Poirot / Poirot - Tropes E to M

This page is for tropes that have appeared in Poirot.

For the rest:

• A to D
• N to Z

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• Eagleland: FBI Special Agent Burt in "The Adventure of the Cheap Flat" is mostly a Type 2, being rather gung-ho and rude to his Scotland Yard counterparts, yet is nevertheless a genuinely loyal agent of the US government who helps apprehend a spy.
• Embarrassing First Name: In The King of Clubs, Mr. Reedburn hates being called "Henry".
• Embarrassing Nickname: In Dumb Witness, we discover that Hastings's nickname is "Battler." As in "Battle a' Hastings."
• Entertainingly Wrong: FBI Special Agent Burt in "The Adventure of the Cheap Flat'', who insists there is no such thing as the Mafia (per official FBI policy) right up until a Mafia hit man holds him at gunpoint.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Poirot gets a few, usually when Hastings or Miss Lemon mention something off-handedly that proves to be the key to the case.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Four and Twenty Blackbirds and Evil Under the Sun both end with the surviving cast having a group laugh.
  • In a downplayed example, many of the early episodes end with Poirot smiling in amusement after making one final little joke or revelation to the other characters.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: In The Incredible Theft, a fighter plane uses a test car as target practice by riddling it full of bullets, and after a few shots the car bursts into flames. Potentially justified if the plane were equipped with incendiary bullets.
• Everyone Is a Suspect: About half the cast generally has a motive for murder.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: One example is Bob, the titular character of Dumb Witness, who sees the motives of the murderer at night and knows what they're up to.
• Exotic Detective: Poirot himself, a Belgian detective who tends to work in countries other than Belgium, mostly European and occasionally America. He enjoys deliberately playing up his exoticness as a form of Obfuscating Stupidity, and his nationality is often brought up as an excuse for his strange behaviour.
• Extra! Extra! Read All About It!: Often occurs in some episodes, including Hickory Dickory Dock and The Big Four.
• Eye Scream: How Colonel Curtiss kills Edward Clayton, albeit in a Gory Discretion Shot, in The Mystery of the Spanish Chest.
• Faking the Dead:
  • In The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb, Poirot does it again by pretending to drink the cyanide in the tisane and lying motionless in bed in order for Hastings to lure Dr. Robert Ames into a confrontation with the detective.
  • Poirot in The Big Four. This, however, is sadly subverted in Curtain.
• Fanboy: Mr. Naughton the innkeeper in The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor is a big fan of Poirot, to the point where he invites the detective to his town to help him write his mystery novel under the guise of requesting help on a case. In the denouement of said episode, he declares that he'll be able to tell his children that he helped solve one of Poirot's cases after doing such.
• Fat Suit: David Suchet had to be padded from the collar down in order to match Poirot's girth.
• Faux Affably Evil: Nurse O'Brian in Sad Cypress seems like a cheerful and outgoing person, but pretty much everything she says — particularly on the subject of Elinor Carlisle — is poisonous and waspish, making her a pretty clear candidate for the poison-pen letter writer. Subverted, however, in that while she's clearly not a particularly nice person, she's not evil — and certainly isn't a murderess.
• Feet-First Introduction:
  • In the very first episode, The Adventure of the Clapham Cook, we get a close-up of Poirot's feet on the foot rest, then the camera moves slowly to his legs, all the way to his face when he is sitting on a chair.
• Final Speech: John Harrison in Wasps' Nest manages to have one last talk with Poirot after having drunk some cyanide-laced tea due to arriving at the Despair Event Horizon. Subverted when we learn that Poirot had swapped the cyanide for washing soda beforehand; had it been cyanide Harrison would have been dead by the time Poirot got to the former's house.
• Fingertip Drug Analysis:
  • Japp does this in The Affair at the Victory Ball to identify the substance in Coco Courtenay's container as cocaine.
• Fingore: There's a Gory Discretion Shot, but we can hear the coroner dislocating the fingers of the victim in The Affair at the Victory Ball to help Poirot uncover a crucial piece of evidence that had been stuck in the man's hand.
