Series / Wonder Woman (1975)

aka: Wonder Woman 77

"Wonder Woman!
All the world's waiting for you
And the power you possess
In your satin tights
Fighting for your rights
And the old red, white, and blue!"

—Series theme

Wonder Woman is an American live-action TV series that originally aired from 1975 to 1979, based on the comic book superhero Wonder Woman. It starred Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman and Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor.

The movie-length pilot episode and first season aired on ABC, and were set during World War II, inspired from the original comics by William Moulton Marston and Harry G. Peter. From the second season, the series moved to CBS, was retitled The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, and the setting moved to the present day (i.e., The '70s). Wonder Woman, being an ageless Amazon, hadn't aged a day, while Lyle Waggoner switched to playing the remarkably familiar-looking Steve Trevor Jr.

An unrelated failed Pilot Movie was broadcast about a year earlier, Wonder Woman (1974), starring Cathy Lee Crosby as a non-powered Wonder Woman in a very loose adaptation (verging on In Name Only). Even earlier, in the mid-1960s, William Dozier (who produced Batman and The Green Hornet) produced a five-minute Wonder Woman screen test that leaned more heavily towards comedy, which portrayed Diana as living with her mother.

In 2011, David E. Kelley attempted to produce a pilot for a new Wonder Woman series starring Adrianne Palicki, best known for her role in Friday Night Lights, although the project was cancelled before the pilot had been completed. The unfinished pilot attracted poor reviews and has a page here.

In January of 2015, a digital comic continuation à la the Batman '66 comic kicked off under the title Wonder Woman '77, written by Marc Andreyko of Manhunter and Batwoman fame. Print anthologies are being released a couple of times a year. November 2016 saw the release of digital crossover miniseries Batman '66 Meets Wonder Woman '77, co-written by Andreyko and Batman '66 writer Jeff Parker, followed in December 2016 with another crossover mini, Wonder Woman '77 Meets Bionic Woman, written by Andy Mangels. This version also made a cameo appearance in the tie-in comic to the Arrowverse adaptation of Crisis on Infinite Earths; her Earth is designated as Earth-76.

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This series provides examples of:

