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** Frequent shots of the Capitol early in an episode.
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* TheFosterKid: Brennan and Sweets.
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** With ''Series/{{Rosewood}}'' as well. Daisy was the college roommate of a character on the series and came in to help on a case.
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** With ''Series/{{Rosewood}}'' ''Series/{{Rosewood|2015}}'' as well. Daisy was the college roommate of a character on the series and came in to help on a case.
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** Temperance "Bones" Brennan's PhDs are in forensics, anthropology, and kinesiology, explaining both why she's so good at studying dead bodies and why she's so insufferable.
** Jack Hodgins' PhDs are in entomology, botany, and mineralogy, which basically makes him the "bug and slime" guy.
** Jack Hodgins' PhDs are in entomology, botany, and mineralogy, which basically makes him the "bug and slime" guy.
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** Temperance "Bones" Brennan's PhDs [=PhDs=] are in forensics, anthropology, and kinesiology, explaining both why she's so good at studying dead bodies and why she's so insufferable.
** Jack Hodgins'PhDs [=PhDs=] are in entomology, botany, and mineralogy, which basically makes him the "bug and slime" guy.
** Jack Hodgins'
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DyingReconciliation: The episode "The Feud in the Family" death with the murder of the patriarch of a family that was involved in a [[FeudingFamilies feud with another family]]. Over the course of the investigation, it was discovered that the man wanted to end the feud as he was terminally ill.[[spoiler: He was murdered by someone from his family who was trying to keep the feud going so they could profit from lawsuits.]]
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* TheLastDance: "Superhero in the Alley" features a teenage boy who is into {{LARP}} and finds out that his childhood leukaemia is returning. [[spoiler:Rather than going to seek treatment, he dons a superhero costume and picks a fight with a man who he knows is a DomesticAbuser. He dies in the fight, but the resulting investigation exposes the abuser.]]
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** In ''The Movie in the Making'', The film crew is documenting the relationship between the Jeffersonian and the FBI, and throughout the film, all of their past members such as Vincent Nigel-Murray, Lance Sweets, and Zack Addy are mentioned. [[spoiler:TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers. Guess who returns in the season finale?]]
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** In ''The Movie in the Making'', The film crew is documenting the relationship between the Jeffersonian and the FBI, and throughout the film, all of their past members such as Vincent Nigel-Murray, Lance Sweets, and Zack Addy are mentioned. [[spoiler:TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers. Guess [[spoiler:Guess who returns in the season finale?]]
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* ArtisticLicense - Science:
** The squints routinely eat and drink in the lab, even using their equipment to cook. To say this is a no-no is an understatement. No matter how carefully you clean, you have to assume that every surface is contaminated with highly unsafe materials and eating is the fastest way to get those materials inside your body where you don't want them.
** They also routinely fail to wear eyewear. Given the reactive chemicals they work with, the unknowns of the remains they're dealing with (meaning unknown materials), and the wildly unconventional experiments Hodgins &co perpetrate, everyone should be wearing ear and eye protection at all times, even absent ''normal laboratory protocol''.
** Hair. Fibers are a big deal. Everyone should be wearing hairnets and (for the relevant men) beard nets. Beyond that, everyone should be wearing face masks because they're dealing with dangerous materials. Hell, they should probably be wearing ''gas'' masks. The lack of face masks actually nearly kills Cam and is a plot point regarding how a killer got cancer, yet no one seems to learn from it.
** Hodgins naming a fungus strain after Angela. He could add her name to the strain as a new variation, but couldn’t just create a new name that way.
** Side note, they should probably be more careful about condoms. That's not laboratory science, though. That's basic bedroom/volvo stuff.
** The squints routinely eat and drink in the lab, even using their equipment to cook. To say this is a no-no is an understatement. No matter how carefully you clean, you have to assume that every surface is contaminated with highly unsafe materials and eating is the fastest way to get those materials inside your body where you don't want them.
** They also routinely fail to wear eyewear. Given the reactive chemicals they work with, the unknowns of the remains they're dealing with (meaning unknown materials), and the wildly unconventional experiments Hodgins &co perpetrate, everyone should be wearing ear and eye protection at all times, even absent ''normal laboratory protocol''.
** Hair. Fibers are a big deal. Everyone should be wearing hairnets and (for the relevant men) beard nets. Beyond that, everyone should be wearing face masks because they're dealing with dangerous materials. Hell, they should probably be wearing ''gas'' masks. The lack of face masks actually nearly kills Cam and is a plot point regarding how a killer got cancer, yet no one seems to learn from it.
** Hodgins naming a fungus strain after Angela. He could add her name to the strain as a new variation, but couldn’t just create a new name that way.
** Side note, they should probably be more careful about condoms. That's not laboratory science, though. That's basic bedroom/volvo stuff.
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* {{Anticlimax}} / AnticlimaxBoss (hopefully): [[spoiler: For all his preparations Pelant didn't expect Booth to show up early and for Bones to let Booth shoot him (she'd previously admitted that Pelant's genius was "beautiful" and wanted him taken alive, possibly becoming a BoxedCrook)]].
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* {{Anticlimax}} / AnticlimaxBoss (hopefully): {{Anticlimax}}: [[spoiler: For all his preparations Pelant didn't expect Booth to show up early and for Bones to let Booth shoot him (she'd previously admitted that Pelant's genius was "beautiful" and wanted him taken alive, possibly becoming a BoxedCrook)]].
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'''Tropes A to L'''|[[Bones/TropesMToZ Tropes M to Z]]
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'''Tropes A to L'''|[[Bones/TropesMToZ L''' | [[Bones/TropesMToZ Tropes M to Z]]
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!!''Series/{{Bones}}'' provides examples of the following tropes:
'''Tropes A to L'''|[[Bones/TropesMToZ Tropes M to Z]]
----
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:A]]
* AbnormalAmmo: The ice and blood bullet that Brennan was shot with in ''The Shot in the Dark''.
* AbortedArc: Gormogon. The 2007 writer’s strike cut it short and forced the ending to be greatly changed.
* AbusiveParents
** Booth's father. Booth was abused a lot by him until Pops rescued him and Jared.
** One of Sweets' foster fathers whipped him with something.
** Brennan's foster parents locked her in a car trunk for breaking a plate.
** Abernathy's stepfather. Abernathy wanted to kill him because it was so bad.
** Aubrey's embezzling father isn't physically abusive (as far as we know) but he's definitely cold-hearted and manipulative, enough to [[spoiler: pretend to have a family to support in order to wring money from his own son]].
* AccentSlipUp: [[spoiler: Intern Arastoo Vaziri who isn't actually "fresh off the boat", but is pretending to be so he won't have to take any grief for his devout Muslim beliefs]].
* AccidentalMarriage : Angela, so drunk she [[OopsIForgotIWasMarried ''forgot'']] it (and implied that she didn't think it counted; she had no idea the paperwork had been filed).
* TheAce: Booth and Brennan as a team; any random activity their case gets them involved in, one of them will usually reveal themselves to be surprisingly talented at it.
* ActorAllusion: Towards Avatar, Angel and various other things other people did.
** The Vegas episode ''The Woman in the Sand'' combines Boreanaz's role of Angel (who also spent time in Vegas) with a role Angel himself played as vampire stuck in the fifties, rat-pack style. Booth spikes his hair up, dons greaser clothes and suspenders, faking a Bronx accent outta ''Theatre/GuysAndDolls''. Plus, there's a mention of Hyperion Hotel on the show (episode "The Girl with the Curl"); the Hyperion Hotel was a major setting for ''Angel''.
** Booth, like Angel before him, feels that he has to atone for the lives he's taken as a sniper. And they both play detective style roles.
** Booth is reading a ‘'ComicBook/GreenLantern’’ comic in the bathtub in ''The Pain In The Heart''. Boreanaz did voice work in one of the franchise’s animated series.
** Joel Moore [[CelebrityParadox played a major character in]] {{Film/Avatar}}, and ''The Gamer in the Grease'' has Fisher and his nerd pals camping outside for the premiere.
*** Someone says during the camp out that they’re “up against freaks and geeks” which is a reference to Sweets, who’s one of said nerd pals, being played by "{{Series/Freaks And Geeks}}" alum John Francis Daley.
** In the episode ''The Death of the Queen Bee'', Sweets reads up on Ray Buxley, the custodian of Dr. Brennan's old high school, and how he was a suspect in the death of one of her classmates. Sweets then comments that he finds him "Creepy. He's like, "[[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Freddy]]" creepy...". Oh, and did I mention that Mr. Buxley is played by Creator/RobertEnglund?
* AdamWesting: David Faustino in ''The Radioactive Panthers in the Party''.
* AdoptingTheAbused:
** Seeley Booth and his younger brother Jared were taken in by their grandfather Hank due to their mother's abandonment and their father's physical abuse and alcoholism. While Seeley long believed his father had abandoned him, Hank later reveals he told his own son to leave the boys once he discovered the abuse.
** Lance Sweets is revealed to be this in "Mayhem on a Cross", when Brennan sees the whip scars on his back. He was put in an abusive foster family as a young child, but was adopted at age 6 by a kind older couple, who passed away just before he started working with Booth and Brennan.
* AerithAndBob: Seeley and Jared Booth. Seeley is a legitimate name, but it sounds a little odd when compared to his brother's.
** Then there’s Camille and Arastoo as far as the couples go.
* AffablyEvil: Max before his forced retirement. He was a robber and killed several people but he was still likable as a person and the murders were usually to protect his family. He started out courteous and nonviolent as a thief, but when he and his wife hooked up with a much more violent crew, they found themselves in over their heads and ended up on the run from murderers. That's when Max found himself more than capable of murder.
* AffectionateNickname:
** In addition to Bones by just about everyone, Brennan is also called "Sweetie" by Angela.
** Angela sometimes calls Jack “Hodgie”.
** Daisy likes to call Sweets "Lancelot" or "Sweet Lancelot".
** Abernathy and Hodgins call each other "Opie" and "Thurston" respectively.
** Jessica calls Aubrey “Superman”. She also has a habit of calling Hodgins “Curly”.
** Dr. Wyatt introducing himself as "Gordon. Gordon Wyatt." leads to Booth referring to him as "Gordon Gordon" and telling others to do the same.
* AffectionateParody:
** ''The Body in the Bounty'' has Bones guest star on a children's show called ''[[Series/BillNyeTheScienceGuy Bunsen Jude the Science Dude]]''.
* AfterlifeAntechamber: Arguably what looked like Brennan’s childhood home in ''The Shot In the Dark'' if she indeed wasn’t hallucinating as she insisted.
* AgentScully
** No matter how often Sweets is useful or just plain ''right'', Brennan ''always'' dismisses it as coincidence. This has been sort of wink-and-nudge acknowledged as Brennan not necessarily believing it's a coincidence, but making herself believe she believes it's a coincidence, which is not the same thing. Witness the time she tries to get Sweets to explain, and he blows her off with "You wouldn't believe me anyway." The curiosity clearly eats her alive.
** {{Lampshade}}d (somewhat) by Booth in the first episode, when his way of turning over a new leaf with Brennan is by referring to them as Mulder and Scully. He makes this reference again in [[BrickJoke the final episode]], saying they're "better than Mulder and Scully" (Brennan still has no idea who they are).
** The Booth/Brennan partnership and UST has often been compared to the Mulder/Scully partnership and UST. Quite a few ''Bones'' fans were ''Series/TheXFiles'' fans first. However, since Booth and Brennan are not (thankfully) Expys of Mulder and Scully, the personalities are different and so is the interaction and dynamic between partners. The Booth/Brennan romantic relationships was (presumably) planned from the start, giving a more logical progression to their UST (also adds realism).
* AgentsDating: Booth and Bones will often discuss domestic relationship stuff while doing their respective jobs (they're partners on the field that are a forensic anthropologist and FBI field agent respectively) or they'll talk about the job while cuddling in bed together. Other times their date nights/lunches together will be interrupted by a call from The FBI/forensic team at the same time for the same case they'll be working on.
* AgonyOfTheFeet: Booth was held captive during his army service and tortured with beatings to the soles of his feet. The scars are still there on the skin and bones both.
* TheAlcoholic:
** Booth's dad and until recently Booth's brother.
** In season six, Vincent Nigel-Murray is a recovering alcoholic (though his road to recovery is almost entirely PlayedForLaughs).
* AlcoholicParent: Booth’s dad; Booth said he only stopped drinking long enough to hit him or Jared.
* AllAreEqualInDeath: In ''The Titan on the Tracks'', a rich industrialist faked his death, then was beaten severely by his accomplice in order to cover his (the accomplice's) participation. The following takes place in his hospital room:
-->'''Brennan:''' When can we talk to him?
-->'''Doctor:''' Any time you want, as long as you don't expect a response. This man has severe brain damage. Off the record, he's not going to wake up. Best case scenario, he spends the rest of his life hooked up to feeding tubes.
-->'''Brennan:''' This is one of the richest men in the country.
-->'''Doctor:''' Most of the time, that might mean something. Not now.
* AllPsychologyIsFreudian: Played straight by psychologist Sweets who often utilizes Freudian theories and language. However, psychiatrist Gordon Wyatt subverts this stating that "Freud is largely discredited, so to hell with him." Brennan actually feels that Wyatt's psychology makes more sense.
* AlmightyJanitor:
** In security guard form, Micah from ''The Doctor in the Photo''. [[InsomniaEpisode Provided he wasn't merely]] [[HelpfulHallucination a figment of Bones' sleep-deprived imagination.]]
** Hodgins is a variation in that he practically owns the Jeffersonian while working in the lab.
* AlmostOutOfOxygen: Brennan and Hodgins wind up in this situation when the Gravedigger buries them alive. Due to the relatively hard science nature of the program, Dr. Hodgins [[spoiler: manages to [[MacGyvering MacGyver]] a carbon dioxide scrubber, and gets a text message out]].
* AlternateUniverse:
** In the season 4 finale, there is one during [[spoiler: Booth's post-surgery dream]]. Booth and Brennan are the owners of a night club called "The Lab", where a murder is committed. Booth's brother and Cam become detectives in the case, Vincent is the DJ, Arastoo is an investor wanting to buy the club, Max is a corrupt politician, Sweets is the bartender and has a band called Gormogon, Angela is the hostess, Caroline is the club's lawyer, Fisher is the chef, Wendell is the bouncer, Clark is a hip-hop impresario called C-Synch, Daisy is a waitress and Hodgins is a writer.
** In ''The 200th in the 10th'' Brennan is a detective fighting sexism on the force during the 1950s and Booth is a jewel thief framed for murder.
* AlwaysGetsHisMan: Booth says this. Brennan turns it into NoManOfWomanBorn by saying she’s a woman, not a man.
* AlwaysSaveTheGirl: Whenever Bones is in danger, Booth won't hesitate to jump in to the rescue.
* AmbitionIsEvil: While not evil, Aubrey wants to be more than a mere FBI agent and as such he's hesitant to get involved with "gut-feeling" squintern because she used to be a member of an extremist environmental group, among other unusual aspects of her past. [[spoiler: He later realizes what a hypocritical jerkass he was being by judging her on her past since anyone would be suspicious of ''his'' past as the son of a multi-million dollar embezzler.]]
* AmoralAttorney: Not a direct example as Bones isn't an attorney, but the trope is explored in ''The Girl in the Fridge''; Bones and an OldFlame turned {{Rival}} are opposing experts in a murder trial. Bones clinically delivers her conclusions, her ex makes somewhat less professional conclusions while chatting up the jury - and implies that Bones isn't really as smart as she sounds. In between sessions, her ex states that he's merely "playing the game" - he's supposed to argue that the evidence supports the defendant, just as she's for the prosecution. In-universe, Bones' consultant argues for impartiality and sweet-talking the jury, but sees nothing wrong with her ex using inside knowledge (which he got by ''sleeping'' with her) to attack her character instead of the evidence (the prosecution objects and the judge sustains[[note]][[http://remediallawnotes.blogspot.com/2014/07/character-of-witnesses.html Character of Witnesses]]; "Personal opinions on the moral character of a witness, being usually too general, sweeping or subjective, are excluded." Bones' ex isn't saying that she's reading the evidence wrong, he's saying she's a lousy scientist. Such a broad accusation is ''absolutely wrong'' in a courtroom where she is not the defendant.[[/note]], but Brennan's consultant waves it off as a technicality; "He looks like a regular guy who's not allowed to speak the truth because the stupid rules get in the way."). This leads into the same problem as Amoral Attorneys - that ''scientists'' aren't supposed to be impartial, but to have agreed in advance as to who is guilty no matter which side they're on.
* AndStarring: Of a sort: all of Verizon [=fiOS=]' episodes descriptions from episode two of season 10 onward include "and Special Agent Aubrey" (IE "Booth/Bones/the team and Special Agent Aubrey investigate...").
* AndTheAdventureContinues: The series finale implies this, [[spoiler: declaring that the lab will be rebuilt with Hodgins ("KING OF THE LAB!!!") becoming interim leader while Cam is away on her honeymoon]].
* {{Angst}}: [[spoiler: Angela and Hodgins are brimming with sadness after learning they both carry a gene that gives their child a 1/4 chance of being blind, but later Hodgins decides to make the best of it, saying they should take up hobbies that don't require sight (piano for him and sculpture for her). When their baby is born he's perfectly healthy]].
** Jessica has been just fine about her "educational cooperative" (''[[InsistentTerminology not]]'' [[InsistentTerminology a commune]]) breaking up due to the head's retirement until the very end of ''The Geek in the Guck'' when she reveals she's a complete wreck because that place was her home and everyone was family to her.
*** She's also annoyed that Aubrey doesn't want to get involved with her just in case her past environmental activism messes up his chances for higher office, and she's annoyed that she's annoyed because they aren't even dating (Bones doesn't care so long as her statement that "being upset makes her work harder" is true; Angela is more sympathetic).
* {{Anticlimax}} / AnticlimaxBoss (hopefully): [[spoiler: For all his preparations Pelant didn't expect Booth to show up early and for Bones to let Booth shoot him (she'd previously admitted that Pelant's genius was "beautiful" and wanted him taken alive, possibly becoming a BoxedCrook)]].
* AntiIntellectualism: A RecurringElement is how Bones and some squints are smart enough to catch crooks with microscopic bone fragments, but not smart enough to confuse, embarrass, or intimidate {{Muggles}}.
** Hodgins gets chewed out on a regular basis for his impromptu tests -- Using spam and artificial bone to determine exact circumstances of death by incineration make perfect sense to Hodgins, Zack and the viewer, but Cam threatens to ''[[GeorgeJetsonJobSecurity fire them on the spot]]'' for acting without her permission.
--->'''Booth''': ''Defense lawyer hears "Spam", he makes a joke, and the jury laughs, and everything we get from the Jeffersonian is framed as 'goofy science', you know, from a bunch of squints with no connection to the real world.''
** Bones herself gets harangued for being smart because most people are slack-jawed morons in comparison -- she nearly loses an otherwise OpenAndShutCase in ''The Girl in the Fridge'' because the opposing expert is chatty and handsome.
--->'''Bones''': ''The jury likes Michael better than they like me, apparently that's a problem. Are they stupid?''\\
'''Goodman''': ''Compared to you, yes they are stupid. However, compared to you most of the world is a little stupid.''
* AnyoneCanDie: While there's not CharactersDroppingLikeFlies, and the major deaths are all very separated, main characters aren't actually safe most of the time.
** The first season finale has [[spoiler:Bones' mother]] as the victim of the week, despite her actually having been dead for quite some time.
** In Season 6, during the manhunt for Broadsky, [[spoiler: Vincent Nigel-Murray]] gets shot in the heart and dies.
** In the Season 10 premiere, [[spoiler:Lance Sweets dies]].
** Season 11 premiere has [[spoiler:Booth's brother]] as the victim of the week.
** Season 12 sees [[spoiler:Max Keenan, Brennan's father]] die.
* ApologeticAttacker: [[spoiler: Agent Kenton]] apologizes to Brennan before preparing to murder her and frame it on a serial killer Booth is after in ''Two Bodies in the Lab'', saying he'll kill her before inflicting the serial killer's signature mutilations. Brennan is understandably not appeased by this and puts up a fight before Booth arrives shortly after he regains the upper hand.
* ArbitrarySkepticism: Hodgins is a conspiracy nut but doesn't believe in the supernatural or the afterlife (ironically this comes up during a crossover with ''Series/SleepyHollow''; he was also trying very hard to convince himself that whatever he saw on a ''Film/TheBlairWitchProject''-esque film in ''The Headless Witch in the Woods'' was just a wisp of smoke).
* ArcNumber: 447, which in the Grand Finale is revealed to mean [[spoiler: Times of change for Booth and Brennan]].
* ArcVillain: The Gravedigger, Gormogon, Jacob Broadsky, Cristopher Pelant, the Ghost Killer, the Puppeteer, and Kovac.
* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Bones loves talking about alpha males among humans, even though that's a model for ''wolf'' behavior that has long since been deprecated, even by the man who developed it, as it was developed by looking at wolves raised and living in captivity.
** In ''The Critic in the Cabernet'' Booth gets his sperm analyzed and everyone brings up that he had 28.8 million sperm in 3 mL. Although anything over 1 million sperm per mL is capable of fertilization, the average sperm count for a male in the United States is 120 million in ONE mL. (Or 360/28.8 = 12.5 times Booth's sperm count).
** ''The Pathos in the Pathogens'' involves a virus that is eating away the victim's corpse. By definition, viruses require living cells to reproduce.
** ''The Source In The Sludge'' seems to have confused lampreys, which are parasitic on ''live'' prey, with hagfish that scavenge dead carcasses.
* ArtisticLicenseChemistry: In ''The Twisted Bones in the Melted Truck'', the bones in question were "melted" by exposure to a magnesium fire. Magnesium burns at 5000°F+ which would have been more than hot enough to melt the bullet which was found intact within the skeleton (lead melts at 622°F, steel at 2500°F).
* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: The Cantilever Group, to which Hodgins is the sole heir, is frequently stated to be beyond wealthy, and one of the "them" that Hodgins believes in. In ''The Corpse in the Canopy'' [[spoiler: Pelant hacks the accounts and drains the entire fortune of the Cantilever Group, leaving Hodgins penniless. First, no organization of that size would only have liquid assets. Second, an organization of that size would be "too big to fail" and couldn't simply disappear without massive repercussions and at least one government would have stepped in. Third, ''banks keep records''; Pelant's actions would have been reversed inside an hour.]]
* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Booth being descended from John Wilkes Booth. He could be related and descended from another Booth brother but John Wilkes Booth himself had no known children. Plus, the Booth surname itself died out because only females lived to even have descendants that are alive now.
** While "The Witch in the Wardrobe" does manage to avoid one of the most common pitfalls of this trope (assuming BurnTheWitch applied to Salem), it ''does'' create a pressing victim who never existed. Giles Corey was the only recorded victim of pressing. It would be an archaeological discovery in itself to find another verified witch trials victim who slipped through the cracks in extant records, but the episode portrays it as if this additional pressing victim ''was'' known to have existed and the only thing to be investigated is how it's connected to the modern death.
* ArtisticLicenseLaw: Brennan gets sentenced to six months probation for assault in season 11, and Booth is assigned as her probation officer. Not only does Booth ''not'' have the required training to work as a probation officer, but he and Brennan have been married for several years by this point, which would create a '''massive''' conflict of interest and therefore no judge in their right mind would assign him to supervise her.
* ArtisticLicensePhysics:
** ''The Science in the Physicist'', featuring a murdered physicist who had worked at the Large Hadron Collider, had another physicist say he was glad the BodyOfTheWeek was dead because of the [[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/03/29/no-the-lhc-wont-destroy-the-earth/ LHC black hole scare]]. Actual physicists had discredited the idea almost as soon as it was brought up because [[UnrealisticBlackHole black holes do not work that way]].
** In ''The Lady on the List'', when Sweets is upset that he might be replaced by a computer named VAL, Bones helpfully points out that the computer's objectivity would skirt the pitfalls of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, thus implying that the main problem with a human profiler is that he can't know both where he is and how fast he's going.
** In the episode ''The Knight on the Grid'', when Zack turns on a laser we can see the laser tracing out its path.
** Occurs even earlier (first season) when Hodgins uses two lasers to examine the chemical composition of a bone.
* ArtisticLicense - Science:
** The squints routinely eat and drink in the lab, even using their equipment to cook. To say this is a no-no is an understatement. No matter how carefully you clean, you have to assume that every surface is contaminated with highly unsafe materials and eating is the fastest way to get those materials inside your body where you don't want them.
** They also routinely fail to wear eyewear. Given the reactive chemicals they work with, the unknowns of the remains they're dealing with (meaning unknown materials), and the wildly unconventional experiments Hodgins &co perpetrate, everyone should be wearing ear and eye protection at all times, even absent ''normal laboratory protocol''.
** Hair. Fibers are a big deal. Everyone should be wearing hairnets and (for the relevant men) beard nets. Beyond that, everyone should be wearing face masks because they're dealing with dangerous materials. Hell, they should probably be wearing ''gas'' masks. The lack of face masks actually nearly kills Cam and is a plot point regarding how a killer got cancer, yet no one seems to learn from it.
** Hodgins naming a fungus strain after Angela. He could add her name to the strain as a new variation, but couldn’t just create a new name that way.
** Side note, they should probably be more careful about condoms. That's not laboratory science, though. That's basic bedroom/volvo stuff.
* AsHimself:
** Billy Gibbons of Music/ZZTop has appeared several times as himself -- Angela's dad!
*** Which is to say, Billy Gibbons is Angela Montenegro's father in-universe. RealLife Gibbons and Creator/MichaelaConlin are unrelated.
** Cesar Millan showed up in one episode, in an obvious plug for his own show. Several scenes were devoted to showcasing his dog-taming skills as the main characters oohed and aahed.
** [[Series/MarriedWithChildren David Faustino]], who took over one victim-of-the-week's glurgey movie and transformed it into an action schlock-fest.
* AsYouKnow: A fair bit, but notably PlayedForLaughs in ''The Source in the Sludge'' when Daisy, having failed her orals, spends the rest of the episode answering Bones's case-relevant questions as if on an exam.
* AssholeVictim: A few over the years. The guy on the bowling league in ''The Change in the Game'' was disliked by just about everyone else. The Gravedigger is probably the best example, though, when Broadsky killed her. No one was too upset to see a serial killer killed.
* AtonementDetective: Booth was an Army Sniper before joining the FBI. In the Pilot he tells Bones that he wants to catch at least as many murderers as people he killed in the line of duty.
* AttendingYourOwnFuneral: [[spoiler: Booth]] at the end of the third season.
* AttentionDeficitOohShiny: A murder suspect in season 3 is easily distracted by the shiny table in the interrogation room.
* AwayInAManger: It wasn’t at Christmas but Brennan did give birth in a barn because there was no room at the inn.
* AwesomeButImpractical: When Brennan finally does get to use the HandCannon she picked up in an earlier season... it's way too large to be practically used, and a ricochet injures Booth. The villain of the week even mocks the gun because it only has five shots.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:B]]
* BabiesMakeEverythingBetter: [[spoiler:Six seasons of UST followed by instant RelationshipUpgrade as soon as Bones is pregnant]]. [[spoiler: Daisy and Sweets were together for a long time (longer than Booth and Brennan were officially coupled) but broke up in Season 9. In the Season 10 premiere it's revealed they kept hooking up and Daisy is now pregnant with Sweet's son and it appears they're going to stick together for good. And then someone involved with a government conspiracy kills Sweets...]]
* TheBabyOfTheBunch: Sweets, due to his young age compared to the rest. Booth especially regards him as an annoying kid early on and keeps saying he’s a 12 year old. He was dubbed “baby duck” in one episode.
* BackForTheDead: [[spoiler:The Gravedigger]] in season 6's ''The Bullet in The Brain'', and [[spoiler:Agent Flynn]] in season 9's ''The Sense in the Sacrifice''.
* BackgroundMusic: Billy Gibbons gets his very own background riffs in ''The Killer in the Crosshairs''. Then again, it is Billy Gibbons.
* BadassBoast: In ''The Verdict in the Story'' we get one as badass as one can get in a realistic series, and from Clark Edison no less!: "I shave, sir. I have a driver's license. I've won a couple fistfights. I've saved a life. I've lain with a woman. I've been hustled at pool. I've defied my father's wishes. I have broken hearts and I have been heartbroken. So by all the markers of this society, I ''am'' a grown man."
* BadassBookworm
** In addition to her scientific prowess, Bones is a skilled and aggressive martial artist.
** Her father is no slouch either, since he was a science teacher before and after he was a dangerous fugitive.
** Don't underestimate Arastoo either. He is quite skilled with nunchaku.
* BadassLongcoat: Booth dons one from time to time. Bones herself occasionally slips into her own trench coat as well.
* BadBadActing: In ''The Knight on the Grid'': Bones, trying to trick Gormogon into thinking they're transporting his [[MadArtist artwork]]. He's clever enough to realize it, and takes advantage of the situation.
* TheBadGuyWins: Pretty much every Pelant episode [[spoiler: (except the one where he's shot dead, of course)]] ends like this. Even the one where [[spoiler:Booth puts a bullet in his face]] ends on the note that Pelant is still out there, and the team can do nothing but wait for him to attack again.
* BadLiar: Brennan. Booth doesn’t take Aldo’s suggestion of getting lost in a cave and telling her the truth about Pelant’s threat because he fears she won’t be able to keep the truth hidden.
** Aubrey also has his moments, such as when he tries to tell Brennan that Booth is at an important meeting, but she figures out almost instantly that Booth is really having an eye exam.
* BaitAndSwitchGunshot: Sweets’ death. Booth and Brennan assume he was shot when Aubrey says shots were fired, but the shots were Sweets wounding his attacker. Sadly, they still did injure him with blunt stomach trauma and he still dies from internal bleeding.
* BalkanBastard: Kovac and his dad. His dad was a Balkan warlord Booth killed as a sniper and he wants revenge no matter who he has to brutally torture to find Booth.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: PlayedForLaughs in ''The Rocker in the Rinse Cycle''. Cam is looking for a gynecologist for her teenage daughter and discusses some options with Brennan at the crime scene. Booth asks them to change the subject. Then what Booth assumes is an eyeball tumbles onto the ground at his feet.
--> '''Cam:''' That's not an eye.
--> '''Booth:''' Then what is it?
--> '''Cam:''' Well, put it this way, our victim was male.
--> [{{Beat}} as Booth comprehends the implication]
--> '''Brennan:''' *cheerfully* Would you like us to go back to talking about lady parts?
* BeardOfSorrow: Booth gets one during his prison stint between seasons 9 and 10.
* BeastlyBloodsports: The VictimOfTheWeek in ''The Finger in the Nest'' is a veterinarian who was trying to shut down a dogfighting ring.
* BeautifulCondemnedBuilding: When Booth and Brennan are looking for a house, Booth gets a great price on one that was heavily damaged in an FBI raid. He nervously shows it to Brennan, who declares that she can see the "bones" of the house and recognize its potential.
* BecomingTheMask: Whenever she and Booth go undercover, Brennan gets way into character.
* BeepingComputers: Whenever the interface of a computer moves or changes.
* BelligerentSexualTension: Aubrey and Jessica, what with them being uncertain if they're just meeting for a congratulatory drink or an actual date, deciding to deliberately style themselves after Booth and Bones, and being sassy about it the whole time. [[spoiler: They hook up but break up in the series finale. It's implied in the series finale that Aubrey hooks up with "quirky glasses-girl" Karen.]]
* BeQuietNudge:
** In ''The Tough Man in the Tender Chicken'', when Brennan has had a fight with Angela, she says she usually doesn't have problems with people. Sweets starts questioning that, but then Booth quickly kicks him under the table to shut him up.
** In ''The Dentist in the Ditch'', Brennan tries to do the same thing when she and Booth are having drinks with Booth's brother and his girlfriend and Booth takes issue with something about their relationship. However, she accidentally kicks Jared instead.
* BerserkButton
** Bones flips out whenever Booth is hurt or threatened. In ''The Wannabe in the Weeds'', she grits her teeth, screams, and [[spoiler:guns down a middle-aged stalker who shot Booth. Booth later faked his death so that he could go deep undercover]] for exactly the first ten minutes of the following episode. When he came back, she was so upset, she hit him. [[spoiler:She also smacks the Gravedigger with a metal briefcase]].
** Likewise, Booth for Bones (see the end of ''The Woman in the Garden'', where Booth threatens a gang leader).
** Ask Booth any questions about his abusive father and he goes from happy guy to DeathGlare in a heartbeat.
** Ditto with asking about his army experiences, especially the torture or his sniper activities. And definitely don’t say he’s anything like ColdSniper Broadsky.
** [[spoiler:Booth is related to Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth; the fact that he's also a sniper makes him doubly sensitive about it]].
** It's just one time, but Dr./Chef Gordon Wyatt gets a good one in ''The Dwarf in the Dirt''.
-->'''Wyatt:''' '''''FRY COOK?!'''''
** Aubrey has a special bone to pick with financial fraudsters, seeing as his father was one himself.
** She may not get violent over it, but even if true DO NOT refer to Dr. Brennan as average in anything especially her intelligence or she will become very indignant about it and even vindictive trying to prove you wrong. Even direct evidence that it's true won't get her off your back most of the time. This also extends to anyone referring to her daughter Christine in such a way, especially teachers.
** Arastoo got rather ticked off by an intern who kept assuming all Muslims are terrorists and gave a pretty epic WhatTheHellHero when he’d had enough. He’s also fiercely defensive of his girlfriend and eventual wife, Cam. Hurt or annoy her and he WILL get in your face.
** Hodgins is prone to anger management issues in general, but he will completely lose it if Angela or Michael Vincent are threatened or hurt. The others had a lot of trouble getting him to act rational and think clearly in ''The Corpse in the Canopy''. And he was very upset in the finale when Angela was hurt and Booth was risking things further in desperation over Brennan’s injuries.
** Hurt Max Keenan’s family and prepare to die horribly. He’s actually a likeable guy for a criminal, but he will very easily kill to protect his family. Even if he has to do it with his bare hands.
* BestFriendManual: Angela for Bones. She often gives others tips on interacting with Brennan
** Booth inverts it by explaining things in the world to Brennan.
* BetaCouple
** Angela and Hodgins [[spoiler:until season 4, where it seems like WriterOnBoard was trying to avoid ShippingBedDeath by throwing in a ToiletSeatDivorce]].
