History Series / Killjoys

* NonIndicativeName: As of season 2, the Nine have been reduced to Three as a result of Seyah Kendry's coup, Jelco killing the head of Land Hyponia on orders from Kendry, and Louella Simms attempting to kill the remaining families out of grief over her sister’s death, but they're still collectively referred to as "the Nine".

* NonIndicativeName: As of season 2, the Nine have been reduced to Three as a result of Seyah Kedry's coup, but they're still collectively referred to as "the Nine".

'''Spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 are unmarked.'''

* LockedRoomMystery: In 'Necropolis Now', Dutch and D'avin are stuck in an elevator with members of the Nine families, who are being killed off one at a time. The trope is [[spoiler: subverted, when it turns out the killer wasn't in the elevator with them at all, but was killing them from afar with robotech they had all swallowed earlier in the episode]].

** Played with for Pawter. She makes questionable medical decisions, but she's also [[spoiler: a drug addict who has been banished to the quad by her family in order to cover up the fact that she killed a patient when operating while high.]] As such, it's unclear whether her actions are supposed to be considered reasonable in-universe, or if she's just a BackAlleyDoctor.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Pretty much everything in the show that's connected to biochemistry / genetics / microbiology is utter nonsense. Like all the alien-microorganism- or nanobot-caused instant healing of even major injuries without any of the necessary additional energy / nutrient intake. (Plus, it's biochemically impossible for human cells to reproduce and grow that fast, even if you could stimulate them to do so through artificial means.) Or the "virus" that almost instantly freezes people solid starting at the point of exposure[[note]] Aside from the fact that the freezing thing makes no sense at all in terms of thermodynamics, viruses - no matter how alien or specially designed - are defined by their need to use the human cells' own metabolism to reproduce in large numbers before they have any noticable effect on the human body, which takes time that cannot be sped up. This is why the symptom-less incubation period for even the most deadly viral diseases is at least half a day, by which point the virus has spread throughout the body evenly. This plot point would have been a lot less stupid if they'd just said that it was some sort of toxin or a cloud of nanobots.[[/note]]. Or Dutch turning out to be [[spoiler: Aneela's "chiral" mirror image]] even on a molecular level, with her DNA helix supposedly turning the other way around[[note]] That's chemically impossible no matter the order of ATCG nucleotids.[[/note]] and the two strands supposedly being switched.[[note]]Since only one of those strands is "read out" by the human cells and since the genetic code that translates the "ATCG" chain of DNA into the chain of aminoacids in a protein is fixed for all life on earth and doesn't mirror (i.e. "TGC" calls for a completely different aminoacid than the mirror version "ACG", and even just one aminoacid switch can make the resulting protein take on a different shape and have different chemical properties, thus making it unusable for its function as e.g. an enzyme), this would mean Dutch has a completely different genome than Aneela and should look very different. Or actually, it would mean her genome wouldn't be viable for a living organism at all, as all the genes necessary for basic biochemistry would be wrong, too. (I.e. all the stuff that we humans share with, say, cauliflower, which is about half of all protein-coding genes in the human genome.)[[/note]]

* BadBadActing: In 'Reckoning Ball', D'avin and Dutch are trying to [[spoiler: implant a memory in an imprisoned Hullen]] and the plan to do so requires them to convincingly act out a scenario where Dutch has decided to leave the team. Their performances are not convincing in the slightest (at least initially).

* BigCreepyCrawlies: "Shaft" has cat-sized centipedes which hunt humans and can release a toxin that causes hallucinations. They're suggested to be the source of the SuperSerum used in the Red 17 SuperSoldier program, as their blood is green and they are repulsed by D'avin.

** The Red 17 project is focused on creating Level 6 RAC agents. Their blood is replaced with a green plasma that gives them an enhanced {{healing factor}} and also prevents them from feeling pain.

* DoNotCallMePaul: Dutch doesn't usually answer to her birth name, Yelena, or the nickname 'Yala'. Although she doesn't object when Johnny calls her Yelena, which suggests she may only object to Khlyen using it.

** Jelco fits Pawter with an explosive ankle bracelet while she's at the Spring Hill complex, preventing her from leaving. When he needs her assistance dealing with a heart condition, she sedates him, uses his DNA to unlock it, then fits it to him so she can leave while he can't stop her.

* FaceStealer: "A Skinner, Darkly" has an underground clinic [[spoiler: providing face transplants using the green plasma as a bonding agent]]. Surprisingly, it's not connected to the main conspiracy; the cyborg doing the work happened upon a sample and got creative.

