Sandbox / Law And Order Elliot Stabler

Elliot Stabler, Sr.

Appearances: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit | Law & Order | Law & Order: Trial by Jury | Law & Order: Organized Crime

Played By: Christopher Meloni

A senior detective in Manhattan's 16th Precinct, also known as the Special Victims Unit, which investigates sex crimes. He is one of the original members of the squad. A former Marine and a dedicated detective, he has a 97 percent closure rate, but his dedication can turn to obsession and cause him to take cases personally. His dedication to the job also makes him the target for several IAB investigations during the course of his 12-year career at SVU.

Ten years after his initial and abrupt retirement from the force, Elliot returns to the job after the murder of his wife, Kathy, and joins the Organized Crime Control Bureau to dismantle every single crime family in the city while also seeking justice for his late wife.

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A-E

• Abusive Parents: His father was physically and emotionally abusive. His mother had untreated bipolar disorder, and although never intentionally caused harm to her son, inadvertently caused him physical injury and emotional distress during his episodes, particularly during points of mania.
• Action Dad: To five kids.
• All Crimes Are Equal: When a group of teenagers threw a party with alcohol and a girl drank too much until she choked on her own vomit, Stabler went after the teenagers with the same zeal with which he goes after murderers, rapists, and pedophiles, and was outraged when the judge didn't throw the book at them. Stabler can be expected to lose his perspective (he has very little to begin with) whenever a victim is even remotely similar to his daughter.
• Always Someone Better: Inverted. Stabler is overzealous, tempermental, and has no regard for constitutional rights. He is frequently temporarily partnered with cops who are even worse. Sometimes it seems as if Stabler learns his lesson from working with them, but it never sticks.
• Anti-Hero: Though fundamentally good and wishing to protect the public and catch criminals, he bends the law to get it done, frequently brutalizes suspects, and is very bigoted and close-minded on sexuality issues.
• Badass Biker: Rescues a trafficking victim by chasing her captor on a bike. You can take Elliot out of SVU, but you can't take SVU out of Elliot.
• Badass in Distress: A couple of times; the most prominent being when Dale captures him and begins to torture him in 'Zebras'.
• Badass Longcoat: In winter episodes.
• Bald of Evil: He sports one as part of his "Eddie Wagner" cover.
• Battle Couple: He and Olivia's Temporary Substitute, Dani Beck, were a couple for a while.
• Beard of Evil: He has a beard as part of his "Eddie Wagner" cover. He shaves it off once he dismantles the Kosta family.
• Big "NO!": He says this as he fails to stop Angela from driving off a cliff.
• Black-and-White Morality:
  • Deconstructed in "Nocturne". He finds out that the victim (who was molested by his piano teacher) had molested a young boy himself at his piano teacher's insistence. He knows he's a victim, but he pretty much wants to kill him at this point (for obvious reasons). This wasn't always the case though, see below.
  • A minor example is the fact that bipolar disorder runs in his side of the family. In the episode "Turmoil", he nearly strangles his son Dickie when he answers his question, "Have you lost your mind?", with, "I'm not the first Stabler to do so, am I?".
• Black-and-Grey Morality: In the first episode of the second season, after the season one finale reveals that he fantasizes about killing perpetrators, he talks to a shrink about it and the current case, where he admits to doing it again, but the suspect is a 16 year old kid who had spent half his life being raped by his foster dad, and was an honor student who also helped mentally handicapped children play soccer. This troubled Elliot deeply. Later, he also had a case where he spent most of the day trying to get a guy to admit he raped and killed a woman. He was in the middle of berating him for also stabbing women with pins, when Oliva comes in and tells Elliot that the suspect was molested by his mother for years. He then switches to comforting him.
• Brooklyn Rage: From New York and has a passionate drive and a rabid temper.
• Broken Pedestal: Dick Finley, who he named his son after.
• The Bus Came Back: After his departure following the Season 12 finale, Elliot is slated to return in Season 22 as a Sequel Hook for his Spin-Off show.
• Characterization Marches On: It's strange to see him in earlier seasons actually spending time with his kids (reading bedtime stories, playing soccer with his daughter) considering his interaction (or lack thereof) with them in later seasons. Or how he was the calming influence to Olivia's hotheadedness.
• Character Tics: He has a tendency to squint slightly when troubled, or when he's lying, something his mother catches on to very quickly.
• Chick Magnet: Throughout the series, Stabler has been on hit on by numerous women: Civilians, suspects, criminals, etc.
• Cowboy Cop or Rabid Cop: Depending on the episode.
• Crusading Widower: His first major plotline in Organized Crime is finding the bastard who killed his wife.
• Dad the Veteran: A former member of the USMC during the birth of his first two children. He had three more following his official retirement from service after The Gulf War.
• Defective Detective: A combination of marital problems and an increasingly over-stressed psyche really start to crack him up. Being forced to put down a deranged victim forces him into retirement.
• Divorce Is Temporary: He and Kathy split during Seasons 6-8.
• The Dreaded: When Benson is in a room with her kidnapper and she got the drop on him she mentions that if her old partner was with her that he'd beat the shit out of him. Direct reference to Stabler.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: His actor was credited as "Chris Meloni" throughout Season 1.
• Exalted Torturer: SVU doesn't endorse his third-degree tactics, but damned if they don't heavily rely on them. And Stabler gets way more latitude for it from the brass than he really should.