A–B

• Abandoned Warehouse: In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", Fausta lures Wonder Woman to one using Steve Trevor as the bait.
• Achilles' Heel: Although typically depicted with a number of superpowers — including super-strength, super-speed, and super-reflexes — Wonder Woman loses all of her strength if anyone removes her magic belt. She's also susceptible to chloroform and poison gas, particularly in the show's first season.
• Action Girl: Wonder Woman followed in the footsteps of the first TV superheroine, Batgirl. She was part of the action girl movement in the 1970's that included shows such as The Bionic Woman, Police Woman, and Charlie's Angels.
• Action Mom: Wonder Woman's mother is Hippolyta - the Amazon who defeated Hercules - but this is never confirmed or denied in the show. However, in "The Feminum Mystique", the Amazons overthrow the Nazis who were holding them prisoner after seizing Paradise Island. The last defining act is when Hippolyta, armed with a feminum bracelet, stares down the leader informing him that his gun is now useless against her.
• Actor Allusion: "The Deadly Toys" stars Frank Gorshin as the Villain of the Week, although Wonder Woman isn't the first DC superhero he came to blows with.
• Adaptation Distillation: The TV show simplified the comics (none of Wonder Woman's supervillains ever appeared, for example, though some of her Nazi opponents did) but still had a charm of its own. As far as public perception goes, this show was to Wonder Woman what the Adam West's Batman was to Batman; everything the public knows (or thinks it knows) about Wonder Woman comes from either this show or Super Friends. The closest the series ever came to traditional DC Supervillains were 'The Pied Piper' and the 'Wicked Toymaker', variations of which appeared in this show and numerous other DC franchises.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Steve Trevor, blond in the comics and most adaptations, is here played by the brunet Lyle Waggoner. The same thing happens to Paula Von Gunther.
  • And the exact opposite happens with Fausta Grables, who was brunette in the comics but played by the blonde Lynda Day George on the show.
• Adaptation Inspiration: This version of Wonder Woman was far more faithful to the vision of William Moulton Marston than Wonder Woman (1974) starring Cathy Lee Crosby, but there were many differences from the original source material. The emphasis on bondage and submission are entirely absent, as would be expected from a prime time network show. There was a considerable amount of girl power, most notably from Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, and the amazons of Paradise Island, but the comics took it much farther. In the comics, Wonder Woman would recruit Etta Candy and her college sorority, the Holliday Girls, who would assist Wonder Woman - even serving as infantry troops to beat up squads of Nazis. In the comics, very special ladies would be given the opportunity to travel to Paradise Island for training to unlock her super strength and fighting abilities. Nothing like that ever happened or was even hinted as being possible on the show. Simply featuring a woman fighting, winning, and being far stronger and more capable than anyone else around her was more than enough in The '70s.
• Adaptational Attractiveness
  • Wonder Woman herself. In the comics of the 40s through the 60s, she was beautiful but in an athletic and less well endowed manner. Lynda Carter changed the entire look of the character. She would never be the same.
  • What was perfect was her attitude, her body language and her face. She looked stunningly like Harry G. Peter's original drawings. Alex Ross famously said she looked like she'd just walked right off the page. This resemblance was deliberately played up. Pete Marston said that Carter put more magic into his father's original creation than anyone else on earth.
• Adaptational Curves: The original comic books up until The '70s portrayed Wonder Woman as a very slim and athletic build. Then Lynda Carter was cast as Wonder Woman and not only did she bring far more cleavage to the role, but the comic book character was forever transformed.
• Adaptational Badass
  • Wonder Woman herself in some ways from the "Earth Two" Golden Age version of the comics. While that one usually won her fights, usually only let herself get captured just to easily escape when done playing along and technically had fewer vulnerabilities to exploit, her winning record in combat wasn't quite as high as this Wonder Woman's, a much lower amount of her fights were so decisively in her favor, she was legitimately captured more frequently and did not save herself as frequently from these situations. In short this Wonder Woman was easier to beat on paper but in practice was in periled far less.
  • In the comic books Wonder Woman has two lariats, the lasso of persuasion and the lasso of truth. They have different powers and she finds using both at once unwieldy, so they are almost never seen together unless she teams up with one of the Wonder Girls. In this show her lasso has the abilities of both lariats plus some powers neither had in the comics, such as mild wish granting ability on the part of those who submit to it(once erasing specific memories of Irene Janus at her request). What's more this shows Wonder Girl has an exact duplicate, so they can both access all of these perks whenever they feel like it.
• Adaptational Wimp
  • Steve Trevor in the comics was decidedly two steps and half behind Wonder Woman in all aspects, but he was still far more tenacious and resourceful than he was in this show.
  • The protagonist herself, on paper. The Golden Age Earth Two Wonder Woman was resistant to all mundane toxins and anesthetics, needing magical or alien substances to really slow down, while the one on this show was susceptible to chloroform. She also retained all of her gifts wherever she was, while the show's Wonder Woman could only use her powers away from Paradise Island if she wore her belt. In practice this Wonder Woman lacked the back of head base of skull weakspot her the Golden Age comic counterpart possessed, which evidently made her far harder to deal with.
  • In the original Golden Age comics, Etta Candy was a one-woman cavalry, routinely beating up Nazi spies with her bare hands (and the occasional judicious use of candy), Willing Suspension of Disbelief be damned. Here, she's little more than flighty comic-relief, and even her love of sweets is downplayed.
  • In the comics, Wonder Girl was one of the most powerful members of the Teen Titans. When she was adapted for television in "The Feminum Mystique, Part I", however, she was depicted as a novice heroine who had trouble executing a successful spin-transformation.
• Advanced Ancient Acropolis: Paradise Island is an uncharted island within the Bermuda triangle. In 1942, the Amazons wear togas and use bows and arrows, but they had an invisible plane, a truth serum, and guns to use in her "Bullets and bracelets" challenge.
• Advanced Ancient Humans: In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", Wonder Woman tells us that the Amazons of Paradise Island have "existed in peace and happiness for twenty-six centuries", thus predating the Roman Empire. They have guns, invisible planes, telepathy, and each Amazon has Super-Strength.
• Aerith and Bob: The two princesses of Paradise Island: Drusilla and Diana. Wonder Girl and Wonder Woman, respectively
• An Aesop:
  • In "The Bushwhackers" - a Very Special Episode - Jeff Hadley learns an important lesson about family, loyalty, jealousy, and trust. Just because his father, J.P. Hadley - played by Roy Rogers - adopted several war orphans, it doesn't mean that his father loves him less.
  • "The Man Who Could Move the World" was about a bitter man with telekinesis convinced modern day Wonder Woman had done him wrong in World War 2. This pulpy plot becomes a lot more serious when you find out he and his family were held in one of the internment camps built by the US government to hold Japanese-American citizens during the war. For a lot of younger viewers, this was probably the first time they'd ever heard of the camps, and while Wonder Woman has to beat him, she acknowledges that what happened to his family was wrong and should never have happened.
• Affably Evil:
  • In "The New Original Wonder Woman", Ashley Norman played by Red Buttons, was cheerful, funny, and amiable whether he was hosting Wonder Woman's theater show, trying to steal her money, or reporting to his Nazi bosses.
  • In "The Queen and the Thief", Evan Robley played by David Hedison, is the classic charming rogue. After trying to steal the crown jewels - what he stole were fakes - he joins forces with Wonder Woman to foil Ambassador Orrick's evil scheme
  • In "Spaced Out", Kimball played by René Auberjonois, steals the lenses, hogties a guest star at the Convention, and escapes Wonder Woman by threatening to throw a large flowerpot on a group of innocent civilians - all with a smile, and joke, and a laugh. He even teams up with Wonder Woman to foil Simon Rohan's plans, but makes his escape once again in the confusion
• After-Action Healing Drama: In "Judgement from Outer Space", Wonder Woman is hit full force with a poison grenade. The following scenes show her in a hospital fighting off the poison and dramatically going out to find the alien spaceship even though she is still woozy and debilitated from the poison.
• After-Action Patch-Up: In the pilot, "The New Original Wonder Woman", Wonder Woman nurses Steve Trevor until he's healthy enough to be transported back to the United States.
• Agony Beam:
  • In "The Man Who Made Volcanoes", Wonder Woman endures the prolonged laser blast of a weapon designed to cause volcanic eruptions.
  • At the climax of "IRAC is Missing", Diana encounters an artificially intelligent security program which uses a laser in an attempt to thwart her heroics.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Most of the AIs Diana meets seem to function as programmed, except possibly for Cori. When Havitol betrayed his robot secretary in "IRAC Is Missing", she quickly did a Heel–Face Turn and used her knowledge of Havitol's escape plans to lead the authorities right to him.
• Air-Vent Passageway: Used by Havitol to steal IRAC in "IRAC Is Missing".
• Alien Invasion: Four episodes ("Mind Stealers From Outer Space: Parts I and II"; and "The Boy Who Knew Her Secret, Parts I and II") feature alien foes that Wonder Woman must defeat. A fifth episode, "The Starships Are Coming", features a fake alien invasion, which is simply part of a madman's scheme.
• Aliens Speaking English: Both averted and played straight. The alien Skrill in "Mind Stealers from Outer Space" communicate with each other via a series of high-pitched sounds. Andros and his galactic council, however, speak perfect English.
• All-Loving Hero: Wonder Woman's theme says it clearly: Make a hawk a dove, stop a war with love. Much like the comics, she frequently rehabilitated or helped people rather than fighting them.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: In "IRAC Is Missing", Bernard Havitol climbs through the Air-Vent Passageway in IADC Headquarters to steal IRAC right from the secret government agency's home base. And gets it back as Wonder Woman destroys his base in return.
• Alliterative Name: Wonder Woman.
• Allohistorical Allusion: The first season was set in World War II, but generally dealt with fictional Nazis, such as Baroness Von Gunther or Captain Radl. In "Beauty on Parade", though, the Nazi plot was to kill General Dwight David Eisenhower. Wonder Woman saves him, General Phil Blankenship, and Major Steve Trevor.
• Almost Kiss: In "The Man Who Could Move the World", the titular man Takeo Ishida, puts both Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor into mortal peril by forcing Wonder Woman, via amplified telekinesis, to step on a bomb. Wonder Woman just barely manages to overpower the mental commands by overloading the amplifier. She and Steve share a long moment touching each others arms and staring into each other's eyes before finally breaking away from each other.
• Almost Out of Oxygen: In "The Man Who Could Not Die", Diana Prince is tied up and trapped in her garage with the car left on in order to kill her. She escapes her bonds just in time to transform into Wonder Woman, she does the spinning...but passes out entirely mid-spin! Bryce Candle, the titular man who could not die, arrives in the nick of time!
• Alternate Continuity: The series created some things that had never existed in the comics to that time, such as the I.A.D.C., IRAC, and most of the villains. Some were played with, such as Wonder Girl. The series' impact on public consciousness was such that some of these elements moved from the series to the comics and have survived the test of time. Wonder Woman's transformation sequence and the, um, look that Lynda Carter brought to the part are the most notable of these. There was a squence in the 1960s Silver Age comics where Earth One Diana Prince spun before changing into Wonder Woman, which may or may not have inspired the show's transformation sequence, but in the comics she wasn't actually changing clothes by spinning but getting Steve Trevor away from her for time to change in private.
• Always on Duty: Being Wonder Woman means never getting a day off, and in "The Feminum Mystique" using her leave time to return to fight Nazis on Paradise Island. In "The Queen and the Thief" and "Knockout", Agent Diana Prince's apartment is set up to alert her when she's needed using signal lamps that look like normal ones. Being woken up in the middle of the night and coming home at midnight are commonplace.
• Amazon Brigade: The amazons of Paradise Island. They were only tested once in the series, but proved up to the task of beating up the Nazis who invaded Paradise Island and ejecting them from their homeland.
• Amazon Chaser: Steve Trevor is shown to be very interested in Wonder Woman, but somewhat oblivious to Diana Prince (romantically speaking).
• Ambiguously Human:
  • Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, and the amazons of Paradise Island. They look like beautiful human women, but are much stronger, more agile, and immortal. The reasons for this are only tangentally explained.
  • Andros Sr., Andros Jr., and the other aliens. In "Judgement from Outser Space" and "Mind Stealers from Outer Space", human looking aliens visit Earth for various reasons. Andros Jr. played by Dack Rambo, has a particular goal in mind.
• An Ass-Kicking Christmas: "The Deadly Toys", featuring Frank "the Riddler" Gorshin as the Big Bad!
• And Mission Control Rejoiced: In "Flight to Oblivion", Wonder Woman breaks into mission control, disarms the Mook and allows the operators to divert the missile into the sea. And there was much rejoicing in the mission control room, indeed!
  Wonder Woman: Good work, Captain!
  Captain: Look who's talking!
• And Starring: This was done frequently. The pilot, "The New, Original Wonder Woman" had Cloris Leachman for a Special Guest Star. Red Buttons was the first one listed in the Starring section. The next episode, "Wonder Woman meets Baroness von Gunther" had a Special Appearance by Bradford Dillman as Arthur Deal, III. And there were many others.
• Animated Credits Opening: Used in the first two seasons, but dropped by the third.
• Anti-Villain:
  • In "Spaced Out", Kimball played by René Auberjonois, steals the lenses, hogties a guest star at the Convention, and escapes Wonder Woman by threatening to throw a large flowerpot on a group of innocent civilians - all with a smile, and joke, and a laugh. He even teams up with Wonder Woman to foil Simon Rohan's plans, but makes his escape once again in the confusion
  • In "The Queen and the Thief", Evan Robley played by David Hedison, is hired by Ambassador Orrick to steal the crown jewels, and is duped by the fakes, but joins the good guys helping Wonder Woman foil the evil plot and even gaining a Royal ambassadorial appointment in the process!
• Applied Phlebotinum: Wonder Woman's golden lasso, bracelets, invisible jet, tiara, and belt of strength. All of them just work for the purpose of the plots and only the bracelets have any sort of explanation - that they're made of Feminum.
• Appropriated Appellation: In the pilot:
  Queen Hippolyte: Go in peace my daughter. And remember that, in a world of ordinary mortals, you are a Wonder Woman.
  Princess Diana: I will make you proud of me... and of Wonder Woman.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", Colonel Kesselman played by Bo Brundin was involved in the planning of Operation Fraulein to capture Wonder Woman, watched the films of what she can do, has ordered her to be strapped to a table with restraints large enough to immobilze several football players, and has been ordered to do all of this on Hitler's personal orders. Despite this, he still scoffs at the idea of a beautiful woman doing what she can do - so much that he throws her belt of strength and magic lasso back to her! It was a bad decision.
  Colonel Kesselman: And you with your supposed magic tricks! The golden lasso! The magic belt! Nonsense! Throws them both away
  Wonder Woman: Catches the belt and lasso then proceeds to snap the bonds of the interrogation table, wipe the floor with all of the soldiers in the room, rip the phone out of the wall, escape, beat the stuffing out of a few more soldiers, steal a plane, and leave Germany.
• Arch-Enemy: None of Wonder Woman's villains in the TV series ever recurred, but it’s implied that Marion Mariposa did appear in a previous, unbroadcast adventure, as he is talked about last seen presumably drowned in the North Sea. The interesting part is that he is not Wonder Woman's enemy, but IADC agent Diana Prince's enemy. For Diana Prince and Marion Mariposa, It's Personal. The following exchange is made the more remarkable given that Diana/WW generally maintained a "no killing" policy, yet here she openly talks about trying to kill someone, or possibly just failing to rescue/capture someone.
