History Series / Narcos

[[caption-width-right:350: ''[[ThemeTune Soy el fuego que arde tu piel, soy el agua que mata tu sed...]]''[[labelnote:*]]"I am the fire that burns your skin, I am the water that kills your thirst''[[/labelnote]]]]

** Félix makes his start by killing Hernin Naranjo to get the attention of the DFS, which is an extremely risky move. He also tricks his DFS driver by saying he was once apprehended by El Azul. The whole point is to get himself just close enough to make his sales pitch of seedless marijuana to El Azul, and it works.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Pablo is chubby and a stoner, but he's the boss, and any time he's forced into a fight, he dominates.

* BigGood: Cesar Gaviria becomes the closest thing to one that the series has, and he looked up to Galan.

* RaceLift: Cesar Gaviria is portrayed as mestizo whereas the RealLife figure is more caucasian-looking, with light gray eyes.

* TranquilFury: If Escobar gets mad, he won't raise his voice or act out in an extreme way. [[spoiler:Except for his initial phone conversation with Cesar Gaviria and when he loses it and beats Galeano to death with a pool cue.]]

** Season 4 continues the trend with how they portray Mexican drug lord, Félix Angel Gallardo. He is shown as pretty nice guy most of the time. A loving husband who is devoted to his family. A trustworthy business man who doesn't screw over his partners and employees. The only time he shows his ruthless side is when someone stands in the way of his dream of creating a Mexican drug empire, no matter who they are. Subverted when he TookALevelInJerkass.

** Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, the founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, replaces them in Season 4 and season 5.

** After the arrest of Don Neto and Rafa and the apparent disappearance of Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, Benjamin organizes a meeting with the heads of the different plazas to establish himself as the new leader. It's abruptly cut short when Félix Gallardo shows up with the Mexican army, showing that he has secured his political protection and is still very much in charge.

** Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, the main villain of seasons 4 and 5 and the leader of the most powerful Mexican cartel, combines aspects of both Escobar and the Cali godfathers. Like the former he came from humble beginnings and more than anything wants to make a name for himself [[spoiler:(ultimately leading to his own downfall)]], but like Cali he does so by creating a vast network with ties to government and intelligence officials and is overal much more calculating.

** While its implied in Narcos Mexico: Season 1, its played very straight for Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo in Narcos Mexico: Season 2. While he runs the operation because of his ability to move cocaine from Colombia throughout Mexico into the United States, he is not liked or respected by the people he works with. He has no friends he can really count on, and even his closest men are with him for the money. Eventually even his wife leaves him when she can't stand how awful he's become, which he soothes with a string of hookers and mistresses. He admits this himself, by claiming he doesn't have friends, only employees. [[spoiler: By the end of the season, all of them turn against Félix and freeze him out of his own empire, leaving him to get arrested by the new Mexican government he helped put in power.]]

** [[spoiler:David Rodriguez, Miguel's son, is killed in a North Valley Cartel drive by in the season 3 finale.]]

** David Rodriguez (Miguel's son) is even worse. Paranoid, doesn't look for threats around him, a BadBoss, obsessed with ruining Jorge's life for no discernible reason, refuses to listen to reason, and tries to "rule" with an iron fist. [[spoiler:Fittingly, he's unceremoniously gunned down, having taken no precautions whatsoever to protect his location.]]

** [[spoiler: Season 3 has David Rodriguez, son of Miguel Rodriguez who is one of the 4 leaders of the Cali Cartel. He treats everyone around him with disrespect, [[BadBoss even his own]] men. Has a HairTriggerTemper that is a time bomb waiting to go off. He goes out of his way to make Jorge's life a living hell, just because his dad sided with him during a conversation. And he loves to torture and kill people.]]

** Félix makes his start by killing Hernin Naranjo to get the attention of the DFS, which is an extremely risky move. He also tricks his DFS driver by saying he was once apprehended by El Alzul. The whole point is to get himself just close enough to make his sales pitch of seedless marijuana to El Alzul, and it works.

* DeathOfAThousandCuts: What gradually happens to Escobar's Medellín Cartel. Even the Cali Cartel was reluctant to cross the Medellín Cartel in the latter's heyday, as seen in a scene during the Mexico arc where the Cali Godfathers appear very reluctant to partner up with Félix if it meant crossing Escobar. But Escobar soon acquires a lot of enemies. The Search Bloc, splinter groups from his Cartel led by Judy Moncada and Berna, the Castano brothers, and then the Cali Cartel. The splinter groups and the Castano brothers together comprise Los Pepes, while the Bloc and Cali assist them from the background. And slowly but surely they start to whittle down Escobar's Sicarios. Each Sicario death, very often amounting to CruelAndUnusualDeath, doesn't look like a big loss in isolation. But it adds up over time, and what's left of Escobar's once mighty Cartel is floudering and struggling to hold on. The knockout blows, severing the connection to Miami, and routing what's left when Escobar tries to make a desperate move on Cali, only come after the Medellín Cartel has been sufficiently weakened over time in a process of attrition.

** [[spoiler: The paramilitary group led by the Castano brothers slaughtered entire villages where communist guerillas had stayed, even briefly. And that was before they even signed up for the campaign to take down Escobar. As leaders of Los Pepes they take to slaughtering not just anyone who is associated with Escobar, but also innocent family members of the associates as well. That gets punctuated when they murder Blackie's girlfriend and father-in-law, and the entire family of Fernando Duquesne, including his ex-wife, his mother, and his 14 year old son.]]

** After season 3 aired the real [[spoiler: Jorge Salcedo ]] was interviewed and stated that while most of the story is factually true, some scenes were added for dramatic effect and never happened. [[spoiler: Miguel never tried to suffocated Jorge with a plastic bag since Jorge was not exposed as TheMole until after Miguel's arrest. Jorge could not have killed Navegante in self defense since at the time of the shooting he was already in protective custody and far from the action.]]

