YMMV / 24

• Alas, Poor Scrappy:
  • Season 1:
    • Janet York, Kim's rambunctious and annoying thrill-seeking friend, was very widely disliked in the early episodes. However, her death, where she is slowly suffocated in her hospital bed by a man impersonating her father, gained her a lot of sympathy and is widely seen as the show's great Growing the Beard moment.
    • Teri Bauer, to the extent that most people have forgotten she was ever disliked to begin with. Although Teri spent the majority of Day 1 being a Damsel Scrappy along with Kim and her poorly-written amnesia subplot certainly didn't endear her to anyone, her death is considered the show's Signature Scene and is so tragic that fans would completely understand its status as Jack's Cynicism Catalyst.
  • Ryan Chappelle spends the first three seasons as an extremely annoying Obstructive Bureaucrat, but his death when Jack is forced to execute him on Stephen Saunders' demands is considered a massive Tear Jerker, the most memorable moment of the third season, and to some, rivals Teri's death as the most iconic moment of the show.
  • Dina Araz. Some fans hated her for taking up too much time in Season 4, along with her son, and also because she still believed in what the other terrorists were doing even after her own husband tried to kill the both of them. When she finally tries to do something right with her life, what's her reward? Two bullets to the back. The fans were not happy, especially with the way she was executed.
  • Season 5:
    • Lynn McGill. While his incompetence led to the terrorists getting his ID card and launching a gas attack on CTU, he sacrifices his own life to save CTU from the gas.
    • Jenny McGill, Lynn's drug addicted sister. She didn't get as much hate as Lynn, but she was still a fairly annoying and useless side character. Doesn't mean she deserved to get shot in the back of the head, and many fans were moved by the pathetic way she sobs and begs for her life.
  • Season 7:
    • Larry Moss. While some fans could argue that he was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap halfway into Season 7, others still hated him for being an FBI version of George Mason, Ryan Chappelle, etc. But when Tony mercilessly suffocated the man to death, all his haters were deeply upset and shocked over it. Many fans would even say Tony crossed the Moral Event Horizon.
    • Blaine Mayer. At the start of the season, he was nothing more than a senator with the word "Anvilicious" tattooed on his forehead. But in the final episode he appears in, not only does he stand up to Jack and tell him right to his face that he's more resilient to torture than Burnett, but he Took a Level in Kindness and tried to help him expose the Starkwood conspiracy. Then Quinn shows up at his door and guns him down. Even Jack didn't take his death well.
  • Dana Walsh in Season 8. After begging Jack not to execute her, he does it anyway. And unlike Nina Myers, who was actually reaching for a gun despite already being shot, Dana Walsh had no weapons nearby and had her hands in the air. Even though very few people liked Dana, a majority of the fans were disgusted that Jack killed her so coldly.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • In Season 4, Mandy makes it look like she blew herself and Tony up with a car bomb thanks to Bill hastily ordering the CTU team to move in. Simple carelessness or, considering Bill's implied romatic history with Michelle, did he mean to have Tony killed?
  • Was Christopher Henderson always corrupt and evil or was he originally innocent of the corruption charges Jack laid against him and being forced out of CTU made him decide it was better to throw his lot in with the bad guys?
  • Was Logan faking his supposed Heel–Face Turn in Season 6, or was he truly trying to redeem himself and do the right thing, if still in a self serving way?
  • A pretty big one regarding Jack's behavior in the last few episodes of season 8. When he originally broke out of CTU and went rogue, were his plans originally exactly what he claimed, to expose the masterminds behind Mehran's attacks on New York and his murder of Hassan, and only fell off that path in favor of murdering them instead when Dana became an obstacle again, more or less proving to be the last straw for him after already pushed to the breaking point several times in the last several hours? Or did he mean to kill everyone involved in it the second he made the decision to take that security guard hostage, meaning his claims to both Chloe and Cole were nothing but complete lies, using them to successfully manipulate the latter into briefly working for him?
  • Was Alan Wilson really the mastermind behind Day 5's events, or was he telling the truth when he said he didn't know who Tony was with Tony being mistaken in going after him? This would explain why he would allow Tony to join his gang despite having killed his wife, which would be quite a stupid thing for such a supposed mastermind to do.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • This can quite often happen, due to the show's having to juggle the demands of its real-time format while using a more conventional narrative pace for dramatic reasons. Just to name one example, Kim is forced to kill Gary Matheson late in the second season, which plunges her into such a Heroic BSoD that she nearly shoots Kate Warner in a panic when she shows up to help out, yet an hour or so later she's perfectly fine, and never mentions it again.
  • Season 6's lack of public response to the Valencia bombing. Just for perspective, the detonation of a nuclear bomb dozens of miles outside of Los Angeles with only a single casualty (who was already dying of radiation poisoning anyway) back in Season 2 caused a nationwide breakdown of law and order that lead to riots and racially-motivated murders within hours. Season 6 has a nuclear bomb detonated actually in Los Angeles, instantly vaporizing over ten thousand people and leading to countless more deaths in the longer term, and it's hardly treated as a bigger deal than the bus bombing that opened the season.
• Ass Pull:
  • Nina Myers being The Mole in Season 1. It's never explained who she was ultimately working for or when they put her in contact with the Drazens, and this revelation blatantly contradicts many of her actions earlier in the season, as she fails to inform the Drazens that CTU has set a trap for Alexis or that Alexis has been stabbed.
  • Season 3:
    • While the build-up to the revelation that Gael was actually Good All Along, and working with Jack and Tony to carry out a sting on the Salazars was actually handled quite well for the most part, it falls apart at the end when Kim walks in on him. Instead of just explaining to her that he's working with her father, something he had video proof of and asking her to keep quiet about it, he holds her at gunpoint and ties up and gags her for absolutely no concievable reason other than they just needed something to serve as an end-of-episode cliffhanger.
    • Michelle being immune to the Cordilla Virus. The possibility of anyone surviving the virus isn't even mentioned until after Michelle has been exposed to it, making it seem like a blatant cop out to avoid killing a main character.
    • Stephen Saunders' death. Gael's wife finds a loaded gun with the safety off in Gael's office and, so upset over his death, calmly walks over to Saunders, quickly pulls out the gun, and shoots him. And she did all of this only after taking a brief glance at Saunders' profile on a monitor, somehow making the Bat Deduction that he was Gael's killer. This was partly the result of the network promising the producers a longer timeslot for the finale and then reneging at the last minute, forcing them to substantially cut the episode down. In the original cut of the episode, she directly questions Kim as to whether he was responsible for Gael's death, and works out from Kim's evasive answers that he was.
  • To some, Charles Logan's status as the Big Bad of Season 5. The actor himself has confirmed that he was not told Logan was evil until he was given the script with The Reveal, and thus had played him as simply an incompetent buffoon to that point, and indeed there isn't really anything to foreshadow him being a villain before it is revealed.
  • Graem being established as Jack's brother in season 6. In season 5, all of his conversations with President Logan have both participants referring to Jack only as "Bauer", no first name, which suggests that Logan doesn't even realize that the person he's talking to also has the surname Bauer.
  • Season 7:
    • Tony Almeida's survival after his apparent death in Season 5 is seen as this by many, although Word of God claims they set up that Retcon by not giving Tony the Silent Clock, the traditional response to the deaths of really important characters.
    • The doctor treating Jack after he's infected with the Starkwood weapon telling him of an experimental cellular treatment that could potentially save his life. This was immediately after the previous episode where she told him that a hint of a cure didn't even exist.
    • The reveal of Alan Wilson being the mastermind behind numerous terrorist plots within the series, including the deaths of David Palmer and Michelle Dessler. Many were unhappy that what they felt was a completely generic, dull character had been set up as the series' Big Bad and stole Day 7's plot away from a highly praised villain in Jonas Hodges, who was built up as the Big Bad of Day 7 since Redemption. The reason the writers tacked Wilson on as the ultimate Day 5 mastermind was that they needed a foil for Tony to be an Anti-Villain. The problem became that, in seasons 5 and 6, every mastermind was either an established major political figure (Chief of Staff Walt Cummings, President Charles Logan) or someone personally important to Jack (mentor Christopher Henderson, brother Graem, or daddy Phillip). Then, it all turned to be the work of... some guy.
    • The revelation of Tony's unborn son, something that isn't even hinted at until the season 7 finale.
  • Season 8:
    • Dana Walsh being The Mole. Though most fans felt this reveal made the character much more interesting, it still made their actions earlier in the season completely nonsensical, since if she was evil she obviously would have just killed Kevin Wade instead of allowing him to blackmail her for so long.
    • The reveal that Yuri Suvarov, a previously respectable character that wasn't bad at all, is the final Big Bad of the season.
  • How does Jack finish off the Big Bad of Live Another Day? For some reason, there just happens to be a katana in the room. Word of God says that Cheng's death was set specifically in an area where the boat captain keeps items that he's collected from traveling the world. Granted, the explanation is arguably flimsy.
  • In the latter half of Legacy, Asim Naseri is suddenly introduced as a henchman of the Big Bad, revealed to have a bitter personal history with The Hero, and promoted to Big Bad himself, all within a single episode. While 24 is no stranger to Disc-One Final Boss, previous seasons were usually more gradual and natural about it thanks to their longer lengths; by contrast, Naseri practically comes out of nowhere, with zero prior buildup or foreshadowing.
• Audience-Alienating Era:
  • The sixth season tried to shake up the previously-established formula with a number of surprising changes while still keeping the status quo. On paper, the season's plot probably seemed like a good idea — Jack Bauer, who has been released from Chinese custody, spends the season trying to atone for his past sins while embroiled in a battle against Middle Eastern terrorists and duplicitous family members. In practice, the season turned out to be a mess — Jack was working with CTU again (for a reason that stretched believability after five seasons of the same thing), characters dropped in and out of the plot, potential season-long storylines (the effects of a nuclear bomb detonation in California) were never capitalized on, several returning characters got a "X goes through Hell" storyline, and the entire affair was bogged down in ridiculous family drama involving Jack's brother's wife and her child, as well as Jack's father (who was a corrupt executive). Following this season (and the lowest ratings in the show's history), FOX "rebooted" the show, moved it to the other side of the continent and jettisoned most of the previous cast and locations.
  • And then, while recovering in the ratings, critically the following season still overall did pretty poorly. The season was packed to the brim with tons of poorly received replacements and brand-new characters that were not liked by most and only a few actually getting any genuine acclaim and one major character in the series returning only to go through a very controversial twist and revelation that left a massive Broken Base at best, and all this was coupled with an infamous storyarc that left Jack sidelined for nearly half the season and oftentimes completely Out of Focus and then ultimately saved by a blatant Deus ex Machina. All this led to the show being completely revamped again with yet another almost entirely brand new cast and setting brought in for the season after that (which unsurprisingly turned out to be the final). That one had its detractors as well and continued the rot for a bit, though ultimately the majority of the fans of the show did feel it (finally) managed to improve itself by the time it was over.
  • The main problem was that, after season 5, the show started feeling less and less like 24. Losing essential characters, jumping from place to place, bringing new characters without much appeal (saving exceptions like Renee Walker, Allison Taylor and Ethan Kanin), killing characters for no reason save shock value or repetition (Curtis, Milo, Bill, Renee, etc), unmemorable villains (Jonas Hodges being the exception, and of course, the return of Charles Logan as the final villain).
• Awesome Music: Up And Down Stairs.
• Badass Decay:
  • In response to criticisms that the show promoted the use of torture, the writers of the show drastically toned down the number of times Jack tortures bad guys in the later seasons. Many fans felt that the kinder and gentler Jack Bauer made the show less entertaining to watch, as much of the show's appeal came in watching Jack interrogate antagonists who are completely unsympathetic. For better or worse, Season 8, the (then) final season, reversed this for Jack. Hard.
