He then escapes, as the terms of the deal did not specify he had to be in custody or stop being Green Arrow for her to still be free.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Chapter 14 in part 2 is titled "The Meta Chapter", and is decidedly meta.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: After her first kidnapping by Adam Hunt and Eric Gitter, Laurel decides to stop dying her hair brunette and return it to its natural blond color to defy the Dumb Blond stereotype and spite her enemies.
• False Soulmate:
  • Felicity turns out to be this for Oliver. Oliver already had an idea she was this when he saw Laurel again and realized he still loved her, and especially after Felicity came back with him only for him to find he still preferred Laurel over her. But what really sealed the deal was learning that Felicity intended to Murder the Hypotenuse to get him back — after learning that, he loses any and all sympathy for her, considering her 'deranged' and admitting that he made a massive mistake in marrying her.
  • Dinah turns out to be this for Quentin. On top of her Never My Fault tendencies, Quentin learns that she refused to come back to Starling in the previous timeline even after Sara came back to Starling, making him realize that she never really wanted to reunite their family at all, but rather to absolve her guilt over Sara's death. After he finally gives up on her, he finally moves on, especially after he meets Kazumi.
• Famed In-Story:
  • Oliver, after he's exposed as the Green Arrow and is later pardoned and made a government-sanctioned hero.
  • In Age, a number of heroes follow his lead and adopt public identities. These include:
    • Laurel, due to the events of the Amnesty Bay arc and her own well-known association with Oliver making it impossible for her to maintain a Secret Identity.
    • Arthur, as he's also a head of state as the King of Atlantis.
    • Diana, due to her costume lacking anything to hide her face and her own supernatural beauty making it impossible for her to blend in.
    • Sara. As Laurel's sister, she's fairly well-known already, and like Diana her costume doesn't obscure her face.
• Fantastic Racism: Just like in canon, many Atlanteans are racist against "surface-dwellers". Though their hatred is nothing compared to Xebel's, who hate both Atlanteans and surface-dwellers.
• Fate Worse than Death: For those who don't choose to join willingly, the League of Assassins is this — especially for women. Oliver even flat-out states that Nanda Parbat is just as bad, if not worse, than Lian Yu.
• Finger in the Mail: The Huntsman sends Felicity's head in a box (complete with apple in mouth) to Queen Consolidated with a warning to stop their investigations. Oliver actually recognizes the smell of rotting flesh before the box is opened, and keeps the courier from leaving so he can answer police questions.
• A Fool for a Client: Discussed and averted. Oliver arranges for Jean Loring to represent Laurel should the police arrest her as an accomplice to Oliver once his identity is out (which happens). Laurel herself notes that representing yourself is never a good idea, and accepts the help.
• For Want Of A Nail: Oh, yes. The Butterfly Effect is very much in play in the story.
  • Oliver has his mother take him to see Laurel as soon as he is released from the hospital, where he quickly tells her the truth about Sara. Starting to make amends with her so quickly, before the news even announced his return in fact, considerably improves their relationship.
  • Oliver deciding to delay the debut of the Green Arrow leads to Laurel being kidnapped by Adam Hunt and nearly killed. This later becomes a distressing pattern with Laurel.
  • As part of his new desire to be an inspiring hero like Barry, Oliver makes a public speech on live TV as the Green Arrow, alluding to Tempest. This catches Ra's al Ghul's attention, who sends Sara to Starling to gather a report on the situation and to meet with Oliver. Oliver then uses this is as an opportunity to reveal Malcolm's plans to the League, simultaneously getting clemency for Starling, condemning Malcolm, and managing to release Sara from her vow a year early.
  • Oliver is forced to assassinate Eobard Thawne to prevent Barry and the Legends from restoring the timeline. This causes S.T.A.R. Labs to fall under the ownership of Hartley Rathaway, and releases Henry Allen several years earlier. Barry promptly moves to Starling with Henry after getting a job offer from Oliver to join Queen Consolidated's Applied Sciences Division. The Particle Accelerator, meanwhile, has its initiation delayed to 2020.
    • Because Hartley is the new head of S.T.A.R. Labs, Cisco is never hired, which Oliver promptly takes advantage of to hire Cisco himself. Ronnie later quits S.T.A.R. for Q Division for the same reason, and Martin ends up furthering his research at Q Division as well.
    • Caitlin Snow is bequeathed a grant of research money upon Eobard's death, which prompts her to quit S.T.A.R. Labs to run her own experiments. Oliver fears that her inability to befriend Cisco and Barry because of this will cause her to become Killer Frost full-time. Oliver also muses that this will mean she will not be able to develop the cure for the Mirakuru, and is not sure who will be able to do so. Then, Oliver manages to mitigate this by hiring her to research Laurel's genetic structure, with Laurel further aiding this by actively trying to befriend Caitlin to convince her to stay in Starling City.
    • Ultimately, while Team Flash does form, it's under the umbrella of Q Division instead, which allows them to pursue both their own projects and their superhero work with the backing of both QC and the government.
  • Malcolm catches wind of Felicity investigating something connected to Tempest, and sends the Huntsman after her to silence her and threaten Walter in one fell swoop. This backfires, as it leads to Oliver and co. discovering the wreckage of the Queen's Gambit, which promptly starts an FBI investigation into the matter, because the wreckage is quite visibly not the result of a storm.
    • The involvement of the FBI leads to Moira killing herself to protect Oliver and Thea. That leads to Malcolm killing Walter to ensure Oliver becomes CEO of Queen Consolidated in hopes of manipulating Oliver into joining Tempest.
    • The successive losses of losing her two remaining parental figures shatters Thea, who subsequently starts to condemn Oliver going out as the Green Arrow for fear of losing him. When he refuses to stop, she runs away to Metropolis, and Oliver's decision to cut her off and refusal to pursue her disgusts Tommy, who goes after her instead and gains custody of her.
    • Tommy's canon Character Development is indefinitely halted due to Oliver and Laurel getting back together and not being cut off by his father. Therefore, his reaction to Oliver becoming the Green Arrow is much worse, going as far as to view his friend as mentally ill, especially after Oliver essentially abandons Thea. This eventually leads to him publicly revealing Oliver as the Green Arrow at a press conference in Chapter 44.
  • Oliver cripples the Triad early on, effectively ending their influence in the city. This causes Helena Bertinelli to start a mob war with the Bratva instead, and this time she succeeds with no one except Oliver being aware of her true motives. Oliver's attempts to deescalate the situation cause him to break with the Bratva much earlier (and causing the end of his friendship with Anatoli), forcing him to intervene as the Green Arrow and increasing his folk hero status.
    • This also forces Oliver to drive out the Bratva from Starling to protect Helena, creating an Evil Power Vacuum that Frank Bertinelli quickly fills. After Malcolm is defeated and killed at the end of Rise, Frank takes over Starling's underworld completely unopposed. This forces Helena to go down the vigilante route, which leads her to teaming up with Laurel as the Huntress in Children in hopes of taking Frank down.
  • Because Oliver killed Malcolm, the League of Assassins seek restitution elsewhere by taking Tommy and Thea and inducting them into their ranks. While Oliver manages to save Thea by taking her under his tutelage, he can't do the same for Tommy, who is forced to join the League.
  • Preventing the destruction of Zambesi in the previous timeline did have consequences, but something prevented them from fully altering the timeline. Said resulting timeline would've seen William dying in front of Oliver, resulting in him fully embracing the role of Ra's al Ghul, murdering everyone he held responsible (including Laurel and Sara), and razing Starling City and Central City to the ground.
  • Preventing the Undertaking results in the Time Masters contracting the Ninth Circle to kill the 502 people that were meant to die in the destruction of the Glades. In response to that, the Legends are formed three years early and with a new lineup: along with originals Rip Hunter, Sara Lance, Kendra Saunders, and Carter Hall, Nate Heywood joins the team at the beginning. The team also includes new members Mari McCabe, Dick Grayson, and a pre-Flash Barry Allen (who was recommended by Oliver in preparation for when he does become the Flash).
  • The formation of the Justice League and everything involved with it, including the unveiling of Atlantis, messes with the plans of several future villains. Slade, for example, is forced to scuttle his own plans and joins H.I.V.E. in order to get the necessary support to take on both Oliver and the JL.
  • Information of A.R.G.U.S.'s activities from Oliver's biography prompts Trumbull to do a full audit of the government in order to makes sure another government agency doesn't do to others what Waller and A.R.G.U.S. did to him. This results in the discovery of Agent Smith and Division X, the agency that deals with the Dominators, three years early. Upon learning what, exactly, Division X has been up to, Trumbull orders the JL to take them down, which ends their slavery operation but may result in Dominator retaliation.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: This is what killed Children. The author found it harder to write because he tried to fit an entire season with an untold number of subplots into one story, while also trying to stretch out the main ones to cover an entire year of events, opposed to a couple of months like the previous installments.
• First-Name Basis: Oliver assumes this with Amanda Waller of all people, shocking everyone present. He later reveals he does this both to show that he no longer answers to her, and to remind her that she's still human.
• Fugitive Arc: Oliver is forced on the run after Tommy exposes him as the Green Arrow. He remains a fugitive until Malcolm's own exposure and defeat, whereupon he's finally pardoned and made a government-sponsored hero.

G-M

• Genuine Human Hide: The Huntsman's outfit isn't made of leather...
• George Lucas Altered Version: The new The Agent of Change version has made a number of changes/corrections to the original Rebirth version, in the hopes of avoiding the problems that caused the story to be dropped. Among them:
  • Oliver was not raped during his five years away, as that plotline never went anywhere.
  • Emiko no longer hired Cayden James to kill Laurel (something Felicity knew about) as that also never went anywhere.
  • Frank Chen's fate after telling Oliver the identities of the members of Tempest was originally not revealed. Here it's said that Waller executes him, as he's no longer needed.
  • The League of Assassins, while deeply sexist no longer practices sexual slavery on its female members. Largely because once she learned of it Wonder Woman simply would not allow such an organization to exist, and the League must continue to exist to bring balance to the universe.
  • The above change means that Tommy's new sexual deviances are his own darker tendencies coming out, rather than having been instilled in him by the League.
  • The combined death tolls of the Battles of Gotham and Metropolis no longer equal the victims of the Undertaking, as that rendered Oliver's actions (and by extension the plot) largely pointless.
  • The Huntsman, Brick, The Count, and Alexi survive the Slabside Arc, allowing them to be used again in the future.