** Pablo's real-life older brother Roberto is entirely absent from the show in spite of his role in founding the Medellín Cartel, making Gustavo Gaviria something of a CompositeCharacter as Pablo's closest relative with a role in the Medellín Cartel.

** For the early Medellín Cartel, especially Pablo and Gustavo, ''Nosotros somos bandidos'' ("We are bandits.")

** The show portrays M-19 as much less competent and dangerous than they were in order to prop up the Medellín cartel. The group did clash with cartels occasionally, but the show portrays it as a slaughter, forcing Ivan the Terrible to turn himself in to Escobar to save the movement. When M-19 attacks the courthouse, it's purely on Escobar's bidding. This is an existing conspiracy theory, but not much credit is given to it. Near the end of the season, [[spoiler:Escobar betrays and casually executes Ivan and his closest supporters. In reality, Ivan was killed in battle against the Colombian army]].

** Judy holds delusions that she can manipulate the Cali Cartel and Los Pepes just long enough to take out Escobar for her, and somehow emerge in Medellín as the undisputed top Narco of Colombia. And despite having no real cards of her own, with Berna her bodyguard holding them as the DragonInChief. She doesn't take his BodyguardBetrayal very well to begin with, but then very reluctantly counts her blessings and realizes she's frankly lucky that Berna's arrangement is the only one that allows her to make it out alive.

** The Cali Cartel appears in the first two seasons and is the focus of the third. [[spoiler: Both Medellín and Cali cartels appear mid-Season 4 after Félix Gallardo decides to expand into the cocaine trade.]]

* CopKiller: Murphy relates that US agents are not targeted by the drug dealers, because the last time one was tortured and killed, the retribution from the US was extremely harsh. Played with in the season 1 finale when [[spoiler:Murphy is kidnapped]] and his fate uncertain for a while. This is also a factor behind the increasing ruthlessness of law enforcement, as Peña relates to Murphy regarding Carrillo: "You had a partner killed. He's had a dozen," because the Medellín Cartel actively encourages the killing of Colombian soldiers and police officers.

** The Medellín cartel sends a message to M-19 by killing several of their number and displaying their bodies with warning messages on them.

* DeathOfAThousandCuts: What gradually happens to Escobar's Medellín Cartel. Even the Cali Cartel was reluctant to cross the Medellín Cartel in the latter's heyday, as seen in a scene during the Mexico arc where the Cali Godfathers appear very reluctant to partner up with Félix if it meant crossing Escobar. But Escobar soon acquires a lot of enemies. The Search Bloc, splinter groups from his Cartel led by Judy Moncada and Berna, the Castano brothers, and then the Cali Cartel. The splinter groups and the Castano brothers together comprise Los Pepes, while the Bloc and Cali assist them from the background. And slowly but surely they start to whittle down Escobar's Sicarios. Each Sicario death, very often amounting to CruelAndUnusualDeath, doesn't look like a big loss in isolation. But it adds up over time, and what's left of Escobar's once mighty Cartel is floudering and struggling to hold on. The knockout blows, severing the connection to Miami, and routing what's left when Escobar tries to make a desperate move on Cali, only come after the Medellín Cartel has been sufficiently weakened over time in a process of attrition.

* DisposingOfABody: Generally averted by the Medellín Cartel, who let the bodies serve as examples not to cross them. The Cali Cartel, on the other hand like to fly below the radar; they wrap bodies in chicken wire and dump them in the river. As the bodies expand from the gases of decomposition, the chicken wire cuts them into little pieces that are eaten by the fish. No body = no crime = no negative publicity.

* EnemyMine: Season two finds [[spoiler: Judy Moncada, technically with the Medellín Cartel, joining up with the Cali Cartel, the RightWingMilitiaFanatic Castaño Brothers and their VigilanteMilitia army (who are being supplied by "CIA Bill" Schencher), with Peña drawn in as well.]]

** Escobar has a pretty diverse crew. His Medellín Cartel includes Blackie ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a black man]]), Carlos Lehder (a half-German Neo-Nazi), Fernando Duque (a high-class lawyer), Lion (an AmbiguouslyGay man), and Barry Seal (a GoodOlBoy American ex-CIA agent). He also "hires" M-19 (a Communist guerrilla organization) and briefly contracts "the Spaniard" (a Basque separatist bomb maker).

** [[spoiler: A few weeks after hiding on his father's farm and living peacefully, Escobar seriously contemplates retiring for good to raise his family in an adjoining farm. Once he brings up the idea to his father, however, he's bluntly told that he is a 'murderer' with too much blood on his hands to ever be just a peaceful farmer. Escobar and Limón return to Medellín not long after.]]

* HowTheMightyHaveFallen: Despite at one point being the most powerful and wealthiest criminal in history, Escobar's continued war with the government and his narco rivals slowly chips away at his empire through sheer attrition. Eventually, all but one of his soldiers are wiped out and he has to go into hiding at his father's farm. When he resurfaces in Medellín with delusional plans to rebuild the cartel from scratch, [[spoiler:the Search Block quickly finds and kills him.]]

** The Medellín Cartel's first incarnation was an organization known as ''Muerte a Secuestradores'' (Death to Kidnappers) in response to M-19 holding the family members of the Cartel leaders for ransom. Later on, Escobar mounts his own kidnapping campaign against the families of politicians to pressure them into accepting his demands.

* IfIWantedYouDead: In season 4, when Mexican drug kingpin Félix Gallardo realizes that he can expand his cartel's activities to transporting cocaine for the Colombians, he approaches the Cali Cartel first because of their more business-like reputation than the Medellín cartel, whose leader Pablo Escobar is known for his HairTriggerTemper. However, Félix is kidnapped by Escobar's sicarios, who threatens to have him killed as this move presents an existenial threat to Escobar's dominance of the cocaine market. Félix counters that he would have already had him killed if that was his intention, and he's right: it speaks to the importance of the Mexican corridor for Escobar's empire that instead he arranges an identical deal as the one offered to Cali.