* TheGreatWall: In season 2, the Company has installed a high-tech force-field wall surrounding Old Town, which is meant to break their spirits so they won't think of acting against the Company every again. Pawter discovers that the Company actually plans to wall off every city in Westerly, suggesting this is actually a much more permanent arrangement.

** And a couple of episodes after that, when the Aneela's Hullen "servants" ([[spoiler: really her handlers / prison guards]]) kidnap [[spoiler: Kendry]] for medical experimentation, Aneela desperately tries to find her, putting the previously mentioned guy through a truly impressive amount of gory (though mostly off-screen) torture. Constant drowning and regenerating for days, several rounds of blinding him with spikes, literally wearing his guts for garters, etc. Though, as Turin had predicted, all this pain fails to break a Hullen. So eventually she just links him up with the Green to read his mind - which is what he wanted, because that way, he can also share what he knows with [[spoiler: the Lady]].
** And in season 4, even though it had previously been established that it's pointless to try to torture a Hullen through conventional means of pain infliction, an elite Black Root SuperSoldier immediately spills all the info he knows after D'avin tasers him just ''once''. The Hullen's superiors were even expecting this and put a kill switch on him to stop him talking. It's not at all presented as if this case was unusual or surprising, and D'avin (who had just again criticized Dutch for her torture-happy attitude a couple episodes before, and specifically took [[spoiler: his son]] away from her because she was trying to teach him how to torture people) wasn't even trying a different approach to extracting information from their prisoner first.

* MileLongShip: The final shot of season 2 reveals that [[spoiler:Aneela]] is in command of a truly massive organic looking starship, surrounded by an entire fleet of Black Root ships.

* MysticalPregnancy: [[spoiler:Delle Seyah with Jaq during seasons 3 and 4.]]

* PoorCommunicationKills: A literal example in "Attack the Rack." In a pitched fight, [[spoiler: Dutch fights Baynon, who she's convinced is a Hullen thanks to her high ranking and the fact she's been against the Killjoys all this time. Dutch stabs Baynon and when the woman staggers from it, scoffs "drop the act, we know it heals." At which point, she sees the wound ''isn't'' healing. Too late, Dutch realizes Baynon is human and doesn't know a thing about the Hullens. She only took the job because she wanted to know why agents were going AWOL and assumed Dutch was somehow involved and that's why she was hostile. Both women realize they were too busy being suspicious of each other to realize they were on the same side, something Banyon lampshades before she dies.]]
* PowerTrio: The main team. Fancy claims it's a bad setup, citing statistics of past trios that also failed, usually because two of the three end up having sex and wrecking the dynamic. John actually tries to nip that in the bud by asking D'avin not to sleep with Dutch.

* PsychicStrangle: [[spoiler: Aneela exhibits the power to do this (while levitating her victim no less) to a fellow Hullen (by controlling their Green) in the end of "Necropolis Now" when she emerges from bathing in Green and learns Kendry was taken. Possibly just for torture since it is preceded by causing two to drop dead upon her simply uttering "die". This was to a pair of lower-ranking soldiers though, so she might lack the strength to do an insta-kill on a high-ranker. She had plenty juice left over to cause subsequent mooks to bleed from the ears. ]]

* RoyalInbreeding: Jelco has a heart condition that requires daily surgery on account of several generations of inbreeding. Pawter also lampshades this, saying, "All the Nine grow up together. We're an incestuous little dynasty."

* ShaggyDogStory: Dutch and D'avin spend all of 'Reckoning Ball' trying to [[spoiler: implant a false memory into Kitaan, an imprisoned Hullen, and then using her connection to the green plasma in order to lure Aneela into a trap. Kitaan figures out what is going on, escapes, and then is able to gain access to some plasma and reveal the truth before Dutch can stop her]], rendering the entire plot-line pointless.

** In another episode, she and John are dosed with Truth Jakk, which causes them to spout all of the things that they resent about one another. Given that [[spoiler:he'd just discovered that she'd been blocking him from gaining his Level 5 clearance and she was still getting over him running out on the team for three months]], the conversation got very personal very quickly.

** Likewise, the first few episodes of season 3 split time between [[spoiler: Dutch and D'avin's fight against the Hullen, and John's encounter with the Hack-mods while searching for Clara]].

** By the end of the second season, Seyah Kendry has been shot in the stomach and left to bleed to death in an Old Town alley, but her ultimate fate is left unclear. [[spoiler:She returns, very much alive, in season three]].

* DeadlyDecadentCourt: It can be inferred that Dutch’s homeworld had one of these, since the girls of the RoyalHarem are [[TykeBomb trained since infancy on how to kill people]].