• "Get Out of Jail Free" Card:
  • After Laurel is arrested as an accomplice to Green Arrow, Oliver turns himself in and secures full immunity for her.
  • After Oliver stops Malcolm Merlyn, Waller approaches the President for a pardon, under the guise that the world will need heroes like him. With public approval, the President not only pardons Oliver of current crimes, but gives him permission to continue being Green Arrow without fear of further arrest.
• The Ghost:
  • Black Manta is mentioned during the Amnesty Bay arc as the one responsible for waking up the Trench, but makes no actual appearance in the story proper.
  • Sinestro is mentioned as one of the possible threats that prevented the Green Lantern Corps from aiding in the Crisis and other incidents in the previous timeline during the Tell-All, but like Manta, doesn't appear at all in the actual story.
• Give Geeks a Chance: Sara Lance has slept with the hunky Oliver Queen, pretty boy Dick Grayson, and Dark Action Girl Nyssa al Ghul. The guy she falls in love with, though? Sweet, geeky Barry Allen.
• Going for the Big Scoop: After learning about an imminent threat to Amnesty Bay, does Susan Williams retreat like any other sane person? Nope. She has her cameraman set up his camera and does a special bulletin report right in front of where the action will take place.
• Good Is Not Soft:
  • Oliver is actually considerably nicer than his show counterpart, but he's still willing to kill. In combat situations he's quite ruthless, and will not hesitate to use lethal force if necessary.
  • Laurel is one of the sweetest and kindest people around. She's also completely willing to beat someone down; and while she avoids killing people, she can and will break bones with her Canary Cry. In the prison riot, she actually makes a point to break most of the Huntsman's bones after subduing him with her fists.
  • This applies to the entire Justice League. While they are all genuinely heroic individuals, they aren't afraid to get their hands dirty to protect the world.
• Good Old Ways: Dark, villainous version. Al-Owal can't stand how the League is changing, but is too loyal to just defect. So he elects to deliberately sabotage the Children's second attempt to snatch Tommy in a public way so he can be executed by Ra's instead.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • While Malcolm Merlyn and Tempest are, naturally, the primary threats of the first story, Oliver also has to deal with them while not tipping off the other future threats, among them Slade, H.I.V.E., and the Ninth Circle. Most of all, he goes through great pains not to piss off the League of Assassins, because unlike the other organizations, they're integral to the balance of the world, so he can't do anything to get rid of them this time around.
  • Black Manta was this for the Amnesty Bay arc and the Atlantis arc. His decision to wake up and agitate the Trench into attacking Amnesty Bay forced Arthur to reveal Atlantis to the world ahead of his original time table. The event also caused the awakening of Laurel's Sonic Scream.
  • The true Greater-Scope Villain for the entire series is the Anti-Monitor, as Oliver was sent back in time to prepare the world for him and the coming Crisis.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Thea grows jealous of Emiko after learning about her, due to the latter being related to the father she wants to be related to, and because Emiko is working side-by-side with Oliver at QC. It doesn't help that Emiko accepted Oliver's offer to take on the Queen name.
• Groin Attack:
  • Malcolm hits Oliver in the balls during their final duel.
  • Laurel kicks the Huntsman and Gitter in the balls during the prison riot. With steel-toed boots.
• Godzilla Threshold: After Oliver is exposed, Sara, who had been going back-and-forth on becoming a vigilante because of her past as an assassin, immediately commits to becoming the Canary as soon as possible to spare the city the wrath of Ra's al Ghul.
• Hated by All: The Merlyn name, post-Rise. To wit:
  • Malcolm, on top of being dead, is now synonymous with terrorism and general supervillainy and will no doubt go down as one of the worst monsters in history. At one point, someone uses him as a unit of scale for how bad a situation is.
  • Tommy, for exposing Oliver and indirectly (if unknowingly) aiding Malcolm in his plan against the Glades. To the point that one of his goals when he returns to Starling as an agent of the League is to rehabilitate his reputation, because he can't fulfill his role otherwise.
  • Subverted with Thea. While she is something of the pariah by the more prejudiced members of the public, once the initial anger faded she became an object of pity, with most (rightly) regarding her as one of the main victims of Malcolm's actions. In fact, one of the reasons why Tommy's reputation took a sharp downturn while he was gone from Starling is because it's believed he ditched Thea and left her "high and dry".
• Holiday Ceasefire: Oliver gives Pollard an extra day to decide whether or not to come clean about Tempest because the following day is supposed to be Thanksgiving. She's confused as to why, as she's apparently completely alone and thus didn't realize that it was Thanksgiving.
• Home Sweet Home: Diana returns to Themyscira in Children, where she reunites with her mother and meets her younger sister Donna for the first time.
• Human Alien: Superman, as always, which is lampshaded by Sara.
• Human Subspecies: The Trench, like in the DCEU. They're one of the three surviving kingdoms of the original seven of Atlantis, but their surroundings have caused them devolve into Animalistic Abominations. Arthur laments their fate, calling it a shame, as they used to be an 'extraordinary people'.
• Human Traffickers:
  • One of the members of Tempest, Wilhelmina Hollinger, gathered up members of Starling's homeless population and sold them to the highest bidder.
  • Division X, the division of the government that struck a deal with the Dominators, gathers up such slave stock and hands them over to keep Earth safe away from invasion. Unsurprisingly, they were one of Hollinger's top customers.
• Humans Are Flawed, but Good: During her meeting with Themyscira's Senate, Diana does her best to sell this idea to them in hopes of convincing them to reintegrate Themyscira with Man's World.
• Humble Hero: At heart, Oliver. He dislikes the way normal people look at him in awe because he ultimately views himself as no better than them.
• I Did What I Had to Do: The excuse Agent Smith uses for his dealings with the Dominators. The members of the JL refuse to believe it.
• I Hate Past Me: It's subtly implied that the reason Sara is so put off and belligerent towards Thea's bratty behavior is because it reminds her of how she was at that age and beyond before the Gambit. Considering where that behavior led, one can't really blame Sara for resenting it.
• I Have Your Wife:
  • The police go after Laurel to bring in Oliver. It works...except Oliver was prepared for their attempt to kill him during the transport and promptly escapes for real.
  • In the climax of the story, Malcolm kidnaps and holds hostage Laurel, Thea, Tommy, Samantha, and William to draw Oliver into a confrontation. Oliver, with Sara's help, manages to get them out while he takes down Malcolm.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: As many benefits as it gives him, if there's anything Oliver resents about Green Arrow it's that denies Laurel and him the chance to be a normal couple.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Oliver, after realizing that by choosing Laurel over Felicity, he's wiped Mia out of existence.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
  • After seeing that Oliver and Laurel are still deeply in love with each other, Sara gracefully steps aside and encourage their relationship. She eventually moves on, finding a Second Love in Barry.
  • Iris similarly wishes the best for Barry and Sara after Barry confirms to her that he no longer has feelings for her.
• I Will Wait for You: Laurel promises to wait for Oliver after he's exposed as the Green Arrow and forced to go into hiding. While they're briefly reunited after the police go after her and Oliver turns himself in to save her, this trope comes in full force after he escapes during an attempt on his life while he's being transported to Slabside.
• I Work Alone: Batman. As always. Oliver does hope he will eventually come around, though.
• I'm a Humanitarian: The Huntsman is a cannibal.
• Improbable Weapon User:
  • After Tommy outs Oliver as the Green Arrow, an enraged Sara muses that if he walked into her hospital room right now, she'd kill him with the television remote.
  • After The Huntsman attacks Laurel, Sara takes her role as bodyguard even more seriously and is left in a state of rage, leading to this conversation:
  Laurel: You don’t need to worry about me. I’m back home, and Sara’s here, and still pissed about the Huntsman going after me. Someone tries to break in and finish the job, she’s going to kill them with a paperclip.
  Sara: No, with my pinky.
• In Prison with the Rogues: When Laurel is arrested as an accomplice to Green Arrow, Commissioner Nudocerdo threatens to have her sent to Slabside, which is full of people she and Oliver put away.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Laurel, Roy, and Thea all still end up becoming vigilantes/vigilantes-in-training.
  • Oliver is still publicly exposed as the Green Arrow. In fact, he's been exposed years early, and this time, not of his own choice.
  • The Undertaking is still exposed and Malcolm's name is still shamed.
  • The Dark Archer takes hostages and makes a pubic challenge over the television to lure Oliver into their first fight. Different hostages, at a different time, and a very different outcome, but still.
  • Moira and Malcolm still die.
  • Samantha and William are still forced into hiding with new names.
  • Rene Ramirez is still inspired by Oliver to take up vigilantism and eventually joins Oliver's team.
  • No matter what happens, Oliver can never save Tommy. Either from death, or from making a Face–Heel Turn.
  • Team Flash still ends up forming in Central City, with Barry, Cisco, and Caitlin. The only differences are that the team forms a year early, without Thawne as a mentor and with Sara as an extra teammate.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Malcolm is not planning on killing people, he's going to kill criminals.
  • Felicity does not mope. She gets sad, maybe a little depressed, but she does not mope.
• Internal Reveal:
  • All of Starling learns about Oliver being the Green Arrow, and later about Malcolm and Tempest, by the end of the first story.
  • Quentin learns specifics about the League of Assassins after Malcolm mouths off about them on live TV and Sara elaborates on them.
  • Laurel finds out about the true circumstances of Oliver's future knowledge after he gets a visit from Talia.
  • Oliver eventually tells Sara, Thea, and Barry about the truth about his coming back in time as well. He also tells Barry that he killed Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawne, the reason why, and the truth about Thawne in general.
  • Oliver also tells Sara that Slade Wilson is still alive.
  • Oliver tells Superman and Wonder Woman the truth about his coming back in time when he first recruits them into the Justice League. At the League's first formal meeting, he not only tells the other members this, but fills them in on the all known coming threats (Slade, Ra's, Darhk, Zoom, the Dominators, Earth-X, etc.)
  • The entire world learns about the specifics of Oliver's five years away from home and his first couple of months back thanks to Lois' biography of him.
  • After returning to Themyscira, Diana reveals to the Amazons all that she's been up to since she left home, including her joining the Justice League.
• Intrepid Reporter:
  • Lois Lane and Clark Kent, natch.
  • Susan Williams of Channel 52 News. Her cameraman, not so much.