* InspectorJavert: Carillo. His obsession with catching and killing Escobar is paramount in his life and leads him to carry out tortures and even the extrajudicial execution of at least one child who acts as a lookout for the Medellín cartel.

** Valeria, a news reporter who seduces Escobar. While this initially provides her a unique insight into the Medellín Cartel, she eventually just becomes a mouthpiece for Escobar [[spoiler:and ends up getting her killed by his rivals.]]

** The Ochoas are the most sophisticated members of the Medellín cartel. They're branded as "soft" by their peers, but they prove to have more teeth than others thought.

** While Escobar is a rival to the Cali godfathers, for much of the series they maintain an uneasy detente. However, throughout season 2 he is also fighting off splinter groups of his own cartel, all the while the government is on an endless hunt for him. Cali also gets involved indirectly, as Medellín's fall would give them a virtual monopoly over the Colombian cocaine market.

* NiceMeanAndInBetween: The founding members of what would become the Medellín Cartel: the cultured and savvy Ochoa brothers are the Nice, ruthless Gacha is the Mean, and Escobar is enough of both to be picked as the leader.

* NotSoHarmlessVillain: [[spoiler: After spending most of the season being the "softest" of the Medellín cartel, the Ochoas sell out Gustavo and get him killed.]]

* OnlySaneMan: The Ochoa brothers aren't quite insane, but Gustavo is the one person in the Medellín Cartel who's fully pragmatic. Later, Don Berna for the anti-Pablo alliance.

** Despite being founding members of the Medellín Cartel, the Ochoa brothers are last seen being given a slap on the wrist prison sentence for illegally importing bulls from Spain towards the end of Season 1.

'''Escobar:''' ...I was going to do marvelous things for this country. If I have made myself a monster, like all of you say, [[NeverMyFault that is the fault of people like your father and those politicians "of always."]] Those oligarchs and those people were ''never'' going to tolerate that little ''paisa'' from Medellín, who had more money and was more intelligent than all of them!\\

** Escobar is seen as emotional and volatile compared to the Gentlemen of Cali, who have a reputation of being much more professional and calculated. Discussed in season 4; when Félix wants to start moving cocaine through his smuggling ring, he decides to do business with Cali instead of Medellín for that reason.

** While in a very light disguise of sunglasses and a beard, [[spoiler: Escobar goes out to the streets of Medellín, buys an ice cream, gives a cop a lighter he dropped, and just has a casual stroll.]]

** After Escobar murders Kiko Moncada, Judy Moncada and Don Berna break away from the Medellín Cartel and form La Oficina de Envigado. They ally with the Castaño brothers' far-right paramilitary group and, briefly, the Cali Cartel to form Los Pepes and destroy the Medellín Cartel.

* TheRemnant: In Season 3, Don Berna's La Oficina de Envigado has become this for the Medellín Cartel. By the end of the season, [[spoiler:the Norte del Valle Cartel is this for the Cali Cartel.]]

** So much, on both sides. The entire first season is basically the Medellín Cartel and the Colombian Police exacting increasingly bloody revenge on each other.

* SlobsVsSnobs: The Medellín Cartel and the Cali Cartel, respectively. Murphy's narration even compares them to their respective primary markets: loose, hard-partying Miami for the Medellín and professional, sophisticated New York for Cali. Pablo also views his war with the politicians and oligarchs as this.

** [[spoiler: Judy Moncada in season two. She goes from a hard-partying cartel wife to cruel and RevengeBeforeReason head of part of the Medellín cartel.]]

** A poor farmer finds millions of dollars buried on his property. Realizing that it is cartel money, he hands it over to the Medellín Cartel. The money does in fact belong to Escobar but the people who buried it there are all dead now. The increasingly paranoid Escobar suspects that his business partners are cheating him and they are the ones who buried the money after they stole from him. He murders them but Murphy and Peña find out about it and inform the Colombian government that Escobar broke the terms of his deal with the government by continuing his criminal activities. This restarts the Colombian Drug War.

** For a while, Escobar enjoys quite a bit of popularity from the lower class for spreading his wealth around the poor, particularly in his home town of Medellín, where people revere him.

** Carillo shoots a teenaged boy for helping Escobar move unseen in Medellín, and gives his traumatized ten-year old friend a bullet to give to Escobar.

** Pablo's real-life older brother Roberto is entirely absent from the show in spite of his role in founding the Medellin Cartel, making Gustavo Gaviria something of a CompositeCharacter as Pablo's closest relative with a role in the Medellin Cartel.

** For the early Medellin Cartel, especially Pablo and Gustavo, ''Nosotros somos bandidos'' ("We are bandits.")

** The show portrays M-19 as much less competent and dangerous than they were in order to prop up the Medellin cartel. The group did clash with cartels occasionally, but the show portrays it as a slaughter, forcing Ivan the Terrible to turn himself in to Escobar to save the movement. When M-19 attacks the courthouse, it's purely on Escobar's bidding. This is an existing conspiracy theory, but not much credit is given to it. Near the end of the season, [[spoiler:Escobar betrays and casually executes Ivan and his closest supporters. In reality, Ivan was killed in battle against the Colombian army]].

** Judy holds delusions that she can manipulate the Cali Cartel and Los Pepes just long enough to take out Escobar for her, and somehow emerge in Medellin as the undisputed top Narco of Colombia. And despite having no real cards of her own, with Berna her bodyguard holding them as the DragonInChief. She doesn't take his BodyguardBetrayal very well to begin with, but then very reluctantly counts her blessings and realizes she's frankly lucky that Berna's arrangement is the only one that allows her to make it out alive.

