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Timeless is a 2016 NBC series, created by Eric Kripke (Supernatural, Revolution, The Boys) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield), about an unlikely trio of time-travellers. When criminals steal a time-machine, our heroes — Dr. Lucy Preston (Abigail Spencer), a history professor, Sergeant 1st Class Wyatt Logan (Matt Lanter), a US Army Green Beret, and Rufus Carlin (Malcolm Barrett), a genius engineer who helped design the time machine — must travel back in time to protect history as we know it.

What follows is the crew going to famous points in history, foiling Rittenhouse's plans, and attempting to maintain the status quo of the pre-established timelines, in order to stop Rittenhouse shaping history to their will and taking over the world.

It was cancelled on May 10, 2017, then Un-Canceled by NBC due to major fan backlash three days later. Season 2 premiered on March 11, 2018 in the US, and premiered on E4 on April 4th in the UK. The series was canceled again on June 22nd, 2018 but on July 31st, it was announced a special two-hour movie would wrap up its plot points in a huge finale. The finale in the US aired on December 20, 2018, while the UK aired it over a fortnight (instead of one big movie); the first part aired the 23rd April, the second part aired on the 30th April.

Compare with The Time Tunnel, a 1960s series with a similar premise; Rewind (2013), a Made For TV Pilot Movie with a similar premise and cast; The Ministry of Time, a similar Spanish series; Timeline which has a similar title complete with time travel and DC Comics' Legends of Tomorrow, which has a near-identical premise but with superheroes instead.


Tropes present in this series:

  • 555: In "The Watergate Tapes," Rufus is given a number that he's supposed to call. It starts with JK-5.
  • Alliterative Name: Some of the Real Life historical figures:
    • Jesse James
    • Harry Houdini
  • Alternate Self:
    • Lucy becomes one. In the original timeline, her parents were married and she herself was single and had a younger sister; in the altered timeline, she grew up an only child to a single mother and has a fiancé. Naturally, Lucy has no memory of this different life and finds herself having trouble handling these new relationships and how different a person she is in this timeline.
    • What Wyatt and Jessica are to each other after reuniting in the present in "Hollywoodland".
      • Jessica is clearly one given that she's reinstated in the timeline by Rittenhouse and recruited (they saved her brother's life with modern medicine, in the original timeline he dies very young).
  • Alternate Timeline: Every trip changes some details of the past, but for the most part, the timeline is the same except for some minor details changed.
    • When the time team gets back from their trip in the pilot episode, they find that history is recorded the way they witnessed it, instead of how it originally happened in the unaltered timeline. "Anarchists" (a.k.a. the time travelers) bombed the Hindenburg, Lucy's comatose mom is perfectly fine, Lucy is engaged to someone, and her sister never existed.
    • After returning to the present in "Hollywoodland," Wyatt discovers that Jessica is alive. This is later revealed to be due to Rittenhouse going back in time and grooming her to be The Mole for them, as well as ensuring that she wasn't murdered as she was in the original timeline.
    • The series finale "The Miracle of Christmas" has Flynn creating yet another Alternate Timeline by killing Jessica in 2012. This rewrites the events of Season 2 - most notably, the absence of Jessica meant that Lucy and Wyatt became a couple after "Hollywoodland", and Jessica never kidnapped Jiah, meaning that the events that led to Rufus being killed in the Wild West never happened. Notably, Rufus remembers Wyatt and Lucy being involved, while the others of course remember Rufus being killed during the events of "Chinatown"
  • Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese version has a different ending theme, titled "Let It Shine" by the Gospellers.
  • Always Save the Girl: When Wyatt sees Kate Drummond under the Hindenburg, he rushes over to pull her out of harm's way, despite her death having been a matter of history, and him having been warned about the effects of saving someone who died in the past. In the end, she's killed by Flynn anyway, and winds up recorded as one of the new Hindenburg victims.
  • An Offer You Can't Refuse: How Rittenhouse appears to recruit its operatives. Followed up with Shame If Something Should Happen as necessary.
  • Ancient Conspiracy: Rittenhouse has apparently been controlling America from the shadows since the Revolutionary War, and is determined to further cement their grip by manipulating time.
  • Anti-Villain:
  • Apologetic Attacker: Before killing William Travis, Flynn lets him know that it's Nothing Personal, and he actually respects him deeply.
  • Artistic License – History: See its own page.
  • Artistic License – Medicine: A young John F. Kennedy is admitted to the hospital in 2018 with a bout of colitis. He notes that he felt better almost immediately after treatment. Colitis is diagnosed by a colonoscopy and treatment of the variety Kennedy was ailed with can take up to several weeks, including steroid injections and a series of medications. In some cases, an elimination diet is also necessary. It's unlikely that JFK would feel instantaneous relief from his symptoms (let alone from the colonoscopy).
  • Artistic License – Military:
  • "Atomic City" features undoubtedly the weakest security ever seen in a facility holding experimental nuclear weapons, as Flynn and Campbell are able to simply walk right into the bomb storage chamber after getting the key without so much as a single security guard present to stop them.
  • In "The Red Scare", Wyatt, a Delta Force member, discusses having to report back to Camp Pendleton once the project is over. Delta Force is an Army unit garrisoned at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Camp Pendleton is a Marine Corps facility in California. Except possibly as a staging area, there's no reason for Wyatt to report to Pendleton in peacetime (especially since there are several Army bases in California as well).
  • In "The Salem Witch Hunt", Flynn is able to fire a musket four times in the space of two minutes with pinpoint accuracy, a remarkable accomplishment for someone who presumably does not use a musket regularly. Even if Flynn was able to steal three additional muskets offscreen and have them prepared, carrying four loaded (and stolen) muskets in a small town like Salem (where just the one Joseph Pope secretly owns is a big deal) isn't exactly inconspicuous. Played for Drama, as the team has never had an issue carrying modern firearms and even ordnance like grenades into the past before.
  • Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: Rife throughout "Atomic City"; there's no way to accidentally "set off" a nuclear core with a sudden shock like a car crash. Making the nuclear chain reaction not only start, but fission enough to release the bulk of a bomb's energy before the detonation blows the core apart too far for the chain reaction to continue requires incredibly sensitive explosives and triggering mechanisms that had to be invented by the Manhattan Project for that specific purpose. Rufus would undoubtedly know this if he knew enough about atomic weapons to be aware of what a Christy pit is.
    • For that matter, the time team should've realized far sooner that one needs much more than just a plutonium core for a nuclear detonation.
    • The ridiculously casual way in which the plutonium core was handled would've killed everyone involved with radiation poisoning before they could have even gotten to burying it in the desert. Even Anthony had zero protective equipment on besides rubber gloves.
    • A Christy pit cannot possibly be repurposed for use as a nuclear reactor, much less the implausibly tiny nuclear battery. Nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors are designed incompatibly different due to the way they use their nuclear fuel, how said fuel is fed into the system, and even the ideal isotope types and alloys used as fuel. Leave aside the impossibility of deriving 300 years worth of useful energy from such a small pit.
  • Ascended Fanboy:
    • Wyatt is a big James Bond fan and is thrilled when he ends up meeting Ian Fleming in 1944 on a mission that resembles the plot of a Bond novel. He is even more gleeful when he finds out that in the new timeline Fleming wrote a Bond novel based on their experience and Wyatt, Rufus, and Lucy are major characters in it.
    • Lucy is so excited to meet Ernest Hemingway that she blurts out she's read all his books, even though at the time he's only written one.
    • Mason's expertise on early blues pioneer Robert Johnson leads to his inclusion on the mission in "The King of the Delta Blues"; he ultimately helps Johnson record his first hit.
  • Babies Ever After: In the Distant Finale, Lucy and Wyatt have had twin girls who are named Flynn and Amy.
  • Back for the Finale: Lucy's father Cahill returns during the Grand Finale, when Agent Christopher allies with him to defeat Emma and save Lucy.
  • Back from the Dead: Rufus is gunned down by Jessica in the Season 2 finale, but in the Grand Finale, Flynn goes back and kills Jessica before she could ever infiltrate the team, averting the events that led to Rufus's death and saving him.
  • Batman Gambit: Mason plays along with Rittenhouse, until they're so desperate to regain control of the time machines that they give him access to their Sinister Surveillance technology. He promptly uses it to gather information on them, to help take them down.
  • Batman Grabs a Gun: Over the course of the series, every main character has shot and killed at least one person at some point (or at the very least, wielded a gun), but while it's to be expected from Wyatt, Agent Christopher, and Flynn, who's jobs require it, the trope applies to Rufus, Lucy, Connor, and Jiya, all of whom use a gun and kill someone for the first time over the course of the series.
    • In "Space Race", Rufus shoots and kills one of Flynn's men who was about to shoot someone.
    • In "The Murder of Jesse James", Lucy shoots and kills Jesse James (despite Bass Reeves trying to convince Wyatt not to kill him throughout the whole episode and in that particular scene), presumably because she reluctantly believed that Wyatt was right; if Jesse James had been allowed to live and been taken into custody, he eventually would have escaped and killed more people who weren't supposed to die.
    • In "The King of the Delta Blues", Connor shoots and kills the Rittenhouse sleeper agent who was about to kill Robert Johnson.
    • In "Chinatown", Jiya shoots and kills the Rittenhouse agent who had killed Rufus in her vision, just as he was about to do it.
  • Beethoven Was an Alien Spy:
    • As Flynn and the protagonists mess with history, their actions are noted in history books of the changed timeline.
      • Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus were the Black Cross anarchists blamed for the Hindenburg disaster.
      • Flynn is the unknown assassin who killed Abraham Lincoln. Lucy as Juliet Shakesman is credited with saving General Grant, and even has a high school named after her. On the other hand, Rufus's heroic actions were overlooked, and the credit for stopping another assassin was given to a white soldier who was present in the area.
      • The team's encounter with Ian Fleming served as the basis for one of his most popular Bond novels.
      • Flynn kills William Travis before he can write his "Victory or Death" letter, so Lucy has to write a new one, signed anonymously, that serves the same historical purpose.
      • The trip to the French and Indian War is comparatively innocuous as Flynn only wanted to strand the team there, but they still end up being America's new first UFO sighting.
      • The moon landing experiences a near-catastrophe due to Flynn's interference, but its successful completion is credited to Katherine Johnson, who is claimed to have single-handedly fixed a computer error due to a "Communist attack" on NASA. She later becomes the first female flight director because of this.