  Marion Mariposa: Oh, why are you so unpleased to see a familiar face? Did you enjoy the candy I sent you?
  Diana Prince: [waking from her induced sleep] Not in the least, and I enjoyed the flowers even less.
  Marion Mariposa: What’s the matter? Lost your sense of humor?
  Diana Prince: I was hoping we were rid of yours. Weren’t you supposed to be drowned at the North Sea after our last encounter?
  Marion Mariposa: By now you should know that I have my entrances and exits carefully choreographed, Diana. I had one of my submarines pick me up.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Whether it's during World War II or The '70s, Wonder Woman faces off against gun toting bad guys armed with a boomerang tiara and a lasso.
• Argentina Is Nazi-Land: Foreshadowed in "Formula 407". Played straight in "Anschluss '77".
• Art Evolution: While Diana's spinning into her WW outfit had been there since the first episode, it wasn't until a few episodes in that the lens-flare coverup was added. The spin was also initially depicted in slow-motion, but this was sped up (hence the need for the lens-flare). It's also stated in the commentary on the first episode that the transparency effect of the transformation in the pilot was too expensive to film over and over again, and the lensflare was a cheaper alternative.
• Artificial Intelligence: I.R.A.C., Information Retrieval Associative Computer, was apparently sentient. It knew Wonder Woman and Diana Prince were one and the same, acted as the information source for many adventures, and had opinions on which other computers were the best competition in chess matches.
• At Arm's Length: In "The Man Who Made Volcanos", a Russian operative who Wonder Woman is trying to talk to attacks her rather than listening to her. Instead of beating him up, she lifts him into the air and holds him up with her outstretched arms. This finally gets his attention and he starts listening to her.
• Artistic License – Geology: Paradise Island didn't appear on any map for inadequately explained reasons. It remained separate from Man's World despite the fact that in "The Feminum Mystique" the Nazis can and did sail directly to it. No one discovered an idyllic island of super strong, beautiful amazons just because, well...they didn't.
• Artistic License – Martial Arts: In "Going, Going, Gone", Wonder Woman faces off against a real Bruce Lee Clone from The '70s. His moves were very showy breaking of boxes, screams of "Hiyahh!", high and wide kicks, and two very clear and very ineffective punches that bounced harmlessly off her Amazonian abs. She finished the fight with blocking a kick which became a foot grab, which somehow resulting in him being lifted into the air in a lying down position, thrown across the dock, and knocked out. A tour de force of 70's Martial Arts Artistic License!
  Wonder Woman: Standing over the defeated Bruce Lee Clone This really hasn't developed into a very good day, has it?
• Audible Gleam: Wonder Woman's classic transformation sequence featured a Lens Flare and sound effects to go with it.
• Audible Sharpness: Wonder Woman's TV series tiara makes a strange sound when she uses it as a boomerang. Her lasso of truth makes a "snap" sound when she lassoes someone, and there is always thunder when Diana Prince spins to change clothes into Wonder Woman.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Let's just say the Nazis' war effort was not helped by repeatedly attacking Diana.
• Back for the Dead: Makes an appearance in the comic tie-in to the Arrowverse Crisis on Infinite Earths event, only to be wiped from existence like all the other Earths. Unlike Smallville or Birds of Prey (2002) there was no confirmation given that the Earths that appeared in the tie-in comic were restored post-Crisis like the Earths featured in the actual event. However given that the Wonder Woman '77 comic crossed over with Batman '66, and that the Batman (1966) show was confirmed to have been restored, it's possible that Earth-76 merged with Earth-66 post-Crisis.
• Badass Adorable: Wonder Woman, especially in the World War II era, and Wonder Girl had the combination of ingenue, beauty, and raw power to leave many thugs wondering what just happened.
• Badass Cape: Wonder Woman occasionally transformed into an outfit with a flowing American themed cape. It first appeared on "The Last of the Two Dollar Bills".
• Badass in Distress: Wonder Woman was gassed or rendered powerless by taking her belt of strength several times in World War II, but it was Diana Prince who was the frequent target in The '70s.
  • In "The Bushwackers", Wonder Woman had her belt removed and was locked in the jail of a ghost town. The pack of war orphans figured it out, broke in and returned her belt to her. cue iron bars bending... she did the rest.
  • In "The Man Who Could Not Die", Diana is unconscious and tied up in a garage with a running car in order to kill her with the fumes. She wakes up, spins, but passes out! Bryce Candle - the aforementioned Man Who Could Not Die - arrives in the nick of time!
• The Bait: Steve Trevor's main job. For example, in "Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman", Steve is gassed by Fausta and locked in a crate solely to draw out Wonder Woman and watch her beat up some Mooks. Later in the same episode, he's chained to a wall to capture Wonder Woman with crushing walls. She's stronger than the Nazis counted on. In "Knockout", Steve spends the entire episode tied up and in the evil terrorist's clutches. Thus dooming the group to be destroyed by Wonder Woman.
• Bang, Bang, BANG: A staple of every episode is when a bad guy shoots at Wonder Woman and she deflects the bullets with her bracelets. The gun generally makes the standard bang sound.
• Banging for Help: In "Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman", a bound, gagged, and trapped in a crate Steve Trevor alerts Wonder Woman as to his whereabouts by kicking the crate and mmmmruphing through the gag. She rips open the crate to rescue him.
• The Baroness: Baroness Paula Von Gunther, though given the child-friendly tone of the show they obviously couldn't show any of the less savory aspects of the trope. She did like tying people up, though.
• Battle Discretion Shot: In "Screaming Javelins", Tom (Rick Springfield!) is saved from certain death as Wonder Woman leaps through the window of the third story apartment and deflects the bullets meant for him. She then disappears into the hallway and we only see the attempted murderers fly across the doorway entrance. Wonder Woman does reappear to get something to tie up the bad guys.
• Beach Episode: Diana spends some time in a swimsuit on the beach in "Skateboard Wiz". It seems to be a somewhat unnecessary bit of fanservice, considering that her iconic outfit is already a Leotard of Power.
• Beauty Contest: In the "Beauty on Parade" episode, Diana Prince enters a beauty contest to covertly expose some villains.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Wonder Woman is a drop dead gorgeous pageant winner and shining beacon of justice and goodness. Steve Trevor is tall, handsome and a war hero. Paradise Island is populated by good and beautiful women who are all willing to fight Nazis.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Wonder Woman always looks like she's competing in the Miss World pageant (which Lynda Carter actually did in 1972) regardless of the death-defying experiences she frequently endures. The most blatant example occurs in "The Man Who Made Volcanoes". At the episode's climax, Wonder Woman places herself in the firing range of a laser beam that causes volcanoes to instantly erupt on the other side of the Earth. Despite being hit by this weapon, which would release up to 25 megatons of energy, for the better part of a minute, Wonder Woman barely has a hair out of place afterwards.
• Beeping Computers: IRAC and Rover were regularly shown with whirring tape machines and beeping superfluous sounds.
• Being Good Sucks: Used sparingly, which isn't surprising for escapist entertainment made during the 1970s. There were situations, however, when it seemed like Diana got the raw end of the deal by becoming a superheroine. Especially considering that prior to repeatedly risking her life to save the world, she enjoyed the life of a royal princess. Of a place called Paradise Island.
  • In "Mind Stealers from Outer Space", Andros asks Diana to join him on a cosmic trip to the most romantic planets in the galaxy. She declines, not because she doesn't want to join him, but because she's needed on Earth.
  • In "The Man Who Could Not Die", Diana Prince chides the despairing eponymous character by noting that, "in a lot of ways, Wonder Woman is more alone than you are."
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Mei Ling and Lin Wan in "The Man Who Made Volcanoes".
• Benevolent A.I.: IRAC, Information Retrieval Associative Computer, was as helpful as it could be. It provided insights and information to help further the plot and even protected Wonder Woman's Secret Identity. It is one of the two re-occurring characters - along with Andros - who weren't from Paradise Island and knew her secret.
• Big Bad: Wonder Woman fought her share of criminal masterminds in The '70s such as Count Cagliostro ("Diana's Disappearing Act"), Bleaker ("The Girl from Ilandia"), and Harlow Gault ("Gault's Brain"). However, none were as memorable as the ubiquitous Nazis in season 1.
• Big Damn Heroes: In "Wonder Woman in Hollywood", once the evil Nazi plot has been unleashed, all of the war heroes and Major Steve Trevor have been captured, and they're being whisked off to Germany, it's Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl to the rescue! They race to the hideout on foot at Amazon speed, rescue the kidnapped soldiers, but Wonder Woman is shot! Or so it seems...
• Big Heroic Run: Lynda Carter could be credited with inventing the Baywatch run for some of her lingering slow-motion running shots, such as in "Amazon Hot Wax". In character, this was best shown in "Death in Disguise" when she ran over 700 mph to thwart the evil plan.
• Blade Lock: In "The Return of Wonder Woman", Dr. Solano (Fritz Weaver) and Wonder Woman are in a pitched sword duel. They lock blades! And he's able to physically throw her back a few steps which reveals that he has switched places with a Dr. Solano robot!
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Wonder Woman's tiara was, much like the rest of her outfit, both a very feminine piece of jewelry and a very functional weapon. Her use of it reached its zenith in "The Queen and the Thief" when she disarmed Ambassador Orrick by throwing it across a room while hanging upside down above a poison gas deathtrap. And caught it on the boomerang return.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: Wonder Woman's bracelets can deflect or block anything. In "Mind Stealers from Outer Space", she blocked laser beams coming from several alien invaders at once. These were the same beams that leveled a building earlier in the episode. It reached it's pinnacle early in the series when she deflected every bullet fired at her by a tommy gun while standing on stage at a theater in "The New, Original Wonder Woman". That much shrapnel flying all over the place that close to a tightly packed crowd would be enough to kill someone and wound many others. Even if it miraculously missed everyone, the stage itself would be literally shot to pieces. Thanks to a healthy does of the Rule of Cool all of the bullets disappeared once deflected.
• Bloodless Carnage: The show went to great lengths to keep the violence PG rated. Wonder Woman crashed cars with Mooks in them, blew up a submarine, hit bad guys with a razor sharp tiara, fought a gorilla, fought her way out of a Nazi prison, and caught bullets all without spilling a drop of blood. In "Wonder Woman in Hollywood", she even convinced Steve Trevor and Wonder Girl that she'd been shot despite the lack of blood!
• Bound and Gagged:
  • In "Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman", Steve Trevor is kidnapped and stuffed in a crate in this condition.
  • Begins to happen to Diana with some regularity after she becomes an active field agent, putting her in harm's way even while not transformed.
    • "Hot Wheels": tied and gagged in the back of a car.
    • "The Deadly Dolphin": tied and gagged on a boat, where there's discussion of the rather heavy anchors aboard...
    • "The Starships Are Coming": Gagged with a scarf and tied to a chair then left with a bomb.
• Boxing Lessons for Superman: Princess Diana and the Amazons of Paradise Island train for combat constantly against each other. Every one of them has Super-Strength. When Wonder Woman leaves the island, she retains the full benefit of her training whether she is wearing her belt of strength or not. She occasionally fights in her Secret Identity, such as in "Skateboard Wiz".
• Bragging Theme Tune:
  Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman
  All the world is waiting for you
  and the power you possess
  In your satin tights
  Fighting for your rights
  And the old Red, White and Blue...
• Brain in a Jar: In the episode "Gault's Brain", the titular Gault's Brain was a brain-in-a-jar villain with floating eyeballs and telekinesis.
• Brain Transplant: In "Gault's Brain", Gault's plan was to find, kidnap, and then transplant his brain into a young athlete's body.
• Brains Evil, Brawn Good: Wonder Woman faced very few foes who could physically match up to her, so many adventures were centered around her figuring out the diabolical plan and then stopping it. Bleaker in "The Girl from Ilandia" was a particularly notable example. He not merely only handled Wonder Woman through brains, but never even attempted to physically face off against her - and succeeded! Gault's brain in "Gault's Brain" is a literal example as the Brain in a Jar could only act through mental abilities.
• Brainwashed: in 'The Pied Piper' pop musician Hamlin Rule uses his flute music and other hypnotizing techniques to transform his fans and Wonder Woman into obedient willing slave groupies in order to attempt to rob his own box office.
• Brainy Brunette: While Diana's genius intellect is far from her sole defining attribute, her apparent knowledge of every spoken language (including birdsong!) and her ability to solve complex scientific problems within seconds indicate she is certainly a brunette who is brainy.
• Brawler Lock: In "The Boy Who Knew Her Secret", Wonder Woman's climactic battle against the Shapeshifter featured several of these. She also had several against the Zardor in "Mind Stealers from Outer Space". Those were the only two times in the series where she faced sufficiently strong and aggressive foes to both qualify as an equal to Wonder Woman and willing to engage in such direct test of strength against her.
• Breaking the Bonds: Wonder Woman did this many times. In "Formula 407" she is chloroformed and Steve Trevor are tied up. She snaps the rope almost as a afterthought. In "Baroness Von Gunther", the bad guys have the forethought to chain her up with chains that are "unbreakable, even by elephants". But they are breakable by Wonder Woman. In "The Murderous Missile", Wonder Woman wakes up in a jail cell chained by both of her hands and feet. It takes her 25 seconds to break the chains and the door of the cell.
• Brought Down to Normal: The effect on Princess Diana of not wearing the belt of strength of her Wonder Woman costume away from Paradise Island. She still retains her warrior training, but does not have Super-Strength. It is implied that her speed and reflexes as Diana Prince are also reduced to human norms.
• Bruce Lee Clone: In "Going, Going, Gone", Wonder Woman faces off against a real Dragon clone from The '70s. His moves were very showy breaking of boxes, screams of "Hiyahh!", high and wide kicks, and two very clear and very ineffective punches that bounced harmlessly off her amazonian abs. Oh, Crap!
  Wonder Woman: Standing over the defeated man This really hasn't developed into a very good day, has it?
• Bullet Catch: In "Death in Disguise", Nightingale surprisingly fires a small cannon that is unexpectedly a real weapon at Wonder Woman. She catches the bullet-sized cannon ball.
• Bulletproof Human Shield: Justified when, in "The Man Who Could Not Die", Wonder Woman ducks behind the aforementioned man to throw her lasso of truth around a Mook. He blocks the bullets with his body which is slightly more efficient than letting her deflect the bullets with her bracelets and lassoing the thug as he runs away - as is done every other time this comes up.
• Bullying a Dragon: One of the Nazi's favorite pastimes in the WWII era of the show and a phenomenally bad idea. One of many, many examples comes from "The Richest Man in the World". Wonder Woman has finally figured out Dunfield's plan and cornered his gang in their warehouse. She closes the door on them, smiles and expects them to give up. Instead, they shoot at her. Whereupon she lays down one of the biggest beatdowns in the entire series.
  Wonder Woman: You weren't really planning on leaving were you? Closes the door I didn't think so.
  Dunfield's thug: Pulls a gun and shoots at her
  Wonder Woman: Steps forward visibly annoyed In under 2 minutes, she beats, rounds up, and captures the entire gang.
• Butt-Monkey: Harold Farnum spends most of his time being an annoyance that is only barely tolerated due to his father being a Senator. His one contribution was, while trapped in a locked cell, to make an arc pencil that would possibly free them in a few hundred years. Wonder Woman breaks the door open to save the audience from watching him grow old and die before escaping.