** The Cali Cartel appears in the first two seasons and is the focus of the third. [[spoiler: Both Medellin and Cali cartels appear mid-Season 4 after Félix Gallardo decides to expand into the cocaine trade.]]

* CopKiller: Murphy relates that US agents are not targeted by the drug dealers, because the last time one was tortured and killed, the retribution from the US was extremely harsh. Played with in the season 1 finale when [[spoiler:Murphy is kidnapped]] and his fate uncertain for a while. This is also a factor behind the increasing ruthlessness of law enforcement, as Peña relates to Murphy regarding Carrillo: "You had a partner killed. He's had a dozen," because the Medellin Cartel actively encourages the killing of Colombian soldiers and police officers.

** The Medellin cartel sends a message to M-19 by killing several of their number and displaying their bodies with warning messages on them.

* DeathOfAThousandCuts: What gradually happens to Escobar's Medellin Cartel. Even the Cali Cartel was reluctant to cross the Medellin Cartel in the latter's heyday, as seen in a scene during the Mexico arc where the Cali Godfathers appear very reluctant to partner up with Félix if it meant crossing Escobar. But Escobar soon acquires a lot of enemies. The Search Bloc, splinter groups from his Cartel led by Judy Moncada and Berna, the Castano brothers, and then the Cali Cartel. The splinter groups and the Castano brothers together comprise Los Pepes, while the Bloc and Cali assist them from the background. And slowly but surely they start to whittle down Escobar's Sicarios. Each Sicario death, very often amounting to CruelAndUnusualDeath, doesn't look like a big loss in isolation. But it adds up over time, and what's left of Escobar's once mighty Cartel is floudering and struggling to hold on. The knockout blows, severing the connection to Miami, and routing what's left when Escobar tries to make a desperate move on Cali, only come after the Medellin Cartel has been sufficiently weakened over time in a process of attrition.

* DisposingOfABody: Generally averted by the Medellin Cartel, who let the bodies serve as examples not to cross them. The Cali Cartel, on the other hand like to fly below the radar; they wrap bodies in chicken wire and dump them in the river. As the bodies expand from the gases of decomposition, the chicken wire cuts them into little pieces that are eaten by the fish. No body = no crime = no negative publicity.

* EnemyMine: Season two finds [[spoiler: Judy Moncada, technically with the Medellin Cartel, joining up with the Cali Cartel, the RightWingMilitiaFanatic Castaño Brothers and their VigilanteMilitia army (who are being supplied by "CIA Bill" Schencher), with Peña drawn in as well.]]

** Escobar has a pretty diverse crew. His Medellin Cartel includes Blackie ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a black man]]), Carlos Lehder (a half-German Neo-Nazi), Fernando Duque (a high-class lawyer), Lion (an AmbiguouslyGay man), and Barry Seal (a GoodOlBoy American ex-CIA agent). He also "hires" M-19 (a Communist guerrilla organization) and briefly contracts "the Spaniard" (a Basque separatist bomb maker).

** [[spoiler: A few weeks after hiding on his father's farm and living peacefully, Escobar seriously contemplates retiring for good to raise his family in an adjoining farm. Once he brings up the idea to his father, however, he's bluntly told that he is a 'murderer' with too much blood on his hands to ever be just a peaceful farmer. Escobar and Limón return to Medellin not long after.]]

* HowTheMightyHaveFallen: Despite at one point being the most powerful and wealthiest criminal in history, Escobar's continued war with the government and his narco rivals slowly chips away at his empire through sheer attrition. Eventually, all but one of his soldiers are wiped out and he has to go into hiding at his father's farm. When he resurfaces in Medellin with delusional plans to rebuild the cartel from scratch, [[spoiler:the Search Block quickly finds and kills him.]]

** The Medellin Cartel's first incarnation was an organization known as ''Muerte a Secuestradores'' (Death to Kidnappers) in response to M-19 holding the family members of the Cartel leaders for ransom. Later on, Escobar mounts his own kidnapping campaign against the families of politicians to pressure them into accepting his demands.

* IfIWantedYouDead: In season 4, when Mexican drug kingpin Félix Gallardo realizes that he can expand his cartel's activities to transporting cocaine for the Colombians, he approaches the Cali Cartel first because of their more business-like reputation than the Medellin cartel, whose leader Pablo Escobar is known for his HairTriggerTemper. However, Félix is kidnapped by Escobar's sicarios, who threatens to have him killed as this move presents an existenial threat to Escobar's dominance of the cocaine market. Félix counters that he would have already had him killed if that was his intention, and he's right: it speaks to the importance of the Mexican corridor for Escobar's empire that instead he arranges an identical deal as the one offered to Cali.

* InspectorJavert: Carillo. His obsession with catching and killing Escobar is paramount in his life and leads him to carry out tortures and even the extrajudicial execution of at least one child who acts as a lookout for the Medellin cartel.

** Valeria, a news reporter who seduces Escobar. While this initially provides her a unique insight into the Medellin Cartel, she eventually just becomes a mouthpiece for Escobar [[spoiler:and ends up getting her killed by his rivals.]]

** The Ochoas are the most sophisticated members of the Medellin cartel. They're branded as "soft" by their peers, but they prove to have more teeth than others thought.

** While Escobar is a rival to the Cali godfathers, for much of the series they maintain an uneasy detente. However, throughout season 2 he is also fighting off splinter groups of his own cartel, all the while the government is on an endless hunt for him. Cali also gets involved indirectly, as Medellin's fall would give them a virtual monopoly over the Colombian cocaine market.

* NiceMeanAndInBetween: The founding members of what would become the Medellin Cartel: the cultured and savvy Ochoa brothers are the Nice, ruthless Gacha is the Mean, and Escobar is enough of both to be picked as the leader.