  • Many fans and even D.B. Woodside felt that Wayne Palmer underwent this in Season 6. In Season 5, Wayne is a badass almost on par with Jack and plays a vital role in exposing Logan's crimes. In Season 6, he fails to wield any kind of authority as President and comes across as a dithering, indecisive doormat.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Despite leaving a shadow over the series and Jack's character long after her death at the end of Season 1, Teri Bauer can be a surprisingly divisive character. Her fans point to her being a quick-thinking and resourceful Mama Bear in the first half of the season, while her detractors tend to be turned off by the severe Badass Decay she suffered in the second half of the season, which saw her veer between being a sobbing Nervous Wreck, constantly complaining about Nina's past affair with Jack, and her much-derided amnesia subplot.
  • Kate Morgan from Live Another Day. Fan response ran the gamut from "competent, badass, hands-down best new character of the season" to "one-note character who's stealing valuable screentime from more interesting characters". This is a first for Yvonne Strahovski, whose other two famous television roles were either unanimously loved (Sarah on Chuck) or unanimously hated (Hannah on Dexter).
  • Audrey Boudreau in Live Another Day. Some fans didn't like that Audrey was back, especially since (until the last two episodes), she contributed almost nothing to the plot and chewed-up screen-time by constantly bickering with her husband and talking to her father. Others were glad to see her restored to her full health again, and enjoyed her interactions with the President and (briefly) Jack.
  • Isaac Carter from Legacy. On one side, people hate him for constantly flip-flopping his attitude, for being a loose cannon, for being the center of a Filler subplot, and for trying to persuade Nicole to leave her husband. On the other side, some people like him for being a competent Anti-Hero, for putting himself in danger when he didn't need to, and genuinely caring about Nicole and Eric. It helps that he's more concerned about Nicole's well-being instead of his career, as opposed to Eric.
• Broken Aesop: In Season 8, the two military officers conspire against President Taylor to turn the IRK President over to the terrorists to get the terrorists to not detonate the nuke in New York City. They succeed, and, although they kill president Hassan, the terrorists DO disarm the nuke (which CTU would NOT have found and stopped in time otherwise). Taylor angrily denounces the pair of conspirators and has them arrested. So we get TWO broken aesops: 1. It is wrong to try to save the lives of tens of thousands, even if CTU is incompetent, because disobeying the president is far worse. 2. If you give terrorists what they want, they will comply with you and not cause further trouble.
• Broken Base:
  • In season 7, the decision to make Tony an ambiguous baddie splintered the opinions of fans. Some thought it was a nice change of pace, and allowed the writers to contrast Jack and Tony's experiences (despite their similarities) even further. Others thought it was an absolute betrayal of Tony's character, and the most sensical motivations for his actions would be unconvincing if it meant backstabbing Jack.
  • Similarly, in season 8, killing off Renee in an unceremonious fashion brought either admiration or ire to the fans. Some fans thought it was typical 24 nature and shrugged it off, while others thought the death was cheap and just plain cruel to Bauer's already messed up psyche.
  • Live Another Day. It's either one of the stronger seasons, with people saying it benefited from its 12-episode format, resulting in tighter plotting and a lack of Padding, or it's one of the weaker ones, with people saying it was unnecessary to bring the show back after a 4-year hiatus, only to do nothing new. More specific examples include:
    • Jack throwing a handcuffed and wounded Margot Al-Harazi out a 5-story window was either one of the most awesome things he's ever done or one of the most monstrous things he's ever done.
    • President Heller's Disney Death. Some felt it ruined all the buildup throughout the season and was a poor copout, while others are fine with it.
    • In the final episode, Audrey is killed off for no story purpose (it's not like Jack doesn't have plenty of reasons to hate Cheng already). The fans' reaction was...predictable, and negatively falls into three bases. Either you hated that the show killed off yet another love interest for Jack, you shrugged off her death (since she was already a Base-Breaking Character for this season), or you didn't mind that she died, but at the same time, were appalled that the writer's threw a Diabolus ex Machina into the finale to cause her death, whereas Renee's death had proper buildup before it happened and affected both the plot and Jack's character.
    • The Downer Ending feel of the finale itself wound up creating a split in the fandom. Some are used to it since the show has in practice marked itself as a tragedy and are happy that it still has some finality to it while still leaving things open for another continuation, while others are wishing that after the show came back after such a long hiatus that just once the show could have closed out on a happier ending.
  • Every season of 24 is heavily hit with this. Even the beloved season 5 and loathed season 6 aren't immune; with the former being hit with Hype Backlash and the latter affected by Critical Backlash years after they originally aired. However, the two most divisive seasons are the fourth and seventh:
    • Season 4 has its fans for introducing several major characters, in particular Bill Buchanan and Charles Logan, having a particularly good character arc for Tony (to the point that one of the undisbuteably hated aspects of the otherwise fan favorite Day 5 was negating it all in the span of a few minutes), and giving a much-needed personality retool to Chloe, turning her from someone unpopular with the fanbase into the show's Breakout Character. It also has its fair share detractors thanks to suffering one of the show's worst cases of Arc Fatigue due to Habib Marwan evading capture so many times, as well as continuing to shuffle characters around all over the season, leading to quite a few too many plots that go nowhere thanks to them being written out or disappearing. A third camp also sees it somewhere squarely in the middle, finding that thanks to its aforementioned positive and negative elements it's not one of the best seasons, but at the same time not a terrible one either.
    • Season 7 is seen as having a better, more focused story arc after the Troubled Production with Day 6 thanks in part to the 2007-08 Writer's Strike allowing the crew to plan the entire season out in advance, Tony having a much better, more involved role after how hard he got shortchanged during Season 5, bringing in fan favorite characters Renee Walker and Allison Taylor, and making Kim a lot more likable. However, just as many dislike the season for its controversial character decisions for both Jack and Tony, pulling one of the most unpopular cases of a Disc-One Final Boss in the show's run by anticlimactically killing the heavily built up Jonas Hodges late into the season and bringing Alan Wilson in as the real villain, having most of the FBI team who weren't Renee being fairly disliked, and trying to reignite the David-Sherry Palmer dynamic with Allison Taylor's daughter Olivia, but failing due to Olivia lacking many of the qualities that made Sherry such a Love to Hate character, causing her to come off as annoying instead.
  • The announcement that another sequel series is being considered without Jack in a starring role, and possibly even being completely absent. People are unsurprisingly split all over the place on whether it's a good idea or not.
  • Now that Season 1 of 24: Legacy has finished airing, fans and critics' opinion on the show has been more divisive than even Live Another Day. Was the show just as good as, if not better than, a typical season of 24? Did it start off very sluggish, but got progressively better after the halfway mark? Did it start off wonderful, but then tumbled to the finish line after Asim Naseri was shoehorned into the plot? Was Rebecca's death shocking and saddening, or just thrown in because of a Diabolus ex Machina and because the writers felt compelled to kill off someone major? Are the characters interesting and relatable, or are they all just bland and soulless? Most importantly, should the show be renewed for a second season, or should they just drop it and never touch the franchise again?
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • In Day 6, almost every viewer worked out as soon as it was claimed that Audrey Raines had suffered a Bus Crash in-between seasons that she wasn't actually dead, as there was no way on earth the show would have casually killed Jack's most significant love interest after Teri off-screen. That being said, the actual revelation of Audrey's still being alive is generally agreed to have been handled pretty well.
  • In Day 7, Sean Hillinger was such a Jerkass that most people thought him being a mole was pretty obvious, even with the Bait-and-Switch of another mole being revealed right before he was.
  • In Live Another Day, Adrian Cross selling Jack out (and later being revealed as Steve Navarro's contact) would probably have been more surprising if he hadn't been played by perennial villain actor Michael Wincott.
  • Also in Live Another Day, Cheng's return is completely spoiled by Tzi Ma openly being listed in the guest cast credits. What's weirder is that William Devane was credited at the end of the previous episode to keep his appearance a secret.
• Catharsis Factor: Easily one of the biggest highlights of the show is Jack laying down punishment on the assorted terrorists, criminals, and murderers foolish enough to get in his way.
• The Chris Carter Effect:
  • This was an unfortunate side-effect of the 24-hour format. The producers often had to write storylines in advance, and would often resort to filler or sidestories to kill time until the next important revelation. Likewise, the villains almost always changed midway through the season, which often threw out the carefully-set up goals and motivations for the enemies and often resulted in The Man Behind the Man being revealed and fans getting tired of it, even if it made no sense in the long run (Marwan in season 4 being a great example of this).
  • The lack of a long term story started causing problems. That certain situations kept repeating themselves after so many seasons damaged the show.
  • Done by necessity in Season 1. The production team had no idea if they would be renewed for the back half of the season, so they closed off the storyline by having Jack rescue his wife and daughter in the thirteenth episode and all plots being tied up. When Kiefer Sutherland won a Best Actor Golden Globe and the show was suddenly renewed thanks to the hype, the producers suddenly had to throw in a number of ridiculous plotlines (including a heretofore-unrevealed second assassin showing up who is having a relationship with one of his target's staff members, Jack butting heads with a sniper who hates him for something he did in the past, the Stunt Casting of Dennis Hopper, Teri's Easy Amnesia, Kim getting kidnapped again and the Ass Pull that Nina was the mole in CTU).
  • The eventual resolution of the three-season arc that began with the assassinations in Season 5, made of equal parts Gambit Pileup and Ass Pull. It is revealed that the businessman Alan Wilson- a character introduced near the end of season 7 and defeated within a handful of episodes- is the ultimate enemy overseeing a chain that passes down from himself, controlling a cabal that includes Jonas Hodges (who was working with Benjamin Juma to overthrow the White House), controlling another group led by Jack's brother Graem (being controlled by his father, who is working with the Chinese government), who is advising President Evil Charles Logan (which was itself caused by one of the writers asking midway through the fifth season, "Hey, what if the President was evil?) and finally to the group of assassins that murdered David Palmer and Michelle Dessler. The failure of season 6 (and the stalling plot arc that was created by this mess) is what forced the show to undergo a Retool and move to the other side of the country in order to get things moving and resolve it. Even then, most fans weren't happy with the outcome - Wilson becomes a Karma Houdini who basically gets away scot-free with his crimes. While the show generally implied that someone was the ultimate Diabolical Mastermind behind these various villains and events, the character of Wilson was a complete Ass Pull as he was an entirely new bad guy who had an at-best tenuous connection to a handful of characters, before being very quickly captured and the whole arc being declared wrapped up afterwards. He never appears again on the show.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Despite what many people think, Jack faking his death at the end of Day 4 was never to escape being imprisoned in China, as he was actually fully willing to let the Chinese Government take him in. He faked his death in order to avoid being ambushed and killed by corrupt members of the U.S. government that were afraid he'd spill something while being held in captivity. Also, due to him working with CTU for the majority of the series, Jack is mistakenly thought to be a CTU agent for the whole show. It's only Days 1 and 3 where he's officially working on duty as an agent. CTU isn't involved at all in either Day 7 or Day 9, and in all other seasons he's specially recommissioned just to help them out for the events of the day only.
  • Also related to Day 4, the belief that various characters from previous seasons were brought back, along with Chloe's getting Put on a Bus being reversed, because the season was poorly received. In reality, the producers had always planned to bring back Tony and Michelle, and held off on introducing them until later in the season so as to allow the new characters time to get established. Similarly, Chloe was written out so as to allow Mary Lynn Rajskub to become a cast member on the U.S. version of The Sketch Show, and after that show was cancelled after just four episodes, the producers brought her back mostly just because they thought Chloe and Edgar played well off each other. The only characters who may have been brought back in an effort to Win Back the Crowd are David Palmer and Mike Novick, and even that's not certain.
