History Characters / Elementary

* FauxAffablyEvil: He considers himself to be Sherlock's friend and is amiable toward the detective, even after Sherlock learns the truth about him. Eventually, Sherlock runs out of patience and tells him to ShutUpHannibal

* EatTheDog: Sherlock initially claims he's taken Clyde home with him with the intention of turning him into turtle soup.

* HollywoodAutism: A downplayed example. She's explicitly stated to be Autistic but avoids most of the usual stereotypes. While she has difficulties with social interaction, and usually avoids eye contact, she develops a romantic connection with Sherlock and mentions having other boyfriends in the past. She's compulisvely honest and is visibly upset when she learns that her work may have been used to harm people.

* KindHeartedCatLover: She is a very sweet person who loves cats.

* DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent: [[spoiler:Mycroft is an MI6 agent, embedded in Le Milieu, pretending to be a restaurateur.]]

* RaceLift: The white, English John Watson is now played by Creator/LucyLiu.

* GutturalGrowler: His typical style of speech.

* InsistentTerminology: ''Consultant'' detective. Not private detective.

* AintTooProudToBeg: Starting partway through season 2, Sherlock frequently finds himself needing information buried somewhere on the Internet or accessible only to master hackers. The hacker collective Everyone will get it for him for a price: self-humiliation. Sherlock has done everything from standing on a street corner asking people to punch him to writing an academic paper about ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' to singing along to ''WesternAnimation/Frozen2013'' in a prom dress. Sherlock doesn't even blink at their requests.

* DiabolicalMastermind: Loves to plan out various gambits that can be truly destructive and personally profitable. In the end of season 1 [[spoiler:Moriarty was willing to cause a huge international interest to get a windfall on a currency bet]].

* BlackSheep: Apparently to his family.

* TookALevelInJerkass: His character development in Season 2 so far surprisingly leads to this.

* FriendOnTheForce: "Friend" is pushing it as neither Holmes nor Watson particularly like him, and the feeling is mutual, but he is willing to help them out by supplying information and leads on some cases. Then again, he's just was willing to shut down their efforts.

* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Combined with DramaticIrony. [[spoiler:After all the evil he's responsible for, trying to help Sherlock stop Odin Reichenbach proves to be his undoing.]]

* ActionSurvivor: As she gets into more and more fights, she is becoming this.

* AloofDarkHairedGirl: There's hardly ever a time where Watson is not composed. Deconstructed to a certain point. While her appearance is cool and tough, she also has a boatload of self-esteem issues.

** She admits as much in "The Female of the Species" as she realizes she'll never have a normal life again, she's too committed to being a detective.

** While not physically "badass" (not yet, at least), Watson is rapidly developing considerable deductive skills. Within a few weeks of meeting Sherlock, she's good enough at deduction to realize that [[spoiler:her date was lying when he said he wasn't married]] and a few episodes later that [[spoiler:Sherlock has a fear of planes]], just through body language cues. She also diagnoses a girl with a relatively rare condition through a minor foot injury, in an interesting confluence of her medical skills and burgeoning powers of deduction that makes her seem not unlike Series/{{House}}.
** And in "A Giant Gun, Filled with Drugs", she manages to knock out an armed man and gets Sherlock to call 911, ''and'' stops a man who got shot from bleeding to death.

** In "We Are Everyone" she is already an expert in lockpicking and [[spoiler:then she learns pickpocketing ''by herself'' and stoles the watch of the criminal of the week, being able to catch the evidence needed to solve the case]]. Even Holmes gets impressed and is speechless for a moment.

* CanonForeigner: Out of the main cast, he's the only one without an evident counterpart in Creator/ArthurConanDoyle's stories - though he ''did'' have a counterpart in reality.

A former 'professional muse' friend of Sherlock's who worked with him on several cases. Becomes official housekeeper at the end of her introductory episode.

* [[GenderFlip Gender Identity Flip]]: Canon Mrs. Hudson was a middle aged cis woman, while in the series she is a young trans woman.

* BigBadWannabe: While Moriarty trusted him enough to act as a proxy when dealing with certain ‘clients’, it's noted that he was overly ambitious, and after Moriarty's arrest, he tries a complex plan to gain access to some of Moriarty's secret data caches.

Note that while we've tried to keep all spoilers marked, due to the nature of ''Series/{{Elementary}}'' it's very difficult to keep everything hidden, and it's quite possible that by merely looking at this page at all you will spoil yourself, especially due to the WalkingSpoiler nature of certain characters. Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.

[[foldercontrol]]

!!Main Characters

[[folder:Sherlock Holmes]]
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sherlock_hueha_4974.png]]
[[caption-width-right:250:''"I am smarter than everyone I meet."'']]
->'''Played by''': Creator/JonnyLeeMiller

->'''Watson:''' ''You know, for a genius you can be a real nimrod.''

A UsefulNotes/{{London}}er from a wealthy family, fresh out of rehab, who tries to go back to work as a consultant detective in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity after a trauma in his past.
----
* AdaptationalJerkass: As is often the case with Holmes adaptions. The books' Holmes was hardly warm but would generally be polite with others unless given reason to be otherwise. Elementary's Sherlock is usually rude and callous with almost everyone but the actually traumatised.
* AintTooProudToBeg: Starting partway through season 2, Sherlock frequently finds himself needing information buried somewhere on the Internet or accessible only to master hackers. The hacker collective Everyone will get it for him for a price: self-humiliation. Sherlock has done everything from standing on a street corner asking people to punch him to writing an academic paper about ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' to singing along to ''WesternAnimation/Frozen2013'' in a prom dress. Sherlock doesn't even blink at their requests.
* AllThereInTheManual[=/=]ShownTheirWork: His heroin addiction as explicitly stated on page one of ''Literature/TheSignOfTheFour''.
* AmbiguousDisorder:
** Following the tradition of depictions of Sherlock, his brain literally seems to work differently than other people. He has a lot of common personality traits with UsefulNotes/AspergerSyndrome--socially awkward and extremely gifted within a certain area (in his case detective work), straightforward and with a lot of BrutalHonesty, often oblivious to others' feelings but not lacking in empathy. He also has certain physical tics like the way he stands hunched in on himself sometimes, his jerking head movements and the way he grips his hands/rapidly taps his index fingers against his thumbs which are also consistent with someone who has Aspergers or Autism. He falls into this trope since he hasn't specifically been diagnosed on screen.
** A FreezeFrameBonus on "Deja Vu All Over Again" of his rehab report from Hemdale reveals that he is clinically depressed, refused medication and saw a therapist while in rehab.
** {{Lampshaded}} in "Murder Ex Machina": Holmes and Watson interview a woman with autism (or as she calls it, neuroatypical) who gives a lengthy diatribe on the distinction between neuroatypicality and neurotypicality. She identifies both her boss and Joan as neurotypical, but takes one look at Sherlock and admits she has no idea what's going on with him.

A [[AmbiguousDisorder neuro-atypical]] software programmer who first appeared as a person of interest in "Murder Ex Machina". She and Sherlock later became romantically involved.

* AmbiguousDisorder: She is suggested be somewhere on the [[UsefulNotes/HighFunctioningAutism autism]] spectrum, though she herself prefers to simply refer to herself as "neuro-atypical".