Film / The Matrix Reloaded

All spoilers for The Matrix will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

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"I have absolutely no idea how you are able to do some of the things you do, but I believe there's a reason for that as well."

"What if I am right? What if the prophecy is true? What if tomorrow the war could be over? Isn't that worth fighting for? Isn't that worth dying for?"

— Morpheus

The Matrix Reloaded is the sequel to The Matrix and the second film in the cyberpunk franchise of the same name, written and directed by The Wachowskis and released on May 15, 2003.

The war between the machines and the human resistance begins to heat up as Neo (Keanu Reeves) and his allies search for a series of wayward programs that can lead them to the source code of the Matrix and, hopefully, bring the war to an end. As Neo learns the true history of the Matrix, he starts to doubt himself — and the plan to save humanity. The effort to stop the machines grows harder when Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) returns as an anomaly, working on his own terms (and with new, virus-like abilities).

The film also stars Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus, Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity, Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe and Gloria Foster as the Oracle.

Reloaded is a unique installment in that it has far more action than its predecessor (which only really got busy in its third act), more of an epic feel to it (thanks in part to a larger budget and in-depth Worldbuilding), and a more deconstructionist approach to its storytelling according to the Wachowskis.

Followed by The Matrix Revolutions, which came out later that same year. Both Reloaded and Revolutions were filmed back-to-back. See also The Animatrix, an anthology of anime shorts released the same year as Reloaded and Revolutions, acting as a companion piece that fleshes out The 'Verse of the Matrix, and the tie-in video game Enter the Matrix.

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The Matrix Reloaded provides examples of:

Tropes #-F

• Abandon Ship: The crew of the Nebuchadnezzar is forced to flee when they are spotted by the Sentinels, who then promptly destroy the ship with a bomb.
• Aesoptinum: Neo gets a visit to the machines that keep Zion alive, suggesting that the machines and humans might need each other more than they think.
• All-Loving Hero: Invoked by the Machines in the Backstory. Previous Ones were created to feel broad love for Humanity at large, which would make them go straight to the Source just before the iteration of Zion they knew was destroyed. Neo, however, feels more strongly about Trinity than about Humanity.