C–D

• The Caligula: Marion Mariposa is wildly irrational, violently moody, very intolerant of being told anything he doesn't want to hear, and totally in control of a micronation, submarines and his mercenaries. He infiltrates the US by sky diving, kidnaps Olympic athletes in an attempt to gain popularity for his own micronation, Mariposalia, and his Arch-Enemy is not Wonder Woman, but IADC agent Diana Prince.
• The Cape: Wonder Woman is an Ideal Hero who strives to do good for the sake of doing good, rehabilitate villains if possible, and, to quote her theme song, "stop a war with love".
• Captive Push: The episode "The Man Who Made Volcanoes" has Diana being captured by a pair of Chinese agents investigating the mountain where the volcano-making machine is. For several scenes after they are shown dragging her along (sometimes literally) with her hands tied behind her as they make their way up the mountain side.
• Captain Patriotic: Wonder Woman's outfit was initially based on Steve Trevor's American flag insignia.
• Cat Fight: Averted. There are several times in which Wonder Woman fights another woman ("The New, Original Wonder Woman", "Wonder Woman Meets Baroness von Gunther", and "Formicida" among others), but none of her fights have the hair pulling, eye scratching, lack of skill associated with the trope. The show went out of its way to clearly show that Wonder Woman was the heroine and when she fought, it was to take down her opponent, man or woman.
• Catch and Return: In "Beauty on Parade", Wonder Woman saves Major Steve Trevor, General Blankenship, and General Eisenhower(!) by doing this with a fired bazooka shell!
• The Champion: Princess Diana / Wonder Woman is the champion for Paradise Island, for Steve Trevor and for Liberty and Democracy while she stays in man's world. Invoked by Queen Hippolyta: The Amazon winner of a tournament will escort Steve Trevor to his country. Subverted because this is less for his safety than to preserve the Lady Land in Paradise Island.
  Queen Hippolyta: For his safety - and ours. One of our young Amazon girls will escort him to his country, and then return to Paradise Island.
  Princess Diana: But all the girls will want that task.
  Queen Hippolyte: I know. To forestall any ill feelings, I have planned a tournament of athletic games, by which I alone will determine the strongest, nimblest, and most likely candidate for the assignment.
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: This adaptation introduced the world to the way Diana Prince could spin to change her clothes, and even Wonder Woman could change back into Diana Prince (in the episode "The Feminum Mystique").
• The Charmer: There are a number of characters on the show for whom this trope applies.
  • Steve Trevor, Sr. embodies this trope without trying. At the start of the pilot episode, Diana enjoys a perfect life as an immortal princess and heiress apparent of a peaceful and Utopian society that is so idyllic that it is named Paradise Island. After one look at Steve, she's happy to abandon her life of privilege and bliss so she can assume a new, dangerous life that revolves around repeatedly saving Steve from Nazis. And Steve achieves this effect on Diana while he's unconscious.
    • To be fair, Diana is canonically more than 2,000 years old, and the pilot episode depicts her as having lived her entire life on Paradise Island. It's not hard to be the most charming man Diana has ever seen when you're the only man she has ever seen.
  • Steve Trevor, Jr. looks just like his dad. Literally, considering both Trevors are played by the same actor. The first few episodes of Season Two often depict Steve effortlessly flirting with Wonder Woman/Diana Prince, and she seems receptive to his charms.
  • Andros, Sr. is remarkably charming for an alien who casually mentions that he'll destroy the Earth if he finds humans unworthy. At the end of "Judgement from Outer Space, Part II", he offers to take Wonder Woman on a tour of the universe, and it's clear that the offer is more for personal reasons than for business.
  • Andros, Jr. is even more charming than his old man. Whereas Andros, Sr. exhibited a calm, cool, and confident charm, Andros, Jr. is openly warm and affectionate towards Wonder Woman. It's obvious to viewers that he has very strong feelings for Wonder Woman, and vice versa, even if her duties on Earth prevent her from joining Andros, Jr. on a trip across the stars.
    • Between the Trevors and the Androsses, Wonder Woman has an odd habit of developing romantic feelings for the sons of her former flames.
  • Evan Robley is a consummate charmer, as seen in "The Queen and the Thief." When he's not conspiring to steal a sovereign's crown jewels (and especially when he is), he can be very charismatic in his interactions with an Amazonian princess and a Malakan queen.
• Christmas Episode: series 2 episode 12 which is also the 25th episode overall "The Deadly Toys" features wonder woman writing a fourth wall breaking Christmas message, most likely intended for the viewers which appears odd because wonder woman being an Amazon is actually a pagan (Polytheist) but it does in fact show that she may or may not believe in Christmas but she respects the beliefs of people who do, even if they don't follow the same beliefs (religious or otherwise) that she does.
• City of Spies: Going by this show, it would seem like half the population of Washington DC were Nazi double agents.
• Clark Kenting: Almost always played straight as pulling her hair back and wearing big glasses fools everyone. In later episodes, the trope is lampshaded by the fact that Diana often appears without her glasses and with her hair loose, yet no one incredibly makes the connection. However, it was averted in "Mind Stealers from Outer Space" when the Skrills, an alien race who steals minds to sell them into slavery, discovers easily Diana Prince's secret with only a slide projector.
  Unquestionably, the same human.
• Cliffhanger Cop Out: The episode "Phantom of the Roller Coaster Part 1" ends with Diana Prince (Wonder Woman's depowered Secret Identity) inside her car looking back, just before an enormous truck smashed it... with her inside. Part 2 begins with Wonder Woman outside the car lassoing the perpetrators.
• Clothes Make the Legend: There were attempts to change the iconic look of Wonder Woman, notably in a failed TV movie/pilot and in the comics themselves at the time, but they failed staggeringly. This series succeeded in part due to the return to the original look of the character. This is why the pilot is named "The New, Original Wonder Woman".
• Clothes Make the Superman: Wonder Woman must wear her belt of strength to retain her strength, speed, and reflexes when she is not on Paradise Island. This is exploited several times including in "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman" and "The Bushwackers".
• Combat by Champion: "Wonder Woman's Return": After being in a stalemate with Dr. Solano, he proposes to Wonder Woman a Sword Fight. "Winner gets all". It's a trap.
• Combat Parkour: In "The Murderous Missile", Wonder Woman does a gymnastics routine using the bars in the ceiling of the barn before landing and knocking out the evil Sheriff. George then sprays knockout gas at her revealing that he's the real mastermind!
• Combat Stilettos: Wonder's Woman's official uniform includes red boots with white trim and fairly high heels. Any viewer paying special attention during action sequences, however, can clearly see that both Lynda Carter and her stunt double used otherwise-identical heelless boots for running, fighting, etc.
• The Commies Made Me Do It: The villainness Paula von Gunther who worked for the Nazis was revealed as doing so because they had her daughter captive. (In the comics she was a willing accomplice, until her Heel–Face Turn.)
• Computer Equals Monitor: IRAC is frequently used by both Diana Prince and Steve Trevor by standing in front of a combination keyboard and monitor in a specialized sealed room built specifically to focus all attention on the monitor. That the monitor itself was an homage to Lite Brite was simply icing on the cake.
• Computer Equals Tapedrive: I.R.A.C., the computer so smart that it knew Wonder Woman's secret identity and protected it, was shown frequently with spinning tape machines, the movement and sound of which indicated the computer processing some problem
• Concert Climax: In "My Teenage Idol Is Missing", the episode ends with a concert headlined by Lane, played by Leif Garrett and his identical twin brother Michael, also played by Leif Garrett.
• Continuity Drift: During Season 1, Wonder Woman was the main character with Diana Prince serving as a secretary only to get information on where she was needed. She frequently visited Paradise Island and traveled in her invisible jet. Seasons 2 and 3 feature Agent Diana Prince who is the IADC's top agent largely because she can become Wonder Woman when the occasion requires. The invisible jet last appears in "The Man Who Could Move the World", the second episode of season 2. In "The Man Who Could Not Die", one of the last episodes of the series, she even says: "In a lot of ways, Wonder Woman is more alone than you are." That's a very long way from the pilot, "The New Original Wonder Woman", with regular invisible jet travel anywhere in the world and an entire island of amazon sisters where she is a member of the royal family.
• Convenient Enemy Base: In "The Bermuda Triangle Crisis", Diana and Steve crash land and end up right next to Manta's secret headquarters.
• Cool Crown:
  • Wonder Woman's tiara is a razor sharp boomerang that she uses regularly to disable Nazi boats, disarm bad guys, and destroy equipment among other things.
  • In "The Queen and the Thief", Queen Kathryn's crown was very nice and the focus of the episode.
• Coordinated Clothes: Jeff and Barbi Gordon in the episode "Amazon Hot Wax".
• Costume Evolution: Despite the material being "indestructible" ("The New, Original Wonder Woman"), Diana's Wonder Woman outfit changed dramatically from her WWII adventures to modern times.
• The Cracker: Bernard Havitol in "I.R.A.C. is Missing" stole multiple entire computer systems, including I.R.A.C.! Essentially magically, he transferred I.R.A.C. into a computerized briefcase.
• Crapsaccharine World: Queen Hippolyta claims Paradise Island is an utopia because it is a Lady Land. Once Princess Diana had seen a man for the first time, she dares to disagree: Paradise Island is a Crapsaccharine World for the very same reason.
• Crystal Spires and Togas: All of the Amazons use multicolor vaporous dresses and use bows and arrows even if they live in an Advanced Ancient Acropolis
• Cultural Posturing: Queen Hippolyta remembers that women were slaves of the Romans and the Greeks. After some thousands of years being an immortal, she is not fond of any culture in the patriarch world:
  Queen Hippolyta: We are stronger, wiser and more advanced than all those people in their jungles out there. Our civilization is perfection!
• Curb-Stomp Battle: This was true of most of Wonder Woman's fights. The producers of the show were very concerned about the visual of a woman being hit by a man in prime time television in The '70s. The solution was generally that her fights were so one sided that she would rarely be hit or even muss her hair. A notable example is in "The Starships Are Coming" when Wonder Woman annihilates Mason Steele and his seven Mooks with contemptuous ease.
  Mason Steele: She must be executed as an example to all those who idolize her. Get her!
  [Wonder Woman tilts her head with an expression of "Seriously?" mixed with "Bring it on"]
  Lead Mook: Well, we gotta do something!
  '[Wonder Woman stomps the curb, floor, grass, bushes, and street with all of them]
• Cute Bruiser: Lynda Carter was 37-25-36 and 125 pounds when she played Wonder Woman. And Wonder Woman stopped tanks with her bare hands ("Anschluss '77"), caught fired bakooza shells in mid air ("Beauty on Parade"), threw grown men three stories up a building ("The Man Who Could Not Die"), and threw robots across the desert ("The Return of Wonder Woman"). Cute? Check. Bruiser? Check, check, check, check, check!
• Damsel in Distress: Diana was frequently captured both as Wonder Woman and as Diana Prince. During World War II, bad guys would use chloroform. During The '70s, it was Diana Prince who would be in distress. Very rarely would she need anyone's help to escape, however.
  • In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", Wonder Woman was gassed and kidnapped to Nazi, Germany. She proved far too dangerous for the sexist self-righteous male supremacist idiot Colonel Kesselman to hold for long.
  • In "Anschluss '77", Diana Prince was captured and tied to a post with dynamite lit and the fuse burning. She escaped and kept her secret identity secret.
  • In "The Starships are Coming", Diana Prince is bound, gagged, and facing a ticking bomb. And she is legitimately saved by Henry Wilson, a random character of the week!
• Damsel out of Distress: Many times. For example, in "Baroness Von Gunther" Wonder Woman is bound by chains that are "unbreakable...even by elephants". The chains don't last long against the Amazon Princess, much to the bad guy's dismay. In "The Last of the Two Dollar Bills", Wonder Woman's bracelets are taken and she's locked in a cell. She breaks the lock in two with her bare hands then disarms and overpowers the guard. Bonus points in the same episode to Steve Trevor, the series' designated Distressed Dude, for disarming the bomb that the Nazi spy left behind to kill him.
• Decoy Damsel: George in "The Murderous Missile".
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Steve Trevor (Jr.) during the last leg of the CBS era, where he was made Diana's commander instead of field partner; the never-materialized fourth season probably would've written him out entirely.
  • To an extent, this happened to Wonder Woman herself in the CBS era, which (probably to compete with NBC's The Bionic Woman) became increasingly focused on Diana as a non-powered government agent and only had her turn into Wonder Woman when some bad-guys needed punching (even the iconic invisible jet was gone by Season 3). In contrast, the ABC-era episodes frequently referenced Diana's Amazon background, and their villains would make specific plans and contingencies for Wonder Woman rather than treating her as a random annoyance.
• Desperate Object Catch:
  • In "A Date With Doomsday", Wonder Woman leaps to catch the virus thrown from a helicopter. She succeeds.
  • Played for Laughs in "The Queen and the Thief" when Wonder Woman tosses the lock she's just ripped out of a safe to Evan Robley. He succeeds...eventually.
• Dirt Forcefield: The show was surrounded by this. Steve Trevor making his way through a Nazi forest? He and his guide are squeaky clean. ("Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman") Wonder Woman, Steve, and a bunch of others just had a knock down fight on a dirt road? Everyone's still clean. ("The Girl With a Gift for Disaster") Wonder Woman breaks up a bottle-smashing, food-flying fight among a bunch of football players? Everyone's still clean. ("The Deadly Sting") Have an entire building demolished with Wonder Woman and Andros still inside of it? Everyone's still clean! ("Mind Stealers from Outer Space")
• Disguised in Drag: Starker in "Death in Disguise".
• Distressed Dude: Steve Trevor's very existence depends on this. His job is to get into trouble that Wonder Woman saves him from. Once he stopped filling this role in the series, his part was Demoted to Extra until being written out entirely by the end of season 3. Behold the distressed dude in-action:
  • "The New, Original Wonder Woman": Captured by his secretary's gang. Until Wonder Woman breaks down the door and makes a pile-o-mooks and unties him.
  • "Wonder Woman Meets Baroness Von Gunther": Tied up by The Baroness. Until Wonder Woman breaks the chains that are "unbreakable, even by elephants".
  • "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman": Captured by Fausta and saved by Wonder Woman - twice.
  • "Beauty on Parade": Caught in an ambush. Until Wonder Woman saves him by catching a bazooka shot and throwing it back at the bad guys.
  • "The Feminum Mystique": Pinned down by gunfire. Until Wonder Woman arrives. He still lost his jet, though.
  • "Last of the $2 Bills": Locked in a cell and later left to die via bomb. He saves himself both times!
  • "Judgment from Outer Space": Trapped in a Nazi base and surrounded by Nazi guards. Until Wonder Woman forges an escape route by out-muscling all of the Nazis in two shoves.
  • "Formula 407": Trapped in a root cellar with a gassed Wonder Woman. She turns out to be a very convenient cellmate for a prisoner looking to escape.
  • "The Bushwhackers": Trapped in a hole covered by a huge boulder. But not big enough to stop Wonder Woman from lifting it off the hole.
  • "Wonder Woman in Hollywood": Captured by Bremmer with the coerced help of Private Jim Ames. Saved by both Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl!
  • "The Return of Wonder Woman": Knocked out by a group of thugs. That Wonder Woman beats up and interrogates.
  • "Anschluss '77": Mugged and attacked by thugs. Until Wonder Woman drags them off of him and chases them away.
  • "The Man Who Could Move the World": Takeo Ishida specifically tells him that he's the bait for Wonder Woman. She talks Ishida into a Heel–Face Turn.
  • "The Bermuda Triangle Crisis": Knocked out and hanging in a tree close to Manta's base after a plane crash. Wonder Woman lowers him out of the tree.
  • "Knockout": His magnum opus of distressed dudehood. He spends the entire episode in the clutches of the evil gang of terrorists! Which dooms their organization to be destroyed by Wonder Woman.
  • "The Queen and the Thief": His cover blown, he ends up tied up and trapped. Diana Prince leaves him captured at his insistence to further the mission. As an added bonus, he's held at gunpoint by Ambassador Orrick (John Colicos). Until Wonder Woman disarms the Ambassador by knocking the gun from his hand by throwing her tiara while hanging upside down over a poison gas deathtrap.
  • "Flight to Oblivion": Trapped in a hypnotic state in the back of the Dante's (John Van Dreelen) bus. While Wonder Woman stops the bus with her bare hands, Steve breaks the trance himself!
• Does Not Like Guns: Not to Batman extents, obviously, but Wonder Woman took a certain pleasure in destroying the bad guys' guns during the first season, and when she goes skeet-shooting in a later season, turned down the shotgun in favor of throwing the shells with her bare hands.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Hoo boy, "Skateboard Wiz". A vice-loving man desperate for money finds an unattended, prepubescent girl at the local arcade and sweet-talks her into using her talents to "help out" at his vice-den of choice. This "helping out" requires that the girl wear a revealing dress to look more "mature". And it's the '70s, so everyone and his brother is wearing a Porn Stache. Really, the episode feels a lot like an hour-long Stranger Danger PSA.^note Despite the episode's title and semi-memetic screencaps, there's very little actual skateboarding; the main plot revolves more around an arcade, and the illegal casino hidden in its backrooms.
  • The golden lasso, and the proclivity for Wonder Woman to be tied up and chained in general, such as in "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman" and "The Murderous Missile", were supposed to indicate bondage and discipline. This is because the goal of the creator of the character Wonder Woman, Charles Moulton, was to popularize bondage itself.
• Domino Mask: In the pilot, "The New Original Wonder Woman", the Amazons on Paradise Island wore these types of masks during the competition to determine who would become Wonder Woman. Diana's mother, Hippolyta, forbade her from competing, but somehow couldn't recognize her in the mask.
• Downer Ending:
  • Averted in most episodes. As a fairly campy show in both its WWII and 1970s eras, most episodes concluded with either Diana Prince or Wonder Woman presenting a broad smile to the camera.
  • Played straight in "The Girl From Ilandia". The character in question was stuck in Man's World without any known way of returning to her home.
  • The ending to "Mind Stealers From Outer Space" was bittersweet at best. The world was saved from the alien invasion, but Diana's refusal to accept Andros's romantic offer was clearly not an easy decision for her to make.
• The Dreaded:
  • The Zardor from "Mind Stealers From Outer Space" was designed to be this. It was a large, nearly mindless humanoid monster that the Skrill alien race only kept with them for the few threats that they couldn't overwhelm with their laser weapons or mind-stealing technology.
  • Also seen with the shape-changing alien in "The Boy Who Knew Her Secret". When it transforms into its final form, Wonder Woman visibly shudders with fear as it advances towards her.^note  Bear in mind that Wonder Woman is amazingly powerful and courageous. She once stopped a tank with her bare hands, and seemed to do so with almost no effort. She once let someone fire a machine gun at her for a charity event. Few things can hurt her, and even fewer things can scare her. If Wonder Woman seems to be afraid of something, you know it's dangerous.

