Lost / Tropes K to O

Tropes A to E | Tropes F to J | Tropes K to O | Tropes P to T | Tropes U to Z

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K

• Karma Houdini:
  • Ben for some. There's the idea that Alex's death more or less absolves him and moves him towards redemption. However, when you think hard about how many people the guy is responsible for killing, including ordering the death of Charlie, being indirectly responsible for Michael's death and almost Jin's and being directly responsible for Locke's murder amongst countless others, its feels like the writers just let him off the hook. Not to mention that he was responsible for those last three after Alex was killed.
    • And the ending implies that he is more deserving of a happy ending than Michael, despite being directly responsible for all the bad things Michael did.
  • Brian Porter. When confronted by Michael, he basically admits to offering Susan a cushy promotion in order to seduce her, helped her win custody of Walt and turned Michael's life into hell for several years; only to reveal after she died that he never wanted Walt in the first place and doesn't like being in the same room as him! He then refuses any contact with Walt, even though as Michael angrily points out, he's been the only father Walt's ever known! Sure, Brian has just lost the love of his life, but so did Michael, in addition to losing his son and getting hit by a freaking car!
• Kick the Dog:
  • In one interview Damon and Carlton said killing Sayid, Jin and Sun was meant to make fans angry at the Man in Black and remove all suspicions of him not being evil.
  • Keamy killing Alex in season 4 also counts.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Boone, Arzt, Nathan, Frogurt and Ilana.
• Kill Him Already!: In early season four, when Locke's group has Ben captive, Sawyer thinks they should do this to him.
• Kill It with Fire: Kate did it to her own father.
  • The Man in Black dealt a finishing blow to Jacob by kicking him into a fire pit.
• Knight Templar Parent: Parodied with Ben in "Through the Looking Glass", when Alex refers to Ben locking up Karl and trying to brainwash him:
  "I didn't want him to get you pregnant. I guess I overreacted."
  • Keep in mind that women who get pregnant on the island and don't get off after a few months die.
• Kudzu Plot: The whole show, inside and out. There may be no better example. Lampshaded by Mother with the most infuriating line in the whole show: "Every question I answer will simply lead to another question. You should rest. Just be grateful you're alive."

L

• Lampshade Hanging:
  • In "the New Man in Charge," Ben tells the guys at the DHARMA packing plant that he's there "to tie up a few loose ends," which is exactly what the epilogue did.
  • In "Exodus Part 2", Artz says: "You know, you people think you're the only ones on this island doing anything of value. I got news for you — there are 40 other survivors of this planecrash" seems to lampshade the fact despite the large number of survivors in the first season, only about a quarter are given any development.
• Land Down Under: The show's portrayal of Australia is laughably inaccurate, mainly appealing to stereotypes.
  • Claire's mum. You'd swear she's on the verge of saying "Dingoes stole moi baybee" every other word.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": Happens every time someone activates one of Rousseau's traps.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Ben in the season 3 finale. Every single one of his plans end up failing because of his previous evil deeds. His mistreat of Juliet and Alex give them the motivation to betray him and tell the survivors of the incoming attack, which allows them to properly defend. Ben's murder of his father and his posterior refusal to allow Richard to give his father a proper sepulture provide Hurley with the van that ends up crucial to kill the last attackers. Ordering Mikhail to kill the Looking Glass guards gives Desmond the chance to free Charlie, and the dying guards the motivation to give Charlie the code. Finally, Ben's tendency to lie means nobody believes his warning about the freighter, even though it's later revealed he was actually telling the truth for once.
• Last Kiss / Now or Never Kiss: Jack and Kate have this in "The End".
• Last-Minute Baby Naming: Clare doesn't name her baby "Aaron" until after he's born, resulting in a "whodat" reaction from Charlie after she uses the name for the first time.
• "Last Supper" Steal: The promotional image from season 6◊, The Lost Supper. With two symbolic positions: like Thomas, Jack doubted Locke many times and continued to doubt the guy who Terry O'Quinn is playing there, and Sayid is on the same spot as Judas when after joining the Man in Black he gives up on him.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the episode "Through the Looking Glass", a man approaches Jack and says "Hey, I know you. You're the hero." However, he was only talking about seeing him on the news.
• Let's You and Him Fight: One of the big reveals near the end of the series was that the Smoke Monster, being prevented from killing Jacob's candidates himself, was manipulating them into killing each other all along: Survivors, the Others, DHARMA folk and everyone else - and while many attempts failed, enough have succeeded.
• Letting Her Hair Down: Ana-Lucia goes back and forth in the second season.
• Ley Line: The island moves along ley lines. Interestingly, there is in fact a ley node in Tunisia. Ley node number 4 actually corresponds with one of the possible locations of the Island.
• Lighthouse Point: One on the island contains a clock that can spy on people.
• Living Prop: Show made a great effort of keeping the background cast consistent throughout the years. While some faces inevitably came and went, many people kept appearing among the crash survivors for 5 or 6 seasons without any impact on the plot whatsoever. In addition, background cast of more seldom appearing groups (The Others, The Tailies, The Ajira folk) remained consistent as well, people were called over season-long gaps to reprise their brief non-speaking roles.
• Logical Fallacies: Miles' in-universe response to Hurley's attempts to understand time travel paradoxes. Nevertheless, they talk about it long enough that Hurley brings up what Miles concedes is a valid point: why didn't Ben remember Sayid as the guy who shot him when he was a kid when they 'met' for the first time in Season 2?
• Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: The four-toed statue, of which only the foot remains, currently provides the trope image. It doubles as an obvious Shout-Out to the Trope Namer, though presumably Shelley's statue would've had five toes.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Often occurs in the Jack/Kate/Sawyer Love Triangle.
• Love Triangle: The one involving Jack, Kate and Sawyer has been played throughout all seasons with an insufferable, obnoxious insistence.
  • The addition of Juliet to the mix makes things slightly more interesting.
• Love Transcends Spacetime: Trope Codifier (together with the movie Sliding Doors). Several of the characters do this a lot in season six.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: We eventually learn that Claire is Jack's half-sister.
  • In season five, Faraday's parents are revealed to be Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore.
  • Pierre Chang (the orientation video guy) is Miles's father.

