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A-D
- Advertised Extra: Even though he's long dead in Season 5 and doesn't appear in it at all (alongside the two previous Bank heist seasons, barring a few flashbacks where he only has a background role), Oslo got his own character poster for the season.
- Age-Gap Romance: Tokyo has had two of these.
- She was 14 years old when she met her former 28-year-old boyfriend.
- There are plenty of comments on the 10+ year age gap between Tokyo and Rio.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: In the first season's twelfth episode, when Denver overpowers him in his attempted Cock Fight with the latter, Arturo begs him to not punch him in the face by saying his stress makes him do reckless mistakes. Denver only spares him when Arturo mentions that several hostages are executing his escape plan at the moment, forcing Denver to intervene with that.
- All Men Are Perverts: Discussed by Berlin in a conversation with Mercedes. He tells a joke about a husband who comes home with an aspirin pill so he and his wife can finally have sex, and adds that many jokes portray men as sex-obsessed (and conversely, their wives as sex-averse).
- Anachronic Order: In each of the two heist storylines, the story constantly jumps back and forth between the ongoing heist in the present and flashbacks detailing how the robbers planned it. The Bank of Spain part also has flashbacks whose events have nothing to do with the heist at all (although most of them do turn up to be relevant in the present).
- And Starring: The first two seasons' cast lists end with "...y Kiti Mánver"
- Anyone Can Die: The series is not shy about killing off the core heist members. Of the original nine criminals, over half of them are dead by the end.
- Armor-Piercing Question: While fleeing from the Professor, Sierra questions him about his decision to initiate a heist in the Bank of Spain and put several people in danger just to free Rio, when he could've simply tracked down Rio's location and rescued him. She states that he did it just because he was bored with his ordinary life, and the Professor later admits that she was right.
- Artistic License – Economics: Due to the nature of the series, the writers take a few liberties here and there with the actual economics of each heist for dramatic effect. Some concrete examples include:
- The Professor makes case for the Royal Mint of Spain heist being harmless, even inspirational in a Just Like Robin Hood kind of way, as long as they don't kill anybody in the process and keep physical and psychological harm to the hostages to a minimum. His reasoning is that, since they'd be printing completely new bills, "they wouldn't be stealing anybody else's money". At one point, he also says this method is no different from the "liquidity injection" that Spain and other European countries received in the early 2010s from the European Central Bank (ECB) "and absolutely nothing happened afterwards". While the first point has some truth to it, the second point... not so much, since the ECB didn't give that liquidity for free. The European Union forced Spain and the other European countries who received similar injections to adopt very strict austerity measures in their economy as a condition to receive that money. These measures had really serious consequences for Spain's working and middle classes, from which the country has yet to fully recover.
- The Professor's final master plan in Season 5 is to use the gold as leverage for negotiating the freedom of the entire gang, since if the general public discovers Spain's gold reserves have been stolen, the turbulences in the stock market would bring the entire country to bankruptcy in just a few days. In reality, Spain losing its gold would be bad, but nowhere near as catastrophic as the series makes it out to be, for multiple reasons:
- Since the Gold Standard
was abandoned in the 1970s, gold is not particularly important for a country's wealth anymore. Most of a country's wealth and financial credibility comes from other sources, such a its capacity to collect taxes, its economic assets (industry, etc.), its alliances, etc. All of which would still be relatively intact after the heist. - The value of the gold reserves of Spain, both in the series and in Real Life at the time of filming, is approximately 13-14 billion euros. That's a lot of money, but it's merely 1% of Spain's total GDP. A country losing 1% of its wealth overnight would undoubtedly lead to disturbances in the market and a number of serious short-term problems, but it wouldn't even come close to put the entire country to its knees the way it's shown in the series.
- Similarly, the show tries to Hand Wave the aforementioned point on liquidity by saying that the ECB, probably the biggest economic fail-safe for all countries in the European Union, would just let the country fall. Even if we overlook the fact explained in the previous point (and that Spain received from the ECB a far bigger liquidity injection during the Eurozone debt crisis of the early 2010s), the idea that the entire European Union would let the country to go down the drain without doing anything is extremely unlikely, not necessarily out of moral obligation, but rather because Spain has the fourth-largest economy in the EU and the 13th in the entire world, and is heavily integrated in the European economy; meaning that if Spain was to default, it would have catastrophic consequences for the entire continent. Worst case scenario, it would bring the entire European Union down with it, which by extension, would also affect the entire world economy down the line.