      • Flynn kills and takes on the identity of famed spy Austin Roe, under which he kills Charles Cornwallis.
      • Wyatt decides to execute infamous serial killer H. H. Holmes, saving the lives of several of his future victims and preventing Holmes from profiting off his fame as a murderer.
      • Flynn saves Jesse James from being shot in the back by his own men by killing them first. Later, Lucy is the one who ends up shooting James in the back during a standoff.
      • Flynn steals the government's evidence against Al Capone, allowing him to beat the tax evasion charges. Flynn also gives Capone the location of Elliot Ness' safe house, leading to his death, and murders the mayor of Chicago—a Rittenhouse associate—after beating the date and location of the next Rittenhouse meeting out of him. To counter this, Lucy convinces Capone's brother Jimmy Capone/Richard Hart to confront his brother and arrest him leading to a shootout that kills Al.
      • Rufus convinces Hedy Lamarr to not let the patent lapse on her frequency hopping technique upon which many other technologies like wi-fi have been based. Thus, when the navy finally uses it in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, she's able to get her deserved profits from it and quits acting to become a full time inventor, and in the present is still the record holder for the wealthiest person in history.
      • The time team cause the Salem Witch Trials to instead be known as the Salem Witch Revolt, where the accused women fought their way out and all escaped to safety. This also prevents the term "witch hunt" from entering the vernacular.
      • After Don Law is killed before recording Robert Johnson's legendary album, Mason does it himself, and it's credited to his alias Lando Calrissian. He also can't help letting out a "Yeah!" which ends up faintly audible on the LP.
    • A number of notable historical figures and events are also revealed over the course of the series to have been connected to Rittenhouse in some way:
      • David Rittenhouse, an astronomer and inventor who was a contemporary and friend of several Founding Fathers, founded a conspiracy to secretly control America from the shadows. His murder by Flynn in 1780 implies that diffraction grating's invention would be delayed until Joseph von Fraunhofer's experiment in 1821.
      • The missing 18 minutes from the Watergate tapes were about Rittenhouse, of whom Nixon was terrified.
      • Henry Ford was a loyal member of Rittenhouse, and Bonnie and Clyde stole a key from him that unlocks a secret safe belonging to the organization. Flynn also becomes part of the posse that takes down Bonnie and Clyde, posing as a bounty hunter hired to retrieve Henry Ford's key.
      • Benedict Arnold was a founding member of Rittenhouse and was executed by David Rittenhouse for bringing Flynn and the team to kill him.
      • Besides Henry Ford, "The World's Columbian Exposition" confirms that Thomas Edison and J. P. Morgan were also top Rittenhouse members.
      • Charles Lindbergh was a member of Rittenhouse, and all his famous antisemitism and rabble rousing was just a ploy by the organization to sow division and distract from their plans.
      • William Hale Thompson, the mayor of Chicago during Al Capone's reign, was also a Rittenhouse member
      • Joe McCarthy was also part of Rittenhouse and used his Red Scare campaign as cover to eliminate the organization's opposition.
  • Big Bad:
  • Big Bad Wannabe: Emma, in comparison to previous Rittenhouse leaders. While they had grand visions to reshape history, Emma just wants to get rich and powerful. Cahill ends up calling her out on how she's taken the world's most successful secret society and ruined it.
  • The Big Damn Kiss: In "Hollywoodland" Lucy and Wyatt finally have one, though it does not confirm Canon, as at the end of the episode, it is revealed that Jessica, Wyatt's wife, is alive.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Wyatt's wife Jessica is a Rittenhouse operative.
  • Black and Nerdy: Rufus. Easily the smartest member of the team (as far as science and engineering is concerned), he's also one of the few people who knows how to pilot a time machine. And he's extremely shy around his Love Interest Jiya, sitting six feet from her and preferring to text her rather than open his mouth. In the pilot, Anthony pretty much has to force him to take Jiya on a taco run, just so they might strike up a conversation. Interestingly, Jiya is a nerd too, but she's much more sociable. During their first meeting, Rufus saw her Tribble toy and joked that they could never be friends due to her being a Trekkie and him being a Star Wars fan (although he at least knew enough about Trek to know what a Tribble is). Rufus knows a bit more about Star Trek than he lets on, as he can translate Klingon script on sight. Jiya takes advantage of his nerdiness to Write Back to the Future in Klingon with the Lifeboat's coordinates and a warning not to come after her in "Chinatown".
  • Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: Lucy and Rufus pretend to be anarchists when they storm the Hindenburg cockpit and threaten the pilots to land before the bomb goes off (Lucy specifically says they're affiliated with the Anarchist Black Cross, an actual anarchist collective active at the time, although it was dedicated to giving material aid to prisoners and jailed dissidents rather than committing acts of terrorism). As such, after the Hindenburg explodes, the bombing is blamed on the anarchists in the altered timeline and the time team are listed as the suspects.
  • Break Out the Museum Piece:
    • To chase after the stolen Time Machine, nicknamed the "Mothership", the protagonists use its earlier prototype, which is known as the "Lifeboat" as it was supposedly kept around in case the Mothership crew needed rescuing.
    • Subverted and Played for Drama in "The Lost Generation" when Wyatt's replacement uses an authentic 1920's firearm (keeping with protocol) rather than a modern firearm for the mission as Wyatt would. Either because he was unfamiliar with the weapon or the then-90-year-old firearm misfired, he ended up getting killed on the mission.
  • Bring News Back: Wyatt was part of a squad that obtained vital intelligence but was surrounded by insurgents. The squad decided that one of them had to try to get the intelligence back to their superiors and the rest would cover his escape in a Last Stand. Wyatt and the only other unwounded soldier flipped a coin, and Wyatt left while all his friends died. He is put in the same situation again when the team travels to the Alamo, and it becomes vital that they get a letter out that would inspire Remember the Alamo. He has to convince a teenage boy to abandon the battle and his comrades because the boy is the courier that history recorded as bringing the letter back (not to mention the first mayor of San Antonio).
  • Broken Pedestal:
    • In 1962, Rufus is stunned to discover that Anthony, a key scientist of the project to whom he had looked up, hasn't been kidnapped at all but rather is working with Flynn willingly. This gets even worse in Space Race, when Rufus sees just how far Anthony is willing to go in order to assist Flynn.
    • Inverted in "The Assassination of Jesse James". Wyatt, who's become jaded by his wartime experiences, has come to regard the movie Western heroes he idolized as a child as frauds. Then he meets Bass Reeves, who is very much the real deal.
    • Jiya feels this way about Mason, after he starts to actively help Rittenhouse and their agents, having looked up to him for years.
    • Lucy's mother becomes this to her in the season finale when she's revealed to be a member of Rittenhouse who doesn't care about bringing Amy back into existence.
    • Travelling to 1955, Wyatt is happy to meet Ryan Millerson, a groundbreaking early NASCAR star he's long idolized as a kid. He's thus rocked to discover Millerson is a Rittenhouse agent.
  • Butterfly Effect: As Flynn manages to alter history in some way, the ramifications mean the trio see their world altered a bit with each return home.
    • The pilot has a major example as Flynn causes the Hindenburg to crash a day later and only two people dying. One person who should have died ended up having a granddaughter who would marry Lucy's father, Henry, who never met Lucy's mother, Carol. Because she never met Henry, Carol never took up smoking and thus avoided getting the cancer that would put her in a coma. It also means that Lucy's sister, Amy, was never born and Lucy realizes this means Henry was never her father in the original timeline. Lucy also finds herself engaged to a man she has absolutely no memory of ever meeting.
    • This is much more downplayed after the pilot. History still changes after each mission but the effects are not as widespread as one would presume. History seems to "auto-correct" and instead of a cascade of changes, we instead get minor historical footnotes that do not significantly change major events, and where the overwhelming majority of people (basically all who weren't directly affected by the events that have been altered) live out their lives as they did in the original timeline.
    • Played for drama in "The Salem Witch Trials" when Wyatt finds out his wife Jessica is alive in this timeline, but estranged from him. Also, Jiya attempts to warn Rufus about killing a man in 1692. Rufus does all he can to avoid killing the man who dies in a random accident anyway, perhaps caused by his encounter with Rufus. This man, Judge Samuel Sewall, was one of the few voices of moderation during the Salem Witch Trials and eventually Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court as well as one of the earliest advocates of abolition.
    • Happens during the mission in "The Kennedy Curse" when we see a Kennedy half-dollar change to a Nixon half-dollar when Emma crashes the party to shoot young JFK. Also, Rufus's attempt to warn JFK about his future causes JFK to avoid Dallas on November 22, 1963, only to be assassinated in Austin instead.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: In "Space Race," Rufus is horrified to find this is his reaction to killing one of Flynn's men.
  • Call-Back: In Season 2, Nicholas Keynes justifies his plan to have JFK murdered as a teenager by suggesting that someone more easy to control would win the 1960 Presidential election, like Nixon. Season 1 showed Richard Nixon in the Oval Office as a paranoid nervous wreck utterly terrified of Rittenhouse, who have been threatening his family, with the implication that Watergate other scandals surrounding his presidency are either a direct result of their manipulations or the fallout from his attempts to get back at them.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: Rufus has trouble communicating his feelings to Jiya. Their one date was awkward and horrible. They sit six feet away from one another, but he always prefers to text her instead of just speaking out loud. She finally takes the matter into her own hands and kisses him when he comes back from a time jump where he was nearly stranded in the past.
  • Can't Default to Murder: In Season 2, Lucy teams up with Flynn. On their first few missions together, Flynn suggests murder in response to an obstacle several times, which Lucy always shoots down right away.
  • Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Rufus invokes this one in "The World's Columbian Expedition", using the voice recorder to remind Rittenhouse that there's no one else but him capable of piloting the Lifeboat. Subverted in the following episode, when Mason tells Rufus that Jiya is now training to operate the Lifeboat and will eventually replace him.
  • Catching Up on History: After Rittenhouse saved him from his death in World War I, Nicholas Keynes decides to learn about what he missed by reading Wikipedia. Except instead of using a computer, he has it printed out for him so that he can read it on paper.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • In the pilot, Lucy complains about her anachronistic clothing, including an underwire bra, being a dead giveaway in the past because those weren't invented until the 1940's and they were going to 1937. The underwire in her bra helps Wyatt pick the lock to the jail cell, allowing them to escape.
    • Wyatt brings a bag of grenades along to the Alamo, just in case. Rufus uses them to create an escape tunnel for the team, and the Alamo's women and children.