  • It's common knowledge that the show leapt out of the gate as a scathing propaganda screed about torturing terrorists. In the beginning, though, the show was just a regular investigative cop show with a real-time twist, and on the occasions it did delve into torture the torture was rarely effective. Jack inadvertently killed Ted Cofell because he didn't know about Cofell's heart condition, he was forced to outwit Syed Ali, Marie Werner, and Michael Amador because they wouldn't break under duress, Nina Myers only escaped custody because CTU was jabbing needles into her neck, and Palmer's torture of Roger Stanton was later used as evidence against him in his impromptu 25th Amendment trial. It was only with the fourth season (which had a bevy of other writing problems to boot) where torture started becoming a "legitimate" font of information (and even then, at least three innocent people on that Day were tortured needlessly), until around mid-season six, when the backlash from critics made the writing staff look for other ways to resolve conflicts besides torturing everybody. Needless to say, Jack himself has been tortured repeatedly over the course of the show yet has never once broken himself.
  • Richard Walsh is often mistakenly believed to be the show's first (and very short-lived) CTU Director. In actual fact, the first person to hold the role was Jack himself, with Richard being stated to be the Regional District Manager. That being said, Jack spends most of the early episodes outside of the CTU office before eventually getting replaced by Alberta Green and then George Mason, so it's easy for viewers to mistake him as just a field agent.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Creator's Pet: Dana Walsh garnered quite a bit of hate for her subplot involving her past, and yet continued to remain relevant to the season's plot.
  • And though some viewers did have sympathy when she died, it stands out a bit that it's her death out of every character that the writers used to indicate the point that Jack was starting to morally lose it.
• Damsel Scrappy:
  • Kate Warner. In one episode, she manages to survive a gunfight involving at least ten heavily-armed mercenaries without a scratch. About two episodes later, she gets captured by three random racists who have NOTHING to do with the plot. The only reason why fans tolerated Kate was because unlike Kim, her subplot in Season 2 eventually became relevant to the main plot.
  • Derek Huxley. He did nothing but get in Jack's way during Season 5 and made it harder for him to deal with the terrorists. He even wound up becoming a hostage during the Russians' attack on the airport, despite the fact Derek only entered to try and warn Jack about the impending attack.
  • Josh and Marilyn Bauer. Whether they were in danger from Phillip Bauer's mooks or Chinese mercenaries, these two had a very bad habit of getting kidnapped/held hostage in Season 6, and contributed nothing to the plot other than being damsels in distress.
  • And of course, the Former Trope Namer herself before we started fighting Trope-Namer Syndrome, The Kimberly: Kim Bauer, who wandered in and out of the plot of Season 1 and then spent basically the entirety of Season 2 contributing nothing to anything. The writers learned their lesson: her appearances in Seasons 3 and 5 were much more plot-relevant, and when The Bus Came Back in Season 7 she was definitively Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, having developed into an Action Survivor who has Taken A Level In Badass.
• Designated Monkey: Jack. While none of the trauma he goes through is played for humorous purposes like most other cases, it still stands out the the showrunners stuck by their rule that "Jack can never get a happy ending," through the show's run, which left a lot of the fandom frustrated at how he constantly ended up sacrificing so much with little to show for it, to the point that even the few positive things that did come his way would usually be taken away from him by the following season while often almost sadistically punishing him whenever he tried to do good. The fact that Day 9 still stuck by this rule with his pardon ending up meaningless, the death of Audrey, and him ending up imprisoned by the Russians was one of the primary reasons the ending was so heavily divisive, with many feeling after all the time that had passed he finally deserved a break. In fact, this status is the main reason why so many fans of the show were still rooting for Jack during his Face–Heel Turn period in the last act of Day 8, feeling if anything that it was more surprising that he didn't snap this bad sooner and were perfectly fine with him potentially kicking off World War III to get what he wanted after how many times the world gone out of its way to screw him over.
• Designated Villain: The seventh season introduces Senator Blaine Meyer, an Obstructive Bureaucrat who is a leading a Senate hearing on human rights violations at CTU (which has just been disbanded), and hauls Jack before a committee to explain his actions. Meyer's behavior and dialogue indicates that he's already all-but-convicted Bauer, and acts smug and short-tempered as he accuses the latter of treating suspects terribly. The problem is that he's absolutely right. Not only was CTU an absolute failure as an agency (to such a point it exemplified Swiss-Cheese Security — it was the site of at least two takeovers by terrorists, the site of a nerve gas attack, several workplace shootings, a bombing, multiple incidents of workplace violence and numerous fatalities), but other CTU staffers routinely tortured suspects, with diminishing success as time wore on and the previous season proving it didn't even work (CTU spent hours torturing an employee who was revealed to have not known anything about what they were investigating). Jack himself assaulted and tortured multiple suspects, with the showrunners doing very little to dissuade viewers that his methods weren't needed. In light of all that, it's no wonder why Meyer is abrupt and smug towards Jack (though this lessens right before the Senator is killed by an assassin midway through the season).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Several over the course of the series:
  • By nothing more than sheer force of popularity, bit character Aaron Pierce has managed to be the only character aside from Jack Bauer to appear in all of the first seven seasons.
  • Chloe also went from very unpopular to one of the show's most beloved characters.
  • Renee's thumb-chopping gambit confirmed her Darkhorse status.
  • Tony was quite disliked during the first half of season one, thanks to his rivalry with Jack, and many believed him to be the CTU mole. Then he saved Teri's life, won Jack's trust and the eternal love of the fans. Even after his Face–Heel Turn in season seven, a whole lot of fans still love him and refuse to see him as evil.
  • Michelle Dessler became an Iconic Sequel Character due to this, starting off with the importance of a typical analyst in Season 2 who then grew in importance to the story as she developed a relationship with Tony, and eventually got promoted to main character status as of Seasons 3 and 4. It certainly helped that, with so many untrustworthy and unlikeable characters among the cast, Michelle was always kind and could always be counted on.
  • For a while, Curtis Manning was the second-biggest badass on the show (after Jack Bauer) and became very popular among fans. Said fans were heartbroken when he was suddenly killed off near the start of Season 6.
  • Mandy. She's only appeared in 7 episodes for the whole series, but the fanbase absolutely loves her.
  • Bill became fairly popular himself, mainly for being the only CTU director who was 100% trustworthy and would more often than not agree with Jack rather than try to get in his way.
  • Tom Lennox is largely considered one of the few consistent bright spots of Season 6.
  • Kate Morgan has managed to get pretty popular after just a few hours thanks to her own pretty badass behavior.
  • Margot Al-Harazi also established herself amongst the series best villains in only a few episodes, primarily due to Michelle Fairley's incredible performance. The fact she was willing to murder her own children for her goal probably didn't hurt though.
  • Despite having limited screentime, Belcheck has managed to develop a strong fan following due to being able to hold his own in the action opposite Jack and for being one of Jack's few allies in the later years to consistently stay on his side.
• Epileptic Trees: Alan Wilson, the Big Bad of Season 7 and The Man Behind the Man extraordinaire, was also supporting behind Marwan in Season 4 so Charles Logan would take over. Him, or anyone else with resources and power, for that matter. Because there is no way Marwan managed to do all that by himself (not to mention the plot holes and other failings that keep it from being believable. Granted, season 4 has more problems than just Marwan, and even with a backer, the plot is still problematic. But hell that it would make more sense like this.
  • Charles Logan in some way manipulated Tony (likely through someone else) into believing Wilson was involved in his wife's death so that Tony would target Wilson instead of him. Logan was merely placed under house arrest and later pardoned of his crimes, and Tony would have probably tried to target him (this was even stated as a possible reason for Tony's Face–Heel Turn early in season seven), so he decided to pin the blame on someone else so that he would not be killed. This is supported by numerous plotholes that prevent Wilson's involvement from being believable (allowing Tony into his organization despite Tony being a target for assassination by Logan's conspirators and Michelle being killed in the same attempt, this being significant considering neither Wilson or his associated ever mention this; as a matter of fact, he mentions he doesn't even know the guy, and for that circumstancea, he could perfectly be telling the truth, and honestly, he would not be stupid enough to let Tony inside his organization had he been involved in the sentox mess, moreso considering how secretive and careful the guy appear to be; the fact the killings were organized to frame Jack Bauer, whom Wilson had no connection with while others in Logan's conspiracy did, for David Palmer's assassination, which was a result of Palmer finding out about what Logan was up to, Logan's plan strongly differing from Wilson's to the point of strong contradiction (the Sentox conspiracy was about making the US government's foreign influence stronger, while the Prion group was trying to take over the US government. While you can somehow reconcile this two, it is still another hole to be dealt with), the fact there is no clear benefit for Wilson in the Sentox conspiracy (And, as much of an Ass Pull as it was the fact Graem was Jack's brother, they at least had an oil company, so it made some sense for them to be tied to the sentox's plan. Wilson is a militar contractor, and while there might have been benefits, it is nothing compared to what Logan and the Bauers would have won), or the fact there isn't a lot of place left for Wilson in the conspiracy to planify or do, not to mention the insane level of power, influence, and intelligence he would need to possess to be the mastermind of all that (Even in the Prion Cabal, while he still was the most powerful, it was not by that much, and a big part of the operation rested on Jonas Hodges and Starkwood. How the hell would he have enough power to be the man behind Logan and The Bauers, plus his own cabal? No one that powerful could be as secretive as Wilson seems to be). And overall the fact that other than Tony's word, in which we still don't know how he found out, there isn't any link between Logan and Wilson, and let's face it, Tony's mental state since Michelle's death is clearly not the best, and he is trying to vent pain more than anything), the fact Wilson and his group are dropped without any fanfare after the end of season 7, and never mentioned again save for one time, but Logan reappearing again as the main villain in season 8. Logan's manipulations in seasons 5 and 8, and in general, also support this, such as finding out about the Russians' involvement with the terrorists (he could have found out about Wilson's group the same way. He was the president of the US, after all. Also, it is possible that Logan or some conspirators had a relationship with Wilson and, Logan got the information from there. It also makes sense he might have tried to blame someone unrelated to the conspiracy, considering he never revealed anything about the Bauer's.) and he even tries to make Jack believe it was Mikhail Novakovich who had Renee killed by himself in order to keep suspicion away from Suvarov so Suvarov would sign the treaty to complete Logan's plan to improve his damaged image, but Jack managed to bug Logan and found out the truth. Hey, it's better than lazily trying to link everything to an Omniscient Council of Vagueness; and it definitely makes more sense. And all this is just in-universe. Out of universe, it is clear none of this was planned and all after season 5 was thrown in/improvised, and rhey just kept making the Sentox mess bigger and bigger for no reason.
  • After the ending of Live Another Day, a popular theory is that the Russians actually want Jack to send on a dangerous mission of their own, rather than just imprisoning him.
  • Due to Tony Todd playing two different characters on the show (Mike Norris during Day 3; Benjamin Juma during Day 7) some fans have come up with the theory that Detective Norris and General Juma are actually the same person, with Mike Norris being a cover identity for Juma, and that he was plotting his invasion during Day 7 years in advance.
• Escapist Character: Jack Bauer allows audiences to play out the fantasy of always being right, no matter what he does, and thereby being justified in using unethical means to pursue ethical ends. While this is Deconstructed — Jack being a Broken Ace with a Cartwright Curse is just the beginning — the fantasy persists, as everything Jack suffers is, ultimately and persistently, in service of some greater good.
• Evil Is Cool: Quite a few antagonists in the series come off this way. Most notably, Ira Gaines, Stephen Saunders, Christopher Henderson, Benjamin Juma, Jonas Hodges, Tony during Day 7, and Jack during the last act of Day 8.
• Fan Nickname:
  • In season 8, Jack himself was given the nickname, "Darth Bauer◊". Interestingly, when one would call him this nickname, he can be considered as the Darth Vader to Kim's Princess Leia.