- Since the Gold Standard
- Artistic License – Explosives: When trying to leave the Bank of Spain, Palermo threatens Tokyo and the hostages with Claymore mines, claiming that by standing behind the mines, he'd be unharmed. In reality, anything within 20 meters of Claymore mines would be subject to the explosion, regardless of their position, so if Palermo actually pressed the detonator, he'd be toast as well.
- Awful Truth: Moscow initially told Denver that his (Denver's) mother was a Domestic Abuser who abandoned them both when he was a kid. In the final episode of Season 2, he reveals the actual truth: she was hooked on heroin, and Moscú's attempts to get her to detox, in which he blew all of his savings four times, never worked because she would soon go back for drugs, so he took her close to a place where he knew drugs were sold and left her there.
- The Bad Guy Wins: By the end of the second season, the bad guy protagonists have lost a few members but have still successfully printed millions of money and got away with them, evading capture.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- When the Professor is at the bar with Raquel as she receives a message with a photograph from one of the robbers, she tries to arrest him... because she believes he is a journalist trying to get information about the robbery.
- Double Subverted: when Mónica grabs Arturo's phone, and Denver sees her, he takes her outside - but he just wants to give her the abortive pill she requested and convinces her not to abort the child. Berlin comes up, Denver tells him about the pill, and Mónica leaves... and the mobile chooses that moment to blip.
- After Tokio's failed attempt to force Berlin to reveal what's Plan Chernobyl, Berlin has Helsinki grab her. The narration appears to indicate she is going to get killed. She is taped to a table with wheels and thrown out of the Mint by the main gates, leading to her arrest.
- "Basic Instinct" Legs-Crossing Parody: In Episode 11 of Season 1, the Professor takes Raquel out to dinner at the bar where they've frequently meet at since the beginning of the Mint heist, as part of their first date. From Raquel's point of view, "Salva" is a charming stranger that she has a crush on, and she doesn't know he's actually the mastermind behind the heist. However, Ángel had recently voiced his suspicions about Salva to her. By the time of the dinner, Raquel invites the Professor to look under the table, and he teasingly asks if she's doing a Basic Instinct thing (i.e. she's not wearing underwear). She's pointing a gun at him under the table, and intends to confirm Ángel's hunch (which ends without her finding any clear evidence).
- Battle Couple: Tokyo and Rio are dating and have more than a few shootouts together.
- Batman Gambit: The plan to steal the Spanish National Bank involves using their security protocols against them.
- Bittersweet Ending:
- The first heist. The heist team manages to get away with almost a thousand million Euros while keeping public opinion on their side, but they lose Oslo, Moscú and Berlín on the way. Raquel leaves her job, but she meets the Professor and possibly reignites their past relationship.
- The second heist. The gang is successful in their heist and escape and go on to live their new lives and Sierra bids her farewell to them as she also decides to start her life anew as well to settle down and raise her daughter Victoria. However, they did lose their close ones in the process, namely Berlin, Moscow, Nairobi and Tokyo.
- Blackmail: The heist team uses top-secret documents hidden in the bank to prevent the cops from assaulting the bank. Unfortunately, Sierra later leaks fake documents to destroy the credibility of the real ones, thus ending their leverage.
- Book Ends: In the Season 2 finale, the meeting between the Professor and Raquel happens pretty much the same way they first met at the beginning of the Mint heist in the first episode of Season 1); namely, Raquel's phone runs out of battery and the Professor offers her his own phone (legitimately in the latter episode, more humorously in the former).
- Bottomless Magazines: While the series mostly averts this, it's played straight with the robbers' rifles during the police's breach on the Mint in the Season 2 finale. Every single one of them fires dozens if not hundreds of rounds, and only Berlin is actually seen reloading, which even then happens near the end of the attack.
- Briefcase Full of Money: During the first heist, the Professor has the crew convince most of the hostages to work with them in exchange for the promise of each cooperating hostage getting a case full of several hundred thousand euros delivered to an intermediary of their choice afterwards. The trope is averted with the take from the heist, which took days to load into a large shipping truck.
- Caper Crew:
- Intially in the first two seasons, the Professor is the Mastermind while the rest of the heist team have defined specializations: Berlin and Tokyo are thieves, Rio is a hacker, Nairobi is a forger, Moscow is a machinery expert, and Denver, Oslo, and Helsinki are muscles. Berlin also acts as the Partner-In-Crime.