E–H

• Earn Your Title: Princess Diana had to compete in a contest on Paradise Island to earn the right to return Steve Trevor to Man's World and fight injustice as Wonder Woman.
• Easy Impersonation: In "Stolen Faces", the main plot revolves around the bad guys impersonating Steve Trevor with a perfect mask and impersonating Wonder Woman with...a random woman hired through the classifieds. The impersonator doesn't even come close to Lynda Carter's physique.
• Effortless Amazonian Lift: Wonder Woman has a habit of lifting up heavy items and opponents in a display of her super-strength. When she's using clearly superhuman strength a bionic style Signature Sound Effect plays.
• Elective Mute: Charlie in "The Bushwackers". Thanks to Wonder Woman, he goes from frightened to the point of mute to leading the children to help her escape a jail cell by returning her magic belt to talking by the end of the episode.
• Elevator Escape: In "The Fine Art of Crime", two Mooks are sent to kill Diana. She hits them with her car door and runs away, ducking into an elevator. She returns to the floor as Wonder Woman. The mooks run. Curb-Stomp Battle ensues.
• Enemy Mine: In "The Queen and the Thief", Wonder Woman teams up with the Thief, Evan Robley, to recover Queen Kathryn's crown jewels. Robley had originally been hired by Ambassador Orrick, only to switch sides when he discovered he was being set up as the fall guy.
• Epic Fail: In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", Fausta Grables and Colonel Kesselman have captured Wonder Woman, taken her powers, kidnapped her to Germany, and have her strapped to a table for interrogation. They know about her magic lasso and even force her to answer questions under its power. Despite this - and perhaps pushed by the fantastical answers Wonder Woman truthfully gives - he wants to torture information out of her rather than use the magic lasso. Fausta insists on using the lasso. This so enrages Kesselman that he grabs the belt and lasso from Grables and throws it away...right into Wonder Woman's hand.
  Colonel Kesselman: And you with your supposed magic tricks! The golden lasso! The magic belt! Nonsense! Throws them both away
  Wonder Woman: Catches the belt and lasso then proceeds to snap the bonds of the interrogation table, wipe the floor with everyone in the room, rip the phone out of the wall, beat the stuffing out of a few more soldiers, steal a plane, and leave Germany.
• Escalating Brawl: In "The Deadly Sting", Professor Brubaker's mind control darts are shot at a dinner filled with football players. As more and more players are hit, the brawl escalates until it's necessary for Wonder Woman to break up the fight.
• Every Episode Ending: Each episode ends with a close-up of Diana smiling, followed by a freeze-frame.
• Everything's Better with Sparkles: The opening credits in season 1 featured sparkles gleaming from Steve Trevor's teeth and Wonder Woman's eyes. It was Lyle Waggoner's trademark at the time.
• Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: Wonder Woman wears a gold tiara and gold or silver bracelets. Ooh shiny!
• Executive Suite Fight: In "The Girl with a Gift for Disaster ", William Mayfield's plot has been foiled by Wonder Woman, but he must gather his prized collection before making his escape. So Wonder Woman catches him in his executive suite, has a very short, very decisive fight and locks him up in his own display case.
• Exposed to the Elements: Wonder Woman has outfits for swimming ("The Deadly Dolphin" and others), motorcycle riding ("The Murderous Missile" and others), skateboarding ("Skateboard Wiz"), ranching ("The Bushwackers"), and impersonating a lab assistant ("Anschluss '77" - seriously! It's a brown dress). All other times, she wears her Leotard of Power. This includes escaping a Nazi base and searching for an airplane in the middle of WWII Germany ("Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman") and catching up to Colonel Von Blasko, a top Nazi spy, boarding his plane in midair, knocking him out, carrying him back to the invisible jet still in midair, and crashing his plane into a submarine ("The New, Original Wonder Woman"). That had to be cold just judging from the heavy flight jacket and clothing he was wearing while failing to soil his hands.
  Colonel Von Blasko: Threatening to hit Wonder Woman I prefer not to soil my hands on female flesh, but if you insist.
  Wonder Woman: knocks him out with one punch to the jaw
• Failed a Spot Check: The fact Steve and other characters seem unable to recognize Diana is Wonder Woman simply by her putting on glasses, covering her legs and putting her hair into a bun is one thing, but in later episodes where she a) stops wearing glasses even as Diana, b) has no qualms about wearing Wonder Woman-esque swimwear at the beach and c) doesn't even bother changing her hairstyle anymore ... and people still don't make the connection? That's textbook failing a spot check.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The goal of the first season was to defeat the Nazis and win World War II, but to actually do so would end the series. Fortunately, it was picked up by CBS and moved to The '70s for season 2.
• Fair Cop: Carolyn Hamilton (played by Jayne Kennedy) in "Knockout" is a beatuiful former cop who kidnaps Steve Trevor rather than letting him be killed because of a debt she owes him in her former profession.
• Fanservice Pack: Diana/Wonder Woman's costuming only got better as time went on; in the second season the costume was tweaked to flatter her bust a bit more (she was never fond of the "bullet bra" from the first season) and to show more leg, and her civilian clothes were sexier than the bulky military uniform she wore in the first season. A (very) skin-tight lycra catsuit was also added to her wardrobe for use when Diana needed to swim or ride a motorcycle. Towards the end of the series Diana wore her hair down Wonder Woman-style more frequently, too, and also got away with losing the glasses, too (meaning Carter basically pretty much looked like Wonder Woman in every scene).
• Fastball Special: In "The Man Who Could Not Die", Wonder Woman throws Bryce Candle, the Man Who Could Not Die, from the outside grounds through the third story window to face off against Joseph Reichman.
• Faux Action Guy: Steve Trevor. He was a war hero, but when he will suddenly be surrounded by Nazi spies, he decks one with a punch, then a second spy will pull a gun on him and he meekly goes into captivity to be rescued by Wonder Woman later that episode.
• Feminist Fantasy: Wonder Woman was one of the great early shows to be led by a strong feminine protagonist. Literally the strongest! Perhaps...
• Fight Magnet: There were always plenty of fights in the show. In the first season there was exactly one episode, "The Pluto Files", that didn't have a fight scene. Every other episode some foolish thug or Nazi soldier tried their luck. And failed.
• Fighting Your Friend: In "The New, Original Wonder Woman", Princess Diana competes against all of her sisters on Paradise Island for the right to become Wonder Woman. In the finals, she personally shoots a gun at the other finalist - who isn't nearly as proficient at bullets and bracelets as Diana.
• Final Battle: Most of Wonder Woman's opponents are vastly outmatched to the point of a Curb-Stomp Battle. But two notable exceptions are the Zardor in "Mind Stealers from Outer Space" and the Shapeshifter in "The Boy Who Knew Her Secret". Zardor was a truly strong opponent that Wonder Woman could not overpower. She was forced to send him plummeting to his death. The Shapeshifter became a barbarian and put up a reasonable fight in the climax to a two part episode. He even threw Wonder Woman around and through some things, until it pissed her off enough to flip, smack, and kick him into the Glowing Pyramid.
• Fish out of Water: Especially in the first season, Wonder Woman didn't entirely know how the world outside Paradise Island worked, and did things like reading books on slang so she could blend in better. Very much downplayed, if not ignored, when Diana returns to America in the 1970s.
• Flat Character: Etta Candy, General Blankenship, Joe Atkinson, and Bobbie are among many examples.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: In "The Deadly Sting", Wonder Woman breaks up a fight among a rowdy crowd of football players - including Deacon Jones! - by rushing into the room and tossing four of them across the room...at the same time!
• For the Evulz: Although the Skrill steal minds to get rich on an intergalactic black market, the ways that Andros and others describe them implies they would delight in doing so for free. They are known for "arrogance...cruelty...taking pleasure in giving pain."
• Friend of Masked Self: More often than not, Diana's mysterious disappearances when Wonder Woman was around were simply never brought up. When they were discussed, Wonder Woman demonstrated clear knowledge of Diana.
• Friend to All Children: Wonder Woman frequently befriends children throughout the series. In "Baroness Von Gunther" and "My Teenage Idol Is Missing", only Wonder Woman believes the fantastic story from the child that turns out to be true. In "The Bushwackers", she befriends all of the children, including inducing the wayward and jealous son to do a Heel–Face Turn and getting the Elective Mute orphan to talk.
• Friend to All Living Things: Definitely present in this portrayal of the character. If you want Wonder Woman to stay out of your secret compound, you'll need more than guard dogs. On one episode, she could mentally communicate with pigeons.
• From Special to Series: The series began as a TV Movie, "The New, Original Wonder Woman", airing on November 7, 1975. The next two specials aired in April of 1976. The remaining WWII episodes were on the regular 1976-77 season from October to February. The 14 WWII episodes are retroactively considered the first season although they were aired over the course of two years. This foot dragging and budget concerns led to the move from ABC to CBS and updating it to present day (The '70s).
• Future Society, Present Values: In "Time Bomb", Cassandra Loren, despite being from the enlightened year of 2155, bases her entire plan on convincing men to believe her future knowledge by seduction rather than using that knowledge to execute her plan herself.
• Gamer Chick: Jamie in "Skateboard Wiz", who can easily beat anyone at everything from arcade games to blackjack as a result of her math-savant abilities.
• Gender Rarity Value: The unconscious Steve Trevor is the only man that had reached the Lady Land/Hidden Elf Village Paradise Island in millennia. There was fear that he would become worshipped, so Queen Hippolyta declares an Amazon will escort him to his country.
  Princess Diana: But all the girls will want that task.
• Generation Xerox: Steve Trevor Sr. landed on Paradise Island, was discovered by Princess Diana who then took on the mantle, uniform, bracelets, lasso, tiara, and belt of strength of Wonder Woman, and escorted him back to America. Then she took a job as his subordinate so that she'd be in position to watch over him and know when and where she was most needed. 35 years later, the exact same thing happened to Steve Trevor Jr. - who just happens to be a dead ringer for his father.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: The Sardor has almost no characterization whatsoever. Its known interests include tearing opponents apart and being excitable near a glittering substance likened to catnip. That's it.
• Genius Bruiser: Diana is shown to be exceptionally skilled at math. In "The Pluto File", Wonder Woman casually solves an equation that was befuddling one of the world's foremost experts.
• Gentleman Thief: Evan Robley in "The Queen and the Thief".
• Glass Cannon: Depicted literally in "The Man Who Made Volcanoes." Professor Chapman's invention is capable of generating dozens of megatons of thermal energy. All that Wonder Woman has to do to render the doomsday weapon inoperable is to destroy a glass lens on the device.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: Steve's inability to see that Diana was gorgeous was largely due to her glasses. Taken literally in later episodes where Diana ditched the glasses herself.
• The Gloves Come Off: In "The Boy Who Knew Her Secret", Wonder Woman and The Shapeshifter are in their climactic battle. They go back and forth, throwing each other across the barn they're fighting in and breaking lots of wooden fencing. Then Wonder Woman has had enough and The Gloves Come Off. She flips him, visibly saunters towards him while taking a punctuated breath, and delivers two backhand shots across his face. Finally, she kicks him into the glowing pyramid and that's all she wrote.
• Gone Horribly Right: In "The Man Who Wouldn't Tell", Alan (Gary Burghoff) discovers the missing ingredient to make a new kind of explosive work. And thus is promptly kidnapped, shot at, and chased down by two different companies who want the formula for themselves.
• The Good Guys Always Win: Almost always in effect. Averted in the conclusion of the first half of each two-parter.
• Good is Not Nice: In "Anschluss '77", Wonder Woman alters a scientific device sustaining a clone of Hitler, which effectively kills the reborn dictator before he can unleash his plans to conquer the world. In most episodes, Wonder Woman prefers to use non-fatal techniques to defeat the bad guys, but there are some enemies who are too dangerous for the proverbial kid gloves.
• The Good Kingdom: Paradise Island is ruled by the benevolent Queen Hippolyta. Wonder Woman's powers - which every woman on Paradise Island has as well - are derived directly from this "pure environment".
• Gorgeous Garment Generation: Wonder Woman's iconic transformation brings her gorgeous outfit from nowhere. She also uses it to change back, although this is never shown on camera. Rather we get a reaction shot of Drusilla in "Wonder Woman in Hollywood".
• Government Agency of Fiction: The IADC (Inter Agency Defense Command), of which Steve Trevor Jr, was an agent.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: In "The Deadly Sting", Roman Gabriel - right after he retired from the NFL - grabs a bottle and threatens everyone in a Bar Brawl with it. Fortunately, Wonder Woman was just finishing de-escalating the situation - mostly by knocking down all of the other football players in the brawl, including Deacon Jones!
• Gun Struggle: In "The Last of the Two Dollar Bills", Wonder Woman has the Curb-Stomp Battle of fighting for a gun. A Nazi spy tries to shoot her with his gun while she tries to rip it out of his hand and bend the gun in half. She wins.
• Guns Are Worthless: One of the staples of every show is when Wonder Woman gets shot at and deflects the bullets with her bracelets. Notable moments include:
  • In "The New, Original Wonder Woman", talent agent Ashley Norman (played by the legendary Red Buttons) is the master of ceremonies for Wonder Woman's bullets and bracelets show where she deflects every bullet fired at her from a tommy gun. When Wonder Woman discovers that he's also a Nazi spy and breaks down the door of his hideout, he knows from experience that his gang's guns aren't going to help against her. His expression as he uselessly unloads his pistol at her is priceless!
  • In "The Feminum Mystique", Queen Hippolyta (played by Carolyn Jones) holds a bracelet and informs invading Nazi Captain Radl of his predicament.
  Queen Hippolyta: Go ahead. Shoot. That's what you came here for, isn't it? But you know what will happen.
• Hallway Fight: In "Judgment from Outer Space", Major Steve Trevor and friends are trapped in a hallway by two groups of Nazi soldiers. Wonder Woman rescues them by overpowering both groups.
• Hand Wave: Wonder Girl also has a magic tiara, lasso of truth. and invisible plane. Does Paradise Island stock one of these for each amazon? Is there a massive hangar of invisible planes somewhere on the island? Regardless, these are presented as special and seemingly unique items until Drusilla came along and then a second set somehow became available without explanation.
• I Have Your Wife: In "Knockout", Pete Johnson's son, Ted, is kidnapped. Diana negotiates with the kidnapper to exchange herself for the young boy. Thus putting Wonder Woman into perfect position to introduce herself.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: In "I Do, I Do," the villain, David Allen, has been using a technique to extract information from the wives of government officials without them even realizing it. He has done this several times to Dolly Tucker, whose husband works at the White House, but she has realized what's been going on. Allen asks her if she's told anyone, and she says she hasn't — and that she doesn't intend to. She wants her husband to quit his job, and thinks the embarrassment of finding out his wife revealed state secrets will prompt him to do so. Allen pretends to accept this, but still arranges for her to ride a horse named Satan that can be induced to throw her and, presumably, kill her.
• Heartwarming: In the final episode Wonder Woman deals with a mysterious "Phantom" haunting an amusement park where there have been several accidents. However in an incredibly dark storyline for an essentially lightweight show the man is actually the twin brother of the park's owner, hideously scarred by napalm in the Vietnam War and too afraid to show his face in public. After catching the real saboteur Wonder Woman persuades him to come out of hiding and the brothers tearfully embrace, reunited at last.
• Heel–Face Turn: Wonder Woman often tried to reform bad guys rather than defeat them, and sometimes she would succeed.
• Henshin Hero: Away from Paradise Island, her powers were generally tied to her outfit. Her belt of strength allowed her to retain her superhuman strength, speed, and reflexes. Her bracelets were impervious to bullets (and lasers!) which combined with the aforementioned speed, strength, and reflexes resulted in her bullet deflecting ability. Her tiara was a razor sharp boomerang. Her magic lasso compelled the truth among other things. All of these things went away when out of costume away from Paradise Island. She did retain her combat training, though.
• Hero Does Public Service: In Season One, Diana was particularly active in encouraging the American public to support the war effort against the Nazis. She'd often show up at charitable events and display her powers, such as attempting to lift an enormous weight or deflecting bullets with her bracelets.
• Hero Killer: The Zardor seen in "Mind Stealers from Outer Space" was designed to be this. It was a large, nearly mindless humanoid monster that the Skrill only kept with them for the few threats that they couldn't overwhelm with their laser weapons or mind-stealing technology. When the Skrill-possessed-Johnny declared, "He will tear Wonder Woman apart", he meant it literally. Even more noteworthy was Diana's reaction to the Zardor. In her first encounter with it, Diana was temporarily stunned by a Heroic BSoD as she tried to comprehend the bizarre abomination that had just burst into her apartment. She then tried to flee in utter terror before it caught her, and when it did, there was nothing she could do to break free of its grip. In her second encounter with the Zardor, she attempted to fight it as Wonder Woman. The struggle had some give-and-take, but as the battle waged on, it was clear that Wonder Woman was fighting against something even more powerful than herself. After it bearhugged her and backhanded her, Wonder Woman tried to run away from the battle, only to have the Zardor still catch up with her. Indeed, Diana only managed to prevail against the Zardor by using her mind to outwit the monster. If the Zardor had been a little smarter, Johnny's earlier threat would have been prophetic.
• Hero Insurance: In "Mind Stealers from Outer Space", the aforementioned mind stealers use their beam weapons to level a building with Wonder Woman and Andros in side. It's never addressed who picked up the tab for the demolished building.
• Hero Stole My Bike: Wonder Woman has a special outfit specifically designed for stealing motorcycles. At no point is it ever established that she brought a motorcycle from Paradise Island or owns one as Diana Prince. However multiple times, such as the climax of "The Murderous Missile", she spins into her bike riding outfit and takes off with someone's bike. Why a super strong amazon who can run over 700 mph bothered with motorcycles at all is never addressed
• Heroic Build: Lynda Carter not only brought the superheroine build to the part, but changed the character forever.
• Heroic Second Wind: Wonder Woman typically has a significant advantage against most of the villains that she encounters. But there were a few situations in which she came back from the brink of defeat.
  • In "The Feminum Mystique", Paradise Island is conquered by the Nazis, and Diana is enslaved along with the rest of the Amazons. She and her sister manage to rally and defeat the invaders.
  • In "The Boy Who Knew Her Secret", Diana has been brainwashed into forgetting that she is Wonder Woman. After she's told of her true identify, she struggles to overcome her disbelief in order to transform before the final battle.
• Hidden Elf Village: Paradise Island is an uncharted island within the devil’s triangle. Queen Hippolyta had decided to hide Paradise Island from the world: In the pilot, she claims that no one in the last thousand years has ever found it. She also claims that any amazon who leaves the island may lose her immortality and become a mortal again.
• Historical Domain Character: In "Beauty on Parade", Wonder Woman foils a plot to assassinate General Dwight David Eisenhower. She saves him personally by catching a bazooka round in midair with her bare hands! In "Judgement from Outer Space", Andros speaks with President Roosevelt, but it's all off screen. And , of course, Adolf Hitler is mentioned frequently.
• Historical Fantasy: Season 1 was set in World War II, albeit a World War II that included Paradise Island and Wonder Woman defeating Nazis all the time.
• Hollywood Hacking: In "IRAC is Missing", Bernard Havitol steals IRAC by connecting a briefcase to the machine. Once complete, IRAC is in the briefcase and no longer in the massive tape machines, terminal, et al and there was no way to retrieve IRAC from backups or piece it back together. That Havitol had IRAC completely and utterly was the main plot of the episode.
• Hollywood Healing: Especially in Season 1, Steve Trevor was gassed, punched, and bashed over the head enough to require his own personal trauma ward, but never showed any worse for the wear.
• Hollywood Silencer: In "Death in Disguise", assassins are sent to kill Diana Prince using silenced guns. They even make the classic twip, twip sound.
• Hot Librarian: Diana Prince poses as one more than once. And while not actually a librarian, her look under her civilian identity as Diana Prince has something of the general aesthetic in the 1970s.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Both Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl were shown learning how to transform into a super heroine while away from Paradise Island. The first time Drusilla changed into Wonder Girl, it took her multiple tries and a mental review to get it right.
• Hypnotize the Captive: In "The Boy Who Knew Her Secret", the Shapeshifter succeeds in hypnotizing Princess Diana into forgetting that she is Wonder Woman. She breaks the spell with the help of the titular boy who knew her secret reminding her of who she is.