  • Curtis Manning was called "Black Bauer" or "Black-Jack" for effectively being just as badass as Jack, and for being... well, black.
  • Fans of Larry Moss in Season 7 affectionately referred to him as "Boss Moss".
  • The bag of equipment Jack can sometimes be seen toting was known as his "Jack-pack."
  • Television Without Pity had a cottage industry of these, at least in the first few seasons' worth of recaps. Some of the more notable ones include "Bitchelle" (Michelle Dessler), "Soul Patch" (Tony Almeida), "Spawn of Kiefer" (Kim Bauer), and "ImhoTerror" (Habib Marwan).
  • "Sparky" for Paul Raines, after Jack used electricity to torture him.
  • "Agent Hobbit" for Lynn McGill, who was played by Sean Astin.
  • Fast Karate for the Gentlemen makes a habit of creating these for pretty much every character not in the core cast, and even one or two who are. Special mention goes to "Special Agent Babykins" (Owen), "JibJub" (Prescott O'Brian), and the "President of Not-Iran" (Omar Hassan).
• Fanon: No President but David Palmer was ever explicitly linked to a political party, but ask fans and they'll tell you that Wayne Palmer and by extension Noah Daniels were Democrats, and every other featured President was a Republican. It makes sense for John Keeler, Charles Logan and Hal Gardner given that Keeler was running against Democrat David Palmer and Logan was his Vice President, and later Gardner was Logan's, but there's nothing in-show that speaks to any of the others.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Logan's collaborator is named Graham, not "Graem", and he is definitely not Jack's brother.
  • Either Tony didn't "die" at all midway through Day 5 and just disappeared instead until Day 7 came up, or alternatively he did die and never suddenly turned sorta-evil and tried to kill a bunch of innocent people to further his own goals of revenge.
  • A lot of fans ignore Day 6 altogether. Some fans are happy to believe that everything after the end of Day 5 was just a hallucination that Jack had while being tortured by the Chinese — or, on a similar note, that Day 8, Live Another Day, and Legacy were just something that he dreamed while his brain was temporarily messed up by the prion variant, and that he's now happily living in retirement in Los Angeles.
• Franchise Original Sin: Certain elements of the show that were criticized in later seasons were fully present in the first two seasons.
  • Too many character deaths. Some people forget that Season 1 killed off Richard Walsh, the Regional District Manager, in the second episode, along with Kim's friend, Janet, many other side characters, and Teri Bauer. But unlike later seasons, the deaths were spaced out throughout each season so the viewers had time to bond with the characters and therefore felt upset once they perished. Later seasons ramped up character deaths so much that it invoked Too Bleak, Stopped Caring from fans and critics alike, and major character deaths (Curtis Manning and Audrey Boudreau, for example) were seen as unnecessary at best, and tasteless shock value at worst.
  • Trapped by Mountain Lions. Season 2 is notorious for Kim Bauer's subplot distracting the main plot, but Season 1 also had Teri Bauer's infamous amnesia subplot, along with Kim's subplot in prison. However, Teri's subplot got much less flak because it only lasted for three episodes—not the entire season—and because it was a case of Executive Meddling (Teri was forced to remain in the show when originally she was going to just fall asleep). As for Kim's prison subplot, it became very relevant in the last few episodes when the Drazen family uses this opportunity to kidnap Kim whilst she's being released.
  • Overabudance of Muslim terrorists. From Season 4 onwards, some critics pointed out that the show nearly goes out of its way to demonize Muslims given the sheer amount of seasons that focused on Middle-Eastern terrorist cells. Season 2, however, also has Muslim terrorists, but faced no criticism because the same season went out of its way to show various innocent Muslim characters (namely Reza Naiyeer and Muslim Intelligence Agent Yusuf Auda) and various American terrorists (namely Marie Warner, Joseph Wald, Peter Kingsley, etc.)
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: 24 achieved a huge popularity in many countries outside the US. The most popular examples being Japan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a big chunk of Europe.
  • The popularity in the Japanese fanbase influenced the decision to recreate the show for Japanese viewers with Japanese political and social views.
• Growing the Beard: The series was a fairly unremarkable police/office drama until about 5:40 AM. The show suddenly kicked into full gear at that point, with the death of Poor Man's Mena Suvari, the unveiling of Ira Gaines' "I Have Your Wife" plot, and the wonderful last-second plot twist, where Teri finds out her new friend is actually The Mole, all dropped on us in rapid succession. This episode set the tone for the rest of the series.
• Ham and Cheese: Jon Voight as Jonas Hodges. Is it any wonder that fans felt he should have stayed the main antagonist of the season?
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Tony saying how good Nina was in coming up with BS. Boy, he was right.
  • In the third episode of Season 2, Megan, the girl Kim is taking care of, has a seizure brought on by a head injury. Years later, her actress Skye McCole Bartusiak died at 21 after an accidental drug overdose with the drugs having been used to treat her own epileptic seizures.
  • There a point in Season 1 where David Palmer tells two assailants trying to squeeze money out of him that if they kept doing what they were doing, they'd be "dead in five years." Palmer himself is killed off during the show's fifth season.
  • A lot of things in the series go over this over the course of what happens with Tony by the final seasons:
    • In Season 3, after Michelle has become trapped in the hotel with the virus, Chappelle tells Tony, "I need you to focus and the best way to do that is to assume the worst and make it about getting revenge." Guess what Tony's main motivation was during Day 7?
    • The cover of The Game shows Tony and Michelle dodging an explosion. This same thing happens to them at the beginning of Day 5, but they don't quite dodge it as well that time.
    • One mission in the game features Tony raiding a subway station in an attempt to prevent a terrorist bomb from being set off which would unleash a biological weapon. A similar event happens late in Day 7, except this time around he wasn't trying to prevent the attack.
    • Going further back, the ending of the first season features Tony as one of the people trying to talk Jack out of getting revenge against Nina after everything she's done. It works. It wouldn't work nearly nearly as well for Jack when his and Tony's roles were reversed 6 season finales later. Worse is both cases involve someone responsible for the death of their respective pregnant spouse.
  • In Season 3, in the middle of his Motive Rant, Big Bad Stephen Saunders tells Jack, "I was abandoned by the people I worked for...as you'll be someday." Events from future seasons slowly prove Saunders's point, with the latter half of Day 8 taking the cake.
  • Shortly after Nina Myers is killed in Season 3, Tony tells Michelle that Jack wouldn't risk dozens of innocents lives solely for personal vengeance. In Season 7 and 8, Tony and Jack, respectively, endanger hundreds of innocent lives just to avenge the murders of people they loved.
  • Jack's received some "Not So Different" Remark speeches before, but his one from Tony in Day 7 hits especially hard after knowing what he eventually pulls in Day 8.
  • After a nuclear bomb goes off and Curtis is killed in Season 6, Chloe, while talking to Morris, somberly asks him why people she knows keep dying. Live Another Day reveals that Morris and Chloe's son, Prescott, are both killed in a car accident.
  • At the very beginning of Season 7, when Renee tells Jack that the likely reason behind Tony's Face–Heel Turn is to seek revenge against the people who wronged him and killed Michelle and states that Jack should understand what it's like after he lost Teri, Jack claims even after what he went through he would never have gone that far. Season 8 proved that, after losing Renee no less, if it wasn't for Chloe he most certainly would have.
  • In the Season 7 finale, Allison Taylor opines that she's lost her family and has no one left. Ethan Kanin, her former Chief of Staff, states that this isn't the case, and they reconcile, with him accepting a part in her administration once more. The implication is that a brighter future would await the two of them. This makes Season 8 all the more disheartening, as Ethan, disappointed in Taylor for letting herself be corrupted by Charles Logan, resigns once more, while Taylor herself prepares to resign from the Presidency after realizing the depths to which she sank. So, essentially, Taylor loses her family and her job, all for nothing.
  • Episode 8 of Live Another Day features a pointed statement that America does not negotiate with terrorists. At the time of its airing, five Taliban leaders had recently been traded for an American POW.
  • At the conclusion of the sixth season, as Cheng Zhi is being taken away into custody, he defiantly shouts at CTU that his government won't abandon him. As Live Another Day shows, they did. This would almost count as Hilarious In Hindsight were it not for the fact that this has caused Cheng to start orchestrating a war between China and the United States in revenge.
  • The reveal in Live Another Day that Moscow is conspiring to start a war between the USA and China so that Russia can gain a strangehold on its Eastern European neighbors is eerily unsettling in light of the ongoing Ukraine crisis.
  • In Season 6, Heller tells Jack to stay away from Audrey, blaming Jack for Audrey's torture at the hands of Cheng Zhi: "You're cursed, Jack. Everything you touch, one way or another, ends up dead." At the end of Live Another Day, Audrey is held hostage by Cheng Zhi as leverage against Jack, and ultimately killed.
    • "Sooner or later you're going to get back into the game, and my daughter is going to pay the price, like your wife did."
    • Additionally, in Erin Driscoll's final apperance in Season 4, Heller is shown comforting her after her daughter's death. Driscoll's last line to Heller is even saying he should check on Audrey. It's awkward to watch now knowing Heller will eventually end up facing the same loss she has here.
  • Near the end of Season 8, Cole shoves Jack to the ground and screams "Look, I can't do this!" at him. A few years after the season ended, Freddie Prinze Jr. admitted that he despised working with Kiefer Sutherland so much that he almost quit his career in acting, which makes this moment seem like he was Leaning on the Fourth Wall. Likewise, Cole's disillusionment over working with Jack, including his "there are no good guys here" comment about him, now has some uncomfortable Reality Subtext because of this.
  • The entire plotline of Season 8 with Jack going after the U.S. government for protecting crooked higher ups in Russia after discovering that they hired Samir Mehran to attack the U.S. becomes this after news surfaced of the Russian Government placing out bounties to Taliban soldiers to kill American and British soldiers, and the Trump Administration worked to protect them.
• He's Just Hiding: Happens a lot due to the show's tendency to kill off beloved characters. Some of the biggest examples are listed below.
  • After Season 5, fans everywhere predicted that Tony was still alive. Eventually, the writers relented and resurrected him for Season 7.
  • Charles Logan got this reaction in Season 6, as he was last seen flatlining in an ambulance. He was later confirmed to have survived in Season 8.
  • In Live Another Day, a lot of people are feeling this about Morris and Prescott, who were apparently killed offscreen in a car crash some time after Day 8. Many fans are under the impression that reports of their deaths may have been faked, especially since the show has had a precedent for that in the past, such as Audrey in Day 6.
  • After the apparent death of James Heller via missile, droves of fans began debating whether or not he was truly dead (as it turns out, he wasn't). Actual Flame Wars began to break out over this, making the internet a particularly nasty place to be for 24 fans the first day or so after the episode aired.
  • After Tony survives his apparent death, it's possible to hope that Bill and Curtis are also Not Quite Dead, given their popularity and how their wounds might have been survivable.
  • It isn't a very widespread belief, but Janet can inspire some of those. Her death is only ever mentioned after the fact in a single After-Action Report novel of ambiguous canonicity and she only gets choked and smothered for about fifty seconds, when it takes five minutes to kill someone that way in real life.
  • Even Michelle has occasionally turned up alive in fan fiction stories, having survived her wounds and reuniting with Tony.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • George Mason's son is named John. John Mason?
  • Nine years after playing Chase Edmunds (who famously got his hand chopped off), James Badge Dale starred in Iron Man 3, playing a character who could regenerate lost limbs.
  • Ira Gaines ordering Jack over the radio. Phone Booth had Kiefer Sutherland play a vigilante who holds people at sniper point in phone boxes and orders them what to do. It even took place in Real Time. Doubly so after Day 8's ending, where as an Actor Allusion Jack winds up acting like Sutherland's character in the film and orders Charles Logan over the phone at sniper point making things come full circle.