* NotSoHarmlessVillain: [[spoiler: After spending most of the season being the "softest" of the Medellin cartel, the Ochoas sell out Gustavo and get him killed.]]

* OnlySaneMan: The Ochoa brothers aren't quite insane, but Gustavo is the one person in the Medellin Cartel who's fully pragmatic. Later, Don Berna for the anti-Pablo alliance.

** Despite being founding members of the Medellin Cartel, the Ochoa brothers are last seen being given a slap on the wrist prison sentence for illegally importing bulls from Spain towards the end of Season 1.

'''Escobar:''' ...I was going to do marvelous things for this country. If I have made myself a monster, like all of you say, [[NeverMyFault that is the fault of people like your father and those politicians "of always."]] Those oligarchs and those people were ''never'' going to tolerate that little ''paisa'' from Medellin, who had more money and was more intelligent than all of them!\\

** Escobar is seen as emotional and volatile compared to the Gentlemen of Cali, who have a reputation of being much more professional and calculated. Discussed in season 4; when Félix wants to start moving cocaine through his smuggling ring, he decides to do business with Cali instead of Medellin for that reason.

** While in a very light disguise of sunglasses and a beard, [[spoiler: Escobar goes out to the streets of Medellin, buys an ice cream, gives a cop a lighter he dropped, and just has a casual stroll.]]

** After Escobar murders Kiko Moncada, Judy Moncada and Don Berna break away from the Medellin Cartel and form La Oficina de Envigado. They ally with the Castaño brothers' far-right paramilitary group and, briefly, the Cali Cartel to form Los Pepes and destroy the Medellin Cartel.

* TheRemnant: In Season 3, Don Berna's La Oficina de Envigado has become this for the Medellin Cartel. By the end of the season, [[spoiler:the Norte del Valle Cartel is this for the Cali Cartel.]]

** So much, on both sides. The entire first season is basically the Medellin Cartel and the Colombian Police exacting increasingly bloody revenge on each other.

* SlobsVsSnobs: The Medellin Cartel and the Cali Cartel, respectively. Murphy's narration even compares them to their respective primary markets: loose, hard-partying Miami for the Medellin and professional, sophisticated New York for Cali. Pablo also views his war with the politicians and oligarchs as this.

** [[spoiler: Judy Moncada in season two. She goes from a hard-partying cartel wife to cruel and RevengeBeforeReason head of part of the Medellin cartel.]]

** A poor farmer finds millions of dollars buried on his property. Realizing that it is cartel money, he hands it over to the Medellin Cartel. The money does in fact belong to Escobar but the people who buried it there are all dead now. The increasingly paranoid Escobar suspects that his business partners are cheating him and they are the ones who buried the money after they stole from him. He murders them but Murphy and Peña find out about it and inform the Colombian government that Escobar broke the terms of his deal with the government by continuing his criminal activities. This restarts the Colombian Drug War.

** For a while, Escobar enjoys quite a bit of popularity from the lower class for spreading his wealth around the poor, particularly in his home town of Medellin, where people revere him.

** Carillo shoots a teenaged boy for helping Escobar move unseen in Medellin, and gives his traumatized ten-year old friend a bullet to give to Escobar.

* BreakTheHaughty: The Arellano brothers get ''way'' too cocky after Félix's downfall. Because they control the most important corridor on the US-Mexico border, they heavily tax the Sinaloa Cartel for moving their product through Tijuana. The final straw for the Sinaloans is Ramon murdering another one of their partners over a drunken insult and Benjamin rejecting their offer to buy their own piece of the border, which would have settled the conflict for good and let them go their own separate ways. This leads to a MobWar between the two that claims the life of Enedina's husband and the collateral damage of a dead cardinal wrecks their credibility with the Mexican elites forever. Being hunted down by the Mexican Army and seeing their empire implode before them, they strike back against the rival Cartels and neutral associates such as El Mayo who were merely in debt to them in a desperate bid to maintain control, which only serves to [[EnemyMine unite everybody against them]] and speed up their demise.

** Ramon is this in the Arellano-Félix organization; at one point he strings up a bunch of dead fish and uses them for target practice in a public park. It's implied this isn't the first time he's done it. He also brutally beats a night club patron for accidentally spilling a drink on his shoes.

** The Arellano-Felix clan is reduced to Enedina and her brothers Benjamin, Ramón, and Francisco. She had several other brothers who were all heavily involved in the Tijuana Cartel.

** Rafa, Cochiloco and Cuco enjoy themselves on both beer and cocaine while pigging out in Cochiloco's seafood restaurant. Bad timing for the two American tourists who come in hoping they can be the last customers for the night. Rafa rushes to the conclusion that they're DEA agents staking him out, and promptly murders both of them. Relations were already strained between Rafa and Felix as it was during Felix's transition from weed to coke. Felix absolutely sees Rafa as TheLoad after the murders in the restaurant.

** In season 4, Felix meets with Escobar in person. The latter implicitly compares himself with the hippopotami he keeps as pets around his mansion--they look harmless, almost like a baby, but if you get in their way they'll bite you in half.

** Brutal as it is, [[spoiler:Nava‘s]] death at the hands of Felix is downright cathartic, given what a sadistic, arrogant and greedy scumbag he was.

** Felix makes his start by killing Hernin Naranjo to get the attention of the DFS, which is an extremely risky move. He also tricks his DFS driver by saying he was once apprehended by El Alzul. The whole point is to get himself just close enough to make his sales pitch of seedless marijuana to El Alzul, and it works.

* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: All narcos, and some of the law enforcement officers, have it. Felix takes the crown during seasons 4 and 5. It would actually be harder to find somebody whose back he didn't plant a dagger into, than to remember the numerous characters he betrays. His ex-wife says as much when she gives him TheReasonYouSuckSpeech.