I–M

• I Need No Ladders: In the series, Wonder Woman couldn't fly, ride air currents, or the like. That change in the comic books would happen years later. Instead she jumped superhuman distances: up buildings, down onto Mooks, across into fights, and so on without ever needing a ladder. Specifically in "The Girl With a Gift for Disaster", Wonder Woman foils an ambush by Neil, played by none other than Dick Butkus(!). He runs away up a two part staircase. Rather than outrun him up the stairs, she jumps over the entire staircase from the first floor to the second. Even Dick Butkus knows he's beat at that point.
• Iconic Item: Wonder Woman has several items that are instantly recognizable even to the general public. Her invisible jet and magic lasso are prime examples, but her bullet deflecting bracelets and boomerang tiara are not far behind. One of the reasons that Lynda Carter's take on Wonder Woman has endured the test of time is that these items show her not merely adventuring while adorning herself with feminine accessories, but these very feminine items are each a source of power.
• Iconic Outfit: One of the reasons that the show succeeded is the return of the classic Wonder Woman outfit. At the time, there had been a failed TV movie/pilot that so botched the outfit that it bordered on In Name Only. The comics of the period also tried to move away from the outfit and failed spectacularly. Wonder Woman's outfit is so iconic that pretty much any woman - or man - wearing any outfit with a red top half and blue with white stars bottom half will be recognized as paying homage to Wonder Woman.
• Ideal Hero: Wonder Woman possesses super-strength, super-speed, bullet-deflecting bracelets, an invisible plane, a golden lasso that can compel people to tell the truth and obey other commands, a tiara that can be used as a boomerang weapon, and the ability to communicate with animals. She is also a compassionate hero who fights honorably and strives to redeem her adversaries whenever possible. And after Season 1, her two known weaknesses on the show (i.e. being stripped of her magic belt or being exposed to chloroform) were almost never used again. And she was played by an actress who previously represented the USA in the Miss World competition. There's a reason that Wonder Woman remains the iconic superheroine of the genre.
• Identical Grandson: After disappearing from "man's world" after World War II ended, Diana meets Steve Trevor Jr. in the first episode of the second season, "The Return of Wonder Woman", a Setting Update in 1977 (which was then the present day). At first, she is confused, thinking he hadn't aged, but given she is an immortal amazon warrior, Queen Hippolyta explains the concept of "sons" to her.
• Idiot Ball: In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", Colonel Kesselman, played by Bo Brundin, was involved in the planning of Operation Fraulein to capture Wonder Woman, watched the films of what she can do, has ordered her to be strapped to a table with restraints large enough to immobilze several football players, and has done all of this on Hitler's personal orders. Despite this, he still scoffs at the idea of a beautiful woman doing what she can do - so much that he throws her belt of strength and magic lasso back to her! It was a bad decision.
• If You Can Read This: The smaller-print newspaper headlines in the pilot episode are variants on the "New Petitions and Building Code" format and the articles are filled with text that, while coherent, has no contextual meaning.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: In "Light-fingered Lady", Diana must steal plans for Caribe to prove her worthiness and standing as a criminal. She does so as Wonder Woman, but unbeknownst to her, Caribe sent someone else to check on Diana. Diana's plans go awry when she runs into him as Wonder Woman and is forced to lock him in a closet. As Diana, she rescues the Mook and gets bonus points for pulling off the job right under Wonder Woman's nose!
• IKEA Weaponry: The old sniper-rifle-in-a-briefcase in "Time Bomb".
• I'm Not Afraid of You: In "Seance of Terror", seemingly unseen poltergeists destroy Diana's car, summon flames out of nowhere, and try to scare her with their haunting cries. This has the opposite effect.
  Wonder Woman: Whatever you are, mortal or otherwise, I challenge you to show yourself!
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: Wonder Woman is thousands of years old, but she looks like she's in her 20s - especially since Lynda Carter was in her 20s during the show's run. This is even mentioned specifically in "The Return of Wonder Woman":
  Steve Trevor: You can't be more than 23 or 24 years old.
  Wonder Woman: I will be 2,527 years old on my next birthday.
• Immune to Mind Control: The same experiment that made Bryce Candle nigh invulnerable in "The Man Who Could Not Die" also made him immune to Wonder Woman's magic lasso.
• Impersonating the Evil Twin: Seen in "The Deadly Toys". Wonder Woman faces off against a robot version of herself that has been designed to defeat Diana and take her place. The battle ends with Wonder Woman being knocked unconscious by the aforementioned robot, who then follows the bad guy to enact his evil plan. Or so it seems.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: The iconic Wonder Woman outfit is indestructible...and comes with a removable skirt!...as described in "The New, Original Wonder Woman".
• Improbable Cover: In "Mind Stealers from Outer Space", the aliens demolish the building that Wonder Woman and Andros are inside of. The next scene, they're climbing out of the rubble with bonus points for the dirt forcefield clearly in display.
• In a Single Bound: Episodes regularly featured Wonder Woman jumping a superhuman height/distance at least once.
• Indy Ploy: In "Light-Fingered Lady", Diana poses as a thief to infiltrate a gang of criminals. They say she can earn their trust by stealing some plans they need. She uses her powers as Wonder Woman to complete this theft, but is caught doing so by one of the criminals, who was following her to make sure she was who she said she was. Thinking fast, Wonder Woman tells him she is on the trail of her criminal alter-ego, and when he won't tell her where she is, she locks him in a closet. Then she goes back to her street clothes and frees him, and the fact that she completed her mission even while Wonder Woman was supposedly after her convinces most of the group she's legitimate.
• Inevitably Broken Rule: In "The New, Original Wonder Woman", Queen Hippolyta forbids her daughter from competing in the tournament to determine who will carry the mantle of Wonder Woman and return Major Trevor to America. Princess Diana, of course, breaks the rule, wins the tournament, and becomes Wonder Woman.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: It never occurs to Wonder Woman that she is basically wearing a strapless bathing suit everywhere she goes (well, except in water), or that there is anything wrong with this.
• Instant Costume Change: Nobody ever put a better spin on this trope than Carter did. Nobody.
• Instant Knots: Wonder Woman could count on her magic lasso securely wrapping itself to whatever is handy when she needs to use it to scale a building. For example, she did this in "My Teenage Idol Is Missing" to scale a 20+ story building. Justified in that the comic books establish that she has mental control of the magic lasso. However, this is neither confirmed nor denied in the series.
• Instant Sedation: During the World War II era of the show, this is used repeatedly. It is the only way the Nazis are able to reasonably stand up against the powerful Wonder Woman. For example:
  • In "Baroness Von Gunther" the eponymous Baroness sprays Wonder Woman with knockout perfume.
  • In "Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman" the Nazis drop Wonder Woman through a trapdoor and knock her out with a chloroformed rag.
  • In "Judgment from Outer Space" a Nazi mole fires a gun at her feet that turns out to be a knockout gas grenade.
  • In "The Feminum Mystique" Wonder Girl is chloroformed after throwing some Mooks around. Later the Nazis take over Paradise Island. When they discover that all of the women can overpower them, they turn to hand-thrown knockout gas grenades.
  • In "Formula 407" Wonder Woman's rescue attempt is foiled by a chloroform rag after tossing a couple of Nazis in the lake.
  • Averted in "The Return of Wonder Woman". A henchwoman pulls out a knockout gas device and runs away. Instead of passing out, Diana coughs a few times, grabs a towel to cover her mouth, turns into Wonder Woman and disables the device. This seemed to be the new network announcing the new direction for the show.
  • However, it still surfaced from time to time after that, such as in "The Murderous Missile" when George tricks Wonder Woman in order to spray her in the face with gas while covering his own mouth and nose.
• Intimidation Demonstration: In "I Do, I Do", a thug tries to hit Wonder Woman with a tire iron. She catches his arm, takes the weapon out of his hand, tosses him away, and then ignores him in favor of bending the tire iron into a circle. That's when he decides to run.
• Invincible Hero: Wonder Woman rarely faced superpowered foes. The notable exceptions were Zardor in "Mind Stealers From Outer Space", Formicida in "Formicida", Takeo Ishida in "The Man Who Could Move the World", and the Shapeshifter in "The Boy Who Knew Her Secret". Zardor and the Shapeshifter were eventually defeated in combat. Formicida and Takeo Ishida each did a Heel–Face Turn. Every other fight in which Wonder Woman was at full strength, the only thing slowing her down was her proclivity to try to convince the bad guy to see the light before punching his lights out. The novelty in The '70s of a woman who actively looked to solve the Mystery of the Week by physically beating up the villains probably helped stave off some of the boring aspects of this trope. Non-super action girls such as April Dancer in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., the Angels in Charlie's Angels, and Batgirl in Batman were portrayed as competent fighters but not overwhelming. Fighting wouldn't always win the day. Wonder Woman was very different. She was well aware that she was much stronger, faster, and better trained than her opponents. They could either a) go quietly or b) fight her, lose, and then go quietly. This was a very unusual twist at the time.
• Invulnerable Knuckles: The Rule of Cool and Beauty Is Never Tarnished lead directly to this. Wonder Woman punched a lot of things and never got so much as a scratch. The top test of her knuckles specifically came in "Diana's Disappearing Act". She punches through a brick wall with the bricks exploding out from the force of her blow without harming her knuckles.
• Javelin Thrower: In "Screaming Javelins", Wonder Woman simultaneously throws two(!) javelins at Mariposa, pinning him to the ground temporarily. He escapes before she goes to retrieve him.
• Jiggle Show: Lynda Carter taught Baywatch how it is done. "Amazon Hot Wax" features this scene complete with slow motion, framing, and the all of the bounce that anyone can ask for.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Happens a lot. If someone is participating in a crime and seems to not really want to do it, or better yet does anything to thwart the rest of the criminals, they will never be punished at the end for the crimes they committed.
  • Also some villains escaped: Marion Mariposa in "Screaming Javelins", Count Cagliostro in "Diana's Disappearing Act," Bleaker in "The Girl from Ilandia" and Harlow Gault's... brain in "Gault's Brain". Gault's brain returns in the digital comic, where he's finally captured and incarcerated.
• Kiai: In "Going, Going, Gone", the Bruce Lee Clone (from The '70s no less!) who fights Wonder Woman uses lots of these shouts.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: In the later episodes of the series, wardrobe made effective use of the fact that their star was an actual beauty pageant winner. She was dressed in the latest fashions, and occasionally fought the Mooks as Diana Prince, such as in "Skateboard Wiz".
• Kid Sidekick: Princess Drusilla, a.k.a. Wonder Girl. She was mostly able to avoid the radioactive continuity that plagued her comics counterpart Donna Troy, though there is the minor issue that episodes set before and after her adventures keep implying her older sister Diana is an only child.
• Killer Gorilla: In "Wonder Woman vs Gargantua", the Nazis train Gargantua to kill Wonder Woman.
• Kryptonite Factor:
  • Initially, Wonder Woman would lose her superhuman strength if her magic belt was removed from her uniform. Similarly, she possessed no resistance to chloroform, which conveniently made its way into a number of Season 1 episodes. When the show was moved to the 1970s, the former weakness was addressed only once (and only then when she willingly removed her belt, lasso, and bracelets to assure an enemy that she did not wish to fight him), and the chloroform was used far less often.
  • There's another, less obvious weakness - Diana Prince needs enough freedom of movement to spin to turn into Wonder Woman. No villains deliberately exploited this (since very few knew about her secret identity in the first place), but several accidentally used it when they handcuffed Diana to a support beam or something similar.
• Labcoat of Science and Medicine: In "Anschluss '77", Wonder Woman transformed into a brown dress and tan heels and put on a lab coat that was available in order to disguise herself as Dr. Heinrich Von Klemper's assistant. Of course, the ruse didn't last long since the doctor had never previously had a stunningly gorgeous assistant. Her magic lasso worked fine, but it was unclear if she was wearing her belt of strength under the lab coat or whether it would work properly when worn this way. The scene implied that Wonder Woman retained her full abilities as it included Steve Trevor holding two Nazis prisoner - something he rarely could accomplish without Wonder Woman backing him up. Regardless, it's often a forgotten that one of the many official Wonder Woman outfits from the series includes...a brown dress.
• Lady of War: Figuratively and literally in Princess Diana's case. Wonder Woman only fights when forced and makes every effort to understand and often rehabilitate her foes. Literally true in that she left Paradise Island and joined the United States Navy to fight in World War II "for the old red, white, and blue".
• Lady Land: The Amazons that live on Paradise Island are an all-female society, but still human (they just don't age on Paradise Island). However, Queen Hippolyta remembers the patriarchal societies of the past very well and she doesn't want these to spoil her paradise, so she forces the expulsion of the only man that had reached the island in millennia by assigning an amazon to escort him to the exterior world.
  • Interestingly, this was probably the only adaptation of Paradise Island/Themyscira to maintain the Golden Age's original idea that the Amazons were sequestered because they loved men too much, not because they were misandrists by nature.
• Large Ham: Mariposa in "Screaming Javelins".
• Laser Hallway: In "IRAC is Missing", Wonder Woman has infiltrated the villain's lair when she enters a room guarded by a sentient computer armed with laser weapons.
• Last Villain Stand: At the end of "The Boy Who Knew Her Secret", a shape-changing alien criminal has been cornered by Wonder Woman after his elaborate plan has failed. Desperate and outraged, he changes his form into one that can rival Wonder Woman in power.
  Wonder Woman: You see, you didn't get rid of me after all. You slipped up. That's what usually happens at the beginning of the end.
  Alien: Beginning of the end for whom, Wonder Woman?
• Latex Perfection:
  • "Wonder Woman vs. Gargantua" used it to disguise Erica Belgard, the Nazi gorilla trainer, as Wonder Woman in order to train Gargantua. It's unclear whether the perfect disguise was only from the audience's perspective (thus allowing them to use Lynda Carter in the faux Wonder Woman scenes) or the Nazis just didn't think of any other uses for the mask and duplicate outfit.
  • "Stolen Faces" centered around a rather convoluted plot to impersonate Wonder Woman and IADC agents. Oddly enough, it was Steve Trevor that the bad guys impersonate.
  • "A Date With Doomsday" features the creation of the masks. The evil plot centers around a dating company so they can use their special chair to make the perfect masks. They probably would've done better had they used a higher tech delivery system than throwing the deadly virus by hand from a helicopter and hoping that Wonder Woman wouldn't catch it. She did.
• Left Hanging: In "The Girl from Ilandia", Tina is left trapped on Earth without a way home. It's a rare Downer Ending in the series. And she's never mentioned again.
  • 39 years later, the comic book based on the series, Wonder Woman '77, ^note  specifically, the Bionic Woman crossover arc reveals that she took up residence on Paradise Island and seems pretty happy there.
• Leg Focus: Completely unavoidable given the context of the series and that costume, but while the camera rarely lingers too long on her legs, the directors did seem to try and work in full-length shots of Wonder Woman whenever possible, and there is one episode where W.W. is shown strung up and her legs dominate the shot throughout.
• Leitmotif: Wonder Woman's transformation sequence was always accompanied by this. It changed over the three seasons from a jazz motif to a build and flourish number by the end of season 3.
• Lens Flare: The solution to one of the big concerns of the show. Previous live action Superhero shows had phone booths, Batpoles, and ripping of clothes. None of those options were especially good for a gorgeous woman to do regularly in prime time. So Lynda Carter suggested the now iconic ballerina twirl. To do it cost effectively every week, they added the Lens Flare.
• Leotard of Power: The iconic uniform. The Season 1 version of Wonder Woman's satin tights were designed to match the World War II comic books including the "bullet bra" with an eagle motif. The show was updated to The '70s for Season 2 and the costume was re-designed to highlight and flatter Lynda Carter's specific curves. This was much more difficult to do during Season 1 since that was a series of movies of the week with 14 episodes airing from November 1975 until February 1977 and the star was an unknown actress in the process of being cast.
• Lightning Bruiser: Her super-strength was obvious (notably when she stopped a tank in its tracks). Her super-speed was implied by feats like catching a bazooka shell in her hand, and her tendency to run rather than use a car when she needed to get somewhere quickly. In "Death in Disguise", she runs forty-seven miles in less than four minutes.
• Like Father, Like Son: Season 1 features Steve Trevor, a brave hero played by Lyle Waggoner who sometimes needs Wonder Woman to save him. Seasons 2 and 3 feature Steve Trevor Jr., a brave hero played by Lyle Waggoner who sometimes needs Wonder Woman to save him.
• Living Statue: In the episode 'The Fine Art of Crime' Wonder Woman is lured into a trap by the story's villains, realises she's been outsmarted by them and surrenders into allowing herself to be placed into suspended animation, accepting being transformed into a living waxwork to be put on display for the unwitting public, becoming their prized possession as the star attraction figurine for their art gallery.
• Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard: In "The Last of the Two Dollar Bills", Steve Trevor becomes the fifth person to be locked into the cell in the basement of the coffee house. He looks around, finds a fork on a nearby shelf and uses it to pick the lock. It might have helped make the lock easier to pick when Wonder Woman bent the lock open and then bent it back into shape earlier when she needed to break out of the same cell.
• Made of Iron: Major Steve Trevor is punched, struck, clubbed over the head, and knocked unconscious so many times that the time he'd have to spend in a hospital recovering from just the blows to his head would far outstrip all of World War II. For example, in "Wonder Woman meets Baroness von Gunther", Steve is knocked out in a barn with a beam so large that it was a significant demonstration of Wonder Woman's strength that she could lift it off of him and toss it away. That's right, this massive beam was still crushing the back of his neck when Wonder Woman arrived but he recovered without a problem.
• Male Gaze:
  • Surprisingly rarely invoked with Wonder Woman herself, mainly due to the character so dominating every scene (especially when in costume) that any additional "help" is unnecessary.
  • Played straight with Wonder Girl in her first appearance.
• Man on Fire: In "The Man Who Could Not Die", Bryce Candle, the titular deathless man is shot, mauled by a lion, and, yes, he is set on fire. Non-spoiler alert: He doesn't die.
• Martial Pacifist: Wonder Woman prefers to use non-violence whenever possible, but she is a skilled martial artist who is more than capable of defeating numerous villains in combat.
• Master Computer: IRAC, Information Retrieval Associative Computer, not merely a powerful supercomputer, but the master computer to the Roving Computer Module, or Rover.
• Mathematician's Answer: In "Spaced Out", Diana throws a thug into a pool, then quickly changes to Wonder Woman, interrogates him with her golden lasso, and makes him forget the conversation. A little later the thug runs into his boss, who's shocked to see him soaking wet.
  Rohan: Where on Earth have you been?!
  Munn: ...Swimming.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Invoked by Queen Hippolyta in regards of Paradise Island:
    Queen Hippolyta: I named this island "Paradise" for an excellent reason. There are no men on it. Thus, it is free from their wars, their greed, their hostility, their... barbaric... masculine... behavior. [bites her hand]
  • Diana's nomenclature for her alter-ego is meaningful as well. On Paradise Island, she is Princess Diana. In Man's World, her alter-ego goes by the name of Diana Prince.
• Mildly Military: Averted, especially compared to her comic book counterpart at the time.
• Mind Control:
  • In "The Man Who Could Move the World", Takeo Ishida controlled Wonder Woman via telekinesis.
  • "The Pied Piper" had the title character using a flute to control minds.
  • The titular "Mind Stealers from Outer Space" controlled minds by literally stealing and encasing them in egg-like holders.
• Mirror Match: In "The Deadly Toys", Wonder Woman fights an identical robot version of herself. The robot wins! [ Nah. Wonder Woman just faked that the robot won to fool the Toymaker, Orlich Hoffman (Frank Gorshin)
• Mission Briefing: In several episodes from early in Season 2, Diana, Steve, and Joe Atkinson would be briefed by a Charlie's Angels-esque faceless voice coming from a TV bearing a picture of the Presidential seal. It was never addressed whether these orders were coming directly from the President or another intermediary.
• "Mission: Impossible" Cable Drop: Wonder Woman did something like this in the episode "The Queen and the Thief", hanging from a rope tied to her ankle so she could get into a safe in the middle of a room with an explosive floor. One wonders how many takes were ruined by Carter falling out of her top, because she looked about a centimeter away from it the whole time.
• Monster Misogyny:
  • In "Wonder Woman vs. Gargantua", the eponymous foe is a Nazi-trained gorilla that has been brainwashed for one purpose: to destroy Wonder Woman. Luckily, the heroic Amazon Princess cleared his head, and made him very peaceful.
  • In "Mind Stealers from Outer Space", the Zardor is reserved solely for attempts to capture or kill Wonder Woman. The Skrill never use him against Andros — the Zardor even peacefully walks past Andros at the start of the second episode — but are quick to use him against the Amazon princess.
• Monster of the Week: Most of the episodes were self contained, no matter what threads were left hanging - we're looking at you, Tina ("The Girl from Ilandia") and Bryce ("The Man Who Could Not Die"). Some examples are the Nazi spy, Wotan ("Last of the Two Dollar Bills"), the Falcon ("The Pluto Files"), and a literal example, the Killer Gorilla Gargantua ("Wonder Woman vs. Gargantua").
• Mook Chivalry: The thugs, soldiers, and goons regularly followed this.
  • In "The Starships Are Coming", five thugs run up to Wonder Woman so they can be defeated individually. A sixth, armed with a gun, waits patiently for her to wipe the floor with the first crew before firing at her.
  • In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", three Nazi goons in a row run up to Wonder Woman individually so she can throw each one of them into the same box. It's such an easy production line of beating thugs up that Fausta openly complains about it.
  Fausta: So far she shows nothing that I couldn't match
• Most Common Superpower:
  • Until the television series, Wonder Woman was portrayed in the comics as a slim, athletic figure. And then Lynda Carter filled out the costume (and then some!) on this show. Ever since, the comics portray her as the (second) bustiest, curviest superheroine in the DC Universe.
  • Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman may have been even bigger, though far more covered.
• Mrs. Robinson: In "The Return of Wonder Woman", Diana explains to Steve that she will turn 2,527 on her next birthday. Most of the various men who flirt with Diana Prince/Wonder Woman over the course of the series have no idea that she is much, much older than they are.
• Ms. Fanservice: Carter herself, of course. And it only got better as time went on; in the second season the costume was tweaked to flatter her bust a bit more (she was never fond of the "bullet bra" from the first season) and to show more leg, and her civilian clothes were sexier than the bulky military uniform she wore in the first season. A (very) skin-tight lycra catsuit was also added to her wardrobe for use when Diana needed to swim or ride a motorcycle. Towards the end of the series Diana wore her hair down Wonder Woman-style more frequently, too, and also got away with losing the glasses, too (meaning Carter basically pretty much looked like Wonder Woman in every scene).
• Mugging the Monster: The first couple of times the Nazi's attack Wonder Woman, they have no idea what she's capable of. However, it quickly becomes Bullying a Dragon as they fail to learn their lesson.
• Muscle Beach Bum: In "Skateboard Wiz", Diana is accosted by a couple of these. The pretty girl was not impressed. They learned the error of their ways.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, their mother, Hippolyta, and every Amazon on Paradise Island had the physique of a pin up girl, yet every one of them could toss a Nazi soldier through the air into a river ("The Feminum Mystique"), lift a car ("The New, Original Wonder Woman"), or easily overpower thugs ("Wonder Woman in Hollywood").
• My Kung-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours: The source of Wonder Woman's powers. In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", Wonder Woman, under control of the golden lasso, explains to a disbelieving Colonel Kesselman that her strength comes from training in a pure environment. And, of course, she had to beat every other Amazon in order to become Wonder Woman.