    • The recorder Rittenhouse forces Rufus to carry proves useful in convincing Bonnie and Clyde that the team didn't rat them out to the cops.
    • The flash drive of family pictures Agent Christopher gave Lucy to keep in the Lifeboat eventually is given to Agent Christopher's younger self in 1981 to convince her to reject the Arranged Marriage her mother set up for her, come out as a lesbian, and remain in law enforcement so that she would eventually form the team.
  • Cliffhanger:
    • The first midseason finale, "The Capture of Benedict Arnold", ends with Flynn kidnapping Lucy and fleeing in the Mothership.
    • "Public Enemy #1" ends with Rufus shot and passed out, and the ship preparing to jump. Also, all three are wanted criminals.
  • Close-Enough Timeline: Much to Lucy's dismay, this seems to be everyone else's attitude about the minor alterations to history they inevitably keep making. Mostly justified by the fact that she seems to be the only main character who has had her life altered by the changes to the timeline.
  • Concepts Are Cheap: A villainous example. Rittenhouse supposedly stands for a world where qualified people rule from the shadows, making sure the stupid masses do what they're supposed to. We never get any details, though, about just why Rittenhouse thinks they're so especially qualified, nor even what it is they think the stupid masses are supposed to do, exactly. The general impression is that they just want more oppression and injustice as an end in itself.
  • Couch Gag: The title sequence briefly shows the destination date (usually the one identified onscreen in The Teaser, or close thereabouts) in numerals before the cards flip to read "Timeless".
  • Critical Hesitation Blunder: Flynn arranges for Grant to be in Ford's Theater with Lincoln (as was the actual plan in real life, but Grant backed out at the last second) with plans to shoot them both; but when he gets there, he's surprised to see Lucy there as well. This gives her enough time to save Grant, though Lincoln still dies.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Flynn's interference turns the Battle of the Alamo into an even bigger defeat for the Texans than it was historically. The Mexicans arrive early and stage an assault right away, rather than besieging the fort for thirteen days first. The Texans are less prepared and lack the extra men who joined the defenders during the original siege.
  • Death by Adaptation:
    • Lewis Powell winds up dying earlier than in history when Wyatt shoots him when Powell tries to assassinate William Seward.
    • H. H. Holmes, Elliot Ness, William Hale Thompson, Al Capone, Don Law, Alice Paul, and Samuel Sewall all die decades before they're supposed to.
    • Inverted with Jesse James and Bonnie and Clyde, who die later than they were supposed to, and under different circumstances.
  • Deceptive Legacy: Lucy learns the reason her sister Amy no longer exists is because their parents never met. Lucy realizes this means the only way she exists is because her mother has been lying all her life about who her birth father is.
  • Declaration of Protection: Wyatt gives one almost word-for-word to Lucy and Rufus in "The Lost Generation."
    Wyatt: I'm meant to protect the both of you. I see that now. And I will.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance:
    • When the team is stranded in 1754 Pennsylvania and needs to sneak into the French Colonial garrison at Fort Duquesne, the French Army surgeon who wants to address Wyatt's supposed wound comes across to modern viewers as a sexist asshole, and his medical skills seem downright horrifying. Except that he's following contemporary medical science of the 1750s (including his casual dismissal of Lucy) to the letter. As far as he knows, he really is doing his job and taking the best possible care of a man with a potentially life-threatening injury. Remember, he's a trained surgeon, and Lucy is just some random woman claiming to be a nurse and talking about "infection" (a word he's probably never even heard before) in French that's grammatically correct, but in an accent he probably can't quite place. All things considered, why would he listen to her? This doesn't change the fact that certain aspects of medical science in the 1750s were genuinely horrifying, of course.
    • A teenage John F. Kennedy experiences the world of 2018 in "The Kennedy Curse" where he is astonished to learn that a multiracial group of male and female college students all attend the same school. In 1934, colleges were still segregated not only by race but by gender.
  • Determinator: Young John F. Kennedy in "The Kennedy Curse". Despite being a sickly teenager stranded decades in the future from his own time, he puts up a fight against both the team and Rittenhouse on multiple occasions. Truth in Television: JFK would later distinguish himself in World War II by saving a badly-wounded member of his PT boat crew by swimming to safety using his teeth to hold the man's life jacket strap.
  • Didn't Think This Through:
    • Rufus thinks he's gotten the upper hand in refusing to do Rittenhouse's dirty work as they need him to pilot the Lifeboat. He's honestly stunned when informed that Jiya is being trained as his replacement and Mason mocks him on his "plan."
    Mason: What did you think was going to happen? You were going to stand up on your hind legs for your little speech and they'd just slink off into the darkness?
    • Jesse James openly states Flynn's major problem is that he's refusing to think about what happens if he loses his "cause."
  • Diagonal Billing: Abigail Spencer and Matt Lanter.
  • Disappeared Dad: It turns out that Denise Christopher's father was killed during a robbery, after which she was helped by a female police officer, which inspired her to become a cop as well.
  • Distant Finale: After all the climatic action is over in the Grand Finale, the story cuts ahead to 2023, which shows how everyone has moved on with their lives, and has the team go on one last mission to close the Stable Time Loop and set Flynn on the course which started the series.
  • Dude Magnet: Lucy seems to be heading this way; so far, she's garnered the attention of Abraham Lincoln's son, Ian Fleming, and of course, the fiancé she suddenly has in these new timelines. As of the ninth episode, there also seems to be something brewing between her and Wyatt.
  • The End... Or Is It?: The last scene of the series finale shows a young student working on blueprints for what appears to be another time machine, implying that someone might start using time travel again in the future.
  • Enemy Mine:
    • In "The Capture of Benedict Arnold", the team and Flynn work together to use Benedict Arnold to get close to David Rittenhouse and assassinate him. It falls apart when they won't also let him kill David's young son John, and Flynn kidnaps Lucy.
    • In Season 2, a more permanent alliance is struck, due to the team's desperation to beat Rittenhouse's plans to rewrite history.
    • In "Mrs. Sherlock Holmes" Emma chooses to help the team find the Rittenhouse sleeper agent sent to stop the Suffragist movement that would lead to women getting the right to vote, explaining women’s suffrage being a personal, important influence of her past.
    • In the Grand Finale, Christopher cuts a deal with Lucy's father, getting his help to stop Emma and save Lucy's life.
  • Equal-Opportunity Evil: During the Watergate episode, it is revealed that a former Rittenhouse operative — in the 1970s — is an African-American woman who had been born into the conspiracy. Strangely enough, David Rittenhouse, the founder of the organization, was a staunch white supremacist and chauvinist. Presumably, his followers chose to take a different approach. This is later confirmed by a member of Rittenhouse.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Flynn is willing to murder innocent people to achieve his mission against Rittenhouse, but he dearly loved his wife and child. He even tries to help his mother by traveling to 1969 and saving his half-brother from dying.
  • Even Evil Has Standards / Everyone Has Standards:
    • Flynn makes it clear to Lucy that he despises having to work with the Nazis, but considers it necessary to achieve his ultimate goal.
    • He's also horrified when he realizes that Santa Anna is going to slaughter everyone in the Alamo, women and children included, rather than let them evacuate. He attempts to persuade Santa Anna not to do this, but fails. Presumably, the deaths of his wife and daughter are the reason he doesn't want them to die.
    • In the middle of his mission to kill the Apollo 11 astronauts, Flynn goes on a side quest to prevent his half-brother from dying of an allergic reaction.
    • Emma is a ruthless killer and Rittenhouse fanatic but even she is deeply troubled when the newest Rittenhouse mission could result in American women never getting the right to vote. She sabotages the mission and gets her own agent killed rather than allow that to happen.
    • The NYPD desk officer in 1919 is an obnoxious sexist prick even by the standards of the day, but he’s still horrified to discover that Alice Paul has been murdered in his holding cell.
  • Exact Eavesdropping: Has happened twice so far between Lucy and Wyatt - once in "Atomic City," when he attempts to send a telegram to his wife in the future, and again in "The Alamo," when he details his tragic origin story/military past to James Bowie. Both times, he turns around to find Lucy right behind him.
  • Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
    • Usually, how the gang figure out Flynn's plan. For example, in the pilot, they're baffled as to why he would save the Hindenburg from exploding on its arrival in New Jersey. They then go over the manifest for its next trip and realize Flynn wants to blow it up when its passengers include Nelson Rockefeller and Omar Bradley.
    • When he discovers Anthony in 1962, Rufus tries to get him away, figuring he's rescuing him from Flynn... but Anthony refuses.
    Anthony: If that man comes back and sees you, he'll kill you. He won't listen to me.
    Rufus: Why would he listen to you? You're Flynn's prisoner... who's completely unsupervised. Anthony... you are his prisoner, aren't you?
    • In 1944 Germany, Lucy figures Flynn is going to kill Wernher von Braun as without him, the U.S.'s space program will be hindered. She confronts Flynn, openly wondering why he didn't kill Von Braun when he had the chance before. Seeing Flynn smiling, Lucy realizes Flynn is really going to deliver Von Braun to the Soviets, who will use him to reach the moon first.
    • The team had figured Flynn was going to use the nuclear core he got from 1962 to give to the Nazis. When they return to report he didn't, they openly wonder what else Flynn could use a powerful source of plutonium for. At which point Mason and Rufus stare at each other in shock as they both remember Anthony talking about using such a core to become a battery for the time machine to make it more powerful.
    • Jiya tells Lucy that the reason her sister Amy no longer exists is because in this new timeline, Lucy's father, Henry, married another woman and never met Lucy's mom, Carol.
    Lucy: But... they're still my parents.
    Jiya: Keep going...
    Lucy: Wait a minute, how was I born?
    Jiya: You're almost there. (sees Lucy's face fall) Yeah, you got it.
    Lucy: Carol is my mother but Henry isn't my father... and never was. Which means my mother has been lying to me my whole life.
    • This is how Jiya figures out what Rufus's ruined message (with only "death" and "millennium" remaining) means. She and Mason start reminiscing on when they first met Rufus. She recalls him telling her that, because she's a Trekkie and he's a Star Wars fan, they'll never be friends. Then she realizes that the message is a reference to the Death Star and the Millennium Falcon about her "guiding the Lifeboat in".
  • Fake Shemp:
    • The portrayal of Frank Sinatra. Rather than find a match looks or voice-wise, he's only seen from behind or at a distance while real Sinatra performances are dubbed in.
    • Richard Nixon in 1972 is only ever seen as a blurry figure amid bright light, in the few scenes that depict him inside the Oval Office.