F-O

• Family Man: Elliot will do ANYTHING for his wife and children. To the point where he nearly beats a man to death when he finds his younger daughter's picture on a pedophile group's child porn database.
• Family Theme Naming: With his children Elizabeth and (obviously) Elliot, Jr.
• Fatal Flaw: Elliot and his marital problems at home. Also his temper and tendency to resort to legally dubious tactics when chasing down criminals gets him into quite a few spots of trouble, even among his squadmates.
• Freudian Excuse: His personality is implied to be as a result of his father's upbringing as well as his mother abandoning both of them.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Against pedophiles. But has been known numerous times to hand out beatdowns to plenty of criminals and even fellow officers for being Jerkasses. This major problem often gets him into trouble and he can't really control himself when he's in this state and ends up with the victim of his wrath in a bloody pulp.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Seemed to be coming closer and closer towards one after Kathy got fed up, left him and took the kids with her.
  • Suffers one at the end of the twelfth season, and retires by the time the next one starts.
• Hot-Blooded: Stabler is most known for this trope as he is more than likely to get into plenty of fights and can barely hold on to his emotions when he gets angry unlike other detectives.
• Hypocrite: Expresses frustration and disgust with the "don't snitch" attitude he encounters on the streets, but he calls Internal Affairs "the rat squad" and holds them in contempt, even though he has done plenty to warrant being investigated and he himself had investigated fellow officers. When Internal Affairs wanted SVU to investigate an abused dead girl who may or may not have been accidentally killed by police, he and Olivia said they had "some nerve" asking for a favor after all the times they had investigated the squad, clearly forgetting that investigating child abuse is supposed to be their job. The only positive thing Elliot ever said about his father was "My father was no rat." Apparently, Elliot thought his father's refusal to testify against a crew of corrupt cops was a good thing.
• I Have No Son!: Inverted. Elliot has mentally erased his childhood and parents to the point of breaking down crying in front of a therapist when he finally starts talking about an incident in which his father called him a failure, and he only goes to visit his mother when Kathleen is in jail and needs proof that bipolar disorder runs in the family to get Kathleen treatment instead of jail time.
• Insane Troll Logic: Whenever he's interrogating someone and he runs out of questions he'll sarcastically say "You've got an answer for everything don't you?" or he'll turn to a third person and sarcastically say "The guy's got an answer for everything." It seems Stabler believes that having a satisfactory answer for all of a detective's questions is evidence that a person must be guilty of something.
• Ironic Name: He has a tendency to be both uncontrollable and unpredictable.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Is prone to tweaking suspects. In the episode "Pandora", he's working on apprehending a child pornographer in Prague. The US frowns upon roughing up suspects. Prague is not in the US.
• Karma Houdini: He has sent innocent people to prison, beaten confessions out of suspects, harassed and insulted people he knew were innocent because he just didn't like them, thrown childish temper tantrums in the squad room, and suffered zero consequences.
• Knight Templar: Some of the suspects he inflicted physical violence on turned out to be innocent. He also sent one innocent man to prison who, even after everyone realized he was innocent, has no way of ever getting out.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Courtesy of Christopher Meloni, who's got a chin to rival Jay Leno.
• Let Me at Him!: Stabler should probably be the Trope Namer.
• Manly Facial Hair: Prior-service Marine-turned-NYPD detective. Even after he reveals himself as a cop to Reggie, he still keeps the beard (as he was still under cover).
• Meaningful Name: Back in Season 1, Stabler was this because he was the level-headed one and Benson was the hot-headed one.
• My God, What Have I Done?: At the end of an episode dealing with an abusive parent, Stabler said he had this moment after hitting one of his daughters as a toddler over some spilled juice. At the end of the episode "Smoked", this was exactly the look on his face after shooting a girl who shot the men responsible for her mother's death, plus an innocent bystander, causing him to retire.
• Never Trust a Trailer: His return and new spin-off are advertised with a voice-over of him saying "The world has changed and so have I." Within a few minutes of his return, he's forced his way into an interrogation he has no business being part of, and almost immediately tries to beat a confession out of the (innocent) suspect. In the second half of the crossover, his new superior calls him out on his crap and his response is "I was a damn good cop then, and I'm a damn good cop now." Clearly, he hasn't changed in the slightest.
• Noble Bigot with a Badge: He's somewhat closed-minded about sexual orientation and transgender issues, although not hateful about it. Possible result of a Catholic upbringing.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: His admitting that he occasionally fantasizes about killing perps is almost always brought up when his ability to competently do his job is brought up.