** Sweets and Daisy later on [[spoiler: until they broke up in Season 9 (he didn't realize that when he asked her to move in with him it was as good as a marriage proposal to her; at least he gave her the apartment), then revealed to have hooked back up in the premiere of Season 10, and then Sweets was killed at the end of the episode]].
** Aubrey and Jessica in later seasons.
* BigBrotherInstinct:
** Booth towards Sweets and, to a lesser extent, all the Squinterns. They’re his people and he gets angry when they’re messed with. Sweets is a cross between this and seeing Booth and Brennan as surrogate parents due to his childhood being bad.
** Christine to her baby brother Hank. She was once found to have taken the box of Jared’s remains to climb on so she can get in Hank’s crib and comfort him.
* BigDamnHeroes: Attempted by Hacker in ''The Proof in the Pudding''. Alas for him:
-->'''Hacker:''' Ten seconds earlier and I would have been the hero, right?
* BigEater: Aubrey. He usually either has something in his mouth or he’s looking for something to put in it, and he's seen chomping down on a food item in every version of the opening titles he's in.
** He [[AvertedTrope averts]] this in ''The Tutor in the Tussle'' in anticipation of confronting his father. Booth lampshades this after the second time Aubrey declines an offering of food.
* BirthDeathJuxtaposition:
** The death of [[spoiler:Vincent]] and [[spoiler:the birth of Angela and Hodgins' son]] an episode afterwards. [[spoiler:Plus Brennan seeking comfort with Booth over Vincent's death led to her becoming pregnant]].
** [[spoiler: We learn that Daisy is hugely pregnant with Sweets' son not long before Sweets is killed in the first episode of Season 10]]. She gives birth later in season 10.
* BittersweetEnding:
** ''The Graft in the Girl''. The team has busted an illegal tissue harvesting ring that's selling cancerous tissue samples, [[spoiler:but Deputy Director Cullen's daughter Amy is still going to die of terminal bone cancer.]]
** ''The Hole in the Heart''. The Squints pay tribute to [[spoiler:Vincent Nigel-Murray]] by singing his favorite song as they place his casket in the hearse.
** They later pay a very similar tribute to Sweets with the same song, also his favorite, as they scatter his ashes in ''The Lance to the Heart''.
* BlackComedy: Working around corpses tends to bring that out in people, especially Booth and Hodgins.
** How the corpses are found practically always falls into this. Episodes often start with someone trying to have fun or going about their business and stumbling onto a body in a darkly amusing way.
* {{Blackmail}}: Season 9 has a ring that goes back to J. Edgar Hoover himself. Brennan blackmails a corrupt Judge to get Booth freed when he’s framed by people in the blackmail ring and wrongly accused of murder, landing him in prison. She says she’s never blackmailed anyone but thinks she has everything.
* BlandNameProduct:
** "Sea Chimps" (Sea Monkeys) were used in one of Hodgins's and Zack's experiments.
** Also ''Hottie Student Body'', a thinly-disguised ''Girls Gone Wild''.
** And a drain cleaner called "Clog-O."
** Aubrey has a “Forensics for Knuckleheads” book in his office. It’s a thinly disguised copy of the “For Dummies” books of which “Forensics for Dummies” is a real title.
** “Busted by Bill”, a fake version of ''Cheaters''.
* BlastingItOutOfTheirHands: Booth does this to Broadsky to foil an assassination attempt when he can’t get a clear shot at Broadsky himself. Broadsky’s hand breaks and that realization proves useful in the final takedown.
* BlatantLies: Dmitri Vladov is an importer of window cleaner. He has no knowledge of any vodka.
* [[BlondBrunetteRedhead Black, White, Asian]]: Cam, Brennan, and Angela. It fiddles around with the stereotypes, too: Angela is the cool one, Cam is the reserved one, and Brennan is the nerdy one (granted, they're all nerds, but she takes the cake).
* BloodFromTheMouth: Sweets is bleeding from the mouth when Booth and Brennan find him as he’s dying.
* BodyInABreadbox: Corpses turning up in unlikely places is such a hallmark of the series that most episodes are named for where the VictimOfTheWeek is found.
* BookDumb: Booth, contrasting with Brennan's TVGenius; there is evidence that this is more an act of ObfuscatingStupidity on his part, so that the various [[{{InsufferableGenius}} Insufferable Geniuses]] he works with are less threatened by him, but we don't know the degrees in which these tropes are present. Probably he's just picked up a lot more from working with them than he lets on. Booth is usually presented as more intuitive with a high emotional intelligence which makes sense for someone who has suffered abuse. Several episodes generally present him (and others) acknowledging that within context of the team, his "specialty" is the emotional aspect of such cases. It comes up a lot less though because within context of having to present a legal case and identifying bodies, gut instincts generally don't cut it.
* BoomHeadshot: [[spoiler:The Gravedigger meets her end when a sniper uses a high-caliber rifle to invoke this trope, and we get to see [[YourHeadAsplode her head explode,]] on screen, in glorious high def]].
* BornInTheWrongCentury: It's often acknowledged that Max would be considered a hero in the old west.
* BottleEpisode: Several examples, most of which involved being trapped in the lab. The most notable is probably season 6's ''The Blackout in the Blizzard'', which finds Wendell, Angela, Cam and Hodgins stuck in the lab while Booth and Bones are stuck in an elevator with seats from old Veterans Stadium (with Sweets helping them from outside the elevator). As with many bottle episodes, there is lots of character development, including Bones and Booth agreeing to try a relationship at a future date.
* BouquetToss:
** Brennan at Booth’s mom’s wedding. She insists she won’t be the next to marry but she actually is.
** Cam’s wedding has one as well.
* BowlingForRatings: ''The Change In the Game'' where a mangled body was found in a bowling alley pin setting machine.
* BrainyBrunette: Bones; Angela and Cam aren't slouches in the brains department either. They’re all intelligent dark haired women.
* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece:
** Hodgins and Wendell do this in ''The Blackout in the Blizzard'' (with a healthy dose of {{MacGyvering}}) when they are trapped by a blizzard without power, and they have to solve the case quickly because the murderer might be contagious. The clearest example is when Hodgins actually manages to vaporize some of the metal shrapnel and analyze it. Justified because they work IN a museum.
** Angela had to borrow an Amiga computer "from the third floor" to process a 20-year-old floppy disk found with the VictimOfTheWeek in "The Boy in the Time Capsule".
** They had to break out an old Kennedy-era replica rifle for Booth in ''The Proof in the Pudding'' [[spoiler: so that he can prove that the corpse, presumed to be John F. Kennedy, was not killed by two gunmen. Unfortunately for Booth, while he did replicate the wound, it turns out that the second hole was an ''entry wound'', invalidating the test anyways]].
** In ''The Male in the Mail'', Hodgins used antique weapons on fake bones to compare striation patterns to the bones of the victim. The closest match came from a guillotine, which led Booth and Brennan to discovering that the killer dismembered the body with an industrial paper-cutter, which left similar striations.
** One Valentine's Day episode, after Booth was put out with the idea of romance in general after the abrupt end of his relationship with Hannah, Brennan cheered him up by meeting him in the FBI rifle range with a pair of Thompson sub-machine (or "Tommy") guns, in honor of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
** In ''The Next in the Last'' Hodgins uses an early mass-spectrometer from the Manhattan Project exhibit to analyze a pizza just because [[spoiler: he's moving to Paris and thinks it'll be his only chance to use it (he and Angela change their minds about moving)]].
* BreakingTheCycleOfBadParenting: Booth. His father was abusive and often drunk but Booth is shown to be loving and playful with Christine and Hank.
* BreakUpMakeUpScenario:
** Hodgins and Angela break up in season 4 and then get back together and marry a season and a half later
** Sweets and Daisy twice. First it’s Sweets not wanting to wait a year while she goes to Maluku with Brennan and then they get back together before splitting after planning to move in together and Sweets panicking when he thinks Daisy thinks they’ll marry soon. Then they reunite again only for him to die.
** Cam and Arastoo. Arastoo breaks up wanting to get a job after getting his doctorate, but he can’t fight his feelings and comes back to Cam a few episodes later. They marry in the series’ end.
* BreatherEpisode: Broadsky was taken down in the penultimate episode of season 6, with a named CharacterDeath to boot. The actual finale is a goofy BowlingForRatings episode where Booth inexplicably goes undercover in a mullet and hick accent, and the victim was so [[AssholeVictim annoying]] that the people that had to deal with him wanted them to go light on the murderer.
* BrickJoke
** The Gravedigger is introduced in season 2. Then they waited until season 4 to bring [[spoiler:her]] back in. And then until season 5 [[spoiler:to actually convict her]]. And finally, in season 6, [[spoiler:she meets her graphic, but well-deserved end]].
** The Angela Forever tattoo that Hodgins involuntarily receives in season 4. Finally revealed to Angela in season 5. She does not approve. Followed in season 6 by a Dad tattoo on the other bicep.
** In ''The Princess and the Pear'', Fisher winds up sleeping with a suspect. In ''The Gamer in the Grease'', he mentions he's had nearly 100 conquests and gets another one while waiting in line to see ''{{Film/Avatar}}''.
** After learning of Booth and Bones' [[spoiler:mistletoe kiss]] in ''The Santa in the Slush'', Sweet's first reaction is [[spoiler: "was there tongue?"]]. Two seasons later, in ''The Parts in the Sum of the Whole'', Sweets learns of [[spoiler:Booth and Bones' real first kiss, during their first case before the pilot]] and is pretty dang shocked. Bones immediately replies [[spoiler:"there was tongue contact"]] before he can even ask the question.
* BritishRoyalGuards: When Brennan and Booth go to London, they suspect a Buckingham Palace guardsman of killing the VictimOfTheWeek, but it turns out he only beat the guy up for sleeping with his sister. While waiting for the guard to finish his tour Booth taunts him, knowing that he can't react. When Booth discovers the truth about the two, he apologizes to the guard who very subtly acknowledges Booth with his eyes.
* BrokenAesop: In ''The Goop on the Girl'', a suicide bomber at a bank appears to detonate his bomb using the signal from an angry left-wing radio show. Booth accuses the host of spreading "poison" throughout the airwaves and causing the attack, even if he was not legally responsible. The episode ends with the radio host giving a long apology on air, lecturing on the dangers of media-stoked rage, and ending his radio show. Nobody told him, however, that the radio show ''didn't'' inspire the bombing. The only reason the show's signal set off the bomb was because it was very close to the frequency used by the actual robbers.
* BrokenPedestal:
** Broadsky was Booth’s mentor who became a ColdSniper and went on a killing spree, including his MistakenIdentity shooting of Vincent Nigel-Murray.
** Michael Stires in ''The Girl in the Fridge'' was one of Brennan’s anthropology mentors and ended up being a jerk who worked for the other side of the case.
* BrutalHonesty: ''The Pinocchio in the Planter'' centers on a murder connected to a group which practices radical honesty, a whole philosophy based on this trope. Cue a lot of blunt comments and answers to the investigators.
* BunnyEarsLawyer:
** Brennan, Hodgins, Zack and ''all'' the interns. To the point where, in stark contrast to the rest, Clark actually seems like this simply for being so very normal.
** Bunsen Jude the Science Dude, a children's TV show host, who veers between competent anatomist and goofy ''Barney the Dinosaur''-type.
** Booth is a milder example. His trademark loud socks and "Cocky" belt buckle would not be acceptable attire for a less competent federal agent.
** The interns have been working on their various quirks between seasons, but the quirk-180 is just as jarring -- for instance, Edison (Mr. Separation-of-work-and-play) suddenly asking if Cam is still dating the gynecologist (she is) and pestering the others for relationship advice on a Valentine's Day episode.
* BuriedAlive: The Gravedigger’s method of operation was burying [[spoiler:her]] victims alive, including Brennan and Hodgins and later, Booth.
** Also the first victim discovered in ''The Mummy in the Maze''.
* TheBusCameBack:
** [[spoiler: Zack]]. After the season 3 finale, he made 3 more appearances and was never seen again after the 100th episode. [[spoiler: ...Until the Season 11 finale, that is. In the final season he's exonerated.]]
** [[spoiler: Sully]]. He appears for four episodes in Season 2, then goes off sailing, claiming he'll return. [[spoiler: It took him 10 years to do so.]]
** Dr. Gordon Wyatt. Once he became a chef and Sweets took over as the team's resident shrink, he got onto the bus. He returned to [[spoiler: examine Sweets's old files to try and exonerate Zack]].
* BusCrash: [[spoiler:Jared Booth]] and [[spoiler: Aldo Clemens]] show up as murder victims after some time absent from the show.
* BusmansHoliday: Bones is bad at vacations. She doesn't actually take vacations. She goes somewhere else to do her job for free, hip deep in genocide victims. The one time we see her actually try to take a typical vacation is early in the ninth season, [[spoiler:during her and Booth's honeymoon]]. She's so bored she takes a trip to the local morgue and finds a case.
* TheButlerDidIt: Deconstructed in ''The Woman in the Garden''. The butler says he did it to protect his employers' reputation, [[spoiler:but it's implied that he's ''falsely confessing'' for that reason. They even vow to provide him with "the finest legal representation". And all law enforcement officers present immediately pull the how-stupid-do-you-think-we-look expression]].
* ButNotTooForeign: DoubleSubverted with Arastoo. He shows up as a thickly accented, fresh off the boat, Arabic stereotypical Muslim who observes all of the customs of his faith. It turns out that the accent is fake and he is an urban intellectual who puts on the FOB act to keep people from questioning his devotion to the Muslim faith.
* ButNowIMustGo: Max was like this when his story started, showing up and then leaving before he could be arrested.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:C]]
* CallBack:
** The first time Angela goes into false labor in ''The Hole in the Heart'', Hodgins [[PanickyExpectantFather freaks out]] screaming "Where the hell are my KEYS!?!?!?!" repeatedly. The following episode, when Angela really goes into labor, after insisting everything is under control, and calm, and as soon as he's off-screen, screams "Where the hell are my KEYS!?!?"
** Bones and Hodgins were kidnapped and buried alive by the Gravedigger in season 2. Seven years later, she reveals that it was Booth to whom she wrote her "Goodbye, world" note. Specifically, [[spoiler: she incorporates the note into her vows when she and Booth finally get married]].
** When Zack told Sweets in Season 4 that [[spoiler: he had not actually killed the lobbyist, but would have done so if Gormogon had told him to]], Sweets told him: "People have no idea if they're capable of ending a life until they're put in that situation." Eight seasons later, near the end of ''The Hope in the Horror'', Zack [[spoiler: is attacked by the Puppeteer, who was his own doctor at the asylum and had framed him for the murders. Zack is incapable of killing him, even in self-defense]].
** Zack says to Sweets in ''The Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond'' that he's stronger that he looks. This comes into play in the S12 premiere when he defends himself against the Puppeteer.
** Way back in the Season 1 episode ''The Soldier on the Grave'', Booth told Brennan about how in his sniper days he shot a Bosnian warlord at his son's birthday party. Eleven seasons and over 200 episodes later, [[spoiler: that child is back for revenge against Booth]].
** In season 2, Brennan and Booth rocked out to Foreigner's "Hot Blooded" and later in season 12, when the song played on the radio, Booth referred to it as "their song".
** In ''The Proof in the Pudding'', Booth shot out the Jeffersonian's glass door to get inside. In ''The Day in the Life'', [[spoiler: Booth is unable to get out of the lab (which has a ticking bomb) because the glass was made bulletproof after the previous incident]].
** The series finale’s last scene is a shout out to the pilot’s last scene in the way Booth and Brennan are shown walking off together.
** In ''The Baby in the Bough'', Brennan entertains Andy, the baby, with a finger wiggling “dancing phalanges” game. In season 7, we see her do the same thing with her own daughter, Christine.
* CampGay: Zigzagged with StraightGay in ''The Cheat in the Retreat'', where a gay couple are both rather effeminate but also happily debate what the greatest boxing match of all time was with Booth and an older man.
* CampStraight: In ''The Bikini in the Soup'', the wedding planner's assistant is very effeminate in manner and speech, but winds up being completely straight.
* CannotSpitItOut: Booth and Brennan at different times. And when one of them can, the other one doesn't want to hear it.
* CaptainErsatz: [[Series/BillNyeTheScienceGuy Bunsen Jude the Science Dude]]
* CarpetRolledCorpse: Booth guesses that this happened to a skeleton found in an unlikely posture in "The Verdict in the Story", but Bones shoots down his theory that the body was left rolled up in a rug that had rotted away.
* CarryingTheAntidote: The killer in ''The Pathos In The Pathogens''. It’s surmised that the killer would have it in case he was infected himself, so they need to find him before Arastoo succumbs to the virus.
* CasanovaWannabe:
** When Dr. Nigel-Murray starts going to Alcoholics Anonymous and has to make apologies to anyone he's harmed, he brings up that he bragged about sleeping with Angela... and Bones... and Cam...
** Dr. Fuentes, who flirts with the lab women and has a karate move laid on him by Brennan when he won’t stop flirting and give her due respect.
* TheCastShowOff
** Eric Milligan is trained in musical theater, so the show had Zack sing an amazing rendition of "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing".
** John Francis Daley's band Dayplayer made an appearance in the season 4 finale.
** In ''The Wannabe in the Weeds'' Dr. Brennan tells the cast that her mother insisted that Temperance sang "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" better than Cyndi Lauper. Emily Deschanel gets the chance to prove that later in the episode.
* CatapultNightmare: The beginning of ''The Boy with the Answer'' has Brennan waking up from a Gravedigger nightmare this way.
* CatchPhrase
** Brennan's "I don't know what that is/means."
** Also, whenever she feels it necessary to explain something, she often begins with, "Well, anthropologically speaking..."
** There's also her going [[DontExplainTheJoke "Oh! I get it, it's funny because..."]]
** In "Aliens in the Spaceship", Hodgins and Brennan are kidnapped. When the team realizes, Booth tells Zack he's going to have to be Brennan. Guess what his response was?
** Hodgins and Zack have "King of the Lab!"
** Angela is a fan of saying, "Awkward, awkward, very awkward."
** Brennan always has the same reaction to anyone (mostly Booth) who points out that she shot a man: "He was trying to set me on fire!"
** Caroline calls everyone "chér" or "chérie".
** Jude's "A-''mazing!''"
* TheCavalryArrivesLate: In ''The Proof In The Pudding'' Booth's boss charges in with a full FBI squad saying this is now under FBI jurisdiction... eight seconds after Booth disables TheMenInBlack holding them hostage.
* CelebrityParadox
** Played with as Temperance Brennan, who is based on the main character in a series of books by Kathy Reichs, herself writes a series of books about a forensic scientist named Kathy Reichs.
** Joel Moore, who plays Fisher is also in ''{{Film/Avatar}}''. This would not be a problem, except Fisher appeared in ''The Gamer in the Grease'', which has an ''Avatar''-centric subplot about him getting free tickets to the movie, and hatching a scheme with Hodgins and Sweets to keep a place at the front of the line. Ironically enough, [[spoiler:he winds up missing the movie completely]].
** The same character also comments on being a fan of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. Amusing, [[{{Series/Angel}} given who he works with]].
** Much more subtly, Hodgins mocks Zack for "watching reruns of ''{{Series/Firefly}}" in Season 1. Six episodes later, [[Creator/AdamBaldwin Jayne]] [[spoiler:backstabs them on a case]].
** One of the most memorable moments of the series is Bones performing Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" in Season 3. And then two seasons later, Music/CyndiLauper gains a reoccurring role as Angela's psychic friend Avalon. Who, at Bones and Booth's wedding, sings "At Last" which was covered by Cyndi Lauper.
* CerebusCallBack: "I don't know what that means", one of Brennan's recurring lines since the pilot, gets this treatment in the GrandFinale. [[spoiler:Brennan says "I don't know what that means" when confronted with bone evidence because she has a serious contusion that compromises her ability to work thanks to Mark Kovac's bombing]].
** Inverted with "King of the Lab", also in the finale: [[spoiler:While Cam's away from the Jeffersonian for a few months, Hodgins will be in charge. So he'll literally be the king of the lab!]]
* CharacterBlog: The Bones iPad app has this in the form of Sweets' journal entries.
* CharacterShilling: For Hannah Burley in the sixth season...there’s a lot of talk about how perfect she is but she turns out not to be good for Booth and turns down his proposal. She also wanted to say she was friends with Brennan but it never really showed that much.
* CharacterizationMarchesOn: Bones. At first, she comes off as cold and heartless, but as the series goes on, more "layers" to her are opened up. She is actually a warm and caring person but has learned how to compartmentalize those feelings, as Sweets pointed out numerous times.
* ChasteHero
** Averted. Bones hooks up with more men than any other female lead not portrayed in a misogynist manner on American television, ever. She once dated two men at the same time, one for sex and the other purely for conversation. When they inevitably meet when one arrives to pick up Brennan early, they're not amused. She even discusses society's gender roles and sexual hangups from an anthropological perspective that flummoxes her partner Booth.
** More recent episodes do the same thing such as Bones reasonably justifying the choice of several teenage girls to have children without the father, skip college, and live together. Booth, being a practicing Catholic, is flummoxed.
* ChekhovsGun: Requisite for a detective story.
** Somewhat inverted once, in that the only time we see Booth securing his gun in his home's hidden safe, it's the only time he might have use for it: there's a wanted killer waiting for him in the living room.
** Also, it seems, [[ChekhovsGun Chekhov's Bank Account]]. Practically anytime that it's mentioned that Bones is really really rich, by the end of the episode she donates large amounts of money to a good cause. Except in the season 6 premiere, when she pays Wendell a large sum of money so he doesn't have to work for tuition, without the audience being reminded beforehand about her wealth. Also, at the end of the seventh season premiere, Bones is looking for houses for her and Booth to move into and she casually mentions that one, which is obviously a mansion, costs "only" $3 million, at which point Booth almost chokes on his beer because he wants to pay for half of the house.
** In ''Death in the Saddle'', [[ChekhovsGun Chekhov's Quippage]]. Whilst discussing the body ''du jour'', the team serenades a typically unaware Brennan with the theme song to Mister Ed, followed by Brennan's horse research online and her trying the joke where horses sleep in hotels on Booth (who naturally gets it--as he says, he's got a five year old son). Wouldn't you know it, the victim in question is named Ed Milner and does pony play in an inn as "Mister Ed".
** A literal example is Bones' [[{{BFG}} hand-cannon]]. The subject of much Freudian dialogue throughout the series, it comes in handy when Booth has to shoot a serial killer through a metal door.
-->'''[[spoiler:Geller]]:''' You're carrying the 50-caliber 500. Well, that's five shots. ''(cocks his shotgun)'' And by my count... ''(snaps the shotgun)'' ...you only got one shot left. That's one dumbass gun to bring to a shootout!\\
'''Booth:''' One shot. ''(BLAM!)'' One hell of a shot.
* ChekhovsGunman: Though he wasn’t seen onscreen in season 1, Kovac probably counts. Booth told Brennan about killing a warlord at the guy’s son’s birthday party, and the boy is a man and the season’s villain in season 12.
* ChekhovMIA: Bones's parents. They’re missing in season one, then her mom’s remains are identified in the season finale, and her dad soon becomes a major character.
* {{Chickification}}: The title character is a trained marital artist and competent marksman who isn't shy about using either on bad guys when the situation warrants... for the first season or so. Afterwards these skills are rarely seen again and Bones becomes completely helpless when a killer is within 20 feet of her and has to be rescued. The worst example is with Pelant, who Bones has the opportunity to stop a few times and she just stands there until he says his piece and gets away. However, it's implied that she's been consciously adopting a more feminine role in response to Booth's presence. In the season 6 premiere, she's shown beating up a group of armed men with a shovel. When she tells Booth about it later, he expresses surprise.
-->'''Booth:''' You beat up armed guerillas?\\
'''Bones:''' I had to. You weren't there to save me.
* ChristmasEpisode: Three, ''The Man in the Fallout Shelter'', ''The Santa in the Slush'', and ''The Goop on the Girl''.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Possibly as a side effect of being a LongRunner, numerous ''Bones'' characters have disappeared from the face of the Earth:
** Dr. Daniel Goodman, who was last mentioned to be on sabbatical. [[LongBusTrip In the Season 2 premiere]].
** Brennan's brother Russ and his family, it's especially noticeable in Brennan's wedding and [[spoiler: Max's funeral]]. However, he is mentioned in [[spoiler: the case of the latter]].
** Intern Finn Abernathy.
** Others include agents Payton Perrota and Genny Shaw, FBI director Sam Cullen, Booth's boss Andrew Hacker, Cam's ex-boyfriend Dr. Lidner, Sid Shapiro (though [[RealLifeWritesThePlot the actor's death definitely justifies lack of recent appearances]]), and Booth's ex-girlfriend/Parker's mom Rebecca Stinson (once again, this is a case of RealLifeWritesThePlot; see ''Series/GreysAnatomy'').
* CirclingVultures: Used at least a couple of times - once when the heroes were looking for some remains and saw vultures circling so they knew that that's where the remains were, and once when they were lost in the desert and saw vultures circling over them.
* CircusEpisode: In ''Double Trouble in the Panhandle'', the remains of a set of conjoined twins are found on an oil field. When they find out the twins worked at a circus, Bones and Booth go undercover to find the culprit.
* CoitusInterruptus: Sweets and Daisy get walked in on at least twice.
* ColdBloodedTorture: Happens to Booth in one episode. He says he's had worse. It’s revealed that one of the worst things was the soles of his feet being tortured when he was captured as an Army Ranger, and it was very severe.
** Done to people connected to Booth's [[spoiler:assassinating a Serbian war criminal]], even tenuous ones like [[spoiler:a little old lady whose only connection was being Booth's former squadmate's frequent customer, who was only tortured to torture the guy]].
* ColdSniper: Broadsky, the anti-Booth. He had no trouble killing a bunch of people to get his message across.
* CollegeWidow: In [[Recap/BonesS4E24TheBeaverInTheOtter "The Beaver in the Otter"]], the VictimOfTheWeek, an underachieving college student, had been carrying on an affair with the college President's wife. Reading between the lines, it seems that she regularly finds young college boys to have affairs with behind her husband's back.
* ComicRolePlay: When the Squints are re-enacting a crime, you can bet it's going to end up as this. Particularly when one of them tries to role play as Booth simply to try and come up with a theory to why a crime was committed when he's not available (they're the science people, he's the people person).
* ComicallyMissingThePoint: Being incredibly literal minded, both Brennan and Zack frequently fail to understand other people when they're joking or speaking metaphorically.
* ConcealmentEqualsCover: Not when [[FriendlySniper Booth]] has a {{BFG}}, as one episode's villain learns while trying to use a steel door for cover.
* TheConspiracy: Booth gets mixed up in one led by a corrupt judge that sends three Delta Force agents to attack him and Brennan, destroying their home, and then framed him for murdering the agents, sending him to prison. It also resulted in Sweets’ death before it was over.
* ConspiracyTheorist: Hodgins.
** At least one was oddly plausible; he believes that old, rich families secretly rule the world. He is actually a member of one of these families. Another was actually confirmed by a government official when he suggested it as a viable tool, although it turned out to be nowhere as cloak and dagger as he imagined (it came down to looking up information that was available in public records, but the way he described it made it sound like there was a dossier already prepared for every human being the US government knew existed).
-->'''Hodgins:''' You call it conspiracy theories, I call it the family business.
** ''The Proof in the Pudding'' features a team of secret service agents 'commandeering' the lab and the team, requiring them to examine a set of bones. They're firmly told not to speculate about the deceased's identity, but as the evidence mounts it looks more and more like they're examining the remains of President UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy. [[spoiler:If it ''is'' JFK, then the evidence they uncover all but proves the existence of [[WhoShotJFK a second gunman, and a cover-up]] ]].)
* ConsultingAConvictedKiller: ExploitedTrope. Imprisoned SerialKiller Howard Epps works with an accomplice on the outside to [[JackTheRipoff commit copycat crimes]] for the sole purpose of making the FBI (and Dr Brennan, in particular) consult him on the case. He very purposefully leaves a trail of clues for the FBI to follow, most of which can’t be understood without talking to him and listening to the hints he drops into conversation.
* ContaminationSituation:
** The first season's Christmas episode, ''The Man in the Fallout Shelter''. The entire team is exposed to an infectious body.
** ''The Pathos In The Pathogen'' has a contaminated body brought in and Arastoo is infected and nearly killed by a virus carrying needle hidden in it.
* ContinuityNod: Oh so many of them, especially in later seasons. It'd be really tough to list them all. Just know there are many episodes that to get the fullest experience, you need to get the nods.
** ContinuityCavalcade: "The End in the End" is the best example; fitting for a finale. Among the things and events brought up or seen one way or another are: [[spoiler: a photo of Hodgins and Zack from season 1, the plaque in memory of Vincent Nigel-Murray, Sweets's book on Booth and Brennan (finally published!), a photo of Max with Brennan at her wedding, many mentions of the B&B moments over the years, and a few of Brennan's memories of her interns]].
* ContrivedCoincidence: Often but ''The Mummy in the Maze'' takes the cake with two huge ones. First, the bodies of both of the killers victims, killed a year apart, being found separately, in different locations by random innocent bystanders within 24 hours of each other. Second, the same suspect, who knew both victims, having been near where both bodies were dumped but not being guilty, although the second one could be justified by the killer having made a conscious attempt to frame him by dumping bodies in places he visited.
* ConvenientlyAnOrphan: Dr. Brennan, whose loss is used to explain and excuse her (seemingly?) detached approach to humanity.
* ConvulsiveSeizures: Arastoo when he’s dying from a virus in ''The Pathos In The Pathogen''. He’s given an anti-serum but it fails to work and increases his heart rate until he seized.
* CoolOldGuy:
** Max Brennan - Retired and often seems kind of harmless but threaten his family and you’ll be sorry.
** Billy Gibbons - Tests Hodgins’ character pretty thoroughly before accepting him, including two instances of knocking him out and tattooing him.
** Hank Booth - Ex-soldier who wasn’t afraid to stand up to his abusive son to save his grandkids.
** [[Creator/StephenFry Gordon Wyatt]]- Psychiatrist-turned-chef who has a funny way with words during Booth’s therapy sessions and is secretly a heavy metal fan and ex-rockstar.
* CopKiller: A couple
** The corrupt judge who had his guys beat Sweets to death. Federal agent killer, but still counts.
** The kids who leave a bomb in a body that kills four cops, badly tears up Aubrey and ultimately paralyzes Hodgins. They mostly wanted thrills but it went far worse than they wanted.
* CopKillerManhunt: After Sweets is killed in ''The Conspiracy in the Corpse'', everyone is determined to take down the guy who did it, with Booth nearly going rogue to do it himself.
** Also the aftermath of four cops dying in “The Doom In The Boom”.
* CopAndScientist: Booth and Brennan, respectively.
* CopsNeedTheVigilante: The show is particularly terrible about this. Agent Booth will tell Dr. Brennan to step in ''in the middle of an interrogation'' if a suspect lawyers up. She dives in and steals evidence right in front of him. The entire team colludes to hide that one of their own tampered with evidence in an investigation he should have recused himself from. They should have the worst record of any team ever for case closure, yet somehow they manage a high solve rate.
* CorruptedData: Given [[HandWave lip service]] where even though it's stated to be corrupted Angela will regularly reconstruct data and it will be good as new.
* CourteousCanadian: Dr. Douglas Filmore, who Bones insulted so hard his arm stopped working, is Canadian. The entire episode he first appears in full of references to Canadian politeness. When told that he should yell at Bones, he says that he can't -- he's Canadian.
Canuck: Canadian.
* CrammingTheCoffin: The "same grave" variant is used in ''The Twist in the Plot'', though it was already occupied when the murderer hid the second body there.
* CreatorsCultureCarryover: In the episode "Mayhem on a Cross", Norwegian police are depicted as wearing what appears to be riot gear and guns, violently kicking in the door spurring a fight between policemen and musicians and concert goers. In reality, Norwegian police are typically unarmed and many policemen may only arm themselves in extreme situations, such as when approaching a suspect they know to be armed.
* CrimeTimeSoap: Sudden conversational switches from details from the murder victim to details of personal life is a show standard.
* CripplingTheCompetition: In ''The Plain in the Prodigy'', the VictimOfTheWeek had done this to himself shortly before he was killed: he slammed his right hand with a desk drawer to break it, in order to remove the temptation of going to a music school to study piano.
* CrossOver:
** With ''Series/SleepyHollow'' for their respective [[{{HalloweenEpisode}} Halloween Episodes]].
** With ''Series/{{Rosewood}}'' as well. Daisy was the college roommate of a character on the series and came in to help on a case.
* CrushingHandshake: In ''The Plain in the Prodigy'', Booth meets Cam's daughter's new boyfriend. After greeting him enthusiastically, Booth throws in some not-very-veiled threats about treating the girl right, including mentioning that he used to be a sniper, and finishes off with a handshake that leaves the kid wincing and rubbing his hand.
* CryptidEpisode: "The Truth in the Myth" focused on the Chupacabra.
* CulturalTranslation: The original novels were partially -- sometimes mostly -- set in Montreal or North Carolina, wheras the show is set in Washington D.C. This gets a nods in the pilot, where Brennan tells Booth the nearest forensic anthropologist other than herself is in Montreal.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:D]]
* DadTheVeteran: Booth’s abusive father and Booth himself. Edwin Booth was damaged by his war experience and it’s indicated it drove him to alcohol and abusing the kids. Booth was an Army Ranger and saw way more war than he wants to remember.
* DamnYouMuscleMemory: For the final sniper cat-and-mouse showdown with Booth, Broadsky, as trained snipers are taught to do, camped out on the high ground. Unfortunately, he forgot that in their previous encounter [[spoiler:Booth [[BlastingItOutOfTheirHands shot his rifle out of his left hand]], mangling it; therefore he can only rest the gun barrel on his arm and is incapable of gripping the barrel and aiming downwards. This allows Booth to do the exact same thing to his ''other'' hand before he can change cover]].
* DarwinistDesire: Dr. Brennan initially justified her interest in having a child with Booth by claiming he possessed favorable genetic traits that would complement her own, she later decided she wanted to have a baby via IVF and decided that Booth had the best genes for it. Then the plan went by the wayside when Booth was diagnosed with an early-stage brain tumor. [[spoiler: They end up having sex, with Bones accidentally getting pregnant and having a daughter. Later they also have a second child after getting married.]]