- In the Bank of Spain heist, Raquel and Palermo replace Berlin as joint Partners-In-Crime, alongside several additions: Mónica as the New Kid, Bogotá as both a Safe-Cracker and machinery expert (replacing Moscow in the latter role), Marseille as the Coordinator, and Manila as an Inside Man (although she's directly part of the crew rather than mainly an employee or regular costumer of the Bank). There's also an assisting squad of unnamed people from Pakistan serving as Fixers. Benjamín and Matías join midway through the heist as another machinery expert and New Kid, respectively.
- Caper Rationalization: The protagonists justify the Mint heist with the fact that they aren't actually stealing from anyone, they're just printing new money, which the central bank does all the time anyway. This applies in-universe as well, as a key part of the plan is to win over the public's sympathy.
- Character Narrator: Tokyo doubles as a narrator for much of the series' episodes, narrating specific moments from time to time.
- Chekhov's Boomerang: The Browning machine gun the team brought along gets used several times to fend off the cops, first to scare them off doing a full frontal assault, then when the escaping hostages leave a hole on a wall and the cops try to exploit it to charge in, and later by Berlin to pull off his final You Shall Not Pass! action as the team gets away with the money.
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- Between Episodes 11 and 12 of Season 1, Jacinto, an employee of the Mint who had little screentime until then, becomes the one who carries out Arturo's first escape plan, with notably successful results into the season's thirteenth and final episode.
- In Season 5, Berlin's son Rafael, introduced in the previous season, turns out to be a Spanner in the Works for the Professor's plans, as his own gang hijacks the scheme and steals the gold from the heist team.
- Cock Fight: In Episode 12 of Season 1, Arturo deliberately starts a physical one against Denver in an attempt to get Mónica back. He ends up failing quickly, without landing any good hit on Denver before the latter overpowers him and sends him begging Denver to not punch him in the face.
- Company Cameo: The various news programs of Antena 3 and its sister channel La Sexta (under their parent company Atresmedia) appear numerous times on televisions and computers to broadcast news relating to the heists, including after Netflix's acquisition of the series from Season 3 onwards. They even keep the program's real-life newsreaders as the speakers.
- Concealment Equals Cover:
- While some shootouts feature realistic bullet-blocking items (e.g. large cement pillars and sandbags) a good number of scenes feature characters surviving rather extreme rains of lead by shielding themselves behind wooden crates and cardboard boxes on sheetmetal shelves.
- Even though the ballistic shields used by the police do reliably stop light gunfire such as from pistols or most shotguns, assault rifle and machine gun rounds — such as those used by the robbers in the series — typically go straight through. In the series, however, all kinds of bullets harmlessly bounce off — replete with "ping" sounds — and leave the cops (and the shields) completely unharmed.
- An especially egregious case happens in "Everything Seemed Insignificant", when the SWAT squad led by Suárez in an attempted raid on the Bank with narcotic gas comes under fire by a .50 cal heavy machine gun from Helsinki. Said machine gun's bullets would go straight through all the protective equipment and bodies of the officers who receive the impact, plus the fellow officers and walls behind them.
- Conflict Ball: The robbers have different, often conflicting personalities. Once they are locked in the Mint with the hostages, tensions start rising and only the Professor is able to keep them working together. Often when it looks like the Professor might have been arrested, things quickly spin out of control and the robbers turn on each other. One particular situation from Season 2 is salvaged by the Professor, but unwittingly leads to Moscow's death.
- Contrived Coincidence: Subverted in the first heist. The police believes that the robbery happening on the same day the students visit the Mint is a coincidence, but the whole heist relies on Allison's presence in accordance to the Professor's plan.
- Convenient Terminal Illness: A variant in that the ill character willingly goes ahead with the sacrifice with the others never thinking about it in the first place. In the final Season 2 episode, Berlin is the only member of the heist team who fights against the incoming armored police squad to give time for the rest of the robbers to run to the exit from the Royal Mint of Spain they made. He ends up being shot down by the squad.
- Conversational Troping: In the first scene after the first episode's intro sequence, the gang talk about how the Malevolent Masked Men trope works, and Rio says how much of an apparent bad choice was to pick Salvador Dalí masks for the heist. Berlin points out that it doesn't matter because a gun will always make a masked person menacing, to which Denver interjects by saying that using masks of children's mascots like Mickey Mouse could help them look scarier because of the feeling of violated innocence it brings in people.
- Conversation Cut: The Season 3 premiere opens with Arturo appearing as a guest speaker in a Spanish TED Expy event. His speech recapping the Mint heist's events (from his own point of view, at least) serves as a means of establishing how the heist's surviving robbers are currently doing (apart from the Professor and their new ally Raquel, whose situation was already seen at the end of the Season 2 finale) whenever Arturo mentions the team in general or specific members. The last of these cuts doubles as an Answer Cut, as Arturo's question of where his child with Mónica could be cuts to said child with Mónica and Denver in Indonesia.