• Is This Thing Still On?: While he didn't live long enough to find out, Malcolm blurted out the existence of the League of Assassins to the entire world during his last confrontation with Oliver due to Henry Fyff hijacking the live feed and keeping it running after Malcolm tried to turn it off. This has massive consequences for everyone that extend well beyond his death.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Batman gives this advice to Green Arrow after they save Laurel from the Bratva together. Green Arrow, who already tried that and learned how ineffective that was through experience, wisely disregards it.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Felicity. She did a lot of morally ambiguous and outright selfish things in the original timeline, but plotting to murder Laurel after Oliver leaves her for the latter chucks any idea of moral ambiguity out the window and places her solidly into villain territory.
• Just Like Robin Hood: Oliver, even more so after he's exposed. For further comparisons, Laurel is often called his "Maid Marion" and Police Commissioner Nudocerdo his "Sheriff of Nottingham". Henry even asks if he's going to start wearing a green cap with a feather in it. Oliver really hates the comparison, but eventually admits that its true.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Apparently, Robert's will indicated that he'd like for Kazumi and Emiko to be provided for. After he died, Moira went to the Adachis' home, and point-blank told them she would not let that happen and would make sure they would live in squalor for the rest of their lives.
  • After kidnapping her, Malcolm makes a point to tell Thea that he was the one to kill Walter, sink the Gambit (killing Robert), and sent the Huntsman after Laurel. This serves no purpose except to horrify her.
  • While all of Quentin's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Laurel was cruel, two points in particular stand out. The first is calling her "a freak" (realizing her worst fears), the second is dismissing her as the Justice League's "pet female representation".
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: The Huntsman murdering Felicity would normally be a horrifying moment, but given that she was planning on murdering Laurel, it has elements of this. When he learns of it, Oliver doesn't even feel inclined to avenge her, only keeps an eye out for the Huntsman because of the threat he poses to everyone else.
• Kidnapped by the Call: Thea is forced to become a vigilante so she won't have to join the League of Assassins instead.
• Killed Off for Real: Thus far, Fake Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawne, Felicity Smoak, Moira Queen, Walter Steele, Joanna de la Vega, Malcolm Merlyn, Ricardo Diaz, Vanch, and all Kryptonians following Zod.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Shinging Knight. Also a literal example.
• Know When to Fold 'Em/Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • After Laurel's superpowers make their debut on national television, several small time criminals decide to get hell out of Starling City.
  • Dante and the Ninth Circle also quit the job from the Time Masters to kill the survivors of the Undertaking, now that Oliver can conceivably call upon aid from Atlantis after Aquaman joins his Justice League.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Felicity hid the true cause of Laurel's death in the original timeline from Oliver, and then plotted to kill Laurel (who didn't even know her yet in this timeline) after Oliver left her for his First Love. She's then promptly killed by the Huntsman, and after Oliver learns about what she was up to, he loses all interest in avenging her.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When its nearly May, Oliver concludes that Zod will be making his move soon "because everything always happened in May."
• Legendary in the Sequel: Oliver solidifies himself as a Living Legend and folk hero in the public conscious after defeating Malcolm and bringing down "the greatest conspiracy of the modern age". By the time of the second story, everyone knows who he is.
• Legion of Doom: In response to a growing team of superpowered heroes, villains have begun to band together. So far Slade Wilson and the Calculator have joined Damien Darhk and H.I.V.E., and chapters set in the future imply Prometheus will be working with them as well.
• Les Collaborateurs: Discussed. After learning of Earth-X, Batman points out the Jewish Felicity simply should not have existed in a world ruled by the Nazis. He guesses the only way she could still be born is if her parents and grandparents both collaborated with the Nazis. He admits however, that he does not know if this applied to her as well.
• Lesser of Two Evils: Oliver was fully aware of the fact that by letting Tommy be taken by the League, he was essentially creating his own villain in his now-former best friend. However, the only other option was challenging the League and either getting everyone, including himself, killed, or destroying the League and hastening Crisis. So Oliver chose this trope and let Tommy be taken instead.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Kazumi Adachi comes to realize that Oliver is a far better man than his father ever was after learning he's the Green Arrow.
• Literal Metaphor/Not Hyperbole:
  • The Huntsman literally gets a piece of Laurel.
  • Oliver recalls Earth-X Tommy saying "that ‘he’ would crush my skull beneath his boot" and believed that Tommy was being literal. As such, he concludes the "Grand Fuhrer" of that world was Superman, who really could do that.
• Living Lie Detector: Diana and her Lasso of Truth, which is frequently used by others to prove that they are telling the truth. Oliver had her use it on him when he finally confessed everything about the Time Travel to the Justice League, and Diana had Donna use it on her when to confirm the information to Themyscira's Senate when pleading her case to have them eventually rejoin Man's World.
• Love Triangle:
  • As this is Season One, the original Oliver/Laurel/Tommy triangle is touched upon, though Oliver/Laurel quickly wins out.
  • Laurel/Oliver/Felicity gets more focus, but in the end, Oliver chooses Laurel and Felicity is killed off.
  • Laurel/Oliver/Sara is also touched upon, but never gets off the ground after Sara realizes Oliver loves Laurel more and gracefully concedes.
• Loving a Shadow:
  • Tommy's affection for Laurel gradually degrades into this the longer he spends with the League. Even Ra's al Ghul can't help but note that Tommy doesn't love her so much as lust after her.
  • After Felicity dies and Oliver learns that she was plotting to murder Laurel, Oliver gradually comes to the realization that he never loved the real Felicity, but rather the good person he wanted her to be. Later commentary suggests that none of Team Arrow knew and cared for the real Felicity either.
  • Quentin realizes this was his relationship with Dinah after he learns that she refused to return to Starling, even after Sara came back, in the previous timeline. As he puts it, she never really wanted their family at all.
  Quentin: I really was in love with a mirage.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: William learns that Oliver is his father at the end of the first story.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Tempest planned to execute Oliver during his transport to Slabside and frame it as necessary because Oliver tried to "escape". Unfortunately, they underestimated him, because Oliver already predicted this would happen, and this leads to him actually escaping.
• Make Sure He's Dead: Why Oliver decapitates Malcolm after fatally having him Impaled with Extreme Prejudice.
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: The Council of Time Masters covet their ability to manipulate the timeline so much that after Oliver's foiling of the Undertaking renders the timeline they chose not only unfeasible but also completely redundant in favor of a better one, they try to correct it by having the Ninth Circle kill all the people who originally died in the Undertaking to get the original timeline they chose back.
• The Man Behind the Man:
  • It turns out this is the reason why Talia trained Oliver. To create an heir for her father that she could have some influence over, as she knew Ra's would never allow either her nor Nyssa to succeed him. The author also states that this is the real reason she opposed Oliver in Season Five — because he gave up that power and eventually helped end the League instead of fulfilling his purpose to her.
  • As noted above in Adaptational Villainy, in the original timeline, Emiko hired Cayden James to sabotage Laurel's life support, which was the real cause of her death. Oliver is completely unaware of this, and with Felicity dead, he'll likely never find out.
• Man Bites Man: Perhaps unsurprisingly for a cannibal, the Huntsman bites off a chunk of Laurel's hand during their fight, and chews and swallows it in front of her.
• Master-Apprentice Chain:
  • Ra's al Ghul → Talia al Ghul → Yao Fei → Oliver Queen → Laurel Lance, Roy Harper, Thea Queen.
  • Ra's al Ghul → Talia al Ghul → Oliver Queen → Laurel Lance, Roy Harper, Thea Queen.
  • Ra's al Ghul → Sara Lance, Oliver Queen (original timeline) → Laurel Lance, Roy Harper, Thea Queen
  • Ra's al Ghul → Bruce Wayne → Dick Grayson, Jason Todd
  • Slade Wilson → Oliver Queen → Laurel Lance, Roy Harper, Thea Queen
• Meaningful Rename: Starling City officially becomes Star City after the Birds of Prey, with help from Team Arrow and the Bat-Family, take down Frank Bertinelli and organized crime in the city for good.
• The Mentor: Oliver and Sara become this again for Roy. They also take on Laurel as a student (who also gets another mentor in Ted Grant), and Thea as well.
• Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: In the interim between the Mob War arc in Rise and the Slabside arc in Age, Anatoli has not only continued running the Bratva as Pakhan but has also taken over the prison entirely. This allows him to lay a trap for Oliver and Laurel when they visit the prison with Lois for Anatoli's interview with her.
• Mirror Character: Oliver and Bruce, natch. They've both got a huge Guilt Complex, for one. For example, Bruce blames himself for Ursa's attack on Gotham because his decision to wait until the last possible second to decide on joining the JL meant that he couldn't convene them to Gotham fast enough to minimize the damages. Oliver, meanwhile, blames himself for Barry creating Flashpoint, thinking that Barry thought it was okay because he was following Oliver's example. Both ignore the fact that those were the actions of other people that would've happened independent of anything they did.
• Mission Control: Henry Fyff. Felicity does take over for him for a little bit after she's sent back, but when she's killed by the Huntsman, Oliver brings back Fyff for good.
• Mob War: An entire arc is centered around one between the Bertinellis and the Bratva. After the Bertinellis bring in men from the Falcones in Gotham, Batman gets involved. It ends with the Bertinellis on top after the Bratva kidnap Laurel, causing Oliver to take down Anatoli and ship him off to Slabside.
• Moral Myopia: Anatoli kills one of his underlings for shooting Sara and seemingly killing her, because Sara saved his life and he wanted her kept alive. He completely ignores the fact that Sara only got shot trying to protect her sister, an innocent whose only involvement in this whole mess is being Oliver's girlfriend, whose kidnapping Anatoli ordered because he wanted Oliver (another person who saved his life) to come to heel.
• Mugging the Monster: The Children of the Glades plot to kidnap Tommy as their next ritual murder, completely unaware that Tommy is now a trained assassin. Tommy promptly slaughters the four-man snatch team with his bare hands.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Felicity plots to murder Laurel after Oliver leaves her for his First Love. She's killed by the Huntsman before any of those plans are fully-formed, however.
• My Beloved Smother: Moira. After Oliver shows understandable anger and panic over Laurel's first kidnapping, her immediate reaction is to have him forcibly sent to a psychiatric facility. While she does later admit that this was an overreaction, the fact that this was the first thing to come to mind does not speak well of her.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • Oliver is haunted by many things from the original timeline, but one of the major ones is Laurel's death. More specifically, he hates that she died "believing a lie", namely that he was not in love with her any more.
  • Another person's fate that haunts him is Tommy, perhaps even more so than Laurel. Unlike her, Oliver can never seem to save Tommy, be it from death or villainy or both.