* DatingDoSiDo: Angela and Hodgins dated, then Angela dated Wendell then she dated Hodgins again and married him. Cam dated Booth (twice), who then eventually dated Bones and married her. Cam eventually went on to date, break up with, date again and marry Arastoo. Off in their own little corner is Daisy and Sweets who dated for quite a long time, then Sweets dated Jessica who would later date Aubrey. Sweets reunited with Daisy shortly before he died.
* DeadGuyJunior
** One of the names Angela and Hodgins' baby gets is [[spoiler:Vincent, after Vincent Nigel-Murray]].
** Booth names Parker after Corporal Edward Parker, a friend of Booth's from the Army Rangers.
** Booth and Brennan name their daughter [[spoiler:Christine Angela Booth, after her mother]].
** Inadvertent one: [[spoiler: Sweets is killed in the same episode that revealed Daisy is pregnant with his son whom she has already named Lance]]. Ends up subverted in the end, as Sweets’ wish to name the baby Seeley wins out. Lance is his middle name though.
** [[spoiler: Booth and Brennan's son's name is Hank, after Booth's grandpa]]
* DeadPersonConversation:
** Brennan and her mom in ''The Shot in the Dark''. It’s ambiguous if she was seeing a ghost or hallucinating.
** Ditto Booth seeing his dead army buddy in ''The Hero In The Hold''.
* DeadpanSnarker: Everyone, to a certain extent.
** Bones especially, though. Subverted in that much of the time, Temperance isn't aware she's snarking.
-->''(head falls off a body hung from a tree, and Bones catches it)''\\
'''Bones:''' I need an evidence bag.\\
''(rest of the body falls)''\\
'''Bones:''' [[GonnaNeedMoreX I'm gonna need a bigger bag]].
** Cam, being the OnlySaneEmployee at the Jeffersonian, does this. A lot.
** Also Caroline Julian is ''made'' of this trope -- everything she says is both deadpan and snarky.
* DeathInTheClouds: In ''The Passenger in the Oven'', they're taking a plane to China when a dead body is found, and they have to discover and arrest the murderer before they touch down or else the case becomes "property" of China.
* DemotedToExtra: Even though [[spoiler:Mark Kovac]] is the BigBad of both season 12 and it's two-part finale, he only appears briefly in that finale, has no dialogue, and dies somewhat unceremoniously in a shootout after his more notable role in the first episode he appeared onscreen.
* DenouementEpisode: The series tends to do this.
** The penultimate episode of Season 4 reveals Booth has a brain tumor. The actual last episode is in an AlternateUniverse dream where Booth and Bones are married and running a bar, and ends with Booth waking up having post-surgery amnesia.
** The penultimate episode of Season 5 features the trial and conviction of recurring villain The Gravedigger. The final episode ties up loose ends as members of the team [[BreakingTheFellowship go their own ways]].
** Season 6's penultimate episode has Vincent Nigel-Murray killed by a ColdSniper, and Booth and Brennan sleeping together. The finale has the birth of Angela and Hodgin's baby, Booth undercover in a mullet [[BowlingForRatings as a bowler]], and the revelation that [[spoiler: Bones is pregnant with Booth's child]].
* DenserAndWackier: A common comment from season four onward is that the show begins to dip more towards the comedy part of "dramedy".
* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: The bratty girl in the BowlingForRatings episode. She was going to be “world champion of the world” by 2026.
* DetectiveMole:
** Agent Kenton in ''Two Bodies in the Lab''. He’s actually the killer and nearly kills Brennan.
** The tech expert who helps Angela in ''The Brother in the Basement''. He’s going through a suspect’s computer and phone to distract everyone from realizing he killed Booth’s brother.
* DiabolusExMachina: Pelant, for one, when he gets in the way of Booth and Brennan’s wedding plans, steals Hodgins’ money and frames Brennan.
* DidntThinkThisThrough: Angela getting herself arrested for refusing to testify at Max's trial. Yes, she was "protecting" her friendship with Brennan, but it's the team's job to testify what they know whether they like it or not, and she's got her BFF's permission to testify anyways. Not to mention that her testimony (identification of the body) would've caused relatively small damage to the defense (unlike Zack's or Booth's, who testified about the murder weapon and opportunity, respectively), so ultimately she got herself locked up over barely anything.
* DiplomaticImpunity: Shows up in two cases. In ''The Girl in Suite 2103'', a diplomat is threatened with being returned home to be prosecuted, in which case she'll be put in prison and killed by other inmates. To avoid this, she waives immunity. Later, Pelant falsifies records to claim Egyptian citizenship, without any mention of him actually having (fake) diplomatic status. Both these examples are also HollywoodLaw.
* DistractedByTheSexy
** In ''The Babe in the Bar'', when Vincent Nigel-Murray comes up with an idea to preserve the bubbles of the victim's last breath, Cam in her enthusiasm says "If I didn't have self-control, I could kiss you!" The normally MotorMouth Nigel-Murray is struck silent for several seconds until Hodgins brings him out of it.
** Hodgins himself falls victim, when he sees the newsreel Angela dug up to check out Booth's new girlfriend.
** In ''The Male in the Mail'', Edison can't stop staring at Bones fidgeting with her pregnancy-sized breasts.
* DontExplainTheJoke: Brennan does, both with her own jokes and the jokes of others to show she ''[[CatchPhrase does]]'' [[CatchPhrase know what they mean]] and finds them humorous.
* DontYouDarePityMe:
** When the very independent and in-control Cam's identity gets stolen and she's arrested for check fraud it takes her a long time to accept help even from Hodgins (who had to deal with [[spoiler: Pelant stealing ''all of his and his family's foundation's money'', if not his identity]]) and techno-wizard Angela.
** Hodgins himself oh so much as he struggles to adjust to being a paraplegic in season 11. He shuts out everyone including his wife and TookALevelInJerkass until he tries for a divorce and Angela finally talks sense into him.
* DoNotCallMePaul: Booth and Cam did this to each other a few times. Cam prefers Cam and Booth his last name. “Don’t call me Camille!” “Don’t call me Seeley!”
* DoubleMeaningTitle: A couple:
** The sixth season opener, ''The Mastodon in the Room'', deals with the team getting back together and examining the motivations that had split them up and the problems this had caused. Unlike most episodes however, the case has nothing to do with mastodons. It instead involves the body of a young boy, and as the episode is entering its last few minutes with not even a mention of mastodons you find yourself thinking [[StealthPun "Aren't they ignoring the Mastodon in the Room?"]]. Then in one of the final shots, the team returns to their old lab -- which in their absence has been turned into an exhibit room for the Jeffersonian -- which features an actual mastodon.
** The show title itself, "Bones":
*** 1) While the show discusses and utilizes many different types of forensics (forensic psychology, engineering, pathology, entomology, etc.), its primary focus is forensic anthropology, which studies the "bones" of the victims.
*** 2) The main character is a female anthropologist with the InSeriesNickname "Bones", given to her by the male lead/{{Deuteragonist}} who is her partner [[spoiler:and later lover/boyfriend/baby daddy, and later still, her husband]].
** ''The Lance to the Heart'' is referring both to the shock of Sweets’ death and his first name being Lance and the others deeply caring for him. It also refers to the broken rib that pierced his aorta and killed him, a literal lance to the heart.
** ''The Pain in the Heart'' refers both to Booth’s gunshot wound and the emotional pain Brennan had when she thought he died.
** ''The Change in the Game'' refers to the team changes in the bowling game, the change in the pin settings on the lane, and Brennan’s reveal that changed things for the whole series since she and Booth were now a couple.
* DownerEnding:
** ''The Graft in the Girl''. Sure, they caught the murderer, but Amy's still terminal.
** Howard Epps's introductory episode probably counts as this; sure, the guy on death row got his life extended, just not for the right reasons.
** The end of Season 7. [[spoiler:Brennan has been framed for an assassination by a guy the Squints and Booth are investigating. The guy managed to falsify proofs of both electronic and physical kinds, and the Squints and Caroline have no choice but to report. In the end, Brennan runs away with Christine, and Booth can only see how his girlfriend and daughter leave him]].
** The beginning of Season 10. [[spoiler: Booth is released from prison and the crew is on their way to getting to the bottom of the conspiracy that landed him in there when Sweets is killed trying to stop one of the conspirators... not long after the audience learned he had not only reunited with Daisy but she is also pregnant with his son. We learn he is really, truly dead when Cam ''does his autopsy'' with everyone present, including Daisy.]]
* DoYouWantToCopulate: In ''The New Tricks in the Old Dogs'' an old man in a nursing home asked one of the women if she "wanted to pork". She didn't. He admits this line hasn't been too successful.
* DreamingOfThingsToCome: In the season 11 finale, Brennan has dreams about burnt remains coming to life, and at one point dreams of a Wendell with a cigarrette behind his ear and with burned hands telling her "If you knew what I knew, you'd be so proud of me". [[spoiler:Dream Wendell's line and burned hands are both nods to Zack in the season 3 finale ''The Pain in the Heart''. Guess who shows up at the end of the episode.]]
* DrinkingGame: In-show, not for the show (although there's probably one of those, too) -- Hodgins reveals that he and his college buddies had one of these for ''[[ScienceShow Bunsen Jude the Science Dude]]'' when he starts fanboying over the eponymous Science Dude and the latter calls him out on being [[PeripheryDemographic "older than my usual audience"]].
* DrivingADesk: Several times during the Hitchcock-inspired ''The 200th in the 10th''.
* DysfunctionJunction: After finding out that [[spoiler:Sweets's birth parents were abusive, and his adoptive parents died shortly before he started working with Booth]]. Lampshaded by Booth: "What are we, the Island of Misfit Toys?"
[[/folder]]
[[folder:E]]
* EarlyBirdCameo: Clark Edison appears as a potential Zack replacement in the season 3 premiere. Zack returns and Clark leaves before later becoming one of the rotating interns after Zack leaves the show.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
** Early on, Hodgins handles and analyzes the bones themselves, which he doesn't do later
** Booth is in the lab itself much more. Once Sweets (and later Aubrey) comes around, Booth spends most of his time with Sweets, Aubrey (or less often) Bones while Bones toils away in the lab.
** The lab doesn't always work with Booth and the FBI and sometimes, handles the interpersonal stuff themselves.
** In the pilot episode, Brennan and Zack seem more socially well-adjusted: Brennan, despite giving her {{Catchphrase}} multiple times, calls out a former hookup for coming over for a booty call (using the exact phrase, with a lack of the SesquipedalianLoquaciousness she possesses later) and handily manipulates Dr. Goodman, and Zack seems like a totally different character, being more quippy and less cowed by authority.
* EasyAmnesia: Brennan recovers from her amnesia in the finale awfully quickly.
* TheEeyore: Fisher. Naturally, his mom is an overly-sunny optimist.
-->'''Fisher:''' I got the idea at my summer job.\\
'''Cam:''' I’m afraid to ask.\\
'''Fisher:''' Suicide hotline.\\
'''Cam:''' Were you for or against?\\\
'''Fisher:''' This is weird. Something good is happening.
* {{Egging}}: It’s mentioned that Booth and Brennan got it one Halloween when they ran out of candy.
* {{Elseworld}}:
** The fourth season finale, a [[AllJustADream dream sequence]] in which a married Booth and Bones run a nightclub staffed by most of the cast.
** The 200th episode, in which Brennan is a police detective in the 1950s, while Booth is a jewel thief.
* EmbarrassingFirstName: Angela is actually Pookie Noodlin Pearly Gates. It’s no wonder she changed it to Angela.
* EmotionlessGirl:
** Brennan. She does occasionally show emotion but she is often detached and doesn’t show emotion much.
** At one point Brennan meets an emotionless food scientist who works alone (there was her boss but he was the VictimOfTheWeek).
* EncouragedRegifting: Season One's Christmas episode sees the gang trapped in the Jeffersonian by a quarantine. Everyone is stressed by the situation, especially Booth, who was supposed to get his son a Christmas present. The gang try to make the best of things and hold a pretty decent Christmas, including a Secret Santa where Zack gives Booth a robot he was working on earlier, explaining that "I thought you could give it to your son." This earns him a handshake from a delighted Booth.
* EnfantTerrible: A particularly brittle, obsessive, bratty little girl on Max's bowling league. [[spoiler:You know something's up when Bones declares several times that her child will never be like that!]]
** There's usually an underage killer [[OnceASeason once per season]].
* EnhanceButton: The show [=RUNS=] on it. So much so that when they seemed about to avert it in season 5 in ''The Predator in the Pool'' they felt the need to justify themselves at length... [[ZigZaggingTrope And then they go ahead and do exactly that anyway]].
-->'''Camille:''' Why can't you just lighten up the guy's face and, you know, zoom in?\\
'''Angela:''' Because it was a ''cell phone camera'' that was aimed by a ''child''.\\
'''Bones:''' The plexiglass at this point is a foot thick!\\
'''Angela:''' And thirty feet of water.\\
'''Bones:''' ''At night''.\\
'''Camille:''' I was just asking!
* EnsembleDarkhorse: An InUniverse example. It had been a StoryArc looking for a new lab intern and the crew were really starting to like Wendell Bray. When the scholarship that qualified him for the position in the first place went bankrupt, they spent an episode trying to find a way to keep him. [[spoiler:He was kept on thanks to an anonymous donation. Except they received ''three times'' as much money as they needed, meaning ''everyone'' was desperate to keep him but didn't want to admit it]].
* EskimosArentReal: Zack expresses surprise that Hodgins believes in pirates, and Hodgins snarks back that they're not Santa.
* EstablishingShot: The stock footage of a lovely summer garden outside 'The Jeffersonian'.
* EstrangedSoapFamily: Brennan's brother Russ hasn't made any appearances since season 3 (and wasn't mentioned in most of the following ''nine'' seasons) to the point where he almost reached ChuckCunninghamSyndrome, missing multiple important events: [[spoiler: the birth of his niece and later, nephew; his sister returning after being a fugitive for several months; Brennan and Booth's wedding; and most strikingly, his ''father's funeral''.]]
* EthicalSlut: Angela '''really''' likes sex, and has no reservations about letting people know it.
* EurekaMoment: Also requisite for a detective story.
* EvenTheGuysWantHim: Angela's ex-husband Grayson gets some of this from both Sweets and Clark.
* EveryCarIsAPinto: In the final episode, serial killer Kovac is shot by Booth while driving and the vehicle runs off a nearby ridge and promptly explodes on hitting the ground. Justified though as there are oil barrels where it lands that likely contained some kind of explosive.
* EveryoneCanSeeIt: Bones and Booth. Sweets writes a book about it!
* EvilCannotComprehendGood: A constant on the show with many a killer failing to realize how people will react to his crimes.
** In a few cases, someone who commited a murder decades ago will be honestly amazed people "still care about it."
** Pelant offers Hodgins a seemingly SadisticChoice: Shut down a server that is slowly draining away his millions or let it run to prevent a drone to strike a school in the Middle East. Pelant assumes Hodgins will either shut the server down right away or waste time trying to save his cash and his choice will ruin his relationship with the team. It never occurs to Pelant that Hodgins (who's always hated being rich) will gladly sacrifice his cash to save innocent lives.
* EvilCounterpart:
** Fans have come to consider the Gravedigger the anti-Brennan, as both are brilliant people who have difficulty connecting to others, save for the fact that the Gravedigger didn't care.
** Broadsky is this to Booth. Broadsky is a sniper who is possibly the only one anywhere near as good as Booth and he wants to kill whereas Booth helps people (Broadsky ''claimed'' he just wanted to punish the guilty, but in the course of his appearances he killed more innocents than criminals).
** Pelant can be considered this to Angela in that she’s a computer whiz who helps catch killers and he’s a super smart hacker who uses technology to harm others and help himself.
** Glen Durant is this to Caroline Julian; where Caroline abides by the letter of the law and is owed favours from various government officials, Durant used blackmail to manipulate government officials to maintain his "Shadow Government".
** Philip Aubrey, father to [=FBI=] agent James Aubrey, can be considered this to Max Brennan; they both abandoned their families due to their criminal pasts, but Max did it to protect his children while Philip just wanted to be rich.
* TheExile: Arastoo and Rodolfo both fled their home countries in fear of being killed if they stayed. Arastoo thought there was an edict for his death, but it actually wasn’t ever made public.
* ExiledToTheCouch: Booth says in ''The Movie in the Making'' that he has “healthy debates” with Brennan that sometimes get so “healthy” that he has to sleep on the couch.
* ExpoSpeakGag
-->'''Brennan:''' Particles from the cut grass are causing his mast cells to release inflammatory mediators.\\
'''Booth:''' It's just allergies, Bones.\\
'''Brennan:''' Yeah, that's what I said.
* ExpositoryHairstyleChange: Zack's second-season makeover.
* {{Expy}}:
** [[Series/BillNyeTheScienceGuy Mr. Bunsen Jude, The Science Dude]] is very similar to the real life Bill Nye The Science Guy show, down to the similar name.
** 'Branson Rose' aka Richard Branson-similar name and is a billionaire adventurer.
* ExtremelyColdCase: One episode had an anthropologist as the VictimOfTheWeek, and ''he'' had recently discovered a collection of early Homo sapiens and Neanderthal bones, which are brought in as evidence. Brennan, assigned to modern murders but eager to participate on prestigious specimens, quickly notes that one of the injuries seems not to be accidental and petitions Cam to classify it as a murder so that she can make it her priority. Clark Edison, the anthropologist assigned to ancient remains, points out that the modern case is much more pressing, while his "murder" has only academic interest. They wind up solving it anyway.
* EyepiecePrank: Hodgins does it to Vincent Nigel-Murray to get revenge for Vincent claiming he slept with Angela.
* EyeScream: Although it's done to a dead body, the scene where they remove fluid from an eye in ''The Double Death of the Dearly Departed'' is still not for the squeamish.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:F]]
* TheFace: Since Brennan has NoSocialSkills, Booth often has to play this role in investigation whenever they talk to witnesses or people involved in the case.
* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler: Vera Waterhouse]] is genuinely innocent of any crime in her first appearance [[spoiler: ''Yanks in the U.K. Part 1'']], and helps with the investigation, but ends up murdering [[spoiler: Ian Wexler]], apparently as an unpremeditated crime of passion, between that episode and [[spoiler: ''Yanks in the U.K. Part 2'']].
* FailedASpotCheck: Behavioral analyst Karen Delfs falls for [[spoiler:Jeannine Kovac's]] act hook line and sinker in all of the three episodes [[spoiler:Jeannine]] appears in, which proves costly for the main characters.
* {{Fanservice}}: Multiple:
** Bones' Franchise/WonderWoman costume in ''Mummy in the Maze'' is a stylized homage to the [[Series/WonderWoman1975 Lynda Carter]] version. She even tries the twirl.
** Having Brennan strip Booth to his boxers and wheel him around on a cart in ''The Goop on the Girl'' probably qualifies... and includes a funny moment when Dr. Saroyan walks in on them:
--->'''Booth:''' I'm thinking of saints...
** ''The Woman in the Sand'' puts Bones in a LittleBlackDress, and Booth in a wife-beater posing as a boxer.
* FantasyLandmarkEquivalent: Temperence Brennan working in the "Jeffersonian Institute", an obvious expy of the Smithsonian; the museum itself is the setting for quite a few cases over the course of the series.
* FakeFirstKiss:
** In ''The Santa In the Slush'', where Brennan and Booth were coerced into kissing under the mistletoe by Caroline.
** In ''The End in the Beginning'', an AlternateRealityEpisode where Booth and Brennan were married nightclub owners. Both scenes [[NeverTrustATrailer appeared in the trailers]] for those episodes. In reality, they don't get together until [[spoiler:the end of season 6.]]
** There's a questionable third instance in ''The Sum in the Parts of the Whole'', where Brennan and Booth kiss in a flashback. However, due to [[spoiler:an actual kiss]] that also occurs in that episode, the status quo does change going forward.
* FakingTheDead: [[spoiler:Booth]]. He was shot by Pam Nunan and he took advantage of it to fake his death and funeral to draw out a long-time adversary of his.
* {{Fauxreigner}}: Arastoo (see farther down about his accent), because pretending to be fresh off the boat would make his coworkers less likely to bug him about his religion.
* FedToPigs:
** Brennan’s mom, after being killed with a stun device. It turned Brennan into a vegetarian.
** The chess player in ''The Master in the Slop''. Hodgins’ filter machine ends up malfunctioning and spewing it all over Dr. Filmore.
* FeudingFamilies: The Mobleys and the Babcocks, from the episode ''The Feud In The Family'', centering around the murder of the Mobley patriarch. At one point, there is a mountain of books detailing the various legal issues that have developed in the feud, including [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking multiple assaults, murders, thefts, and nuisance lawsuits]].
* FictionalCounterpart: Bones and her team work at a thinly veiled version of the Smithsonian Institution.
* FinaleSeason: In February 2016, FOX executives and the showrunners came to an agreement to end the show with a shortened 12-episode farewell season. In response, the showrunners wrote a Season 11 finale that [[spoiler:brought back Zack Addy for a serial killer arc]] and served as a launch pad for the last season's main theme: tying up loose ends.
* FindTheCure: Arastoo is infected with a SyntheticPlague in ''The Pathos In The Pathogens'' and catching the killer of the originally infected victim is tantamount to getting the anti-serum to save him.
* FingerInTheMail:
** [[spoiler:A Bishop's kneecaps]] in ''The Knight on the Grid''.
** One actual use of this trope occurs in ''The Woman in the Car'', where the son of a grand jury witness gets kidnapped. Booth gets the kid's pinky finger in the mail.
** Again in ''The Corpse on the Canopy'', though it turns out to be an ape's finger.
* {{Fingore}}: The Ghost Killer rips off one fingernail from each of her victims [[spoiler: because when she was a child her father locked her in a stable and she ripped all of her own off trying to escape. When her body is found she's wearing all of her victims' fingernails as her own]].
* {{Flanderization}}:
** Very badly in Brennan's case -- in the pilot, and the rest of Season One, to a lesser extent, she seems a little detached from reality and certainly lonely, but she gets sarcasm, irony, and most of the normal human interaction going on around her. Four seasons later, her unawareness of pop culture has morphed into full-on ridiculousness about the most basic bits of metaphor.
** Oddly inverted for the intern-of-the-week crowd: they all started off with a single trait ([[FunnyForeigner Muslim]], [[GenkiGirl way too over-peppy]], [[SomedayThisWillComeInHandy constantly spouting useless facts]]...), but these easy traits all turned into pretty deep characterization down the road.
* FleshAndBombs: “The Doom in the Boom”. Four officers die, Aubrey is critically injured, and Hodgins left paralyzed by a body with a bomb inside it. The killers were young guys looking for notoriety. Caroline made sure they didn’t get it.
* FlexibilityEqualsSexAbility: In ''The Body in the Bag'', Sweets and Booth have to watch a woman's sex tape [[ItMakesSenseInContext to look for clues about a murder]] and Sweets comments on how flexible she is, earning him an odd look from Booth
* FloweryElizabethanEnglish: In the episode ''The Archaeologist in the Cocoon'', the team solves a 25,000 year old murder involving both modern humans and Neanderthal. They are [[ShowWithinAShow recreating the scene]], and Dr. Hodgins is playing the part of a Neanderthal male:
-->'''Hodgins:''' Hark, I bring thee meat which we thus shall feast upon, and...\\
'''Angela:''' Hey, honey, [[LampshadeHanging it's not Shakespeare]].
* FoolishSiblingResponsibleSibling: Booth is the responsible sibling despite a few slips into gambling addiction along the way. Jared kept getting in trouble and Booth would try to help. Jared was an alcoholic and had repeated money issues and his issues cost him his life.
* FootDraggingDivorcee: Angela's husband that she didn't even remember marrying appears and says he has built a house for her. He won't grant her an annulment/divorce so she can marry Hodgins, but by the end of the episode, he agrees to it finally.
* ForensicDrama
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** Angela's bisexuality was hinted at as far back as the first few episodes.
-->'''Angela:''' "You have ''no idea'' how open-minded I can be."
** In ''The Woman in the Car'', Agent Pickering, who was conducting interviews to see how suitable the lab guys were to be allowed access to top secret files (or something) asked Zack what he would do if [[spoiler:someone used irrefutable logic to get him to do something treasonous]]. Zack replies he would ask Dr. Brennan first.
** Just before he gets shot, [[spoiler:Vincent]] says, "I feel like I'm going to be dead soon."
** Zack is seen to hang on every word that his best friend, Jack Hodgins, says. This makes it all the more heartbreaking when you learn that [[spoiler:it was partly because of Hodgins believing in conspiracy theories that Zack was persuaded to become the Gormogon's apprentice]].
** In ''The Sound In the Silence'' Booth and Bones talk about what to get Angela and Jack for the baby. Booth makes a comment about Brennan’s hormones going haywire and “boom, Mama Bones”. This was just two episodes before her pregnancy reveal.
** In ''The Change in the Game'', [[spoiler:Bones and Booth spend most of the episode at a bowling tournament and are saddled with a "horrible child" as Bones calls her. In between dealing with the girl, Bones states "you and I would never have a kid like that" several times. Guess what she announces at the end of the episode?]]
** In ''The Woman in the Car'', while being going through interviews and background checks for security clearance, Angela is asked by the interviewer when the last time she saw her husband was to which she splutters out "Wow, that took? Didn't seem legal." and "We were in Fiji". [[spoiler: Guess who Angela and Hodgins have to track down several years later when they want to tie the knot?]]
** In ''The Movie in the Making'', The film crew is documenting the relationship between the Jeffersonian and the FBI, and throughout the film, all of their past members such as Vincent Nigel-Murray, Lance Sweets, and Zack Addy are mentioned. [[spoiler:TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers. Guess who returns in the season finale?]]
** In ''The Price for the Past'', [[spoiler:Aldo Clemens]]'s body is found with colorful balloons tied to it. This is brushed off by the team early on as a way to ensure the body would be found quickly. It makes sense, until you realize that [[spoiler:the culprit is the now-grown-up son of a Bosnian warlord who saw his father shot by a sniper (Booth) at his ''birthday party''.]]
** Brennan deals with Dr. Goodman's "retirement" (she simply didn't find anthropology fun anymore) and one of her interns' problem with finding a thesis subject (Brennan was so enthusiastic about her chosen field she did ''four'' of them and that's just the ones that got published) and realizes how much she loves her job and couldn't imagine living without it. In the series finale [[spoiler: she loses her "technical memory" and everything related to bones and anthropology becomes gibberish to her. Fortunately it was temporary]].
** Season 8 heavily foreshadows Booth and Brennan’s season 9 wedding. One episode has them talk to a jeweler about a case and the guy thinks they want engagement rings. A couple episodes later, Brennan catches the bouquet at Booth’s mom’s wedding. Tradition says the bouquet catcher will get married next, and despite Pelant’s meddling, it did happen.
** In ''The Radioactive Panthers in the Party'', Betty White’s character Dr. Mayer asks Brennan to think about her work and how she would feel if it were all taken away. The next two episodes are the series finale where Brennan suffers a head injury that temporarily does just that.
** Sweets dresses as a ''Franchise/StarTrek'' RedShirt in “The Princess and the Pear” in season 4. Six seasons later in season 10, he’s the first and only opening credits character to die.
* FormulaBreakingEpisode:
** "The Ghost in the Machine", which puts the viewer in the POV of the victim's skull.
** "The Movie in the Making", which has the investigation filmed by a camera crew, with sidelines commentary of the cast members.
* TheFosterKid: Brennan and Sweets.
* FramedClue: Subverted in "The Man in the Mansion", when Hodgins is taking samples from a crime scene and when nobody is looking, opens up a frame and removes a picture that showed him and the victim together before anyone noticed. The picture is NOT a clue related to the case, but would have revealed Hodgins' past connection to the victim (childhood friends until he stole Hodgin's fiancee) and stopped him from helping to solve his old friend's murder.
* FrameUp:
** [[spoiler:The victim in ''The Lost in the Found'' attempted to frame her three bullies for her suicide using items she stole from them; they don't attempt much of a cover-up because she drugged them so deeply they didn't even think they did anything the night of the "murder".]]
** Booth in the season 9 finale/season 10 opener. He ends up in prison due to it.
* FreudianExcuse: They put pressure on escaped serial killer Epps by locking up his (abusive) mother.
* TheFriendNobodyLikes: Dr. Oliver Wells. He takes being an InsufferableGenius up to eleven, to the point not even Bones likes him. Everyone (except for Fisher, go figure) will outright admit they don't like him. He's kept around out of necessity (and being a polymath).
* FriendlySniper: Booth is a nice guy, even wanting to atone for the people he had to kill.
* FriendlyNeighborhoodChinatown: D.C.'s Chinatown shows up on occasion. It's much nicer than the real version, which is often referred to as a China-"block".
* FromTheLatinIntroDucere: One VictimOfTheWeek was a guy who seemed to be the genuine SantaClaus. This gives Booth and Brennan another opportunity to bicker LikeAnOldMarriedCouple. Booth's remark isn't quite FromTheLatinIntroDucere, but Brennan's correction is.
-->'''Brennan:''' Kris Kringle. From the North Pole. Lives above a toy store - This is further evidence that our victim is, indeed, the mythic figure known as Santa Claus.
-->'''Booth:''' '''Mythic'''. Coming from the Latin, "Myth", meaning "doesn't actually exist".
-->'''Brennan:''' No. From the Greek, "Mythos", meaning "word".
* FryingPanOfDoom: Booth hits a suspect with one when they’re running through a restaurant kitchen, using whatever is on hand as weapons.
* FullNameBasis: Gordon Gordon Wyatt. That's not a typo, at one point he posits that his first and middle names are the same, and he never says whether he's joking or not.
* FurnitureAssemblyGag: Angela tries to assemble a baby walker in "The Prince in the Plastic". The instructions are a BlindIdiotTranslation and she can't make sense of the diagrams, preventing her from getting it together.
* TheFunInFuneral: ''The Double Death of the Dearly Departed''.
* FunctionalAddict: Nigel-Murray, apparently, who would get drunk and brag about sleeping with the lab's ladies to his pals (Cam and Angela are shocked, Bones just finds the idea of them being compatible hilarious). He joined AA and got better.
* FunnyBackgroundEvent: Brennan describes scoring a goal in hockey as "making a net." Cam gives her the strangest look.
* FurnaceBodyDisposal: * The aptly named episode "The Intern in the Incinerator" has this, just like the title says. An intern at the lab was killed and ended up discovered in the lab's incinerator.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:G]]
* TheGamblingAddict: Booth. He struggles all along and relapses in season 10 and Brennan kicks him out while he works to get "sober" again.
* GamerGirl: One of the suspects in "The Gamer in the Grease" is a world-class gaming expert. She takes advantage of this trope to get lucrative endorsements.
* GeekPhysiques: Sweets and Zack are both skinny and kind of scrawny. Hodgins is a subversion. He looks skinny but is actually very well toned when his shirt comes off.
* GeekyTurnOn:
** Hodgins and Angela, frequently. Notable incidents include him naming a rose smelling fungus after her (long story), proposing to her with glowing sea food (longer story), and the following:
-->'''Angela:''' Okay, what I did was modify my mass recognition program -- patent pending -- to scan the photographic reconstruction of the crime scene, to find areas of comparatively less chaos.\\
'''Hodgins:''' Awesome.\\
'''Cam:''' ''(surprised)'' You understand what she's saying?\\
'''Hodgins:''' Not in the least, but I am so turned on by her brain. I'd like to see her brain totally naked.
** "The Gamer in the Grease" has a suspect who is a female gamer. She takes advantage of the fact that by being a GamerGirl she has a great deal of popularity with the predominantly male gamer community.
* GeniusCripple: Hodgins after his season 11 injury.
* GeniusesHaveMultiplePhDs: The show has ''two'' characters with three [=PhDs=] to help explain why the characters' group at the Jeffersonian is one of the world's top forensic teams.
** Temperance "Bones" Brennan's PhDs are in forensics, anthropology, and kinesiology, explaining both why she's so good at studying dead bodies and why she's so insufferable.
** Jack Hodgins' PhDs are in entomology, botany, and mineralogy, which basically makes him the "bug and slime" guy.
** In "The Parts in the Sum of the Whole", a WholeEpisodeFlashback, Jack tells Bones and Zack that he has as many doctorates as the two of them put together, because Zack (then a grad student) doesn't have any.
* GenreBusting: It's a drama-comedy all about decaying bodies, murder investigations and romance.
* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: InUniverse, the episode ''Big In the Philippines'' is about a country singer [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin who is astoundingly popular in the Philippines]] despite being virtually unknown in the U.S. (his American fans amount to twenty or less, whereas he's a radio superstar in the Philippines)
* GiveGeeksAChance: Hodgins, the nerdy guy, and Angela.
* GiveAwayTheBride: Angela’s dad gives her away during the first wedding attempt. Later, Brennan plays with it. She lets Max walk her down the aisle to Booth, then says to everyone that it’s not one man giving a woman to another man like property.
* GiverOfLameNames: Angela's father. She goes by Angela Pearly Gates Montenegro, but her given name is Pookie Noodlin. When she's pregnant, her father tries to convince Hodgins to name the child Staccato Mambo, which he defends as being gender-neutral. [[spoiler: Staccato does wind up as the kid's middle name, but it's Michael Staccato Vincent, and after the episode where he's born, he's consistently referred to as "Michael Vincent."]]
* GladYouThoughtOfIt: Invoked. When some characters wonder how Dr. Sweets will tell Daisy Wick she's being fired, Booth suggests he'll make her think she's leaving on her own.
* GoingCommando: Booth admits to sometimes doing this when he doesn't have clean underwear, while at a Radical Honesty meeting. Try to look at him the same way again, I dare you.
* GoneHorriblyRight: In "The Secret in the Proposal" [[spoiler: A CIA HoneyTrap is very good at being attractive enough to seduce her target but innocent enough that no one suspects her real job -- too good: her handler gets assaulted by her mother (who thinks her daughter's an escort and the handler's her john) and killed by her boss (who's in love with her and thinks the handler seduced her into being a prostitute)]].
%%* GPSEvidence: And Jack Hodgins has the GPS.