M

• Mafia Princess: Sun, though she does not really approve of it. Her father believed that she was unaware of her status as this trope until she threatened to stop pretending unless he helped out Jin. But in the long run, Sun's threat doesn't actually help either of them.
• Mama Bear: Claire, Kate, Rousseau, Sun, and Eloise. Eloise Hawking was so gung-ho into this trope that she shot and killed her own son, while she was pregnant with him, and yes it makes perfect sense in context.
  • Actually quite subverted in the case of Eloise Hawking. While she did love her son she remained distant from him for his whole life since she knew his destiny was to be killed by her.
• The Man Behind the Man: Jacob to the Others and Charles Widmore to the people on the freighter.
• Marrying the Mark: Nikki (of Nikki and Paulo) is in a relationship with the producer of her tv show. She and Paulo are actually a couple and plan to murder the producer and steal his diamonds.
• Mathematician's Answer: Several times.
  Locke: What does [this compass] do?
  Richard: It points north, John.
  • As well as:
  Ilana: How'd you get shot?
  Sawyer: With a gun.
• Matryoshka Object: Howard L. Zukerman keeps diamonds a nested doll in the episode "Exposé".
• Mauve Shirt:
  • Rose and Bernard. They actually make it through the whole series.
  • Similarly, flight attendent Cindy Chandler whose fate is unknown after the mortar attack on the Others following the Man in Black. It is implied she and other Others survived and scattered into the jungle.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The show runs on this trope. While several events are explicitly confirmed to be supernatural and some are confirmed to have logical explanations, others are left completely hanging by the time of the finale.
  • Not all of Christian Shephard's appearance have clear explanations. Some were definitely the Man in Black (leading Jack to the caves), while some are hallucinations (every appearance off-Island after the crash), but others, like his appearances in Jacob's cabin and on the freighter aren't clear. The freighter in particular is a mystery, since it's Michael, of all people, who's seeing him (he even asks "who are you?) and it couldn't have been the Man in Black since it's off of the Island.
  • Walt and his supposed "powers" are never explained, so it's left in the air whether or not all the birds that keep coming to him are just a massive coincidence or if he has some sort of supernatural ability. The epilogue implies that he's special in some way, but it's still never elaborated on.
  • When a time-traveling Daniel makes contact with Desmond, the buzzing that heralds the time flashes occurs. Unlike the other characters who aren't time traveling, Desmond can clearly hear the buzzing and looks around confused as to where it's coming from - and at that exact moment in the present day, Desmond suddenly remembers this encounter and seeks out Eloise Hawking like Daniel asked him to. The show's time travel normally runs on You Already Changed the Past, so it's never clarified if Daniel actually managed to break the rules of time travel like he believes he's doing, if Desmond's memory of the encounter was supernaturally suppressed until Daniel went back in time, or if Desmond's electromagnetism resistance makes him immune to time travel rules.
  • When Sayid comes to get Hurley out of the mental institution, Hurley makes a move on his chessboard and says "Checkmate, Mr. Eko", even though Eko has long since died. Hurley does have the ability to talk to the dead, but we don't see Eko this time around, so it's not clear if he's genuinely playing with Eko's spirit or he's hallucinating.
  • Is Desmond's resistance to electromagnetism something natural which is why Jacob brought him to the Island? Or did Jacob somehow empower him and that's why he's special?
• Meaningful Name: Apart from those characters named after historical figures and philosophers, we have Ethan Rom, which is an anagram for "Other man."
  • Applied strangely in the case of the spiritual, faith-obsessed John Locke, who seems like the polar opposite of his empiricist namesake.
  • A boon is a blessing, a favor or a gift. Locke tells Jack that Boon(e) was a sacrifice that the Island demanded.
  • Sawyer is a con-man, not unlike a certain lovable scamp. Lampshaded in that Sawyer took that name from Anthony Cooper, who himself took it from the fictional Tom Sawyer.