• Answers to the Name of God: The former Trope Namer.
  Bane: Oh, God!
  Smith: "Smith" will suffice.
• Apologetic Attacker: An example where the person being attacked isn't a villain occurs when Seraph apologizes to Neo before attacking.
• Arc Number: 101 (Neo's apartment number in the first film) makes several appearances, including the address of the Merovingian's club and the number of the highway.
• Arc Words: "Only/still human" reoccurs as characters either mockingly or thankfully (re)affirm that Neo retains his humanity despite his godlike status. The Agents at the beginning of the film, Counselor Hamann, The Merovingian and finally The Architect all repeat slight rewordings of that sentence whilst talking to Neo.
• Arms and Armor Theme Naming: The crew aboard the Mjolnir all have names that have to do with guns: Roland, Maggie (could refer to Magnum or Magazine), AK, Colt, and Mauser. Mjolnir itself, of course, is named after the weapon of Thor from Norse Mythology, and its English translation Hammer is also related to firearms.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: "I just thought I should say oh shit, look out behind you!"
• Audible Sharpness: Plenty of examples: the Twins' straight razors, Morpheus' katana, the ENTIRE fight between Neo and the Merovingian's goons.
• Awful Truth: An even more staggering truth than the previous movie's: the prophecy is a lie. Neo is simply the latest in the line of "Ones", of which there have been five before and were given a choice upon stumbling on the Source: either reject the offer put forward by the Architect and witness the Matrix crash catastrophically, killing every human still connected to it, while the Machines lay waste to what remains in Zion to eradicate humanity entirely or travel to the Source, whereby twenty three men and women of the One's choosing will be used to repopulate Zion while what currently lays within is destroyed and the One is killed to reclaim the Prime Program. The rebellion Neo and the rest of Zion have been fighting has been nothing but the latest in a recurring cycle that the Machines allow in an effort to create the illusion not just inside the Matrix but outside as well that humanity still holds their destiny in their own hands.
• Badass Biker: Trinity when she steals a motorcycle during the highway chase scene to escape through the opposite lane.
• Beard of Evil:
  • At the end, Neo and his Evil Counterpart are lying unconscious. How do we know that Bane is evil? Well, aside from the fact that we saw him get possessed by the Big Bad and the rumours that he sabotaged his teammates, the most compelling piece of evidence of his evil is probably the facial hair. Or the "duh duh DUUUHH?!" music that plays when the camera pans over to him.
  • The Architect sports a natty full beard.
• Big Damn Heroes: Neo coming to save Morpheus and the Keymaker at the end of the freeway sequence, i.e.: the longest action sequence in the whole trilogy.
• Big "YES!": Link when Neo rescues Morpheus and the Keymaker from the truck collision.
• Blatant Lies: When Smith comes to the captains' meeting looking for Neo, the door guard says he's "never heard of him." Smith doesn't believe the guard for a second, and gives him a package for Neo, which the guard hands over to Neo after he arrives moments later.
• Bottomless Magazines: Two notable aversions during the freeway chase. First, the UMP-wielding Twin runs out of ammo and decides to try the more up-close-and-personal method of getting the Keymaker (although he fires a lot of rounds with no onscreen reloading — far more than his weapon would ever allow on a single magazine). Later, Agent Thompson is very clearly shown having to reload his Desert Eagle.
• Butt-Monkey: The Merovingian goon in white. Throughout the entire fight, he is slapped aside by Neo with much more ease than the others, pinned him to the wall and knocked out with a single punch, and kills one of his own squad before being dispatched.
• Calling Your Bathroom Breaks: The Merovingian, exemplifying his Sophisticated as Hell nature and, as he notes, another example of causality.
• Can't You Read the Sign?: A "No Brawling" sign is briefly visible in the background during the Burly Brawl sequence.
• Captain Obvious: Link when Neo gets transported to a different location in the Matrix when trying to escape the Merovingian's stronghold:
  [Neo opens door to find he's in a mountain range and calls Link for his location]
  Link: You're not gonna believe this, you're all the way up in the mountains.
  Neo: Really?
• Car Chase Shoot-Out: When Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus try to get The Merovingian to hand over the Keymaker, he refuses though Persephone allows them to rescue him. While Neo holds off the forces in the Chateau, Morpheus and Trinity grab the Keymaker and flee onto the highway with The Merovingian's top henchmen, The Twins, in pursuit. This ends up attracting the attention of Agents in the process who join in as well. Not only is it a gunfight but a few close range martial arts and sword battles as well.
• Cluster F-Bomb: The Merovingian's speech is epic: "Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d’enculé de ta mère." An extremely rough translation for this is "Goddamn shit-fucking, filthy assholed motherfucker."
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Agent Jackson refers to Neo as the anomaly, which the Architect explains it all to Neo.
  • The Merovingian spoke of Neo's predecessors twice, which is expanded upon by the Architect at the end.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • The Keymaker apparently thought out every possible contingency and had keys for them all.
  • Who carries silver bullets in their gun? Only the crazy-prepared.
• Creepy Twins: The Twins, with their white clothes, deathly pale skin and hair, and (of course) that thing about phasing through matter while looking monstrous.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Neo deals these out like candy due to having become a Physical God in the Matrix. There's exactly one scene in the entire movie where someone manages to deal him an injury, and it's so insignificant it doesn't slow him down at all. During the finale it's revealed that his abilities even transcend the Matrix into the real world, when he curb-stomps five Sentinels without any weapon.