* GrandFinale: The final episode ("The End in the End") features a ContinuityCavalcade as well as several major changes for the characters. Notably, [[spoiler: we see the aftermath of the bombing of the Jeffersonian, including Booth trying to be a hero, Brennan temporarily losing her ability for complex thoughts, the five most recurring interns chipping in to solve the case, the season's antagonist eventually hunted down and killed, the revelation that Cam and Arastoo are leaving for six months because they are going to adopt three kids from Mississippi, and a resolution to the [[ArcNumber 447 mystery]]. Oh and while Cam is gone, Hodgins will finally actually be "King of the Lab". Almost everything is wrapped up, though the series ultimately ends on a AndTheAdventureContinues note, as the Jeffersonian will be rebuilt.]]
* GrandmasRecipe: One episode of Bones has a B-plot where one of the lab assistants (Hodgins) uses up the last of the hot sauce from the company fridge, ignoring the note from another assistant, Finn, not to eat it. Turns out it was the very last bottle of hot sauce Finn's grandmother ever made, and seemingly irreplaceable. This being a forensic show, Hodgins manages to determine precisely what was in the hot sauce via testing and replicate it to make it up to Finn.
* GratuitousGerman:
-->'''Brennan''': I need you to do a search for ''Der Schlächterkelch''.
-->'''Angela''': Okay, I love that you think I would know how to spell that.
* GretzkyHasTheBall: Any time Bones has to talk about sports.
* GroinAttack
** How Max evens the playing field after he challenges the younger, stronger and more capable Booth to a fight.
** Booth himself in "The Proof in the Pudding".
-->'''Booth:''' Good, old, American classic.
** Brennan, when presented with a fleeing suspect, threatens one unambiguously. The suspect stopped and Booth collared him, but you just '''know''' Brennan would have done it.
-->'''Booth:''' (repeating it afterward) "Stop, or I'll kick you in the testicles"??
-->'''Brennan:''' Well, it worked.
* GrossUpCloseUp
** The bodies are often found badly decomposed and covered with maggots.
** The fifth season episode "The Gamer in the Grease" takes it a step further with an extended shot of half-liquidated flesh sliding off of a corpse's bones. Complete with sound effects.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:H]]
* HadToComeToPrisonToBeACrook: SerialKiller Howard Epps, possibly. He could be a ManipulativeBastard all along, or maybe he learned it while on death row. When we first meet Epps, he's claiming to be innocent and trying to get exonerated, but it ends up he just reveals he's killed even more people than previously thought, so they have to keep him alive while they process the new bodies. When he returns in season 2, Epps is even more manipulative and playing serial killer games, leading the team on a merry chase with body parts as clues.
* HammerSpace: Near the denouement of "The Mummy in the Maze" Brennan draws her [[HandCannon massive revolver]] despite only wearing her very fitted Series/WonderWoman1975 costume, (sans cape) and not carrying a purse or handbag of any sort. Immediately lampshaded by Booth:
--> '''Booth:''' Okay, where did you even find a place to carry that?
::We never find out, but from the motion, its ''not'' VictoriasSecretCompartment.
* HandCannon: One episode has Brennan getting ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_&_Wesson_Model_500 the most powerful production handgun in the world]]''. In a later episode, she trades guns with Booth, confessing, "my gun is too big for me," and putting an interesting spin on the very Freudian conversation she'd had with him earlier.
* HandcuffedBriefcase: One VictimOfTheWeek is a diamond merchant who was transporting diamonds in a briefcase handcuffed to his hand. His murderer cut the hand off in order to get the briefcase.
* HappilyAdopted:
** Sweets in his backstory-an older couple rescued him from abusive foster parents and he was quite close to them.
** Cam's daughter Michelle. There was friction a time or two but they had a decent relationship.
* HappilyMarried:
** The adorable older couple at the couples' retreat [[spoiler: who turn out to be serial house robbers and that week's murderers. They're not sorry because the victim tried to hit the wife while they were stealing his car, so she KO'd him with her blackjack and he crushed him between the car and a tree. They also think (or appear to think) they won't be separated in prison due to their age; Booth doesn't have the heart to tell them otherwise]]. Booth and Bones like them so much they say they would [[spoiler: KO and crush to death anyone who'd harm the other]]. Aww!
** Hodgins and Angela, and as of the latest episodes [[spoiler: Booth and Bones]]. Unfortunately not [[spoiler: Booth's brother Jared and his wife Padme (he was trying to hook back up with her before he was killed)]] nor, as far as can be seen, [[spoiler: Cam and Aristoo (he proposed then broke up with Cam after Brennan essentially fired him for not being as good at her as closing cases and knew that while Cam would follow him anywhere he didn't want her to hate him for making her leave her job and her friends). After a lot of delays they finally get married in the penultimate episode of the final season and appear very happy.]]
* HardOnSoftScience
** Brennan rather hypocritically mocks psychology. [[spoiler:Which makes it darkly ironic when she persuades Zack to give up the Gormogon using applied psychology]]. Very ironic, considering that Brennan is an anthropologist, and psychology is a considerably "harder", more lab/experiment-based social science than anthropology.
-->'''Brennan:''' ''(aside)'' She's a therapist, isn't she? She talks like a therapist!\\
'''Therapist:''' ''(later interview, out loud)'' Oh my god. She's an anthropologist, isn't she? She ''talks'' like an anthropologist!
** Also ironically, one of Brennan's childhood idols is Wonder Woman, a superheroine ''designed'' by a psychologist.
** Interestingly [[spoiler: after Sweets dies she's the one who brings up psychological aspects of the cases because that's what Sweets would do]].
* HatesEveryoneEqually: Hodgins is told by Sweets that he has misanthropic tendencies after he breaks up with Angela and has to deal with his issues with what Zack did. He assumes he’s headed for endless medication and therapy but Sweets assures him he’ll learn to cope. It does improve, then comes back big time when he’s left paralyzed in season 11, at least til Angela talks some sense into him.
* HateSink: In season 11, the team investigates the murder of a meninist who led a group called "Man Now" that wanted changes in laws, believing that white men are an oppressed group. The entire group is a long hate sink, one of the first things Booth and Bones hear when they go to a meeting is a man saying that they want to abolish rape shield laws, stating that "if a woman dresses as a slut, she might as well walk with a sign written rape me". Booth even states wanting to punch the guy, something that Bones eventually does when he tells Booth to put a muzzle on Bones and calls her a loud bitch.
* HatesSmallTalk: Bones is an expert at shooting down any conversation that isn't related to the case during the first examination in the Jeffersonian; she's also terrible at subtle hints that her coworkers give ("I work better when I'm upset." "Well you're doing good work.").
** Squintern Edison is constantly frustrated by the amount of time the main characters spend discussing their personal lives and dramas, so much so that "can we talk about the job, please" is his CatchPhrase.
* HeadTurningBeauty: Booth says to Brennan, "There isn't a guy in this country who wouldn't want to have sex with you, including half the gay men."
* TheHeart: Angela, at least according to Hodgins. Except rather than personal vendettas, it's the minutiae of the body they're studying that she raises their eyes from. Further driven home by the fact that in "The Man in the Cell", Angela receives a human heart in the mail after the publication of a newspaper article in which Hodgins calls her "the heart of the operation".
* HeroicBSOD
** Booth nearly has one in "Proof in the Pudding", [[spoiler:when it's implied that [[WhoShotJFK there were two assassins involved in JFK's death]] and there was a government cover-up to hide this. Given the number of people he's killed for his country, he sees it as a huge betrayal]].
* HeroOfAnotherStory: Occasionally Booth and Brennan will run into another odd pair of team of crime fighters that they will have to work with in order to solve the mystery of the week including a crossover with another (short-lived) crime show about an eccentric and talented "Finder" and his hard-line Law Enforcement Handler. There is also "The Yanks In The UK" where they team up with (in Booth's words) "The British Version of me and you!" (A top-line forensic anthropologist who consults with Scotland Yard and his Detective Partner).
* HeterosexualLifePartners:
** Brennan and Angela
** Hodgins and Zack until the latter's departure from the show. Later, he becomes especially close to many of the interns (Wendell, Finn, and Arastoo in particular).
** In later seasons after Zack leaves and is replaced by rotating interns, and Cam and Sweets have fully adjusted as members of the team, there is instead a [[TrueCompanions true companionship]] between the entire team, although Bones and Angela retain their special life-partners status.
* HiddenDepths: All of the main characters have them. For example, Arastoo (the Iranian squintern) writes poetry in Farsi.
* HideYourPregnancy: The various pregnancies that occurred during the show were explained quite easily by pregnancies occurring ''in'' the show. The 12th season, however, saw Emily Deschanel get pregnant and it wasn't as announced as the other pregnancies.
* HollywoodAtheist: Dr. Temperance Brennan fits the stereotype of not just declaring her (anti-religious) atheism but going so far as picking fights over it with her Catholic partner Booth. Her views seemed to veer into scientism too.
* HollywoodHacking: [[spoiler:Pelant, a crazy-gifted hacker, manages to create a virus for a custom-built system he's never interacted with, or even '''''seen''''', by making a very detailed carving in bone, knowing that the bone is going to be scanned in later, because everyone knows image files are routinely executed like commands]].
** Mechanically feasible, but highly improbable. [[spoiler: There have been many viruses that take advantage of how an image/file is opened by an application to sneak code in. So if the hacker knew what software Angela was using AND said software had a security hole, he could theoretically have pulled it off. Insanely improbable, but fundamentally feasible. Which is, sadly, better than about 99% of HollywoodHacking examples]].
* HollywoodLaw:
** [[DiplomaticImpunity Diplomatic immunity]] is badly abused in two cases. In the first, a diplomat is threatened with being returned home to be prosecuted, in which case she'll be put in prison and killed by other inmates. To avoid this, she waives immunity. Too bad for her, immunity belongs to the state, not the individual, so she can't actually waive her own immunity. Later, Pelant falsifies records to claim Egyptian citizenship, without any mention of him actually having (fake) diplomatic status. Somehow, all Egyptian tourists are diplomats now.
** In multiple episodes, Booth and/or Rebecca say he has no parental rights to Parker because they weren’t married when Parker was conceived or born. Paternity might be assumed for married couples, but that doesn’t mean it’s no existent for unmarried fathers. Booth could have asserted paternity and thus his rights to shared legal custody and visitation/shared physical custody with some paperwork, or at worst court proceedings.
* HollywoodPsych
** This seems to be Bones' view on psychology, completely not trusting it and calling it a "soft science". This would not be too bad if not for the fact that she prefers hard sciences like her own anthropology, a science not considered particularly "hard".
** She dismisses any implied relation from what "is" to what "could be", so her use of anthropology is limited to what has been proven as fact.
** Pointedly subverted in "The Devil in the Details", which takes place mostly in a mental ward.
-->'''Dr. Adam Copeland:''' ''(to Bones)'' I've listened to you take shots at my profession. And that's okay. I'm a big boy, and tolerant man. I want you to think about something. I spend every working hour of everyday trying to help people who are living in hell. That's an honorable way to spend a life. Perhaps more honorable than figuring out what happened to dead people who are already beyond pain and suffering.
** When Creator/StephenFry is on the show, his character seems to have a bit of disdain for psychology himself, calling it on its ability to oversimplify and objectify a person's state of mind while arbitrarily projecting solutions that rely on the person's ability to understand and implement them. Then again, he was probably just using fast word play and large vocabulary to turn Brennan to his way of thought.
* HollywoodSilencer: Averted in "The Bond in the Boot," where a very obviously silenced pistol was still pretty loud.
* HonorBeforeReason:
** In "The Girl in Suite 2103" the team find evidence a South American official with [[DiplomaticImpunity Diplomatic Immunity]] was involved with a murder. Getting through the red tape would be nearly impossible, and Cam suggested manipulating evidence to implicate the son, trying to get the official to confess and waive immunity. Booth listened but quickly rejected the proposal on the grounds that trying to cheat around DI would cause ''international'' problems, even though such manipulation is used all the time in local law enforcement. [[spoiler:They got her to waive immunity based on what the political situation would be back home-if they did try to go through the normal channels, she would be killed by her enemies. As mentioned above, this is HollywoodLaw though]].
** In another episode, they are taken hostage by TheMenInBlack, ordering the squints to ID a body's cause of death and explicitly NOT to look into the body's identity. Their quest for the whole truth nearly leads to Booth being fired for helping out
* HotLibrarian: When Bones is doing an investigation on a [[BusmansHoliday flight to Shanghai]], she has to borrow hornrim glasses from an elderly passenger. Booth walks in on her with her hair up in a bun wearing the glasses and requests she shake her hair out of the bun and say, "Mr. Booth, do you know what the penalty is for an overdue book?" She doesn't get it.
* HopeSpot: [[spoiler: Brennan's dad]] hid a hospital visit; turns out they "only" got a pacemaker. Unfortunately [[spoiler: the pacemaker's GPS allowed trained assassins to track him and the grandkids to an FBI safehouse]]. Fortunately they survive the encounter; unfortunately [[spoiler: he dies in the hospital after the attack proved too much for his heart (he was able to say goodbye, in a way, to Brennan)]].
* HowWeGotHere: The episode "Aliens in a Spaceship" and "The Parts in the Sum of the Whole".
* {{Hunk}}: Booth, probably the hottest guy in the group.
* TheHunterBecomesTheHunted: What happened to [[spoiler:the Ghost Killer: Her first victim was pinned on an innocent teacher and her rich family covered it up and got him sent to jail. He spent the next 20 years planning his revenge and finally killed her (and the judge who helped the family) when he was paroled]].
* HypercompetentSidekick: In season 7, Genny Shaw accomplishes a lot in a very short time and does it well.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:I]]
* ICanStillFight: Booth leaves the hospital after he’s injured by a bomb to save a kidnapped Brennan.
* IHaveBoobsYouMustObey: Angela opens her shirt and flashes her bra to an airport clerk who’s ignoring her attempts to get information on Brennan’s flight in the Pilot episode.
* IHaveToGoIronMyDog: Subverted, when Bones, slightly flustered, sounds like she's making an excuse to leave, but is actually telling the stark truth.
-->'''Bones:''' I... have to go... do scientific things... to catch a serial killer.
* IWantYouToMeetAnOldFriendOfMine: Boreanaz and TJ Thyne worked together on the fifth season of ''Series/{{Angel}}'', with Thyne as a lawyer at Wolfram & Hart. We also get Adam Baldwin as a guest star in the first season, who played Marcus Hamilton, a sort of supernatural juggernaut who also worked for Wolfram & Hart.
* IdenticalStranger: The victim in "The Doctor in the Photo" is found to be of similar height, weight, and demeanor to Bones. Bones begins to hallucinate that the victim ''is'' her.
* IdentificationFromDentalRecords: Used frequently, since they deal with corpses in advanced states of decay and/or dismemberment.
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Usually described as "The X in the Y", with X being a one-word description of the victim, and Y being the place in which they're found. X and Y are usually alliterative too. Exceptions to this pattern are often highly meaningful.
* IfYouEverDoAnythingToHurtHer:
** Inverted. Booth says this to Brennan's brother Russ.
** Booth also does this to the boyfriends-the first guy and later intern Finn-of Cam's foster daughter, introducing himself as a cool uncle... who happens to be a sniper.
** Angela’s dad tells Hodgins he has cars, guitars and guns and that if Hodgins treats Angela right he’ll only see the business end of the cars and guitars.
** Max to Booth at Booth and Brennan’s wedding. And Booth knows he means it.
* IllegalGamblingDen: In one episode, one victim uncovered a dog-fighting ring. He was killed because the operator found out he was gathering evidence against them.
* IJustShotMarvinInTheFace: Averted with Booth. He shows excellent trigger discipline, even checking a rifle he brought to a scene himself that has no magazine.
* IJustWantToBeNormal: Hodgins's family is actually one of the most powerful families in the world and ''owns'' the Jeffersonian. He deliberately downplays it because he wants to be treated on his own terms.
* IKnewThereWasSomethingAboutYou: Zach was a brilliant but vulnerable genius, who [[spoiler: goes absolutely crazy, crushing his friends.]]
-->'''Cam''': "I knew the day I met that boy that he would cause me pain."
* TheILoveYouStigma: When Booth talks to [[spoiler:the ghost of an old army friend]] he tells him he loved his girlfriend Claire but couldn't tell her cause he felt they were too young, his last request is that Booth tell her and his finding her at his grave is [[spoiler:one of the signs he wasn't a hallucination.]]
* ImAHumanitarian: The Gormogon.
** Happens ''by accident'' in "The Tiger In The Tale", when a car is stuck in the mud where a body is buried, and the man trying to dislodge it gets spattered by human remains sprayed by its tires. A tooth is flung into his open mouth and he swallows it by reflex.
** The VictimOfTheWeek was also consumed unknowingly in the opening scenes of The Mystery in the Meat, having been cooked
and packaged into cans of beef stew that was subsequently fed to students at a high school cafeteria.
* ImpoverishedPatrician: A bizarre zig-zag around this trope was performed around Dr Hodgins. He was originally an undistinguished, if brillant, senior squint. Then he turned out to be grotesquely rich (in fact, his family more or less owned the entire Jeffersonian Institute). Years later he lost his entire fortune in an absurdly unrealistic way that didn't withstand a single minute of reflection, but was repeatedly emphasized as being irreversible and permanent. After that the writers came up with one hare-brained scheme after another to explain him getting rich again. Particularly puzzling because ''none of these status changes had any appreciable impact on his standing in life whatsoever''.
* ImprobableTaxonomySkills:
** A character identifies a fungus to species from a few hyphal traces. This is impossible even for trained mycologists as hyphae structure only gets you to the phylum level which is incredibly unspecific as it's just below the kingdom classification.
** A character whose specialty is in ''{{art}}'' identifies a specific species of fungal spores thanks to having a boyfriend who studies them. That this is actually accepted in court is a major case of HollywoodLaw.
** Hodgins, for which this trope essentially defines two-thirds of his job. The other third involves doing much the same, only with particulates. He ''is'' [=PhD=]-qualified for both of these, so it makes more sense than in many of these examples.
* ImprobablyPredictable: Booth reveals that he knows Brennan's computer password, because he knows how she thinks. He also knows what she changes the password to -- twice.
* InformedAttractiveness: Brennan. Characters regularly refer to her as being beautiful. Naturally, Booth's attractiveness in a [[{{Hunk}} hunky]] way is mentioned quite often as well. So is Angela’s attractiveness.
* InformedAbility: Brennan often says that she is extremely intelligent and has very high IQ. In practice, she is far from that. Sure, she is very knowledgeable but she finds it difficult to make connections when they are not obvious, something Booth or Hodgins do naturally. This is especially jarring in social situations, because Brennan sometimes compares the situations she witnesses to anthropological trivia, yet sometimes she seems completely lost even though such event should be simple to any anthropologist, even on a purely analytical level.
* InNameOnly: The TV series takes nothing from the novel series aside from the main protagonist's name, profession, and tendency for not suffering fools gladly. Most of the inspiration for the series comes from the life and work of Kathy Reichs, the novelist. While both series can stand on their own considerable merits, the two are so different that they might as well be two completely independent franchises.
** The novel character is a worldly and rather jaded divorced (not to Booth, who does not exist in the novels) single-mother, former alcoholic professor in her late-forties. A bit taciturn but capable of normal social interaction. And she is nicknamed Tempe, not Bones. Reichs and Deschanel theorize that Novel!Brennan is a older version of TV!Brennan, but it's not canonical, especially given the big deviations by the show’s end.
* InPrisonWithTheRogues: Booth when he’s framed for murder in season 9. The members of TheConspiracy seemed to hope he’d die from being attacked, and Brennan resorted to {{blackmail}} in fear for his life.
* InSeriesNickname:
** Bones, Bren, and Tempe for Brennan.
** King of the Lab for Hodgins (and occasionally, Zack).
** Cam has called Jack Hodgepodge and Zack Zackaroni (he always has Mac and cheese for lunch).
** Daisy calls Sweets Sweet Lancelot as a play on his first and last names
** Jessica calls Aubrey ''Franchise/{{Superman}}''.
** Angela likes to call Booth "Studly" on occasion and she sometimes calls Jack "Hodgie".
* InsistentTerminology:
** Ska-luh! It’s a Norwegian word for skull, and Brennan is insistent on it being pronounced correctly.
** Jessica was part of an educational "collective", not a "commune"
** It’s “soil”, not “dirt” to Hodgins.
** Gordon Gordon is a chef. Do not call him a cook.
* InsideJob: In one episode the VictimOfTheWeek had been trying to talk his girlfriend, who works at a currency exchange, to leave the back door unlocked so he and an accomplice could rob the place when nobody was there, but she refused.
* InspectorJavert: FBI Special Agent Hayes Flynn, who was tasked with hunting down Bones when she was accused of murder.
* InstantIllness: A SyntheticPlague has Arastoo close to death in a couple of hours in “The Pathos In The Pathogen”.
* InstantSedation: Arastoo in “Pathos in The Pathogen” again. He needs a procedure to help him fight the illness and when Cam injects sedative into his IV beforehand, he’s out in seconds. Possibly justified since it was directly into his bloodstream.
* InsufferableGenius: ''Many''. Brennan, Zack and Oliver Wells all tend to be very smart but not always all that nice. Wells in particular thinks he's better than everyone and Brennan is known to talk down to people who aren’t as smart as her.
* InsultOfEndearment
** Hodgins dismissively calls new intern Finn Abernathy "Opie", after the character in ''Series/TheAndyGriffithShow''. Abernathy counters by calling Hodgins "[[Series/GilligansIsland Thurston]]." By the end of the episode they've gained respect for each other, but still use the same nicknames.
** Also used with 'Mister' Nigel-Murray, introduced as Brennan's way of subtly mocking him for having not received his doctorate yet. By later in the series, even after he has proved himself, it is used as a fond nickname.
** PlayedWith by Booth and Bones herself. Booth originally used the name as a term of endearment and respect for Brennan but [[spoiler: after their first falling out]] he continued to call her it out of a desire to annoy her and always got a "Don't call me Bones!" in response. Later on she came to like the nickname again and he became the only person allowed to call her that.
* IntentionalEngrishForFunny: The instructions to the "baby walker" that Angela buys for her baby in season seven's "The Prince in the Plastic".
* InterdisciplinarySleuth: Brennan, Hodgins, and Angela all qualify in their own way.
* InterplayOfSexAndViolence: A fourth season episode opens with the squints watching Booth playing hockey and beating the crap out of some guys on the ice (he's the team's enforcer). Cam says she likes it... a little too much. Then she has a DidISayThatOutLoud moment.
* InternalHomage: Compare these scenes from [[http://i46.tinypic.com/121wzt2.jpg “The Parts in the Sum of the Whole” and “The Boy With the Answer”]] -- [[ItsASmallWorldAfterAll same taxi even]]!
* InterruptedIntimacy: In "The Shallow in the Deep", Booth and Brennan accidentally walk in on Sweets and Daisy having sex in Sweets' office. The couple promptly has a NakedFreakOut and resort to HandOrObjectUnderwear, while a surprisingly nonchalant Booth still tries to get Sweets to sign his ready-for-duty form, much to Sweets annoyance.
* IntroductionByHookup: Brennan has a one night stand with her former college professor who has just come to town. The next day she discovers that he's the forensic anthropologist that the defense has hired for a trial she's testifying at.
* IntroOnlyPointOfView-episodes often open with random people finding a body and then the main characters come in.
* InvincibleVillain: Christopher Pelant has been built into one of these. He can [[CardboardPrison get anywhere]], [[HollywoodHacking hack anything]], [[AnyoneCanDie kill anyone]], and [[KarmaHoudini get away scot-free]] without breaking a sweat. And, as Hodgins [[GoodIsNotNice finds out first-hand]], he [[DeathSeeker enjoys the idea of being killed]], even if only [[HeWhoFightsMonsters for the effect it would have]] on the protagonists. [[spoiler: Turns out to be quite vincible, and the heroes don't even care to watch his last ominous recording because now he's dead, end of story.]]
* InvisibleWriting: In the Season 7 finale a man in a mental institution leaves a secret message written on the walls in his own saliva. It works like invisible ink; it only shows up under special light.
* {{Irony}}: The replacement bowler on Max's team (paraphrased): "I'm not superstitious like Victim-of-the-Week, I believe in God!" Amazingly Bones doesn't say a word (she's undercover, barely, but it must have been a strain).
* ItAmusedMe: Caroline Julian's reasoning for making Bones kiss Booth in a ChristmasEpisode, though chances are it's more ShipperOnDeck.
* ItHasBeenAnHonor: Hodgins to Brennan [[spoiler:before they attempt to blow up the windshield of the van they are trapped in]].
* ItNeverGetsAnyEasier: Even though the team is made up of a coroner, murder investigators, and forensic anthropologists, every so often this comes into play, either by a person's death being exceedingly disturbing, or the circumstances being tragic.
** "The Goop in the Girl": The victim was an innocent bystander who was forced into robbing a bank while strapped to a bomb, which got detonated by sheer coincidence. Before figuring it out, Angela joked that "I won't let Santa ruin Christmas". Afterwards...
---> You don't think that sometimes we forget those bones out there are people?
** "The Ghost in the Machine" shows how the entire team's affected by the remains of a young 14-year old.
* ItsPersonal
** Does this somewhat frequently. When someone threatens either Booth or Bones, or their kids,it becomes quite personal for the other.
** Brennan wanting justice for her murdered mother in season 1.
** The Gravedigger and Harold Epps are the most guilty of invoking this. The Gravedigger kidnapped Bones and Hodgins in one episode and Booth in another. Epps poisoned Cam, tried to blow up Zack, and used Booth's son as a clue, ''all in the same episode.'' Making it personal was pretty much his M.O.
** And then there was Pelant, who [[spoiler:snuck a dead body above Angela and Hodgins' ''bed'' while they were knocked out from carbon monoxide poisoning]], among other things. After a while his M.O. was ''literally'' making things personal.
** Season 10’s Beginning, when Booth is railroaded and framed and winds up in prison. Then no sooner is he freed than Sweets is fatally injured and dies in his arms. Booth and Brennan definitely want these guys stopped.
** Later there’s Kovac, whose storyline has a double dose. He attacks Booth and Brennan because Booth killed Kovac’s war criminal father during his sniper days. It then turns personal for Brennan and Booth when Kovac’s attack kills Brennan’s father and later blows up the entire lab.
* IWasYoungAndNeededTheMoney: Cam's role in "The Invasion of the Mother Suckers".
[[/folder]]
[[folder:J-K]]
* JerkAss: A recent stand-out is the person who stole Cam's identity, ruined her financially, and was clearly only sorry about getting caught (or wanted to show they weren't afraid after Cam punched them in the face while handcuffed) [[spoiler: She was an old college friend who was jealous of Cam's "easy life," and the fact that they were close only made it easier for her to hide her purchases among Cam's for a year]]. On the plus side (for the thief), their attitude was so horrible that Cam decided not to add "aggressive ID theft" and three years to their sentence just so she wouldn't have to deal with them anymore.
** Not to mention that while the show tries to excuse some of it with Brennan simply being clueless her incredible [[{{Hypocrite}} hypocrisy]] suggests she might just be an awful person. Among other things: Other people have to provide a high standard of evidence but she expects people to accept her own leaps of logic without question, she goes out of her way to be condescending even on topics she knows little about, she actively spites other skilled people (including her own interns at times) out of apparent jealousy, and on many occasions she takes offense at people not observing social norms she herself discounts when its convenient. Unfortunately StatusQuoIsGod so episodes where she learns to get past these behaviors are forgotten the moment the credits roll.
** Oliver Wells is probably worse even than Brennan is as he seems to view literally everyone as his intellectual inferior.
** Amusingly one of the only people who doesn't find Wells to be insufferably arrogant is . . . Brennan herself.
** On the other hand, he does not find it difficult to accept that he made a mistake and he does not take conflicts personally. So, he is definitely more an InsufferableGenius rather than JerkAss, in comparison to Brennan.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: The sheriff who puts Hodgins and Angela in jail after they mess around with [[ProductPlacement their Prius' auto-driving feature]] [[spoiler:showers them with confetti when they get married in the cell. Awww]].
* [[spoiler:UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy]]: Brennen's team suspects, but can't ever be sure, that [[spoiler:the skeleton the Secret Service conscripted them to analyze with state-of-the-art forensic methods was him]].
* {{Joisey}}:
** Bones pretends to be a Jersey girl when she and Booth go undercover at a couples' retreat.
** Her anthropological fascination with the ''Jersey Shore'' series comes in handy when a case of the week takes place there.
* JokerImmunity: Whenever the team even manages to get close to thwarting Pelant, he always [[VillainExitStageLeft has a contrived way out of the situation]] to turn up and torment them all ''again''. Booth even manages to [[spoiler: [[BoomHeadshot shoot him in the head]], complete with epic blood spatter]], and he still escapes, although this time he [[spoiler: [[NotSoInvincibleAfterAll finally suffers lasting injuries]], including [[EyeScream a ruined right eye]]]]. All this seems to do, however, is make him more vicious and untouchable. Subverted in a ''big'' way in Season 9: [[spoiler:Booth kills Pelant with a single shot to the throat.]]
* JumpScare: Cam jumps visibly when Hodgins rolls up behind her to tell her something. His wheelchair doesn’t make much noise rolling over the lab floor so she’s startled when he suddenly starts talking behind her.
* JuryAndWitnessTampering: In one episode, a man who is about to testify against a big military contractor ends up with his wife dead and son kidnapped in order to keep him from testifying.
* KarmaHoudini: At the start of the eleventh season, a newly retired Agent Booth gets involved in [[spoiler:a multimillion dollar heist]] in order to protect his brother from the latter's gambling debts. There are several murders at the scene and later deaths, and Booth ends up in the hospital (again. With a bullet wound. Again.) The episode ends with both Booth and Brennan realizing that they are simply not built for retirement. For Brennan, this isn't really a problem, but Booth ends up back in his old job at the FBI without any questions asked about his role in a series of felonies.
* KeepingSecretsSucks: [[spoiler: Booth had to turn down Bones' marriage proposal because Pelant threatened to kill five random people if he stopped being Booth's #1 priority, and because Bones is a poor actress and Pelant is nigh-omniscient he can't take the risk of telling her. Booth knows this is making Bones miserable but he also knows trading five innocent people for her happiness would be much worse. Fortunately after speaking to Booth's ex-confessor/bartender Bones realizes his "cold feet" is making him just as unhappy and they'll work it out somehow (but next time it's his turn to propose)]].
* KilledOffForReal:
** [[spoiler: The Gravedigger, head-shotted by Booth's ex-sniper teammate]]
** [[spoiler: Vincent Nigel-Murray, shot in the heart by Booth's same ex-teammate]]
** [[spoiler: Pelant, shot by Booth]]
** [[spoiler: Sweets is killed at the beginning of Season 10]]. Unlike [[spoiler: Booth's]] fake death this is for real because ''Cam does their autopsy in front of all their friends''.
** [[spoiler: Booth's brother, and pretty thoroughly at the beginning of Season 11: Shot through a third story window and his body incinerated. Because the brothers have similar injuries from similar life experiences his body was mistaken for Booth's.]]
** [[spoiler: Brennan's dad, peacefully(!) of heart failure after saving his grandkids by killing two assassins. This was after setting up a hope-spot: a mysterious hospital bracelet he's hiding from Brennan which turns out to be from a secret pacemaker operation; unfortunately the pacemaker's GPS allows the killers to track him to an FBI safehouse.]]
* TheKillerBecomesTheKilled: [[spoiler: Heather Taffet]], the serial killer known as [[spoiler: the Gravedigger]], is Jacob Broadsky’s first victim.
* TheKindnapper: One episode involves a kidnapped child, who it turns out has been kidnapped by his father, who thinks his ex-wife is an unfit mother. The father changes the child's name and hair color to hide him at his cousin's house.
* KnifeThrowingAct: Booth and Bones went undercover as a knife-throwing act.
* KnockoutAmbush: How Zach kidnapped Bones, as she'd have mopped the floor with him in a fair fight, even without the handicap of his mangled hands.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:L]]
* LaserGuidedAmnesia: In the final episode [[spoiler: Brennan gets caught in an explosion and loses her "technical memory": she has no idea what anything related to bones means and becomes distressed at the thought of living without her knowledge (it returns when Booth injures his hand and she remembers how to fix it).]]
* LaserGuidedKarma: In "The Graft in the Girl", a woman who dropped out of medical school is stealing corpses from a funeral home and selling them through a fake medical supply house for bone grafts. One of these corpses, who died of mesothelioma, infected at least five people with a deadly disease. The suspect isn't going to trial, though. She didn't last long enough in med school to know that bone dust is toxic, so she gave herself a fatal disease.
* LastNameBasis: Most characters. Some standouts:
** Even away from the job Booth is just Booth, almost nobody calls him Seeley. Inverted with his brother who is always called "Jared" and is actually at one point called "a fake Booth".
** Max and Russ are the only people who call Bones "Temperance". Booth calls her "Bones" (the only one she allows to), Angela calls her "Sweetie" and everyone else calls her Brennan with or without the "Doctor".
** Bones herself refers to everyone but Angela by their last name, even still calling Booth by his last name after they marry.
** Colin Fisher is never called by his first name. In a scene where Wendell is speaking to Cam about the other interns, he refers to them as Daisy, Vincent (who almost everyone ''else'' calls Mister Nigel-Murray), Arastoo and Fisher.
** Hodgins; even his own wife rarely calls him Jack.
** In fact, Angela is the only character that no one refers to by their last name. Only [[PutOnABus Dr Goodman]] regularly referred to by last name.
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall:
** Brennan writes novels that are in-universe versions of the novels the series is based on. In the pilot, and several times after, her co-workers recognize themselves in the characters. Brennan vehemently denies that the characters are based on herself and her friends -- and that is true, seeing as it's the other way around.
** In the episode the ''Family in the Feud'' the conflict of the Hatfield and [=McCoys=] is referred to as "a story," whereas "there's nothing made up about the Mobley's and Babcocks," when in fact it's the exact opposite.
* LeftTheBackgroundMusicOn: In "The X in the File," Bones and Booth are talking about the possibility of alien visitation, when the ''[[Series/TheXFiles X-Files]]'' theme starts up in the background. Turns out it's the ringtone of an abandoned cellphone.
* LetMeGetThisStraight: From the episode ''The Santa In The Slush''.
-->'''Angela:'''"Wait. The evidence actually adds up to an old, fat man with a white beard, in a custom-made Santa suit who smoked a clay pipe and got kicked in the ass by a reindeer?"