  • Religious: Also Jack Shephard and his father Christian. Benjamin was the youngest son of Jacob. Aaron's name means "light bringer". Christian's name was lampshaded in "The End".
    Kate: Who died?
    Desmond: A man named Christian Shephard.
    Kate: [Chuckling] Christian Shephard? Seriously?
    Desmond: Seriously.
    • Another religious reference: the biblical Jacob had long-lasting rivalry with his twin brother, Esau - who he screwed out of basically everything...
    • More on Jacob and Esau: Esau was born first, and Jacob was born holding Esau's ankle. Where does Jacob reside? In the (literal) foot of the statue... Also, Jacob and Esau's mother was told that her children would "fight all their lives."
    • Not to mention when Locke's mother goes into labor while shouting "His name is John!" (Luke 1:59-63)
  • Penelope is the faithful wife of Odysseus. Also the proverb: A (bad) penny is sure to return (with "bad" not really being applicable).
• Meanwhile, in the Future…: Done when Desmond (and, by Season 5, the whole island) gets unstuck in time. Averted in name with title cards stating "Thirty years later" (and earlier).
• Memory Trigger: One of the episodes has many scenes where characters accidentally, through various means, come to remember things about their life they never were aware of. For example, two characters meet in a hallway, start a conversation, they realize they had met before and unlock shared memories that were previously unavailable for them.
• Mental Time Travel: Happens if you encounter a large blast of radiation or electromagnetism on or near the island.
• Message in a Bottle: When Michael, Walt, Jin and Sawyer leave on their raft at the end of the first season they take a wine bottle full of messages from the other survivors to loved ones back home. Once they're out of sight of the beach Sawyer opens the bottle and starts reading the notes. After the raft is destroyed the bottle washes up on shore where Claire finds it, alerting the people that stayed behind that the people on the raft are in trouble.
• Messianic Archetype: Locke seems to definitely fit this role. A whole race of people awaiting his arrival? Suffering a lot and eventually dying to save everyone? Having a resurrection?
  • Very obvious in the apartment scene in "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham", when Locke has his right hand extended in a christlike gesture of benediction, and Ben kneels down before him.
  • Cruelly subverted in season five when it is revealed Locke was never brought back to life at all.
• Meta Twist: The season 3 final episode. After spending the entire series so far watching the now-iconic flashbacks, no one was expecting a flash-forwards instead.
• Metaphorically True:
  • Un-Locke is fond of using this tactic. When he tells Ben that he can have the island all to himself if he helps him in his cause, he "leaves out the part about it being at the bottom of the ocean". He tells the candidates that he needs them to escape the island: and he does need them...to die.
  • Christian's medical report on the patient he ended up killing in his drunkenness told "the truth": that two doctors tried to save her and failed. It seems to be carefully worded to avoid the issue of the cause of failure being that he ended up fatally lacerating her because his hands were shaking too badly from all the booze.
• Mind Screw: Lots of it.
  • Probably the first hint of serious Mind Screw in the series turns up in season 1 episode 17, in a flashback sequence featuring Jin. He is supposed to work as a hit man for Sun`s father, and while visiting the Korean minister of environmental issues, we see the minister`s daughter watching TV. In a short sequence, we see that the man on the TV show is Hurley, wearing the same T-shirt he frequently wears on the island. So are this girl watching Lost in a flashback before the series` actual time frame began?
  • And personified by Eloise Hawking. She's like The Architect. If that woman shows up on screen, go for the Panadol, 'cause you're gonna need it.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Season 3 reveals that most of these are escaped DHARMA experiments from 12 years before the crash.
• Missing Child:
  • The season 1 finale has Michael's son Walt stolen right out of his hands and abducted by the Others for unknown purposes, before they torch the raft to ensure they can't be followed.