  • Morpheus versus Agent Johnson, which highlights that Agents are still to be feared by the other redpills outside of Neo. Morpheus literally barely does scratch damage to the Agent before getting disarmed and almost killed.
  • Trinity versus Agent Thompson, which goes so badly for Trinity that Thompson actually manages to kill her.
• Cut the Juice: In order to bypass security measures at the door to the Source, the group decides to shut off the power ... by blowing up an entire nuclear power plant. Even then, there is a contingency system which has to be shut off simultaneously from an entirely different place.
• Darkest Hour: A quarter million Sentinels are digging straight for Zion.
• Deadly Dodging: Neo is very adept at this, as the Merovingian's mooks find out the hard way; Neo only personally kills three out of six total opponents.
• Deconstruction: After the previous movie sets Neo up as a straightforward case of The Chosen One, here the entire prophecy turns out to be Resistance as Planned.
• Destroy the Product Placement: There are noteworthy collisions of trucks and cars provided by General Motors. At least the trucks had other names on them.
• Digital Head Swap: Hugo Weaving's head was digitally overlaid on the bodies of the stunt double "Agent Smiths" in the Burly Brawl sequence.
• Disturbed Doves: A flock of crows takes off from around Smith when he shows up to confront Neo after the Oracle leaves.
• Dog Pile of Doom: A type A at the end of the Burly Brawl. Neo gets buried under the mob of Smiths, but manages to heave them off with a huge effort. He then resorts to fleeing for the first time since unlocking his full power.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: The opening scene depicts Trinity on the run from Agent Thompson, and ends with her jumping out of a building, getting shot, and slamming into a moving car ... and then Neo wakes up. Later in the movie, the same exact events actually happen ... whereupon Neo saves her in midair and brings her back to life.
• Dressed All in Rubber: Trinity's PVC outfit and Persephone's latex dress.
• Dual Wielding: During the freeway chase, Morpheus uses his katana and a Glock 18 to disable and then Shoot the Fuel Tank of the car the Twins were driving. They survive, but they're out of the chase from then on.
• Dystopia Is Hard: The Architect has this problem, as he can't really understand the concept of choice. Thus, it required the Oracle's intervention to make the Matrix actually stabilize and function by accounting for choice, although the end result was still noticeably flawed.
• Elevator Going Down: Played straight. Neo and Trinity are in an elevator along with Link and the Kid; as soon as the latter two leave, the make-out session begins.
• Enemy Mine: During the freeway chase, Morpheus and one of the Twins immediately ceases their knife fight when Agent Johnson rips off of Trinity's car and proceed to shoot at him together, highlighting how both redpills and rogue programs equally consider the Agents to be the greatest threat to their existence.
• Escort Mission: The entire car chase/fight scene over the Keymaker.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: The Twins' SUV and the two semi trucks on the freeway.
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French: One phrase spoken, that is "like wiping one's ass with silk." When you translate the French that was spoken, the result is a Cluster F-Bomb.
• Evil Versus Evil: The entire film can ultimately be summed up as a giant free-for-all clusterfuck among bad guys, with the Redpills stuck in the middle of it all. To count, there's the Agents and the Machines in general, the Merovingian and his mooks, and finally Smith making a mess everywhere he goes. It isn't until the third movie when there are finally two clear factions: Smith, and then everyone else.
• Fauxreigner: The Merovingian is, of course, a computer program, so he's not really French any more than he's a human being at all, but he seems to enjoy acting like an Affably Evil bohemian French eccentric basically just because it's cool, and of course très sexy.
• Fetch Quest: Bizarrely, this seems to be the entire plot of this film. Visit this guy, go to this guy to get this guy, get this guy to that thing. ... The Merovingian actually notes this, mocking the heroes for mindlessly following the Oracle's orders; Persephone mocks the Merovingian for calling everything "a game"; the Keymaker fatalistically states that he has no purpose but to expedite the quest; and the Architect mocks Neo for believing he "chose" anything in his life. The "revolutions" of the last movie are when both humans and machines break off the fetching.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Smith, having come Back from the Dead, accosts Neo after he finishes his chat with the Oracle. There's a cut back to control on the Nebuchadnezzar, where Link notes "he's not reading like an Agent." Smith proceeds to tell Neo he's no longer an Agent in about so many words.
• Forced Orgasm: The Merovingian demonstrates his power within the Matrix by forcing a random woman in the restaurant with him to have an orgasm from eating a piece of cake.
• Forgot About His Powers: The Reset Button used to bring Neo back down from the Reality Warper he was at the end of the first film cause this. At the end of the first film, he could transcend the rules of the Matrix and do virtually whatever he wants, to the point that he can tear Agents apart by their very code. In this film, due to "upgrades," he must fight the Agents hand to hand again. He also never attempts to warp reality in any way beyond what we've already seen him do: stop bullets and fly (the latter of which he doesn't even think to do against the mass of Smiths that descend on him until there's so many they manage to dogpile him).
• French Jerk: The Merovingian, appreciation for the French language aside, is a snooty, sleazy, pompous prick who apparently enjoys being able to manipulate people (hence the cake scene) while mocking Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity for following the Oracle's directions. Even Persephone can barely tolerate him.
• From Bad to Worse: We learn quickly that the Machines are heading for Zion. Smith's return and the Architect's big reveal make things progressively worse.
• Future Music: There is a rave scene that seems to go on forever.