P-W

• Papa Wolf: Bringing up his children in an argument is a surefire way to piss him off. Going after his family is a surefire way to get the snot beat out of you.
• Parents as People: Don't get us wrong - Stabler loves his kids. He is, however, far from a perfect parent, and he knows it.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: You can't deny that a lot of the perps Stabler brutalizes have it coming. Considering their crimes it sometimes seems as if they get off easy.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Olivia, until his departure. They are partners and very good friends. The closeness of their relationship sometimes causes friction with their colleagues, but never threatens Stabler's relationship with his wife and four (later five) children. Their relationship does occasionally cause some marital friction. Kathy sometimes finds it difficult to deal with the fact that Elliot confides in Liv instead of her. There are also the unfortunate times when Liv has to be the go-between (when Elliot is undercover and unreachable, for example) and Kathy clearly objects to being kept out of the loop of her own husband's life. Still, it doesn't come up nearly as often as you'd expect and Elliott and Liv really are just friends. Kathy does seem to have accepted the relationship after she gets back together with Elliott, at one point referring to Liv jokingly as Elliott's "work wife."
• Put on a Bus: Starting Season 13. Forced to shoot and kill a teenage girl to stop her from killing someone is pretty much enough for him to retire for nine years.
  • He returns in Season 22, joining the NYPD's Organized Crime Control Bureau as a lead-in to the Spin-Off series Law & Order: Organized Crime.
• Quip to Black: Tied with Munch for these.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: He is the Red to Benson's Blue.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: Gets a pretty scathing one from Fin after he dumps Fin's phone in "Cold":
  Elliot: Look, the situation got a little heated and I want to say I'm sorry about that.
  Fin: You're a bulldog, Stabler. Quick to assume, slow to admit when you're wrong. Makes for a good cop, but a lousy human being...
  Olivia: Fin, hear him out.
  Fin: Stay out of it, Liv. That being said, I know what it cost you.
  Elliot: Appreciate that.
  Fin: I'm not done. The problem is you will still be the same rat bastard tomorrow, and nothing you say will ever change that.
• Secret-Keeper: He and Olivia are the only ones who knew about Alex only Faking the Dead and being in Witness Protection. They kept their silence until the act was forced to be dropped over a year later.
• Semper Fi: Served as a Marine during Desert Storm and has a Marine Corps tattoo on his arm. One suspect even refers to him as a "Jarhead cop."
• Sex with the Ex: He and Kathy have occasional hookups during their separation. Their youngest child Eli was a product of one of these.
• Strictly Professional Relationship: He always works with a woman, usually Benson. Once he was partnered with a man. It didn't go so well. He was briefly romantically involved with Dani Beck while separated from his wife. He took it fairly hard when she quit. It's also implied that he may have slept with Jo Marlowe when they were partnered together.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Not quite as tall as Munch, but just as snarky.
• Temporary Blindness: Goes blind for an episode in "Blinded".
• Took a Level in Kindness: Downplayed. Losing Kathy left him solemn and morose, but it also made him more caring about his remaining family and the people close to him, as well as more open about his feelings. He still has a temper and could go off the handle if pushed far enough, but such incidents are much rarer now, helped by the changing political climate making his actions while part of SVU no longer acceptable and blatant police brutality, forcing him to keep his temper in control even when people push him.
• Transplant: He is set to return as the lead star of Law & Order: Organized Crime.
• Tuckerization: Named after the series creator's son.
• Ultimate Job Security: Despite an entire career of ignoring warnings and orders given by Cragen, beating suspects, acting abrasive to detectives and attorneys he's assigned to work with, and using outright torture to extract confessions in investigations, Stabler is never fired. He only leaves the show when he chooses to resign.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: As his mother stated.
• Waistcoat of Style: He sports one while at OCCB, something he never wore while he was in SVU. Sometimes it's as part of a three-piece suit, others it's with five-pockets as part of a casual outfit.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Has been on the receiving end on quite a few of these.