* YourCheatingHeart: As it turns out, N'oa's husband Vince has a secret girlfriend on Leith who has no idea he's actually married.

** In "Escape Velocity" Seyah Kendry jokes about shiving a member of Land Hyponia, as she does not like them. Fast forward to the next season and in "Full Metal Monk" Arune Hyponia has become the leader of the family and is Pawter's main ally among the Nine to go after Land Kendry.

* IronicEcho: In 'The Harvest', N'oa's husband just laughs and says "she should have made better choices" when Johnny tells him how much trouble N'oa will be in if he doesn't get home immediately. When Johnny takes the guy in for illegal immigration at the end of the episode, he tells him "you should have made better choices".

** When John first met Dutch, he broke into Lucy and was shot by Dutch while wearing a blood-soaked wedding dress. It seems like a weird NoodleIncident at first, until we learn that Khlyen "lost" Dutch six years ago when he killed her husband.

* FirstEpisodeSpoiler: If you've seen any of the promotional materials, it won't be a surprise that in the first episode the warrant that Johnny gets is for his brother...who will go on to be part of their team.

* MysticalPregnancy: [[Delle Seyah with Jaq during seasons 3 and 4.]]

* MileLongShip: The final shot of season 2 reveals that [[spoiler:Aleena]] is in command of a truly massive organic looking starship, surrounded by an entire fleet of Black Root ships.

* GenreShift: ''Killjoys'' began as a show about sci-fi bounty hunters chasing down targets before morphing into a saga about what it means to be human and a despeate war for humanity's survival.

::In 'Vessel', the heavily pregnant surrogate Constance leads the charge against the assassins with a rifle and kicks copious amounts of ass. Justified in that she's just had an adrenaline injection, before which she was fragile enough to be seen as needing bed rest - though even in that state, she was still badass enough to stab someone trying to hold her hostage.
:: Delle Seyah Kendry shows no sign of her pregnancy slowing her throughout season 4.

''Killjoys'' is a Canadian-American science fiction series; a co-production between Creator/SpaceChannel in Canada and Creator/{{Syfy}} in the U.S. It premiered on June 19th, 2015 and stars Creator/HannahJohnKamen, Aaron Ashmore, and Luke Macfarlane.

In 2017, after wrapping its third season, it was announced that an end date was set and that ''Killjoys'' will end its run in 2019 for a total of five seasons.

** Calvert in Season 5 has much the same build, yet she takes on Dutch, Johnny and D'Avin ''at the same time'', holding them off quite well for a time until she's overwhelmed.

* AirVentPassageway: Dutch suggests doing this to infiltrate The RAC in 'Enemy Khlyen', but John points out that it would just expose her to enough radiation to melt her face off.

* ArtisticLicenseMedicine: Played with for Pawter. She makes questionable medical decisions, but she's also [[spoiler: a drug addict who has been banished to the quad by her family in order to cover up the fact that she killed a patient when operating while high.]] As such, it's unclear whether her actions are supposed to be considered reasonable in-universe, or if she's just a BackAlleyDoctor.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: When D'avin detonates an EMP inside the RAC headquarters, it disables internal comms, security, and primary lighting, but not life support, ArtificialGravity or emergency lighting. (Though this might be justified, as it's not physically impossible to shield against an EMP attack (Farraday cages) and it would make sense to put those essential survival systems in separate computers shielded against possible attacks. On the other hand, not shielding the security systems as well would be a clear case of IdiotBall on part of the RAC engineers.)
** Also, the planet and moons in the Quad all have very different sizes, and yet all of them have the same gravity. Realistically, even with terraforming, either the planet would have far too high gravity for humans to survive, or the moons shouldn't even be able to hold any atmosphere or water they imported there during the terraforming process. While the setting clearly has artificial gravity on the ships, it's never established how they managed to increase the gravity on the moons' surfaces. (If they burried a massive infrastructure system of "gravity generators" of some sort, they should already be finished with mining the ground as well.)
** The planet and moons are also almost [[SingleBiomePlanet Single Biome Planets]], with Leith for example being covered in lush vegetation and apparently (sub)tropical temperatures all over (There aren't even any major bodies of water to be seen from space - How the hell does the water cycle on that moon work and generate enough rain for all that vegetation?!), except for a small area at the poles that's covered in snow and pine forests. Meanwhile, Arkyn is apparently constantly frozen over, despite getting basically the same amount of energy due to being at the same distance from the sun. (Though that ''might'' be possible if there's almost no carbondioxide in the atmosphere due to a lack of volcanism or much inhabitation by people. They did establish that there's no plant life viable there for some unexplained reason, so the atmosphere, and especially the oxygen, must be completely imported.)