Tropes G-O

• A Glass of Chianti: The Merovingian sips wine while holding court in the restaurant.
• Gory Discretion Shot: When Neo finishes off the last of the Merovingian's mooks he takes a heavy mace and slams it on the poor sod's head as the camera cuts to the Merovingian wincing.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Neo uses one Smith to scatter the others; even the sound effect suggests bowling pins.
• Hand Wave:
  • Neo has to fight Agents hand to hand again, despite being the One, because they've been "upgraded."
  • When Neo asks the Architect why they would allow him to crash the Matrix if they need it for power, the Architect replies that there are levels of existence that they're prepared to accept. No other details are provided.
• Hallway Fight: Neo and Morpheus must fight their way through a swarm of Smith clones when they are ambushed in the portal along with the Keymaker.
• Hero of Another Story: Niobe's scenes are limited in this movie but she is one of two main characters in Enter the Matrix, which explores the side events led by Niobe and Ghost.
• Hood Hopping: Agent Johnson does this to pursue Trinity and the Keymaker.
• Hot Consort: Persephone for the Merovingian, played by Monica Bellucci.
• Hotter and Sexier: The first film had little Fanservice in it, being a fairly tightly paced film focused on the mythos and journey of Neo. ^note The sole exception was the Lady in Red in the Agent Training Program, whose purpose was to distract Neo and prove Morpheus's point about the illusory and transient nature of the Matrix. This film however features several instances of fanservice that can borderline gratuitous. Including:
  • The rave scene which is essentially Three Minutes of Writhing en masse for all of Zion interspersed with clips of Neo and Trinity having sex, the camera making sure to include full body shots of the two actors.
  • The scene in which the main trio meets Merovingian, which includes him feeding a woman in a tight-fitting pink dress (as a Call-Back to the iconic Lady in Red scene from the first film) a piece of cake laced with the program equivalent of an aphrodisiac. Though it's all rendered using scrolling code, the camera goes up her skirt to show the aphrodisiac's effect.
  • A close-up of Neo making out with Persephone as it's the payment she asks for telling them where the architect is.
• Human Hammer-Throw: During the Burly Brawl. After Neo throws off all the Agent Smiths dogpiling on him, he grabs one of them by the legs, spins around, and throws him into the crowd of Smiths.
• I Would Say If I Could Say: Agent Smith describes himself as "A new man, so to speak."
• Informed Ability: The Agents' upgrades Neo mentions at the beginning of their fight. They don't seem to do them any good, to the point where the guys come across as little more than suit-clad punching bags for Neo. For other redpills however, they are still a legitimate threat, Johnson is able to best Morpheus during the freeway chase and Thompson kills Trinity at the power plant.
  • At the end of the first movie Neo was able to defeat Agent Smith effortlessly; the upgrades are meant to give the Agents a fighting chance against the One. It's a patch, in short.
• Internal Deconstruction: The film deconstructs Neo's true purpose and hero's journey, as he is considered a systemic anomaly by the Architect who explains that it was all just another layer of control.
• Intimidation Demonstration:
  • During the Burly Brawl, Neo hits an Agent Smith with a pole and knocks the concrete off the end, then spins it around to intimidate the other Smiths watching.
  • During the fight in the Merovingian's château, Neo does a brief spin display with the two sai after he pulls them off a wall to him. Also, one of the Merovingian's goons spins his swords around in an intimidating way before attacking Neo with them.
  • During Morpheus' fight with the albino ghost Twins, each of them does some fancy moves with their straight razors before fighting him.
  • During Morpheus' fight with Agent Johnson on top of the truck during the car chase. After pulling the sword out of the side of the truck and slicing through Johnson's tie, Morpheus swings the sword around a few times.
• Invincible Hero: Now that he has the powers of The One, Neo is simply too overpowered for there to be much real tension in any action scene involving him. He opens the film effortlessly fighting off three Agents, and only shows off greater powers from there. The biggest action scene actually doesn't involve him at all, with the tension shifted to whether he can get there in time to save the day.