    • Ronald Reagan is never seen directly except in a distant shot in "The Day Reagan Was Shot". Averted with John Hinckley Jr.; the actor who played him is a pretty close match.
  • Fake Ultimate Hero: Subverted when the team meets Davy Crockett. Crockett freely admits that the story about him wrestling a bear was made up to impress his men. Crockett killed the bear, but under much more prosaic circumstances, and he was scared out of his mind. However, Crockett is shown as an extremely heroic figure who simply likes to hear embellished stories about himself.
  • Faking the Dead:
    • Emma Whitmore was the original pilot for the time machine but realized the dark plans Rittenhouse had as they threatened her family. She and Anthony thus faked her death in an accident as she hid out in the 1880s until Flynn finds her.
    • Lucy arranges for Charles Lindbergh to fake his own death in order to escape from his father's expectations and the role Rittenhouse has in mind for him (which he genuinely finds distasteful). The lure of fame and fortune for being the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic is too much to resist, however, and Lindbergh reemerges a few weeks later.
  • Foreshadowing: In "The Murder of Jesse James", Flynn says, "If I could go back in time and put a bullet in the head of my wife's killer, I would." The next episode involves Wyatt trying exactly this with his wife's killer.
  • Frying Pan of Doom: Kate uses one on one of Flynn's goons on the Hindenburg.
  • Grand Finale: The two-part "Miracle at Christmas", which was aired as a TV movie to tie up all remaining plot lines left over after the series was canceled following the end of Season 2.
  • Grandfather Paradox:
    • Subverted when Lucy's actions in the past cause her parents never to meet. Her sister is Ret-Gone but Lucy's life has taken pretty much the same path as in the original timeline. This causes her to realize that her father was not actually her biological parent.
    • Averted when Flynn saves his half-brother's life, which could have caused his parents never to meet. In the new timeline, Flynn's personal history seems not to have changed significantly.
    • Invoked by Flynn when he suggests to Wyatt that on a trip to the past he kill the parents of the man who killed Wyatt's wife, causing the man to be never born and thus stopping the murder. the next episode has Wyatt and Rufus taking the Lifeboat to perform this mission. Wyatt at first tries to keep the couple from hooking up in a one-night stand, but events escalate until Wyatt accidentally kills the presumptive father. Jessica still dies although the killer's other two victims were spared.
    • In the penultimate episode of Season 1, Rittenhouse attempts to do this to Flynn before the main trio and Christopher steal the machine.
    • Attempted again by Rittenhouse in "The Salem Witch Trials" when they implicate Abiah Foulger Franklin, the mother of Benjamin Franklin, as a witch in an attempt to keep him from being born.note 
    • A variation on the theme takes place in "The Day Reagan Was Shot" when a Rittenhouse agent attempts to kill Agent Christopher during the Reagan assassination when she was still a DC police officer. Later on the team has to convince Christopher not to go through with an Arranged Marriage which, though unrelated, would still have accomplished Rittenhouse's goal: to keep the team from forming in the first place.
  • Gratuitous German: In the episodes involving Germans (usually taking place in WW2). Different from the usual applications of this trope insofar as the actors who play characters supposed to be Germans are either German themselves (like Wernher von Braun) or at the very least got a decent vocal coach. Those characters who aren't native speakers (like Ian Fleming and Wyatt) get their heavy accents lampshaded.
  • Gratuitous Latin: According to Lucy, the gold key pendant worn by Bonnie Parker in "Last Ride of Bonnie and Clyde" is engraved with a Latin phrase about being the key to the beginning and end of time. The actual phrase, however, is not mentioned.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: When Wyatt asks why the group doesn't just use the prototype to go back in time and stop Flynn from stealing the machine, he's informed that they tried... and the pilot came back in pieces.
  • Happy Ending Override: The events of the Season 1 finale and Wyatt's subsequent raids on Rittenhouse facilities have taken their toll. As of the ending of "King of the Delta Blues" the organization is on the run and consists only of Nicholas, Lucy's mother, Emma, and whatever operatives they've managed to insert into the past.
  • He Knows Too Much: Cahill eventually threatens this when Agent Christopher starts looking into Rittenhouse. It's hinted that this is standard procedure for Rittenhouse.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Flynn in Season 2 appears to have made a complete turn but as usual, the trope continually reminds the viewer that Good Is Not Nice.
  • Heinousness Retcon: Flynn, the main antagonist of Season 1, is presented as an international terrorist who attempts to undo several major historical events and casually murders several innocent people, sometimes for no reason. Come Season 2, the protagonists learn that Flynn did all that he did in an effort to defeat the true villain of the show, the Rittenhouse organization. Flynn and the protagonists then join forces, and all of Flynn's past crimes are mostly swept under the rug. From that point on, Flynn is much less bloodthirsty, and some of the other characters even develop a close friendship with him.
  • Hell Hotel: H. H. Holmes and his "Murder Castle" appear in "The World's Columbian Expedition". Flynn cruelly leads an unwitting Wyatt and Rufus to check in there during the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, where they're put in danger. Lucy has to enlist the help of Harry Houdini in their rescue.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Flynn travels to the past to take out Jessica in a Mutual Kill, ensuring Rufus lives.
  • He Who Fights Monsters:
    • What Rufus feels is happening to him as a result of his involvement with the chase after Flynn.
    • Arguably Flynn, who seems more and more the lesser of two evils (as Rittenhouse seems as if it's going to be the greater threat, and Flynn's manipulations seem more and more like attempts to save the future from them).
    • In "The Murder of Jesse James", Jesse James claims that this happened to him, and warns that this is happening to Flynn.
    • It is implied that this is happening to Wyatt in "The Murder of Jesse James".
  • Historical Domain Character: Played very differently than most time-traveling fiction. While famous figures in history such as Abraham Lincoln and JFK are mentioned, the series tends to focus on lesser-known historical figures. For instance, during Lincoln's assassination attempt, they were largely focused on Robert Todd Lincoln, rather than the president or even John Wilkes Booth.
  • Historical Hero Upgrade: In this series, Charles Lindbergh wasn't really an anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer, he was just a weak-willed guy who agreed to outrage the public as a distraction from what Rittenhouse was up to.
  • Historical Villain Upgrade: The real David Rittenhouse was a scientist, a patriot, and a friend to Ben Franklin, John Adams, and other Founding Fathers. He even decried slavery in a speech to the American Philosophical Society that included the importance of self-determination and the rights of a man. Here, he's a slave-owning monster who founded a secret evil organization to control America, who orders Wyatt and Flynn executed and who intends to rape Lucy.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard:
    • Nicholas Keynes instructs Emma to stay on the mothership because she's too valuable to him and he doesn't want to risk her doing "dirty work." This, coupled with the fact that the mission is to derail the woman's suffrage movement, angers her so much that she shoots the other agent and sabotages the entire mission.
    Emma: the dirty work is what I'm good at.
  • Hollywood History: The entire premise of the show relies on their being a large number of watershed moments in history where disaster was averted (or ensured) by the actions of a few important people. Each historical period also has very clear heroes and villains.
  • Hollywood Law: Lucy convinces James Capone to come with them to Chicago and arrest Al Capone. The problem with the plan is that they have nothing to back up that arrest. Al just had the tax evasion charges against him dismissed and they do not have any evidence tying him to other crimes. If James arrests Al, Al will be out of jail within an hour or two. Al Capone was not an outlaw that had to tracked down and apprehended. The police could have arrested him at any time but did not have the evidence to make the arrest stick.
  • A House Divided: The team's trust in each other is shattered in "The Watergate Tapes", with the twin revelations about Lucy's journal from the future which is in Flynn's hands, and that Rufus has been spying on them for Rittenhouse.
  • I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Lucy's reaction when Wyatt and Jessica get back together. She even goes so far as to speak on Wyatt's behalf, talking about the risks he's taken to his life and his career to find her killer and bring her back in his original timeline.
  • I'm Mr. [Future Pop Culture Reference]: Used so often that it's pretty much a Running Gag.
    • Lucy uses the alias "Nurse Jackie" during the Hindenberg mission. She refers to Wyatt as Dr. Dre and says they work for General Hospital.
    • Rufus introduces himself to some USCTs as Denzel Washington.
    • Done a few more times until it finally hits the team they can just use their real names.
    • Which doesn't stop Rufus from introducing himself to some black militants in 1972 as "Kanye". The militants think it's an obviously fake name.
    • Lucy introduces herself as a medicine woman named Dr. Quinn in the French and Indian War, managing to make a reference a century too early for the show's setting despite it being a western.
    • In "Space Race," when a local cop sees his gun, Wyatt pulls out his badge showing that he's Agent Mulder, FBI.
    • Rufus actually carries a fake driver's license which identifies him as Wesley Snipes. It helps when he's arrested in "Last Ride of Bonnie and Clyde."
    • When they meet Elliot Ness, Wyatt introduces the trio as Connery, Costner and Robert De Niro.
    • Mason introduces himself to blues singer Robert Johnson as Lando Calrissian. For bonus points: a recording Mason makes for Johnson lists the credit on the album cover 82 years later!
    • In "Mrs. Sherlock Holmes" Lucy and Wyatt introduce themselves to the police as Alice Paul's attorneys, Ally McBeal and Johnnie Cochran.
    • "The Day Reagan Was Shot" has Lucy and Jiya introduce themselves to a young Agent Christopher as Cagney & Lacey. When they return to the present, and adjusted, timeline, Agent Christopher makes reference to this.
    • In the finale, Lucy and Jiya, who are pretending to be war correspondents, meet a young Korean woman. Lucy introduces herself as Rachel Maddow but quickly realises how ridiculous this is and tells the woman her and Jiya's real names.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Bass Reeves insists on taking all his targets alive to stand trial, sticking to it even after Jessie James kills his long time partner. He also eschews any kind of personal glory for his countless acts of heroism. Wyatt notes afterwards that he figured the idealized heroes of western movies were completely made up, but then he meets this guy. Downplayed as he took this stance due to how haunted he is by the people he killed early in his career (the real Reeves apparently killed around fifteen criminals in self-defense).
  • Indy Ploy: After it becomes clear that history has already been altered, the team has to wing it. In one episode, after the disaster happens anyway but in a different manner, Lucy says maybe they can't just make it up as they go along.
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: John Wilkes Booth is portrayed as one, described by the show as his time's equivalent of Donnie Wahlberg; he's more concerned with his plan being suitably dramatic than the greater effectiveness Flynn offers him. Eventually Flynn just knocks him out and kills Lincoln himself, muttering, "Actors!"