** Felix throws lavish parties for his godson's wedding and his own birthday, where he is gifted a tiger.

* DeathOfAThousandCuts: What gradually happens to Escobar's Medellin Cartel. Even the Cali Cartel was reluctant to cross the Medellin Cartel in the latter's heyday, as seen in a scene during the Mexico arc where the Cali Godfathers appear very reluctant to partner up with Felix if it meant crossing Escobar. But Escobar soon acquires a lot of enemies. The Search Bloc, splinter groups from his Cartel led by Judy Moncada and Berna, the Castano brothers, and then the Cali Cartel. The splinter groups and the Castano brothers together comprise Los Pepes, while the Bloc and Cali assist them from the background. And slowly but surely they start to whittle down Escobar's Sicarios. Each Sicario death, very often amounting to CruelAndUnusualDeath, doesn't look like a big loss in isolation. But it adds up over time, and what's left of Escobar's once mighty Cartel is floudering and struggling to hold on. The knockout blows, severing the connection to Miami, and routing what's left when Escobar tries to make a desperate move on Cali, only come after the Medellin Cartel has been sufficiently weakened over time in a process of attrition.

** PlayedWith with [[spoiler:Kiki Camarena]]. He initially begs Felix to let him go back to his family, but after realizing that Felix never has any intention of letting him go alive, he accepts his fate calmly and ominously tells Felix that retribution will come swiftly and that whatever dreams Felix have are over.

* DudeWheresMyRespect: Rafa's pride and joy is the creation of his seedless marijuana. Getting sidelined and left behind when Felix moves the Guadalajara cartel into cocaine leads him to StupidEvil behavior that exemplifies that EvilIsPetty.

** The Arellano Felix brothers are not pushovers by any stretch of the imagination. But it's shown that Enedina is the real shot caller in the Tijuana cartel.

* FeedTheMole: Trying to lure Felix into the United States to be able to arrest him, the DEA leverages his American accountant into (falsely) telling him that a recent cash shipment they intercepted also contained financial documents and he needs to come North of the border in order to move his accounts before they are frozen. To sell the deception the DEA agents offhandedly tell their Mexican law enforcement liaison about the supposed financial documents, knowing the information will filter its way back to Felix.

** The corrupt PRI politicians that profit off their protection of the Guadalajara Cartel but are quick to drop Felix the second they need NAFTA approved by the US Congress.

** Felix is the epitome of ChronicBackstabbingDisorder. It becomes a bit of LaserGuidedKarma when Guerra betrays him by making his own deal with Pacho and the Cali Cartel.

* ImpliedDeathThreat: Pacho lets Felix know that he isn't really bothered by Felix' betrayal of Matta, as Matta wasn't directly tied to the Cali Cartel. It becomes a [[ShameIfSomethingHappened warning]] not to screw over anyone the Cali Cartel values. He also lets on that the Cali Cartel will be fine with the deal so long as they make money, but then adds a "we'll see" if the deal doesn't work out.

** Notably averted in ''Mexico''; Rafa, Neto, and Felix all end up in what appears to be a very average prison. However, when Chapo joins him in prison in season 6, it's clear that Neto has more privileges than your typical prisoner.

** This is why Felix's coalition eventually falls apart. After he betrays Rafa and Don Neto, sanctions the killing of Cochiloco, has Palma's wife and children murdered, and makes multiple huge business decisions without consulting any of them, the plaza bosses have finally had enough and withdraw from the federation.

** In ''Mexico'' Felix has several, straining his relationship with his wife.

** In season 6, the plazas have become their independent Cartels, but Tijuana and Sinaloa start ''another'' war after previously agreeing to a truce immediately following Felix's downfall. The Arellanos start abusing their superior position to tax the poorer Sinaloans even more and refuse any resolution that would satisfy the latter. The resulting violence between the two groups eventually gathers national and international attention when they accidentally murder a beloved cardinal during a shoot-out, which deeply shocks the majorly Catholic country. Tijuana in particular suffers greatly from the ensuing government crackdown. This and the Cali Cartel deciding to call it quits creates an opening for their former allies to screw them over, so they declare war on ALL the other Mexican Cartels.

* MoreHateableMinorVillain: The series is full of psychopaths of all nature in the cartels, and several nefarious CIA types who are willing to deal with them or do anything to "win" the war on drugs. However the cartel are often very badass, and the main CIA badguy, Bill Stechner, is very machiavellian and cool-headed. When Bill makes a deal with Felix Gallardo, the main bad guy of the first two seasons of Narcos Mexico, he has the state department send in an obnoxious smug bureaucrat named Ted Kaye. Ted Kaye proceeds to act like an entitled ass to Walt Breslin, the main protagonist, telling him that he made a shit sandwich, and he's trying to put a little mustard on it. He later ends up giving Breslin an award, while forgetting that they met before. Ultimately the likes of Bill Stechner or the cartels have far more direct influence on the story than Kaye who only appears in two episodes of the entire series.

** Breslin and his team fall in with Calderoni's suggestion of tipping off the Tijuana Cartel to the tunnel built underneath their noses by the Sinaloa Cartel. They're well aware that it's going to mean more deaths, but decide it's worth it if it means the end of Felix' Federation. But it's clear from their facial expressions that they're wracked with guilt as they watch the execution of the Sinaloa tunnel workers from a rooftop.

* MyNewGiftIsLame: Felix is underwhelmed by Palma's and Chapo's gift of a tiger to him, and immediately thinks of donating it to a zoo.

** Guerra, the boss of the Gulf Cartel, lets on that he knows Felix' reputation for ChronicBackstabbingDisorder proceeds him. He decides he wants no part of Felix' grand plan for a Mexico-wide federation, and makes his own deal with Pacho and the Cali Cartel.