• Flashback Effects:
  • In The Clocks, whenever someone tells a story about what happened in the past, a scene cuts to the clocks rewinding until we get to the flashback.
  • In Five Little Pigs, all the scenes from the summer fourteen years ago are tinted with warm colours and are filmed on a hand-held camera, emulating the effect of a Happier Home Movie.
• Fly Crazy: In Murder in Mesopotamia, during one night when Poirot is asleep, he gets woken up by a buzzing sound from a mosquito out to bite him. He tries many ways of catching it.
• Foot Focus: Key to solving the murders in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: There are church bells tolling ominously in one flashback scene early on in The Clocks.
• Foreign Queasine: Done as a joke in an episode where Poirot and Japp alternatively invite each other over for dinner, Poirot serving Japp fancy French cuisine he hates because there's "barely any meat in it" and Japp serving Poirot his greasy home cooking that he turns down just as readily.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Poirot does not dress up for The Victory Ball, a costume party.
  Hastings: I still don't think they'll let you in; I thought I made it clear the Victory Ball is a costume do.
  Poirot: Hercule Poirot does not wear costumes.
  Hastings: Everybody does. The whole idea is to go as someone famous.
  Poirot: Precisely.
  Hastings: Oh. I see.
• Formally-Named Pet: We learn in The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb that Miss Lemon had a recently deceased cat named "Catherine the Great".
• Funny Background Event: As Poirot and Hastings drive away from the house in The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly, a line of policemen suddenly jumps out of the way.
• Gayngst: Later adaptations (for example, Five Little Pigs, Hallowe'en Party) occasionally add quite angsty storylines about gay characters (that weren't necessarily gay in the original). Since Britain of the 30s wasn't a gay-friendly place by all means, the "angst" part is justified.
• Genteel Interbellum Setting: Even more rigidly enforced than in the book canon, with plots originally set post-WWII, like Taken at the Flood, being moved back in time.
• Gold Makes Everything Shiny: In the later episodes, Poirot carries a gold rosary with him wherever he goes. This is especially evidenced in Curtain, where he often kisses its crucifix and prays for guidance and strength, even in his final moments at his deathbed.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Colonel Curtiss in The Mystery of the Spanish Chest has a scar on his left cheek gained from a duel in his younger years. He's revealed to be the culprit behind the murder.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Toward the end of The Kidnapped Prime Minister, as Imogen Daniels is on the roof of her castle, after she shouts out her last words, "Erin go Bragh! (Ireland Forever)" as she is about to shoot herself in the head, scene cuts to the horrified crowds as a gunshot is heard, then to her blood getting splattered on the rocks, then to her body falling before cutting to the eagle-eye view of the camera falling down from the sky before finally cutting to her gun landing on the ground.
• The Great Depression: The stories set during the 1930s put a little more stress on this part of the time period than the books to show why the criminals go to such lengths to swindle grand sums of money.
• Greater-Scope Villain: As all the adaptations except for Curtain take place before World War II, Nazi Germany serves as this in a number of adaptations where Poirot and his allies confront their spies and agents. As Poirot experienced the Great War and had to flee to England because of it, he is only too aware of the danger that any threat to Britain poses for his native Belgium.
• Happy Ending Override: The final season becomes progressively darker. The first two episodes are a triumph for Poirot, who also manages to reunite with his old friends. Dead Man's Folly and The Labours of Hercules lean more towards a Bittersweet Ending, especially since Poirot has to turn in Alice Cunningham even if she's Vera Rossakoff's daughter, and thus has to say goodbye to the Countess. Finally, Curtain takes place after World War Two, with an old and ill Poirot assisted only by Hastings, now a widower. In the end, Poirot is forced to murder Norton, who would otherwise escape justice, and dies shortly after.
• Happy Flashback: Lampshaded in Sad Cypress. In the opening scene, Elinor is in the courtroom and the last of her thought we get to hear is: "The beginning... the beginning... it seemed happy..."
• He Knows Too Much:
  • In The Mystery of the Spanish Chest, after Poirot exposes Colonel Curtiss as the one who murdered Edward Clayton, Curtiss takes out the rapier and corners Poirot, removing his hat and attempting an Impromptu Tracheotomy on him in order to silence him forever. Leave it to Big Damn Hero Major John Rich to save the day.