  • In the second story, Laurel is deeply haunted by Joanna's death. Not only was Joanna her close friend, but she was killed by mercenaries who came specifically to collect Laurel.
• My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours: Oliver uses the League's obsession with blood to take Thea on as his student and spare her from having to join like Tommy.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits:
  • Subverted and Played for Laughs in regards to Oliver. He's perfectly fine with Roy and Thea dating, mostly because Roy is the only boyfriend of Thea's that he's ever liked. Of course, Roy doesn't know that, leaving him flailing when he spontaneously kisses Thea and Oliver very much amused at their attempts to hide it from him.
  • A very dark variant with Tommy; he hates the idea of Roy dating Thea, seeing someone from the Glades as 'beneath' him and unworthy of his sister.

N-S

• The Needs of the Many: The mentality Oliver ascribes to, and what he hopes to inspire into future generations of heroes. It doesn't come without a cost, however, as it nearly destroys his relationship with Thea and does, in fact, completely destroy his friendship with Tommy. The only reason it didn't ruin his relationship with Laurel and friendship with Sara is because both understand where he's coming from, with the former in particular believing in this mentality just as strongly if not stronger than he does.
• Nepotism:
  • The Board of Directors at Queen Consolidated prefers to have someone of the Queen family as the CEO, regardless of whether or not they're suitable for the job. This is why Thea was disqualified as a possible candidate after her parentage was revealed, and why Oliver immediately made Emiko his heir after publicly revealing her to be a Queen. Not only was she qualified for the job, she was literally the only option left.
  • How Quentin got stuck with the job of being Oliver's official police liaison. And why no one else will be getting the job as long as he's alive and not indisposed, like when he was in rehab.
  • Discussed. Oliver is reluctant to invite Laurel into the Justice League, not because he doesn't think she's capable but because he's unquestionably biased in her favor. It takes Aquaman, an unbiased perspective, to convince him otherwise, especially after the public display of her powers.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Oliver screws himself over by revealing himself to Tommy, and assuming he'd keep the secret like he did in the previous timeline.
  • In turn, Tommy screws up by revealing Oliver, as that ends with everyone he cares about in permanent danger, his sister forced into vigilantism, and he himself forced into the League of Assassins.
  • Helena's attempt to start a mob war between the Bertinelli Family and the Bratva in hopes of taking down her father for good instead causes a series of events that creates an Evil Power Vacuum that allows him to take over all of Starling's criminal underground. Helena later lampshades this with an undercurrent of bitterness.
  • While Clark's decision to reveal his weaknesses to the press helped calm the public's apprehensiveness about Superman, it allowed Division X to implement proper measures to block him out and prevent him from finding their gathering facilities, allowing their activities to go unimpeded for months.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Malcolm having Felicity killed to prevent Tempest's exposure not only ensures that the conspiracy is exposed, but also brings in the FBI.
  • The Huntsman eating a piece of Laurel right in front of her presses her Rage Breaking Point, giving her all she needs to beat him down.
• Nice to the Waiter: Oliver is courteous to his drivers and waiters.
  • The Graysons by contrast aren't, and don't even bother remembering the faces of their staff. This allows the Children to have their members pose as the staff and murder them rather easily.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: As Word of God himself points out, this is the great tragedy of Tommy's character arc in the first story. While exposing Oliver was a foolish decision, it was ultimately done out of love and concern for his best friend. And what does Tommy get in return? The scorn of the woman he loved, his family name shamed, and loss of whatever innocence he had left, culminating in his best friend effectively (if reluctantly) abandoning him to be taken and forced to join the League of Assassins, to become the one thing he's fought all his life against: his father.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • In Children of the Glades, assassin Creote gives a stomach-churning one to Helena. To the point that she actually begs for mercy.
  • The following chapter, Laurel repays the favor, and then blasts him with the Canary Cry, shattering his bones...including his spine.
• No Mere Windmill: Tempest. A great majority of the city are skeptical of the idea of such an organization which such wide-spanning influence exists, despite the Green Arrow's claims. Tommy even goes as far to use it as proof that Oliver is mentally ill. However, a select few such as Oliver, Laurel, and Sara, along with the readers, know that Tempest is very much a real threat and worse than the Green Arrow has been implying so far. When Tempest is finally exposed, the world does not take it well.
• No Sympathy: Sara, who quickly grows sour on Thea and Tommy for their insistence that Oliver quit being the Green Arrow. Part of that is because her own experiences have made her well aware of how inconsequential their problems are compared to the city's and to most of the world, for that matter, especially those in the Glades, and part of it is because she knows that without Oliver's crusade, Ra's will destroy Starling.
• Not Helping Your Case: Oliver is too busy with the Mob War to to pursue Thea when she runs away, and doesn't even attend the custody hearing. This does him no favors with Thea or Tommy, and the judge is distinctly unimpressed. Which was exactly the point, as he intended for Tommy to gain custody from the beginning.
• Not His Sled: Since Mick Rory never joined the Legends, the identity of Chronos is revealed to someone else; in this case, Barry Allen.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Tommy exposes Oliver as the Green Arrow because he believes that Oliver is mentally ill and needs help. Not only is that not true, but he Didn't Think This Through — regardless of whether he was right or not, Green Arrow made a great number of enemies already and Tommy's actions have put many of Oliver's loved ones, not to mention Oliver himself, in danger, including Laurel and Thea, the people he wanted to protect from Oliver's crusade.
• Not So Above It All: Oliver. Despite claiming to dislike the "cutesy nicknames" given to elements of his work, he calls his second base "The Quiver", escaped prisoners from Fort Rozz and the Phantom Zone "Zoners", and the division of Queen Consolidated that will be supplying him as "Q-Core" (after James Bond). Emiko eventually concludes he's a huge dork.
• "Not So Different" Remark: As Oliver notes, Sebastian Blood and Tommy are both very classist (they're also both murderers). Their classism is opposite of each other (Tommy hates the lower classes, Sebastian hates the rich) but present in both.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore:
  • Oliver's exposure as the Green Arrow and subsequent vindication at the end of the first story changes everything. He's pardoned and charged with creating a group of government-sanctioned heroes (all but stated to be the future Justice League), the League of Assassins has become a publicly-known, if mysterious, entity, and Clark Kent finally makes his debut as Superman.
  • Partway through the second story, Atlantis is officially revealed to the world, turning everything on its head again, especially for several villains who realize that if they want to go against the Justice League, they need to change strategies to accommodate for a technologically-advanced army from the sea potentially coming to aid them.
  • Diana creates a worldwide crisis of faith after publicly revealing herself to be a demigoddess and confirming that the Greek Pantheon once existed. As the modern world is almost exclusively monotheistic, it creates a surge in paganism and polytheistic worship while, at the same time, antagonizing the more extreme religious sects.
  • At the end of Age, the Battle of Metropolis upends everything again, with the world seeing, for the first time, the full strength of the powerhouses of the Justice League.
• Obliviously Evil: When his Mask of Sanity is in place anyway, Malcolm sincerely believes himself a good man acting in the best interest of his city, and sees the Undertaking as the ultimate demonstration of Pay Evil unto Evil. He's even stopped all attempts at gentrifying/improving the Glades to keep it a crime ridden slum, and wants both Rebecca's clinic and C.N.R.I. closed to ensure there are no good people in the Glades when he destroys it.
• Off with His Head!: Oliver decapitates Malcolm with his own sword to Make Sure He's Dead.
• Official Couple:
  • Oliver/Laurel, who reconcile after some soul-searching and talking, including Laurel learning that Oliver is the Green Arrow. Oliver even goes as far as to leave Felicity, his wife in the previous timeline, for her.
  • Clark/Lois, as always. By the time they appear in the story, they've been a couple for years.
  • Thanks to Oliver reawakening Kendra's memories earlier, Carter/Kendra is a thing from the onset, with the two immediately getting married the moment they were reunited.
  • In Age, thanks to a copious amount of For Want Of A Nail, another one forms in Barry/Sara.
• Offing the Offspring: Despite Thea being his daughter, Malcolm is ultimately willing to kill her simply because she is Oliver's sister.
• One Degree of Separation: Henshaw's replacement for head of the D.E.O. turns out to be General Sam Lane, the father of Clark's long-time lover Lois.
• One-Man Army:
  • Green Arrow fought off a mob war by himself.
  • Every single member of the Justice League.
  • Shiva cites this as the reason why Laurel should accept her tutelage. Right now, Laurel can fight off ten men by herself. After Shiva is done with her, she'll be able to fight off a hundred. And, as Children show, that is a very accurate assessment of Laurel's new fighting ability.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: When Slade believes that the Trenchers have killed Oliver, he's outraged that he was denied his vengeance.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Oliver is essentially this for the Queens, if you take out Walter. That honestly says more about his family than it does him.
  • Tommy thinks he's this in his immediate social circle, but truth be told he's more Locked Out of the Loop and has Selective Obliviousness.
• Open Secret: It's heavily implied that the locals of Amnesty Bay are perfectly aware that Aquaman exists and that Arthur Curry is in fact him. They just don't talk about it to outsiders.
• Original Character:
  • The Huntsman aka Hadrian Wolcott, a cannibalistic Serial Killer who is a well-known staple in many of the author's stories.
  • FBI Agent Darius Trimble, who becomes Green Arrow's unofficial liaison during the investigation into Tempest.
• Parental Favoritism: Malcolm clearly prefers Tommy over Thea, though the exact reasons aren't clear. That doesn't stop him from treating Thea well, however, if only just to screw with Oliver.
  • Quentin and Dinah, especially Dinah, prefer Sara over Laurel, something Laurel in uncomfortably aware of. This blows up their relationship with both of their daughters, and while Quetin is able to recognize it and make amends, Dinah refuses to do so.
• Parents as People:
  • Walter Steele was the one who told Robert about the loophole that allowed the latter to cut out the severance packages of QC's steel factory workers. That being said, Robert is the one who implemented it and Walter admits he disapproved and they had an argument about it after the fact.
  • Robert and Moira themselves. While Oliver accepts the fact that both his parents did love Thea and him, he also recognizes that neither of them were good people and have left all of their children a lot of baggage they need to work through.
  • Dinah honestly does love Laurel, but she favored Sara because Sara was so much like her during her younger years. This is why she let Sara go on the Gambit with Oliver, and why she couldn't be there for Laurel after it sank — she couldn't face Laurel while carrying that guilt. While Laurel accepts that her mother is genuinely repentant, she can't find it in herself to forgive Dinah, and chooses to cut ties with her.