  • In Spite of a Nail: Legendary music producer Don Law is killed by Rittenhouse in 1936, and the show acts like everything's put back on track by the team making Robert Johnson's LP themselves, with no mention of what happened with Law's extensive later work with the likes of Johnny Cash, Bob Wills, Flatt and Scruggs, and Lefty Frizzell.
  • Instantly Proven Wrong: After recognizing that Wyatt and Lucy aren't real Germans, Ian Fleming pulls them away from the tavern full of German officers and begins berating them for sloppy infiltration. "I swear, you Americans! You couldn't stand out more if you tried!" Cue Rufus coming in with a gun, pointing it at Fleming, who, upon seeing a black man in Nazi Germany, just mutters, "I stand corrected."
  • In the Past, Everyone Will Be Famous: The time travellers run into a new Historical Domain Character basically every other scene. Very much justified most of the time though, since usually they're intentionally seeking either them out (either to protect them from Flynn or because they need to enlist their help and of course are only familiar with those people who made it into the history books) or the places they had been at that particular point in time. However, it also occurs occasionally that they run into them completely by coincidence (as was the case with Ernest Hemingway, Sophia Hayden, Ian Flemming etc.
  • Jerkass Has a Point:
    • Von Braun is dismissive over the damage of his creations when Rufus confronts him on it. Rufus is astounded.
    Rufus: I helped invent something greater than you ever will... and all I can think about is the destruction it's doing... the people it's hurting.
    Von Braun: But you weren't thinking of that when you were creating it. Because if you did...you'd have never gone through with it.
    • Jesse James points out to Flynn how he's becoming just as vicious as the people he's supposedly tracking down. See He Who Fights Monsters above.
  • Just Following Orders: Von Braun says this when Fleming almost shoots him for sending the V-2 rockets down on London.
  • Language Drift:
    • In the sixth episode, everyone — the protagonists, Flynn, and Rittenhouse — are all after "the doc." The protagonists take it for granted that they are looking for a document. It turns out that the "doc" is a doctor, as in a Ph.D. This becomes obvious after a little Fridge Brilliance, when one recalls that "doc" for "document" did not come into usage until the 1990s, with the advent of Microsoft Word and its .doc files; consequently, in the 1970s, a doc could only be a doctor. On the other hand, they seem to always be using the modern version of whatever language they're speaking, be it English, French, or German, and hardly anyone bats an eye, excepting an occasional blank look at a modern idiom.
    • In 1893, the main characters' references to a "serial killer" are met with confusion as that term has not entered the English vocabulary yet.
    • After the trip to the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, Jiya is unfamiliar with the term 'witch hunt' as the team disrupted the trials and freed the women who were about to be hanged in an incident henceforth known as the Salem Witch Revolt.
    • In "Hollywoodland" Rufus is attempting to listen in on a Rittenhouse operative in an adjoining room using a drinking glass against the wall. Hedy Lamarr suggests using cellophane tape over a pinhole to amplify the noise. When Rufus says that he's going to find Scotch tape, Hedy replies that the brand isn't important. The brand name 'Scotch' hadn't yet become synonymous with all types of clear cellophane tape in 1941.
  • Large Ham: Harry Houdini, as befits a stage magician. In fact, his showmanship is widely agreed within the trade to be the key reason that he was so much more successful than his equally talented brother Hardeen.
  • Last Stand: When the team travels to the Battle of the Alamo, Flynn's interference accelerates events and the heroes end up trapped in the middle of the most famous last stand in US history. And even once they manage to create an escape tunnel, Jim Bowie and Davey Crockett choose to stay behind and cover their escape, going down fighting. Crockett half-jokingly asks Rufus to tell others that he killed dozens of Mexicans with one hand.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: In "The Watergate Tapes," Rufus and Lucy trick Rittenhouse and Flynn into showing up at the same place, leading to them shooting at each other. Flynn laughs at the audacity of the situation.
  • Like a Duck Takes to Water: Mason does surprisingly well on his first mission on the Lifeboat, adapting quickly to circumstances and improvising convincingly when necessary.
  • Like a Son to Me: Mason feels this way about Rufus. He hates forcing Rufus to spy on the others for Rittenhouse, but he himself has no choice.
  • Line-of-Sight Name: In episode 2, Lucy uses a nearby Romeo & Juliet poster to choose her alias, Juliet Shakesman.
  • The Load: John Wilkes Booth's flair for dramatics (such as insisting on using a Derringer instead of Flynn's men's semi-automatic handguns) winds up being a liability to Flynn's plans... so Flynn knocks him out, then assassinates Lincoln himself.
    Flynn: Actors.
  • The Lost Lenore: Wyatt's wife, who died in something he believes to be his fault. Kate resembles her, to the point that he pulls the Always Save the Girl move above.
  • Lured into a Trap:
    • The team heads to 1754, thinking Flynn is somehow going to mess with the French and Indian War or kill a young George Washington. It turns out Flynn has actually finally figured out how they're tracking him and intends to have his guys destroy the Lifeboat and strand the trio in the past.
    • Wyatt and Rufus are lured into H.H. Holmes' notorious "murder castle" in "The World's Columbian Exposition" to keep them from tracking down Lucy.
  • Magical Native American: Averted and Played for Laughs in "The Assassination of Jesse James". Bass Reeves's Native American partner scoffs at the idea that he's using mysticism and a 'connection to the land' to track down outlaws, instead telling the team that he conducts interviews and follows the evidence.
    • He also gets mildly offended when they called him "Tonto," because he knows it means "Stupid" in Spanish.
  • Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Flynn's entire Evil Plan is to use time travel to completely change American history. Though he sees it as Set Right What Once Went Wrong; he's trying to destroy Rittenhouse, in the hopes that his dead family will be restored as a consequence.
    • According to Anthony, Rittenhouse themselves are planning on using time travel to alter history in such a way to create a perfect Police State that they can control. This is later confirmed in the Season 2 premiere, when the team discover a manifesto written by a Rittenhouse member (Lucy's maternal great-grandfather) prior to World War I about the idea of using time travel to "correct" history in order to create a world which Rufus says sounds like it's "somewhere between Hunger Games and Handmaid's Tale".
  • Mercy Kill: Harriet Tubman shoots a wounded black soldier who's dying from a gut wound, begging to be finished, then berates the time travelers for hesitating in doing the same.
  • Mistaken for Gay: Rufus tries to stay near the future father of a serial killer to keep him apart from the future mother. When a stewardess hits on Rufus, he says, "I'd rather stay here for you." After a long, awkward pause, he adds, "Because you're so cool." Rufus did not help his case by ordering a banana daiquiri from the bartender he was supposed to be shadowing.
  • The Mistress: Judith Campbell, mistress to both JFK and Sam Giancana, the top mob boss in Vegas. Judith would actually serve as the go-between for them. She's also with the general in charge of the atomic testing and apparently many more men of power and influence.
  • The Mole:
    • Rufus is forced to spy on the team by Rittenhouse. When he comes clean, Wyatt tells him to act as a Double Agent and spy on Rittenhouse for them.
    • In the first season finale, Ethan becomes one for Lucy inside Rittenhouse, accumulating evidence from 1954 to 2017, when Lucy picks it up from him.
    • Also, Emma is revealed to have been a Rittenhouse mole while working for Flynn.
  • Mooks: Anyone working with Flynn or Anthony is likely going to die, as they are disposable bad guys. It's unclear where Flynn gets them, as there always appear to be more.
    • Partially addressed in the season finale "The Red Scare", where except for Emma, Flynn is now completely out of henchmen — the ones still alive by this point have grown disillusioned and jumped ship.
  • More Expendable Than You: Inverted. In "The World's Columbian Expedition", Rufus tells Mason that he refuses to work with Rittenhouse anymore, stating that, because he's the pilot, he's indispensable. In "The Murder of Jesse James", Mason responds by having Jiya trained as a "co-pilot", in reality, Rufus's replacement if he doesn't reconsider.
  • Motive Misidentification: Lucy and the others initially think Flynn is an anarchist out to bring down America before it can ever form, but Flynn insists to her that he's actually a patriot trying to "save" the country from Rittenhouse, to which he is proven right.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: When she returns to the present, Lucy is delighted to find her sick mother is now quite well. She's then horrified to discover that, because of her actions in the past, her sister Amy was never born.
  • New Meat: When Wyatt is taken off the team, he is replaced by Sergeant Dan Baumgartner. Dan is a veteran special forces soldier but this is his first trip through time and he makes a rookie mistake. Wyatt ignores the rule about not taking anachronistic weapons into the past but Dan obeys the rule and takes a period-appropriate revolver rather than his standard service pistol. He is not familiar with the gun and during a gunfight it misfires. Dan is killed as a result.
    • Mason plays with this on the one mission he takes with the team, but his knowledge of early blues music proves critical to the mission.
  • Nice Guy:
    • Harry Houdini in "The World's Columbian Exposition". Even after being tricked by Lucy into helping Flynn break into the Rittenhouse meeting Houdini is still willing to help her escape from Flynn and rescue Wyatt and Rufus from H. H. Holmes. He's one of the most helpful people the team has dealt with in the past.
    • Hedy Lamarr fills the part in "Hollywoodland" to the point that it's doubtful the mission would have succeeded at all absent her assistance.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • Obviously, the corporation behind the time machine in the first place, as thanks to them the Hindenburg crashed a day later and only killed two people, thus affecting history.
    • The end of the pilot has Lucy at first thinking things are better as her sick mom is okay. However, she then finds out that not only is she engaged to someone she's never met, but her sister Amy was never born.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Flynn convinces General Santa Anna to be more decisive and attack the Alamo immediately rather than besieging it first. This would have made the Battle of the Alamo into a Curbstomp Battle and robbed it of its symbolism. However, Santa Anna then refuses to allow the women and children safe passage from the fort which means that the defenders are now fighting to protect the innocent, giving their deaths an even bigger symbolism.
  • No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: Played straight; see Politically Correct History below. Rufus's adventure in 1937 starts with him having to sit in the back of a city bus, and only goes downhill from there.
    • Rufus helps a little girl use the "Colored" drinking fountain in 1934 Arkansas before the cops pick him up on suspicion of being an accomplice to Bonnie and Clyde. While there is clearly racism involved, the Arkansas officers are noticeably less antagonistic to him than the cops in New Jersey, though Rufus also makes a point of not being belligerent with them this time.