** In Season 1 of ''Mexico'', Isabella Bautista afer Felix's downfall begins.

** The DEA higher-ups fully intended to bury Breslin in a desk job in Sacramento for the rest of his career after he lost most of his team to the [[LuredIntoATrap trap set for him by Amado]]. Averted when he's allowed back into action at El Paso. The DEA decides they need a hero for good publicity following the arrest of Felix.

** In ''Narcos: Mexico'', El Azul and the PRI politicians in league with Felix organize the kidnapping of Kiki Camarena, coordinated with Rafa and using Rafa's men. Felix points out that they only worked with Rafa so they could pin the blame on him when things inevitably went bad (ironically, it is Felix himself who later gives up Rafa to protect himself).
** After Kiki's death, the Federal Police massacre the family of an opposition politician and dump the body near a ranch of their property to tie them to Felix.

** Ramon is this in the Arellano-Felix organization; at one point he strings up a bunch of dead fish and uses them for target practice in a public park. It's implied this isn't the first time he's done it. He also brutally beats a night club patron for accidentally spilling a drink on his shoes.

** Miguel Ángel Felix Gallardo betrays his boss, El León de Sinaloa, to establish his vision of the Federation.

** Felix over the course of season 4. He starts out as a loving husband and father and loyal friend with a vision to bring Mexico's drug traffickers together to make more money with less violence. By the end of the season he has left his wife (after callously telling her that he has outgrown her and no longer needs her), betrayed his best friend to save himself, and rules his cartel through threats and fear. And in season 5 it gets even ''worse''. [[spoiler:By the end he's despised and hated by absolutely everyone, leading the Plazas to remove him from power.]]

** Likewise, Season 5 ends with Felix getting arrested, but he omnimously warns [[spoiler:Breslin]] that without him in control, the Mexican cartels that were once united under Felix's banner will slowly grew apart and inevitably come into conflict with each other, kickstarting the Mexican Drug War that is still ongoing even to the present day.

** Javier Pena and Feistl head off any and every contigency as they plan and execute the arrest of Gilberto Rodriguez. They guess correctly that Calderoni is a CorruptCop, so they pretend to be misinformed and accompany Calderoni on a search of an empty residence. That proves to be a diversion, as Hugo Martinez arrives by a chicken delivery truck to the residence where Feistl had spotted Gilberto and begins the real search. They bring Calderoni over afterwards, and his nervous reaction reveals to Hugo that Gilberto is indeed hiding in the residence where the real search was taking place. They leave no stone unturned, and find Gilberto hiding under a Jacuzzi tub. They lead him away in the chicken delivery truck. It seems like Calderoni is about to become the SpannerInTheWorks when he hotwires a police car, and tries to get the rest of the local police to halt the arrest in its tracks before Gilberto can be flown to Bogota. But Pena and Feistl thought of that too. The truck carrying Gilberto hooks up with a second identical chicken delivery truck. Feistl leads the pursuing corrupt cops on a wild goose chase, buying time for the truck carrying Gilberto to make it to the airfield.

** Escobar has Limón provide his location to Maritza, who in turn provides it to Pena, who in turn provides it to Carillo. Carillo takes the bait hook line and sinker. Escobar springs the trap with heavy trucks both behind and in front of Carillo's convoy. Carillo and his men become fish in a barrel for Escobar's sicarios.

** Javier Pena finds himself on the receiving end of more than one. One comes from Hugo Martinez:
-->'''Pena:''' Not a lot of police work these days.\\

* SpottingTheThread: Pena listens in on a wiretapped conversation between Franklin Jurado, the money launderer for the Cali Cartel, and his wife. Jurado is careful to avoid saying that is indirectly incriminating. But then he says "Dasha Masha Danki" to room service. Pena figures out that the words come from a language known as Papiamento, which is used in several Carribean Islands. And one of those islands, Curacao, has several banks with less red tape which makes it the perfect laundering site for drug cartels. Pena thereby deduces that Jurado is in Curacao, and immediately siezes the opportunity to track him down and place him in custody.

* ThisIsUnforgivable: The mission to find Gacha initially has Carillo wanting to kill Gacha, and Pena wanting to take him in alive for information. Pena ends up changing his mind after seeing the dead body of the maid who was murdered by Gacha's son, Freddy. Pena's chopper zeroes in on Gacha's truck, and Freddy is killed by machine gun fire. Carillo leaves Gacha's fate in Pena's hands. And Pena coldly issues an order to the machine gunner, "Give him lead!"

* BaitTheDog: Jhon (Limon's) whole story in Season 2. He seems like a good person who is in over his head at first. You'd expect the HeelFaceTurn to come in at some point, right? [[spoiler: Nope. Instead, he uses his friend by pretending to want out, in order to setup the Policia, which gets Carillo and many of his men killed by Escobar. He ultimately kills his friend, when she threatened to turn him in for ruining her life, and because she spent most of the money Pablo gave to her, which he wanted back. And he is the only man to fight and die with Escobar at the end of the Season 2 Finale.]]

** Escobar pulls one off. It's based on having Lhimon generate a HopeSpot for Maritza, that she can secure passage to America, and setting the bait for Carillo. Escobar correctly guesses that Carillo can't resist the chance to bring him down once and for all, and Carillo takes the bait hook line and sinker.

* DramaticIrony: [[spoiler:Jhon aka Limon was the one to save Maritza from being killed by La Quica, but later on he ends up killing her in front of her daughter.]]

** Escobar has Lhimon provide his location to Maritza, who in turn provides it to Pena, who in turn provides it to Carillo. Carillo takes the bait hook line and sinker. Escobar springs the trap with heavy trucks both behind and in front of Carillo's convoy. Carillo and his men become fish in a barrel for Escobar's sicarios.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: When [[spoiler: Limon shoots Maritza]], he leaves her daughter there. No mention is made of her fate.