  • Quentin genuinely loves his daughters unconditionally but is a Recovered Addict prone to going Off the Wagon with a nasty temper and a narrow worldview. Eventually, his behavior forces Oliver to send him to rehab halfway through Age so he can get help; this allows him to clean up his act, at which point he personifies Good Parents.
• Patchwork Fic: While the story primarily takes place in the Arrowverse, the Adaptation Expansion borrows from various DC adaptations. To wit:
  • Superman is based off the Arrowverse version, but has a lot of influences from Smallville and Krypton.
  • Zod is visually based off the Smallville incarnation but his personality, general motivations, and strategic mind come from the comics, Krypton and the DCEU incarnation.
  • Batman is a former member of the League of Assassins, like in The Dark Knight Trilogy. His past with Talia and his Rogues Gallery, however, come from the comics.
  • His proteges Dick Grayson and Jason Todd are based off their Titans (2018) incarnations, though Dick lifts his personality from the comics.
  • Barbara Gordon is Oracle, so she's primarily based on her comics incarnation, particularly her time with the Birds of Prey.
  • Wonder Woman's backstory and overall personality is lifted from her DCEU film.
  • Aquaman is visually based off his Smallville incarnation but his personality and backstory come from the comics, primarily the New 52 version, and his mythos is partially based on the DCEU incarnation.
  • Hal Jordan is also based off his comics incarnation, with influences from both Pre- and Post-Flashpoint.
• Peggy Sue: Eventually named dropped by Barry.
• Picky People Eater: The Huntsman prefers eating muscular women, as they taster better than those with less developed muscles.
• Platonic Life-Partners:
  • After their one night stand, Sara Lance and Dick Grayson settled into this.
  • Sara is also this with Oliver, after they decided they were Better as Friends.
  • Barry and Iris, as of Children. Barry even admits that what he currently feels for Sara is stronger than whatever feelings he had for Iris.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Tommy is an elitist, and due to the League quite sexist.
  • The Huntsman only kills women, and targets thosespecifically ones who "rock the boat" or "push beyond their natural place" making him very sexist. He also never kills a woman over 35, possibly indicating ageism as well.
  • The Children of the Glades Eat the Rich plans and tendencies show them to be classist.
• Poor Communication Kills: Discussed and defied. Oliver and Laurel come to realize that part of why they fell apart as a couple is because they never properly talked about the insecurities they had about their relationship and that led to them keeping secrets from each other as a result. When they decide they want to get back together, they get around to talking for real, with Oliver explaining the pregnancy scare he had with Samantha while Laurel tells him about how she's been sleeping with Tommy on-and-off for the last couple of years.
• Promotion to Parent: Oliver effectively becomes Thea's guardian after the deaths of Moira and Walter. Thanks to his devotion to being the Green Arrow, however, he views himself to be a poor guardian, and after Thea runs away, he arranges things so Tommy is given custody of her instead. Unfortunately, Tommy's naïveté proves him to be an even worse guardian than Oliver, and after he's taken to the League, Oliver re-assumes guardianship over her permanently.
• Price on Their Head: Malcolm puts an underground bounty on Oliver's head after his exposure.
• Psycho for Hire: The Huntsman occasionally acts as an assassin. Given that he's a cannibalistic Serial Killer, he certainly fits the 'psycho' part.
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • After the Huntsman attacks her and takes a literal bite out of her, Laurel finally snaps, beats the crap out of him, and declares she's done being a Damsel in Distress.
  • Slade Wilson gets increasingly angry as he learns of the powers Oliver's allies have (as they'll prevent him from getting his revenge); but seeing the full might of the Justice League during the Battle of Metropolis causes him to snap completely, and slaughter everyone in the room with him.
• Rank Up: Laurel becomes the new director of CNRI after Eric Gitter's corruption is exposed.
• Rape as Backstory: Sara was gang-raped by the survivors of the Amazo before Nyssa saved her, according to the note she leaves Oliver after being released from the League. Oliver promptly passes the note to Laurel, who shows it to Quentin and Dinah.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil:
  • As in canon, Sara has a particular hatred of rapists.
  • It extends to Laurel as well. As Black Canary, she typically offers criminals the chance to surrender or flee when she encounters them. Rapists (or attempted rapists) are offered so such chance.
  • In Children, Tommy is shown having BDSM sex with a woman who resembles Laurel...and imagines that he's raping Laurel herself.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Oliver gives one to Lyla Michaels on how (in the original timeline) she knew about the impending Crisis, but never took a single step to prepare for it or prevent it, and the fact that Waller also knows and is taking steps to stop it just highlights the issue. He concludes it saying the reason she didn't is that she's not a leader, but a follower/lapdog.
  • Quentin gives Laurel a particularly cruel one after she returns from Amnesty Bay, criticizing her not forgiving her mother, resuming a relationship with Oliver, letting Sara leave, and becoming a vigilante. She and later Oliver retaliate with a very on point one, calling him out for his alcoholism and his poor treatment of Laurel after everything she's done for him over the last five years.
• Redeeming Replacement:
  • Laurel to her old boss Eric Gitter, after the latter is exposed for corruption and arrested.
  • Oliver is quite solidly this compared to his father as CEO of Queen Consolidated, as Kazumi Adachi, Robert's former lover, can attest to.
• Relationship Upgrade: Barry and Sara get together in Age, after the Huntsman's Trial.
• Replacement Goldfish:
  • A benevolent, downplayed example. It's revealed in Children that after Diana left Themyscira, Hippolyta began to suffer Empty Nest syndrome and sought to resolve it by creating another daughter: Donna. However, by the time Diana returns to Themyscira, it's quite clear that Hippolyta has come to love Donna as her own person, as opposed to a replacement for Diana.
  • In Children, Tommy seduces the real estate agent that helped him secure the building he is going to use for his new club because she had a superficial likeness to Laurel. And when they have sex, he imagines her as Laurel. He later murders her without a second thought after they've had sex after she sees him slaughter Blood's snatch team with his bare hands.
    • In fact, each time he's seen with a woman she bears a physical likeness to Laurel. Laurel and Oliver both notice, and are appropriately creeped out.
• Ret-Gone:
  • Oliver realizes that by not pursuing a relationship with Felicity, he's erasing their daughter from existence.
  • After Oliver kills Eobard Thawne, he's prevented the original timeline from ever happening, effectively erasing the original versions of everyone.
• The Reveal: Barry is Chronos.
• Revenge Before Reason: Instead of fleeing Starling with his children as soon as possible, Malcolm decides to stick around a little longer after he's exposed so he can get revenge on Oliver by executing all of his loved ones. In the process, not only does he get killed, but he also accidentally exposes the League of Assassins thanks to Henry Fyff jacking the feed and keeping it running, effectively screwing over his family anyway.
• The Runaway: Thea runs off to Metropolis to track down more of her mother's family after Moira and Walter die and Oliver refuses to give up being the Green Arrow for her.
• Running Gag: Laurel keeps fighting things that want to eat her. Okay, so it isn't a funny running gag, but still. She even complains about it.
• San Dimas Time:
  • Apparently the way time travel works (which is consistent with how it was portrayed in Legends of Tomorrow). Once Oliver starts making changes to the timeline, Barry and the Legends are able to notice it in the future. Novu warns Oliver that they will try to undo the work he has started, and to prevent it he must kill Eobard Thawne. Even deciding to do so is not enough to erase the old timeline, Oliver needs to actually do it within 24 hours. Once he does, the old timeline is gone completely.
  • In Age, the Legends are forced to touch down in 2046 Star City to repair the Waverider. Rip informs everyone that since they haven't yet returned to 2013, Oliver and Laurel's (and by extension everyone else's) last memory of them will be their leaving on the Waverider.
  • The Legends watch news feed or read news articles about major events in the present (the battle of Amnesty Bay, the trial of the Huntsman, the interview of Wonder Woman) as they happen, as opposed to whenever they feel like it.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • As the Green Arrow gradually begins to meddle and dismantle his plans, Malcolm starts losing whatever Mask of Sanity he had on and descends into gradual instability. After he's exposed as the leader of Tempest, he full-on snaps, kidnaps Laurel, Thea, Samantha, and William, and draws Oliver into a public confrontation which sees him mouthing off about the League of Assassins on live television.
  • Felicity loses her goddamn mind after Oliver leaves her for Laurel.
  • Slade was never the sanest person after the Mirakuru took its hold on him, but he completely flips his lid after watching Green Lantern form a Humongous Mecha on the news and realizing how absolutely screwed his revenge is.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!:
  • A benign example. Laurel has no problems using the fact that her boyfriend is the Green Arrow to threaten private investigators into doing their jobs at their actual rates instead of letting them hike it up for a profit.
  • Tommy planned to do this after exposing Oliver to get his best friend into a psychiatric facility. What he completely failed to realize is that those "connections" are the same people Oliver has been targeting as the Green Arrow.
• Secret-Keeper: Thus far, the people who know about Oliver's Time Travel include Clark, Laurel, Sara, and Thea. It gradually expands in Age to include Barry and the rest of the Justice League. In Children, the list now includes Emiko, Quentin, and the rest of Team Arrow as well.
• Secret Test of Character: In order to meet Aquaman, Oliver has to undergo one of these by defeating a group of whalers without his gear.
• Selective Obliviousness:
  • When wondering where he went wrong in raising Tommy, Malcolm ignores the fact that he actually had little do with Tommy's upbringing outside of bailing him out occasionally, which is probably why Tommy turned out the way he did.
  • Tommy is so convinced that Oliver's crusade is driven by his self-righteousness and "mental illness" that he willingly blinds himself to the blatant corruption of the city and doesn't even entertain the possibility that Oliver might be right about Tempest.
• Self-Deprecation: "The Meta Chapter" in Age.
  Barry: A Peggy Sue. It’s where a fictional character in a series of books, movies, or TV shows gets the chance to go back to the start of the series with all of their accumulated knowledge and change things for the better. Its mostly used by fanfiction writers to correct mistakes in canon and make the characters they love the most overpowered as hell.
  Oliver: (sigh) My life isn’t a TV show, Barry, and if it was, it’d be in the horror genre, not sci-fi.
• Serial Killer: The Huntsman, an Original Character made by the author. He targets young women (usually athletic, curvy blondes), kills them, and then cannibalizes on their remains. He also doubles as a Professional Killer, with one of his contracts being Felicity Smoak.
• Sex Slave: Unless you are an al Ghul or have the protection of one, this is the fate of all women in the League of Assassins. The sole exception to this was Lady Shiva, because she was too dangerous for any of the men to manage holding her down, let alone actually doing the deed.