N–R

• Those Wacky Nazis: Wonder Woman combats them continuously during the Second World War (but never the Italians, Japanese or other Axis or communist agents?) and once again in the 1970s, even helping dispose of a reanimated Hitler. We actually get to meet the "Nazi Wonder Woman" but she is just a spy skilled in judo rather than a blonde version of Lynda Carter with her Leotard of Power festooned with Swastikas (as the producers were wary of creating a pin-up girl for fetishists/the extreme right).
• Neutral Female: Inverted, and how! The character of Wonder Woman was designed by William Marston to invert this trope. Her portrayal by Lynda Carter is true to Marston's vision.
• Nice Girl: Wonder Woman/Diana Prince herself, she is compassionate and very kind, and on a mission of diplomacy and peace, but will strive above all else to serve as a champion of freedom and justice. So yeah, she's sweet but not someone you shouldn't mess with.
• Nice Guy: Steve Trevor in spades. War hero (constantly referred as such in season 1). Fighter jock ("The New, Original Wonder Woman", "The Feminum Mystique", and others). Rose Bowl (presumably winning) quarterback ("Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman"). Tall, handsome, gleaming smile (literally true in the opening credits of season 1), and will sacrifice his entire career and risk his life for Wonder Woman without hesitation ("Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman").
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Bryce Candle, the title Poorly Disguised Pilot hero in "The Man Who Could Not Die", was this. He got shot, thrown three stories up by Wonder Woman, and mauled by a lion with nary a scratch.
• Nightmare Face: Formicida's expressions are terrifying.
• No Ontological Inertia: In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", Major Steve Trevor is faced with utterly damning evidence of being a traitor. Once Wonder Woman punches out the bad guys, all of the evidence still exists, but is ignored. In "Judgment from Outer Space", the world is visited by a confirmed alien who demonstrates his powers and meets with world leaders such as President Roosevelt. But once Wonder Woman beats up a few Nazis and rescues everyone from their clutches, the very existence of extraterrestrial life drops out of everyone's sight.
• No-Sell: In "Going, Going, Gone", Wonder Woman fights a Bruce Lee Clone. He maneuvers her into what he thinks is a tactical advantage and deals two hard shots right to her gut. Which don't phase her in the slightest.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: The robot "Cori" in "IRAC Is Missing" has a feminine voice and a rectangular protrusion on her chest that is reminiscent of breasts.
• Not Quite Flight: Instead of flying, or even "riding air currents", Diana can only jump really far and high.
• Not Wearing Tights: "The Bushwackers" featured Wonder Woman wearing white pants with a red blouse at the request of Special Guest, Roy Rogers.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: "Just George," who turns out to be the mastermind in "The Murderous Missile".
• Obvious Stunt Double:
  • Some of Lynda Carter's doubles were not-particularly-effeminate men. Jeannie Epper◊ took on most of the stuntwork for Wonder Woman. It's still fairly obvious when Jeannie is playing the part, as those sequences typically obscure Wonder's Woman's face.
  • Carter did perform many of her own stunts as well, including the incident wherein she held on to the bottom of a helicopter in actual flight without a harness. The producers reportedly flipped out when they learned that Lynda had risked her life to get that shot.
• Oh, Crap!: A common experience for the mook of the week when encountering Wonder Woman. On very rare occasions, Wonder Woman's reaction to a surprising foe.
  • Diana's encounters with the Zardor in "Mind Stealers From Outer Space".
  • Diana's discovery that a bomb is guarded by an amazon-seeking laser in "IRAC is Missing".
  • Wonder Woman reacts this way when the alien shapeshifter in "The Boy Who Knew Her Secret" changes into his final form.
• One-Gender Race: The Amazons that live on Paradise Island are an all-female society, but still human (they just don't age on Paradise Island). However, Queen Hippolyta remembers the patriarchal societies of the past very well and she doesn’t want these to spoil her paradise, so she forces the expulsion of the only man that had reached the island in millennia by assigning an amazon to escort him to the exterior world.
• Old-School Dogfight: In "The New, Original Wonder Woman", Major Steve Trevor and Captain Drangel engage in a classic duel in the skies over Paradise Island. After several maneuvers, they both lose a game of chicken! After they both eject, Captain Drangel shoots Major Trevor while both are floating down with their parachutes. That's the last advantage Captain Drangel has, though. Major Trevor is rescued and nursed back to health by Princess Diana. Captain Drangel falls into the water and becomes shark food.
• Older Than They Look: From "The Return of Wonder Woman":
  Steve Trevor: You can't be more than 23 or 24 years old.
  Wonder Woman: I will be 2,527 years old on my next birthday.
• One-Man Army: And how! Take an already extremely powerful superheroine, throw in executive fiat to not show a woman getting hit by a man in prime time in The '70s, and you have the very model of a modern one woman army. This combined to make Wonder Woman vastly stronger, faster, and more skilled than most of her foes. So much so that during The '70s, the focus was on Agent Diana Prince with the understanding that any serious problem would be solved by transforming into Wonder Woman. For good reason!
  • In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", she beat up the first three of four mooks so easily that she interrogated the last one and just let him go. And that was the preamble to breaking out of a Nazi interrogation room, overpowering multiple guards at once, and wiping the floor with everyone else in the room - including the Nazi Wonder Woman.
  • In "Judgement From Outer Space", she rescues Steve Trevor by overpowering two different groups of Nazi soldiers.
  • In "Going, Going, Gone", Wonder Woman faced off against a Bruce Lee clone. This was soon after the real Bruce Lee's death in 1973 and when that stock character was understood to be a one man army himself. He actually got two hits in...which did nothing to her. And then she crushed him.
  • In "The Richest Man in the World", she gives an entire warehouse of mooks the chance to give up before she opens up the can of whoop ass. They shoot at her, instead of surrendering. Bad choice...especially since this visibly pisses her off.
  • "The Starships Are Coming" had the single largest number of bad guys overwhelmed in one scene in the series when she tossed, flipped, punched over and into a trash pile, deflected bullets from, and lassoed eight men. And turned over a car for good measure.
  Mason Steele: She must be executed as an example to all those who idolize her. Get her!
  [Wonder Woman tilts her head with an expression of "Seriously?" mixed with "Bring it on"]
  Lead Mook: Well, we gotta do something!
  [Wonder Woman demonstrates why bullying the dragon is such a bad idea]
• "Open!" Says Me: In "Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman" and "Judgment from Outer Space", Wonder Woman breaks down doors to rescue Steve and Andros respectively. Except Andros doesn't want to be saved. In "Diana's Disappearing Act", she rips open a steel door and punches through a brick wall to confront Count Caliostro.
• Outside Ride: Wonder Woman in "Mind Stealers From Outer Space" and "Death in Disguise".
• Painted-On Pants: In The '70s era of the show, Diana Prince frequently wore stylish and flattering outfits, including these type of pants. For example, in "The Fine Art of Crime", she can be seen wearing tight pants (with 70's bell bottoms!) while eluding a couple of thugs.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Wonder Woman has multiple:
  • The glasses disguise for her Secret Identity that fools everyone else is literally broken by aliens using a projector in "Mind Stealers from Outer Space". He takes a picture of Diana Prince and overlays it with a picture of Wonder Woman.
  Alien Leader: Undoubtedly the same human
  • In the pilot, "The New Original Wonder Woman", the Amazons on Paradise Island wore masks during the competition to determine who would become Wonder Woman. Diana's mother, Hippolyta, forbade her from competing, but somehow couldn't recognize her in her mask.
  • In "The Feminum Mystique", the Nazis mistake Wonder Girl for Wonder Woman repeatedly. The first time is almost reasonable since they knew nothing of Paradise Island or other Amazons, both wore a red and blue Leotard of Power, and had the same super powers. Exaggerated when they can't tell the difference between two entirely different women after conquering Paradise Island itself!
• Parent Service: For an entire generation of children, the Wonder Woman series was their first exposure to a superheroine who could save the world entirely on her own. For the fathers of those children, the series had an entirely different kind of allure.
• Perfect Pacifist People: In this incarnation, Paradise Island's amazons are this. In contrast with the Proud Warrior Race Guys from the comics, the amazons were overpowered by the Nazis in "The Feminum Mystique". However, the Amazons easily overpower the Nazis once Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl came back to liberate the isle.
• Performer Guise: In "Amazon Hot Wax", Diana Prince goes undercover as singer Cathy Meadows.
• Pilot Movie: "The New, Original Wonder Woman" was a TV movie airing on November 7, 1975 complete with special guest stars such as Cloris Leachman as Queen Hippolyta and Red Buttons as Ashley Norman, the Nazi spy with the best reaction shot ever to Wonder Woman deflecting his bullets. It proceeded slowly from there to specials in April of 1976 to a short season on ABC in 1976-77 to two full seasons on CBS from 1977 to 1979.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: All of the Amazons of Paradise Island are slim, pin up girl physiqued women. All of them can physically overpower Nazi soldiers ("The Feminum Mystique"). Wonder Woman of course, fights gorillas ("Wonder Woman vs. Gargantua"), alien killing machines ("Mind Stealers from Outer Space"), shape shifting barbarians ("The Boy Who Knew Her Secret"), and much more.
• Planet Destroyer: In "Judgment From Outer Space", Andros is a self described "judge, jury, and if need be, executioner" of the Earth.
• Play-Along Prisoner: In "Judgement from Outer Space", Andros is taken prisoner by the Nazis and actively refuses to be rescued by Wonder Woman. His goal is to interview the Nazis and doing it while imprisoned works as well for him as any other way.
• Politically-Active Princess: Princess Diana joins the fight against the Nazis in World War II once she understands the political threat that they represent to the world in general and to Paradise Island in particular. In "Mind Stealers from Outer Space", she goes so far as to personally address the United Nations itself.
• Pool Scene: Having some of these scenes is practically unavoidable when Lynda Carter is your star. For example, "I Do, I Do" had Diana Prince and her fake husband discussing plans and Diana diving into the pool.
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: Wonder Woman's producers seemed to enjoy trying to make spin-offs, despite the fact that they never succeeded. For example:
  • Wonder Girl could have had her own show. Debra Winger turned it down.
  • "The Girl From Ilandia" had all the makings of a new show including The Homeward Journey, a suitably sinister villain, and one of the very few downer endings.
  • "The Man Who Could Not Die" set up a new location, new cast, and a new superhero who was somehow immune to Wonder Woman's magic lasso. Whether it was a spin-off or a new direction for season 4, neither happened.
• Pop the Tires: Steve Trevor gets his shining moment in "Gault's Brain". Two bad guys run away from him, race to their car, almost run him down, then Steve shoots out a tire and captures one of them. Steve did all of this without Wonder Woman around to even intimidate them or anything!
• Power Glows: There is always one of those just when Diana Prince spins to change clothes into Wonder Woman. (Notice that there wasn't any Audible Gleam nor Power Glows in "The Feminum Mystique", the only episode in the series where Wonder Woman is actually seen changing back into Diana Prince.
• Precocious Crush: In "Seance of Terror", Matt, a preteen boy, seems to develop a crush towards Wonder Woman. He gushes about what a "pretty good team" they make and acts bashfully after Diana gives him a friendly, chaste peck on the head.
• Pretty in Mink: Diana wore a fur jacket a few times.
• Pretty Princess Powerhouse: Princess Diana is royalty, beautiful, and a warrior of the highest order.
• Primal Chest-Pound: In "Wonder Woman vs Gargantua", Gargantua pounds his chest while being displayed to the public.
• Primary-Color Champion: Wonder Woman's outfit is almost exclusively made of primary colors. Red bustier and boots? Check. Golden tiara, bracelets, belt and lasso? Check. Blue star-spangled bottoms. Check. When she wears a cape, this color scheme is enhanced even further.
• Princess Protagonist: Princess Diana is the heir to the throne of Paradise Island and wins the right to become Wonder Woman.
• Progressively Prettier: Diana Prince undergoes this transformation. In Season 1, she's Yeoman Diana Prince, Steve Trevor's secretary and always dressed in a dowdy military uniform with her hair in a bun. By season 2, she's Agent Diana Prince and wears the latest fashions. By season 3, she stops wearing glasses entirely and simply looks like Wonder Woman all the time.
• Protect This House: In "The Feminum Mystique", Paradise Island itself is under attack by Nazis. The Nazis succeed and take over the island. Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl help retake their home.
• Proud Scholar Race Guy: In this incarnation, Paradise Island's amazons are this, in contrast with the Proud Warrior Race Guys from the comics.
• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: In "Going, Going, Gone", a Bruce Lee Clone that serves as a Mook for the Villain of the Week becomes one of the few bad guys to actually punch Wonder Woman. His two solid punches to her gut do absolutely nothing to her.
• Punched Across the Room: Wonder Woman threw quite a few bad guys across rooms, but in "The Starships Are Coming" she punches Mason Steele's chief lieutenant and he flies into a pile of garbage.
• Put Their Heads Together: In "Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman", while being attacked by two Nazi guards Wonder Woman grabs their shoulders and knocks their heads together, knocking them out (they were wearing helmets at the time).
• Ransacked Room: In "The Return of Wonder Woman" Diana's apartment is ransacked and the burglar is still there! Diana has a rare serious fight in her Secret Identity.
• Ray Gun: Ray guns appear multiple times. Wonder Woman's bracelets work as well against them as they do against bullets.
  • In "Going, Going, Gone", Sheldon Como and Vladimir Zukov try to hold off Wonder Woman with these as she assaults Como's submarine. They're hopelessly overmatched.
  • In "Mind Stealers from Outer Space", the alien Skrill use them for multiple purposes including attacking Wonder Woman and leveling a building.
• Really 700 Years Old: At the start of Season Two, Wonder Woman is 2,526 years old.
  Steve Trevor: You can't be more than 23 or 24 years old.
  Wonder Woman: I will be 2,527 years old on my next birthday.
• Rebellious Princess: Against the orders of the Queen Mother, Princess Diana participates in the tournament that allows her to become Wonder Woman. Doing so results in her leaving Paradise Island and venturing to Man's World, much to her mother's dismay.
• Reckless Sidekick: The plot of "The Feminum Mystique" hinged on Wonder Girl's recklessness. The good news: the Nazi's couldn't tell Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl apart. The bad news: Wonder Girl gave up the secret location of Paradise Island.
• Redundant Rescue: In "The Last of the Two Dollar Bills", Wonder Woman captures Wotan and then races back to save Steve Trevor - who has already defused the bomb and saved Secret Service Agent Dan Fletcher.
  Wonder Woman: I was so worried. They said you were dead!
  Steve Trevor: Nothing to worry about, Wonder Woman. We handled this all on our own. For a change.
• Refusal of the Call: Between seasons 1 and 2, Wonder Woman returns home for three decades. Apparently the goal was to save the world from the Nazis and once that was done, she went home. "The Return of Wonder Woman" shows her mistaking Steve Trevor Jr. for his father and being coerced back into action, but now it's the 1970's.
• Reluctant Warrior: Partly as a result of Executive Meddling. The producers didn't want Wonder Woman to be too violent, thinking that it would alienate viewers, which is why you're more likely to see her tossing a thug into a pile of cardboard boxes than punching him in the face. Also see Heel–Face Turn above. During the entire run, there are only a couple of cases where she kills anybody (i.e. destroying a German U-boat and its crew in one of the first episodes, and she later encounters one villain who she thought she'd killed in an earlier encounter).
• Retool: Besides the update to the 1970s at the beginning of the second season, there was a planned retool that showed up in one episode of the third season (which should have been the season finale but was shown out of order). Diana was transferred to the Los Angeles branch of the IADC, with a new boss and supporting cast. The show never got a fourth season, so that was all we got.
• Robot Master: "The Deadly Toys" features Frank Gorshin of Batman (1966) fame as an evil toymaker. His plan included making a robot Wonder Woman to challenge the real Amazon Princess.
• Rooftop Confrontation: Wonder Woman jumped onto many buildings during the series, so this happened quite a bit. "The Deadly Toys", "Spaced Out", and "Diana's Disappearing Act" featured them.
• Royal Blood: Unlike the comics where she is made from clay or a daughter of Zeus, there is no backstory explicitly stated of Princess Diana's birth. She is simply the heir to the throne and has a younger sister, Drusilla.
• Rules Lawyer: Invoked by the IADC's main computer during Seance of Terror. IRAC gave Diana information that she wasn't (technically) cleared for. But after all...
  IRAC: Major Trevor said nothing about clearance for Wonder Woman.^note Granted, the computer waited until she was out of the room before it said this, but still...
• Samaritan Syndrome: When Season 1 begins, Wonder Woman is a naive idealist whose lack of experience is exceeded by her willingness to help others and fight for justice. By the end of Season 3, she seems far less naive, and her snappy one-liners to the bad guys are often laced with snarky cynicism. While she still fights to make the world a better place, it's apparent that dealing with would-be supervillains gets old fast. The reason for Wonder Woman being written this way during the latter seasons may be more than mere character development. The CBS incarnation of the show was supposed to be less campy than its WWII-era precursor on ABC, and Wonder Woman was written to have "more modern" dialogue.