- Crazy-Prepared: The Professor. The entire heist is built on the premise that things will go badly and parts of the plan will fail, and The Professor accounted for these failures and turns them into distractions for the cops. To give some examples:
- To prevent the Madrid police from just going for a full-out frontal assault, the team brings enough fake guns (alongside overalls and Dali masks) that a camera probe makes it look like there's an army standing on the main room of the House (and obviously they can't risk going in and shooting a hostage)... as well as a Browning heavy machine gun.
- When Ángel suspects there's something weird going on, he follows him - and the Professor has prepared part of his warehouse for a cider cellar.
- When Raquel begins to suspect the same and forces him at gunpoint to take her there, he takes her to a different warehouse where he also prepares cider and has a substantially cosier living space.
- The country home where the team trained for the heist was almost completely wiped clean, but littered with a (false) Orgy of Evidence that would lead the cops askew if they managed to find it.
- Although certain kinds of injuries are understandably beyond them (because of lack of equipment or them being just too severe), the Professor trained the whole team in how to handle medical emergencies like being shot.
- When the police tries to sneak in a couple of SWAT Team troopers wearing the same outfit (red coveralls, Dali mask) as what the gang and the hostages are wearing in the hope they will go unnoticed, the Professor orders the team to have everybody switch to different masks, forcing the infiltrators to abort.
- The Professor gave everybody an exact breakdown of every single law that they would be breaking during the heist and how many years each (individual) offense would give to their prison time (the complete total being a Longer-Than-Life Sentence no matter what happens), knowing perfectly well that one of the things the police will do is to try to Divide and Conquer by saying that the first thief to help arrest the others would be given leniency (and then exploit Loophole Abuse to take them in — a list this severe would only be pardoned by the Prime Minister, anyway). Rio calls the cops after he sees the footage with his parents, lists off every crime that the pardon would have to remove, and asks if they are truly capable of making the Prime Minister do that. They unconvincingly lie to him, and Rio tells them to kiss his ass before hanging up.
- One of the gang's first steps while taking over the Mint is to install a dedicated physical phone line that they had dragged in through the sewage pipes, providing them a virtually untraceable method of communicating with the Professor. It is not until several twists occur in the final hours of the heist (after almost a week of being sieged) that the cops are able to pick up a cell phone signal to trace to the Professor's hide-out.
- Because the possibility of burning out of exhaustion was very high, the Professor had set daily mandatory R&R time-outs for the team. Only Berlin follows this order to the letter.
- Criminal Found Family: The gang of bank robbers come to view each other as a Family of Choice.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Moscow used the knowledge he had gained from a legitimate job to turn to crime, because it paid better - even if it led to him going to prison. Same with Rio, who just worked as a programmer when he was asked to hack a system - which belonged to a mansion in Geneva.
- Darkest Hour: Season 3, Episode 8's Cliffhanger. Nairobi gets shot by a sniper and is close to death, Raquel/Lisbon has been arrested and her execution faked and the heist team crosses the Godzilla Threshold to prevent the police from bringing down the Bank's doors by blowing the tankette with two RPGs, killing several cops and pretty much sending Rule #1 down the drain.
- Dead-Hand Shot: In the Season 2 premiere, Oslo's left hand ceasing to shake is what shows that Helsinki's Mercy Kill of him was successful.
- Death Faked for You: In the series finale, the government ultimately does this for the heist team, pretending to kill them during a final shootout and then providing them with new identities, as part of a deal to cover up the loss of the gold reserve.
- Death Trap: The Bank of Spain's vault wasn't designed specifically to kill intruders, but once the security system is tripped, the vault will fill with water within minutes and anyone still in it will drown.
- Decided by One Vote: Of the "Last-Minute Vote" variant. Midway through the Season 2 premiere, after the Professor doesn't respond the robbers in any call for about 18 hours (due to him being busy with external measures regarding the police), Berlin casts a voting between all the robbers on whether they should continue trusting for the Professor's possible next call in 6 hours or not. By the time there are three votes on both sides, Berlin lampshades the trope by telling Nairobi, the last voter, to choose "the decisive vote", at which she votes for continuing to trust the Professor.
- Defiant Captive: Thoroughly deconstructed with Arturo. He wishes to be seen as a brave and heroic leader to the other hostages, but comes off as nothing more than a cowardly and entitled Manchild. His increasingly desperate plans to escape and resist the robbers only make things worse for everyone including himself, and both heists eventually get to the point where even the other hostages tell him to sit down and shut up.