• Shadow Archetype: Malcolm to Oliver. Oliver even states that Malcolm is everything he could be if he ever fell.
• Ship Sinking:
  • Oliver/Felicity dies brutally in this fic. First, Oliver leaves Felicity (who had just traveled back from the original timeline to reunite with him) for Laurel, then Felicity is killed by the Huntsman, preventing any chance of them getting back together and/or having Mia, and then Oliver finds out about her plans to kill Laurel, causing him to lose any sympathy he had for her and ending any plans he might have had to bring her back.
  • Oliver/Sara ends much more gracefully, with Sara asking Oliver about the pact they made on the Amazo to see if they could make a relationship work if they made it out alive, and Oliver admitting he hadn't even thought about it. Hearing this, Sara accepts that Oliver loves Laurel more and becomes supportive of their relationship.
  • Tommy/Laurel officially ended when Laurel chose to get back together with Oliver. If that weren't enough, any chances Tommy possibly had of winning back Laurel effectively die the moment he exposes Oliver as the Green Arrow to the public, screwing over everyone.
  • Barry/Iris ends due to the conflict between Barry and the Wests over his decision to move to Starling and his support for Oliver. The final nail in the coffin was a vicious argument between Barry and Iris over the situation, culminating in Barry wondering, out loud, why he ever fell in love with her. This statement prompted Iris to slap him, put their friendship on ice and killing whatever feelings he had for her. When Iris and him meet again after Barry moves back to Central City, Barry reaffirms this to Iris, due to having fallen in love with Sara in the interim.
  • Quentin/Dinah didn't have much of a chance of happening again to begin with after Laurel permanently broke ties with the latter, but it ends for good after Quentin gets out of rehab and confronts Dinah over her treatment of their daughters and she refuses to accept any wrongdoing on her end. Hearing that, he asks her to no longer use 'Lance' as her last name and gives up on getting back together with her altogether. This decision is only reaffirmed after Oliver confirms to Quentin that Dinah refused to return to Starling even after Sara came back home in the previous timeline. Upon learning that, Quentin finally accepts that the Dinah he was in love with was a "mirage".
• Ship Tease:
  • Sara has a flirtatious exchange with Dick Grayson when they first join the Legends. Later chapters reveal that they had a one night stand, but have now settled into an amicable friendship.
  • Barry and Sara have an increasing amount of this after the visit to Starling City in 2046 and The Reveal that Barry is Chronos, with Sara solidly refusing to give up on him. As of Chapter 36 of Age, they are officially dating.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Oliver solidly supports Roy/Thea, even though they don't get along at all in this timeline. Mostly because Roy was the only boyfriend of Thea's that Oliver didn't hate on principle. One of the reasons why he made them work together at Lance Floral was in hopes of bringing them closer together. Ultimately, it worked.
  • He also becomes one for Barry/Sara after he learns about their Relationship Upgrade. To the point that his "dream world" via the Black Mercy has them as a couple too.
• Shout-Out:
  • The POTUS in this story is Alan Trumbull, from Angel Has Fallen.
  • The Vice-President is named Robert Kinsey.
  • Susan Williams' on-site cameraman is named Kenny McCormick.
  • A blogger and her associate that Oliver meets at Amnesty Bay are named Diana Allers and John Shepard. They turn out to be A.R.G.U.S. assets searching for Aquaman.
    • Later, Oliver talks with an African-American named David Anderson.
    • And the Justice League's contact in the Defense Intelligence Agency is Steven Hackett.
  • The ship that takes Oliver out to look for Aquaman is called the Orca.
    • The shark that Oliver encounters on that mission is dubbed "Bruce" (the name given to the animatronic shark in the same movie) by Oliver.
  • While searching Amnesty Bay, Oliver briefly muses he doesn't want to encounter "walking talking sharks".
  • In an intentional case, the division of Queen Consolidated specifically purposed to provide Oliver's team with armor and supplies is called Q-Core, an obvious reference to Q.
  • The Huntsman's various victims include women named Charlotte Grayson and Daphne Blake.
  • Dick Grayson dubs the Council of Time Masters as "knock-off Time Lords".
  • During his final face-off with Oliver, Anatoli declares that "one shall stand, one shall fall".
  • Two members of the Children's snatch team is Daniel Whitehall and Alexander Harris.
    • One of the Children's victims is named Cordelia Chase.
  • Iris' date in Chapter 17 of Children is named Derek Venturi. This is a clever and amusing Mythology Gag and Take That! when you remember what Life with Derek's notorious Fan-Preferred Couple was.
  • Trumbull's new VP is Fitzgerald Grant and Oliver's mayoral campaign manager is Olivia Pope.
• Sibling Team:
  • Oliver and Emiko become this during Oliver's time as CEO of QC and Emiko's brief tenure as Red Arrow.
  • Laurel and Sara during the Battle of Metropolis.
• Sickening Sweethearts: Sara claims Oliver and Laurel are this. Oliver denies it, but it's very much true.
• Sins of Our Fathers:
  • Malcolm Merlyn goes after William and even his daughter Thea for being related to Oliver after Oliver exposes his crimes. In the aftermath, Oliver is forced to send William and Samantha into hiding with new names so they can't ever be used against him again.
  • The League of Assassins, as always, believes strongly in blood debts. After Malcolm stupidly mouths about them on a live feed, they try to induct Tommy and Thea into their ranks. While Thea is saved by Oliver making her his own student, Tommy is not so lucky.
  • Thea becomes something of a pariah in Age after Malcolm's crimes are exposed. It certainly isn't helping her attitude.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man:
  • What causes Laurel's anger to diminish and renews her interest in Oliver is seeing how much he's changed and finally become the man she thought he was, especially after learning he's the Green Arrow.
  • Sara tells Barry that many men simply see her as a sex object. One of the things that makes him attractive to her is that he treats her like a person, and has never been afraid of her.
• Smug Snake:
  • Malcolm is supremely arrogant and confident that he can manipulate the situation to his own ends, despite nothing having gone according to his plan to so far.
  • Isabel Rochev eventually appears, and among other things believes she could quite easily seduce Oliver away from Laurel as "Who would want a woman like that when they could have a woman like Isabel?"
• Smug Super:
  • Ursa is so convinced of Kryptonian superiority that she doesn't instantly kill the Justice League when she encounters them, and actually stands still and lets Oliver shoot her with a kryptonite arrow. This gets her killed, but in her defense she had no idea what kryptonite was. This doesn't excuse giving Oliver a free shot though.
  • Done even worse, on a mass scale, during the Battle of Metroplois. Despite knowing that the Justice League is armed with kryptonite weapons, Zod's followers still attack on the ground and get slaughtered. Afterward, the League members talk about how Zod's people could have simply hovered above the ground and vaporized buildings with their heat vision, but were too arrogant to acknowledge the danger the League genuinely was.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse:
  • Sara used to take a lot of pride in her looks, before she started getting raped for said looks.
  • This is flat-out the main reason why Diana chooses not to have a Secret Identity — her Semi-Divine-beauty makes it impossible for her to blend in like Clark can.
• So Proud of You: After learning about all her daughter's heroics, Hippolyta squeeze's Diana's hand and tells her that she has "done Antiope's tiara proud".
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Green Arrow is this for the Undertaking, thanks to publicly alluding to Tempest in a speech on live TV and bringing hope to the Glades. It isn't long before Malcolm makes taking him down top priority.
  • Tommy is this for the heroes. His refusal to listen to Oliver and general naivete eventually leads to him exposing Oliver, which sends everything to hell and makes things infinitely harder for his friends.
  • Barry and the Legends from the original timeline would have been this, had Oliver not assassinated Eobard Thawne to erase them completely from existence thanks to a warning from the Monitor.
  • The Council of Time Masters in the sequel, due to Oliver becoming a spanner for their plans in the present.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • The author made it clear he has no plans to kill off Earth-1 Laurel.
  • Since the Undertaking was foiled, over five hundred people (including Tommy) were spared that died in the show. This becomes an important plot point in the sequel, because the survival of those people have completely rendered the timeline chosen by the Time Masters unfeasible.
  • Aware of his actions, Oliver is able to stop Garfield Lynns early this time saving a number of his victims, including Danny de la Vega. :Which is fortunate, due to Joanna's death.
• Spotting the Thread: When Oliver escapes police custody by kneecapping the driver, the driver's guard, and the guards in the back of the truck with the driver's sidearm, Quentin immediately realizes they tried to execute Oliver.
• Stable Time Loop: Chronos blasts a hole into the Waverider that sends both Barry and Sara flying into the temporal zone. While Sara joins the League like she did in canon, it's revealed that Barry is Chronos, making the attack a case of this.
• Starter Villain: The Huntsman serves as this for Laurel's journey to becoming the Black Canary, being the first major antagonist she takes down on her own before she even becomes a vigilante.
• Stations of the Canon: Defied. Oliver actively tries to avoid the worst parts of canon due to his long-term goals, and it causes drastic changes. Once he's exposed as the Green Arrow, everything goes straight to hell and there's no longer any attempt to keep to canon at all.
• Stay in the Kitchen: The League of Assassins is heavily patriarchal, with women treated as property and liable to sanctioned sexual assault. It's for that reason that there are a small number of women in the League.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land:
  • As much as Sara loves her family and friends, everything she's been through has caused her to realize that Starling is no longer her home, which is why she's so reluctant to join Oliver in his crusade. She only relents after Oliver is exposed, because if something does happen to Oliver, she'll be the only person able to keep the city from being outright destroyed by Ra's al Ghul. In the end, after the Legends complete their mission, she ends up moving to Central City to be with Barry.
  • Hal Jordan has been off-world for several years, ever since he was recruited by the Green Lantern Corps. It takes him over a week to re-acclimate to living on Earth, and he needs Oliver's help to create a backstory for where he's been during all these years.
  • Diana shows hints of this when she returns to Themyscira. She notes that she's far more used to wearing modern clothing and has to remind herself to change into a more appropriate outfit for her meeting with the Senate.
• Stunned Silence:
  • Many, many people when Laurel awakens her Canary Cry to save Oliver.
  • The Themysciran Senate is in complete awe when Diana shows them a picture of the Moon Landing.