  • Kate losing track of Aaron in a grocery store in "Whatever Happened, Happened". She takes her eyes off him for a few seconds and when she looks around he's gone. He soon turns up being escorted to the checkout by a helpful stranger but the sight of Kate frantically running through the store looking for him is sure to strike a nerve with any parent whose child has similarly wandered off while in public.
• Mistaken Death Confirmation: When the survivors encounter the sonic fence with Mikhail in tow, Mikhail goads Locke into throwing him through it before he can be tortured for information. Mikhail suffers a massive seizure and falls over bleeding from his ears; understandably, the survivors don't cross the perimeter to check him and assume he's dead. He shows up alive several episodes later, as the fence wasn't turned up high enough to be lethal.
• Mockstery Tale: The storyline has shades of this. While many mysteries are eventually explained, some others are not (like Hurley's cursed numbers), and the Word of God says that the whole series are basically about the characters and the relationships between them, which is Lampshaded by the series' ending.
• Monochrome Casting: Notably averted; characters are of various continents and various races. There, is however, a noticeable lack of Jews throughout the series, which is especially egregious considering that most of the Island's mythology seems to be based on stories from the Old Testament.
  • Ilana Verdansky's name strongly suggests that she's an Ashkenazi Jew or Israeli (possibly Russian-Israeli), also displaying some Badass Israeli characteristics.
  • Frank Lapidus has a Hebrew last name, and Naomi Dorrit's name is made of two Hebrew first names.
• Monster Munch: The Pilot gets killed by The Monster right after he is seen. The only other thing he does that's important is always wear a ring, and that only briefly comes up in Season 4.
• Monumental View: Boone had a hotel room impressively built in the middle of Sydney Harbor, judging from his view.
• Morality Kitchen Sink: Big time. The truly "good" or "evil" characters are few and far between, while all the heroic characters tend to be overly aggressive or suspicious at best and the villains are often Well-Intentioned Extremist groups. Many characters undergo a Heel–Face Turn or Face–Heel Turn and infighting within all the factions is common until by the end, almost every character is finally on one side with the Man in Black on the other.
• Morning Routine: The first episode of the second season starts with one for Desmond Hume. It turns out to be inside the Hatch that Locke and Jack broke into at the end of season 1.
• Mortality Ensues: The final episode implies that Richard Alpert has lost his immortality, which he considers a very good thing.
• Mr. Fanservice: Sawyer, Jack, Sayid, Desmond, Jin, Locke for the older set. Ben, if only for his voice.
• Ms. Fanservice: Bikini-clad Shannon in season 1. Kate was often in her underwear and averaged one bathing scene a season. Also Sun in season 1.
• Multilayer Façade: Ben pretends to be the victim of a group of savages. He's actually the leader of this group of savages, which doesn't exist except as a front for an Ancient Conspiracy. However, Ben is not in control: Indeed he is the leader of this Ancient Conspiracy, but the conspiracy itself is also a front for something else, something which Ben cannot even reach, much less control.
• Murder by Cremation: After Ben stabs Jacob, his brother throws his body into a nearby fire to Make Sure He's Dead.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: Kate in "Catch-22" when Sawyer walks in on her getting dressed in her tent.
• Mysterious Past: All the characters, at first. Some of them still have unanswered questions.
• My Greatest Failure: Jacob admits that his biggest mistake was turning the Man in Black into a great honkin' smoke monster. He's literally spent hundreds (possibly thousands) of years trying to fix this mistake.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: interesting variation - not only do the flashes triggered by a near-death experience continue after the event is over, they actually are a combination of premonitions and Mental Time Travel. This trope is used by Desmond to describe the weird things happening to him.
  Desmond: "When I turned that key my life flashed before my eyes. And then I was back in the jungle and still on this bloody island. But those flashes, Charlie - those flashes - they didn't stop."
• Mystery Cult: The Others.