• Just Toying with Them: The Chateau Fight, where Neo goes six-to-one with the Merovingian's Mooks. For the first half of the fight, Neo sticks to unarmed combat, whereas all of the Merovingian's mooks use melee weaponry. It isn't until one of them makes Neo bleed that he grabs a pair of sai and gets serious - and once he does, the bodies begin piling up rapidly.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Neo uses a western broadsword during the Chateau fight, but doesn't use it to do anything particularly impressive. Morpheus, on the other hand, grabs a katana, and promptly cuts through a car.
• Knuckle Cracking: As the Agent Smiths start to wander off at the end of the Burly Brawl, several of them crack their necks as an ensemble.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Seraph fights Neo on their first meeting, but in that case it's to establish that he really is The One. Given Mr. Smith's ability to Body Surf, this is a sensible precaution.
• Lighter and Softer: While this film (and its sequel) would not be considered light-hearted by any means, the first film has a dark, bleak mood that the sequels almost completely abandoned for the most part. YMMV on the violence being harder or tamer.
• Little "No": Neo utters one when the Architect reveals that Trinity, whom he had asked to stay in the real world, jacked in and put herself in danger in the name of saving him.
• Long Song, Short Scene: Rob Dougan's "Furious Angels" is played for a short burst during a fight scene.
• Made of Iron: Averted with Merovingian's Mooks. Persephone initially builds them up as being very hard to kill, only being vulnerable to things like wooden stakes or silver bullets. Unfortunately, they do not quite live to their fearsome reputation during the Chateau fight. Despite all of them being capable of withstanding infinite amount of punches and blunt attacks (expect for Cain, who somehow dies after being kicked into a statue), they all die from sharp weapons as quickly as a regular human would.
• Magpies as Portents: Agent Smith's arrival is heralded by a flock of crows. This is done because in older, superstitious cultures, crows or other corvids (e.g., magpies) showing up was considered to be a sign that something bad was on the way.
• Makes Us Even: At the end of the first film, Trinity saved Neo's life by giving him a How Dare You Die on Me! speech. In Reloaded, after she's mortally wounded, he returns the favor. Afterwards:
  Trinity: I guess this makes us even.
• Meaningful Echo: The scene of Neo revealing that the prophecy about the One was a lie parallels the scene in the first film where Morpheus reveals to Neo the truth about the Matrix. Except this time, Morpheus is the one in denial and Neo is the one espousing the unpleasant truth.
  • The Matrix:
    Neo: No, I don't believe it. It's not possible.
    Morpheus: I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.
  • The Matrix Reloaded:
    Morpheus: I don't believe that.
    Neo: I know it isn't easy to hear, but I swear to you, it's the truth.
• Mêlée à Trois: The freeway chase becomes a three-way fight over the Keymaker between the heroes, the Twins and the Agents.
• Menacing Hand Shot: After Smith overwrites Bane, we first seem him cutting his hand, but when Neo and the others walk by, he steps out from where he's been hiding and starts to follow them, the camera cutting to the knife in his hand a couple of times as he prepares to attack.
• Morton's Fork: The Architect presents Neo with this. If he goes straight to the Source, he and all but 23 humans he chooses to rebuild Zion to resume the cycle will die. If he goes back to the Matrix at large, he can't restart the Matrix's code to keep it operating, killing him and every human connected to it and leaving Zion's people to die in the Final Battle with the Machines. The Architect presents the first choice as self-evidently the Lesser of Two Evils, and when Neo defies him, he responds dismissively.
  Architect: Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness.
• Mr. Exposition:
  • The Keymaker when explaining about the bomb-trapped building that houses the door to the Architect — and how to break into it.
  • The Architect fills this role in his speeches to Neo, telling him about the entire history of the Matrix and why Neo is an essential part of it.
• Ms. Fanservice: Persephone in both this film and Revolutions; here she's wearing a tight, slightly translucent white dress.