• Succession Crisis: Atlantis has a minor one. While Arthur already has an heir in his adopted son Garth, most Atlanteans prefer he had a blood heir as well. Luckily, Arthur and Mera are still young enough to have children.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Sara often drifts between the bubbly but sweet, airheaded girl she was before the Gambit and the traumatized, cold-blooded assassin she became after it. It puts off everyone, even her father, except for Oliver (who knows what she's been through and has a similar personality himself) and Laurel (who also knows her past and had warning from Oliver before the sisters met again).
• Super Team:
  • One of the concurring plots of the second story is the formation of the Justice League, which is being helmed by Oliver. As of Chapter 41, the League is complete with himself, Batman, Superman, Green Lantern (as a liaison to the Green Lantern Corps), Laurel (as the Black Canary), Aquaman, and Wonder Woman.
  • The Legends are also formed, consisting of Rip Hunter, Sara Lance, Dick Grayson, Nate Heywood, Carter and Kendra Hall, Mari McCabe, and Barry Allen.
  • Children sees the gradual formation of the Birds of Prey, with Laurel teaming up with Helena to take on Frank Bertinelli and Barbara Gordon temporarily moving to Starling to get away from Bruce for a bit. Barbara, as Oracle, later gets the former two out of a sticky spot, forming the team completely.
• Surprise Incest: Defied. Oliver recognizes that with Laurel and him getting back together, Tommy might entertain himself with Thea's crush on him when she turns eighteen. Obviously, he wants to nip that relationship in the bud as soon as possible, but is hobbled by Moira's suicide. He succeeds by revealing Thea's true parentage at Tommy's custody hearing for her.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Even though the woman was planning on murdering her, Laurel can't help but pity Felicity after learning she was a victim of the Huntsman. No one else does.

T-Z

• Take That!:
  • A tenement building in the Glades, currently held by the Albanians and being used as a distribution center for drugs like Vertigo, is called the Guggenheim Projects — named after the widely hated Arrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim.
  • The headmaster of Berlanti Preparatory, a sleazy figure that Oliver greatly dislikes, is named after disgraced Arrowverse showrunner Andrew Kreisberg.
  • Mericle Plaza, the place where Malcolm dumps Walter's body, is also named after another hated showrunner: Wendy Mericle, who was Guggenheim's partner for Arrow Seasons Three to Six.
  • Felicity's anticlimactic death, which Oliver doesn't even feel like avenging. Sara also later refers to her as "some obsessed fangirl who fell for Ollie hard"; and Laurel dubs her a "delusional psychopath". Her Insufferable Genius tendencies are also derided.
  • Oliver's "Reason You Suck" Speech to Lyla over her (lack of) actions leading up to the Crisis. He even muses "that felt good" afterward, which was definitely a little meta.
  • Barry and the Legends from the original timeline are referred to as self-righteous hypocrites when it comes to time travel, as they frequently change the timeline but are opposed to anyone else doing so.
  • Laurel is outraged and horrified to learn of her death in the original timeline, and refuses to let herself die just to "send a message".
  • Oliver's team in Season 5 dubbing him a Serial Killer just like Prometheus after learning about the List is dismissed as nonsense by Laurel and Sara. They point out that Oliver only kills people guilty of heinous crimes whereas Prometheus kills innocent people. When Oliver laments that even Diggle and Felicity (who were a part of the List takedowns and should have been condemned as well, but somehow weren't) didn't defend him, Laurel says “I think the less said about John Diggle and Felicity Smoak, the better.”
  • Oliver's terrible treatment of Laurel in the show is a source of deep shame for him, and he continuously resolves to never treat her that way again.
  • When telling the Justice League of the original timeline, Oliver refers to making Malcolm Merlyn Ra's al Ghul as "one of the most foolish choices I have ever made".
  • Dinah Drake is not only Evil All Along, but not actually named Dinah Drake. Oliver muses she probably chose that name to prey on Oliver's feelings for Laurel, something she quickly denounces as "sick".
• Teach Me How To Fight:
  • Thea asks Oliver to teach her how to fight after she's kidnapped by China White and learns he's the Green Arrow when he rescues her. It's cut short, however, when Moira and Walter die and she becomes disillusioned with his vigilantism. It resumes after Thea is effectively press-ganged into becoming Oliver's student by the League.
  • After seeing Oliver destroying himself trying to contain the Mob War in Starling, Laurel asks Sara to teach her how to fight so she can one day help him. Sara initially refuses, due to fearing that she might hurt Laurel, but after they're attacked by the Bratva and Sara is shot, she relents, recognizing that Laurel needs the training to protect herself.
• Tears of Joy:
  • Emiko at the press conference where she's finally publicly acknowledged as a Queen. She doesn't actually sheds them, however, until Oliver tells her in private that he truly considers her family.
  • Diana, when she lays eyes on Themyscira for the first time in almost a century. Similarly, her mother Hippolyta when she's reunited with her eldest daughter.
• Tempting Fate:
  • In Chapter 44, Laurel worries that Malcolm will have a team of armed mercenaries attack the C.N.R.I. charity gala, only for Oliver to assure her that he's not so overt. In Chapter 57, Malcolm having completely snapped, orders a team of mercenaries to attack C.N.R.I. directly to abduct Laurel. And one of them shoots Joanna almost immediately in the process, eventually causing her death.
  • After learning that Samantha and William have been given the new names of Sandra and Connor Hawke, Oliver muses on how those were the same names as the wife and child of Ben Turner in the previous timeline. He then dismisses it as a coincidence, thoroughly convinced that time "couldn't be that cruel".
  • In Chapter 25 of Age, 2046!Oliver chastises Barry for leaving the Waverider, and tells him to be safe and return to the ship. Sara points out they're in Queen Mansion, does he really think anything will happen? Immediately after she says this, Barry is caught by ninja who places a sword against his throat.
  Sara: Seriously?
  • After realizing Barry is a Weirdness Magnet, Sara makes a Declaration of Protection towards him. Immediately afterward, Chronos blasts a hole into the Waverider and sends them both flying into the temporal zone.
  • After her Traumatic Superpower Awakening, Laurel worries that her father will think she's a freak, only for Oliver to assure her Quentin would never think that. When she returns to Starling City, a drunken and bitter Quentin does in fact call her a freak.
• Thanksgiving Episode:
  • Chapter 50 of Rise, which looks into how each of the main cast is celebrating Thanksgiving after Oliver is exposed.
  • Children see a three-part episode of Thanksgiving with Oliver and family, including Thea, the Lances, the Adachis, and their various vigilante comrades. The dinner goes well —until Frank Bertinelli shows up to make threats. The last part also shows glimpses of how other members of the Justice League are celebrating Thanksgiving that year.
• Thicker Than Water:
  • Ultimately the reason why Oliver reaches out to Emiko — despite all the things she did to him in the previous timeline, she is still family in the end. It helps that this Emiko hasn't actually done any of those things yet, and probably never will.
  • Subverted with Malcolm and Thea. His love for her does not outweigh his hatred of Oliver. Because Thea is Oliver's sister, he ends up trying to kill her to get back at his enemy.
  • Oliver invokes this to save Thea from joining the League. Unfortunately, however, he cannot do the same for Tommy since they aren't biologically related, as much as he loves Tommy like a brother.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill:
  • Subverted with Oliver. While he isn't as...lethal as Season One Oliver was, he does recognize that there are certain situations where killing is the only option.
  • Played straight, as always, with Bruce Wayne. He compensates for this by being way more brutal than Oliver, to the point that even Laurel notices the difference and disapproves of it.
  • Oliver himself actually deconstructs the idea. In a debate over the Green Arrow's methods, he comments that once the Joker escaped from Arkham Asylum again, Batman should have accepted that he cannot be held and will never stop killing, and killed him in response. By not killing him, he bears partial responsibility for all subsequent victims.
• The Time Traveller's Dilemma:
  • Oliver struggles with this constantly. Most notably with his decision to leave Felicity for Laurel. He knows that in doing so he's effectively written Mia out of existence, and reacts by going on a bender.
  • In Age, the Legends are forced to touch down in 2046 Star City. Sara learns that Laurel and Oliver both have Artificial Limbs, and at least some people they care about have been killed. She wants to learn as much as can to prevent it, but Laurel is unwilling to tell her much as "time fights back, and when it fights back, it plays dirty"; and she is unwilling to risk what she currently has (a husband and a daughter) to change anything.
• Threatening Shark:
  • A shark is seen around the cave of whalers that Oliver has to deal with to prove himself to Aquaman. It eats several of the whalers that get knocked into the water, but never attacks Oliver, because it's being directed by Aquaman.
  • When fighting the Trenchers, Aquaman again summons several sharks. They messily devour any Trencher they can.
• Three Lines, Some Waiting:
  • The Age of Heroes:
    • The A-Plot is Oliver and the formation of the Justice League, and their conflict with Zod and his army of Phantom Zone escapees.
    • The B-Plot is the adventures of the Legends and their attempts to sabotage the efforts of the Council of Time Masters to manipulate time using the Oculus and restore the original future where Vandal Savage rules the world.
    • The C-Plot is the machinations of various future villains, particularly Slade, the League of Assassins, and H.I.V.E., as they prepare for their own future confrontations with the Justice League.
  • Children of the Glades (First Half):
    • The A-Plot is the rise of the Birds of Prey, with Laurel and Helena taking on Frank Bertinelli and the Bertinelli crime family, the last major bastion of organized crime in Starling City.
    • The B-Plot is Oliver and Quentin forming their partnership and investigating recent cult killings in Starling.
    • The C-Plot is the daily lives of the rest of the Justice League; in particularly, Diana's return to Themyscira, meeting her sister Donna, and trying to convince the Amazons to reintegrate with Man's World.
• Too Dumb to Live: Damien Darhk lampshades the sheer stupidity of Malcolm's last actions, which include trying to get revenge on Oliver instead of fleeing Starling after he's exposed, and then ranting about the League of Assassins on live television. If Oliver hadn't killed him, Ra's certainly would have, and he wouldn't have been nearly as nice about it.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • Sara, at least from the perspectives of the people who knew her before the Gambit. She's still the same bubbly, caring girl at heart, but the trauma she endured has made her a much harder person who is more easily irritated by immature behavior.
  • Tommy. Nanda Parbat has done absolutely no favors for his personality.
• Tough Love: Oliver's style of parenting towards Thea. Unfortunately, due to her general immaturity, Thea doesn't think he's doing it out of love but because he genuinely hates her.
• Training from Hell:
  • The League of Assassins trains its recruits through the use of torture in order to toughen them up. Sara went through that training, as did Oliver in the previous timeline. Which is why Oliver is well aware his friendship with Tommy is effectively over the moment he let his best friend be taken by the League.