- Didn't Think This Through: Rio's capture by Panamian cops on behalf of the Interpol in the Season 3 premiere, which is the detonating event of the Bank heist, happened because he used a connection between a pair of satellite-based phones to communicate with Tokyo during her stay in Panama's mainland. He didn't consider how such a means of phone communication (and likely every other one possible) could be easily detected by the Interpol's network, even if he and Tokyo had bought the phones from a black market.
- "Die Hard" on an X: Die Hard at the Royal Mint of Spain, and later the Bank of Spain, with the heist team as a Villain Protagonist collective.
- Eventually, the hostages trapped in the Mint start devising plans to escape and ways to overcome the heisters.
- It's even lampshaded in a flashback from Episode 13 of Season 1, wherein the Professor teaches the team on how to act when the hostages begin to defy them and how to get the hostages to comply again. Nairobi scoffs that the hostages would rebel, saying they're not all going to turn into Bruce Willis.
- Disguised Hostage Gambit: In both heists, the hostages are forced to wear the same outfits as the robbers. The intention of the gambit is notably different from the usual examples of the trope, as instead of disguising the hostages as more robbers, it's the robbers who disguise themselves among the hostages, which the police becomes aware of early on in the first heist and right at the beginning of the second.
- Disowned Parent:
- In the flashback to the first season's fifth episode wherein the Professor assigns Rio and Tokyo to conduct an initial survey of the Royal Mint of Spain, Tokyo asks the Professor if it's because he thinks she's not good enough as a member of the heist team before following up with her mother, to which the Professor tells her that she died of a heart attack the previous day, and was worried about informing her because she wouldn't have been able to farewell her by that point. Tokyo tells him that she had effectively disowned her mother after her last call with her back at the beginning of the first episode, claiming that she was essentially trying to bring her to the police. She regrets her claim not long after, though, as she talks to Rio about her in a subsequent flashback.
- Late in the Season 2 finale, Denver comes close to disowning Moscow as his father when the latter reveals to him that he had left his late girlfriend and Denver's mother alone at a drug market because she was always high on heroin and couldn't get back to functioning normally at all, long after previously lying to him about her being a Domestic Abuser who abandoned them herself (this lie being among his many attempts to ensure Denver's well-being). He quickly retracts when he sees Moscow receiving a fatal wound while defending Tokyo during her return to the Mint in the episode's climax.
- Dope Slap: In the Season 3 premiere, Raquel gives one to Tokyo on their first encounter since the Mint heist, in response to Tokyo's initial anger towards her and disbelief that she would become one of the heist team's members without betraying them at a later point.
- Driven to Suicide: In the Season 1 finale, Raquel attempts to get herself killed by the robbers after she learns that Ángel was not a mole for them like she suspected, and reads through all the exasperated calls he did to her just before his car crash in her voicemail. She walks into a close area to the Mint where she could easily be shot; just as Helsinki aims a sniper rifle at her, Suárez and Prieto run to save Raquel by bringing her back to the tent, with the latter telling her that she deserves to take a break.
- Due to the Dead: After Nairobi is killed by Gandia, the others make the Governor's security team carry her coffin outside the bank, with the authorities backing down on an attempted assault out of respect.
E-L
- Enhance Button: The national police are able to "improve" a blurred image with maybe 60p of effective resolution to clearly show one of the perpetrators' faces. The literal translation of the original Spanish was "double the pixels", but the English dub avoided using the word "enhance".
- Ensemble Cast: Despite Tokyo being the narrator of the series, the series and narration mostly focuses on the whole group of criminals equally, with each of the main members having his own personal arc.
- "Eureka!" Moment: When Raquel sees the orange hair on "Salva's" shirt, she connects him to the clown at the hospital and to further incidents involving the Professor that he (a) either knew about or (b) fit the physical descriptors of, and realizes that he was the mastermind all along.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Several of the robbers have issues related to their families. Moscow brought his son in on the plan, Tokyo loves her mother who died while they were in the planning, Rio feels particularly crushed when his parents appear on television, Nairobi wants to get her son back, Helsinki sends a bunch of money to his family even though he puts the operation in danger...
- Even Evil Has Standards: The heist team has this, some of them at different levels, but all of them to.
- Most work so they won't have to physically harm any of the hostages, even treating some of them very well.
- Berlín may be a sociopath and a thief and pretty much raping one of the hostages, but he won't stand for being accused of white slavery and pimping.