  • Also attempted toward the end of Sad Cypress, in which Nurse Hopkins tries to kill Poirot for letting her secrets out by offering him poisoned tea. Poirot pretends to drink it, and then, in order to make the trap more convincing to her, he pretends to cough a little bit, and then more and more until he gets to the part of choking, making her believe that her plan is working. Just when she thinks he is on the point of death, he manages to gasp weakly that he never liked tea anyways, then pours the poisoned tea into the vase, foiling her plan.

Henpecked Husband: Colonel Clapperton has this relationship with his wife in Problem at Sea, who among other thing resents him for refusing to play bridge - he's so good at card tricks it would be easy to cheat. His good humor in the face of such spitefulness is taken by Poirot as a sign of guilt, since it either meant he was thoroughly beaten down or knew his burden was soon to be over.

• Here We Go Again!:
  • In The King of Clubs, Inspector Japp gets that reaction when he sees Poirot and Hastings on the case.
  • In Three Act Tragedy, Oliver Manders says this when Lady Mary Lytton-Gore says she saw no one go through the secret passage.
• He's Got a Weapon!: In The Double Clue, as Hastings and Miss Lemon encounter a tramp (actually Redfern, one of the private detectives, in disguise), he pulls out a gun, and Lemon shouts out, "Hastings, he's got a gun!!!" before the tramp fires the weapon at him. Hastings, of course, is not killed, but only damaged his forehead in escaping from the shots.
• Historical Domain Character: The Prince in The Theft of the Royal Ruby is unnamed in the original story, but the TV adaptation explicitly makes him the real-life Farouk of Egypt.
• Hit Them in the Pocketbook: In the series' adaptation of Appointment with Death, Jefferson Cope gets revenge on his abusive foster mother, Lady Boynton, by compromising her company's stocks and depriving her of access to newspapers so that she wouldn't learn about it until it's too late. Lady Boynton is murdered, however, before the ramifications of Cope's plot become apparent.
• Hostage Situation: Towards the end of The Mystery of the Blue Train, after Major Knighton is denounced as the murderer of Ruth Kettering, he tries to get away by taking Katherine Grey hostage and dares anyone not to take one more step closer or he will kill her. Poirot manages to talk him out of the situation, and finally, Knighton lets go of her before committing suicide by the Railroad Tracks of Doom.
• Hotter and Sexier: Series 9 features bed scenes in Five Little Pigs and Death on the Nile, as well as a scene of two lovers caught in flagrante delicto in The Hollow.
• I Can Explain:
  • Poirot unsuccessfully attempts to talk his way out of burglary in The Veiled Lady.
  • In The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim Poirot tasks Hastings with attempting to break into Mr. Davenheim's safe - knowing full well that it can't be done without attracting attention. Hastings is caught with chisel in hand by Mrs Davenheim and Inspector Japp. His tongue-tied attempts at explanation are somewhat pitiable.
  Hastings: (to Poirot) It's a wonder Japp didn't lock me up for breaking and entering.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Poirot manages to out the culprit in The Lost Mine with this. He invites Lord Pearson to the opium den where they're keeping the ostensible murderer, only for Lord Pearson to reveal himself as the mastermind by assuming the incriminating evidence he had in hand was the victim's passport... only for Poirot to reveal it was merely a pamphlet for the rules of Monopoly.
• I Was Quite the Looker: Poirot, Hastings, and Japp are depicted with darker hair, tidier appearances, and leaner builds in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, their first canonical adventure together that was only adapted after several episodes set during what constitutes their present day.
• Idiot Ball: Captain Hastings manages to carry one at least once per episode.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!:
  • Toward the end of Five Little Pigs, when Elsa Greer urges Lucy to shoot her, Poirot walks in and asks her to spare Elsa, warning that if Lucy kills her, she will only kill herself. Lucy reluctantly complies to his advice.