      Rufus: Okay, I don't know how it works across the pond, but I am black! There is literally no point in history where that's gonna be awesome for me!
    • Since most of their adventures take them to North America (and the only ones so far that didn't were in Nazi Germany, 1920s Paris, and France during World War One), Rufus's fear is justified. Mason is a British black man, so his cultural experiences are different from being an American black man. Interestingly, Rufus being black ends up saving the team during the French and Indian War, when the Shawnee chief releases him, assuming that, as a slave, he had no choice to come into her lands. His insistence that Lucy and Wyatt are his friends astounds her.
    • A little downplayed in 1930s Chicago, when Al Capone expresses mild disbelief that his brother would associate with someone like Rufus. Then he shoots him, but only because Flynn asked him to.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Rufus sadly accepts it when the history books credit his saving of Johnson to a white soldier, knowing there was little chance a black man of the time would be recognized as a hero.
  • "No Peeking!" Request: When Wyatt and Lucy are stuck in a cell in the past, Wyatt suddenly realizes they can use the wire in Lucy's bra as an Improvised Lockpick, and he immediately asks her to hand him her bra. She realizes what he means right away and begins to strip, then suddenly realizes stops when she notices he didn't turn around and sends him an incredulous look, prompting him to catch himself and turn away. She also turns her back just in case, therefore also preserving her modesty to the audience who can only see her Toplessness from the Back.
  • "Not So Different" Remark:
    • Flynn says this to William Travis right before killing him, stating that they're both patriots who are viewed as fanatics due to their actions.
    • Jesse James sees how Flynn is as committed to his cause as Jesse was to the Confederacy but realized that in the end, it didn't matter as he ended up on the losing side. He states Flynn may claim to kill just to make a "better world" but that's not the real reason.
    Jesse: I kept right on killing and realized why. Because deep down, I was always a killer, I just needed an excuse. And you know what another word for excuse is? Cause.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus's reactions when they realize the Hindenburg is not exploding and history has been altered.
    • Lucy's expression when she meets her fiancé.
    • The team's reaction when they see the Mexican Army arriving early and they realize that they are trapped at the Battle of the Alamo.
  • Omniglot: Flynn speaks a variety of languages, including Croatian (his native language), English, Spanish, and German. Possibly justified given his intelligence background. Partly averted with the protagonists, although Wyatt mentions being fluent in four languages, including German. Given that Delta Force tends to be deployed all over the world, this makes sense. However, he doesn't speak French; luckily, Lucy speaks it fluently.
  • One Riot, One Ranger:
    • When Flynn tries to put pressure on Frank Hamernote  to get to Rufus, Hamer stares him down and quietly explains how he once faced an angry mob 2000-strong in Nacogdoches when they tried to lynch a black man ("guilty as sin, by the way") without trial. Hamer didn't back down then, and he doesn't back down now. Flynn recognizes that he's Bullying a Dragon and lets it drop. The best part? The story is true, and was in fact just one of fifteen lynch mobs he faced in his career, losing only one prisoner when the mob burned down the courthouse to get him. Hamer really was that badass.
    • Wyatt's raids on Rittenhouse's facilities in the present qualify. Realistic consequences follows with each of the raids, however: while Wyatt is a Green Beret, he's only one man against a heavily fortified facility and while he does throw Rittenhouse off balance he's unable to take control of significant assets such as the time machine or intact computers.
  • Once an Episode: As soon as the lifeboat jumps back to the past, the title card plays, with the date the team are travelling to being listed on a flip-clock; such as "05061937", which then rapidly flips again, and stops all the cards to spell out "TIMELESS"
  • Only One Me Allowed Right Now:
    • The team are told that they can't go back to their own timeline and cannot return to a time period where they have already been.
    • Wyatt asks why the group just doesn't use the Lifeboat to stop Flynn from stealing the machine in the first place. He's told that was the first thing they tried, but the pilot came back in pieces. The team learns in "The Assassination of Jesse James" that they had been lied to when they meet the original pilot hiding in the past.
    • Late in the second season, Flynn tells Lucy about when he got her journal from her, saying she looked about five years older than she is at the present time, implying that they will find a way to fix the problem.
    • The second season finale, "Chinatown". after the team returns to the present and tells Connor about Rufus's death in 1888. Connor wants to go back and try to save him, but they remind him of the "you can't go back to when you already exist" rule.
      • The episode ends with doubles of Wyatt and Lucy showing up in an upgraded Lifeboat, and they plan on going back to save Rufus.
  • Only Smart People May Pass: When Wernher von Braun brushes off Rufus who wants to talk to him, the latter simply writes down a fiendishly hard equation to demonstrate that he isn't just some random black peasant (mind you, it's 1944 in Germany we're talking about). In a later episode, he uses a similar trick to convince Katherine Johnson that he is, in fact, not a mere janitor.
  • One-Word Title: Aside from the show itself, a few episodes have only a single word as a title.
  • Phony Veteran: Al Capone liked to claim that his facial scars were wounds he received while serving in World War I. His brother James calls him out on it and Al admits that he was actually scarred in a fight because he insulted the sister of a friend. James Capone was the only Capone brother to serve in World War I.
  • Police Are Useless
    • The 1930s cops in New Jersey aren't very helpful, and prove to be a hindrance more than once.
    • Averted in "Last Ride of Bonnie and Clyde"; the Arkansas cops of the same time period seem less prejudiced towards Rufus than their New Jersey counterparts. They don't go out of their way to make his life miserable even though he is a black man and a person of interest in the bank robbery that just took place. Frank Hamer is shown to be a highly competent and fair police officer who looks for evidence against Rufus rather than just take Flynn's word for it. Even without Flynn's help, Hamer's posse was gonna find and kill Bonnie and Clyde soon.
    • Also averted in "The Assassination of Jesse James"; U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves is portrayed accurately as every bit the badass he was historically, even refusing to give an interview to a newspaper to promote his image.
    • Zigzagged in "Karma Chameleon". The state trooper in the bar is very clearly doing his job and doing it well. Unfortunately that puts him afoul of Wyatt and Rufus's plans.
    • In “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes”, the police are not just useless, they’re violent towards the suffragettes, to the point of beating and choking them.
  • Politically Correct History: Subverted, as Rufus is quick to point out that as a black guy, "There is literally no place in American history that would be awesome for me."
    • In a 1937 New Jersey bar, several of the patrons appear ready to jump and lynch him right there, and at the police station he nearly gets beaten with batons for protesting being called a "boy."
    • When Flynn tries to intervene in the assassination of President Lincoln, Rufus advocates preventing the assassination altogether, particularly after meeting some black Union soldiers who were very optimistic about their future, as Lincoln's death brought his plans for greater racial equality to a screeching halt. Rufus is put out (but not surprised) to learn that rather than a mysterious black soldier, the history books say Johnson was saved by a white soldier who was in the area.
    • He uses it to his advantage when they go to Las Vegas in the 1960s, getting away with all kinds of stuff because black people in Las Vegas at the time are pretty much invisible. "It's my superpower!"
    • Wyatt openly points out how much Rufus is going to stand out in 1944 Germany. When Ian Fleming points out the same, Rufus covers by saying he's a Tuskegee Airman.
    • Nicely inverted when Rufus gets the assistance of the Black Liberation Army in 1972, taking a bit of pleasure in telling Lucy that she had better wait outside and not make eye contact with anyone.
    • Also averted during the French and Indian War, when the three are captured by a Shawnee tribe. Lucy and Wyatt are marked for death by the chieftess, but Rufus is set free, as she claims that, as a slave, he had no choice but to come into her lands. Rufus's insistence that Lucy and Wyatt are his friends astounds her and convinces her that, maybe, not all white people are bad.
    • In 1969, Lucy has to deal with sexist men who ignore the fact that she's obviously busy; in particular one scientist at NASA insistently requests coffee from her to the point where she gets fed up and gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech. At the same time, Katherine Johnson (a black woman) is openly applauded for (supposedly) single-handedly saving the Apollo 11 mission. This earns her public recognition and boosts her career in NASA.
    • Completely averted in "Karma Chameleon," the only episode in which Rufus's race doesn't play even a minor part in the plot. Of course, it's set in 1983, the closest the series has come to the present day so far (and probably about the closest it can come based on their stated premise).
    • Played horribly straight in "Public Enemy #1" when Rufus is shot by Al Capone. Lucy notes that hospitals in 1930's Chicago are segregated (not that 1930's treatment would be anything to brag about). The team is forced to take a barely-conscious Rufus back to the present for treatment despite the risk of being arrested, and Rufus passes out at the controls of the Lifeboat just as the episode fades to black.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: One of the time alterations Nicholas Keynes orders is meant to sabotage women's suffrage in the USA. Since Rittenhouse's whole shtick is to create the appearance of democracy while making sure to control elected officials from behind the scenes, you'd think he wouldn't care who did or did not get to cast meaningless votes, but according to one of his female operatives he felt it was important to "put women in their place." Which is why that otherwise-loyal operative teams up with the heroes to ruin his plans on that one occasion.
  • Portmantitle: "Time" + "Less"
  • Posthumous Sibling: In "Space Race" its revealed that Garcia Flynn had an older half-brother named Gabriel Thompkins who died before he was born. Flynn changes the timeline to save his brother's life and spare his mother the trauma of losing a child, having experienced that pain himself with the murder of his daughter Iris.
  • Properly Paranoid: Richard Nixon with regard to Rittenhouse. It's all but stated that the missing 18 1/2 minutes on the Watergate tapes concerns his apprehension about them and implied that Rittenhouse is the source of Nixon's legendary paranoia in general.
  • Ragnarök Proofing: Averted. The emergency communication capsule Rufus uses during the trip to 1763 survives undiscovered for centuries as the area transitions from wilderness to a built-up Pittsburgh suburb, but the material deteriorates and the message inside is rendered nearly illegible. In the Season 2 finale Jiya manages to keep the Lifeboat from being discovered for 130 years in what would become the San Francisco metro area, but the electronics inside have deteriorated and it requires extensive repairs before it can be used again. Even then it's still very risky.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Ben Cahill delivers an epic one to Emma, berating her for her selfishness and reduction of Rittenhouse to a mere vehicle for her intertemporal larceny, and explaining exactly why he helped Agent Christopher stop her. When she asks what they offered him, he tells her with a look of pure contempt on his face that he simply did it to save his daughter, and cuts right to the bone by telling her that it's a "family thing", something she'll "never have, or understand".