- Faking the Dead: In the middle of the first season, starting from Episode 3, Denver tries to fake Mónica's death after she gets caught with a mobile phone and Berlin orders him to execute her, only letting the fellow robbers he trusts and Arturo (the latter in an unsuccessful attempt via a letter from Mónica) know what he's doing. It doesn't take long before Berlin finds out Mónica is still alive in Episode 9, though he lets her live.
- Feud Episode: Episodes 11 and 12 of Season 1 are a pair of these for Raquel and Ángel, who begin to blame each other for being a Detective Mole for the robbers in the police operation because of various things regarding their respective contributions, with Ángel adding that he figured Raquel's new acquaintance "Salva" is the Professor. It ends when Ángel ends up having a drunk driving accident while trying to tell Raquel on the phone that he found out clearer evidence on who the Professor is.
- Finale Credits: While the Closing Credits of most episodes (sans Season 2, which doesn't use them at all) consist of simple text without much aesthetic that address the crew in each individual episode/season (with the first season using On the Next footage), two season finales use distinctive sequences.
- The Season 1 finale has the credits displayed over old television reels about the New York Stock Market Crash.
- The series' very last episode from Season 5, "A Family Tradition", has a much longer and detailed closing credits sequence with footage from numerous other episodes.
- Flashback Within a Flashback: Used occasionally, such as when Moscow talks to Tokyo about how Denver had to join him as part of the heist team, while the two are cleaning the "classroom" where the Professor explained the Royal Mint heist's plans and rules; it cuts midway through to an earlier flashback of Moscow and Denver talking about their recent events at a terrace in nighttime.
- Flirting Under Fire: Tokyo and Rio in the final shoot out. They declare their love and have a Now or Never Kiss all whilst being shot at by the police.
- Frame-Up:
- In Episode 5 of Season 1, the robbers make it look like Ángel has been passing information to them via a microphone Helsinki sneaks in his glasses when he enters the Mint.
- In Episode 8 of Season 1, when they publish Berlin's identity, the Spanish National Police state he has been involved in white slavery and child abuse, in order to make the Heist Team's image go down the drain. It bites them in the ass later in Episode 4 of Season 2, when Berlin uses an interview with journalists planned by them to mention the frame-up live and the journalists dig up the truth.
- In Episode 2 of Season 2, in order to get out of the police charge he has for knocking out Alberto in the previous episode, the Professor frames Alberto for engaging in Police Brutality on him with a bathroom time at the police station that he approaches to give himself some bruises and make them look like Alberto did them.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The name of the Professor's father is never actually said at any point in the series, but can be seen as "Jesús Marquina" in a newspaper piece he burns because of its potential as an evidence leading to his own identity.
- From Bad to Worse: In Season 5, the Heist Team has to face the Spanish Army to stop them for good, after the Professor "struck the tent" in the previous season by airing Rio's confession.
- Fun with Acronyms: Most of the character posters for Season 5 (mainly used as promotional street banners) simply show the major characters across the whole series and the initials LCDP (for "La Casa De Papel"). The ones for Gandía and Arturo, however, say "LPQTP" and "HDP" (use your imagination, we are not translating that).
- Given Name Reveal: The real names of most of the group are revealed over the course of the series, and because they refer to each other with city codenames to prevent attachments, said reveals are usually saved for important moments. A particularly dramatic instance is when a dying Moscow asks to say his name as his last will.Moscow: Agustín Ramos, it has been a pleasure.
- Give the Baby a Father: Denver eventually gets with Mónica and adopts her baby (by Arturo) as his own son.
- The Glasses Gotta Go: When giving Alison advice about how to be more confident, Nairobi discusses this trope by talking about how in teen movies, the unpopular girl takes off her glasses and becomes a knockout. Alison's response is that she doesn't wear glasses.
- Godzilla Threshold:
- The Professor knocks Raquel's former husband (who is helping in the investigation) out to eliminate proof that could lead the cops to his true identity, getting himself arrested just when the robbers are starting to fight against each other when he doesn't answer to their control calls.
- Plan Chernobyl. Tie the cash they have spent days printing to balloons and launch them into the sky to then blow them up, thus causing enough of a disturbance that the team can escape.
- In the Bank of Spain heist, The government has declared the robbers to be dangerous terrorists and subversives and is determined to stop them at any cost. The Bank of Spain heist is treated as a national security rather than police matter and the authorities are more concerned with stopping or killing the robbers rather than saving the hostages. A dangerous knockout gas is used that could kill hostages and one official suggests that they should just blow up the building and kill everyone inside.