* LimitedWardrobe: Booth's trademark black suit and belt buckle, with occasional variations in the shirt, socks, and tie. When he's off the job, he usually wears a brown leather jacket, which he sometimes wears to crime scenes. Brennan tends to wear big, dangly earrings and necklaces.
-->'''Dr. Gordon Wyatt:''' ... Bilious socks and your ostentatious ties, and your provocative belt buckles. [...] [[FreudWasRight Oh, it's a modern-day codpiece. It forces the eye to the groin]].
* LiterallyShatteredLives: "The Science in the Physicist" is notable for deconstructing this a bit; the corpse was flash frozen in liquid nitrogen but shattered by [[spoiler:vibrating it in an earthquake simulator]]. The actual results of simply dropping it are demonstrated when [[ItMakesSenseInContext Angela is hit in the head by a bouncing turkey.]]
* LiteralMinded: Brennan, more so than anyone who isn't an android should be.
* LivingLieDetector:
** Sweets
-->'''Perotta:''' Booth was right, you're like a portable polygraph.\\
'''Sweets:''' He didn't mean that in a good way, did he?
** Booth, mostly in interrogations. He has an innate talent for reading people and even gets rattled once when he misses a lie. He worries his health problems are impairing him.
* LockingMacGyverInTheStoreCupboard: When Brennan and Hodgins are [[spoiler:buried alive by the Grave Digger, their cell (Brennan's car) contains all of the materials a person needs to perform surgery, manufacture oxygen, power a cell phone, and hack a detonator -- assuming one has three [=PhDs=]]].
* LodgedBladeRemoval: There's an episode where Brennan does this when she gets stabbed in the arm. And it may be a case of TooDumbToLive because as a forensic anthropologist she ought to have enough anatomical knowledge to know better.
* LonelyFuneral: Brennan and Booth decide to avert this by showing up with the whole team at the funeral of their latest [[VictimOfTheWeek corpse of the week]], a loner who had nobody in the world but his mother.
* LongLostRelative: Hodgins finds he has a brother named Jeffery who lives in a mental hospital in “The Heiress In The Hill”.
* LovableSexManiac: Angela
* LowerClassLout: One episode explores the "Guido" culture, and Brennan herself said she followed [[Series/JerseyShore the TV "documentary" on them]].
* LyingByOmission: Sweet figures out that the suspect in the Murder of the Week also probably committed the rape they uncovered in their investigation. Booth points out in the suspect's hearing that even if that's true, the FBI wouldn't be able to charge him with both crimes. The suspect thinks he sees a way out and confesses to the rape, and is promptly told he just confessed to murder. When the perp calls them out on lying, Booth explains that the reason they can't charge him with both is that the FBI only has jurisdiction on the murder; he omitted that the Washington, D.C. police have jurisdiction on the rape case.
[[/folder]]
----
'''Tropes A to L'''|[[Bones/TropesMToZ Tropes M to Z]]
----
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:A]]
* AbnormalAmmo: The ice and blood bullet that Brennan was shot with in ''The Shot in the Dark''.
* AbortedArc: Gormogon. The 2007 writer’s strike cut it short and forced the ending to be greatly changed.
* AbusiveParents
** Booth's father. Booth was abused a lot by him until Pops rescued him and Jared.
** One of Sweets' foster fathers whipped him with something.
** Brennan's foster parents locked her in a car trunk for breaking a plate.
** Abernathy's stepfather. Abernathy wanted to kill him because it was so bad.
** Aubrey's embezzling father isn't physically abusive (as far as we know) but he's definitely cold-hearted and manipulative, enough to [[spoiler: pretend to have a family to support in order to wring money from his own son]].
* AccentSlipUp: [[spoiler: Intern Arastoo Vaziri who isn't actually "fresh off the boat", but is pretending to be so he won't have to take any grief for his devout Muslim beliefs]].
* AccidentalMarriage : Angela, so drunk she [[OopsIForgotIWasMarried ''forgot'']] it (and implied that she didn't think it counted; she had no idea the paperwork had been filed).
* TheAce: Booth and Brennan as a team; any random activity their case gets them involved in, one of them will usually reveal themselves to be surprisingly talented at it.
* ActorAllusion: Towards Avatar, Angel and various other things other people did.
** The Vegas episode ''The Woman in the Sand'' combines Boreanaz's role of Angel (who also spent time in Vegas) with a role Angel himself played as vampire stuck in the fifties, rat-pack style. Booth spikes his hair up, dons greaser clothes and suspenders, faking a Bronx accent outta ''Theatre/GuysAndDolls''. Plus, there's a mention of Hyperion Hotel on the show (episode "The Girl with the Curl"); the Hyperion Hotel was a major setting for ''Angel''.
** Booth, like Angel before him, feels that he has to atone for the lives he's taken as a sniper. And they both play detective style roles.
** Booth is reading a ‘'ComicBook/GreenLantern’’ comic in the bathtub in ''The Pain In The Heart''. Boreanaz did voice work in one of the franchise’s animated series.
** Joel Moore [[CelebrityParadox played a major character in]] {{Film/Avatar}}, and ''The Gamer in the Grease'' has Fisher and his nerd pals camping outside for the premiere.
*** Someone says during the camp out that they’re “up against freaks and geeks” which is a reference to Sweets, who’s one of said nerd pals, being played by "{{Series/Freaks And Geeks}}" alum John Francis Daley.
** In the episode ''The Death of the Queen Bee'', Sweets reads up on Ray Buxley, the custodian of Dr. Brennan's old high school, and how he was a suspect in the death of one of her classmates. Sweets then comments that he finds him "Creepy. He's like, "[[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Freddy]]" creepy...". Oh, and did I mention that Mr. Buxley is played by Creator/RobertEnglund?
* AdamWesting: David Faustino in ''The Radioactive Panthers in the Party''.
* AdoptingTheAbused:
** Seeley Booth and his younger brother Jared were taken in by their grandfather Hank due to their mother's abandonment and their father's physical abuse and alcoholism. While Seeley long believed his father had abandoned him, Hank later reveals he told his own son to leave the boys once he discovered the abuse.
** Lance Sweets is revealed to be this in "Mayhem on a Cross", when Brennan sees the whip scars on his back. He was put in an abusive foster family as a young child, but was adopted at age 6 by a kind older couple, who passed away just before he started working with Booth and Brennan.
* AerithAndBob: Seeley and Jared Booth. Seeley is a legitimate name, but it sounds a little odd when compared to his brother's.
** Then there’s Camille and Arastoo as far as the couples go.
* AffablyEvil: Max before his forced retirement. He was a robber and killed several people but he was still likable as a person and the murders were usually to protect his family. He started out courteous and nonviolent as a thief, but when he and his wife hooked up with a much more violent crew, they found themselves in over their heads and ended up on the run from murderers. That's when Max found himself more than capable of murder.
* AffectionateNickname:
** In addition to Bones by just about everyone, Brennan is also called "Sweetie" by Angela.
** Angela sometimes calls Jack “Hodgie”.
** Daisy likes to call Sweets "Lancelot" or "Sweet Lancelot".
** Abernathy and Hodgins call each other "Opie" and "Thurston" respectively.
** Jessica calls Aubrey “Superman”. She also has a habit of calling Hodgins “Curly”.
** Dr. Wyatt introducing himself as "Gordon. Gordon Wyatt." leads to Booth referring to him as "Gordon Gordon" and telling others to do the same.
* AffectionateParody:
** ''The Body in the Bounty'' has Bones guest star on a children's show called ''[[Series/BillNyeTheScienceGuy Bunsen Jude the Science Dude]]''.
* AfterlifeAntechamber: Arguably what looked like Brennan’s childhood home in ''The Shot In the Dark'' if she indeed wasn’t hallucinating as she insisted.
* AgentScully
** No matter how often Sweets is useful or just plain ''right'', Brennan ''always'' dismisses it as coincidence. This has been sort of wink-and-nudge acknowledged as Brennan not necessarily believing it's a coincidence, but making herself believe she believes it's a coincidence, which is not the same thing. Witness the time she tries to get Sweets to explain, and he blows her off with "You wouldn't believe me anyway." The curiosity clearly eats her alive.
** {{Lampshade}}d (somewhat) by Booth in the first episode, when his way of turning over a new leaf with Brennan is by referring to them as Mulder and Scully. He makes this reference again in [[BrickJoke the final episode]], saying they're "better than Mulder and Scully" (Brennan still has no idea who they are).
** The Booth/Brennan partnership and UST has often been compared to the Mulder/Scully partnership and UST. Quite a few ''Bones'' fans were ''Series/TheXFiles'' fans first. However, since Booth and Brennan are not (thankfully) Expys of Mulder and Scully, the personalities are different and so is the interaction and dynamic between partners. The Booth/Brennan romantic relationships was (presumably) planned from the start, giving a more logical progression to their UST (also adds realism).
* AgentsDating: Booth and Bones will often discuss domestic relationship stuff while doing their respective jobs (they're partners on the field that are a forensic anthropologist and FBI field agent respectively) or they'll talk about the job while cuddling in bed together. Other times their date nights/lunches together will be interrupted by a call from The FBI/forensic team at the same time for the same case they'll be working on.
* AgonyOfTheFeet: Booth was held captive during his army service and tortured with beatings to the soles of his feet. The scars are still there on the skin and bones both.
* TheAlcoholic:
** Booth's dad and until recently Booth's brother.
** In season six, Vincent Nigel-Murray is a recovering alcoholic (though his road to recovery is almost entirely PlayedForLaughs).
* AlcoholicParent: Booth’s dad; Booth said he only stopped drinking long enough to hit him or Jared.
* AllAreEqualInDeath: In ''The Titan on the Tracks'', a rich industrialist faked his death, then was beaten severely by his accomplice in order to cover his (the accomplice's) participation. The following takes place in his hospital room:
-->'''Brennan:''' When can we talk to him?
-->'''Doctor:''' Any time you want, as long as you don't expect a response. This man has severe brain damage. Off the record, he's not going to wake up. Best case scenario, he spends the rest of his life hooked up to feeding tubes.
-->'''Brennan:''' This is one of the richest men in the country.
-->'''Doctor:''' Most of the time, that might mean something. Not now.
* AllPsychologyIsFreudian: Played straight by psychologist Sweets who often utilizes Freudian theories and language. However, psychiatrist Gordon Wyatt subverts this stating that "Freud is largely discredited, so to hell with him." Brennan actually feels that Wyatt's psychology makes more sense.
* AlmightyJanitor:
** In security guard form, Micah from ''The Doctor in the Photo''. [[InsomniaEpisode Provided he wasn't merely]] [[HelpfulHallucination a figment of Bones' sleep-deprived imagination.]]
** Hodgins is a variation in that he practically owns the Jeffersonian while working in the lab.
* AlmostOutOfOxygen: Brennan and Hodgins wind up in this situation when the Gravedigger buries them alive. Due to the relatively hard science nature of the program, Dr. Hodgins [[spoiler: manages to [[MacGyvering MacGyver]] a carbon dioxide scrubber, and gets a text message out]].
* AlternateUniverse:
** In the season 4 finale, there is one during [[spoiler: Booth's post-surgery dream]]. Booth and Brennan are the owners of a night club called "The Lab", where a murder is committed. Booth's brother and Cam become detectives in the case, Vincent is the DJ, Arastoo is an investor wanting to buy the club, Max is a corrupt politician, Sweets is the bartender and has a band called Gormogon, Angela is the hostess, Caroline is the club's lawyer, Fisher is the chef, Wendell is the bouncer, Clark is a hip-hop impresario called C-Synch, Daisy is a waitress and Hodgins is a writer.
** In ''The 200th in the 10th'' Brennan is a detective fighting sexism on the force during the 1950s and Booth is a jewel thief framed for murder.
* AlwaysGetsHisMan: Booth says this. Brennan turns it into NoManOfWomanBorn by saying she’s a woman, not a man.
* AlwaysSaveTheGirl: Whenever Bones is in danger, Booth won't hesitate to jump in to the rescue.
* AmbitionIsEvil: While not evil, Aubrey wants to be more than a mere FBI agent and as such he's hesitant to get involved with "gut-feeling" squintern because she used to be a member of an extremist environmental group, among other unusual aspects of her past. [[spoiler: He later realizes what a hypocritical jerkass he was being by judging her on her past since anyone would be suspicious of ''his'' past as the son of a multi-million dollar embezzler.]]
* AmoralAttorney: Not a direct example as Bones isn't an attorney, but the trope is explored in ''The Girl in the Fridge''; Bones and an OldFlame turned {{Rival}} are opposing experts in a murder trial. Bones clinically delivers her conclusions, her ex makes somewhat less professional conclusions while chatting up the jury - and implies that Bones isn't really as smart as she sounds. In between sessions, her ex states that he's merely "playing the game" - he's supposed to argue that the evidence supports the defendant, just as she's for the prosecution. In-universe, Bones' consultant argues for impartiality and sweet-talking the jury, but sees nothing wrong with her ex using inside knowledge (which he got by ''sleeping'' with her) to attack her character instead of the evidence (the prosecution objects and the judge sustains[[note]][[http://remediallawnotes.blogspot.com/2014/07/character-of-witnesses.html Character of Witnesses]]; "Personal opinions on the moral character of a witness, being usually too general, sweeping or subjective, are excluded." Bones' ex isn't saying that she's reading the evidence wrong, he's saying she's a lousy scientist. Such a broad accusation is ''absolutely wrong'' in a courtroom where she is not the defendant.[[/note]], but Brennan's consultant waves it off as a technicality; "He looks like a regular guy who's not allowed to speak the truth because the stupid rules get in the way."). This leads into the same problem as Amoral Attorneys - that ''scientists'' aren't supposed to be impartial, but to have agreed in advance as to who is guilty no matter which side they're on.
* AndStarring: Of a sort: all of Verizon [=fiOS=]' episodes descriptions from episode two of season 10 onward include "and Special Agent Aubrey" (IE "Booth/Bones/the team and Special Agent Aubrey investigate...").
* AndTheAdventureContinues: The series finale implies this, [[spoiler: declaring that the lab will be rebuilt with Hodgins ("KING OF THE LAB!!!") becoming interim leader while Cam is away on her honeymoon]].
* {{Angst}}: [[spoiler: Angela and Hodgins are brimming with sadness after learning they both carry a gene that gives their child a 1/4 chance of being blind, but later Hodgins decides to make the best of it, saying they should take up hobbies that don't require sight (piano for him and sculpture for her). When their baby is born he's perfectly healthy]].
** Jessica has been just fine about her "educational cooperative" (''[[InsistentTerminology not]]'' [[InsistentTerminology a commune]]) breaking up due to the head's retirement until the very end of ''The Geek in the Guck'' when she reveals she's a complete wreck because that place was her home and everyone was family to her.
*** She's also annoyed that Aubrey doesn't want to get involved with her just in case her past environmental activism messes up his chances for higher office, and she's annoyed that she's annoyed because they aren't even dating (Bones doesn't care so long as her statement that "being upset makes her work harder" is true; Angela is more sympathetic).
* {{Anticlimax}} / AnticlimaxBoss (hopefully): [[spoiler: For all his preparations Pelant didn't expect Booth to show up early and for Bones to let Booth shoot him (she'd previously admitted that Pelant's genius was "beautiful" and wanted him taken alive, possibly becoming a BoxedCrook)]].
* AntiIntellectualism: A RecurringElement is how Bones and some squints are smart enough to catch crooks with microscopic bone fragments, but not smart enough to confuse, embarrass, or intimidate {{Muggles}}.
** Hodgins gets chewed out on a regular basis for his impromptu tests -- Using spam and artificial bone to determine exact circumstances of death by incineration make perfect sense to Hodgins, Zack and the viewer, but Cam threatens to ''[[GeorgeJetsonJobSecurity fire them on the spot]]'' for acting without her permission.
--->'''Booth''': ''Defense lawyer hears "Spam", he makes a joke, and the jury laughs, and everything we get from the Jeffersonian is framed as 'goofy science', you know, from a bunch of squints with no connection to the real world.''
** Bones herself gets harangued for being smart because most people are slack-jawed morons in comparison -- she nearly loses an otherwise OpenAndShutCase in ''The Girl in the Fridge'' because the opposing expert is chatty and handsome.
--->'''Bones''': ''The jury likes Michael better than they like me, apparently that's a problem. Are they stupid?''\\
'''Goodman''': ''Compared to you, yes they are stupid. However, compared to you most of the world is a little stupid.''
* AnyoneCanDie: While there's not CharactersDroppingLikeFlies, and the major deaths are all very separated, main characters aren't actually safe most of the time.
** The first season finale has [[spoiler:Bones' mother]] as the victim of the week, despite her actually having been dead for quite some time.
** In Season 6, during the manhunt for Broadsky, [[spoiler: Vincent Nigel-Murray]] gets shot in the heart and dies.
** In the Season 10 premiere, [[spoiler:Lance Sweets dies]].
** Season 11 premiere has [[spoiler:Booth's brother]] as the victim of the week.
** Season 12 sees [[spoiler:Max Keenan, Brennan's father]] die.
* ApologeticAttacker: [[spoiler: Agent Kenton]] apologizes to Brennan before preparing to murder her and frame it on a serial killer Booth is after in ''Two Bodies in the Lab'', saying he'll kill her before inflicting the serial killer's signature mutilations. Brennan is understandably not appeased by this and puts up a fight before Booth arrives shortly after he regains the upper hand.
* ArbitrarySkepticism: Hodgins is a conspiracy nut but doesn't believe in the supernatural or the afterlife (ironically this comes up during a crossover with ''Series/SleepyHollow''; he was also trying very hard to convince himself that whatever he saw on a ''Film/TheBlairWitchProject''-esque film in ''The Headless Witch in the Woods'' was just a wisp of smoke).
* ArcNumber: 447, which in the Grand Finale is revealed to mean [[spoiler: Times of change for Booth and Brennan]].
* ArcVillain: The Gravedigger, Gormogon, Jacob Broadsky, Cristopher Pelant, the Ghost Killer, the Puppeteer, and Kovac.
* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Bones loves talking about alpha males among humans, even though that's a model for ''wolf'' behavior that has long since been deprecated, even by the man who developed it, as it was developed by looking at wolves raised and living in captivity.
** In ''The Critic in the Cabernet'' Booth gets his sperm analyzed and everyone brings up that he had 28.8 million sperm in 3 mL. Although anything over 1 million sperm per mL is capable of fertilization, the average sperm count for a male in the United States is 120 million in ONE mL. (Or 360/28.8 = 12.5 times Booth's sperm count).
** ''The Pathos in the Pathogens'' involves a virus that is eating away the victim's corpse. By definition, viruses require living cells to reproduce.
** ''The Source In The Sludge'' seems to have confused lampreys, which are parasitic on ''live'' prey, with hagfish that scavenge dead carcasses.
* ArtisticLicenseChemistry: In ''The Twisted Bones in the Melted Truck'', the bones in question were "melted" by exposure to a magnesium fire. Magnesium burns at 5000°F+ which would have been more than hot enough to melt the bullet which was found intact within the skeleton (lead melts at 622°F, steel at 2500°F).
* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: The Cantilever Group, to which Hodgins is the sole heir, is frequently stated to be beyond wealthy, and one of the "them" that Hodgins believes in. In ''The Corpse in the Canopy'' [[spoiler: Pelant hacks the accounts and drains the entire fortune of the Cantilever Group, leaving Hodgins penniless. First, no organization of that size would only have liquid assets. Second, an organization of that size would be "too big to fail" and couldn't simply disappear without massive repercussions and at least one government would have stepped in. Third, ''banks keep records''; Pelant's actions would have been reversed inside an hour.]]
* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Booth being descended from John Wilkes Booth. He could be related and descended from another Booth brother but John Wilkes Booth himself had no known children. Plus, the Booth surname itself died out because only females lived to even have descendants that are alive now.
** While "The Witch in the Wardrobe" does manage to avoid one of the most common pitfalls of this trope (assuming BurnTheWitch applied to Salem), it ''does'' create a pressing victim who never existed. Giles Corey was the only recorded victim of pressing. It would be an archaeological discovery in itself to find another verified witch trials victim who slipped through the cracks in extant records, but the episode portrays it as if this additional pressing victim ''was'' known to have existed and the only thing to be investigated is how it's connected to the modern death.
* ArtisticLicenseLaw: Brennan gets sentenced to six months probation for assault in season 11, and Booth is assigned as her probation officer. Not only does Booth ''not'' have the required training to work as a probation officer, but he and Brennan have been married for several years by this point, which would create a '''massive''' conflict of interest and therefore no judge in their right mind would assign him to supervise her.
* ArtisticLicensePhysics:
** ''The Science in the Physicist'', featuring a murdered physicist who had worked at the Large Hadron Collider, had another physicist say he was glad the BodyOfTheWeek was dead because of the [[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/03/29/no-the-lhc-wont-destroy-the-earth/ LHC black hole scare]]. Actual physicists had discredited the idea almost as soon as it was brought up because [[UnrealisticBlackHole black holes do not work that way]].
** In ''The Lady on the List'', when Sweets is upset that he might be replaced by a computer named VAL, Bones helpfully points out that the computer's objectivity would skirt the pitfalls of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, thus implying that the main problem with a human profiler is that he can't know both where he is and how fast he's going.
** In the episode ''The Knight on the Grid'', when Zack turns on a laser we can see the laser tracing out its path.
** Occurs even earlier (first season) when Hodgins uses two lasers to examine the chemical composition of a bone.
* ArtisticLicense - Science:
** The squints routinely eat and drink in the lab, even using their equipment to cook. To say this is a no-no is an understatement. No matter how carefully you clean, you have to assume that every surface is contaminated with highly unsafe materials and eating is the fastest way to get those materials inside your body where you don't want them.
** They also routinely fail to wear eyewear. Given the reactive chemicals they work with, the unknowns of the remains they're dealing with (meaning unknown materials), and the wildly unconventional experiments Hodgins &co perpetrate, everyone should be wearing ear and eye protection at all times, even absent ''normal laboratory protocol''.
** Hair. Fibers are a big deal. Everyone should be wearing hairnets and (for the relevant men) beard nets. Beyond that, everyone should be wearing face masks because they're dealing with dangerous materials. Hell, they should probably be wearing ''gas'' masks. The lack of face masks actually nearly kills Cam and is a plot point regarding how a killer got cancer, yet no one seems to learn from it.
** Hodgins naming a fungus strain after Angela. He could add her name to the strain as a new variation, but couldn’t just create a new name that way.
** Side note, they should probably be more careful about condoms. That's not laboratory science, though. That's basic bedroom/volvo stuff.
* AsHimself:
** Billy Gibbons of Music/ZZTop has appeared several times as himself -- Angela's dad!
*** Which is to say, Billy Gibbons is Angela Montenegro's father in-universe. RealLife Gibbons and Creator/MichaelaConlin are unrelated.
** Cesar Millan showed up in one episode, in an obvious plug for his own show. Several scenes were devoted to showcasing his dog-taming skills as the main characters oohed and aahed.
** [[Series/MarriedWithChildren David Faustino]], who took over one victim-of-the-week's glurgey movie and transformed it into an action schlock-fest.
* AsYouKnow: A fair bit, but notably PlayedForLaughs in ''The Source in the Sludge'' when Daisy, having failed her orals, spends the rest of the episode answering Bones's case-relevant questions as if on an exam.
* AssholeVictim: A few over the years. The guy on the bowling league in ''The Change in the Game'' was disliked by just about everyone else. The Gravedigger is probably the best example, though, when Broadsky killed her. No one was too upset to see a serial killer killed.
* AtonementDetective: Booth was an Army Sniper before joining the FBI. In the Pilot he tells Bones that he wants to catch at least as many murderers as people he killed in the line of duty.
* AttendingYourOwnFuneral: [[spoiler: Booth]] at the end of the third season.
* AttentionDeficitOohShiny: A murder suspect in season 3 is easily distracted by the shiny table in the interrogation room.
* AwayInAManger: It wasn’t at Christmas but Brennan did give birth in a barn because there was no room at the inn.
* AwesomeButImpractical: When Brennan finally does get to use the HandCannon she picked up in an earlier season... it's way too large to be practically used, and a ricochet injures Booth. The villain of the week even mocks the gun because it only has five shots.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:B]]
* BabiesMakeEverythingBetter: [[spoiler:Six seasons of UST followed by instant RelationshipUpgrade as soon as Bones is pregnant]]. [[spoiler: Daisy and Sweets were together for a long time (longer than Booth and Brennan were officially coupled) but broke up in Season 9. In the Season 10 premiere it's revealed they kept hooking up and Daisy is now pregnant with Sweet's son and it appears they're going to stick together for good. And then someone involved with a government conspiracy kills Sweets...]]
* TheBabyOfTheBunch: Sweets, due to his young age compared to the rest. Booth especially regards him as an annoying kid early on and keeps saying he’s a 12 year old. He was dubbed “baby duck” in one episode.
* BackForTheDead: [[spoiler:The Gravedigger]] in season 6's ''The Bullet in The Brain'', and [[spoiler:Agent Flynn]] in season 9's ''The Sense in the Sacrifice''.
* BackgroundMusic: Billy Gibbons gets his very own background riffs in ''The Killer in the Crosshairs''. Then again, it is Billy Gibbons.
* BadassBoast: In ''The Verdict in the Story'' we get one as badass as one can get in a realistic series, and from Clark Edison no less!: "I shave, sir. I have a driver's license. I've won a couple fistfights. I've saved a life. I've lain with a woman. I've been hustled at pool. I've defied my father's wishes. I have broken hearts and I have been heartbroken. So by all the markers of this society, I ''am'' a grown man."
* BadassBookworm
** In addition to her scientific prowess, Bones is a skilled and aggressive martial artist.
** Her father is no slouch either, since he was a science teacher before and after he was a dangerous fugitive.
** Don't underestimate Arastoo either. He is quite skilled with nunchaku.
* BadassLongcoat: Booth dons one from time to time. Bones herself occasionally slips into her own trench coat as well.
* BadBadActing: In ''The Knight on the Grid'': Bones, trying to trick Gormogon into thinking they're transporting his [[MadArtist artwork]]. He's clever enough to realize it, and takes advantage of the situation.
* TheBadGuyWins: Pretty much every Pelant episode [[spoiler: (except the one where he's shot dead, of course)]] ends like this. Even the one where [[spoiler:Booth puts a bullet in his face]] ends on the note that Pelant is still out there, and the team can do nothing but wait for him to attack again.
* BadLiar: Brennan. Booth doesn’t take Aldo’s suggestion of getting lost in a cave and telling her the truth about Pelant’s threat because he fears she won’t be able to keep the truth hidden.
** Aubrey also has his moments, such as when he tries to tell Brennan that Booth is at an important meeting, but she figures out almost instantly that Booth is really having an eye exam.
* BaitAndSwitchGunshot: Sweets’ death. Booth and Brennan assume he was shot when Aubrey says shots were fired, but the shots were Sweets wounding his attacker. Sadly, they still did injure him with blunt stomach trauma and he still dies from internal bleeding.
* BalkanBastard: Kovac and his dad. His dad was a Balkan warlord Booth killed as a sniper and he wants revenge no matter who he has to brutally torture to find Booth.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: PlayedForLaughs in ''The Rocker in the Rinse Cycle''. Cam is looking for a gynecologist for her teenage daughter and discusses some options with Brennan at the crime scene. Booth asks them to change the subject. Then what Booth assumes is an eyeball tumbles onto the ground at his feet.
--> '''Cam:''' That's not an eye.
--> '''Booth:''' Then what is it?
--> '''Cam:''' Well, put it this way, our victim was male.
--> [{{Beat}} as Booth comprehends the implication]
--> '''Brennan:''' *cheerfully* Would you like us to go back to talking about lady parts?
* BeardOfSorrow: Booth gets one during his prison stint between seasons 9 and 10.
* BeastlyBloodsports: The VictimOfTheWeek in ''The Finger in the Nest'' is a veterinarian who was trying to shut down a dogfighting ring.
* BeautifulCondemnedBuilding: When Booth and Brennan are looking for a house, Booth gets a great price on one that was heavily damaged in an FBI raid. He nervously shows it to Brennan, who declares that she can see the "bones" of the house and recognize its potential.
* BecomingTheMask: Whenever she and Booth go undercover, Brennan gets way into character.
* BeepingComputers: Whenever the interface of a computer moves or changes.
* BelligerentSexualTension: Aubrey and Jessica, what with them being uncertain if they're just meeting for a congratulatory drink or an actual date, deciding to deliberately style themselves after Booth and Bones, and being sassy about it the whole time. [[spoiler: They hook up but break up in the series finale. It's implied in the series finale that Aubrey hooks up with "quirky glasses-girl" Karen.]]
* BeQuietNudge:
** In ''The Tough Man in the Tender Chicken'', when Brennan has had a fight with Angela, she says she usually doesn't have problems with people. Sweets starts questioning that, but then Booth quickly kicks him under the table to shut him up.
** In ''The Dentist in the Ditch'', Brennan tries to do the same thing when she and Booth are having drinks with Booth's brother and his girlfriend and Booth takes issue with something about their relationship. However, she accidentally kicks Jared instead.
* BerserkButton
** Bones flips out whenever Booth is hurt or threatened. In ''The Wannabe in the Weeds'', she grits her teeth, screams, and [[spoiler:guns down a middle-aged stalker who shot Booth. Booth later faked his death so that he could go deep undercover]] for exactly the first ten minutes of the following episode. When he came back, she was so upset, she hit him. [[spoiler:She also smacks the Gravedigger with a metal briefcase]].
** Likewise, Booth for Bones (see the end of ''The Woman in the Garden'', where Booth threatens a gang leader).
** Ask Booth any questions about his abusive father and he goes from happy guy to DeathGlare in a heartbeat.
** Ditto with asking about his army experiences, especially the torture or his sniper activities. And definitely don’t say he’s anything like ColdSniper Broadsky.
** [[spoiler:Booth is related to Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth; the fact that he's also a sniper makes him doubly sensitive about it]].
** It's just one time, but Dr./Chef Gordon Wyatt gets a good one in ''The Dwarf in the Dirt''.
-->'''Wyatt:''' '''''FRY COOK?!'''''
** Aubrey has a special bone to pick with financial fraudsters, seeing as his father was one himself.
** She may not get violent over it, but even if true DO NOT refer to Dr. Brennan as average in anything especially her intelligence or she will become very indignant about it and even vindictive trying to prove you wrong. Even direct evidence that it's true won't get her off your back most of the time. This also extends to anyone referring to her daughter Christine in such a way, especially teachers.
** Arastoo got rather ticked off by an intern who kept assuming all Muslims are terrorists and gave a pretty epic WhatTheHellHero when he’d had enough. He’s also fiercely defensive of his girlfriend and eventual wife, Cam. Hurt or annoy her and he WILL get in your face.
** Hodgins is prone to anger management issues in general, but he will completely lose it if Angela or Michael Vincent are threatened or hurt. The others had a lot of trouble getting him to act rational and think clearly in ''The Corpse in the Canopy''. And he was very upset in the finale when Angela was hurt and Booth was risking things further in desperation over Brennan’s injuries.
** Hurt Max Keenan’s family and prepare to die horribly. He’s actually a likeable guy for a criminal, but he will very easily kill to protect his family. Even if he has to do it with his bare hands.
* BestFriendManual: Angela for Bones. She often gives others tips on interacting with Brennan
** Booth inverts it by explaining things in the world to Brennan.
* BetaCouple
** Angela and Hodgins [[spoiler:until season 4, where it seems like WriterOnBoard was trying to avoid ShippingBedDeath by throwing in a ToiletSeatDivorce]].
** Sweets and Daisy later on [[spoiler: until they broke up in Season 9 (he didn't realize that when he asked her to move in with him it was as good as a marriage proposal to her; at least he gave her the apartment), then revealed to have hooked back up in the premiere of Season 10, and then Sweets was killed at the end of the episode]].
** Aubrey and Jessica in later seasons.
* BigBrotherInstinct:
** Booth towards Sweets and, to a lesser extent, all the Squinterns. They’re his people and he gets angry when they’re messed with. Sweets is a cross between this and seeing Booth and Brennan as surrogate parents due to his childhood being bad.
** Christine to her baby brother Hank. She was once found to have taken the box of Jared’s remains to climb on so she can get in Hank’s crib and comfort him.
* BigDamnHeroes: Attempted by Hacker in ''The Proof in the Pudding''. Alas for him:
-->'''Hacker:''' Ten seconds earlier and I would have been the hero, right?
* BigEater: Aubrey. He usually either has something in his mouth or he’s looking for something to put in it, and he's seen chomping down on a food item in every version of the opening titles he's in.
** He [[AvertedTrope averts]] this in ''The Tutor in the Tussle'' in anticipation of confronting his father. Booth lampshades this after the second time Aubrey declines an offering of food.
* BirthDeathJuxtaposition:
** The death of [[spoiler:Vincent]] and [[spoiler:the birth of Angela and Hodgins' son]] an episode afterwards. [[spoiler:Plus Brennan seeking comfort with Booth over Vincent's death led to her becoming pregnant]].
** [[spoiler: We learn that Daisy is hugely pregnant with Sweets' son not long before Sweets is killed in the first episode of Season 10]]. She gives birth later in season 10.
* BittersweetEnding:
** ''The Graft in the Girl''. The team has busted an illegal tissue harvesting ring that's selling cancerous tissue samples, [[spoiler:but Deputy Director Cullen's daughter Amy is still going to die of terminal bone cancer.]]
** ''The Hole in the Heart''. The Squints pay tribute to [[spoiler:Vincent Nigel-Murray]] by singing his favorite song as they place his casket in the hearse.
** They later pay a very similar tribute to Sweets with the same song, also his favorite, as they scatter his ashes in ''The Lance to the Heart''.
* BlackComedy: Working around corpses tends to bring that out in people, especially Booth and Hodgins.
** How the corpses are found practically always falls into this. Episodes often start with someone trying to have fun or going about their business and stumbling onto a body in a darkly amusing way.
* {{Blackmail}}: Season 9 has a ring that goes back to J. Edgar Hoover himself. Brennan blackmails a corrupt Judge to get Booth freed when he’s framed by people in the blackmail ring and wrongly accused of murder, landing him in prison. She says she’s never blackmailed anyone but thinks she has everything.