  • One of the early descriptions of Mass Effect was that Commander Shepard could essentially be played as "Jack Bauer in space". Two years after playing Cole in the eighth season, Freddie Prinze Jr. would go onto voice James Vega in the third game, serving in a similar Lancer role to Shepard that Cole served to Jack in the first half of the season.
  • A few years after C. Thomas Howell played Dr. Barry Landes, who was a therapist that helped people, he had a recurring role in Criminal Minds as George "The Reaper" Foyet, who was a serial killer.
  • It's a staple of the series to have Jack go on the run when someone frames him as early as the first season. The 2006 thriller The Sentinel saw Kiefer Sutherland playing the role of an agent similar to Jack, with the exception that this time he's in the Inspector Javert role trying to catch a fellow agent that's been set up instead of the other way around.
  • Remember all those Jack Bauer facts that was about him doing completely over-the-top badassery? The final hours of season 8 with things like storming a car tunnel full civilians to get to Charles Logan's limousine, in full body armor and an selection of assault rifles and the aftermath of his massacre of Novakovitch and his men, including Novakovich being impaled to the floor with a poker and with a bullet to his head. As well as the gory, bloody bodies of his henchmen, while Jack was dealing with a good sized knife wound in his chest shows Jack Bauer could very well perform all of that. Most Jack Bauer facts now pale in comparison to all the crazy shit he's actually doing in the show.
  • In-universe, there's something slightly amusing about seeing Hal Gardner sincerely express empathy for Wayne Palmer following David's assassination (the first truly admirable action he does in the season) when one realizes that following Gardner's succession of Charles Logan as Commander-In-Chief, the two would have likely gone up against each other as rival Presidential candidates prior to Day 6 later on.
  • The Big Bad of Live Another Day is played by Michelle Fairley, whose motivation is her husband being killed, and one of her henchmen is her daughter (who has red hair). And we all know how important family is to Catelyn Stark. And this time she actually gets to see her son thrown out a window.
  • An old joke read that "If everyone listened to Jack Bauer, the show would be called 12." Cue Live Another Day, where Jack actually receives a lot more cooperation than before. The length of the series? Twelve episodes.
  • In the Chicago Tribune RedEye's 2007 Best TV Character Contest, Jack Bauer came in second under Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (played by Katee Sackhoff). Three years later, during 24's eighth season, Jack Bauer cold-bloodedly murdered Dana Walsh (played by Katee Sackhoff).
  • In Live Another Day John Boyega plays a soldier who's framed for being a traitor. One year later in The Force Awakens he plays an ex-stormtrooper who's attacked by another stormtrooper who declares him a TRAITOR in one of the most popular scenes in the film.
  • Day 4 has Behrooz and Dina played by Jonathan Ahdout and Shohreh Aghdashloo - who played mother and son one year later in House of Sand and Fog.
  • In Day 8, one of the CTU trainees (Julian Morris) try to have a Kamistani suicide bomber (Rami Malek) show the bomb so that they could shut down it's controls. After this, both Julian and Rami's roles got switched, in which Julian portrays a guy who works for the bad guys in Pretty Little Liars and later gets killed while Rami portrays a far more heroic character in Mr. Robot who gets harrased by a bunch of bad guys.
  • In the finale to the fourth season the main villain pulls a Thanatos Gambit by falling to his death in order to prevent the protagonist from stopping a missile, forcing said protagonist and his allies to quickly improvise and find a different way to disarm it midair moments before it hits its target. Sounds a lot like a climax to another fourth installment of an espionage work, doesn't it?
    • Not to menion Anil Kapoor, who was a regular in the show's last normal season, was also in that installment.
  • During season one, the show was described by the press and the actors as a high-octane soap opera, in reference to the melodramatic office romances and palpable sexual tension among the CTU officers and Jack's family. Ten seasons later, in light of the many, many baffling, contrived, asinine, poorly-conceived plot twists the show's trotted out, describing it as a soap opera sounds bang on the money for an entirely different reason.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • Complaints started somewhere around Season 3, where the criticism was mostly summarized as "Terrorists attack America. Jack saves the day. Rinse, repeat."
  • Season 6 is considered the worst offender for this trope, combining Season 1's attempts on the life of one of the Palmer brothers, Season 2's nuclear terrorism plot and the attempt to remove the president from office via the Twenty-fifth Amendment, Season 4's having the Chinese become a secondary threat late in the season, and Season 5's having one of Jack's mentor figures trying to cover up his supplying terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.
  • Live Another Day gets a lot of it, with many fans baffled that they'd go to the trouble of bringing the show back after four years just to tell the same old story again.
• It Was His Sled: 24 has had some memorable twists.
  • Season 1: Nina is bad and she kills Teri.
  • Season 2: Marie Warner is a terrorist.
  • Season 3: The events of the first seven episodes are part of an elaborate sting operation.
  • Season 4: Jack fakes his death.
  • Season 5: President Logan is bad. The Chinese capture Jack.
  • Season 6: The Chinese faked Audrey's death and tortured her to the brink of insanity.
  • Season 7: Tony is alive and he's the bad guy.
  • Season 8: Hassan dies, the peace treaty he was trying to sign is a fraud, and Jack goes on a revenge spree.
  • Live Another Day: Jack surrenders to the Russians.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many fans of the show who initially had no interest in watching 24: Legacy changed their minds when it was revealed that Tony would be appearing, continuing off the Sequel Hook from the 24: Solitary short.
• Like You Would Really Do It: They almost always do. However, the trope has been played straight a few times:
  • Jack clinically dies in the middle of Day 2 after his heart stops during a torture session, and his character profile was even changed to "deceased" for a week on the official website. Even that early into the show, Jack's reputation had been so cemented that nobody actually bought it.
  • Jack being infected with the prion bio-weapon in Day 7. Nobody really believed it would kill him, especially with the show renewed for another season. Sure enough, a cure was suddenly revealed even though it had been previously stated there wasn't any.
  • The "death" of President Heller in Live Another Day. Even 24, a show that kills off main characters left and right, did not take the risk of killing off the President of the United States of America while he was still in office.
    • Additionally, it was well-known among many fans that President Keeler was originally written to die in the Air Force One attack in Season 4 but was overturned by the network on a mandate that a sitting US President not be killed on air, leading many to immediately No-Sell a replay of this exact same scenario.
  • They only really started to subvert the trope on Day 5. Before that, this trope was actually Played Straight quite a lot. Jack miraculously survived clinical death at the hands of Peter Kingsley's henchmen during Day 2, David Palmer miraculously survived the deadly virus Mandy infected him with at the end of Day 2, Tony miraculously survived getting shot in the neck at the start of Day 3, Michelle miraculously survived getting exposed to the virus at the end of Day 3 when the possibility of infection was higher than 90%, Heller and Audrey survived their suicide attempt at the start of Day 4, and Tony and Mandy survived their supposed car bomb death at the end of Day 4. Popularity Power was actually pretty strong, back in the day.
• Love to Hate:
  • Nina Myers may be a heartless Sociopath who killed Jack's wife, and Charles Logan may be a manipulative, weasly Smug Snake, but they are by far two of the greatest recurring villains in the series. There's even a poll on the 24 Wiki asking users who their favorite recurring villain is, and well over two-thirds of the voters chose them.
  • Dana Walsh. At least in the second half of Season 8, where we find out she's The Mole and she becomes much more plot-relevant. Before this happened, she was an abysmal Scrappy chewing up way too much screen-time.
• Magnificent Bastard: See here.
• Memetic Badass:
  • "Jack Bauer is the leading cause of death among Muslim men."
    • "TELL ME WHERE MARWAN IS!"
  • THAT'S JACK BAUER!!!!!!!!!
  • DAMMIT!
  • You can even buy t-shirts with the slogan "Jack Bauer wouldn't stand for this shit."
  • Jack Bauer is the only man alive who can shrug off a Death Note.
  • TELL ME WHERE THE BOMB IS!!!
• Memetic Mutation: "Ore wa Jack Bauer."^note A Japanese commercial sung by Rikiya Koyama.
• Misaimed Fandom: Ironically the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique is a result of this. During the first few seasons, Jack torturing his perps was portrayed as horrific and rarely accomplished anything. More often than not, it got him into even more trouble than it's worth. But as the series progressed, the show began to glorify Jack's methods to the point where it became what he's best known for.
• Moe: Michelle Dessler is about as Moe as one can possibly get on this show. Cute? Check. Heartwarming personality, with emphasis on being selfless, caring and compassionate? Check. Woobie moments making you sympathize with her? Check. Being sincere in her do-gooder nature, never turning out to be The Mole? Check.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • In Season 1, Nina Myers murders Teri Bauer and (consequently) her unborn child. No attempts are made after this to give Nina any sympathetic qualities and she is portrayed as Jack's most personal Arch-Enemy.
  • In Season 3, Sherry Palmer talking Alan Milliken to death and preventing his wife from administering life-saving medicine. For a character who had previously been merely a Manipulative Bitch and had even helped catch the culprits behind the terrorist plot in Season 2, taking the leap into outright murder showed she had clearly crossed the line. Fittingly, she's killed by Milliken's wife in revenge at the end of the season, ending her time on the show firmly as a villain.
  • In Season 5, the implied offscreen murder of a child at the hands of Christopher Henderson.
  • Most of Cheng Zhi's actions in Day 4 and 5 could be considered reasonably sympathetic, as Jack was absolutely in the wrong to attack the Chinese Consulate, which caused the death of the consul, and Cheng had every right to seek justice against him for it. Even torturing Jack for information between Days 5 and 6, while certainly nasty, is arguably no worse than the way Jack himself has treated prisoners in the past. However, torturing the completely innocent Audrey Raines into insanity when she tried to rescue Jack from China clearly marks him as irredeemable, and after this his characterization takes a major shift from a loyal Chinese agent just doing his job to a maniac terrorist that his own country wants nothing to do with.
  • Yuri Suvarov ordering the killings of Omar Hassan and Renee Walker.
  • Margot Al-Harazi torturing her own daughter to pressure Naveed into piloting the drone attacks.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Best. Ringtone. EVER.
  • The most epic digital clock in the universe. This sound means you need to sit back down in front of your TV right the fuck NOW.
• Narm:
  • The infamous setting up of perimeters. Across eight seasons there was almost never a time when this actually worked, and yet CTU still kept trying (humorously enough, Season 7 did feature somewhat effective perimeters that required the suspects to try a little harder to escape, but those were set up by the FBI, not CTU).
  • "Day 4: 11pm - 12am" involves the hunt for a briefcase containing the US government's nuclear launch codes, known as the "Nuclear Football". This actually is what the briefcase is called in real life, but that didn't keep the dialogue from sounding extremely silly, nor did it stop fans from making endless football jokes.
  • Jack's first seizure in Season 7 (Episode 17) comes off comical due to the way his eyes bug out.
  • Alamanoooooooooooo!!!
  • Not in the show itself, but the promos for Live Another Day featured a rather over-the-top shot of Jack in Shouting Shooter mode. It even made its way into the poster.◊
    • Also from Live Another Day, Chloe's sudden resemblance to Lisbeth Salander.
  • The real time format doesn't do any favors for the sequence where a torturer simply stares at Kate while threateningly revving a drill without actually doing anything with it for at least ten minutes. This includes a commercial break.
  • When Ian Al-Harazi blows up the vehicle he thinks Jack, Kate, and his sister Simone are in, he immediately jabs the air and screams "YEAH!", almost as if he just beat a frustrating level in a video game.
  • At one point in Live Another Day, Margot Al-Harazi talks to Simone about whether her loyalties lie with her husband or her mother and gives off a Death Glare. Kind of hard to take her seriously when the tea kettle in the background starts whistling shrilly.