• Impoverished Patrician: The Waverlys in The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly. The titular child's father had to halt restoration work on the family home after the money ran out, and his wife (who is independently wealthy) refused to finance work on a house she didn't care about.
• In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: The official title has always been Agatha Christie's Poirot, in order to remind people who created Poirot, though it is sometimes shortened for export.
• Ironic Echo: At the beginning of Dead Man's Folly, Poirot is summoned by Mrs. Oliver via telegram to the battery scene at Nasse, in which Poirot asks, "Mais pourquoi?" and Oliver goes into a conversation with him about how she feels "jockeyed about". More than halfway through the episode, the roles are reversed, this time with Poirot summoning her back to the same place via telegram for a conversation of being "jockeyed about", with Mrs. Oliver asking Poirot's question, "Mais pourquoi?"
• Irony: At the end of Problem at Sea, Ellie Henderson tells Poirot that it was "a cruel, dirty trick" that he played, regarding the way in which he revealed Col. Clapperton as the murderer. To this, Poirot sternly responds that he does not approve of murder. Much later, in Curtain, he commits murder himself.
• Irregular Series: Ran from 1989 to 1993, then became a series of feature-length specials whose releases spanned almost two decades.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In Sad Cypress, Nurse O'Brian is a poisonous Faux Affably Evil gossip with a seemingly unprovoked malice against Elinor Carlisle. But when Mary Gerard gripes that Elinor didn't seem entirely pleased to be granting Mary a sum of the inheritance that Elinor received from her dead aunt, O'Brian does point out that any hostility on Elinor's part probably has something to do with the fact that Mary basically seduced Elinor's fiancé away from her, which might also explain why she's not overly thrilled to be giving Mary a huge sum of money on top of it.
• Jitter Cam: In Five Little Pigs, this filming of summertime flashbacks and the present day is done via handheld camera, as if to make the viewer feel that they are there on the same day.
• Just Train Wrong:
  • "The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge" features a train announced as being bound for Kings Cross Station - on the London, Midland, and Scottish Railway, which ran into Euston and St Pancras.
  • The opening titles show an LNER A4 steaming past Battersea Power Station. Battersea is on the Southern.
• Karmic Death: The fate of Sister Agnieszka in the desert in Appointment with Death.
• The Killer Was Left-Handed: In The Affair at the Victory Ball, during the denouement at the BBC Radio station, Poirot reveals that Chris Davidson was the killer by the fact that Davidson was left-handed and the victim (Viscount Cronshaw) was right-handed.
• The Lady's Favour: In The Chocolate Box, Poirot gets a flower bouquet label pin from his Love Interest Virginie, which he still wears as a memento every day while he is on the job.
• Leave Behind a Pistol: Although Poirot doesn't leave behind the pistol himself, he does allow Mrs. Folliat the opportunity to give her son and herself this option in Dead Man's Folly.
• Like You Were Dying: In Wasps' Nest, John Harrison, a son of one of Poirot's friends, has only a few weeks to live with a terminal illness and makes his bucket list. When he discovers that his wife is secretly having an affair with Claude Langton, he almost turns this into The Last Dance in which he attempts to kill himself by placing cyanide in a coffee cup and drinking it in order to make it look like murder and pin the blame on Langton. Fortunately, thanks to the tea leaves and the danger that Poirot has read earlier, Poirot is able to Screw Destiny by replacing the cyanide with sodium carbonate, then talking him down and telling him that he has so much more to live for. Harrison feels relieved that his plan didn't work after all, and in the end tells Poirot to come and see him once more in a few weeks.
• Lonely Piano Piece: Plays through the end credits for all episodes of Season 13 except Dead Man's Folly, indicating that the sad chapters in Poirot's life are coming to a close.
• Long Runner: Combined with British Brevity. All in a span of nearly 25 years!
• Look Both Ways: In the prologue to The Clocks, Fiona Hanbury tries to stop Annabel Larkin for espionage, but both end up getting run over by a car. She does leave behind a Dying Clue, which can be useful later.