- Discussed when the Special Forces team is brought in to storm the bank. Their tactics are not subtle and could result in many casualties among the hostages. The super public nature of the events could also expose the team's many covert and not always legal missions. However, the authorities are so desperate that they are willing to accept the massive physical and PR damage.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: When Arturo tells Mónica he does not plan to divorce his wife, she requests an abortive pill. Denver convinces her not to take it, at least for a while.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Tokyo gets rather angry when she notices her boyfriend Rio is getting closer to Allison Parker.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: The moralities of the robbers run the gamut from Rio (whose first crime was to unknowingly hack into a mansion in Geneva, thus putting him on the wrong side of the law) to Berlin (a confirmed Sociopath) and Palermo (a misogynist who critically endangers the heist on the Bank of Spain because the other robbers opted to replace him). And as for the police officers and military officials who oppose them? Raquel Murillo and Ángel Rubio are by-the-book cops who seek to protect the public good whenever possible, Suarez is a ruthless-yet-honorable strategist, Alicia Sierra is a sadist, and Tamayo is completely selfish and PR-obsessed. And as for the hostages, the governor of the Bank of Spain is the Good Counterpart to the Dirty Coward and rapist Arturo Roman. So there's lots of good and evil to go around on all sides.
- Groin Attack:
- In Episode 9 of Season 1, Nairobi hits Pablo in the groin when he and his friends start to bully Allison after they find out the cops decided against getting eight of them free in favor of just her.
- In the Season 2 finale, in her brief fight against the Professor's Serbian auxiliary team, Raquel does this to a member who manages to grab her and take her pistol in order to free herself from him. She's quickly defeated just after that, when she's held at a gunpoint by the other members that she can't escape from this time around.
- Guns Akimbo: In his final defense of the tunnel Berlin briefly hand-holds two assault rifles. Against trained elite squads. It works about as well as you'd expect, only really delaying them at all because they're presumably trying to avoid shooting at a hostage, but then again he isn't really trying to achieve anything more.
- Happy Ending Override: Río and Tokio's happy ending becomes overriden when the police finds out where Río is, capturing him and forcing Tokio on the run.
- Hard-Work Montage: Happens in a flashback from Season 2's second episode, where Rio sets up the communication system used by the Professor for the Mint heist, although it's entirely shot from a longer distance than usual for the trope.
- Helmets Are Hardly Heroic:
- Unlike the other GEO officers involved, who wear the standard helmets and masks, Suárez wears no headgear at all when he comes to the police's raid on the Mint in the Season 2 finale.
- Averted later in "Everything Seemed Insignificant", wherein Suárez wears a helmet and oxygen mask alongside the rest of the five-member GEO squad sent inside the Bank as part of the police's first raid attempt during the Bank heist, which involves the unleashing of narcotic gas into the bank.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Played With. Berlin, one of the Villain Protagonists, ultimately stays behind to stall the SWAT team by several minutes, allowing everyone to escape with the cash and the evidence that would allow it to be traced. He does it partially to spite a hostage he had been raping and manipulating the entire time, though. It's still treated as a noble death, with slow-motion gunfire and his body dropping to the floor dramatically.
- Hollywood Density: After the robbers succeed in getting the gold at the Bank of Spain, Nairobi is seen holding up a bar of gold in each hand and playing with them. If they're Good Delivery standard bars (and they look bigger than that), it means she's effortlessly carrying around about 25 kg of gold - more than a third of the weight of her own body.
- Hollywood Healing: The Professor receives a gunshot from Sierra in his left foot. In real life, that would make him pretty much unable to walk properly, but in the series, the only effect is a somewhat light (and inconsistent) limp.
- The Hyena: Ramiro, one of the special forces soldiers, hysterically laughs a lot, even shortly after he gets severely injured from Tokyo launching a suicide attack on his team.
- Hypocrite: When Arturo catches Mónica and Denver having sex in Episode 11 of Season 1, he accuses the latter of raping his then-lover. It doesn't stop him from actually raping Amanda later in Season 4.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Discussed in Tokyo's narration regarding Helsinki's Mercy Kill of Oslo and her, Denver and Rio's attempted capture of Berlin in the Season 2 premiere. While name-dropping the trope, she explains that people can and will retort to some questionable acts regarding their morality and/or loyalty in order to survive, which she considers to be the most human thing to do.
- I Have No Son!: At the beginning of the Season 1's fifth episode, Rio's father states in television (just when the robbers have managed to hook up a TV signal to watch the news) that his son is dead to him. Subverted when Raquel later sneaks in an SD card with a video where Rio's parents plead him to leave, promising that they are going to get him a good defense attorney and a deal.