• Mundane Solution: During the freeway chase, when Agent Johnson jumps onto Morpheus and Trinity's car and dodges Morpheus' attempts to shoot him, Trinity simply brakes the car, causing the Agent to fall off.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: When Smith approaches the building housing the meeting, Neo immediately senses something troubling and leaves to investigate.
• The Needs of the Many: Invoked by the Machines in the Backstory. Previous Ones were created to feel broad love for humanity at large, which would make them go straight to the Source just before the iteration of Zion they knew was destroyed. Neo, however, feels more strongly about Trinity than about humanity.
• No Endor Holocaust : Trinity is shot while falling off a building. Neo, flown in at hypersonic speed to save her, ends up leaving a huge trail of destruction across the city, obviously killing a lot of people, but we don't see anyone die on screen and no one makes any comment about it afterwards .
• Never Bring A Knife To A Fistfight: In a stab at Katanas Are Just Better, Morpheus tries to fight an unarmed Agent Johnson with a sword. He barely manages to nick Johnson's cheek and cut off his tie before the sword gets snapped, and Morpheus gets punted off the back of the moving truck. That's still better than how Morpheus was faring when fighting with only his fists.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Neo and Morpheus are heading to the door too early, unaware that the team that was supposed to cut the power failed in their mission. Then Smith and his clones show up and attack them, which delays them just long enough for Trinity to head in and shut it down.
• Non Sequitur Environment: The Merovingian's chateau has perfectly innocuous-looking portal doors connecting his home with other locations across the Matrix. As such, it's a bit of a surprise when Neo tries to follow the Merovingian back through doors that previously led to an urban restaurant, only to find himself suddenly up in the mountains. Happens a second time when the Keymaker escapes via a door leading into a carpark back in the city; once again, Neo tries to follow, only to get the same result as last time when one of the Twins slams the door in his face... so he gives up and just flies back.
• Not in Front of the Kid: When Link arrives home after being away for weeks (ready for some sexy-time with Zee), he yells "Where's my puss—" before noticing his visiting nephews and hastily changing to G-rated conversation.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Persephone doesn't betray the Merovingian out of any sort of idealism or even interest in Neo's mission; she's just "[...] so sick of his bullshit."
• Off Bridge, onto Vehicle: Morpheus orders Trinity to get the Keymaker to safety, and she does so by jumping with him off the bridge and landing on a truck carrying motorcycles.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Bane is introduced fleeing from an encounter with Smith with another redpill, remarking that he's "never seen an Agent move that fast".
  • After Trinity finishes her work at the power plant, she returns to the elevator to leave only for it to open and reveal Agent Thompson. Trinity's look is understated, but it's clear she knows she's screwed.
• Once More, with Clarity!: The opening begins with Trinity attacking a place, before being attacked by Agent Thompson and apparently dying. It's not until the climax that the whys and wherefores are given (it's the only way to get Neo, Morpheus and the Keymaker where they're going. Another crew was supposed to handle it, but they all got killed).
• One Myth to Explain Them All:
  • The Oracle tells Neo that things of the supernatural are actually rogue programs.
    The Oracle: Every story you've ever heard about vampires, werewolves, or aliens is the system assimilating some program that's doing something they're not supposed to be doing.
  • Later, Persephone uses a derringer-type gun loaded with Silver Bullets to kill one of the Merovingian's lackeys, and the Twins take on a monstrous appearance when they use their phasing ability.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: It's a matter of this trope combined with Only the Worthy May Pass. Neo and friends follow The Prophecy of the Oracle to end the Man/Machine war by way of a stack of living and non-living Plot Coupons and Plot Devices that must be first discovered or destroyed, culminating with a minor character dying, passing on a key for Neo to open a door to the source of the Machines. It was all for nearly nothing, as all the protagonist's work is yet another way for the Machines to keep control. Despite that, Neo figures out another option in time.