• The Lost Lenore: The adaptation of The Clocks has Fiona Hanbury, Colin's dead lover. His guilt over her death is one of the reasons he was so determined to save Sheila from being arrested, because he refused to let another woman fall by his failure.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Peter Lord is already exhibiting this trope in the original novel of Sad Cypress, but was taken even further in the adaptation: his devotion to Elinor leads him to take actions in her defence that briefly make him seem like he's the actual murderer.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Japp seems to be assigned to investigate everything from homicides to jewel thefts and government emergencies. Presumably the Metropolitan Police would have enough chief inspectors to specialize.
• Malaproper: As in the novels, Poirot is prone to this due to the fact that he is a Belgian man who tends to be unfamiliar with some English idioms (e.g., "running up the wrong tree" or "barking up the wrong bush"^note "barking up the wrong tree", "has taken leave of his rocker"^note "is off his rocker", "making hills out of mole mounds"^note "making a mountain out of a molehill", etc.).
• Malevolent Masked Men: The creepy face masks from sword duel in "The Mystery of the Spanish Chest". They look extra unsettling in the grainy Monochrome Past flashback.
• Man Bites Man: Or rather "Woman Bites Woman": In The Mystery of the Blue Train, during one night in a French villa, a mysterious intruder, later revealed to be the maid Ada Mason, approaches to kill Katherine Grey for having an affair with Major Richard Knighton and making her jealous; but as Katherine screams, Lenox Tamplin wrestles with Ada and bites her on the neck, making her retreat.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot:
  • The disappearance of the eponymous cook in The Adventure of the Clapham Cook reveals the murder of a bank clerk and the theft of fifty thousand pounds' worth of securities.
  • Inverted in The Plymouth Express. The murder of a mining heiress reveals a scheme by her otherwise innocent paramour to low ball stocks in her father's company, then selling them as they appreciated.
• Miscarriage of Justice: In the adaptation of ''Sad Cypress', Elinor is actually tried and found guilty, and only acquitted at the very end of the book.
• Mistaken for Dying: In both The Third Floor Flat and The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge, whenever Poirot comes down with a cold, he often calls it a "deadly fever" and feels like he's "a corpse that's waiting to die". However, when he is given food, like blackberry tea offered to him by Mr. Anstruther, for instance, he and his "little grey cells" feel rejuvenated, and he gets back on the case.
• Mistaken for Toilet: Inverted in the adaptation of Hickory Dickory Dock. Inspector Japp, while staying over at Poirot's place due to his wife being on vacation, mistakes the bidet for a face-washing implement. When he recounts this to Poirot, the latter doesn't even attempt to disabuse Japp of his assumption.
• Moe Greene Special: Delivered by a practice foil sword in The Mystery of the Spanish Chest.
• The Mole: The Clocks revolves around Poirot trying to determine which of the weirdo denizens of Wilbraham Crescent is, in actuality, a Nazi spy.
• Moustache de Plume: Inverted in The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor. Mr. Naughton writes mystery novels under a female name, reasoning that doing so draws better sales.
• Multi-Part Episode: Type 1: Peril at End House, split into two parts.
• Multitasked Conversation: The lawyer of the victim in How Does Your Garden Grow? manages to communicate to Poirot who the beneficiary of his client's will is in public, by using his judging of a pony show as a metaphor.
• Murder-Suicide:
  • The solution to Elephants Can Remember. Things get complicated, however, when it comes to the identity of one of the victims.
  • Happens toward the end of Appointment with Death, when both Dr. Gerard and Dame Celia Westholme are denounced as both murderers and Jinny Boynton's real parents. Once they are found out, Dr. Gerard kills Dame Celia and then himself with a fatal dose of digitoxin.
  • Also implied at the very end of Dead Man's Folly by the way that two shots are fired outside, followed by Poirot's final word of the episode: "Bon."
• My Greatest Failure: The Chocolate Box for Poirot. Until the ending reveals that he solved the case correctly, but allowed the murderer to die from a terminal illness instead of being jailed.
• Mysterious Middle Initial: Or for Hastings, middle initials.
  • In The ABC Murders his suitcases are monogrammed alternately with 'Captain A. J. M. Hastings' or 'A.J.M.H.' However, we never learn what these middle names are.

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