* BlandNameProduct:
** "Sea Chimps" (Sea Monkeys) were used in one of Hodgins's and Zack's experiments.
** Also ''Hottie Student Body'', a thinly-disguised ''Girls Gone Wild''.
** And a drain cleaner called "Clog-O."
** Aubrey has a “Forensics for Knuckleheads” book in his office. It’s a thinly disguised copy of the “For Dummies” books of which “Forensics for Dummies” is a real title.
** “Busted by Bill”, a fake version of ''Cheaters''.
* BlastingItOutOfTheirHands: Booth does this to Broadsky to foil an assassination attempt when he can’t get a clear shot at Broadsky himself. Broadsky’s hand breaks and that realization proves useful in the final takedown.
* BlatantLies: Dmitri Vladov is an importer of window cleaner. He has no knowledge of any vodka.
* [[BlondBrunetteRedhead Black, White, Asian]]: Cam, Brennan, and Angela. It fiddles around with the stereotypes, too: Angela is the cool one, Cam is the reserved one, and Brennan is the nerdy one (granted, they're all nerds, but she takes the cake).
* BloodFromTheMouth: Sweets is bleeding from the mouth when Booth and Brennan find him as he’s dying.
* BodyInABreadbox: Corpses turning up in unlikely places is such a hallmark of the series that most episodes are named for where the VictimOfTheWeek is found.
* BookDumb: Booth, contrasting with Brennan's TVGenius; there is evidence that this is more an act of ObfuscatingStupidity on his part, so that the various [[{{InsufferableGenius}} Insufferable Geniuses]] he works with are less threatened by him, but we don't know the degrees in which these tropes are present. Probably he's just picked up a lot more from working with them than he lets on. Booth is usually presented as more intuitive with a high emotional intelligence which makes sense for someone who has suffered abuse. Several episodes generally present him (and others) acknowledging that within context of the team, his "specialty" is the emotional aspect of such cases. It comes up a lot less though because within context of having to present a legal case and identifying bodies, gut instincts generally don't cut it.
* BoomHeadshot: [[spoiler:The Gravedigger meets her end when a sniper uses a high-caliber rifle to invoke this trope, and we get to see [[YourHeadAsplode her head explode,]] on screen, in glorious high def]].
* BornInTheWrongCentury: It's often acknowledged that Max would be considered a hero in the old west.
* BottleEpisode: Several examples, most of which involved being trapped in the lab. The most notable is probably season 6's ''The Blackout in the Blizzard'', which finds Wendell, Angela, Cam and Hodgins stuck in the lab while Booth and Bones are stuck in an elevator with seats from old Veterans Stadium (with Sweets helping them from outside the elevator). As with many bottle episodes, there is lots of character development, including Bones and Booth agreeing to try a relationship at a future date.
* BouquetToss:
** Brennan at Booth’s mom’s wedding. She insists she won’t be the next to marry but she actually is.
** Cam’s wedding has one as well.
* BowlingForRatings: ''The Change In the Game'' where a mangled body was found in a bowling alley pin setting machine.
* BrainyBrunette: Bones; Angela and Cam aren't slouches in the brains department either. They’re all intelligent dark haired women.
* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece:
** Hodgins and Wendell do this in ''The Blackout in the Blizzard'' (with a healthy dose of {{MacGyvering}}) when they are trapped by a blizzard without power, and they have to solve the case quickly because the murderer might be contagious. The clearest example is when Hodgins actually manages to vaporize some of the metal shrapnel and analyze it. Justified because they work IN a museum.
** Angela had to borrow an Amiga computer "from the third floor" to process a 20-year-old floppy disk found with the VictimOfTheWeek in "The Boy in the Time Capsule".
** They had to break out an old Kennedy-era replica rifle for Booth in ''The Proof in the Pudding'' [[spoiler: so that he can prove that the corpse, presumed to be John F. Kennedy, was not killed by two gunmen. Unfortunately for Booth, while he did replicate the wound, it turns out that the second hole was an ''entry wound'', invalidating the test anyways]].
** In ''The Male in the Mail'', Hodgins used antique weapons on fake bones to compare striation patterns to the bones of the victim. The closest match came from a guillotine, which led Booth and Brennan to discovering that the killer dismembered the body with an industrial paper-cutter, which left similar striations.
** One Valentine's Day episode, after Booth was put out with the idea of romance in general after the abrupt end of his relationship with Hannah, Brennan cheered him up by meeting him in the FBI rifle range with a pair of Thompson sub-machine (or "Tommy") guns, in honor of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
** In ''The Next in the Last'' Hodgins uses an early mass-spectrometer from the Manhattan Project exhibit to analyze a pizza just because [[spoiler: he's moving to Paris and thinks it'll be his only chance to use it (he and Angela change their minds about moving)]].
* BreakingTheCycleOfBadParenting: Booth. His father was abusive and often drunk but Booth is shown to be loving and playful with Christine and Hank.
* BreakUpMakeUpScenario:
** Hodgins and Angela break up in season 4 and then get back together and marry a season and a half later
** Sweets and Daisy twice. First it’s Sweets not wanting to wait a year while she goes to Maluku with Brennan and then they get back together before splitting after planning to move in together and Sweets panicking when he thinks Daisy thinks they’ll marry soon. Then they reunite again only for him to die.
** Cam and Arastoo. Arastoo breaks up wanting to get a job after getting his doctorate, but he can’t fight his feelings and comes back to Cam a few episodes later. They marry in the series’ end.
* BreatherEpisode: Broadsky was taken down in the penultimate episode of season 6, with a named CharacterDeath to boot. The actual finale is a goofy BowlingForRatings episode where Booth inexplicably goes undercover in a mullet and hick accent, and the victim was so [[AssholeVictim annoying]] that the people that had to deal with him wanted them to go light on the murderer.
* BrickJoke
** The Gravedigger is introduced in season 2. Then they waited until season 4 to bring [[spoiler:her]] back in. And then until season 5 [[spoiler:to actually convict her]]. And finally, in season 6, [[spoiler:she meets her graphic, but well-deserved end]].
** The Angela Forever tattoo that Hodgins involuntarily receives in season 4. Finally revealed to Angela in season 5. She does not approve. Followed in season 6 by a Dad tattoo on the other bicep.
** In ''The Princess and the Pear'', Fisher winds up sleeping with a suspect. In ''The Gamer in the Grease'', he mentions he's had nearly 100 conquests and gets another one while waiting in line to see ''{{Film/Avatar}}''.
** After learning of Booth and Bones' [[spoiler:mistletoe kiss]] in ''The Santa in the Slush'', Sweet's first reaction is [[spoiler: "was there tongue?"]]. Two seasons later, in ''The Parts in the Sum of the Whole'', Sweets learns of [[spoiler:Booth and Bones' real first kiss, during their first case before the pilot]] and is pretty dang shocked. Bones immediately replies [[spoiler:"there was tongue contact"]] before he can even ask the question.
* BritishRoyalGuards: When Brennan and Booth go to London, they suspect a Buckingham Palace guardsman of killing the VictimOfTheWeek, but it turns out he only beat the guy up for sleeping with his sister. While waiting for the guard to finish his tour Booth taunts him, knowing that he can't react. When Booth discovers the truth about the two, he apologizes to the guard who very subtly acknowledges Booth with his eyes.
* BrokenAesop: In ''The Goop on the Girl'', a suicide bomber at a bank appears to detonate his bomb using the signal from an angry left-wing radio show. Booth accuses the host of spreading "poison" throughout the airwaves and causing the attack, even if he was not legally responsible. The episode ends with the radio host giving a long apology on air, lecturing on the dangers of media-stoked rage, and ending his radio show. Nobody told him, however, that the radio show ''didn't'' inspire the bombing. The only reason the show's signal set off the bomb was because it was very close to the frequency used by the actual robbers.
* BrokenPedestal:
** Broadsky was Booth’s mentor who became a ColdSniper and went on a killing spree, including his MistakenIdentity shooting of Vincent Nigel-Murray.
** Michael Stires in ''The Girl in the Fridge'' was one of Brennan’s anthropology mentors and ended up being a jerk who worked for the other side of the case.
* BrutalHonesty: ''The Pinocchio in the Planter'' centers on a murder connected to a group which practices radical honesty, a whole philosophy based on this trope. Cue a lot of blunt comments and answers to the investigators.
* BunnyEarsLawyer:
** Brennan, Hodgins, Zack and ''all'' the interns. To the point where, in stark contrast to the rest, Clark actually seems like this simply for being so very normal.
** Bunsen Jude the Science Dude, a children's TV show host, who veers between competent anatomist and goofy ''Barney the Dinosaur''-type.
** Booth is a milder example. His trademark loud socks and "Cocky" belt buckle would not be acceptable attire for a less competent federal agent.
** The interns have been working on their various quirks between seasons, but the quirk-180 is just as jarring -- for instance, Edison (Mr. Separation-of-work-and-play) suddenly asking if Cam is still dating the gynecologist (she is) and pestering the others for relationship advice on a Valentine's Day episode.
* BuriedAlive: The Gravedigger’s method of operation was burying [[spoiler:her]] victims alive, including Brennan and Hodgins and later, Booth.
** Also the first victim discovered in ''The Mummy in the Maze''.
* TheBusCameBack:
** [[spoiler: Zack]]. After the season 3 finale, he made 3 more appearances and was never seen again after the 100th episode. [[spoiler: ...Until the Season 11 finale, that is. In the final season he's exonerated.]]
** [[spoiler: Sully]]. He appears for four episodes in Season 2, then goes off sailing, claiming he'll return. [[spoiler: It took him 10 years to do so.]]
** Dr. Gordon Wyatt. Once he became a chef and Sweets took over as the team's resident shrink, he got onto the bus. He returned to [[spoiler: examine Sweets's old files to try and exonerate Zack]].
* BusCrash: [[spoiler:Jared Booth]] and [[spoiler: Aldo Clemens]] show up as murder victims after some time absent from the show.
* BusmansHoliday: Bones is bad at vacations. She doesn't actually take vacations. She goes somewhere else to do her job for free, hip deep in genocide victims. The one time we see her actually try to take a typical vacation is early in the ninth season, [[spoiler:during her and Booth's honeymoon]]. She's so bored she takes a trip to the local morgue and finds a case.
* TheButlerDidIt: Deconstructed in ''The Woman in the Garden''. The butler says he did it to protect his employers' reputation, [[spoiler:but it's implied that he's ''falsely confessing'' for that reason. They even vow to provide him with "the finest legal representation". And all law enforcement officers present immediately pull the how-stupid-do-you-think-we-look expression]].
* ButNotTooForeign: DoubleSubverted with Arastoo. He shows up as a thickly accented, fresh off the boat, Arabic stereotypical Muslim who observes all of the customs of his faith. It turns out that the accent is fake and he is an urban intellectual who puts on the FOB act to keep people from questioning his devotion to the Muslim faith.
* ButNowIMustGo: Max was like this when his story started, showing up and then leaving before he could be arrested.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:C]]
* CallBack:
** The first time Angela goes into false labor in ''The Hole in the Heart'', Hodgins [[PanickyExpectantFather freaks out]] screaming "Where the hell are my KEYS!?!?!?!" repeatedly. The following episode, when Angela really goes into labor, after insisting everything is under control, and calm, and as soon as he's off-screen, screams "Where the hell are my KEYS!?!?"
** Bones and Hodgins were kidnapped and buried alive by the Gravedigger in season 2. Seven years later, she reveals that it was Booth to whom she wrote her "Goodbye, world" note. Specifically, [[spoiler: she incorporates the note into her vows when she and Booth finally get married]].
** When Zack told Sweets in Season 4 that [[spoiler: he had not actually killed the lobbyist, but would have done so if Gormogon had told him to]], Sweets told him: "People have no idea if they're capable of ending a life until they're put in that situation." Eight seasons later, near the end of ''The Hope in the Horror'', Zack [[spoiler: is attacked by the Puppeteer, who was his own doctor at the asylum and had framed him for the murders. Zack is incapable of killing him, even in self-defense]].
** Zack says to Sweets in ''The Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond'' that he's stronger that he looks. This comes into play in the S12 premiere when he defends himself against the Puppeteer.
** Way back in the Season 1 episode ''The Soldier on the Grave'', Booth told Brennan about how in his sniper days he shot a Bosnian warlord at his son's birthday party. Eleven seasons and over 200 episodes later, [[spoiler: that child is back for revenge against Booth]].
** In season 2, Brennan and Booth rocked out to Foreigner's "Hot Blooded" and later in season 12, when the song played on the radio, Booth referred to it as "their song".
** In ''The Proof in the Pudding'', Booth shot out the Jeffersonian's glass door to get inside. In ''The Day in the Life'', [[spoiler: Booth is unable to get out of the lab (which has a ticking bomb) because the glass was made bulletproof after the previous incident]].
** The series finale’s last scene is a shout out to the pilot’s last scene in the way Booth and Brennan are shown walking off together.
** In ''The Baby in the Bough'', Brennan entertains Andy, the baby, with a finger wiggling “dancing phalanges” game. In season 7, we see her do the same thing with her own daughter, Christine.
* CampGay: Zigzagged with StraightGay in ''The Cheat in the Retreat'', where a gay couple are both rather effeminate but also happily debate what the greatest boxing match of all time was with Booth and an older man.
* CampStraight: In ''The Bikini in the Soup'', the wedding planner's assistant is very effeminate in manner and speech, but winds up being completely straight.
* CannotSpitItOut: Booth and Brennan at different times. And when one of them can, the other one doesn't want to hear it.
* CaptainErsatz: [[Series/BillNyeTheScienceGuy Bunsen Jude the Science Dude]]
* CarpetRolledCorpse: Booth guesses that this happened to a skeleton found in an unlikely posture in "The Verdict in the Story", but Bones shoots down his theory that the body was left rolled up in a rug that had rotted away.
* CarryingTheAntidote: The killer in ''The Pathos In The Pathogens''. It’s surmised that the killer would have it in case he was infected himself, so they need to find him before Arastoo succumbs to the virus.
* CasanovaWannabe:
** When Dr. Nigel-Murray starts going to Alcoholics Anonymous and has to make apologies to anyone he's harmed, he brings up that he bragged about sleeping with Angela... and Bones... and Cam...
** Dr. Fuentes, who flirts with the lab women and has a karate move laid on him by Brennan when he won’t stop flirting and give her due respect.
* TheCastShowOff
** Eric Milligan is trained in musical theater, so the show had Zack sing an amazing rendition of "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing".
** John Francis Daley's band Dayplayer made an appearance in the season 4 finale.
** In ''The Wannabe in the Weeds'' Dr. Brennan tells the cast that her mother insisted that Temperance sang "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" better than Cyndi Lauper. Emily Deschanel gets the chance to prove that later in the episode.
* CatapultNightmare: The beginning of ''The Boy with the Answer'' has Brennan waking up from a Gravedigger nightmare this way.
* CatchPhrase
** Brennan's "I don't know what that is/means."
** Also, whenever she feels it necessary to explain something, she often begins with, "Well, anthropologically speaking..."
** There's also her going [[DontExplainTheJoke "Oh! I get it, it's funny because..."]]
** In "Aliens in the Spaceship", Hodgins and Brennan are kidnapped. When the team realizes, Booth tells Zack he's going to have to be Brennan. Guess what his response was?
** Hodgins and Zack have "King of the Lab!"
** Angela is a fan of saying, "Awkward, awkward, very awkward."
** Brennan always has the same reaction to anyone (mostly Booth) who points out that she shot a man: "He was trying to set me on fire!"
** Caroline calls everyone "chér" or "chérie".
** Jude's "A-''mazing!''"
* TheCavalryArrivesLate: In ''The Proof In The Pudding'' Booth's boss charges in with a full FBI squad saying this is now under FBI jurisdiction... eight seconds after Booth disables TheMenInBlack holding them hostage.
* CelebrityParadox
** Played with as Temperance Brennan, who is based on the main character in a series of books by Kathy Reichs, herself writes a series of books about a forensic scientist named Kathy Reichs.
** Joel Moore, who plays Fisher is also in ''{{Film/Avatar}}''. This would not be a problem, except Fisher appeared in ''The Gamer in the Grease'', which has an ''Avatar''-centric subplot about him getting free tickets to the movie, and hatching a scheme with Hodgins and Sweets to keep a place at the front of the line. Ironically enough, [[spoiler:he winds up missing the movie completely]].
** The same character also comments on being a fan of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. Amusing, [[{{Series/Angel}} given who he works with]].
** Much more subtly, Hodgins mocks Zack for "watching reruns of ''{{Series/Firefly}}" in Season 1. Six episodes later, [[Creator/AdamBaldwin Jayne]] [[spoiler:backstabs them on a case]].
** One of the most memorable moments of the series is Bones performing Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" in Season 3. And then two seasons later, Music/CyndiLauper gains a reoccurring role as Angela's psychic friend Avalon. Who, at Bones and Booth's wedding, sings "At Last" which was covered by Cyndi Lauper.
* CerebusCallBack: "I don't know what that means", one of Brennan's recurring lines since the pilot, gets this treatment in the GrandFinale. [[spoiler:Brennan says "I don't know what that means" when confronted with bone evidence because she has a serious contusion that compromises her ability to work thanks to Mark Kovac's bombing]].
** Inverted with "King of the Lab", also in the finale: [[spoiler:While Cam's away from the Jeffersonian for a few months, Hodgins will be in charge. So he'll literally be the king of the lab!]]
* CharacterBlog: The Bones iPad app has this in the form of Sweets' journal entries.
* CharacterShilling: For Hannah Burley in the sixth season...there’s a lot of talk about how perfect she is but she turns out not to be good for Booth and turns down his proposal. She also wanted to say she was friends with Brennan but it never really showed that much.
* CharacterizationMarchesOn: Bones. At first, she comes off as cold and heartless, but as the series goes on, more "layers" to her are opened up. She is actually a warm and caring person but has learned how to compartmentalize those feelings, as Sweets pointed out numerous times.
* ChasteHero
** Averted. Bones hooks up with more men than any other female lead not portrayed in a misogynist manner on American television, ever. She once dated two men at the same time, one for sex and the other purely for conversation. When they inevitably meet when one arrives to pick up Brennan early, they're not amused. She even discusses society's gender roles and sexual hangups from an anthropological perspective that flummoxes her partner Booth.
** More recent episodes do the same thing such as Bones reasonably justifying the choice of several teenage girls to have children without the father, skip college, and live together. Booth, being a practicing Catholic, is flummoxed.
* ChekhovsGun: Requisite for a detective story.
** Somewhat inverted once, in that the only time we see Booth securing his gun in his home's hidden safe, it's the only time he might have use for it: there's a wanted killer waiting for him in the living room.
** Also, it seems, [[ChekhovsGun Chekhov's Bank Account]]. Practically anytime that it's mentioned that Bones is really really rich, by the end of the episode she donates large amounts of money to a good cause. Except in the season 6 premiere, when she pays Wendell a large sum of money so he doesn't have to work for tuition, without the audience being reminded beforehand about her wealth. Also, at the end of the seventh season premiere, Bones is looking for houses for her and Booth to move into and she casually mentions that one, which is obviously a mansion, costs "only" $3 million, at which point Booth almost chokes on his beer because he wants to pay for half of the house.
** In ''Death in the Saddle'', [[ChekhovsGun Chekhov's Quippage]]. Whilst discussing the body ''du jour'', the team serenades a typically unaware Brennan with the theme song to Mister Ed, followed by Brennan's horse research online and her trying the joke where horses sleep in hotels on Booth (who naturally gets it--as he says, he's got a five year old son). Wouldn't you know it, the victim in question is named Ed Milner and does pony play in an inn as "Mister Ed".
** A literal example is Bones' [[{{BFG}} hand-cannon]]. The subject of much Freudian dialogue throughout the series, it comes in handy when Booth has to shoot a serial killer through a metal door.
-->'''[[spoiler:Geller]]:''' You're carrying the 50-caliber 500. Well, that's five shots. ''(cocks his shotgun)'' And by my count... ''(snaps the shotgun)'' ...you only got one shot left. That's one dumbass gun to bring to a shootout!\\
'''Booth:''' One shot. ''(BLAM!)'' One hell of a shot.
* ChekhovsGunman: Though he wasn’t seen onscreen in season 1, Kovac probably counts. Booth told Brennan about killing a warlord at the guy’s son’s birthday party, and the boy is a man and the season’s villain in season 12.
* ChekhovMIA: Bones's parents. They’re missing in season one, then her mom’s remains are identified in the season finale, and her dad soon becomes a major character.
* {{Chickification}}: The title character is a trained marital artist and competent marksman who isn't shy about using either on bad guys when the situation warrants... for the first season or so. Afterwards these skills are rarely seen again and Bones becomes completely helpless when a killer is within 20 feet of her and has to be rescued. The worst example is with Pelant, who Bones has the opportunity to stop a few times and she just stands there until he says his piece and gets away. However, it's implied that she's been consciously adopting a more feminine role in response to Booth's presence. In the season 6 premiere, she's shown beating up a group of armed men with a shovel. When she tells Booth about it later, he expresses surprise.
-->'''Booth:''' You beat up armed guerillas?\\
'''Bones:''' I had to. You weren't there to save me.
* ChristmasEpisode: Three, ''The Man in the Fallout Shelter'', ''The Santa in the Slush'', and ''The Goop on the Girl''.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Possibly as a side effect of being a LongRunner, numerous ''Bones'' characters have disappeared from the face of the Earth:
** Dr. Daniel Goodman, who was last mentioned to be on sabbatical. [[LongBusTrip In the Season 2 premiere]].
** Brennan's brother Russ and his family, it's especially noticeable in Brennan's wedding and [[spoiler: Max's funeral]]. However, he is mentioned in [[spoiler: the case of the latter]].
** Intern Finn Abernathy.
** Others include agents Payton Perrota and Genny Shaw, FBI director Sam Cullen, Booth's boss Andrew Hacker, Cam's ex-boyfriend Dr. Lidner, Sid Shapiro (though [[RealLifeWritesThePlot the actor's death definitely justifies lack of recent appearances]]), and Booth's ex-girlfriend/Parker's mom Rebecca Stinson (once again, this is a case of RealLifeWritesThePlot; see ''Series/GreysAnatomy'').
* CirclingVultures: Used at least a couple of times - once when the heroes were looking for some remains and saw vultures circling so they knew that that's where the remains were, and once when they were lost in the desert and saw vultures circling over them.
* CircusEpisode: In ''Double Trouble in the Panhandle'', the remains of a set of conjoined twins are found on an oil field. When they find out the twins worked at a circus, Bones and Booth go undercover to find the culprit.
* CoitusInterruptus: Sweets and Daisy get walked in on at least twice.
* ColdBloodedTorture: Happens to Booth in one episode. He says he's had worse. It’s revealed that one of the worst things was the soles of his feet being tortured when he was captured as an Army Ranger, and it was very severe.
** Done to people connected to Booth's [[spoiler:assassinating a Serbian war criminal]], even tenuous ones like [[spoiler:a little old lady whose only connection was being Booth's former squadmate's frequent customer, who was only tortured to torture the guy]].
* ColdSniper: Broadsky, the anti-Booth. He had no trouble killing a bunch of people to get his message across.
* CollegeWidow: In [[Recap/BonesS4E24TheBeaverInTheOtter "The Beaver in the Otter"]], the VictimOfTheWeek, an underachieving college student, had been carrying on an affair with the college President's wife. Reading between the lines, it seems that she regularly finds young college boys to have affairs with behind her husband's back.
* ComicRolePlay: When the Squints are re-enacting a crime, you can bet it's going to end up as this. Particularly when one of them tries to role play as Booth simply to try and come up with a theory to why a crime was committed when he's not available (they're the science people, he's the people person).
* ComicallyMissingThePoint: Being incredibly literal minded, both Brennan and Zack frequently fail to understand other people when they're joking or speaking metaphorically.
* ConcealmentEqualsCover: Not when [[FriendlySniper Booth]] has a {{BFG}}, as one episode's villain learns while trying to use a steel door for cover.
* TheConspiracy: Booth gets mixed up in one led by a corrupt judge that sends three Delta Force agents to attack him and Brennan, destroying their home, and then framed him for murdering the agents, sending him to prison. It also resulted in Sweets’ death before it was over.
* ConspiracyTheorist: Hodgins.
** At least one was oddly plausible; he believes that old, rich families secretly rule the world. He is actually a member of one of these families. Another was actually confirmed by a government official when he suggested it as a viable tool, although it turned out to be nowhere as cloak and dagger as he imagined (it came down to looking up information that was available in public records, but the way he described it made it sound like there was a dossier already prepared for every human being the US government knew existed).
-->'''Hodgins:''' You call it conspiracy theories, I call it the family business.
** ''The Proof in the Pudding'' features a team of secret service agents 'commandeering' the lab and the team, requiring them to examine a set of bones. They're firmly told not to speculate about the deceased's identity, but as the evidence mounts it looks more and more like they're examining the remains of President UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy. [[spoiler:If it ''is'' JFK, then the evidence they uncover all but proves the existence of [[WhoShotJFK a second gunman, and a cover-up]] ]].)
* ConsultingAConvictedKiller: ExploitedTrope. Imprisoned SerialKiller Howard Epps works with an accomplice on the outside to [[JackTheRipoff commit copycat crimes]] for the sole purpose of making the FBI (and Dr Brennan, in particular) consult him on the case. He very purposefully leaves a trail of clues for the FBI to follow, most of which can’t be understood without talking to him and listening to the hints he drops into conversation.
* ContaminationSituation:
** The first season's Christmas episode, ''The Man in the Fallout Shelter''. The entire team is exposed to an infectious body.
** ''The Pathos In The Pathogen'' has a contaminated body brought in and Arastoo is infected and nearly killed by a virus carrying needle hidden in it.
* ContinuityNod: Oh so many of them, especially in later seasons. It'd be really tough to list them all. Just know there are many episodes that to get the fullest experience, you need to get the nods.
** ContinuityCavalcade: "The End in the End" is the best example; fitting for a finale. Among the things and events brought up or seen one way or another are: [[spoiler: a photo of Hodgins and Zack from season 1, the plaque in memory of Vincent Nigel-Murray, Sweets's book on Booth and Brennan (finally published!), a photo of Max with Brennan at her wedding, many mentions of the B&B moments over the years, and a few of Brennan's memories of her interns]].
* ContrivedCoincidence: Often but ''The Mummy in the Maze'' takes the cake with two huge ones. First, the bodies of both of the killers victims, killed a year apart, being found separately, in different locations by random innocent bystanders within 24 hours of each other. Second, the same suspect, who knew both victims, having been near where both bodies were dumped but not being guilty, although the second one could be justified by the killer having made a conscious attempt to frame him by dumping bodies in places he visited.
* ConvenientlyAnOrphan: Dr. Brennan, whose loss is used to explain and excuse her (seemingly?) detached approach to humanity.
* ConvulsiveSeizures: Arastoo when he’s dying from a virus in ''The Pathos In The Pathogen''. He’s given an anti-serum but it fails to work and increases his heart rate until he seized.
* CoolOldGuy:
** Max Brennan - Retired and often seems kind of harmless but threaten his family and you’ll be sorry.
** Billy Gibbons - Tests Hodgins’ character pretty thoroughly before accepting him, including two instances of knocking him out and tattooing him.
** Hank Booth - Ex-soldier who wasn’t afraid to stand up to his abusive son to save his grandkids.
** [[Creator/StephenFry Gordon Wyatt]]- Psychiatrist-turned-chef who has a funny way with words during Booth’s therapy sessions and is secretly a heavy metal fan and ex-rockstar.
* CopKiller: A couple
** The corrupt judge who had his guys beat Sweets to death. Federal agent killer, but still counts.
** The kids who leave a bomb in a body that kills four cops, badly tears up Aubrey and ultimately paralyzes Hodgins. They mostly wanted thrills but it went far worse than they wanted.
* CopKillerManhunt: After Sweets is killed in ''The Conspiracy in the Corpse'', everyone is determined to take down the guy who did it, with Booth nearly going rogue to do it himself.
** Also the aftermath of four cops dying in “The Doom In The Boom”.
* CopAndScientist: Booth and Brennan, respectively.
* CopsNeedTheVigilante: The show is particularly terrible about this. Agent Booth will tell Dr. Brennan to step in ''in the middle of an interrogation'' if a suspect lawyers up. She dives in and steals evidence right in front of him. The entire team colludes to hide that one of their own tampered with evidence in an investigation he should have recused himself from. They should have the worst record of any team ever for case closure, yet somehow they manage a high solve rate.
* CorruptedData: Given [[HandWave lip service]] where even though it's stated to be corrupted Angela will regularly reconstruct data and it will be good as new.
* CourteousCanadian: Dr. Douglas Filmore, who Bones insulted so hard his arm stopped working, is Canadian. The entire episode he first appears in full of references to Canadian politeness. When told that he should yell at Bones, he says that he can't -- he's Canadian.
Canuck: Canadian.
* CrammingTheCoffin: The "same grave" variant is used in ''The Twist in the Plot'', though it was already occupied when the murderer hid the second body there.
* CreatorsCultureCarryover: In the episode "Mayhem on a Cross", Norwegian police are depicted as wearing what appears to be riot gear and guns, violently kicking in the door spurring a fight between policemen and musicians and concert goers. In reality, Norwegian police are typically unarmed and many policemen may only arm themselves in extreme situations, such as when approaching a suspect they know to be armed.
* CrimeTimeSoap: Sudden conversational switches from details from the murder victim to details of personal life is a show standard.
* CripplingTheCompetition: In ''The Plain in the Prodigy'', the VictimOfTheWeek had done this to himself shortly before he was killed: he slammed his right hand with a desk drawer to break it, in order to remove the temptation of going to a music school to study piano.
* CrossOver:
** With ''Series/SleepyHollow'' for their respective [[{{HalloweenEpisode}} Halloween Episodes]].
** With ''Series/{{Rosewood}}'' as well. Daisy was the college roommate of a character on the series and came in to help on a case.
* CrushingHandshake: In ''The Plain in the Prodigy'', Booth meets Cam's daughter's new boyfriend. After greeting him enthusiastically, Booth throws in some not-very-veiled threats about treating the girl right, including mentioning that he used to be a sniper, and finishes off with a handshake that leaves the kid wincing and rubbing his hand.
* CryptidEpisode: "The Truth in the Myth" focused on the Chupacabra.
* CulturalTranslation: The original novels were partially -- sometimes mostly -- set in Montreal or North Carolina, wheras the show is set in Washington D.C. This gets a nods in the pilot, where Brennan tells Booth the nearest forensic anthropologist other than herself is in Montreal.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:D]]
* DadTheVeteran: Booth’s abusive father and Booth himself. Edwin Booth was damaged by his war experience and it’s indicated it drove him to alcohol and abusing the kids. Booth was an Army Ranger and saw way more war than he wants to remember.
* DamnYouMuscleMemory: For the final sniper cat-and-mouse showdown with Booth, Broadsky, as trained snipers are taught to do, camped out on the high ground. Unfortunately, he forgot that in their previous encounter [[spoiler:Booth [[BlastingItOutOfTheirHands shot his rifle out of his left hand]], mangling it; therefore he can only rest the gun barrel on his arm and is incapable of gripping the barrel and aiming downwards. This allows Booth to do the exact same thing to his ''other'' hand before he can change cover]].
* DarwinistDesire: Dr. Brennan initially justified her interest in having a child with Booth by claiming he possessed favorable genetic traits that would complement her own, she later decided she wanted to have a baby via IVF and decided that Booth had the best genes for it. Then the plan went by the wayside when Booth was diagnosed with an early-stage brain tumor. [[spoiler: They end up having sex, with Bones accidentally getting pregnant and having a daughter. Later they also have a second child after getting married.]]
* DatingDoSiDo: Angela and Hodgins dated, then Angela dated Wendell then she dated Hodgins again and married him. Cam dated Booth (twice), who then eventually dated Bones and married her. Cam eventually went on to date, break up with, date again and marry Arastoo. Off in their own little corner is Daisy and Sweets who dated for quite a long time, then Sweets dated Jessica who would later date Aubrey. Sweets reunited with Daisy shortly before he died.
* DeadGuyJunior
** One of the names Angela and Hodgins' baby gets is [[spoiler:Vincent, after Vincent Nigel-Murray]].
** Booth names Parker after Corporal Edward Parker, a friend of Booth's from the Army Rangers.
** Booth and Brennan name their daughter [[spoiler:Christine Angela Booth, after her mother]].
** Inadvertent one: [[spoiler: Sweets is killed in the same episode that revealed Daisy is pregnant with his son whom she has already named Lance]]. Ends up subverted in the end, as Sweets’ wish to name the baby Seeley wins out. Lance is his middle name though.
** [[spoiler: Booth and Brennan's son's name is Hank, after Booth's grandpa]]
* DeadPersonConversation:
** Brennan and her mom in ''The Shot in the Dark''. It’s ambiguous if she was seeing a ghost or hallucinating.
** Ditto Booth seeing his dead army buddy in ''The Hero In The Hold''.
* DeadpanSnarker: Everyone, to a certain extent.
** Bones especially, though. Subverted in that much of the time, Temperance isn't aware she's snarking.
-->''(head falls off a body hung from a tree, and Bones catches it)''\\
'''Bones:''' I need an evidence bag.\\
''(rest of the body falls)''\\
'''Bones:''' [[GonnaNeedMoreX I'm gonna need a bigger bag]].
** Cam, being the OnlySaneEmployee at the Jeffersonian, does this. A lot.
** Also Caroline Julian is ''made'' of this trope -- everything she says is both deadpan and snarky.
* DeathInTheClouds: In ''The Passenger in the Oven'', they're taking a plane to China when a dead body is found, and they have to discover and arrest the murderer before they touch down or else the case becomes "property" of China.
* DemotedToExtra: Even though [[spoiler:Mark Kovac]] is the BigBad of both season 12 and it's two-part finale, he only appears briefly in that finale, has no dialogue, and dies somewhat unceremoniously in a shootout after his more notable role in the first episode he appeared onscreen.
* DenouementEpisode: The series tends to do this.
** The penultimate episode of Season 4 reveals Booth has a brain tumor. The actual last episode is in an AlternateUniverse dream where Booth and Bones are married and running a bar, and ends with Booth waking up having post-surgery amnesia.
** The penultimate episode of Season 5 features the trial and conviction of recurring villain The Gravedigger. The final episode ties up loose ends as members of the team [[BreakingTheFellowship go their own ways]].