  • Deconstructed in Laurel's case. While the League does train through torture, even they recognize there are limits as to how far they can go in one training session. When Laurel begins to over-train out of her fear of dying young like she did in the previous timeline, Sara has to stop her and talk some sense into her.
• Trauma Conga Line:
  • The first story is horrible to Thea. In two short months, she's kidnapped and held ransom by China White, her mother commits suicide, her stepfather is murdered by her actual father, her brother effectively abandons her and cuts her off, she finds out that her real father is Malcolm Merlyn, her other brother exposes the first brother as the resident vigilante, sending him on the run, she's kidnapped again and held hostage to bring the first brother in, and then she finds out that her biological dad is responsible for almost every terrible thing that's happened to her family and the city as a whole. Then said biological father takes her hostage too, intending to murder her in front of her first brother as revenge. As annoying as Sara and the readers might find her Emo Teen Bratty Teenage Daughter act to be, it's not hard to see why she's like that, and it's really saying something that her life only begins looking up when she gets press-ganged into vigilantism.
  • The first story isn't kind to Laurel either. While she reunites and reconciles with Oliver and Sara and even gets back together with the former, those are probably the only real good things that happen to her in the story. She's kidnapped at least three times, each with the intent of killing her, has her sacred view of the law completely destroyed, sees her sister get shot in front of her and her boyfriend exposed as Green Arrow and forced on the run, and gets attacked by a cannibalistic serial killer. Later when armed gunmen storm her place of business, her close friend Joanna is fatally shot right in front of her. While she keeps it together better than Thea, she's still suffering from a great number of nightmares that Oliver and Sara have to soothe her down from.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Laurel awakens her Canary Cry after watching Oliver seemingly die against Trenchers.
• The Unapologetic: What ultimately destroys Laurel's relationship with her mother is that Dinah will not apologize over letting Sara get on the Gambit, or her other instances of favoritism. Sara and Quentin also eventually end their relationships with her for the same reason.
• Underestimating Badassery: For all his cunning and charisma, Sebastian Blood has never really been in a real fight and it shows. After the snatch team fails to capture Tommy and disappears, cluing Blood in on the possibility of Tommy being trained like his father, he thinks it takes someone of Oliver's caliber to fight off four untrained men with some guns. While Tommy has been trained by Ra's al Ghul, he is nowhere near Oliver's level yet. The reality is that every trained vigilante in the city (including other newbies like Thea and Roy) could've done what he did, and probably a lot less lethally too.
• Undying Loyalty: After being put in charge of C.N.R.I. Laurel has completely won over her coworkers/employees, to the extent that they all stand behind her when Oliver is outed as the Green Arrow, and the police come to arrest her as an accomplice.
• Unequal Pairing: It turns out Nyssa/Sara was even more of this than it was in the show. Nyssa was the only woman in the League exempt from being a Sex Slave, and used that to protect Sara as well. Regardless of whatever Sara felt for Nyssa, she was well aware of what would happen if Nyssa had ever gotten bored with her, and that puts a very dark slant to their relationship.
• Unexpected Successor: Subverted. Emiko thinks she's this as Oliver's prospective successor for CEO of QC, but as Oliver points out, she's actually the only possible heir he has left. He has no children other than William, who is six and can't be a part of his life anyway due to his duties as the Green Arrow, and his sister Thea hasn't even graduated high school yet and was recently revealed to not be Robert's biological daughter, but instead the daughter of Malcolm Merlyn, a (now-deceased) domestic terrorist. Even if Oliver made Thea his heir, the Board would never accept her. That leaves Emiko, who is Robert's daughter and a fully-grown adult with a college education, including training in business. She's the most logical choice to be Oliver's successor in case something were to happen to him while he was being Green Arrow.
• Unholy Matrimony: Damien and Ruve Darhk, as in canon.
• Unknown Rival: Felicity plots to murder Laurel so she can get back with Oliver. Laurel meanwhile doesn't even seem to know that Felicity exists. Eventually Played for Drama, Laurel is horrified at the idea that someone she's never met could hate her enough to plot her death, and begins to have nightmares over it.
• Unperson:
  • It's revealed in Age that by 2266, Dinah has become this to Oliver and Laurel's descendants, with it being considered bad luck in the Queen family to name a child after her. Sara is originally perplexed by this, and it isn't until she returns to her own time that she finds out why.
  • In Children, it's revealed that Joe refused to even speak Barry's name after the disastrous Christmas the Allens and the Wests had together in the Time Skip between Rise and Age. They only manage to reconcile towards the end of the first half of Children.
• Urban Legends: The 'Aquaman' of Amnesty Bay. As the residents of Amnesty Bay and the audience know, however, he's very much a real figure.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Malcolm loses it after he's exposed, having Laurel and Tommy kidnapped in broad daylight and (accidentally) ranting about the League of Assassins on live television.
  • Frank Bertinelli, after having most of his resources and operations destroyed by Laurel and his daughter, is crazy enough to visit Oliver and Laurel's apartment during Thanksgiving just to make threats.
• Villainous Legacy: Malcolm Merlyn. Even though he dies at the end of Rise, his impact is still keenly felt in Age. Along with his canonical actions of triggering the start of Oliver and Sara's journeys to become heroes, his constant targeting of Laurel through intermediaries before and after Oliver is exposed are eventually what give her the necessary drive to start her journey to becoming Black Canary earlier. His exposure of the League during his final and public confrontation with Oliver eventually force Thea and Tommy into vigilantism and the League, respectively. Finally, the sheer scope of his conspiracy shocks the public and the government so much that President Trumbull decides to charge Oliver with creating a successor team to the JSA to combat such threats in the future — the Justice League.
• Villain with Good Publicity:
  • Malcolm, since the first story is a retelling of Season One. Even Tommy is convinced he's a good man despite their distant relationship since Rebecca's death. This all ends when Oliver exposes his crimes towards the end of the first story.
  • Lex Luthor, as always. Not even Oliver is aware of his true personality and motives, due to never meeting Lex on either Earth-1 or Earth-38 and Kara's unwillingness to bring him up in polite conversation.
• Villainous Lineage:
  • Subverted with Oliver. Many people note that Oliver is a far better person than either of his parents ever were.
  • Ra's al Ghul muses that if Tommy proves to be disloyal and vengeful like his father, then they'll have to kill not just him, but Thea as well, just in case the 'sickness' is in the bloodline.
  • It's implied that Felicity's moral failings originated from her father, who is not a good person in the least.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: In 2046, Oliver and Batman have settled into this sort of dynamic, with Laurel saying they have a "love-hate thing going".
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • Oliver and Tommy's friendship takes a real beating in the first story, especially after Tommy exposes Oliver as the Green Arrow. However, what puts a permanent end to their friendship is Oliver allowing the League of Assassins to take Tommy to be trained and inducted as a member of their ranks. The sheer betrayal in Tommy's eyes as he's dragged away cements it.
  • Oliver and Anatoli considered each other brothers prior to the start of the story. Oliver's unwillingness to hand Helena over to the Bratva for "mob justice" (read: being gang raped and murdered) leads them being on opposite sides of the Mob War. After Anatoli has Laurel kidnapped, which leads to Sara getting shot in the process, their friendship is gone forever. Anatoli later masterminds a prison riot in an attempt to kill Oliver, Laurel, and Lois Lane, only to be killed by Oliver who concludes he's Beyond Redemption.
  • Oliver admits that in the original timeline, he and Laurel were barely friends (or might not have been friends at all) by the time of her death. He attributes this largely to her consistently calling for Malcolm's death, and his continued refusal to kill him (or let anyone else do so).
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Gal:
  • Emiko, as in canon. One of the reasons why she comes to latch on to Oliver so quickly (much like she did with Dante and the Ninth Circle) is because he gave her the love and recognition she so desperately wanted from their father, first by making her the head of QC's Applied Sciences Division, then by offering her the option of taking the Queen name, and finally by making her his heir as CEO of the company.
  • Thea as well. The underlying conflict in her turbulent relationship with Oliver is her desperate desire for his approval. Unfortunately, the person she's been emulating since his disappearance is the spoiled playboy she saw him as, and not the good, but hardened man he came back as. This causes a lot of friction between them that doesn't seem to be really going away any time soon.
  • Laurel laments that neither of her parents are proud of her after she becomes the Black Canary. Oliver does his best to console her, but also points out she needs to life her own life and stop trying to prove herself to them.
• Wham Episode:
  • Age, Chapters 19-21: The Battle of Amnesty Bay, aka the debut of the Justice League. Not only are the League filmed fighting off the Trench, but Laurel awakens her Canary Cry on live television. After its over, both Aquaman and Black Canary are invited into the Justice League, and both decide to accept.
  • Age, Chapter 27: Barry is Chronos.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Tommy is furious with Oliver for effectively abandoning Thea to be the Green Arrow and run QC.
• Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: Asked and answered with QC resources. After Oliver is made a public and government-sanctioned hero, he takes full advantage of this by creating a subdivision of Applied Sciences called Q-Core, which is directly in charge of outfitting him and his fellow heroes, both in Starling and on the Justice League. Jax Briggs is its head, and two of his employees are Cisco Ramon and Curtis Holt.
• Witness Protection: Samantha and William are forced to change identities and go into hiding after William is publicly exposed as Oliver's son by Malcolm.
• World's Best Warrior: Sandra Wu-San, aka Lady Shiva, a top-level assassin and almost indisputably the world's greatest martial artist, who appears in the last chapter of Age to take Laurel under her wing.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: Diana, who is so gorgeous that Even the Girls Want Her. Oliver even tells her she is this at one point (in the most platonic and objective way possible).
  • Queen Guinevere was this in her day. Shining Knight says that he thought a woman surpassing her beauty was impossible...until he saw Diana.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Zigzagged. Many things have been changed, and somethings found a way to happen regardless. It is cautioned that "time fights back", and it fights back dirty. In particular, Oliver prevented the Undertaking, but the combined casualties of the battles of Gotham and Metropolis equal the number of people who originally died in the Undertaking exactly. Oliver notices this, and is worried about what it means.
• You Remind Me of X: Multiple people note the similarities between Laurel and Rebecca Merlyn, who both worked to provide aid (legal and medical respectively) to the people of the Glades. The similarities are made more clear when during Laurel's first kidnapping, where none of the people try to help despite all she's done for them, just like no one helped Rebecca Merlyn when she was bleeding out. Oliver even worries that losing Laurel will turn him into Malcolm.