  • Live Another Day features what was perhaps always the inevitable end of the "perimeter" motif, as Erik describes the terrorists as making one of their own. They're finished a few moments later.
  • The subplot in Legacy with Amira Dudayev and her chemistry teacher making a bomb. Both of them are so incompetent at covering their tracks that half the time it honestly feels like it's deliberately being played for wacky slapstick, except the music never stops being deadly serious.
  • Towards the end of Day 2, the U.S. gears up for war with the three countries supposedly responsible for acquiring the nuke for Second Wave. And that's how they are always referred to, "the three countries". The writers obviously didn't want to piss off three real-life countries, especially given the real life rising tensions in the Middle East at the time, but it's just hard to take seriously.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The PS2 game, covering between seasons two and three, is a box set in it's own right that begins with Jack raiding a cargo ship before a bomb expert disarms explosives, then a driving scene, then it cuts to Chase, then a shootout and a Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique before analysts track down snipers Jack has to stop, so you won't be bored. The music, cinematics and intrigue are of the same quality of the show, it plugs up many plot holes and there are lots of little nods to the fandom, easily as high quality as the Buffy the Vampire Slayer games.
• Older Than They Think: The Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique in season one? Buffy Summers did it first, only she used a cross.
• Once Original, Now Common: At the time, a heavily-serialized show like 24 was absolutely groundbreaking. However, decades later, viewers have been inundated with serialized shows that do such outlandish things as come up with a plot for the season before they start making it, so the slapdash, Writing by the Seat of Your Pants plotting of 24 pales in comparison to the shows it influenced.
• One-Scene Wonder: Officer Jenkins from Legacy, who had the courage to walk out into a busy street and shoot Amira Dudayev by himself in order to stop her from bombing a bridge. Shame he didn't kill her though...
• Only the Creator Does It Right: While they're not without their flaws, Seasons 1-4, where creators Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran were still in charge of the show, are generally agreed to be overall superior to Seasons 5-8, where Howard Gordon took over as showrunner — albeit with Gordon's first season as showrunner (Season 5) being agreed by many to be the show's best.
• Paranoia Fuel: Nearly anybody around you can turn to be The Mole, even they don't look like it. Even members of CTU and the FBI.
• Questionable Casting:
  • Dennis Hopper as Serbian warlord Victor Drazen.
  • David Herman, best known at the time for Office Space, stars as a quirky CTU techie in season 3. According to the creators, they decided Chloe o'Brien possessed enough quirk, so they deleted most of his scenes and quickly wrote him out.
  • Kal Penn playing a terrorist in Season 6, which likely led to his being killed off early on.
  • Freddie Prinze Jr.'s announcement as a regular for Season 8 was met with similar confusion and jokes alike. As Season 8 went on, his casting was viewed in a more favorable light though.
  • Similarly, Katee Sackhoff being cast as an office drone seemed strange, with some viewers suggesting that maybe she and Prinze (who was playing a badass field agent) should switch jobs. Once she was revealed as a double agent the casting seemed to make more sense.
  • Stephen Fry as the British Prime Minister in Live Another Day. Which wasn't helped by his being given very little to do.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Tony was widely hated in the first half of season one. After receiving Character Development and becoming a Jerk with a Heart of Gold he eventually started growing more likable and had all the fans won over by the time he saved Jack's wife late in the season.
  • Chloe O'Brian was extremely unpopular in and out of universe in her first appearance in Season 3 for being annoying and obstructive. In Season 4, she becomes Jack's most consistent ally and a full-on Ensemble Dark Horse after shooting a bunch of terrorists with an M16. She eventually became so popular that she became the Deuteragonist of the entire series, and almost as iconic of a character as Jack.
  • Season 5:
    • In Season 4, Audrey Raines was widely disliked as a character and Love Interest for Jack for being whiny, squeamish and judgmental about the nature of Jack's work. Having taken a serious level in badass between seasons, she became much more popular this season, being a genuine asset to CTU and the only person smart enough to immediately see through the attempted Frame-Up of Jack for the murders of David Palmer and Michelle. Though her appearance in Live Another Day was more divisive, she was still much more popular than in Season 4.
    • It's hard to remember now that his status as one of the major villains is so well-known, but back when Charles Logan was originally revealed to be the mastermind behind Day 5's events, the initial reaction was very divisive, with the majority of the viewers and critics feeling that the twist was so ridiculous that trying to paint the incompetent president as a criminal mastermind had turned the show into a joke by that point. As the season went on he proved himself to be genuinely threatening and resourceful, quickly changing opinion toward the positive.
  • Season 6:
    • Tom Lennox, who went from a weaselly little Jerkass demanding to revoke the rights of several U.S. citizens, to a clever Morality Pet who ultimately proved himself to be one of the good guys when it came down to it. Even though he only mainly appeared in the infamous sixth season several fans ultimately wound up liking him and wishing he'd come back for a later appearance.
    • Mike Doyle. When he first showed up, he was a racist, sadistic jerkass and a Replacement Scrappy for Curtis Manning. A few episodes after his appearance, he started to lighten up a bit and his jerk attitude all but went away. Some viewers were more impressed when he revealed that he was a religious man trying to find "answers".
  • Season 7:
    • Larry Moss, as established both above and below, was like an FBI version of Ryan Chappelle - a stickler for protocol who constantly reproached Jack for his hotshot antics and overuse of torture. However, as Season 7 progressed, some of his more proactive actions (notably leading the counterattack on Juma's men in the White House against the Vice-President's orders and helping Jack and Tony in taking out Jonas Hodges) helped to redeem him in the eyes of more than a few viewers (the reviewer at EW.com even affectionately referred to him as "Boss Moss"). He also showed that, despite his disagreements with Jack on how to handle Day 7's situations, he was still human, given his interactions with Renee and his appreciation for Tony's efforts in stopping Hodges. When Tony killed him later on in the season, quite a few fans were genuinely upset.
    • Kim Bauer. Yes, she's still a damsel in distress, but she quickly shows everyone that she can get out of a sticky situation using nothing but a pen. She also put herself in harm's way just to uncover the terrorists' plot, and if it hadn't been for her, the FBI never would've found Jack. She's also much more reasonable than she was in her brief appearance in Season 5, in which she essentially blamed Jack for all the problems in their relationship and said she never wanted to see him again.
  • Season 8:
    • Cole Ortiz got a lot of hatred from fans before he even debuted on the show, solely because he was played by Freddie Prinze, Jr. However, the hate died down after Cole performed two near-Heroic Sacrifices in a row (the first to save Omar Hassan from assassination, and the second to prevent the assassin from escaping).
    • Dana Walsh once she was revealed to be The Mole. After being the center of an annoying, worthless subplot, she spends the rest of the season being a Manipulative Bitch and Smug Snake, which was widely agreed to be a much better use of Katee Sackhoff's acting skills.
    • Arlo Glass. He spent the first half of Season 8 sticking his nose into Dana's business while repeatedly flirting with her, even though he knew she planned on marrying Cole. But after Dana turned out to be The Mole, Arlo dropped his perverted act, focused more on his job, and became Chloe's most trustworthy agent within CTU, alongside Cole. At one point Arlo blatantly said that he shouldn't have spent so much time eye-humping Dana, indicating that he knew he was becoming annoying and needed to change.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Teri's rapist in season one is Silas Weir Mitchell, who would later play Munroe on Grimm.
  • Alexis Drazen is played by Misha Collins, years before he would debut on Supernatural as Castiel.
  • Jimmi Simpson appears as a Right-Wing Militia Fanatic in the first few episodes of Day 2.
  • Ron Swanson is the leader of the racist trio from late in Day 2, while one of his two cohorts is Tuco Salamanca.
  • Sarah, who works at CTU in Season 4, is played by Lana Parrilla - a full decade before she would be best known as Regina on Once Upon a Time.
  • Also from Season 4. Behrooz's girlfriend Debbie who his mother kills is Leighton Meester - best known as Blair Waldorf on Gossip Girl.
  • Marcos Al Zacar, who was part of the Kamistani splinter cell in Season 8 as a suicide bomber is played by Rami Malek. 5 years later, he would be best known as Elliot Alderson on Mr. Robot.
  • Rick D. Wasserman plays Alex Hewitt, the hacker Jack tries to cut a deal with and ends up accidentally killing late into Season 2. Nowaday's he's best known as the voice of The Mighty Thor, first in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and several times after that, most recently in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order.
  • John Eric Bentley appears during Season 8 as an NSA official who assists Jack. This was just a few years before he started gaining prominence as a voice actor such as playing Nick Fury numerous times including in LEGO Marvel Super Heroes and the aforementioned Ultimate Alliance 3, as well as doing voice work in various anime titles such as Tiger & Bunny, Viz's 2014 re-dub of Sailor Moon, and Promare.
• Ron the Death Eater: Oboy. In the final season when Chloe initially refused to help Jack out of worry that he wasn't thinking straight and tried to get him captured, several fans immediately proceeded to demonize her and paint her as a heartless monster. This is even though one, her fears turned out to be valid, and two, within the show's narrative, Jack actually was the one being the bad guy.
• Rooting for the Empire: Kind of. Jack is always the protagonist and the character that most of the fans of the show root for. This includes the final six episodes even when it's obvious that he isn't the hero this time around and his Roaring Rampage of Revenge isn't the right thing. But with Logan and Suvarov clearly being even worse, Allison Taylor also doing the wrong thing by protecting the two, and them finding the CTU staff rather forgettable it meant they were still with Jack even though he was closer to Villain Protagonist status at the moment than anything else. Some of them even wish he'd succeeded in killing Suvarov, even though doing so would have led to a war between Russia and the U.S.A.
• The Scrappy:
  • Kim Bauer, for being Jack's Bratty Teenage Daughter who frequently blames him for the problems in their relationship even when they aren't his fault, for being in irrelevant subplots that only take time away from the main story and for constantly needing to be rescued. However, these problems are all addressed in Season 7, which got her Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
  • Season 4:
    • Behrooz Araz due to his whiny personality and the fact that his subplot took up huge chunks of the season, yet ultimately went nowhere. Even the writers later coined the term "Behrooz'd" for when they abruptly wrote out a character who wasn't working and/or was proving unpopular with the viewers.
    • Habib Marwan; despite being second-only to Charles Logan in terms of on-screen appearances for a season's primary villain, he's written with zero depth and very little personality, has no backstory that might explain the completely absurd amounts of Offscreen Villain Dark Matter he has access to (other than an extremely vague Hand Wave that he's been planning the day's events for years) or why he has so many American allies, and his constant escapes are more down to dumb luck than anything that might make Marwan a worthy rival to Jack. As a result, he's widely considered a strong contender with Alan Wilson for the title of the show's most unpopular Big Bad.
  • Season 5:
    • Kim's new boyfriend Dr. Barry Landes, for being a condescending jerk to Jack, having a creepy Age-Gap Romance with Kim, not helped by the major ethical problems around them having met when he was Kim's therapist, and killing the popular Kim/Chase ship just by existing.
    • Although Miles Papazian was clearly intended to be a Hate Sink for being an Obstructive Bureaucrat and betraying CTU to Logan, many fans disliked that he ended up as a Karma Houdini for these actions.
  • Season 6:
    • Wayne Palmer, who had been a very popular character in his earlier appearances. Some fans didn't like that he wasn't the shady, albeit caring Anti-Hero from Season 3 who was willing to bend a few rules and cross a few lines in order to get things done. Others felt that he suffered from Badass Decay when compared to Season 5, where he not only Took a Level in Badass and helped Jack on his quest to uncover the conspiracy, but also figured out that Evelyn Martin knew who the true Big Bad was. Wayne's actor shared the same sentiments as the fans.