** Season 6's penultimate episode has Vincent Nigel-Murray killed by a ColdSniper, and Booth and Brennan sleeping together. The finale has the birth of Angela and Hodgin's baby, Booth undercover in a mullet [[BowlingForRatings as a bowler]], and the revelation that [[spoiler: Bones is pregnant with Booth's child]].
* DenserAndWackier: A common comment from season four onward is that the show begins to dip more towards the comedy part of "dramedy".
* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: The bratty girl in the BowlingForRatings episode. She was going to be “world champion of the world” by 2026.
* DetectiveMole:
** Agent Kenton in ''Two Bodies in the Lab''. He’s actually the killer and nearly kills Brennan.
** The tech expert who helps Angela in ''The Brother in the Basement''. He’s going through a suspect’s computer and phone to distract everyone from realizing he killed Booth’s brother.
* DiabolusExMachina: Pelant, for one, when he gets in the way of Booth and Brennan’s wedding plans, steals Hodgins’ money and frames Brennan.
* DidntThinkThisThrough: Angela getting herself arrested for refusing to testify at Max's trial. Yes, she was "protecting" her friendship with Brennan, but it's the team's job to testify what they know whether they like it or not, and she's got her BFF's permission to testify anyways. Not to mention that her testimony (identification of the body) would've caused relatively small damage to the defense (unlike Zack's or Booth's, who testified about the murder weapon and opportunity, respectively), so ultimately she got herself locked up over barely anything.
* DiplomaticImpunity: Shows up in two cases. In ''The Girl in Suite 2103'', a diplomat is threatened with being returned home to be prosecuted, in which case she'll be put in prison and killed by other inmates. To avoid this, she waives immunity. Later, Pelant falsifies records to claim Egyptian citizenship, without any mention of him actually having (fake) diplomatic status. Both these examples are also HollywoodLaw.
* DistractedByTheSexy
** In ''The Babe in the Bar'', when Vincent Nigel-Murray comes up with an idea to preserve the bubbles of the victim's last breath, Cam in her enthusiasm says "If I didn't have self-control, I could kiss you!" The normally MotorMouth Nigel-Murray is struck silent for several seconds until Hodgins brings him out of it.
** Hodgins himself falls victim, when he sees the newsreel Angela dug up to check out Booth's new girlfriend.
** In ''The Male in the Mail'', Edison can't stop staring at Bones fidgeting with her pregnancy-sized breasts.
* DontExplainTheJoke: Brennan does, both with her own jokes and the jokes of others to show she ''[[CatchPhrase does]]'' [[CatchPhrase know what they mean]] and finds them humorous.
* DontYouDarePityMe:
** When the very independent and in-control Cam's identity gets stolen and she's arrested for check fraud it takes her a long time to accept help even from Hodgins (who had to deal with [[spoiler: Pelant stealing ''all of his and his family's foundation's money'', if not his identity]]) and techno-wizard Angela.
** Hodgins himself oh so much as he struggles to adjust to being a paraplegic in season 11. He shuts out everyone including his wife and TookALevelInJerkass until he tries for a divorce and Angela finally talks sense into him.
* DoNotCallMePaul: Booth and Cam did this to each other a few times. Cam prefers Cam and Booth his last name. “Don’t call me Camille!” “Don’t call me Seeley!”
* DoubleMeaningTitle: A couple:
** The sixth season opener, ''The Mastodon in the Room'', deals with the team getting back together and examining the motivations that had split them up and the problems this had caused. Unlike most episodes however, the case has nothing to do with mastodons. It instead involves the body of a young boy, and as the episode is entering its last few minutes with not even a mention of mastodons you find yourself thinking [[StealthPun "Aren't they ignoring the Mastodon in the Room?"]]. Then in one of the final shots, the team returns to their old lab -- which in their absence has been turned into an exhibit room for the Jeffersonian -- which features an actual mastodon.
** The show title itself, "Bones":
*** 1) While the show discusses and utilizes many different types of forensics (forensic psychology, engineering, pathology, entomology, etc.), its primary focus is forensic anthropology, which studies the "bones" of the victims.
*** 2) The main character is a female anthropologist with the InSeriesNickname "Bones", given to her by the male lead/{{Deuteragonist}} who is her partner [[spoiler:and later lover/boyfriend/baby daddy, and later still, her husband]].
** ''The Lance to the Heart'' is referring both to the shock of Sweets’ death and his first name being Lance and the others deeply caring for him. It also refers to the broken rib that pierced his aorta and killed him, a literal lance to the heart.
** ''The Pain in the Heart'' refers both to Booth’s gunshot wound and the emotional pain Brennan had when she thought he died.
** ''The Change in the Game'' refers to the team changes in the bowling game, the change in the pin settings on the lane, and Brennan’s reveal that changed things for the whole series since she and Booth were now a couple.
* DownerEnding:
** ''The Graft in the Girl''. Sure, they caught the murderer, but Amy's still terminal.
** Howard Epps's introductory episode probably counts as this; sure, the guy on death row got his life extended, just not for the right reasons.
** The end of Season 7. [[spoiler:Brennan has been framed for an assassination by a guy the Squints and Booth are investigating. The guy managed to falsify proofs of both electronic and physical kinds, and the Squints and Caroline have no choice but to report. In the end, Brennan runs away with Christine, and Booth can only see how his girlfriend and daughter leave him]].
** The beginning of Season 10. [[spoiler: Booth is released from prison and the crew is on their way to getting to the bottom of the conspiracy that landed him in there when Sweets is killed trying to stop one of the conspirators... not long after the audience learned he had not only reunited with Daisy but she is also pregnant with his son. We learn he is really, truly dead when Cam ''does his autopsy'' with everyone present, including Daisy.]]
* DoYouWantToCopulate: In ''The New Tricks in the Old Dogs'' an old man in a nursing home asked one of the women if she "wanted to pork". She didn't. He admits this line hasn't been too successful.
* DreamingOfThingsToCome: In the season 11 finale, Brennan has dreams about burnt remains coming to life, and at one point dreams of a Wendell with a cigarrette behind his ear and with burned hands telling her "If you knew what I knew, you'd be so proud of me". [[spoiler:Dream Wendell's line and burned hands are both nods to Zack in the season 3 finale ''The Pain in the Heart''. Guess who shows up at the end of the episode.]]
* DrinkingGame: In-show, not for the show (although there's probably one of those, too) -- Hodgins reveals that he and his college buddies had one of these for ''[[ScienceShow Bunsen Jude the Science Dude]]'' when he starts fanboying over the eponymous Science Dude and the latter calls him out on being [[PeripheryDemographic "older than my usual audience"]].
* DrivingADesk: Several times during the Hitchcock-inspired ''The 200th in the 10th''.
* DysfunctionJunction: After finding out that [[spoiler:Sweets's birth parents were abusive, and his adoptive parents died shortly before he started working with Booth]]. Lampshaded by Booth: "What are we, the Island of Misfit Toys?"
[[/folder]]
[[folder:E]]
* EarlyBirdCameo: Clark Edison appears as a potential Zack replacement in the season 3 premiere. Zack returns and Clark leaves before later becoming one of the rotating interns after Zack leaves the show.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
** Early on, Hodgins handles and analyzes the bones themselves, which he doesn't do later
** Booth is in the lab itself much more. Once Sweets (and later Aubrey) comes around, Booth spends most of his time with Sweets, Aubrey (or less often) Bones while Bones toils away in the lab.
** The lab doesn't always work with Booth and the FBI and sometimes, handles the interpersonal stuff themselves.
** In the pilot episode, Brennan and Zack seem more socially well-adjusted: Brennan, despite giving her {{Catchphrase}} multiple times, calls out a former hookup for coming over for a booty call (using the exact phrase, with a lack of the SesquipedalianLoquaciousness she possesses later) and handily manipulates Dr. Goodman, and Zack seems like a totally different character, being more quippy and less cowed by authority.
* EasyAmnesia: Brennan recovers from her amnesia in the finale awfully quickly.
* TheEeyore: Fisher. Naturally, his mom is an overly-sunny optimist.
-->'''Fisher:''' I got the idea at my summer job.\\
'''Cam:''' I’m afraid to ask.\\
'''Fisher:''' Suicide hotline.\\
'''Cam:''' Were you for or against?\\\
'''Fisher:''' This is weird. Something good is happening.
* {{Egging}}: It’s mentioned that Booth and Brennan got it one Halloween when they ran out of candy.
* {{Elseworld}}:
** The fourth season finale, a [[AllJustADream dream sequence]] in which a married Booth and Bones run a nightclub staffed by most of the cast.
** The 200th episode, in which Brennan is a police detective in the 1950s, while Booth is a jewel thief.
* EmbarrassingFirstName: Angela is actually Pookie Noodlin Pearly Gates. It’s no wonder she changed it to Angela.
* EmotionlessGirl:
** Brennan. She does occasionally show emotion but she is often detached and doesn’t show emotion much.
** At one point Brennan meets an emotionless food scientist who works alone (there was her boss but he was the VictimOfTheWeek).
* EncouragedRegifting: Season One's Christmas episode sees the gang trapped in the Jeffersonian by a quarantine. Everyone is stressed by the situation, especially Booth, who was supposed to get his son a Christmas present. The gang try to make the best of things and hold a pretty decent Christmas, including a Secret Santa where Zack gives Booth a robot he was working on earlier, explaining that "I thought you could give it to your son." This earns him a handshake from a delighted Booth.
* EnfantTerrible: A particularly brittle, obsessive, bratty little girl on Max's bowling league. [[spoiler:You know something's up when Bones declares several times that her child will never be like that!]]
** There's usually an underage killer [[OnceASeason once per season]].
* EnhanceButton: The show [=RUNS=] on it. So much so that when they seemed about to avert it in season 5 in ''The Predator in the Pool'' they felt the need to justify themselves at length... [[ZigZaggingTrope And then they go ahead and do exactly that anyway]].
-->'''Camille:''' Why can't you just lighten up the guy's face and, you know, zoom in?\\
'''Angela:''' Because it was a ''cell phone camera'' that was aimed by a ''child''.\\
'''Bones:''' The plexiglass at this point is a foot thick!\\
'''Angela:''' And thirty feet of water.\\
'''Bones:''' ''At night''.\\
'''Camille:''' I was just asking!
* EnsembleDarkhorse: An InUniverse example. It had been a StoryArc looking for a new lab intern and the crew were really starting to like Wendell Bray. When the scholarship that qualified him for the position in the first place went bankrupt, they spent an episode trying to find a way to keep him. [[spoiler:He was kept on thanks to an anonymous donation. Except they received ''three times'' as much money as they needed, meaning ''everyone'' was desperate to keep him but didn't want to admit it]].
* EskimosArentReal: Zack expresses surprise that Hodgins believes in pirates, and Hodgins snarks back that they're not Santa.
* EstablishingShot: The stock footage of a lovely summer garden outside 'The Jeffersonian'.
* EstrangedSoapFamily: Brennan's brother Russ hasn't made any appearances since season 3 (and wasn't mentioned in most of the following ''nine'' seasons) to the point where he almost reached ChuckCunninghamSyndrome, missing multiple important events: [[spoiler: the birth of his niece and later, nephew; his sister returning after being a fugitive for several months; Brennan and Booth's wedding; and most strikingly, his ''father's funeral''.]]
* EthicalSlut: Angela '''really''' likes sex, and has no reservations about letting people know it.
* EurekaMoment: Also requisite for a detective story.
* EvenTheGuysWantHim: Angela's ex-husband Grayson gets some of this from both Sweets and Clark.
* EveryCarIsAPinto: In the final episode, serial killer Kovac is shot by Booth while driving and the vehicle runs off a nearby ridge and promptly explodes on hitting the ground. Justified though as there are oil barrels where it lands that likely contained some kind of explosive.
* EveryoneCanSeeIt: Bones and Booth. Sweets writes a book about it!
* EvilCannotComprehendGood: A constant on the show with many a killer failing to realize how people will react to his crimes.
** In a few cases, someone who commited a murder decades ago will be honestly amazed people "still care about it."
** Pelant offers Hodgins a seemingly SadisticChoice: Shut down a server that is slowly draining away his millions or let it run to prevent a drone to strike a school in the Middle East. Pelant assumes Hodgins will either shut the server down right away or waste time trying to save his cash and his choice will ruin his relationship with the team. It never occurs to Pelant that Hodgins (who's always hated being rich) will gladly sacrifice his cash to save innocent lives.
* EvilCounterpart:
** Fans have come to consider the Gravedigger the anti-Brennan, as both are brilliant people who have difficulty connecting to others, save for the fact that the Gravedigger didn't care.
** Broadsky is this to Booth. Broadsky is a sniper who is possibly the only one anywhere near as good as Booth and he wants to kill whereas Booth helps people (Broadsky ''claimed'' he just wanted to punish the guilty, but in the course of his appearances he killed more innocents than criminals).
** Pelant can be considered this to Angela in that she’s a computer whiz who helps catch killers and he’s a super smart hacker who uses technology to harm others and help himself.
** Glen Durant is this to Caroline Julian; where Caroline abides by the letter of the law and is owed favours from various government officials, Durant used blackmail to manipulate government officials to maintain his "Shadow Government".
** Philip Aubrey, father to [=FBI=] agent James Aubrey, can be considered this to Max Brennan; they both abandoned their families due to their criminal pasts, but Max did it to protect his children while Philip just wanted to be rich.
* TheExile: Arastoo and Rodolfo both fled their home countries in fear of being killed if they stayed. Arastoo thought there was an edict for his death, but it actually wasn’t ever made public.
* ExiledToTheCouch: Booth says in ''The Movie in the Making'' that he has “healthy debates” with Brennan that sometimes get so “healthy” that he has to sleep on the couch.
* ExpoSpeakGag
-->'''Brennan:''' Particles from the cut grass are causing his mast cells to release inflammatory mediators.\\
'''Booth:''' It's just allergies, Bones.\\
'''Brennan:''' Yeah, that's what I said.
* ExpositoryHairstyleChange: Zack's second-season makeover.
* {{Expy}}:
** [[Series/BillNyeTheScienceGuy Mr. Bunsen Jude, The Science Dude]] is very similar to the real life Bill Nye The Science Guy show, down to the similar name.
** 'Branson Rose' aka Richard Branson-similar name and is a billionaire adventurer.
* ExtremelyColdCase: One episode had an anthropologist as the VictimOfTheWeek, and ''he'' had recently discovered a collection of early Homo sapiens and Neanderthal bones, which are brought in as evidence. Brennan, assigned to modern murders but eager to participate on prestigious specimens, quickly notes that one of the injuries seems not to be accidental and petitions Cam to classify it as a murder so that she can make it her priority. Clark Edison, the anthropologist assigned to ancient remains, points out that the modern case is much more pressing, while his "murder" has only academic interest. They wind up solving it anyway.
* EyepiecePrank: Hodgins does it to Vincent Nigel-Murray to get revenge for Vincent claiming he slept with Angela.
* EyeScream: Although it's done to a dead body, the scene where they remove fluid from an eye in ''The Double Death of the Dearly Departed'' is still not for the squeamish.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:F]]
* TheFace: Since Brennan has NoSocialSkills, Booth often has to play this role in investigation whenever they talk to witnesses or people involved in the case.
* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler: Vera Waterhouse]] is genuinely innocent of any crime in her first appearance [[spoiler: ''Yanks in the U.K. Part 1'']], and helps with the investigation, but ends up murdering [[spoiler: Ian Wexler]], apparently as an unpremeditated crime of passion, between that episode and [[spoiler: ''Yanks in the U.K. Part 2'']].
* FailedASpotCheck: Behavioral analyst Karen Delfs falls for [[spoiler:Jeannine Kovac's]] act hook line and sinker in all of the three episodes [[spoiler:Jeannine]] appears in, which proves costly for the main characters.
* {{Fanservice}}: Multiple:
** Bones' Franchise/WonderWoman costume in ''Mummy in the Maze'' is a stylized homage to the [[Series/WonderWoman1975 Lynda Carter]] version. She even tries the twirl.
** Having Brennan strip Booth to his boxers and wheel him around on a cart in ''The Goop on the Girl'' probably qualifies... and includes a funny moment when Dr. Saroyan walks in on them:
--->'''Booth:''' I'm thinking of saints...
** ''The Woman in the Sand'' puts Bones in a LittleBlackDress, and Booth in a wife-beater posing as a boxer.
* FantasyLandmarkEquivalent: Temperence Brennan working in the "Jeffersonian Institute", an obvious expy of the Smithsonian; the museum itself is the setting for quite a few cases over the course of the series.
* FakeFirstKiss:
** In ''The Santa In the Slush'', where Brennan and Booth were coerced into kissing under the mistletoe by Caroline.
** In ''The End in the Beginning'', an AlternateRealityEpisode where Booth and Brennan were married nightclub owners. Both scenes [[NeverTrustATrailer appeared in the trailers]] for those episodes. In reality, they don't get together until [[spoiler:the end of season 6.]]
** There's a questionable third instance in ''The Sum in the Parts of the Whole'', where Brennan and Booth kiss in a flashback. However, due to [[spoiler:an actual kiss]] that also occurs in that episode, the status quo does change going forward.
* FakingTheDead: [[spoiler:Booth]]. He was shot by Pam Nunan and he took advantage of it to fake his death and funeral to draw out a long-time adversary of his.
* {{Fauxreigner}}: Arastoo (see farther down about his accent), because pretending to be fresh off the boat would make his coworkers less likely to bug him about his religion.
* FedToPigs:
** Brennan’s mom, after being killed with a stun device. It turned Brennan into a vegetarian.
** The chess player in ''The Master in the Slop''. Hodgins’ filter machine ends up malfunctioning and spewing it all over Dr. Filmore.
* FeudingFamilies: The Mobleys and the Babcocks, from the episode ''The Feud In The Family'', centering around the murder of the Mobley patriarch. At one point, there is a mountain of books detailing the various legal issues that have developed in the feud, including [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking multiple assaults, murders, thefts, and nuisance lawsuits]].
* FictionalCounterpart: Bones and her team work at a thinly veiled version of the Smithsonian Institution.
* FinaleSeason: In February 2016, FOX executives and the showrunners came to an agreement to end the show with a shortened 12-episode farewell season. In response, the showrunners wrote a Season 11 finale that [[spoiler:brought back Zack Addy for a serial killer arc]] and served as a launch pad for the last season's main theme: tying up loose ends.
* FindTheCure: Arastoo is infected with a SyntheticPlague in ''The Pathos In The Pathogens'' and catching the killer of the originally infected victim is tantamount to getting the anti-serum to save him.
* FingerInTheMail:
** [[spoiler:A Bishop's kneecaps]] in ''The Knight on the Grid''.
** One actual use of this trope occurs in ''The Woman in the Car'', where the son of a grand jury witness gets kidnapped. Booth gets the kid's pinky finger in the mail.
** Again in ''The Corpse on the Canopy'', though it turns out to be an ape's finger.
* {{Fingore}}: The Ghost Killer rips off one fingernail from each of her victims [[spoiler: because when she was a child her father locked her in a stable and she ripped all of her own off trying to escape. When her body is found she's wearing all of her victims' fingernails as her own]].
* {{Flanderization}}:
** Very badly in Brennan's case -- in the pilot, and the rest of Season One, to a lesser extent, she seems a little detached from reality and certainly lonely, but she gets sarcasm, irony, and most of the normal human interaction going on around her. Four seasons later, her unawareness of pop culture has morphed into full-on ridiculousness about the most basic bits of metaphor.
** Oddly inverted for the intern-of-the-week crowd: they all started off with a single trait ([[FunnyForeigner Muslim]], [[GenkiGirl way too over-peppy]], [[SomedayThisWillComeInHandy constantly spouting useless facts]]...), but these easy traits all turned into pretty deep characterization down the road.
* FleshAndBombs: “The Doom in the Boom”. Four officers die, Aubrey is critically injured, and Hodgins left paralyzed by a body with a bomb inside it. The killers were young guys looking for notoriety. Caroline made sure they didn’t get it.
* FlexibilityEqualsSexAbility: In ''The Body in the Bag'', Sweets and Booth have to watch a woman's sex tape [[ItMakesSenseInContext to look for clues about a murder]] and Sweets comments on how flexible she is, earning him an odd look from Booth
* FloweryElizabethanEnglish: In the episode ''The Archaeologist in the Cocoon'', the team solves a 25,000 year old murder involving both modern humans and Neanderthal. They are [[ShowWithinAShow recreating the scene]], and Dr. Hodgins is playing the part of a Neanderthal male:
-->'''Hodgins:''' Hark, I bring thee meat which we thus shall feast upon, and...\\
'''Angela:''' Hey, honey, [[LampshadeHanging it's not Shakespeare]].
* FoolishSiblingResponsibleSibling: Booth is the responsible sibling despite a few slips into gambling addiction along the way. Jared kept getting in trouble and Booth would try to help. Jared was an alcoholic and had repeated money issues and his issues cost him his life.
* FootDraggingDivorcee: Angela's husband that she didn't even remember marrying appears and says he has built a house for her. He won't grant her an annulment/divorce so she can marry Hodgins, but by the end of the episode, he agrees to it finally.
* ForensicDrama
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** Angela's bisexuality was hinted at as far back as the first few episodes.
-->'''Angela:''' "You have ''no idea'' how open-minded I can be."
** In ''The Woman in the Car'', Agent Pickering, who was conducting interviews to see how suitable the lab guys were to be allowed access to top secret files (or something) asked Zack what he would do if [[spoiler:someone used irrefutable logic to get him to do something treasonous]]. Zack replies he would ask Dr. Brennan first.
** Just before he gets shot, [[spoiler:Vincent]] says, "I feel like I'm going to be dead soon."
** Zack is seen to hang on every word that his best friend, Jack Hodgins, says. This makes it all the more heartbreaking when you learn that [[spoiler:it was partly because of Hodgins believing in conspiracy theories that Zack was persuaded to become the Gormogon's apprentice]].
** In ''The Sound In the Silence'' Booth and Bones talk about what to get Angela and Jack for the baby. Booth makes a comment about Brennan’s hormones going haywire and “boom, Mama Bones”. This was just two episodes before her pregnancy reveal.
** In ''The Change in the Game'', [[spoiler:Bones and Booth spend most of the episode at a bowling tournament and are saddled with a "horrible child" as Bones calls her. In between dealing with the girl, Bones states "you and I would never have a kid like that" several times. Guess what she announces at the end of the episode?]]
** In ''The Woman in the Car'', while being going through interviews and background checks for security clearance, Angela is asked by the interviewer when the last time she saw her husband was to which she splutters out "Wow, that took? Didn't seem legal." and "We were in Fiji". [[spoiler: Guess who Angela and Hodgins have to track down several years later when they want to tie the knot?]]
** In ''The Movie in the Making'', The film crew is documenting the relationship between the Jeffersonian and the FBI, and throughout the film, all of their past members such as Vincent Nigel-Murray, Lance Sweets, and Zack Addy are mentioned. [[spoiler:TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers. Guess who returns in the season finale?]]
** In ''The Price for the Past'', [[spoiler:Aldo Clemens]]'s body is found with colorful balloons tied to it. This is brushed off by the team early on as a way to ensure the body would be found quickly. It makes sense, until you realize that [[spoiler:the culprit is the now-grown-up son of a Bosnian warlord who saw his father shot by a sniper (Booth) at his ''birthday party''.]]
** Brennan deals with Dr. Goodman's "retirement" (she simply didn't find anthropology fun anymore) and one of her interns' problem with finding a thesis subject (Brennan was so enthusiastic about her chosen field she did ''four'' of them and that's just the ones that got published) and realizes how much she loves her job and couldn't imagine living without it. In the series finale [[spoiler: she loses her "technical memory" and everything related to bones and anthropology becomes gibberish to her. Fortunately it was temporary]].
** Season 8 heavily foreshadows Booth and Brennan’s season 9 wedding. One episode has them talk to a jeweler about a case and the guy thinks they want engagement rings. A couple episodes later, Brennan catches the bouquet at Booth’s mom’s wedding. Tradition says the bouquet catcher will get married next, and despite Pelant’s meddling, it did happen.
** In ''The Radioactive Panthers in the Party'', Betty White’s character Dr. Mayer asks Brennan to think about her work and how she would feel if it were all taken away. The next two episodes are the series finale where Brennan suffers a head injury that temporarily does just that.
** Sweets dresses as a ''Franchise/StarTrek'' RedShirt in “The Princess and the Pear” in season 4. Six seasons later in season 10, he’s the first and only opening credits character to die.
* FormulaBreakingEpisode:
** "The Ghost in the Machine", which puts the viewer in the POV of the victim's skull.
** "The Movie in the Making", which has the investigation filmed by a camera crew, with sidelines commentary of the cast members.
* TheFosterKid: Brennan and Sweets.
* FramedClue: Subverted in "The Man in the Mansion", when Hodgins is taking samples from a crime scene and when nobody is looking, opens up a frame and removes a picture that showed him and the victim together before anyone noticed. The picture is NOT a clue related to the case, but would have revealed Hodgins' past connection to the victim (childhood friends until he stole Hodgin's fiancee) and stopped him from helping to solve his old friend's murder.
* FrameUp:
** [[spoiler:The victim in ''The Lost in the Found'' attempted to frame her three bullies for her suicide using items she stole from them; they don't attempt much of a cover-up because she drugged them so deeply they didn't even think they did anything the night of the "murder".]]
** Booth in the season 9 finale/season 10 opener. He ends up in prison due to it.
* FreudianExcuse: They put pressure on escaped serial killer Epps by locking up his (abusive) mother.
* TheFriendNobodyLikes: Dr. Oliver Wells. He takes being an InsufferableGenius up to eleven, to the point not even Bones likes him. Everyone (except for Fisher, go figure) will outright admit they don't like him. He's kept around out of necessity (and being a polymath).
* FriendlySniper: Booth is a nice guy, even wanting to atone for the people he had to kill.
* FriendlyNeighborhoodChinatown: D.C.'s Chinatown shows up on occasion. It's much nicer than the real version, which is often referred to as a China-"block".
* FromTheLatinIntroDucere: One VictimOfTheWeek was a guy who seemed to be the genuine SantaClaus. This gives Booth and Brennan another opportunity to bicker LikeAnOldMarriedCouple. Booth's remark isn't quite FromTheLatinIntroDucere, but Brennan's correction is.
-->'''Brennan:''' Kris Kringle. From the North Pole. Lives above a toy store - This is further evidence that our victim is, indeed, the mythic figure known as Santa Claus.
-->'''Booth:''' '''Mythic'''. Coming from the Latin, "Myth", meaning "doesn't actually exist".
-->'''Brennan:''' No. From the Greek, "Mythos", meaning "word".
* FryingPanOfDoom: Booth hits a suspect with one when they’re running through a restaurant kitchen, using whatever is on hand as weapons.
* FullNameBasis: Gordon Gordon Wyatt. That's not a typo, at one point he posits that his first and middle names are the same, and he never says whether he's joking or not.
* FurnitureAssemblyGag: Angela tries to assemble a baby walker in "The Prince in the Plastic". The instructions are a BlindIdiotTranslation and she can't make sense of the diagrams, preventing her from getting it together.
* TheFunInFuneral: ''The Double Death of the Dearly Departed''.
* FunctionalAddict: Nigel-Murray, apparently, who would get drunk and brag about sleeping with the lab's ladies to his pals (Cam and Angela are shocked, Bones just finds the idea of them being compatible hilarious). He joined AA and got better.
* FunnyBackgroundEvent: Brennan describes scoring a goal in hockey as "making a net." Cam gives her the strangest look.
* FurnaceBodyDisposal: * The aptly named episode "The Intern in the Incinerator" has this, just like the title says. An intern at the lab was killed and ended up discovered in the lab's incinerator.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:G]]
* TheGamblingAddict: Booth. He struggles all along and relapses in season 10 and Brennan kicks him out while he works to get "sober" again.
* GamerGirl: One of the suspects in "The Gamer in the Grease" is a world-class gaming expert. She takes advantage of this trope to get lucrative endorsements.
* GeekPhysiques: Sweets and Zack are both skinny and kind of scrawny. Hodgins is a subversion. He looks skinny but is actually very well toned when his shirt comes off.
* GeekyTurnOn:
** Hodgins and Angela, frequently. Notable incidents include him naming a rose smelling fungus after her (long story), proposing to her with glowing sea food (longer story), and the following:
-->'''Angela:''' Okay, what I did was modify my mass recognition program -- patent pending -- to scan the photographic reconstruction of the crime scene, to find areas of comparatively less chaos.\\
'''Hodgins:''' Awesome.\\
'''Cam:''' ''(surprised)'' You understand what she's saying?\\
'''Hodgins:''' Not in the least, but I am so turned on by her brain. I'd like to see her brain totally naked.
** "The Gamer in the Grease" has a suspect who is a female gamer. She takes advantage of the fact that by being a GamerGirl she has a great deal of popularity with the predominantly male gamer community.
* GeniusCripple: Hodgins after his season 11 injury.
* GeniusesHaveMultiplePhDs: The show has ''two'' characters with three [=PhDs=] to help explain why the characters' group at the Jeffersonian is one of the world's top forensic teams.
** Temperance "Bones" Brennan's PhDs are in forensics, anthropology, and kinesiology, explaining both why she's so good at studying dead bodies and why she's so insufferable.
** Jack Hodgins' PhDs are in entomology, botany, and mineralogy, which basically makes him the "bug and slime" guy.
** In "The Parts in the Sum of the Whole", a WholeEpisodeFlashback, Jack tells Bones and Zack that he has as many doctorates as the two of them put together, because Zack (then a grad student) doesn't have any.
* GenreBusting: It's a drama-comedy all about decaying bodies, murder investigations and romance.
* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: InUniverse, the episode ''Big In the Philippines'' is about a country singer [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin who is astoundingly popular in the Philippines]] despite being virtually unknown in the U.S. (his American fans amount to twenty or less, whereas he's a radio superstar in the Philippines)
* GiveGeeksAChance: Hodgins, the nerdy guy, and Angela.
* GiveAwayTheBride: Angela’s dad gives her away during the first wedding attempt. Later, Brennan plays with it. She lets Max walk her down the aisle to Booth, then says to everyone that it’s not one man giving a woman to another man like property.
* GiverOfLameNames: Angela's father. She goes by Angela Pearly Gates Montenegro, but her given name is Pookie Noodlin. When she's pregnant, her father tries to convince Hodgins to name the child Staccato Mambo, which he defends as being gender-neutral. [[spoiler: Staccato does wind up as the kid's middle name, but it's Michael Staccato Vincent, and after the episode where he's born, he's consistently referred to as "Michael Vincent."]]
* GladYouThoughtOfIt: Invoked. When some characters wonder how Dr. Sweets will tell Daisy Wick she's being fired, Booth suggests he'll make her think she's leaving on her own.
* GoingCommando: Booth admits to sometimes doing this when he doesn't have clean underwear, while at a Radical Honesty meeting. Try to look at him the same way again, I dare you.
* GoneHorriblyRight: In "The Secret in the Proposal" [[spoiler: A CIA HoneyTrap is very good at being attractive enough to seduce her target but innocent enough that no one suspects her real job -- too good: her handler gets assaulted by her mother (who thinks her daughter's an escort and the handler's her john) and killed by her boss (who's in love with her and thinks the handler seduced her into being a prostitute)]].
%%* GPSEvidence: And Jack Hodgins has the GPS.
* GrandFinale: The final episode ("The End in the End") features a ContinuityCavalcade as well as several major changes for the characters. Notably, [[spoiler: we see the aftermath of the bombing of the Jeffersonian, including Booth trying to be a hero, Brennan temporarily losing her ability for complex thoughts, the five most recurring interns chipping in to solve the case, the season's antagonist eventually hunted down and killed, the revelation that Cam and Arastoo are leaving for six months because they are going to adopt three kids from Mississippi, and a resolution to the [[ArcNumber 447 mystery]]. Oh and while Cam is gone, Hodgins will finally actually be "King of the Lab". Almost everything is wrapped up, though the series ultimately ends on a AndTheAdventureContinues note, as the Jeffersonian will be rebuilt.]]
* GrandmasRecipe: One episode of Bones has a B-plot where one of the lab assistants (Hodgins) uses up the last of the hot sauce from the company fridge, ignoring the note from another assistant, Finn, not to eat it. Turns out it was the very last bottle of hot sauce Finn's grandmother ever made, and seemingly irreplaceable. This being a forensic show, Hodgins manages to determine precisely what was in the hot sauce via testing and replicate it to make it up to Finn.
* GratuitousGerman:
-->'''Brennan''': I need you to do a search for ''Der Schlächterkelch''.
-->'''Angela''': Okay, I love that you think I would know how to spell that.
* GretzkyHasTheBall: Any time Bones has to talk about sports.
* GroinAttack
** How Max evens the playing field after he challenges the younger, stronger and more capable Booth to a fight.
** Booth himself in "The Proof in the Pudding".
-->'''Booth:''' Good, old, American classic.
** Brennan, when presented with a fleeing suspect, threatens one unambiguously. The suspect stopped and Booth collared him, but you just '''know''' Brennan would have done it.
-->'''Booth:''' (repeating it afterward) "Stop, or I'll kick you in the testicles"??
-->'''Brennan:''' Well, it worked.
* GrossUpCloseUp
** The bodies are often found badly decomposed and covered with maggots.
** The fifth season episode "The Gamer in the Grease" takes it a step further with an extended shot of half-liquidated flesh sliding off of a corpse's bones. Complete with sound effects.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:H]]
* HadToComeToPrisonToBeACrook: SerialKiller Howard Epps, possibly. He could be a ManipulativeBastard all along, or maybe he learned it while on death row. When we first meet Epps, he's claiming to be innocent and trying to get exonerated, but it ends up he just reveals he's killed even more people than previously thought, so they have to keep him alive while they process the new bodies. When he returns in season 2, Epps is even more manipulative and playing serial killer games, leading the team on a merry chase with body parts as clues.
* HammerSpace: Near the denouement of "The Mummy in the Maze" Brennan draws her [[HandCannon massive revolver]] despite only wearing her very fitted Series/WonderWoman1975 costume, (sans cape) and not carrying a purse or handbag of any sort. Immediately lampshaded by Booth:
--> '''Booth:''' Okay, where did you even find a place to carry that?