Tropes P-Z

• Person as Verb: Neo was "doing his Superman thang."
• Person of Mass Destruction: Neo's high-speed flight through the city causes a tremendous amount of collateral damage.
• Pop the Tires: While the Agents are pursuing Trinity and Morpheus on the freeway, an Agent shoots out the left rear tire on Trinity's car, which eventually forces her to stop.
• Portal Door: The Keymaker's ability. If something needs to be unlocked, opened, or otherwise activated, he can produce the key.
• Power-Strain Blackout: At the conclusion, in the real world, Neo and the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar escapes a bomb that destroys their ship, only to find themselves about to be ripped apart by Sentinels. However, Neo can now sense and communicate with real-world machinery. He hacks the five Sentinels, causing them to short out and deactivate. The process causes Neo to fall unconscious and stay in a coma to the end of the movie.
• Power-Up Food: This is subtle, as we don't see an overt un-natural effect from consuming food until The Merovingian slips a rather special dessert to his victim. In that scene it is obvious that this is done to inject code into the target. Before that scene The Oracle slips Neo a red candy just before the Burly Brawl. And in the previous film, she made sure he had one of her cookies. Did these alter Neo's in-Matrix code to give him additional skill to defeat an army of Smiths, and (in the first movie) set him on the path to truly become The One?
• Product Placement: Combined with The Merch. Samsung worked with the creators to create a real life cell phone that was a prop in the film, as well as a piece of merchandise.
• Psychic Surgery: When Neo saves Trinity by restarting her heart... by hand!
• Race Against the Clock: The protagonists try to fulfill the prophecy to end the war before the Sentinels get to Zion. They succeed, only to learn that the prophecy was a lie.
• Reality Has No Subtitles: The Merovingian does this in French twice: the Cluster F-Bomb he drops after saying that French is his favorite language and while cursing Persephone for betraying him.
• Recruited from the Gutter: The Kid wants to serve on the Nebuchadnezzar with Neo (who helped him escape from the Matrix), which he'll soon be old enough to do. However, Neo defies the trope:
  Neo: I told you, Kid, you found me, I didn't find you.
  Kid: I know, but you got me out! You saved me!
  Neo: You saved yourself.
• Red Shirt: Captain Soren of the Vigilant is a literal example. His Zion counterpart wears red clothing, while in the Matrix he wears a red turtleneck under a tuxedo. He doesn't make it to the climax.
• Redshirt Army: The aforementioned Vigilant crew are killed by the Sentinels, and — along with the Keymaker — are the only heroes who stay dead in the film. Subverted with the Logos crew, who make it to the next film.
• Remembered I Could Fly: Neo fights dozens of copies of Agent Smith in a long, drawn-out fight scene before realizing that he can't win and escapes by flying away.
• Reset Button: The first film ended with Neo "seeing the code" and transcending all rules of the Matrix. He's able to outfight Smith effortlessly, using only one hand and without even looking, before he dispenses with fighting altogether and simply tears Smith's code apart. But it wouldn't be very fun if Neo could just effortlessly curb-stomp every Agent he comes across for the next two films. When Neo encounters Agents in this film, he finds that they've been "upgraded," forcing him to fight them in conventional hand-to-hand combat. Furthermore, Neo's other abilities to alter the code of the Matrix are limited to only what we've already seen him do in the first film: stop bullets and fly. So instead of the Reality Warper he's implied to be in the previous film, he's just a superhero.
• Resistance as Planned: The Architect, who explains to Neo how the perfect system he had originally devised was rejected by the humans. Instead, he created a system which purposefully introduced anomalies to fight the system in order to make it work better. In addition, these rejects would knowingly be allowed to leave the Matrix and fight it from the outside (in Zion), where they would be destroyed every once in a while.
• Resurrection Revenge: Agent Smith lampshades the trope during his monologue, when he confronts Neo. He tells Neo that his death freed him from the restrictions of the Matrix, and ... that he was there to repay him for trying to deny him the purpose of his existence, by returning the favor.
• Rousing Speech: Morpheus delivers one to the whole of Zion directly before the infamous rave scene commences.
• Ruder and Cruder: Reloaded has overall cruder language compared to both The Matrix and The Matrix Revolutions thanks to the Merovingian saying a colorful variety of swears in French.
• Second Chapter Cliffhanger: In a Two-Part Trilogy case, it ends with Neo in a coma and the emergence of Smith as an enemy unaligned with the machines, though just as dangerous. It also removed the possible solution that Neo had been working towards during the rest of the movie. This possibly reduced the drama because it made a lot of the actions of the second movie a great big "Shaggy Dog" Story when going into The Matrix Revolutions.
• Secret Test: Seraph, the Oracle's bodyguard, attacks Neo to test his combat abilities and make sure that he is the One. He only tells Neo why he did it after he ends the fight.
• Self-Harm: The first time we see Bane after he's been overwritten by Smith, he's using a knife to cut his palm.
• Sequel Non-Entity: The absence of Tank is explained away by Zee saying she had lost two brothers to the Nebuchadnezzar, implying that Tank had been killed, probably from the injuries he sustained in the first film.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Almost all the Architect's dialogue, like it was run through a thesaurus to find the longest synonyms for every noun and then given the most convoluted expression of every concept. He's explicitly doing it deliberately, and mentions Neo worked out what he was actually saying (and that he'd used it to avoid a direct question) much faster than his predecessors.
• Shoot the Fuel Tank: How the chase against the Twins ends, when Morpheus flips their vehicle then shoots its gas tank when it's facing him.
• Shoot the Hostage Taker: While fighting one of the Twins, Trinity is captured and held while being threatened with a straight razor. The Twin orders Morpheus to Put Down Your Sword and Step Away. Morpheus shoots him in the head, which forces him to desolidify long enough for Trinity to escape.