    • Sandra Palmer is by far the least popular member of her family for being a preachy Soapbox Sadie.
    • Jack's entire family ended up being widely disliked for one reason or another. Jack's father Phillip was hated for being a bland villain with baffling motives and a phoned-in performance from James Cromwell (who admitted he didn't get the character at all), his brother Graem was hated for the Ass Pull of his being revealed to be related to Jack after this wasn't even hinted at during his appearance in Season 5 (not to mention that he suffered significant Villain Decay from said appearance, where he was fairly well-liked for being The Chessmaster leader of the Omniscient Council of Vagueness), and his nephew Josh and sister-in-law Marilyn were most hated of all for being an even worse pair of Damsel Scrappies than Kim. Marilyn was especially disliked for her and Jack's romance subplot that many found gross and unconvincing, not to mention her constant whining.
    • Rita Brady. She spent all of her screentime whining and bickering with Darren McCarthy. She almost got herself rescued when she decided to kill Darren and was about to free Morris, but then put the final nail in her coffin when she kidnapped Morris herself all so she could have the money Fayed intended on giving to Darren.
  • Season 7:
    • Larry Moss, for being an Obstructive Bureaucrat on par with George Mason and Ryan Chappelle when the fans had long since grown sick of that kind of character. He did manage to win over many with his Character Development later in the season.
    • Janis was what Chloe would have been if she hadn't received the necessary dose of Character Development after Season 3, and a lot of her snarkiness came off as irritating rather than funny. Most fans were glad she wasn't back for the final season.
    • Sean and Erika are two of the show's most unpopular Moles for being a Smug Snake Jerkass and a bitchy complainer respectively, and for their affair subplot being given an unnecessary level of attention.
    • Olivia Taylor quickly earned herself a hatedom after mending bridges with her mother for more or less being an ungrateful brat only to quickly reveal her real colors as a complete Manipulative Bitch. Her Genre Blindness when dealing with the Jonas Hodges affair at the end of the season just cemented things.
    • Alan Wilson is easily the show's least popular Big Bad. Within Season 7 itself, he was seen as a Replacement Scrappy to the very well-received Jonas Hodges, with his Dull Surprise being compared unfavorably to Jon Voight's Evil Is Hammy performance. Then he was revealed to be the ultimate mastermind behind Day 5's events, which was both confusing, since the previous season had pretty definitively stated that Phillip Bauer was the mastermind, and underwhelming, because this revelation came out of nowhere and Wilson was widely seen as less interesting than the villains who were now being stated to be his pawns. Though the season ends with the implication that he would be a Karma Houdini and return in the final season, his unpopularity meant that his storyline was abruptly dropped with only a few mentions of what happened to him, with Word of God confirming he eventually faced justice, and the more popular Logan instead returned to be the show's final villain.
  • Mark Boudreau from Live Another Day started off tolerable as the typical Hero Antagonist who in this case had some very good reasons to think Jack was up to no good. But then he continued working against Jack after the real situation became clear for a quite astoundingly petty reason (he assumed Jack's presence would send Audrey running back to him), and quickly became insufferable.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Season 4 is markedly different from the preceding three seasons; Jack is effectively deposed as head of CTU operations, the building itself has undergone a makeover, and just about everyone from the previous season is gone without explanation. It's not surprising that, by the end of the season, almost all of the major surviving characters from the series were brought back into the fold. Other faults include the Big Bad, Habib Marwan's constant escapes and his plans often seeming over-prepared to the point of absurdity, and the huge amounts of time eaten up by Behrooz Araz's subplot. That being said, the season is at least usually held in higher regard than many of the subsequent ones, if only because it introduced a number of fan-favorite characters such as Bill Buchanan, Audrey Raines, James Heller, Edgar Stiles, and of course, Charles Logan.
  • Season 6 is the only season that was hated by almost everyone; even the writers admit it was incredibly subpar. It started out promising, and then became mired in a complex, ridiculous family drama filled with plot points ripped haphazardly from previous episodes.
  • The Live Another Day season. While the majority of fans see it as a big step up in quality from the previous 3 seasons there are a fair number who think it's a part of the same rot that started on Day 6.
  • 24: Legacy, a reboot/continuation season, already suffered from an Audience-Alienating Premise of continuing the show but not including Jack this time around. As it progressed, many people found new lead Eric Carter to be a lackluster replacement for Jack, the story arc was criticized for its uneven pacing despite the shorter episode count, the ending came off as a huge Anti-Climax to many with the final showdown, which only soured fans further when Rebecca Ingram, whom many felt was a better protagonist than Eric ended up getting killed off. Not helping was the show hyping up the return of fan-favorite Tony Almeida, only to do almost nothing with him, including having him disappear in the middle of the finale.
• Signature Scene: Every season has at least one:
  • Day 1: Jack's shootout with the Drazens and the very last scene where Jack discovers Teri's murder, which doubles as the signature scene for the entire series
  • Day 2: Jack's interrogation of Syed Ali and George Mason's Dare to Be Badass speech to Jack, giving him a reason to keep on living.
  • Day 3: Jack being forced to execute Ryan Chappelle.
  • Day 4: Tony arriving to save Jack and Audrey and the final scene with Jack walking off into the unknown as a new day begins.
  • Day 5: The revelation that Charles Logan has been Evil All Along
  • Day 6: A more infamous case with Curtis' death due to its anticlimatic nature.
  • Day 7: Jack discovering Tony is still alive.
  • Day 8: Jack's assault on Logan's motorcade.
• Slow-Paced Beginning:
  • Many fans and critics were disappointed with the way Season 8 started out, due to the sheer amount of potential villains that ended up being wasted, the general slow pacing of the season, and Dana's infamous subplot with Kevin Wade. However, around the time Kevin Wade was killed, and CTU was hit with an EMP, the season started to get much better, and the sheer amount of Wham Episodes and Character Development led to a much more well-received second half.
  • A fair number of fans were unimpressed by the Salazar arc in Season 3's first half. However, the second half (where Stephen Saunders takes over as the Big Bad and Jack is forced to execute Ryan Chappelle) is near-universally regarded as one of the finest run of episodes the show has ever accomplished. In fact, there are a large number of viewers who regard the execution of Chappelle as THE defining moment of the series, even rivaling Teri's death.
  • Live Another Day was initially slammed for playing into every cliché; the show had built up, to the point where it was completely predictable and there seemed to be no point to bringing the show back. But the last four episodes piled on the shocks and twists, which won over some naysayers.
  • Legacy also suffered from this as well, for having way too many subplots early on in the series. It wasn't until halfway in when many of the subplots converged or were wrapped up and the show focused more on the major plots. Whether or not the series got better or worse (especially when Naseri came in) is debatable.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • This is usually the case whenever the show uses CGI, especially for explosions.
  • "Day 1: 6am - 7am" features very dim picture quality during the scene where Jack is driving to CTU. It's pretty obvious the scene was filmed in the middle of the day, with the video's brightness turned down in order to (poorly) simulate the early morning.
  • Habib Marwan's death in Season 4. Viewers had a ball ridiculing the awful green screen effect.
• Spoiled by the Format: Due to the show's tendency to end every episode on a cliffhanger, if a scene appears near the end of the episode, (usually the one after the split screen) you know that something bad is about to happen. This is especially true as the season is drawing to a close. For example in Live Another Day when Audrey goes to talk to the daughter of the Chinese consulate, you know that it isn't going to end well, because it's the near the end of the penultimate episode. However, even though you know that something bad will happen, sometimes you don't know what, which still creates some great suspense.
  • One of the reasons people doubted Heller's death in Live Another Day was the lack of a silent clock that normally confirmed major deaths or other shocking moments.
• Strangled by the Red String: While Jack's romances with Teri, Audrey Raines (at least in Season 5), and Renee Walker were all well-received, the same can not be said of Kate Warner, with there being no romantic chemistry and no obvious reason for the attraction between the two, and the season not even seeming able to make up its mind as to whether they actually were supposed to be romantically interested in one another. There were very few complaints when Kate was Put on a Bus in the first episode of the following season, without sharing any actual screentime with Jack.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • The Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: anyone who has ever came out against this in any context is either a tyrannical, authority figure with no third option to bring the terrorists down sans torture or an unwitting pawn of those same terrorists. Senator Mayer was the most reasonable objector but was still portrayed as naive about what it takes to get the job done. It doesn't help that 24 justifies the use of torture as an absolute necessity via the "Ticking clock scenario" that some who support enhanced interrogations in Real Life think is just as much of an everyday occurrence as in 24.
  • Similarly, one time one of Jack's prisoners had a lawyer come in. Even though it's easy to sympathize with Jack since they are working against a clock and we know that he's a terrorist, he still has the right to an attorney and due process until he is proven guilty in a court of law, making Jack's "How do you sleep at night?" comment come across as anarchical and petty.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Jack's verbal beatdown of Janis late in Day 7 was this. Let's just say that him telling her to shut up for once made a lot of fans pretty happy.
  • Erika getting shot in the gut by Sean, who was ironically the man she was having an affair with.
  • Not too many fans were upset when Marianne Taylor got shot to death by her own employers. Even Curtis barely raised an eyebrow.
    • Even Edgar stated that she deserved an even worse fate than what she went through. Granted, he had just gone through some traumatic events recently, but his attitude about her more or less reflected the audience's views.
  • Admit it: you were happy when Jack choked Dr. Barry Landes after he pried into his personal life too much.
  • Quite a number of fans couldn't help but nod in agreement when Jack angrily called Mark Boudreau an "idiot" for forging the President's signature and helping the Russians to impede Jack's duties.
  • In the third season, Tony getting fed up and bluntly telling Chloe that he was sick of her behavior served as this while she was still in Scrappy territory.
  • Agent Samuels from Season 6 blatantly tells Sandra Palmer multiple times that she's far too preachy than she needs to be, and that she only gets special treatment because she's Wayne's sister.
  • It's impossible to feel sorry for Rita Brady after Fayed coldly shoots her to death, especially after she willingly delivered Morris to him when she could've freed him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Despite making a great partner for Jack and Love Interest for Kim, Chase Edmunds never reappears after Season 3, meaning viewers would never find out how he dealt with being a father or the loss of his hand. Though he would later make a reappearance in the ambiguously canon Deadline novel set after Day 8, he ends up being killed off.
  • Ivan Erwich. He was The Dragon to Vladimir Bierko who managed to realize that the American "allies" he partnered with were trying to sabotage his evil plans. He had no problem harming innocent civilians, or even shooting a man in cold blood moments after he revealed his backstory to him. Just when it looks like he might be the Big Bad for Season 5, Bierko shows up, and kills him almost instantly for "wasting" a nerve gas canister.
  • Season 6:
    • Curtis Manning. After spending the previous two seasons as one of the most popular and badass characters in the series, he's killed four episodes in after attempting to kill Hamri Al-Assad due to Revenge Before Reason, a decision which many, including Curtis's own actor, felt was extremely out of character for him.
    • Graem, the mysterious Man Behind the Man to Charles Logan in Season 5, seemed a very intriguing character and many were excited to see what role he might have in the following season. Most fans were not happy with his brief appearance in Season 6, between the Ass Pull revelation that he's Jack's brother and his being anticlimactically killed after only appearing in three episodes.
    • Hamri Al-Assad. As a reformed former terrorist, he was a a very interesting and complex character completely unlike anything the show had seen before. Unfortunately, he's unceremoniously killed less than halfway through the season and, to add insult to injury, gets framed for attacking Wayne Palmer when he actually saved his life.
    • After going to the trouble of bringing him back when he hadn't been seen since Season 1 and had likely been forgotten about by most viewers, the anti-climactic way Milo Pressman was killed off struck many as a huge waste.