::We never find out, but from the motion, its ''not'' VictoriasSecretCompartment.
* HandCannon: One episode has Brennan getting ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_&_Wesson_Model_500 the most powerful production handgun in the world]]''. In a later episode, she trades guns with Booth, confessing, "my gun is too big for me," and putting an interesting spin on the very Freudian conversation she'd had with him earlier.
* HandcuffedBriefcase: One VictimOfTheWeek is a diamond merchant who was transporting diamonds in a briefcase handcuffed to his hand. His murderer cut the hand off in order to get the briefcase.
* HappilyAdopted:
** Sweets in his backstory-an older couple rescued him from abusive foster parents and he was quite close to them.
** Cam's daughter Michelle. There was friction a time or two but they had a decent relationship.
* HappilyMarried:
** The adorable older couple at the couples' retreat [[spoiler: who turn out to be serial house robbers and that week's murderers. They're not sorry because the victim tried to hit the wife while they were stealing his car, so she KO'd him with her blackjack and he crushed him between the car and a tree. They also think (or appear to think) they won't be separated in prison due to their age; Booth doesn't have the heart to tell them otherwise]]. Booth and Bones like them so much they say they would [[spoiler: KO and crush to death anyone who'd harm the other]]. Aww!
** Hodgins and Angela, and as of the latest episodes [[spoiler: Booth and Bones]]. Unfortunately not [[spoiler: Booth's brother Jared and his wife Padme (he was trying to hook back up with her before he was killed)]] nor, as far as can be seen, [[spoiler: Cam and Aristoo (he proposed then broke up with Cam after Brennan essentially fired him for not being as good at her as closing cases and knew that while Cam would follow him anywhere he didn't want her to hate him for making her leave her job and her friends). After a lot of delays they finally get married in the penultimate episode of the final season and appear very happy.]]
* HardOnSoftScience
** Brennan rather hypocritically mocks psychology. [[spoiler:Which makes it darkly ironic when she persuades Zack to give up the Gormogon using applied psychology]]. Very ironic, considering that Brennan is an anthropologist, and psychology is a considerably "harder", more lab/experiment-based social science than anthropology.
-->'''Brennan:''' ''(aside)'' She's a therapist, isn't she? She talks like a therapist!\\
'''Therapist:''' ''(later interview, out loud)'' Oh my god. She's an anthropologist, isn't she? She ''talks'' like an anthropologist!
** Also ironically, one of Brennan's childhood idols is Wonder Woman, a superheroine ''designed'' by a psychologist.
** Interestingly [[spoiler: after Sweets dies she's the one who brings up psychological aspects of the cases because that's what Sweets would do]].
* HatesEveryoneEqually: Hodgins is told by Sweets that he has misanthropic tendencies after he breaks up with Angela and has to deal with his issues with what Zack did. He assumes he’s headed for endless medication and therapy but Sweets assures him he’ll learn to cope. It does improve, then comes back big time when he’s left paralyzed in season 11, at least til Angela talks some sense into him.
* HateSink: In season 11, the team investigates the murder of a meninist who led a group called "Man Now" that wanted changes in laws, believing that white men are an oppressed group. The entire group is a long hate sink, one of the first things Booth and Bones hear when they go to a meeting is a man saying that they want to abolish rape shield laws, stating that "if a woman dresses as a slut, she might as well walk with a sign written rape me". Booth even states wanting to punch the guy, something that Bones eventually does when he tells Booth to put a muzzle on Bones and calls her a loud bitch.
* HatesSmallTalk: Bones is an expert at shooting down any conversation that isn't related to the case during the first examination in the Jeffersonian; she's also terrible at subtle hints that her coworkers give ("I work better when I'm upset." "Well you're doing good work.").
** Squintern Edison is constantly frustrated by the amount of time the main characters spend discussing their personal lives and dramas, so much so that "can we talk about the job, please" is his CatchPhrase.
* HeadTurningBeauty: Booth says to Brennan, "There isn't a guy in this country who wouldn't want to have sex with you, including half the gay men."
* TheHeart: Angela, at least according to Hodgins. Except rather than personal vendettas, it's the minutiae of the body they're studying that she raises their eyes from. Further driven home by the fact that in "The Man in the Cell", Angela receives a human heart in the mail after the publication of a newspaper article in which Hodgins calls her "the heart of the operation".
* HeroicBSOD
** Booth nearly has one in "Proof in the Pudding", [[spoiler:when it's implied that [[WhoShotJFK there were two assassins involved in JFK's death]] and there was a government cover-up to hide this. Given the number of people he's killed for his country, he sees it as a huge betrayal]].
* HeroOfAnotherStory: Occasionally Booth and Brennan will run into another odd pair of team of crime fighters that they will have to work with in order to solve the mystery of the week including a crossover with another (short-lived) crime show about an eccentric and talented "Finder" and his hard-line Law Enforcement Handler. There is also "The Yanks In The UK" where they team up with (in Booth's words) "The British Version of me and you!" (A top-line forensic anthropologist who consults with Scotland Yard and his Detective Partner).
* HeterosexualLifePartners:
** Brennan and Angela
** Hodgins and Zack until the latter's departure from the show. Later, he becomes especially close to many of the interns (Wendell, Finn, and Arastoo in particular).
** In later seasons after Zack leaves and is replaced by rotating interns, and Cam and Sweets have fully adjusted as members of the team, there is instead a [[TrueCompanions true companionship]] between the entire team, although Bones and Angela retain their special life-partners status.
* HiddenDepths: All of the main characters have them. For example, Arastoo (the Iranian squintern) writes poetry in Farsi.
* HideYourPregnancy: The various pregnancies that occurred during the show were explained quite easily by pregnancies occurring ''in'' the show. The 12th season, however, saw Emily Deschanel get pregnant and it wasn't as announced as the other pregnancies.
* HollywoodAtheist: Dr. Temperance Brennan fits the stereotype of not just declaring her (anti-religious) atheism but going so far as picking fights over it with her Catholic partner Booth. Her views seemed to veer into scientism too.
* HollywoodHacking: [[spoiler:Pelant, a crazy-gifted hacker, manages to create a virus for a custom-built system he's never interacted with, or even '''''seen''''', by making a very detailed carving in bone, knowing that the bone is going to be scanned in later, because everyone knows image files are routinely executed like commands]].
** Mechanically feasible, but highly improbable. [[spoiler: There have been many viruses that take advantage of how an image/file is opened by an application to sneak code in. So if the hacker knew what software Angela was using AND said software had a security hole, he could theoretically have pulled it off. Insanely improbable, but fundamentally feasible. Which is, sadly, better than about 99% of HollywoodHacking examples]].
* HollywoodLaw:
** [[DiplomaticImpunity Diplomatic immunity]] is badly abused in two cases. In the first, a diplomat is threatened with being returned home to be prosecuted, in which case she'll be put in prison and killed by other inmates. To avoid this, she waives immunity. Too bad for her, immunity belongs to the state, not the individual, so she can't actually waive her own immunity. Later, Pelant falsifies records to claim Egyptian citizenship, without any mention of him actually having (fake) diplomatic status. Somehow, all Egyptian tourists are diplomats now.
** In multiple episodes, Booth and/or Rebecca say he has no parental rights to Parker because they weren’t married when Parker was conceived or born. Paternity might be assumed for married couples, but that doesn’t mean it’s no existent for unmarried fathers. Booth could have asserted paternity and thus his rights to shared legal custody and visitation/shared physical custody with some paperwork, or at worst court proceedings.
* HollywoodPsych
** This seems to be Bones' view on psychology, completely not trusting it and calling it a "soft science". This would not be too bad if not for the fact that she prefers hard sciences like her own anthropology, a science not considered particularly "hard".
** She dismisses any implied relation from what "is" to what "could be", so her use of anthropology is limited to what has been proven as fact.
** Pointedly subverted in "The Devil in the Details", which takes place mostly in a mental ward.
-->'''Dr. Adam Copeland:''' ''(to Bones)'' I've listened to you take shots at my profession. And that's okay. I'm a big boy, and tolerant man. I want you to think about something. I spend every working hour of everyday trying to help people who are living in hell. That's an honorable way to spend a life. Perhaps more honorable than figuring out what happened to dead people who are already beyond pain and suffering.
** When Creator/StephenFry is on the show, his character seems to have a bit of disdain for psychology himself, calling it on its ability to oversimplify and objectify a person's state of mind while arbitrarily projecting solutions that rely on the person's ability to understand and implement them. Then again, he was probably just using fast word play and large vocabulary to turn Brennan to his way of thought.
* HollywoodSilencer: Averted in "The Bond in the Boot," where a very obviously silenced pistol was still pretty loud.
* HonorBeforeReason:
** In "The Girl in Suite 2103" the team find evidence a South American official with [[DiplomaticImpunity Diplomatic Immunity]] was involved with a murder. Getting through the red tape would be nearly impossible, and Cam suggested manipulating evidence to implicate the son, trying to get the official to confess and waive immunity. Booth listened but quickly rejected the proposal on the grounds that trying to cheat around DI would cause ''international'' problems, even though such manipulation is used all the time in local law enforcement. [[spoiler:They got her to waive immunity based on what the political situation would be back home-if they did try to go through the normal channels, she would be killed by her enemies. As mentioned above, this is HollywoodLaw though]].
** In another episode, they are taken hostage by TheMenInBlack, ordering the squints to ID a body's cause of death and explicitly NOT to look into the body's identity. Their quest for the whole truth nearly leads to Booth being fired for helping out
* HotLibrarian: When Bones is doing an investigation on a [[BusmansHoliday flight to Shanghai]], she has to borrow hornrim glasses from an elderly passenger. Booth walks in on her with her hair up in a bun wearing the glasses and requests she shake her hair out of the bun and say, "Mr. Booth, do you know what the penalty is for an overdue book?" She doesn't get it.
* HopeSpot: [[spoiler: Brennan's dad]] hid a hospital visit; turns out they "only" got a pacemaker. Unfortunately [[spoiler: the pacemaker's GPS allowed trained assassins to track him and the grandkids to an FBI safehouse]]. Fortunately they survive the encounter; unfortunately [[spoiler: he dies in the hospital after the attack proved too much for his heart (he was able to say goodbye, in a way, to Brennan)]].
* HowWeGotHere: The episode "Aliens in a Spaceship" and "The Parts in the Sum of the Whole".
* {{Hunk}}: Booth, probably the hottest guy in the group.
* TheHunterBecomesTheHunted: What happened to [[spoiler:the Ghost Killer: Her first victim was pinned on an innocent teacher and her rich family covered it up and got him sent to jail. He spent the next 20 years planning his revenge and finally killed her (and the judge who helped the family) when he was paroled]].
* HypercompetentSidekick: In season 7, Genny Shaw accomplishes a lot in a very short time and does it well.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:I]]
* ICanStillFight: Booth leaves the hospital after he’s injured by a bomb to save a kidnapped Brennan.
* IHaveBoobsYouMustObey: Angela opens her shirt and flashes her bra to an airport clerk who’s ignoring her attempts to get information on Brennan’s flight in the Pilot episode.
* IHaveToGoIronMyDog: Subverted, when Bones, slightly flustered, sounds like she's making an excuse to leave, but is actually telling the stark truth.
-->'''Bones:''' I... have to go... do scientific things... to catch a serial killer.
* IWantYouToMeetAnOldFriendOfMine: Boreanaz and TJ Thyne worked together on the fifth season of ''Series/{{Angel}}'', with Thyne as a lawyer at Wolfram & Hart. We also get Adam Baldwin as a guest star in the first season, who played Marcus Hamilton, a sort of supernatural juggernaut who also worked for Wolfram & Hart.
* IdenticalStranger: The victim in "The Doctor in the Photo" is found to be of similar height, weight, and demeanor to Bones. Bones begins to hallucinate that the victim ''is'' her.
* IdentificationFromDentalRecords: Used frequently, since they deal with corpses in advanced states of decay and/or dismemberment.
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Usually described as "The X in the Y", with X being a one-word description of the victim, and Y being the place in which they're found. X and Y are usually alliterative too. Exceptions to this pattern are often highly meaningful.
* IfYouEverDoAnythingToHurtHer:
** Inverted. Booth says this to Brennan's brother Russ.
** Booth also does this to the boyfriends-the first guy and later intern Finn-of Cam's foster daughter, introducing himself as a cool uncle... who happens to be a sniper.
** Angela’s dad tells Hodgins he has cars, guitars and guns and that if Hodgins treats Angela right he’ll only see the business end of the cars and guitars.
** Max to Booth at Booth and Brennan’s wedding. And Booth knows he means it.
* IllegalGamblingDen: In one episode, one victim uncovered a dog-fighting ring. He was killed because the operator found out he was gathering evidence against them.
* IJustShotMarvinInTheFace: Averted with Booth. He shows excellent trigger discipline, even checking a rifle he brought to a scene himself that has no magazine.
* IJustWantToBeNormal: Hodgins's family is actually one of the most powerful families in the world and ''owns'' the Jeffersonian. He deliberately downplays it because he wants to be treated on his own terms.
* IKnewThereWasSomethingAboutYou: Zach was a brilliant but vulnerable genius, who [[spoiler: goes absolutely crazy, crushing his friends.]]
-->'''Cam''': "I knew the day I met that boy that he would cause me pain."
* TheILoveYouStigma: When Booth talks to [[spoiler:the ghost of an old army friend]] he tells him he loved his girlfriend Claire but couldn't tell her cause he felt they were too young, his last request is that Booth tell her and his finding her at his grave is [[spoiler:one of the signs he wasn't a hallucination.]]
* ImAHumanitarian: The Gormogon.
** Happens ''by accident'' in "The Tiger In The Tale", when a car is stuck in the mud where a body is buried, and the man trying to dislodge it gets spattered by human remains sprayed by its tires. A tooth is flung into his open mouth and he swallows it by reflex.
** The VictimOfTheWeek was also consumed unknowingly in the opening scenes of The Mystery in the Meat, having been cooked
and packaged into cans of beef stew that was subsequently fed to students at a high school cafeteria.
* ImpoverishedPatrician: A bizarre zig-zag around this trope was performed around Dr Hodgins. He was originally an undistinguished, if brillant, senior squint. Then he turned out to be grotesquely rich (in fact, his family more or less owned the entire Jeffersonian Institute). Years later he lost his entire fortune in an absurdly unrealistic way that didn't withstand a single minute of reflection, but was repeatedly emphasized as being irreversible and permanent. After that the writers came up with one hare-brained scheme after another to explain him getting rich again. Particularly puzzling because ''none of these status changes had any appreciable impact on his standing in life whatsoever''.
* ImprobableTaxonomySkills:
** A character identifies a fungus to species from a few hyphal traces. This is impossible even for trained mycologists as hyphae structure only gets you to the phylum level which is incredibly unspecific as it's just below the kingdom classification.
** A character whose specialty is in ''{{art}}'' identifies a specific species of fungal spores thanks to having a boyfriend who studies them. That this is actually accepted in court is a major case of HollywoodLaw.
** Hodgins, for which this trope essentially defines two-thirds of his job. The other third involves doing much the same, only with particulates. He ''is'' [=PhD=]-qualified for both of these, so it makes more sense than in many of these examples.
* ImprobablyPredictable: Booth reveals that he knows Brennan's computer password, because he knows how she thinks. He also knows what she changes the password to -- twice.
* InformedAttractiveness: Brennan. Characters regularly refer to her as being beautiful. Naturally, Booth's attractiveness in a [[{{Hunk}} hunky]] way is mentioned quite often as well. So is Angela’s attractiveness.
* InformedAbility: Brennan often says that she is extremely intelligent and has very high IQ. In practice, she is far from that. Sure, she is very knowledgeable but she finds it difficult to make connections when they are not obvious, something Booth or Hodgins do naturally. This is especially jarring in social situations, because Brennan sometimes compares the situations she witnesses to anthropological trivia, yet sometimes she seems completely lost even though such event should be simple to any anthropologist, even on a purely analytical level.
* InNameOnly: The TV series takes nothing from the novel series aside from the main protagonist's name, profession, and tendency for not suffering fools gladly. Most of the inspiration for the series comes from the life and work of Kathy Reichs, the novelist. While both series can stand on their own considerable merits, the two are so different that they might as well be two completely independent franchises.
** The novel character is a worldly and rather jaded divorced (not to Booth, who does not exist in the novels) single-mother, former alcoholic professor in her late-forties. A bit taciturn but capable of normal social interaction. And she is nicknamed Tempe, not Bones. Reichs and Deschanel theorize that Novel!Brennan is a older version of TV!Brennan, but it's not canonical, especially given the big deviations by the show’s end.
* InPrisonWithTheRogues: Booth when he’s framed for murder in season 9. The members of TheConspiracy seemed to hope he’d die from being attacked, and Brennan resorted to {{blackmail}} in fear for his life.
* InSeriesNickname:
** Bones, Bren, and Tempe for Brennan.
** King of the Lab for Hodgins (and occasionally, Zack).
** Cam has called Jack Hodgepodge and Zack Zackaroni (he always has Mac and cheese for lunch).
** Daisy calls Sweets Sweet Lancelot as a play on his first and last names
** Jessica calls Aubrey ''Franchise/{{Superman}}''.
** Angela likes to call Booth "Studly" on occasion and she sometimes calls Jack "Hodgie".
* InsistentTerminology:
** Ska-luh! It’s a Norwegian word for skull, and Brennan is insistent on it being pronounced correctly.
** Jessica was part of an educational "collective", not a "commune"
** It’s “soil”, not “dirt” to Hodgins.
** Gordon Gordon is a chef. Do not call him a cook.
* InsideJob: In one episode the VictimOfTheWeek had been trying to talk his girlfriend, who works at a currency exchange, to leave the back door unlocked so he and an accomplice could rob the place when nobody was there, but she refused.
* InspectorJavert: FBI Special Agent Hayes Flynn, who was tasked with hunting down Bones when she was accused of murder.
* InstantIllness: A SyntheticPlague has Arastoo close to death in a couple of hours in “The Pathos In The Pathogen”.
* InstantSedation: Arastoo in “Pathos in The Pathogen” again. He needs a procedure to help him fight the illness and when Cam injects sedative into his IV beforehand, he’s out in seconds. Possibly justified since it was directly into his bloodstream.
* InsufferableGenius: ''Many''. Brennan, Zack and Oliver Wells all tend to be very smart but not always all that nice. Wells in particular thinks he's better than everyone and Brennan is known to talk down to people who aren’t as smart as her.
* InsultOfEndearment
** Hodgins dismissively calls new intern Finn Abernathy "Opie", after the character in ''Series/TheAndyGriffithShow''. Abernathy counters by calling Hodgins "[[Series/GilligansIsland Thurston]]." By the end of the episode they've gained respect for each other, but still use the same nicknames.
** Also used with 'Mister' Nigel-Murray, introduced as Brennan's way of subtly mocking him for having not received his doctorate yet. By later in the series, even after he has proved himself, it is used as a fond nickname.
** PlayedWith by Booth and Bones herself. Booth originally used the name as a term of endearment and respect for Brennan but [[spoiler: after their first falling out]] he continued to call her it out of a desire to annoy her and always got a "Don't call me Bones!" in response. Later on she came to like the nickname again and he became the only person allowed to call her that.
* IntentionalEngrishForFunny: The instructions to the "baby walker" that Angela buys for her baby in season seven's "The Prince in the Plastic".
* InterdisciplinarySleuth: Brennan, Hodgins, and Angela all qualify in their own way.
* InterplayOfSexAndViolence: A fourth season episode opens with the squints watching Booth playing hockey and beating the crap out of some guys on the ice (he's the team's enforcer). Cam says she likes it... a little too much. Then she has a DidISayThatOutLoud moment.
* InternalHomage: Compare these scenes from [[http://i46.tinypic.com/121wzt2.jpg “The Parts in the Sum of the Whole” and “The Boy With the Answer”]] -- [[ItsASmallWorldAfterAll same taxi even]]!
* InterruptedIntimacy: In "The Shallow in the Deep", Booth and Brennan accidentally walk in on Sweets and Daisy having sex in Sweets' office. The couple promptly has a NakedFreakOut and resort to HandOrObjectUnderwear, while a surprisingly nonchalant Booth still tries to get Sweets to sign his ready-for-duty form, much to Sweets annoyance.
* IntroductionByHookup: Brennan has a one night stand with her former college professor who has just come to town. The next day she discovers that he's the forensic anthropologist that the defense has hired for a trial she's testifying at.
* IntroOnlyPointOfView-episodes often open with random people finding a body and then the main characters come in.
* InvincibleVillain: Christopher Pelant has been built into one of these. He can [[CardboardPrison get anywhere]], [[HollywoodHacking hack anything]], [[AnyoneCanDie kill anyone]], and [[KarmaHoudini get away scot-free]] without breaking a sweat. And, as Hodgins [[GoodIsNotNice finds out first-hand]], he [[DeathSeeker enjoys the idea of being killed]], even if only [[HeWhoFightsMonsters for the effect it would have]] on the protagonists. [[spoiler: Turns out to be quite vincible, and the heroes don't even care to watch his last ominous recording because now he's dead, end of story.]]
* InvisibleWriting: In the Season 7 finale a man in a mental institution leaves a secret message written on the walls in his own saliva. It works like invisible ink; it only shows up under special light.
* {{Irony}}: The replacement bowler on Max's team (paraphrased): "I'm not superstitious like Victim-of-the-Week, I believe in God!" Amazingly Bones doesn't say a word (she's undercover, barely, but it must have been a strain).
* ItAmusedMe: Caroline Julian's reasoning for making Bones kiss Booth in a ChristmasEpisode, though chances are it's more ShipperOnDeck.
* ItHasBeenAnHonor: Hodgins to Brennan [[spoiler:before they attempt to blow up the windshield of the van they are trapped in]].
* ItNeverGetsAnyEasier: Even though the team is made up of a coroner, murder investigators, and forensic anthropologists, every so often this comes into play, either by a person's death being exceedingly disturbing, or the circumstances being tragic.
** "The Goop in the Girl": The victim was an innocent bystander who was forced into robbing a bank while strapped to a bomb, which got detonated by sheer coincidence. Before figuring it out, Angela joked that "I won't let Santa ruin Christmas". Afterwards...
---> You don't think that sometimes we forget those bones out there are people?
** "The Ghost in the Machine" shows how the entire team's affected by the remains of a young 14-year old.
* ItsPersonal
** Does this somewhat frequently. When someone threatens either Booth or Bones, or their kids,it becomes quite personal for the other.
** Brennan wanting justice for her murdered mother in season 1.
** The Gravedigger and Harold Epps are the most guilty of invoking this. The Gravedigger kidnapped Bones and Hodgins in one episode and Booth in another. Epps poisoned Cam, tried to blow up Zack, and used Booth's son as a clue, ''all in the same episode.'' Making it personal was pretty much his M.O.
** And then there was Pelant, who [[spoiler:snuck a dead body above Angela and Hodgins' ''bed'' while they were knocked out from carbon monoxide poisoning]], among other things. After a while his M.O. was ''literally'' making things personal.
** Season 10’s Beginning, when Booth is railroaded and framed and winds up in prison. Then no sooner is he freed than Sweets is fatally injured and dies in his arms. Booth and Brennan definitely want these guys stopped.
** Later there’s Kovac, whose storyline has a double dose. He attacks Booth and Brennan because Booth killed Kovac’s war criminal father during his sniper days. It then turns personal for Brennan and Booth when Kovac’s attack kills Brennan’s father and later blows up the entire lab.
* IWasYoungAndNeededTheMoney: Cam's role in "The Invasion of the Mother Suckers".
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[[folder:J-K]]
* JerkAss: A recent stand-out is the person who stole Cam's identity, ruined her financially, and was clearly only sorry about getting caught (or wanted to show they weren't afraid after Cam punched them in the face while handcuffed) [[spoiler: She was an old college friend who was jealous of Cam's "easy life," and the fact that they were close only made it easier for her to hide her purchases among Cam's for a year]]. On the plus side (for the thief), their attitude was so horrible that Cam decided not to add "aggressive ID theft" and three years to their sentence just so she wouldn't have to deal with them anymore.
** Not to mention that while the show tries to excuse some of it with Brennan simply being clueless her incredible [[{{Hypocrite}} hypocrisy]] suggests she might just be an awful person. Among other things: Other people have to provide a high standard of evidence but she expects people to accept her own leaps of logic without question, she goes out of her way to be condescending even on topics she knows little about, she actively spites other skilled people (including her own interns at times) out of apparent jealousy, and on many occasions she takes offense at people not observing social norms she herself discounts when its convenient. Unfortunately StatusQuoIsGod so episodes where she learns to get past these behaviors are forgotten the moment the credits roll.
** Oliver Wells is probably worse even than Brennan is as he seems to view literally everyone as his intellectual inferior.
** Amusingly one of the only people who doesn't find Wells to be insufferably arrogant is . . . Brennan herself.
** On the other hand, he does not find it difficult to accept that he made a mistake and he does not take conflicts personally. So, he is definitely more an InsufferableGenius rather than JerkAss, in comparison to Brennan.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: The sheriff who puts Hodgins and Angela in jail after they mess around with [[ProductPlacement their Prius' auto-driving feature]] [[spoiler:showers them with confetti when they get married in the cell. Awww]].
* [[spoiler:UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy]]: Brennen's team suspects, but can't ever be sure, that [[spoiler:the skeleton the Secret Service conscripted them to analyze with state-of-the-art forensic methods was him]].
* {{Joisey}}:
** Bones pretends to be a Jersey girl when she and Booth go undercover at a couples' retreat.
** Her anthropological fascination with the ''Jersey Shore'' series comes in handy when a case of the week takes place there.
* JokerImmunity: Whenever the team even manages to get close to thwarting Pelant, he always [[VillainExitStageLeft has a contrived way out of the situation]] to turn up and torment them all ''again''. Booth even manages to [[spoiler: [[BoomHeadshot shoot him in the head]], complete with epic blood spatter]], and he still escapes, although this time he [[spoiler: [[NotSoInvincibleAfterAll finally suffers lasting injuries]], including [[EyeScream a ruined right eye]]]]. All this seems to do, however, is make him more vicious and untouchable. Subverted in a ''big'' way in Season 9: [[spoiler:Booth kills Pelant with a single shot to the throat.]]
* JumpScare: Cam jumps visibly when Hodgins rolls up behind her to tell her something. His wheelchair doesn’t make much noise rolling over the lab floor so she’s startled when he suddenly starts talking behind her.
* JuryAndWitnessTampering: In one episode, a man who is about to testify against a big military contractor ends up with his wife dead and son kidnapped in order to keep him from testifying.
* KarmaHoudini: At the start of the eleventh season, a newly retired Agent Booth gets involved in [[spoiler:a multimillion dollar heist]] in order to protect his brother from the latter's gambling debts. There are several murders at the scene and later deaths, and Booth ends up in the hospital (again. With a bullet wound. Again.) The episode ends with both Booth and Brennan realizing that they are simply not built for retirement. For Brennan, this isn't really a problem, but Booth ends up back in his old job at the FBI without any questions asked about his role in a series of felonies.
* KeepingSecretsSucks: [[spoiler: Booth had to turn down Bones' marriage proposal because Pelant threatened to kill five random people if he stopped being Booth's #1 priority, and because Bones is a poor actress and Pelant is nigh-omniscient he can't take the risk of telling her. Booth knows this is making Bones miserable but he also knows trading five innocent people for her happiness would be much worse. Fortunately after speaking to Booth's ex-confessor/bartender Bones realizes his "cold feet" is making him just as unhappy and they'll work it out somehow (but next time it's his turn to propose)]].
* KilledOffForReal:
** [[spoiler: The Gravedigger, head-shotted by Booth's ex-sniper teammate]]
** [[spoiler: Vincent Nigel-Murray, shot in the heart by Booth's same ex-teammate]]
** [[spoiler: Pelant, shot by Booth]]
** [[spoiler: Sweets is killed at the beginning of Season 10]]. Unlike [[spoiler: Booth's]] fake death this is for real because ''Cam does their autopsy in front of all their friends''.
** [[spoiler: Booth's brother, and pretty thoroughly at the beginning of Season 11: Shot through a third story window and his body incinerated. Because the brothers have similar injuries from similar life experiences his body was mistaken for Booth's.]]
** [[spoiler: Brennan's dad, peacefully(!) of heart failure after saving his grandkids by killing two assassins. This was after setting up a hope-spot: a mysterious hospital bracelet he's hiding from Brennan which turns out to be from a secret pacemaker operation; unfortunately the pacemaker's GPS allows the killers to track him to an FBI safehouse.]]
* TheKillerBecomesTheKilled: [[spoiler: Heather Taffet]], the serial killer known as [[spoiler: the Gravedigger]], is Jacob Broadsky’s first victim.
* TheKindnapper: One episode involves a kidnapped child, who it turns out has been kidnapped by his father, who thinks his ex-wife is an unfit mother. The father changes the child's name and hair color to hide him at his cousin's house.
* KnifeThrowingAct: Booth and Bones went undercover as a knife-throwing act.
* KnockoutAmbush: How Zach kidnapped Bones, as she'd have mopped the floor with him in a fair fight, even without the handicap of his mangled hands.
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[[folder:L]]
* LaserGuidedAmnesia: In the final episode [[spoiler: Brennan gets caught in an explosion and loses her "technical memory": she has no idea what anything related to bones means and becomes distressed at the thought of living without her knowledge (it returns when Booth injures his hand and she remembers how to fix it).]]
* LaserGuidedKarma: In "The Graft in the Girl", a woman who dropped out of medical school is stealing corpses from a funeral home and selling them through a fake medical supply house for bone grafts. One of these corpses, who died of mesothelioma, infected at least five people with a deadly disease. The suspect isn't going to trial, though. She didn't last long enough in med school to know that bone dust is toxic, so she gave herself a fatal disease.
* LastNameBasis: Most characters. Some standouts:
** Even away from the job Booth is just Booth, almost nobody calls him Seeley. Inverted with his brother who is always called "Jared" and is actually at one point called "a fake Booth".
** Max and Russ are the only people who call Bones "Temperance". Booth calls her "Bones" (the only one she allows to), Angela calls her "Sweetie" and everyone else calls her Brennan with or without the "Doctor".
** Bones herself refers to everyone but Angela by their last name, even still calling Booth by his last name after they marry.
** Colin Fisher is never called by his first name. In a scene where Wendell is speaking to Cam about the other interns, he refers to them as Daisy, Vincent (who almost everyone ''else'' calls Mister Nigel-Murray), Arastoo and Fisher.
** Hodgins; even his own wife rarely calls him Jack.
** In fact, Angela is the only character that no one refers to by their last name. Only [[PutOnABus Dr Goodman]] regularly referred to by last name.
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall:
** Brennan writes novels that are in-universe versions of the novels the series is based on. In the pilot, and several times after, her co-workers recognize themselves in the characters. Brennan vehemently denies that the characters are based on herself and her friends -- and that is true, seeing as it's the other way around.
** In the episode the ''Family in the Feud'' the conflict of the Hatfield and [=McCoys=] is referred to as "a story," whereas "there's nothing made up about the Mobley's and Babcocks," when in fact it's the exact opposite.
* LeftTheBackgroundMusicOn: In "The X in the File," Bones and Booth are talking about the possibility of alien visitation, when the ''[[Series/TheXFiles X-Files]]'' theme starts up in the background. Turns out it's the ringtone of an abandoned cellphone.
* LetMeGetThisStraight: From the episode ''The Santa In The Slush''.
-->'''Angela:'''"Wait. The evidence actually adds up to an old, fat man with a white beard, in a custom-made Santa suit who smoked a clay pipe and got kicked in the ass by a reindeer?"
* LimitedWardrobe: Booth's trademark black suit and belt buckle, with occasional variations in the shirt, socks, and tie. When he's off the job, he usually wears a brown leather jacket, which he sometimes wears to crime scenes. Brennan tends to wear big, dangly earrings and necklaces.
-->'''Dr. Gordon Wyatt:''' ... Bilious socks and your ostentatious ties, and your provocative belt buckles. [...] [[FreudWasRight Oh, it's a modern-day codpiece. It forces the eye to the groin]].
* LiterallyShatteredLives: "The Science in the Physicist" is notable for deconstructing this a bit; the corpse was flash frozen in liquid nitrogen but shattered by [[spoiler:vibrating it in an earthquake simulator]]. The actual results of simply dropping it are demonstrated when [[ItMakesSenseInContext Angela is hit in the head by a bouncing turkey.]]
* LiteralMinded: Brennan, more so than anyone who isn't an android should be.
* LivingLieDetector:
** Sweets
-->'''Perotta:''' Booth was right, you're like a portable polygraph.\\
'''Sweets:''' He didn't mean that in a good way, did he?
** Booth, mostly in interrogations. He has an innate talent for reading people and even gets rattled once when he misses a lie. He worries his health problems are impairing him.
* LockingMacGyverInTheStoreCupboard: When Brennan and Hodgins are [[spoiler:buried alive by the Grave Digger, their cell (Brennan's car) contains all of the materials a person needs to perform surgery, manufacture oxygen, power a cell phone, and hack a detonator -- assuming one has three [=PhDs=]]].
* LodgedBladeRemoval: There's an episode where Brennan does this when she gets stabbed in the arm. And it may be a case of TooDumbToLive because as a forensic anthropologist she ought to have enough anatomical knowledge to know better.
* LonelyFuneral: Brennan and Booth decide to avert this by showing up with the whole team at the funeral of their latest [[VictimOfTheWeek corpse of the week]], a loner who had nobody in the world but his mother.
* LongLostRelative: Hodgins finds he has a brother named Jeffery who lives in a mental hospital in “The Heiress In The Hill”.
* LovableSexManiac: Angela
* LowerClassLout: One episode explores the "Guido" culture, and Brennan herself said she followed [[Series/JerseyShore the TV "documentary" on them]].
* LyingByOmission: Sweet figures out that the suspect in the Murder of the Week also probably committed the rape they uncovered in their investigation. Booth points out in the suspect's hearing that even if that's true, the FBI wouldn't be able to charge him with both crimes. The suspect thinks he sees a way out and confesses to the rape, and is promptly told he just confessed to murder. When the perp calls them out on lying, Booth explains that the reason they can't charge him with both is that the FBI only has jurisdiction on the murder; he omitted that the Washington, D.C. police have jurisdiction on the rape case.
[[/folder]]
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