N

• Never Found the Body:
  • The justification for the return of Jin after the boat explodes is that he was thrown clear of the blast.
  • The fate of Frank Lapidus, who was presumed dead after "The Candidate" although his body wasn't shown, and Richard Alpert, who is thrown into the jungle by the Man in Black and not seen again for the rest of the episode. They later turn up in the finale.
• Never Was This Universe: The Flash Sideways to the show's main timeline. It was first shown to the viewers following The Incident in 1977 which was implied to be the reason for timeline divergence. Later episodes however revealed that small differences between two timelines existed even before that date. In the end, the mainstream world was revealed to be a Stable Time Loop and the Flash Sideways was in fact the Nextlife/Afterlife all along.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Turns out Jacob turned his brother into the invincible killing machine that is the Smoke Monster. Sure would have been easier to keep him on the island as a human.
• The Nicknamer: Sawyer, of course.
• Nitro Express: The protagonists find dynamite in the wreck of an old ship and need to transport it through the jungle to blast their way through an obstacle. It is very old and sweating nitroglycerin. They use it on multiple occasions throughout the series and two times one them is accidentally killed when it blows up
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Ben's brutal savaging of Keamy, not to mention his unbridled rage at the man for killing his daughter, and also being one of the few times where Ben shows genuine emotion, possibly from watching Jack in season 3's finale. And after Shannon's death, the scene where an enraged Sayid shows off that Republican Guard hand-to-hand training and just mows through several Tailies trying to get to (and from the look on his face, kill) Ana-Lucia. Then there was Locke beating the snot out of Butt-Monkey Mikhail. And Jack and Sawyer in the Season 5 finale. It was pretty even until the Groin Attack.
  • No one delivers beatdowns harsher than ol' Smokey himself. Specific example is Mr. Eko's death via tree-smashing, or when he responds to Richard attempting to talk to him by flinging him into the jungle so hard that if he wasn't immortal at the time, he'd probably be dead.
  • Ben gets beat up so often and so savagely and by such a varied group of people that they hang lampshades on it. In "What They Died For", it's even what's used to trigger his memories of the real world.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Ben treats Kate to a pleasant breakfast on the beach, explaining that he wanted to give her something nice to remember, as "the next few weeks are going to be very unpleasant".
• No Name Given: Jacob's nemesis. He may in fact be literally nameless — his birth mother died before she was able to name him.
• Noodle Incident: The "Incident" at the Swan. Until the end of Season 5.
  • Others include Sayid's "Basra Incident" and Sawyer's "Tampa Job".
  • And the story, which Hurley is so very reluctant to tell, of how he acquired his nickname. One can guess as to what it obviously might have involved, but not at the unglimpsed hilarious particulars.
• No Periods, Period: For the most part Lost adheres to this trope, rather than even attempt to deal with the inconvenience of twenty or so women of childbearing age trapped on a desert island with no feminine supplies. However, in Season 4's "Eggtown", Kate, who's been worried that she might be pregnant is suddenly certain she isn't, and it's mentioned that she and Sawyer abstained the night before.
  • When Claire finds out she is pregnant, she mentions that she is "late".
• Nostalgia Heaven: When Eko dies; also the end of the entire series.
• The Notable Numeral: The Oceanic Six.
• Not Blood Siblings: Boone and Shannon.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Cassidy gives a pitying variety of this to Kate as she recognizes that she's been manipulated by Sawyer as she was.
• Not-So-Small Role: For their first appearance, Mark Pellegrino and Titus Welliver were credited as playing "Man #1" and "Man #2". Turned out, they in fact portrayed Jacob and his nemesis, aka "The Smoke Monster" - two cornerstone mythology figures of the show.
• Not So Stoic: Juliet multiple times, but particularly in the webisode "The Envelope" after finding out Ben has cancer and that her sister may still be dying; as in if Jacob can't sure Ben's cancer, then he can't cure her sister's.
  Juliet: It's just... complicated.
  Amelia: Complicated doesn't make you cry.
  Juliet: I burned my hand.
  Amelia: That doesn't make you cry either.
• No Time to Explain: Multiple key players who may or may not know some or all of the answers to the mysteries (Rousseau, Ben, Eloise Hawking, Dogen, Jacob, Man in Black)
• Not Quite Dead: Charlie's Disney Death in season one, Locke in season three. Both stretched credibility, Charlie moreso. Jin's probably now outdone both. However, as far as credibility goes, it's most likely the Island's healing properties.
• Not Himself: Every single "dead person" who's been seen on the island, including Locke has actually been The Monster/Man in Black assuming their form, with the exception of the ghosts that only Hurley can see.
  • Finally subverted near the end of the series when the remaining candidates see Jacob's ghost
• Not So Omniscient After All: Ben, in later seasons.