S–Z

• Sauna of Death: In "I Do, I Do", Diana succumbs to knockout gas while in a sauna.
• Save the Princess: Steve Trevor occasionally gets a chance to try to do this, but usually fails because Wonder Woman saves herself instead.
  • In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", Wonder Woman is captured by the Nazis and taken behind enemy lines. Steve disobeys the order to not go after her but obeys the order to take a vacation...so he can go rescue her. He arrives just after Wonder Woman escapes and gets captured himself
  • In "Judgement from Outer Space", Wonder Woman is hit by poison gas. Steve does get to take her to the hospital, but she fights off the poison herself.
• Say My Name: The theme tune starts out with shouting her name.
  "WONDER WOMAAAAAN!"
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The villain of "The Starships Are Coming" is a rich, powerful Right-Wing Militia Fanatic who wants to ensure American supremacy by tricking the US into nuking China. He attempts this by using Phony Newscasts to create the illusion of an Alien Invasion.
• Scullery Maid: In "The Queen and the Thief" Diana goes undercover as a scullery maid while Steve Trevor poses as Steven Ludwig, president of the American Malachar cultural association. Diana immediately points out the chauvinism, but ultimately her cover lasts longer than his.
• Secret Identity Change Trick: Diana Prince has a tendency to run away from trouble the moment she realizes that she can't handle the danger as her alter-ego, only to secretly transform into Wonder Woman when no one is looking, and then return to save the day. This need to protect her secret identity does seem a little absurd, given that: (1) as a princess from Paradise Island, she literally has no loved ones in Man's World to protect with a secret identity; and (2) she makes no effort in the latter seasons to conceal Diana Prince's uncanny resemblance to Wonder Woman.
• Secret-Keeper: IRAC strongly, repeatedly suggests that he knows exactly who Diana is.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • The pilot establishes that Paradise Island, in 1942, is a Hidden Elf Village of Action Girls who had never seen a man in a thousand years. Princess Diana is elected The Champion to travel to Man's world. She is the first Amazon to leave Paradise Island in a thousand years. Then the first season happens in The '40s. However...
    • In the second season episode "The Man Who Made Volcanoes", her first year back in Man's world since World War II, (The '70s), the villainous Arthur Chapman says Diana had foiled a scheme of his a few years earlier.
    • In the third season episode "Diana's Disappearing Act", Cagliostro claims that Wonder Woman has stopped all his lineage's plans since the original Cagliostro (born in the 18th century) and...
    • In "Screaming Javelins" Diana remembers having met Napoléon Bonaparte, implying not only that she was in Europe those years, but that she was already doing her superhero job. She had also supposedly foiled a scheme of Mariposa's some years earlier but this is somewhat less problematic as she had actually been back a while by this point.
  • At the pilot and the first episodes, Wonder Woman uses spinning to change clothes into her costume. Later episodes show how she changes by spinning with Audible Sharpness and Power Glow. In "The Feminum Mystique", Wonder Girl remembers Queen Hippolyta teaching Wonder Woman how to change her clothes with Audible Sharpness and Power Glow before leaving Paradise Island.
• Setting Update: The first episode of the second season, "The Return of Wonder Woman": Wonder Woman disappeared when World War II ended, but another plane incident at Paradise Island forces her to return to man's world, by which time it's now:
• The '70s: The first episode of the second season, "The Return of Wonder Woman" was set in 1977 which was the present day at the time. Also the entire series aired in the 1970's with the first episode, "The New Original Wonder Woman" airing on November 7, 1975 and the last episode, "Phantom of the Roller Coaster" airing on September 11, 1979.
• Sexier Alter Ego: In the World War II era, Wonder Woman went to great lengths to make her Secret Identity, Diana Prince as mousy and unglamorous as it is reasonably possible.
• Ship Tease: Diana and Steve would occasionally have a "moment" in the first season. They backed off from this in subsequent seasons (possibly nervous about the obvious 16-year age gap between Carter and Waggoner) to the point of making Steve Diana's boss so they wouldn't be working directly together anymore.
• Shooting Superman: In the pilot, "The New Original Wonder Woman", Wonder Woman's agent and Nazi spy Ashley Norman empties his gun at Wonder Woman after watching her on stage deflect every bullet fired at her by a tommy gun. His expression is priceless.
• Shout-Out:
  • The sci-fi convention in "Spaced Out" has Shout-Outs to Robby the Robot and Logan's Run, among others.
  • The titular guy in "The Man Who Couldn't Die" wonders what he's going to do with his newfound immortality. Diana jokingly suggests he join the circus and call himself the Man of Steel.
• The Show Goes Hollywood: "Wonder Woman In Hollywood", which doubles as the finale to Season 1 and the entire WWII era of the show.
• Sidekick Creature Nuisance:
  • Rover, the roving computer module who literally sounded like the Road Runner.
  • In the "The Man Who Could Not Die", the titular man, Bryce Candle, had a chimp who was the first successful experiment before him.
• Sleeping Dummy: Diana does this poolside to give a bad guy the slip in "I Do, I Do."
• Sliding Scale of Villain Threat: Wonder Woman's villains ranged from local area threat ("The Man Who Wouldn't Tell") to planetary threat ("Judgement from Outer Space", "Mind Stealers from Outer Space")
• Small, Secluded World: The amazons claim Paradise Island is this: the youngest of these immortals have never seen a man before. However, Princess Diana recognizes a parachute, and the Queen can read Trevor’s English written documents without any problem.
• Smoke Out: Count Cagliostro (a descendant of THE Count Cagliostro) in "Diana's Disappearing Act", one of the few bad guys to just flat-out escape Wonder Woman.
• Soft Glass: In "The Richest Man in the World", Wonder Woman punches through the window of a van. In "The Man Who Made Volcanoes", she punches through the lens of the volcano beam. It was established in "Wonder Woman in Hollywood" that she is not invulnerable, yet the glass does not harm her at all.
• Something Person: Wonder Woman.
• Songs in the Key of Lock: In the first season two-part episode "Judgment From Outer Space", Wonder Woman meets a space alien named Andros. During Part 1 she hears him whistle a six note musical phrase, and in Part 2 she uses that same phrase to both open the outer hatch on his space ship and deactivate a force field inside the ship.
• Special Guest: There were many special guest stars, such as Cloris Leachman in the pilot, "The New Original Wonder Woman". "The Bushwackers" easily had the most plot changes to accommodate the guest star, Roy Rogers. It was set on a cowboy ranch with Roy raising war orphans. Significantly, it is the only time in the series where Wonder Woman is Not Wearing Tights. At Roy's behest, she wore white pants and a red blouse instead.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: In "The Deadly Dolphin" and "Light-fingered Lady", Wonder Woman pacifies guard dogs. In "The Man Who Could Not Die" she does the same to a lion. "A Date With Doomsday" has her getting information from a pigeon. "The Girl from Ilandia" shows it best as Wonder Woman gives telepathic commands to a dog named Tiger who then executes them perfectly.
  Wonder Woman: Tiger, you take care of her and if she's in trouble you come and find me. Understand?
  [Tiger barks and later carries out these orders to the letter]
• Spectacular Spinning: The famous spin-change used by Diana to transform into Wonder Woman. It was proposed by Carter; the producers were nervous about having Wonder Woman simply take off her clothes every episode.
• A Spy at the Spa: The episode "I Do, I Do" features a spa with mind-reading massages.
• Stage Magician: Several in "Diana's Disappearing Act".
• Statuesque Stunner: Lynda Carter was both tall and stunning in her satin tights.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Played literally with Andros. Despite the obvious chemistry between him and Diana, their conflicting responsibilities in different solar systems prevent them from taking their relationship to the next level.
  Wonder Woman: The last time we said goodbye was when? 1943?
  Andros: Perhaps we should keep track of our hellos instead. Even better...
  Wonder Woman: Don't ask me that.
  Andros: I know a planet with eight moons. They fill the night sky like jewels in a crown. You'd look beautiful under that sky.
  Wonder Woman: Andros...I can't. I'm needed here.
  Andros: Yes...you are. So, Princess: until whenever.
  Wonder Woman: Until whenever.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: In "Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman" Wonder Woman is captured, her belt of strength removed and put into this position. Pride saves the day as Fausta's superior officer throws the belt and lasso back to Wonder Woman. A minute later Wonder Woman is the only one left standing.
• The Strength of Ten Men: In "The Feminum Mystique", General Blankenship uses this trope word for word to describe Wonder Girl.
  Major Steve Trevor: Say, what happened to Wertz? Did they catch him?
  General Phil Blankenship: Yes. The poor man's lost his mind. He gave himself up babbling something about a fifteen year old girl with the strength of ten men!
• Stripperiffic: To Wonder Woman, she wears an indestructible ambassadorial outfit that demonstrates her allegiance to freedom and democracy, a razor-sharp boomerang, a belt of strength, bullet-deflecting bracelets symbolizing her heritage, and the magic lasso of truth. To the rest of the world, she's a stunningly gorgeous woman in a strapless bathing suit.
• Strong and Skilled: Wonder Woman has both Super-Strength and is a trained warrior.
• Stronger Than They Look: Every Amazon on Paradise Island looks like a model, but can bench press a car. And that doesn't get into a fraction of what Wonder Woman does during the series.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: While not extreme, the Nazis here had very advanced animal training and plastic surgery. They would have become this had they captured the feminum mine.
• Stylish Protection Gear: Wonder Woman has special outfits for swimming, motorcycle riding, and skateboarding. Stylish helmets, kneepads, and wetsuit are included.
• Super Family Team: Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl are sisters. Their mother, Hippolyta, even gets in on the act dirtectly in "The Feminum Mystique".
• Super-Strength: One of Wonder Woman's powers. She and all of the amazons have this while on Paradise Island. A magic belt is necessary to use her amazonian strength elsewhere.
• Super-Strong Child: Wonder Girl. In "The Feminum Mystique", she's shown as a teenager enjoying teenage life in Washington D.C., including an incredible appetite. Her strength is impressive. Let's let General Blankenship describe it:
  Major Steve Trevor: Say, what happened to Wertz? Did they catch him?
  General Phil Blankenship: Yes. The poor man's lost his mind. He gave himself up babbling something about a fifteen year old girl with the strength of ten men!
• Super Window Jump: In "Death in Disguise", Wonder Woman races back to I.A.D.C. headquarters by leaping up the side of the building and crashing through the window.
• Super Hero Origin: The pilot, "The New Original Wonder Woman" shows her origin on Paradise Island, the competition she won to become Wonder Woman, and her first steps into the larger world.
• Superhero Prevalence Stages: The series is in an early setting with very few superheroes. Wonder Woman rarely faces villains with super powers or who even remotely come close to her own power level.
• Superhero Speciation: Inverted. Both Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl have the exact same powers, including two lassos of truth, two belts of strength, two boomerang tiaras, and apparently two invisible jets. Every Amazon on Paradise island has bullet deflecting bracelets. It is unclear if there would be more jets, lassos, and tiaras for the other Amazons.
• Superheroes Stay Single: In Season One, Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor were clearly attracted to each other, but nothing serious came of their flirtations. In Seasons Two and Three, Diana Prince/Wonder Woman had several other potential-suitors-of-the-day that appeared for just an episode, but no long-term love interest.
• Superheroes Wear Capes: Wonder Woman occasionally wears a star spangled cape, such as in "Judgment From Outer Space".
• Superheroes Wear Tights: Wonder Woman's iconic Leotard of Power.
• Supernormal Bindings: Subverted in one episode when after being caught by Nazis, she's wrapped in chains that had survived being tested by teams of elephants. For a while she just sits there as they monologue, but when the time comes she breaks the chains easily.
• That Syncing Feeling: In "My Teen Idol Is Missing", when teen idol Lane Kincaid gets kidnapped and switched with his identical twin brother Michael, he has to perform at a $1 million dollar concert and lip sync. Diana and the fangirl Whitney watching in the crowd think that it will not end well. Sure enough, Michael is exposed of his lip syncing and the concert is a disaster, though he does redeem himself with his real singing chops.
• Taking Over the Town: In "The Murderous Missile", George and his minions clear out the entire town of Burrogone to stage their missile hijacking plans. Apparently every last one of the townsfolk went on the Vegas vacation.
• Taking the Bullet: Downplayed in "Wonder Woman in Hollywood". Wonder Woman pretends to take a bullet to inspire Corporal Jim Ames.
• Talking to Themself: Bleaker, the villain of "The Girl from Ilandia", talks to no one but himself, which he does out loud. Apparently this is because he's so brilliant that he finds himself to be the only worthy conversation partner.
• Teen Idol: Leif Garrett plays a thinly veiled version of himself in an episode appropriately titled, "My Teenage Idol Is Missing".
• Terminator Twosome: In "Time Bomb", Cassandra Loren, an expert on 20th Century history from 2155, travels back in time to Los Angeles in 1978 in order to use her knowledge of the future to make a fortune. Adam Clement follows her back to stop her.
• "Test Your Strength" Game: In "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman", Wonder Woman sets the goal for a war bond drive via a Test Your Strength game. She hits the machine so hard that the bell rockets into the sky!
  Wonder Woman: The sky's the limit when it comes to buying bonds!
• There Are No Global Consequences: In "Judgment from Outer Space", the world is visited by a confirmed alien who demonstrates his powers and meets with world leaders such as President Roosevelt. But once Wonder Woman beats up a few Nazis and rescues everyone from their clutches, the very existence of extraterrestrial life drops out of everyone's sight.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: In "I Do, I Do", Christian Harrison is eating a hamburger when some thugs show up across the street. He rushes to aid Wonder Woman, but neglects to put down his burger first. The show usually doesn't pay attention to details like this, but much to their credit they do show his burger getting thrown to the ground in the ensuing fight.
• Think Unsexy Thoughts: After immortal Princess Diana of Paradise Island invokes What Is This Thing You Call "Love"? when she sees a man for the first time, her mother hilariously invokes this trope:
  Queen Hippolyta: There are some things that are better not known. Young Amazon minds are best occupied with athletic discipline, higher learning.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: With a couple of exceptions (such as an early WWII-era episode in which she destroys a German sub, and a later modern-era episode referencing a villain she apparently killed), Diana is generally never shown using deadly force.
• Throwing Off the Disability: Type 4 example. In "Anschluss '77", Fritz Gerlich is able to regrow a leg he lost before World War Two due to the same cloning technique later used to bring Hitler back.
• Time Bomb: In "IRAC is Missing", Bernard Havitol's headquarters are about to blow up in 250 seconds with Diana Prince and IRAC trapped inside. Wonder Woman cuts the power to the building with .8 seconds left.
• Title, Please!: None of the episodes displayed the title in the opening credits.
• Torment by Annoyance: In "The Fine Art of Crime", Harold Farnum repeatedly torments everyone, Diana Prince, Steve Trevor, and even Henry Roberts - everyone.
  Henry Roberts: Do you know how many telephone calls I ignored from him yesterday? Ten. Ten!
  Moreaux: I believe his record is fourteen.
• Town with a Dark Secret: In "The Murderous Missle", the entire town of Burrogone was replaced by members of a criminal conspiracy to steal the titular missile - including the ever-classic Small-Town Tyrant sheriff. Wonder Woman handled him by hanging him up on a barn wall.
• Transformation Sequence: The now-iconic twirl transformation was actually Lynda Carter's idea, which she suggested during the filming of the pilot episode. The transformation sequence has been so strongly associated with the character that it has since been incorporated into the comic book and the Justice League Unlimited cartoon.
• Triple Shifter: Wonder Woman frequently runs overtime in the lack of balance between her day job working for the government as Diana Prince and fighting crime as Wonder Woman. "Knockout" begins with Diana Prince getting home at midnight.
• Twin Switch: "The Deadly Toys" features Frank Gorshin as a toymaker who creates robots to duplicate real people - including Wonder Woman. After an epic Wonder Woman vs. robot Wonder Woman fight, the real Wonder Woman pretends to be the robot Wonder Woman to foil the evil plot!
• Theme Twin Naming: In "My Teen Idol Is Missing", the teen idol Lane Kincaid and his twin brother are revealed to be named Melvin and Michael.
• Twinkle Smile: Season 1 and the first eight episodes of Season 2 featured an animated to live action Title Sequence. In both sequences, Steve Trevor had a Twinkle Smile while Wonder Woman's eyes similarly sparkled.
• Typhoid Mary: In "The Pluto File", The Falcon is an unknowing carrier of the bubonic plague and manages to infect several people he comes into contact with before he develops symptoms himself. Sure, he's a villain, but he still has no idea he's carrying the plague.
• Undercover as Lovers: In "I Do, I Do", Diana and Christian Harrison pose as newlyweds because they suspect someone has been manipulating the wives of high government officials to gain information, and Christian works in the White House.
• Undercover Model: Diana Prince went undercover as a beauty pageant contestant, although Steve didn't think she was pretty enough to pull it off...
• Underestimating Badassery: Early in Season 1, the Nazi leaders who had never personally encountered Wonder Woman often scoffed at the reports landing on their desk.
  Colonel Kesselman: [after he watches a film of Wonder Woman's abilities] This is nonsense. Obviously trick photography. Hollywood magic for American propaganda.
• Uninhibited Muscle Power: This is the canonical reason given for Wonder Woman's strength and the strength of all of the Amazons of Paradise Island as stated in "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman". Note that Wonder Woman was under the influence of her golden lasso at the time.
  Fausta Grables: What makes you so strong?
  Wonder Woman: On Paradise Island there are only women. Because of this pure environment we are able to develop our minds and our physical skills unhampered by masculine destructiveness.
• Unobtainium: Paradise Island is the only known source of Feminum, the metal used to make Wonder Woman's bulletproof bracelets.
• Very Special Episode:
  • The war orphans in "The Bushwackers".
  • The digital comic also had stories spotlighting Domestic Abuse and elephant poaching.
• Victory Pose: In "The New, Original Wonder Woman", Wonder Woman delivers a top Nazi spy to the police by carrying him over her shoulder, throwing his unconscious body to the ground, and stepping on him in the classic foot on chest victory pose.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: While most of the villains were captured (and a few killed) at the end of their episodes, two notable exceptions include Harlow Gault('s brain) and the scientists from "The Man Who Could Not Die" (who were presumably meant to be the Myth Arc of the never-materialized fourth season).
• The Villain Knows Where You Live: When the Skrill determine that Diana Prince and Wonder Woman are the same person, they send two of their alien-possessed humans to Diana's apartment. Diana is surprised and shocked to see them there, but she almost manages to fight them off. Then the third Skrill envoy, the seven-foot tall monster called the Zardor, arrives.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Especially true during Season 1 when Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor were making googly eyes at each other regularly. Mess with Steve and Wonder Woman will break your spy ring ("The New Original Wonder Woman"), snap your elephant-proof chains while exposing your mole ("Wonder Woman Meets Baroness Von Gunther"), chase your team of divers back into the sea ("Formula 407"), or worse. In "Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman", Fausta specifically kidnaps Steve just to lure Wonder Woman and test her abilities. She passes.
• Voice Changeling: Wonder Woman displayed this power occasionally.
• Wakeup Makeup: Diana, either as Wonder Woman or Diana Prince, is always perfectly coiffed with immaculate makeup. For example, in "Death in Disguise", she is in bed and wakes up just before assassins break in and shoot her. Of course she is in full makeup and looks great.
• The Walls Are Closing In:
  • In "Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman", Steve Trevor is held captive in such a room to lure Wonder Woman to her doom. The lure succeeds. The walls, however, don't.
  • In "The Man Who Made Volcanoes", Diana's snooping in a place where she's not welcome when she falls through a trap door. She quickly finds herself in a narrow pit with the walls closing in to crush her. There is, however, enough room for her to spin and transform into Wonder Woman.
• Warrior Princess: Diana is a member of the royal family of Paradise Island. She could easily enjoy a comfortable life in a utopian society as the universally-adored heir to the throne. Instead, she devotes her life to saving Man's World from Nazis, mad scientists, alien monsters, criminal masterminds, and one disembodied brain in a jar with telekinetic powers.
• We Do the Impossible: A short list of the eponymous heroine's feats includes: wrestling a gorilla; stopping a tank with her bare hands; running 47 miles in four minutes; saving the world from several alien invasions; and preventing World War III from starting by destroying Hitler's clone. She's called Wonder Woman for a reason.
• We Have Ways of Making You Talk:
  • Used in the conventional sense by the Nazi villains in the first season, albeit in a family-friendly version that never got worse than a PG-rating level in intensity.
  • Also used by Diana herself. Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth allowed her to command people ensnared within it to honestly answer any question she posed to them. The lasso could always give people temporary amnesia or command them to do other things.^note The original creator of the Wonder Woman comic book, William Moulton Marston, also invented the systolic blood pressure test, aka the polygraph. He also had a penchant for bondage. Three guesses as to where the idea of the Lasso of Truth came from...
• Weaponized Headgear: Diana's tiara is for more than just looks. When necessary, she can throw it as a boomerang weapon.
• Weather-Control Machine: In "Judgment from Outer Space", Andros controls the weather through his amulet.
  Bjornsen: Let us start with your device Dr. Andros. You will explain it!
  Andros: Even if I were willing it would be impossible. You don't have the scientific knowledge. It's not a machine. It's part of my mind - perhaps part of my soul.
• Weather Manipulation: In "Judgment from Outer Space", Andros demonstrated this ability.
  Wonder Woman: You can control the weather, can't you?
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The show had a habit of backdoor pilots and retcons that left all sorts of threads hanging
  • What happened to Wonder Girl? After season 1, she's never heard from again. Presumably she's back on Paradise Island, but...
  • What happened to Paradise Island? In "The Man Who Could Not Die", Diana tells Bryce Candle, the aforementioned deathless man, "In a lot of ways Wonder Woman is more alone than you are." Huh? Except for her immortal mother, sister, the other women who inhabit her homeland that is literally named Paradise Island. None of whom we've seen for almost two seasons.
  • What happened to Tina? In "The Girl From Ilandia", the Ilandian girl, Tina, is trapped and cut off from returning to her homeland. Wonder Woman can ignore Bryce, but an adolescent girl trapped away from her family?
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: In the pilot, the reason why Steve Trevor cannot stay any in Paradise Island.
  Princess Diana: When I look at Steve Trevor, I feel things. Things I've never known before.
• Whole-Plot Reference: "Judgement from Outer Space" is basically The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) set during WWII and Andros taking the place of Klaatu. There's even a scene at the Lincoln Memorial.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The third-season episode "The Man Who Couldn't Die" features a man desperately trying to get the scientist who somehow made him immortal to reverse the process. Even though it's been a short time, he's already freaked out about feeling no pain. The scientist even taunts him with this after being caught, saying he'll be all alone when humanity inevitably dies out. The man says he can't help but fear this when he's up in the middle of the night and no one else is around.
• Wicked Toymaker: "The Deadly Toys" features Frank Gorshin as a toymaker who creates robots to duplicate real people - including Wonder Woman!
• Winds of Destiny, Change!: One-Shot Character Bonnie Murphy, the "girl with a gift for disaster", produces bad luck whenever she's agitated. Her episode comes up with a lot of Techno Babble to try and justify it, but she might as well be an actual (if reluctant) witch.
• A Wizard Did It: The magic lasso of truth, the shape changing boomerang tiara, the belt of strength, why Wonder Woman lost her powers when she left Paradise Island, or even the basic physics of how 100 pound women could lift 20+ times their body weight and more these were all magical and never adequately explained.
• Women Are Delicate: Averted. Wonder Woman deflects bullets, wrestles gorillas, catches mortars in mid-air, and stops tanks in their tracks with her bare hands.
• Works Set in World War II: Season 1 was set in 1942. Steve Trevor's plane was shot out of the sky by a Nazi.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: In the comics, Wonder Woman is canonically acknowledged as the world's most beautiful woman, due to the blessing she received from Aphrodite. In real life, Lynda Carter had already represented the USA in the Miss World pageant prior to being cast as Wonder Woman.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Although the bad guys try to kill Wonder Woman in various ways, no one ever really is shown taking a swing at her, much less connecting. Largely true as Wonder Woman overwhelms the majority of her opponents to the point they can't even start an attack although they sometimes swing wildly over her head. Averted in "Going, Going, Gone" when a karate guy punches her twice in the stomach...to no effect and his own Oh, Crap! moment, and "The Girl with a Gift for Disaster" when a thug attacks Wonder Woman with a huge boulder...that she breaks in half before dispatching him.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: In "Wonder Woman in Hollywood", Wonder Woman, accompanied by Wonder Girl, rush in to rescue Major Steve Trevor, Corporal Jim Ames, his parents, and others. But instead of simply rushing in and saving the day, Wonder Woman fakes getting shot to inspire Corporal Ames to find his inner hero.
• Wrestler of Beasts: In "Wonder Woman vs. Gargantua", Wonder Woman wrestles and overpowers the eponymous foe, a Nazi-trained gorilla that has been brainwashed to destroy her.
• You Cloned Hitler!: In "Anschluss '77", Wonder Woman foils a plot by remnants of the Nazis from World War II in Argentina cloning Hitler. It was one of the few times Wonder Woman killed anyone.
• Your Days Are Numbered: In "Time Bomb", Diana meets a time traveler from the future who casually reveals that a nuclear war occurs in 2007. The fact that Wonder Woman now has 30 years to save the world from nuclear annihilation or she'll face a Crapsack World is never addressed.
• You Didn't Ask: Apparently, I.R.A.C., the IADC's super-computer, figured out, quite easily, that Diana was Wonder Woman. No one ever asked it the question though.
• Zeerust: In "Time Bomb", the time travelers, Adam Clement and Cassandra Loren, wear silvery clothes and computers all have big consoles complete with lots of levers and colored buttons. The Earth is a series of domed cities. All of which is very reminiscent of a 1950s view of future.

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"I'm in love with
Wonder Woman!