• Shout-Out:
  • During the freeway chase scene, the following police radio chatter can be heard: "One Adam-12, please respond."
  • There are also some shot for shot remakes of the scene in Dragon Ball Z when Vegeta is chasing Android 18 on the freeway.
  • Seraph's line "You do not truly know someone, until you fight them" sounds similar to the line "How much do you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?" from Fight Club.
• Shown Their Work: The film features a brief glimpse of Trinity hacking a power grid mainframe. Compared with most films' dumbed-down portrayals of "hacking a computer", this instance is remarkably realistic, despite being on-screen for only a few seconds, and references actual hacking tools and known security vulnerabilities (circa 2001). It is likely the creators felt the need to "get it right" since the concept of computer hacking is a central theme in the Matrix films. To elaborate further on this, while most films would feature ridiculously elaborate and impractical interfaces, Trinity enters commands via an SSH terminal to a server (which even uses correct private IP address space instead of illegal IP addresses) to shut power down, and plausible-sounding commands at that. The server's response to the commands are also sensible ways for the program to carry out its function, warning the user what will happen and requesting confirmation of the input, followed by text notifications of the shutdown sequence as it is performed. Not bad for a ten second sequence.
• Silver Bullet: Persephone carries them, and is happy to demonstrate.
• Single-Minded Twins: The Twins, probably justified seeing as how they are computer programs. The Agents had previously been established to communicate similarly, suggesting it may be a possibility for certain programs.
  Twin #1: We are getting aggravated.
  Twin #2: Yes, we are.
• Skeleton Key: The Keymaker is a living embodiment of this trope.
• Slow Electricity: After the power station is destroyed (and later when Trinity turns off the power again), the blackout spreads slowly through the affected area.
• Small Role, Big Impact: The Vigilant crew don't manage to do much when they're killed, but their deaths result in Trinity having to enter the Matrix to complete their task and, indirectly, causing her death and resurrection.
• So Last Season: The "upgrades" to the Agents force Neo to fight them in hand-to-hand combat rather than just casually destroying them as he did to Smith at the end of the first film.
• Sole Survivor: At the end of the film, the Mjolnir picks up a lone survivor of an attempted ambush on the Sentinels that went horribly wrong. It's Bane.
• Sorry That I'm Dying: After Trinity is mortally wounded by a bullet through the heart, Neo removes the bullet. Trinity says "I'm sorry" and dies. She gets better.
• Spare a Messenger: After Persephone kills one of the two programs guarding the Keymaker, she spares the other one and tells him to go tell the Merovingian what she has done. She does this so the Merovingian will show up and she can tell him to his face why she did it.
• Spy Catsuit: Invoked with Trinity's skintight black latex bodysuit.
• Stepping-Stone Sword: Morpheus uses a sword stuck into the side of a truck as a perch and jumps back up to the top of the truck from it.
• The Stinger: After the credits, there is a trailer for The Matrix Revolutions.
• Stock Footage: From Baraka used during the Architect scene.
• Sword and Gun: Morpheus wields both a katana he took from the Merovingian's chateau and a Glock 18C during the freeway chase but never uses both of them at the same time.
• Sword Pointing: Morpheus does it to Agent Johnson with a samurai sword while fighting him on the top of the truck.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Compared to the first film, Reloaded has TONS of dialogue.
• Telephone Polearm: During the Burly Brawl with the hundred Smiths, Neo tears a signpost out of the ground and uses it as a staff.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: The Twins, during their highway pursuit.
  Twin 1: We are getting aggravated.
  Twin 2: Yes, we are.
• Unfolding Plan Montage: Shown as the three hovercraft crews plan to take down a power station so that Neo can reach the source.
• Untouchable Until Tagged: The Smiths dogpile Neo.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: Neo's fight with the Merovingian's men ends with him killing the last one using his own weapon.
• The Vamp: Persephone.
• Watching Troy Burn: Morpheus with the Nebuchadnezzar.
• Wham Shot:
  • The newly resurrected Smith remarks on Neo's fight with the upgraded agents, to another Smith.
  • Smith overriding Bane, just before he returns to the real world.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: At the climax of the film, the Architect tries to force Neo to select a group of humans to awaken from the Matrix and rebuild Zion after its destruction by threatening to crash the Matrix and kill everyone connected to it if he refuses to cooperate, which will result in the extinction of the entire human race once Zion is destroyed. Neo indeed refuses to cooperate, but the Architect never makes good on his threat, and it's never mentioned again.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve: The bomb placed in the power plant is set to go off at midnight.
• The Worf Effect: When Agent Thompson shows up to the Burly Brawl, he's immediately approached by one of the Smith clones, who quickly and effortlessly assimilates him^note Or rather, the bluepill Thompson was hijacking. This not only shows how dangerous Smith has become, but also how Smith is hostile not only to mankind, but now to machinekind as well.
• "You!" Exclamation: Played with.
  Agent Thompson: You!
  Smith: Yes, me. [stab] Me, me, me.
  New Smith: Me too.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Any program who does this is meant to be deleted, since they can pose a threat to the stability of the Matrix. The Agents who get involved in the freeway chase go after the Keymaker specifically because of this.
  Keymaker: We do only what we're meant to do.
  Agent Johnson: Then you are meant for one more thing: Deletion.
• Zerg Rush: The Burly Brawl eventually turns into at least a hundred Smiths dogpiling Neo because he can take on a few dozen with no problem.

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"I have dreamed a dream, and now that dream has gone from me."

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