O

• Oceanic Airlines: An Oceanic plane crash kicks the story off.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Frank manages to survive the submarine explosion and stay in the water that was previously established to have sharks until he's picked up by Richard and Miles two days later.
• Offscreen Teleportation: There are a lot of scenes were characters wake up in a different location without it really addressed how they got there. It's vaguely insinuated that the Island's energy is teleporting them around the place.
• Oh, Crap!: Kate's face after seeing the Resurrected "Locke" for the first time, after seeing the Temple massacre.
  • Jack's face when Ben shows him that the Red Sox did indeed win the World Series.
  • Ben Linus' reaction when Locke tells him about the "Code 14J" alert in "The Shape of Things to Come".
• Older Than They Look: Richard Alpert. Part of why he's so damn creepy. Likewise with Jacob and his rival.
  • As of the Series Finale, "The End", he has his first gray hair. Guess now that Jacob's dead, he's aging again.
• The Omniscient: Jacob and his rival. In earlier seasons, Ben seems to be this.
• Once a Season: Every season finale features Stuff Blowing Up and/or a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • In the first season poor Doc Arzt blows himself up while "heroically" lecturing the A-Team on dynamite safety. Later in the episode, Jack, Locke, Kate, and Hurley use the dynamite to blow open the hatch door.
  • In Season 2 Desmond turns the failsafe key, releasing a large amount of electromagnetic energy and causing the Swan station to implode. He believed that he was making a Heroic Sacrifice but survived.
  • In Season 3 Charlie almost manages to subvert his prophesied heroic sacrifice in the Looking Glass, only for Mikhail to show up and grenade his ass. But not before he gets to reveal to Desmond that it's NOT PENNY'S BOAT.
  • In Season 4 we have the long-suicidal Michael stay behind on the freighter to delay Keamy's Dead Man Trigger. When Michael runs out of liquid nitrogen, Christian Shephard appears and says "You can go now, Michael." KABOOM. Jin was okay though. Earlier in the episode, there's another non-explosive Heroic Sacrifice when Sawyer jumps out of the helicopter, giving up a chance to get off the island in order to ensure that everyone else on the helicopter can.
  • In Season 5 the very last shot we see is of Juliet repeatedly BANGING A HYDROGEN BOMB WITH A ROCK in order to prevent "The Incident", and by extension, the plane crash that kicked the whole series off. She appears to successfully detonate it, and the screen goes bright white, only for her to be alive and in the present in the Season 6 premiere and then die later that same episode from injuries unrelated to hydrogen bombs.
  • Season 6's seems to come early when Sayid pulls a Heroic Sacrifice and takes the bomb that Flocke put in Jack's bag away from the others before it explodes, saving everyone in the submarine... for the moment.
  • Not to be outdone, the Series Finale "The End" ends with an Heroic Sacrific of epic proportions, which manages to Bookend the entire series. After Desmond pulls out the island's Cosmic Keystone (and yes, the island's a Cosmic Keystone with its own Cosmic Keystone), the island begins to sink. Jack, after preventing un-Locke from getting on his boat, goes to put it back in. Down in the heart of the island, Desmond tells him that he (Jack) should let him (Desmond) put the keystone back in, since he's the only one that can survive the EM radiation. Jack tells Desmond to go home, to his wife and son, and then carries him to the mouth of the cave. Jack puts the keystone back in, saving the island, but taking a fatal dose of radiation in the process. The series ends with Jack walking through the jungle, until he finally collapses in the bamboo forest, with the final shot being a close-up of his eye closing.
• Once More, with Clarity: At the end of "Flashes Before Your Eyes."
• One Degree of Separation: Pretty much everyone has encountered everyone else in some way before the crash.
  • Practically invoked in season 6's flash-sideways universe given that it was the afterlife.
• One-Eyed Shot: Many episodes often begin with a closeup shot of one of the cast member's eye opening, which usually belongs to the central character of that said episode.
• One-Steve Limit: There will always be only one Jack, one John, and one Kate.
  • There are some technical exceptions, such as Charlie Pace and Charles Widmore, but when Charles Widmore is not on a Full-Name Basis he is on a Last-Name Basis, and he wasn't a player on the island until right after Charlie's death. As for Charlie Hume, Desmond and Penny's son, he wasn't born until after Charlie Pace died.
  • And some other exceptions, but of the same sort. For instance, there are two seemingly unrelated characters named Lennon but one of them appears in one scene in an earlier season and the other is a much more major character from season six.
  • Probably the biggest one in the series is the two Charlottes: Charlotte Malkin (a one-episode character from the flashbacks) and Charlotte Lewis (a series regular from season 4-early season 5)
  • Emily Locke and Emily Linus, too.
  • There are two background characters named Steve - Steve Jenkins (of "Scott and Steve") and an engaged man who died with his fiancee in the crash.
  • There are several Davids or Daves. Hurley friend from the asylum, Hurley's father, Jack's 'son', Sawyer's con target and Libby's husband.
  • There are several characters called Tom or Thomas: Tom Friendly, one of the Others; Tom Brennan, Kate's childhood sweetheart who owned the toy plane; and Thomas, Claire's ex-boyfriend and Aaron's father. Tom was also the fake name Ana Lucia gave to Christian Shepherd when they met in Two For The Road.
• One-Word Title: "Lost", because that's what they are. Lost on a mysterious island.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Sawyer and Hurley for a while.