- I Know You Know I Know: Said almost verbatim by Pietro to Raquel in the final episode of Season 2: "Not only do you know [where the Professor's hideout is], but you know that I know you know, so let's spare ourselves this part."
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: In the second episode of Season 2, after Rio reveals the whole plan to the hostages because Berlin threw Tokyo out of the door to be arrested, Berlin brings Rio down with Helsinki and gets a pistol while threatening to execute him.Berlin (paraphrasing): My hand will not shake when I pull the trigger!
(Berlin points his pistol, which is shaking quite a lot because of Berlin's illness.)
Berlin: Okay, maybe it will shake a bit. - Indy Escape: Discussed by Tokyo in her narration at the beginning of Episode 5 of Season 1, which she uses as a comparison to the "giant snowball rolling down" metaphor with which she references people going on downward spirals.
- In-Series Nickname: Berlin coins "Arturito" (translated to "Little Artie" in English) as a derogatory term for him, which several other robbers also use whenever they refer to him. Considering Arturo tries to be as macho as possible, it's as denigrating to him as you expect it to be.
- Ironic Echo:
- Irony: In a flashback from Episode 3 of Season 1, Moscow tells Denver that the reason he got out of the mine was because he had claustrophobia... and that led to him making holes to rob and being sent to jail.
- It's All Junk: Invoked by the Professor in a flashback from the Season 2 premiere, when he explains to Berlin why he's burning sentimental photos and other paper objects with correlation to his father in the countryhouse's chimney furnace; they would become easy evidence leading to the Professor's own identity, not to mention that they could potentially make nostalgic mesmerizing get in his way during his occupation for the heists. Later in the episode, the ashes from the objects turn out to be important in the present, as Alberto figures that they're the only legitimate evidence for the heist team's plans and identities among the Orgy of Evidence the Professor had left in the countryhouse by that time.
- Jerk Jock: Pablo is the captain of Brighton College's athletics team. In the series' very first episode, he fakes interest in Alison so he can take a half-naked photo of her and publish it on social media, which happens just as Tokyo comes and interrupts the two (Tokyo even describes him as "a fucking asshole" in her first narration from the fifth episode). Downplayed in that he didn't necessarily attempt to do it out of his own will, but rather because he was forced by two female classmates, and he apologizes to Alison (with the aforementioned two girls immediately following him on it)note and stops being a jerk as the Mint heist progresses, until he escapes with a number of other hostages in Episode 12.
- Just Like Robin Hood: Explicitly stated to be one of the aims of the robbery. As long as no one gets hurt, the people will be likelier to support them.The Professor: Be very careful, because the moment there is a single drop of blood, this is very important, we will stop being Robin Hoods to become just sons of bitches.
- Kansas City Shuffle: The entire Royal Mint heist is a series of these. The Professor knows that the Spanish National Police are not all incompetent, so he feeds them information in drips and directs their investigation towards dead ends and red herrings. He starts out by making the cops think that the hostage taking was incidental because it forces them into a certain protocol and makes them waste a day. He specifically designed parts of his plan to fail because it makes the cops think that they can win without having to storm the building. This all culminates in the final escape plan: Moscow orders some of the hostages to dig a hole to a nearby tunnel the robbers know will be detected by the police, while he secretly digs a different hole in the vault that leads to another tunnel the police isn't aware of.
- Kind Hearted Simpleton:
- Relatively speaking, for being in a crowd of hostage-takers and previously convicted for all sorts of trouble, but Denver still comes off as one. Immature, simple-minded and possessing the most irritating laughter, he shows himself as one of the most sympathetic between the attackers — sparing Monica when it might have cost him his life, very deeply caring for his father, and ultimately taking as his own the child she conceived with one of the most hated characters in the whole event.
- Denver's father Moscow, too, though he's fully self-aware of it: he candidly admits that neither himself nor his son amount to much of anything brains-wise, but this time they might just make it because it's not them putting in the brains.
- Lampshade Hanging: Mónica, formerly a hostage of the Mint heist who fell in love with one of her kidnappers, adopts the codename of Stockholm in the Bank heist, after the Stockholm Syndrome that Denver and Moscow prominently discussed about her back during the Mint heist (with Denver having suggested the codename for her).
- Leitmotif: Starting with the final flashback from the Season 1 finale, the melody of "Bella Ciao" becomes a recurring form of soundtrack throughout the series.
- Love Makes You Dumb: Several characters make stupid decisions because the people they love are in danger.