* DoNotCallMePaul: Dutch does not answer to her birth name, Yelena, or the nickname 'Yala'. Although she doesn't object when Johnny calls her Yelena, which suggests she may only object to Khlyen using it.

::In 'Vessel', the heavily pregnant surrogate Constance leads the charge against the assassins with a rifle and kicks copious amounts of ass. Justified in that she's just had an adrenaline injection, before which she was fragile enough to be seen as needing bedrest - though even in that state, she was still badass enough to stab someone trying to hold her hostage.

* ShoutOut: In 'The Wolf You Feed', Zeph stymies John's backdoor hack into Lucy with a hologram that wags its finger and begins its message with "Ah ah ah!", an obvious reference to Film/JurassicPark.

* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: The Company's way of dealing with a labor strike involves ''carpet-bombing''.

* NoTranshumanismAllowed: Cybernetic enhancement is tolerated, but only to a limited extent. Too much enhancement and the person isn't even considered human by law. 26% is considered well over the legal limit.

* PregnantBadass: In 'Vessel', the heavily pregnant surrogate Constance leads the charge against the assassins with a rifle and kicks copious amounts of ass. Justified in that she's just had an adrenaline injection, before which she was fragile enough to be seen as needing bedrest - though even in that state, she was still badass enough to stab someone trying to hold her hostage.

* HostileWeather: Westerly is occasionally beset by magneto-active acid rainstorms, a result of all the pollution from strip-mining the planet.

* DoubleStandardRapeMaleOnMale: In the season 3 episode "The Lion, the Witch and the Warlock", Pree is captured by his old mercenary gang and their leader (his ex-lover). They plan to execute him for running away from the gang / the ex, and the last we see of him in one late scene is him surrounded by drawn guns and asking to be forgiven for leaving the ex. Then he shows up to rescue Dutch and Johnny, explaining that the mercenaries decided not to kill him after all, and in return, he "had to put out. A lot." This implies the previous scene ended in a gang bang - but, even though Pree and the leader clearly still have feelings for each other and even if Pree maybe wouldn't mind having sex with the rest of the mercenaries under normal circumstances - the point remains that they were ''threatening to kill him'' if he doesn't "put out". That means he had no way of refusing and thus couldn't give consent, which means that whatever happened was sexual assault. This comment from Pree is played as a throw-away joke about [[AllGaysArePromiscuous how "easy" gay men are.]] The mercenaries are specifically supposed to be accepted as honorable and righteous "good guys" by the audience, meaning the writer really didn't see any problem here. Imagine a female character in Pree's situation and you get a scenario that's usually reserved for justifying mass murder of the gang that captured her, and especially the creepy ex who won't let go and is using the situation to exhort sexual favors. And even if Pree was just joking in-universe, that would still mean he's implying the mercenaries he wants Dutch to trust are capable of raping their prisoners / allies, or at least that he and they think this would be funny, if the victim is a man.

** In a season 4 episode, Dutch decides to fly in close circles around a sun to create a higher g-force after her lab centrifuge wasn't strong enough to separate the cells from the suspension medium in some ApliedPhlebotinum. This means that Dutch supposedly survived more than the 5000 to 15000 g[[note]]or rather Relative Centrifugal Force equivalents[[/note]] that even a small, low-speed desktop centrifuge can easily reach. Even if human tissue/bone could actually survive more than about 25 g for more than a second, at thousands of g, her blood cells should have clotted at the bottom of her heart and all her blood vessels, killing her through heart attack / brain embolism. So the nonsense in this episode isn't even internally consistent: Separating suspended cells from liquids is literally what this kind of low-power centrifuge is for, and what she was trying to do with their spore sample by pulling this stunt. But somehow it only happens to the sample, not her blood. Also, if it was actually acchievable the way she was planning, higher power (higher rotation speed) centrifugation than what the small desk centrifuge could do would have destroyed the spore cells in her sample, because separating the parts of cells (organelles, DNA strands, proteins, etc.) is what higher power centrifuges are for.[[note]] These are about the size of a desk, due to needing a bigger diameter, a bigger motor, bigger anchoring mass and sometimes even having to be bolted to the floor. If you don't roughly balance out the load of a small desktop centrifuge, you might damage the machine. If you don't ''very carefully'' balance out the load of a high-power centrifuge, the machine will likely fling itself out to break the next wall. Also, you just cost the lab several hundred thousand Dollars.[[/note]]