    • Ahmed Amar is everything that Behrooz Araz should have been back in Season 4. Unlike Behrooz, he cared about his cause, he was much less whiny, and much more willing to take risks despite his incompetence (not to mention he single-handedly killed Stan). His storyline could've showed him struggling to believe in his cause or had him gradually rise through Fayed's ranks and become one of his most valuable followers. Instead, he's shot to death by a CTU agent who couldn't keep his trigger finger under control, and then forgotten about.
  • Season 7:
    • Jonas Hodges. A gloriously hammy villain played by a massive star in Jon Voight who had been built as the season's Big Bad since Redemption, he's blown up with a handful of episodes to spare and replaced by the extremely dull Alan Wilson.
    • John Quinn. Badass? Check. Evil Counterpart to Jack Bauer? Check. Killed off after only appearing in two episodes? ...Check.
  • Some people feel this way about Belcheck. During Live Another Day he has an undying loyalty for Jack, just as loyal as Chloe is, and was pretty badass when he was in action. And yet he only appeared in 9 of the 12 episodes, and most of the time he was just standing around not really doing anything. And other than an off-hand remark about him being part of a Serbian crime group, and the fact that Jack saved his life once, we know nothing about his backstory. Many fans feel that if the show continues, that his character needs to be explored.
  • A lot of people feel that Tony Almeida was wasted in Legacy. Despite all the hype built around his return, he doesn't appear until the season is halfway over, and during his appearance, all he does is torture Henry Donovan and get into a shootout and brief fistfight with Carter. He could've been replaced by a random Mauve Shirt who knew Rebecca and it wouldn't have changed the story at all.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The early episodes of season 1 make it perfectly clear that CTU is behind the Palmer assassination, and that Jack is being targeted because he busted several of his corrupt fellow agents. After episode 7, though, that whole angle is dropped^note probably because of solidarity after 9/11 and the villains are revealed to actually be Serbian warlords.
  • In the season 1 finale, it was revealed Nina Myers was working for....someone. Even though she reappeared twice, it's never explained why she was a mole or who she was working with. A foreign government? Terrorists?^note A non-canon deleted scene from season 2 reveals she's working with the villain. Some kind of rent-a-mole dispatch office?
  • Season 2 ended on an incredible cliffhanger and the reveal of The Man Behind the Man...season 3 revealed that it had been resolved off-screen (later revealed to be the video game, but even that was arguably a little lackluster), and another one of the Season 2 masterminds (Alexander Trepkos) was never heard of again.
  • In season 3, Nina Myers comes back, working for some vague, unspecified group. Not only is it never revealed who they are, what they want, or whether it's the same group as in season 1, but Jack blithely doesn't ask her anything at all about it.
  • In season 4, the "corrupt defense contractor selling weapons to terrorists" plotline is abruptly dropped after episode 13, right as the show was getting into full-on conspiracy mode. Pointedly, episodes of 24 are always shot in pairs by the same director, except for those two episodes, implying the original episode 14 was scrapped. Seems like someone at FOX didn't like where it was heading....
  • Season 5 ends with Jack being abducted and shipped away by the Chinese government. Come Season 6 and...Jack is returned to the US in the first ten minutes, and the story moves on to an unrelated terrorist threat. Although the Chinese do reappear later on, most fans agree that that storyline is a weak shadow of what could have been.
  • Season 6:
    • The fourth episode concludes with the detonation of a nuclear weapon in Los Angeles as Jack severs his ties with CTU in the midst of a severe Heroic BSoD, displaying a drastic shift in the status quo. Within ten minutes of the next episode Jack snaps back into his usual mode and within the space of a couple hours the entire population of LA has seemingly forgotten about a nuclear attack that happened just miles away while the Bauer family Plot Tumor takes over the season.
    • For that matter, despite the storyline revolving around the Bauer family, Kim wasn't involved in the plot and her reaction to the fact that most of her family members are involved in terrorism is never touched upon. This robs her of an opportunity to have major character development and a chance to develop her relationship with Jack as well as finally forgive him / realize her mistake. The fact that she could have easily filled Josh and Marilyn's role (thus relieving the audience of two more Damsel Scrappy), just managed to make herself useful in season 3 and their relationship plays an important role in season 7 just made this worse.
  • Season 7:
    • In the middle of the season, Jack was set up for the deaths of two government officials, with the law falsely believing that he was attempting to avenge Bill's death and taking it out on anyone potentially involved. Jack also couldn't bring the guy who really committed the murders in to clear his name because he'd been attacked by and forced to kill him in self defense. Believing that Jack had crossed the line, the order was put out to shoot him on sight because he was too dangerous to be left alive. Although Jack being framed and wanted by the authorities was nothing new, being wanted dead or alive certainly was; before this whenever he was set up the law would just try to detain him. However, this potentially interesting spin on an old arc was quickly killed since the following episode after that cliffhanger then almost immediately had the FBI discover the existence of the real killer and learn that Jack really was framed, leading to him working with them once again before the hour was even halfway over, and making the previous two episodes that had been building this plot up completely pointless.
    • Originally Cara Bowden was supposed to be Mandy. That would have made the second half of the season far more interesting for two reasons. First of all, Mandy's connection to three separate terrorist plots before this would give more credibility to the idea that Wilson's cabal really did have a big hand in the plots of previous seasons. Second, considering Tony and Mandy faced off during Season 4, seeing them on the same side this time (and even possibly dating, assuming they still had the same relationship Tony and Cara did) would be an awesome way to represent Tony as a case of He Who Fights Monsters.
  • Charles Logan's Redemption Rejection after Season 6. Some people actually liked that Logan tried to redeem himself in Season 6, which was a breath of fresh air since the show never redeems any Big Bad or major villain, and those who skirt towards that line end up dying or are never heard from again. When Season 8 rolls around, everything that Logan went through in Season 6 (including being stabbed and nearly killed by his ex-wife) is never brought up and has little impact on his character, and he goes right back to being another major villain. Some argue that Logan got fed up with trying to do good and chose to focus on simply reviving his career, but it is still frustrating that the show didn't bother following through on this plotline.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: This may have set in for some viewers during or after season 5 when all but two major characters from season 1 had been killed off. Similarly, many newer characters added in seasons 2-4 had also been killed, written off or just forgotten about. Thanks to this and Anyone Can Die it became almost impossible to worry or even care about the possibility of new characters dying since by this point the show had become fairly predictable as far as character deaths go.
  • Renee Walker interestingly manages to escape this apathy. Fans took to her early on when she was added in season 7 and many were just as angry as Jack when she was murdered in the show's final season.
  • The end of Live Another Day, with many accusations that cheap shock deaths are the only thing the writers have left in their bag of tricks.
• Took The Bad Season Seriously: In lesser seasons, one could argue that Kiefer Sutherland is this trope. Entertainment Weekly critic Ken Tucker, in a review for the series finale, praised Sutherland's acting in the series as a whole, saying that even when the show got ridiculous and absurd, Sutherland's acting remained engaging and believable. Notably, despite the lackluster reception to Day 6, Sutherland's performance was strong enough to still earn him an Emmy nomination for that year.
  • Cherry Jones (Allison Taylor) got similar praise from fans; while rage about Allison's storyline ranged far and wide, most fans agreed that Cherry did the best she could with what she was given, and her best is fairly awesome.
• Tough Act to Follow: Season 5 received critical acclaim, record viewership, and the Emmy for Best Drama. What followed was a widely panned sixth season and an era of declining popularity, all overshadowed by the former glory of Season 5.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions:
  • The Trope Namer is Kim's bizarre subplot in season 2, in which she encounters a cougar in an event that Makes Just as Much Sense in Context,^note (Ironically, Kim's only actually trapped by the cougar for about five minutes of screentime spread out across two episodes; however, this sets up what's pretty unanimously regarded as the low point of the season, namely her being duped into becoming the prisoner of a lovesick survivalist. This in turn leads to an almost-as-derided subplot in which she gets caught in a convenience store hold-up, though that one's at least vaguely related to the overall storyline, depicting the start of the civil unrest that lasts through the remainder of the season) which has almost no overlap with the main plot of Jack tracking down a nuclear bomb that's set to blow up L.A., and exists mainly because Elisha Cuthbert was contracted to appear in every episode of the season even though the writers had no idea how to involve her in the main story. This was so derided that it was brought up in Elisha Cuthbert's next series, Happy Endings.
    Penny: What if you were, like, stuck in a trap in the woods and, like, a cougar was trying to eat you? Would you date?
    Alex: That's insane. Why would that even happen?
    Penny: I have no idea, forget that. 'Cause maybe your dad is the head of some elite counter-terrorist unit and he has 24 hours to—I don't know! The point is, would you date?
  • The first season was originally going to have Teri Bauer falling asleep for a few episodes (thanks to the show's Real Time format), since her storyline ended once she escaped from the terrorists that had captured her. However, the producers demanded that she stay in the show and so she ended up contracting amnesia and walking around not doing much for a few hours instead.
  • Jack's heroin addiction is given a lot of focus in the first half of season 3 without having any real impact on the plot, before being unceremoniously dropped halfway through.
  • Season 5 turns this on its head when a seemingly pointless subplot involving Lynn's drug addict sister ends up causing his keycard to fall into enemy hands, which in turn allows them to attack CTU.
  • The sixth season's story arc regarding Morris' alcoholism has similarly been identified as pointless by some fans.
  • Dana being blackmailed by her redneck ex-boyfriend in the first half season 8 has nothing to do with anything, and makes her being The Mole seem like a complete Ass Pull since if she was Evil All Along, she clearly would have just killed him instead of giving in to so many of his demands.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Behrooz Araz's storyline. The show tried its damndest to make his subplot sympathetic, but most viewers hated him with a passion and saw him as a typical angty teen who just so happened to be a terrorist relevant to the main plot.
  • Tony in season 7. It's clear he was supposed to be viewed in some sort of Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds light by the end, but the fact that the revelation regarding it is almost thrown in at the last second hasn't sit well with some people as well as his willingness to kill innocent people despite claims that they were never actually in danger, especially when compared to Jack's turn in season 8 where he still had some principles and was clearly suffering even as his actions became darker through the final third of it.
  • Dana Walsh's death from Season 8. While some fans were shocked to see her go, a number of viewers were surprised that the show made her death seem so shocking when the character in question had just tried to murder Jack Bauer, and killed two innocent people in the same episode. And considering that her character wasn't likable to begin with, some viewers were delighted to see the character's demise.
• Values Resonance: Season 2 came out a couple years after 9/11, so it was unavoidable that Islamic terrorists would be seen as the antagonists. However, the season went out of its way to showcase that both Middle-Easterns as well as Americans are more than capable of being innocent people as well as terrorists, and that prejudice against either side is wrong (the biggest example being Yusuf Auda, a Muslim intelligence officer trying to stop the terrorists, being beaten to death by three Americans for assuming he's a terrorist). It even shows how easy it is for someone to manipulate a group of people into hating the other for personal gain, given how Peter Kingsley, an American businessman, tried to start a war with the Middle East (which would incite hatred across the country) just so he could profit from it all. Given the plethora of hate crimes and the political divide that has swarmed America from the mid-2010s onwards, this moral holds true now just as much as it did back when Islamophobia was rampant. It also goes to show that it does not matter how "justified" you are or what "side" you're on: if you harm or kill someone from a certain group of people based on nothing but the group they're in and they turn out to be innocent, you are being prejudiced, you are in the wrong, and you deserve to be punished for it.
• Wangst: Behrooz, in spades. He whines about his girlfriend, his parents, his guilt over working for Marwan, and so on and so forth.
• Win Back the Crowd: The sixth season was heavily panned, making many, even hardcore fans, think maybe the show ran its course. The seventh season, beginning with 24: Redemption has won back the old fans and even a fair share of new ones along with the highest ratings ever for the series.

---