History Series / Fortitude

* NotSoDifferent: Pettigrew's speech to Dan while the sheriff has him in his car, telling him he knows Dan would rape Elena too, given the chance.

** [[spoiler: Tomak kills and decapitates Bianca, making it look like the work of the serial killer, simply because she accessed the research centre database and may have seen information about the illegal research Dr. Khatri was conducting on behalf of Shentel Biotech]].
* YourCheatingHeart:
** Instead of looking after his ill son Liam, Frank Sutter chooses to go off with his mistress Elena and have sex. This comes back to bite him in the ass ''big time''. While he's gone, Liam escapes from his room, [[spoiler:somehow ends up at the scene of Charlie Stoddard's murder,]] and ends up with serious frostbite on his feet. When Frank returns and finds Liam covered in [[spoiler:Stoddard's]] blood, he panics, and in the process of cleaning Liam up he ends up covering his own shirt in blood. When the frostbite is discovered, his wife Jules is furious at him, and when she realizes why he was gone, she kicks him out. Frank's discarded, bloody shirt is later found, implicating him in [[spoiler:Stoddard]]'s murder, and when Dan Andersen arrives at Elena's apartment to arrest him, he loses his temper and beats him senseless. With the bloody shirt, and his alibi hinging on the testimony of [[spoiler:a convicted murderer]], he's an inch away from being charged with [[spoiler:Stoddard's]] murder before a repentant Anderssen realizes exactly ''how'' the blood got onto Frank's T-shirt and his HumiliationConga ''finally'' comes to a halt... for now.
** Eric, Hildur's husband and one of the cops investigating [[spoiler:Stoddard's]] murder, has been sleeping with his widow, Trish. Hildur is oblivious until Trish, angry at Hildur for deleting a voicemail Stoddard sent her, tells her before leaving the town.
** Jason Donnelly, who is shown to have a loving wife and young daughter, sleeping with HotScientist Natalie.
** When Hildur and Michael end up spending the night in Vukobejina, Eric assumes they have slept with eachother (given their past and his and Hildurs current marital problems). It turns out they didn't though.
** Erling Munk is cheating on his wife with his secretary back in Oslo. This proves useful to Hildur, who [[spoiler: blackmails her into providing his laptop password, allowing her to discover his corruption]].

* BarFight: Eric and Billy Pettigrew in flashback, which they then take outside. Billy's apparent loss [[spoiler:triggers him to rape Elena]].

* RightThroughHisPants: Frank and Elena in the first episode when he sneaks out of the house to meet her for a quicky in a garage nearby, [[spoiler:leaving the sick Liam alone]]. Justified in that, well, it''is'' a snowy winter night in the Arctic and they left the garage door open.

* WallOCrazy: Set up by Eric to make sense of the second season's murders. Lampshaded when Munk calls it "diagrams and string" as he orders them to focus on Hildur's disappearance.

** [[spoiler: Vladek Klimov]]. He is beaten to a bloody pulp and then strangled to death, but as retribution for [[spoiler: murdering multiple people in a crazed attempt to carry out an ancient Sami ritual he believes will rid the town of a demon. He also discourages Freya from seeking proper medical treatment, which is also shitty]].
** Elena relies on this trope to justify [[spoiler:having killed her husband, who she said was abusive]].

** Hildur discovers that Munk owns a large second house in Oslo, under his uncles name. It is her first indication he is corrupt, as there is no way he could afford it on a government salary.

* GroinAttack: Vladek mentions to Dan that one of the requirements to become a Shaman is to be castrated, but he ran away from the group as a child before being subjected to it. [[spoiler: Later, after Dan mocks him for "running away", he castrates himself and uses a soldering iron to cauterise the would]].

* LukeIAmYourFather: Played with. Henry Tyson reveals to DCI Morton that he is [[spoiler: Dan's]] father moments before he [[spoiler: blows his brains out]]. However, as [[spoiler: Henry commits suicide and Morton is shot and killed by Henry, Dan never finds out]].

* BodyHorror: Dr. Allerdyce [[spoiler:as the wasps begin to hatch and force their way out of her]]
* BrickJoke:
** When DCI Morton first comes to Fortitude he remarks to Trish that he has heard about a dish called lutefisk and wants to try it. In Episode 5, he finally gets the chance.
-->'''Dan:''' The truth about the lutefisk is- ''(DCI Morton gags on his first mouthful, clearly disgusted)'' -that you should never order the lutefisk.
** Later on in the second season, when Dan claims he feels like a changed man ([[spoiler: its not a good thing, its due to the parasite altering his behaviour]], he orders the lutefisk and is able to eat the entire dish without reacting.
** In Episode 1, Vincent asks Elena whether Dan Anderssen is a [[GoodCopBadCop good sheriff or a bad sheriff]]. She tells him that since there's never any crime in Fortitude, he's never had to do anything, so nobody knows. In Episode 5, she angrily confronts him about his beating of Frank and tells him, "You're a bad sheriff". In the season two finale, Dan brings up the joke again when he is in the process of [[spoiler: beating Vladek to death]].
-->'''Dan:''' You know, people always ask me, am I a good sheriff or a bad sheriff? Now I realise I am ''both''. Hell, I am ''all the fucking sheriffs who have ever existed''.
* BreakTheCutie: Applies to both Petra and Ingrid, who despite being cops are unaccustomed to the levels of violence and murder that sweeps the previously safe town. When the violence starts up again in the second season, Petra is considerably hard hit by it.

* BlackGuyDiesFirst: Subverted. Both Frank Sutter and Max Cordero survive the first season.
* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece: When Dan discovers that [[spoiler: Vladek]] is in custody, he asks Petra for her sidearm before locking her in the holding hell. However, he then ditches the pistol and utilises an old seal club to brutally beat [[spoiler: Vladek]] to a pulp, presumably only asking for Petra's gun so she couldn't shoot her way out of the holding cell (with glass doors) and stop him.

* KubrickStare: Jason, out his window, shortly after becoming infected.

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: After witnessing Dan's overly aggressive arrest of Frank while he is naked and showering, Morton is then shown interviewing him about his use of force. Yes, he may be the only other cop in town with the skills to do an interview, but in real life he'd have no business doing so, as he's a material witness and should be the one ''being'' interviewed about the incident by someone who wasn't present.