  Sawyer: Who the hell is Hugo Reyes and why has he got 160 million dollars?

  • It took a while for people to stop calling Ben "Henry", as well.
• Oo C Is Serious Business: Whenever Sawyer calls someone by their real name rather than one of his trademark nicknames.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Evangeline Lily betrays her Canadian upbringing whenever she says something that rhymes with "out." And every time she says "sorey." Naveen Andrews occasionally slips into his native British accent as well, particularly during more emotional scenes. Korean speakers have taken issue with both the wording (not his fault) and speaking patterns used by American-raised Daniel Dae Kim, and when he's speaking English in later seasons, his accent slips big time at points. In the sideways universe, when Jin and Sun remember the island, he and Yunjin Kim are Not Even Bothering with the Accent.
• Open Heart Dentistry: Averted, for the most part. Juliet's a doctor, but she's a fertility doctor; she can't perform Ben's spinal surgery, and she can't save Colleen from a gunshot wound. She does manage to take out Jack's appendix though, with Bernard (an actual dentist) assisting.
• Operation Game of Doom: The Black Rock dynamite qualifies. And a guy gets blown up to show it's really serious. Not that that stops Locke fooling about and lampshading the trope.
• Out of Focus: So, so much.
  • Henry Ian Cusick is listed as a main cast member for season 6. At the ten-episode mark, how much screen time did he have, collectively? Approximately one minute. It was apparently done to make his return an actual surprise by making viewers wonder when Desmond would finally return.
    • This is probably because in season four, the first eight episodes (the only ones completed before the Writer's Strike caused hiatus) credited Harold Perrineau Jr. So when "Meet Kevin Johnson', the last episode before the hiatus, aired, no one was the least bit surprised that Michael was Kevin Johnson.
  • Did you know that Jeff Fahey (Frank Lapidus) is a main cast member in Season 6? Neither did the writers, apparently.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: Very prominent. The show's use of flashbacks, flashforwards and Flash Sideways allowed the writers to dabble in other genres regularly:
  • Jack's flashbacks are full-blown medical drama.
  • Ana Lucia's flashbacks become a cop/crime drama.
  • Kate's flashbacks feature a fugitive drama.
  • Nikki and Paulo became a one-time relationship comedy. Or rather, tragicomedy.
  • Ben and Sayid had a James Bond/Die Hard episode.
  • Desmond's episodes had him involved in a Mental Time Travel back when other characters would dismiss the thought of that nonsense outright.
  • And some consider the Sun/Jin flashbacks to be a full-fledged Soap Opera.
  • The Flash Sideways frequently switch genre. Flash-sideways Locke appears to be in some sort of dramedy about coping with his disability, Ben's are a drama set in a high school (yes, a canon High School AU), Sawyer and Miles are in a buddy cop movie...
• Our Time Machine Is Different: The whole freaking island...

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