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: In 1934, Captain Frank Hamer of the Texas Highway Patrol (who received a special federal deputization to pursue Bonnie and Clyde across state lines) treats Rufus with respect even though Rufus is accused by Flynn of being an accomplice of Bonnie and Clyde. He refuses to hand over Rufus to Flynn and dares Flynn to do something about it. When he gets proof of Rufus's innocence, he promptly releases him and helps him evade Flynn.
    • "Karma Chameleon" features an Ohio state trooper who is stranded with the characters in a bar due to a severe storm. The trooper advises everyone to stay off the roads; intervenes when Wyatt finds himself having to punch out a drunk; and takes Wyatt into custody after discovering Wyatt has a concealed handgun. All of these are the right actions to take, but don't help the team out one bit in accomplishing their goals.
  • Red Herring:
    • When Flynn goes back to 1960s Las Vegas, it's assumed he's after John F. Kennedy, or any of the other high-profile individuals gathering there at the time. He's actually after Kennedy's mistress, who can get him to his real objective, the core of a nuclear bomb.
    • The team follows Flynn to Germany in 1944, on the eve of the launch of the first V2 rocket at England, believing that he intends to arm it as a nuke. In fact, he's there to abduct Wernher von Braun and hand him over to the Soviets, guaranteeing them winning the Space Race.
    • The entire trip to the French and Indian war was merely meant to be a trap to keep the Lifeboat crew from following them.
    • In the finale, the only reason Rittenhouse visits North Korea during the Korean War is so they can lure Lucy and the others there in order to kill them.
  • Remember the Alamo: Flynn's goal at the Battle of the Alamo is to prevent the Trope Namer from being created. He accelerates events so the battle is a complete Curb-Stomp Battle for the defenders and makes sure that Colonel Travis's letter is never written. Thus The Alamo will become a minor historical footnote rather than a massive symbol of defiance and sacrifice.
  • Ret-Gone: One of the consequences of the dangers of changing the past. Lucy discovers this happened to her sister, Amy as in the new timeline, their parents never met.
    • Openly addressed when Christopher invites Lucy to dinner with her wife and children and admits she wants to make sure Lucy remembers them just in case something happens that erases them from existence.
  • The Reveal: "The Watergate Tape" has two big ones:
    • As it turns out Rittenhouse is real and has been behind Mason's time travel exploits as well as working behind the scenes of American history for decades (if not longer). When Flynn stumbled onto a mention of them at the NSA, his family was killed and he was put on the run for revenge.
    • Lucy comes face to face with her birth father... Benjamin Cahill, the Rittenhouse chief who's been pulling the strings on Rufus and Mason. She doesn't know that, however.
    • Flynn's purpose for coming to 1888? To find Emma Whitmore, the original test pilot for the time machine, supposedly killed in its first voyage but really hiding out in the past all this time. When he rescues her, she gratefully joins him as she has her own beef with Rittenhouse.
    • In the final scene of season 1, Lucy tells her mother about Amy and how she's going to find a way to bring her back. Carol's reply: "Rittenhouse will never let that happen." It turns out that Carol's family has been "good Rittenhouse stock," she has known all along what Lucy is up to and she and Emma are now working together to complete the company's plans to change history.
  • Ripple Effect Indicator: The first sign of things changing for Lucy is when her sister Amy no longer exists in any family photos and her comatose mother is perfectly healthy.
  • Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: The trio are completely unfamiliar with the changes to the timeline upon their return to the present day, which are common knowledge to everyone else.
    • Lucy shows Mason a locket she has containing a photo of Amy. As she was wearing it when she made the very first trip, it still survives and Mason is astounded to realize Lucy is retaining an artifact from a timeline that no longer exists. She, of course, is less interested in the scientific implications and more on how to fix this.
    • This doesn't go the same for the crew who stayed behind. When Lucy protests that she lost her sister, one of the technicians tells her that their records [now] show that she never had a sister.
  • Rock Beats Laser: Mercilessly averted - the period natives can't hold a candle to the modern weaponry Flynn and the team bring with them; and these arms oftentimes become quite plot-relevant due to their innate superiority. Also, the one time they bring a guy with them who has period-appropriate weaponry, he gets immediately gunned down.
  • Rubber-Band History: Played straight most of the time. Apart from the pilot where a significant change occurs, the timeline the team returns to is usually pretty much identical to the one they left, with the history changes that have taken place having tapered off instead of rippled out. This goes so far that the new timeline mission control that greets them upon their return behaves identical to the mission control that sent them away up to their identical mission parameters (the only exception being that they're oblivious to aforementioned, tapered-off changes).
  • Running Gag: It's not that funny except in terms of Black Humour, but Rufus keeps encountering racism because of his skin colour — or, in the case of Las Vegas, using it as an advantage to slip beneath notice. And since a Running Gag gets stale after a while, his skin color comes in extremely handy when the team is captured by Indians who set him free because they think he's an escaped slave, or has to enter the Black Panthers.
    Rufus: She? Oh, I fuck her.
    Lucy: [speechless]
  • San Dimas Time: The show appears to operate on this principle. The Lifeboat appears to spend exactly as much time in the past as shown on the clock in mission control. It's never stated why the Lifeboat can't return a split second after leaving. For that matter, changes to the present don't take place until they happen in the past, even though, from the viewpoint of those in the present, that happened long ago.
  • Secret Legacy: It's stated by "the Doc" that Rittenhouse members are born into the organization. This might explain Lucy being chosen out of all the historians, since it's revealed that her biological father is a Rittenhouse member. Even when the Lifeboat is stranded in the 18th century, Cahill only seems to be concerned about Lucy.
  • Serial Killer: In "The World's Columbian Exposition", the team encounters H. H. Holmes, the first recorded American serial killer, and the man responsible for the coining of the term itself.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong:
    • The mission of the main trio is to try and prevent Flynn from altering history. Flynn, in turn, claims to be trying to save the United States, not destroy it as the protagonists believe.
    • On a smaller, more personal scale, Wyatt also wants to find a way to save his wife from being murdered. In "Space Race," Flynn takes time off from his mission to save his older half-brother from dying as a child, to spare his mother the trauma of the loss.
  • Shipper on Deck: Lucy and Wyatt have both been rooting for Jiya and Rufus to get together.
  • Shown Their Work: "Space Race" shines a light on the role of Katherine Johnson in the space program (see Shout-Out entry above). The speech Richard Nixon is seen giving on TV when it's feared the Apollo astronauts are lost is the very speech which was written for him to give in just such a contingency.
  • The Siege: Subverted due to Flynn's interference. The Battle of the Alamo was a thirteen day long siege that ended when the Mexican Army launched a full-on assault and overwhelmed the defenders. Flynn convinces Santa Anna to skip the siege and assault the fort right away.
  • The Slow Path: After stealing a plutonium core in the past, Flynn buries it in a remote location so he then can dig it up in the present.
    • Jiya uses this to return the Lifeboat to the team after escaping from Rittenhouse custody in "Chinatown". Backfired when Mason and Rufus have to make extensive repairs to the 130-year-old electronics in the Lifeboat over and above the damage done during Jiya's escape.
  • Spared by the Adaptation:
    • John Wilkes Booth winds up dying later than in history, when he is executed for the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln, Johnson, Seward, and Grant.
    • Flynn's interference causes the Battle of the Alamo to be resolved earlier. In the original timeline, a number of the defenders only joined the battle at its later stages. In the new timeline, these men never had the time to arrive and thus did not die in the Last Stand.
  • Spotting the Thread: Some USCTs quickly spot that Rufus isn't an actual Union soldier because he can't name his unit or what battles he fought in, and his uniform, acquired from Civil War reenactors, isn't up to snuff. They get very upset over the impersonation, which threatens to blow his cover.
  • Stable Time Loop:
    • At the end of "The Lost Generation", Lucy's mother gives her a gift: the journal that Flynn was using to know the future. Then, in the Grand Finale, the team goes back to 2014 so that Lucy can give Flynn the journal, sending him on the path that leads to the events that start the series.
    • The Grand Finale also features Flynn going back to 2012 and killing Jessica. It is strongly implied that this too was part of the overall Stable Time Loop. Wyatt at any rate believes that Flynn was meant to be the killer.
  • Stepford Smiler: Ernest Hemingway's hedonistic lifestyle is his way of coping with the horrors he saw in World War I, seeing it as having all the enjoyments the dead no longer can.
  • Suicide by Cop: After Clyde is gunned down by the police, Bonnie grabs his gun and aims it at them, knowing they'll kill her and reunite her with him.
  • Take That!: "Space Race" features the team getting an assist from Katherine Johnson, giving Rufus the opportunity for a dig at Apollo 13 erasing her role in the event.
  • Temporal Abortion: An episode has Wyatt go back to prevent the birth of the man who killed his wife Jessica. It turns out the killer was conceived in a one-night stand and he just has to prevent that. He manages to prevent the killer from being born but Jessica still dies even though the killer's other victims are now alive.
  • Tempting Fate: Wyatt openly asks, "How can Flynn make the Alamo worse?" The answer: by killing Colonel Travis before he writes the inspirational letter and then convincing Santa Anna to launch a full-scale attack rather than a siege. Thus, instead of the epic stand that inspired Texas, the Alamo is a forgotten battle of history to keep the territory under Mexican control.
  • There Is No Kill Like Over Kill: "Last Ride of Bonnie & Clyde" opens with the Outlaw Couple killed by a police posse who empty over a hundred rounds into the criminals' car. (This is Truth in Television, by the way.) This is subverted when Flynn alters the timeline and they die after Clyde is shot twice and Bonnie once.
  • Thicker Than Water: Rittenhouse's M.O. Most of their members are descended from specific families, including Lucy, through both her parents, and is described as practically "Rittenhouse Royalty". They have a strong "keep it in the family" tradition, and though outsiders may be recruited for their usefulness or special skills, they're never allowed to rise very high through the ranks. This ends up being their downfall each time though, as first, Lucy uses her connections to convince her grandfather to work as a mole for decades to bring them down. Then, Emma, who grows extremely frustrated with their "bloodlines crap" and jealous of Carol's special treatment towards Lucy even after she turns on Rittenhouse, orchestrates a coup, kills Carol and Nicholas, and takes over what little remains of the organization. Finally, Benjamin Cahill helps Agent Christopher find Emma's hideout to help her save Lucy and get protection for his son, bringing a final end to Rittenhouse, appparently once and for all.