Features Wagner Moura as the famous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and Creator/BoydHolbrook and Creator/PedroPascal as the DEA agents on his trail. Season four moves the story to the Mexican drug trade, with Creator/DiegoLuna as Félix, and Creator/MichaelPena as DEA agent Kiki Camarena. The series also has as its executive producer (and director of the first two episodes) Jose Padilha.

** The Arellano-Felix clan is reduced to Enedina and her brothers Benjamin and Ramón. She had four other brothers who were all heavily involved in the Tijuana Cartel.

** The Gentlemen of Cali, who are described as "the biggest drug lords you've probably never heard of." They spend vast amounts on lawyers an political influence to maintain their legitimate image and are careful to conceal any acts of violence.

** Despite being a far-right paramilitary organization ,Los Pepes gets a lot of support because of how they go after Escobar.

** Amado Carrillo Fuentes builds the Juarez Cartel into the most powerful cartel in Mexico but is smart enough to realize that his time at the top is limited. With the downfall of his Cali Cartel partners and a nearly-successful attempt on his life, he decides that it is time to cash out and disappear. He has his accountant move millions to secret accounts and plans to retire to Chile. [[spoiler: This costs him his government protection and he has to scramble to find a way to get out Mexico. He tries to disguise himself through plastic surgery and apparently dies on the operating table, though TheStinger heavily implies that he might actually be FakingTheDead.]]

** In''Narcos: Mexico'', El Azul and the PRI politicians in league with Felix organize the kidnapping of Kiki Camarena, coordinated with Rafa and using Rafa's men. Felix points out that they only worked with Rafa so they could pin the blame on him when things inevitably went bad (ironically, it is Felix himself who later gives up Rafa to protect himself).

* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: In ''Narco's Mexico'' Season 3, Victor Tapia is a corrupt police officier who decides to do the right thing for once when he is asked by a local woman he knows to find her missing teenage daughter. His search soon makes him realize a serial killer is raping and killing girls in the community. [[spoiler: He eventually finds the teen girl as another victim and becomes personally determind to find and kill the guy. By the end of the Season, he succeeds in finding and killing the guy, only for him to find out shortly afterward, that he wasn't the only killer operating in the area. He is then murdered by his equally corrupt partner, because he found out Tapia talked with an DEA Agent, even though Tapia did so to get help in tracking the serial killer with a DNA test, not to snitch on their corrupt criminal actions.]]

** Breslin and his team fall in with Calderoni's suggestion of tipping off the Tijuana Cartel to the tunnel built underneath their noses by the Sinoloa Carter. They're well aware that it's going to mean more deaths, but decide it's worth it if it means the end of Felix' Federation. But it's clear from their facial expressions that they're wracked with guilt as they watch the execution of the Sinaloa tunnel workers from a rooftop.

** Blackie [[[EvenEvilHasStandards is visibly disturbed]] when he sees the destruction caused by the bomb he planted in Bogota. It's heavily implied this is what causes him to effectively turn himself in.

** [[spoiler:Fernando Botero Salcedo, the Minister of Defense for Ernesto Samper]], is a collaborator the Cali Cartel while also being one of the leaders of the government's efforts to fight the cartels.

* KarmaHoudini: Despite being deeply involved financially with the narco cartels, and also dabbling in money laundering, corruption, and criminal threats, [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Carlos Hank González]] never faced any legal persecution or sactions for any of these things. With [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney the money vested in his business empire]] and [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections his political connections]], Hank had plently of threads to pull when it came to effectively shutting down or redirecting any investigation that touched upon his shadier activities. Even when the US National Drug Intelligence Center launched a larger investigation into his business, the so-called "Operation White Tiger", in 1997 and chaught him and his sons death to rights on tape dicussing the coordination of drug shipments, Hank leveraged his network that reached as far the US Senate to get the United States Attorney General at the time, Janet Reno, to make an official statement contradicting the results of the NDIC investigation and send him a personal letter of apology. Hank eventually died from cancer in 2001, at the age of 74, surrounded by his family and without never having been made to answer for his substantial part in the creating the chaos and violence that would continue to haunt large parts of Mexico in the decades afterwards.

** In Season 3 when one of the Cali Cartel leaders, Jose, who operates out of New York makes a phone call in a diner, he noticed someone might be listen in. After the call he confronts the man speaking Spanish, but the man claims he doesn't understand. Thinking he is being paranoid, he leaves the man alone. [[spoiler: Episodes later, after the meth lab he controls blows up by accident,the same man is the main reporter on television speaking Spanish and revealing that its the Cali Cartel who controlled the lab, not the Dominicans who he took it from. He confronts the reporter and offers him a bribe. After the reporter refused, he kills him an goes back to Cali.]]

** The end of Officer Tapia's story in ''Narco's Mexico'' Season 3. [[spoiler: While he is able to find and kill a guy who was kidnapping, raping, and murdering young women in his community, he soon finds out that the guy wasn't the only serial killer operating in the area, and he is threaten to drop the issue by his superiors. He is then killed by his partner shortly afterwards because he beleived Tapia was a snitch for the DEA. The ending narration points out that the kidnapping and murdering of young women was never solved and still happens today.]]

* DirtyCoward: [[spoiler:La Quica is notable for the sadistic pleasure he takes from his work as the Medellín Cartel's main assassin after the death of Poison, having absolutely no qualms in liquidating defenseless civilians and killing police officers in ambushes, but when Escobar asks for his participation in StormingTheCastle of the Cali Cartel, something that is very probably a SuicideMission, he gets notably deadly afraid, and ultimately deciding that he doesn't like the odds, he ends up betraying the Medellín Cartel by [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere trying to run away with a chunk of the cartel's money]], but gets arrested by the Search Bloc during this attempt. He also cracks very easily during Murphy and Peña's interrogation of him, quickly dropping his half-hearted attempts at acting tough and agreeing give them all the information they want in exchange for a more lenient punishment, where pretty much all of Escobar's other men put up much more of a fight.]]