  • Translation Convention: Surprisingly, averted. Whenever non-English characters are speaking their language, the actors actually are speaking that language (if not, perhaps, the appropriate version of it). Most of it tends to be subtitled for the viewer's benefit, although much of the Shawnee speech is left untranslated.
  • The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Constantly - in pretty much every episode, the team encounters a celebrity whom one of the team members admires. Comes with the format of a series that involves Time Travel and a hefty dose of In the Past, Everyone Will Be Famous.
  • Threat Backfire: Rufus makes a stand by telling Rittenhouse that he's refusing to work with them and they have to go along as he's the only one who can fly the Lifeboat. He's thrown when Mason tells him that Rittenhouse wants to train Jiya as the pilot, rendering Rufus's threat meaningless.
  • Took a Level in Badass:
    • All of the team, but particularly Rufus, who's leveling up under Wyatt's tutelage and after each interaction he has with historical badasses like Ian Fleming, Bass Reeves, and Ernest Hemingway. He's now more of a Badass Bookworm than The Load.
    • Jiya has taken a few levels as of the end of Season 2, when she strangles a Rittenhouse operative while making an escape and survives for three years on her own in the 1880's working as a card dealer in a saloon.
  • Trash the Set: Within the first five minutes of the Season 2 premiere, Rittenhouse blows up Mason Industries in an attempt to destroy the Lifeboat. Afterwards, the team has to relocate to a secret government bunker.
  • Truth in Television:
    • A few months before Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth's brother, saved the life of Lincoln's son Robert. Robert accidentally fell in the space between a train and the train platform and would have been maimed or killed if Edwin Booth had not pulled him to safety.
    • The US Atomic Energy Commission regularly tested atomic bombs at the Nevada Test Site in Nye County — 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas — during the 50s and early 60s. The US Department of Energy (which did not exist in 1962) assumed the responsibility for underground nuclear testing in the 1970s. The explosions from the atmospheric tests were visible from downtown and became a tourist attraction. They're now best known for much of the cast and crew of The Conqueror getting cancer after it was unwisely filmed near the old site.
    • Harry Houdini is accurately shown doing his escapes behind a curtain early on his career. It wasn't until a while later that he hit on the idea that it would be more entertaining for the audience to actually see him escape, making him a household name.
    • Emma confirms that Napoleon Bonaparte was actually of quite average height for his time, and is only remembered as short because he surrounded himself with tall men.
    • John F. Kennedy did suffer from serious health problems his entire life, including a bout of colitis in 1934 that was originally diagnosed as leukemia.
  • Two Guys and a Girl: The protagonists.
  • Tyrant Takes the Helm: In "The Lost Generation", the NSA swoops in and takes control of the time travel project, kicking out Agent Christopher. Wyatt realizes that a move like this must have been planned well in advance, and that it's actually Rittenhouse seizing the time machine for themselves.
  • Unexplained Accent: Although Garcia Flynn is presumably supposed to be an American of combined Hispanic and Irish ancestry (and in line with this, giving his name establishes his bona fides to the Spanish/Mexican General Santa Anna), Goran Višnjić plays him with his own distinctive Croatian accent. This is sometimes given a Lampshade Hanging, including one episode where a Union general is suspicious of him and cites his unplaceable accent, and another where when claiming the two are Pinkertons, Rufus identifies Flynn as "Hans Gruber", to Flynn's annoyance. It is mentioned at one point that he was raised in Croatia though, explaining his accent in-universe, although not to all the characters.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: Wyatt is still dealing with the death of his wife, but he gets really irritated when Ian Fleming flirts with Lucy.
  • Villain Decay:
    • Since the heroes fight him every single episode of the first season, Flynn's inability to make any major changes to history note  starts to get really noticeable after a while. Lampshaded in "Red Scare," where all but one of his minions have deserted him rather than sign up for yet another hopeless plan, and Lucy tells him outright that neither of them is actually accomplishing anything with their feud other than wracking up collateral damage throughout history.
    • Time itself. The pilot episode ends with a big Wham moment when it becomes apparent that butterflies in the space-time continuum have erased Lucy's sister from history, but after this, everything tends to end up as close enough despite a rising kill count across history. Season two even implies that history actively fights back against being changed, which also lessens the threat that Rittenhouse poses since the laws of nature themselves seem to be hindering them and aiding the heroes.
    • Nicholas Keynes in Season 2, for the same reason as Flynn in Season 1. It gets progressively harder to take him seriously as an evil mastermind given that his plans never, ever work.
  • Visionary Villain:
    • Rittenhouse's founder and namesake, David Rittenhouse, believed that the common people have no ability to rule themselves efficiently, and that democracy is therefore too chaotic, but also that monarchy is too selfish in nature to serve as a proper alternative. Therefore, in the view of himself and his followers, the only way to truly rule is to use democracy as a façade to placate the masses, while a select few wield power from the shadows.
    • Nicholas Keynes, a Rittenhouse member from the early 1900s and Lucy's great-grandfather. He foresaw the creation of time travel, and wrote a manifesto on how it could be used to rewrite history to create a "perfect" world with Rittenhouse in ultimate control. At the start of Season 2, he's brought to the present in order to help implement the plan.
  • We Hardly Knew Ye: Sergeant Dan Baumgartner, Wyatt's replacement in "The Lost Generation". He's been namechecked in an earlier episode, has good chemistry with the team, and knows what he's doing. Unfortunately he's shot and killed in the first twenty minutes of the episode, forcing Lucy and Rufus to rely on Ernest Hemingway for security.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: How Flynn sees himself. He truly believes the only way to wipe out Rittenhouse is to completely undo American history and thinks it's worth all the cost.
  • Wham Episode: The season 2 finale. Emma kills Carol and Keynes, basically ending their plan to rewrite history. Later, Rufus dies in 1888. But just as the episode is about to end, another, newer Lifeboat arrives with an older Wyatt and Lucy preparing to retrieve their past selves and go get Rufus back.
  • Wham Line:
    • Lucy's mom when she asks about her sister: "Who's Amy?"
    • Lucy recognizing her handwriting in the notebook Flynn carries and says she never wrote this. Flynn replies, "You will."
    • Lucy's mom again in the Season 1 finale. After Lucy tells her about the time machine, the mother says that "Rittenhouse would never allow me to become sick", and says that Lucy is practically Rittenhouse royalty.
  • Wham Shot:
    • At her return home, Lucy finds that a photo of her, her sister and her mother is now just she and her mother and realizes Amy was never born.
    • In 1888, Flynn comes to a cabin and tells the woman there that "I have a ship." She lets him inside where Flynn sees massive high-tech equipment strewn about. In the present, Jiya sees video of the woman, Emma Whitmore as she was the original test pilot for the ship who faked her death to hide in the past.
    • In the Season 1 finale Jiya, who's been suffering seizures after her own trip in the machine, appears to briefly flash into the past, with the Golden Gate Bridge appearing to still be under construction.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Granted, the missing plutonium core was a far bigger concern, but the theft of the core should have resulted in a number of things, including the sacking of the general in charge of those keys for falling for an obvious honey trap, that would have had major downstream effects the characters have not yet explored.
    • The shooter Rittenhouse sends with Lucy and Rufus in "Public Enemy #1" was last seen after he was tranquilized by Rufus in the Lifeboat. He could not have been disposed of in 1961 (as he might complete the mission) or 1931 (as he might alter the timeline and live long enough to complete the mission). Nor could he have been disposed of in the present, as he would compromise the Lifeboat's hiding place. So what did happen to him?
  • White Sheep: James Capone was the only Capone brother who did not become involved with organized crime. He served with distinction in World War I and after changing his name became a respected law enforcement official.
  • Who Shot JFK?: In "Karma Chameleon", Anthony implies that Rittenhouse was involved in both the JFK and MLK assassinations.
  • Would Hurt a Child:
    • Played With in "Space Race" when Flynn seems to be targeting a widow and her young son. It looks like he is there to kill the boy but his conscience is holding him back till the very end. However, it turns out that the boy is Flynn's half-brother and Flynn is there to save his life.
    • Played with again in "The Capture of Benedict Arnold." After killing David Rittenhouse, Flynn is stalking 12-year-old John Rittenhouse, but when he finds him, he can't work up the nerve to shoot a child, giving Lucy a chance to intervene.
  • Write Back to the Future:
    • When he sees a Western Union kiosk, Wyatt tries sending a message to his wife telling her not to do whatever led to her death that day. When he gets back, she's still dead. He admits it was a long shot. Unfortunately, Western Union's famous telegram service was discontinued in 2006. Since the delivery date was for 2012, six years after the cessation of service, it's highly probable that she never received his warning.
    • Used for real when, stuck in 1754, Rufus buries a bottle with a message in a spot the group already decided on using and Jiya digs it up in 2016. Sadly, over the two centuries and thanks to the capsule cracking, most of the message faded away.
    • Flynn's team places the stolen plutonium pit in a sealed container and buries it in the desert in 1962 for later retrieval in the present.
    • Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus break into the Oakland State Penitentiary in 1941 in order to hide escape materials for Flynn to break out with 77 years later.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Played with. The heroes are quite savvy when it comes to time travel tropes but they cannot be sure which particular trope Flynn is using on a particular mission. Guessing wrong leads to them failing to stop Flynn's plan in 1962 (they think he's going to kill JFK when he's really stealing a nuclear core), and almost gets them killed in 1944 (they believe Flynn is giving a nuke to the Nazis when he's really going to send a key scientist to the Soviet Union so they win the space race).
  • You Can't Fight Fate:
    • Despite their actions, the Hindenburg is destroyed (by a stray bullet), and Kate still dies, from being shot in the heart. Lucy says that maybe it was just... Wyatt practically dares her to say "fate".
    • At the end of "Stranded," Lucy is in despair because Flynn's possession of her journal means she'll one day be working for him. Wyatt reminds her that she has free will and doesn't have to do what Flynn says she did in some alternate timeline.
    • "Karma Chameleon" is practically built on this one. Every time Wyatt and Rufus attempt to keep the parents of Jessica's killer from getting together, something interferes with the plan. Wyatt ultimately contributes to the accidental death of the would-be father, averting the killer's birth, only to find out on his return that Jessica was still killed anyway.
    • This is discussed by Rufus when they are not sure if Jiya' visions are prophecy or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. He further lampshades this when his attempt to stop JFK's death in Dallas merely shifted the event to a different city.
    • It's actually suggested that time works to prevent changes, meaning that this trope is actually a fundamental law of reality, if one that can be circumvented if you work at it hard enough, as some minor changes have been made, even if history as a whole is relatively unchanged.

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