History Series / SonsOfAnarchy

* BungledSuicide: [[spoiler: Juice tries several times to hang himself. When he does manage to jump off, the branch snaps. Walking through a fully-active minefield could be considered a suicide attempt as well]].

** Tara makes copies of John Teller's letters.

* TheCartel: In between seasons 3 and 4, Clay makes a deal with the Gallindo Cartel, ostensibly to sell them military-grade weaponry from their Northern Irish contacts, but a secret part of the agreement means that SAMCRO will transport their cocaine into northern California while the Mayans will distribute it. This causes an internal club conflict since the Sons have traditionally been hard on drugs, but Jax chooses to support Clay for his own reasons [[namely, leaving the club entirely and taking his family away]]. They also get involved in a major gang war when the rival Sonora Cartel shows up in the area. Additionally, the end of the season reveals that [[spoiler:the Gallindo Cartel has been infiltrated and "subsidized" (read: taken over) by the CIA to stabilize the drug trade]].

* CantStopTheSignal: Tara makes copies of John Teller's letters.

* DisneyVillainDeath: Clay executes [[spoiler: McGee for betraying the Sons to Jimmy O]] by shoving him off a roof.

* AncestorVeneration: A big part of the club's culture revolves around remembering John Teller, the founding member of the club and Jax's father, to the point that his rebuilt bike occupies a prominent area in the hallway that resembles a biker shriner for all intents and purposes. Jax in the pilot episode grabs the throttle when walking past in a thoughtful way as if connecting with JT.

* DisneyVillainDeath: Clay executes a traitorous IRA biker by shoving him off a roof.

** The earlier episodes followed the cliched formula of SAMCRO running around, solving problems and pissing off Hale with the way that they are always five steps ahead of the local cops due Unser being in bed with them. It would not be until closer to the end of the first season that a real continuing storyline would take hold.

* ElvisImpersonator: Bobby Munson is an Elvis Impersonator in addition to being a Badass outlaw biker with a sizable body count. When another impersonator tries to steal his gig, he has the guy savagely beaten.

* AffablyEvil: In earlier seasons, Jax was this, until he became President, and forgets himself.

-->''''"I'm an okay mechanic with a GED. The only thing I do well is outlaw."''''

* TattooedCrook: An EnforcedTrope. All of the Sons have various club tattoos, along with various other ones unique to their character. [[https://64.media.tumblr.com/ce7a1cc76cd6c7339e9ceae57bec5c56/401b44104a9433cc-2c/s400x600/f9f21e534eb696f34aa091b935b410cab885348b.gifv Jax]] and [[https://25.media.tumblr.com/a043299fa3962ff446fd617d64dfe7a4/tumblr_mi9agcSrWn1qaf3g8o1_500.gif Opie]] both sport the club colors(the Reaper with M16 and Anarchy-crystal ball along with the club name and state) on their back. Juice has the Reaper on his left forearm and gets 2 [[https://64.media.tumblr.com/550ee26dc6f99328888d9933ec59209c/tumblr_oxipd8HU6O1s1y1feo2_400.gifv Sons-themed skulls]] on his chest at some point between Seasons 5 and 6. Clay has the Reaper on his right bicep as well as [[https://i.redd.it/0rixmgyg7ahx.png a more old school Reaper]] on the left side of his back. Tig also has the Reaper on his right bicep, likely in reverence to his sponsor and mentor. If you leave the club, the tattoo also has to come off. When Kyle Hobart, an excommunicated member of the MC who got Opie caught on a job, comes back to Charming and accidentally reveals his uncovered tattoo (the same as Opie and Jax), SAMCRO [[spoiler: burns it off.]] In Season 5, Clay [[spoiler:has his blacked out when he is voted out of the club.]]

* ObfuscatingDisability: In Season 5, Clay suffers multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and arm that damages his lungs and gets him put on an oxygen tank. Midway through the season, it is revealed that he has completely healed and in perfect health, but he continues to wear the tank and pretend to be weak and frail. Forshadowed a few episodes earlier where he is shown attempting to keep his bike upright for a 2nd time. He is perfectly able, yet when Juice and Bobby enter, he pretends to struggle and lets it fall.

** [[spoiler: In Season 4, Clay attempts to hire an outside agent of the Cartel through Romeo and Luis to kill Tara because of her knowledge of JT's letters to Maureen. Unbeknownst to Clay, all 3 men are CIA agents.]]

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: If the League of American Nationalists had just waited for SAMCRO to implode, Clay and Jax would have fallen out irreversibly and Jax would have gone Nomad, leaving for good. Instead, they rape Gemma - the worst possible target they could have picked, being Clay's wife and Jax's mother - and united the Redwood chapter in special hatred of the League, whom they prompty deal with after that. And it gets Ethan's daughter Polly killed into the bargain, where normally the sons would have left her alone as they left other family members of rivals alone.

* ObfuscatingDisability: In Season 5, Clay suffers a gunshot wound to the chest that damages his lungs and gets him put on an oxygen tank. Midway through the season, it is revealed that he has completely healed and in perfect health, but he continues to wear the tank and pretend to be weak and frail. Forshadowed a few episodes earlier where he is shown attempting to keep his bike upright for a 2nd time. He is perfectly able, yet when Juice and Bobby enter, he pretends to struggle and lets it fall.

* PoliceAreUseless: The Sons have the local police chief and county sheriff deputies on their payroll so they see little interference from them in their criminal activities. The ATF agents who go after them have their own private agendas and grudges and the Sons are able to use this against them to neutralize them. Season 4 averts this with new, more competent police moving in and providing an escalated threat.

* ProfessionalKiller: Happy's primary function for the club is killing, but assassination missions are given to a number of club members. Clay also hires one from outside the club.

** In season 1, Opie's wife Donna is murdered after dirty ATF Agent Stahl makes it look like Opie is informing on the club. She does this despite multiple local law enforcement officers warning her that she is putting Opie's life in extreme danger. Donna is killed in a case of mistaken identity because she was driving Opie's truck late at night.
** The club is able to turn this threat around on Stahl in season 3 when she uses the threat of imprisoning Jax's mother on charges of murder she didn't commit if Jax doesn't inform. He feeds Stahl the information she wants in order to make sweetheart deals for all the club members who are facing time, but has long since told the club what he's doing. Despite believing that revealing Jax's status as an informant will guarantee his death, she does it anyway just to be petty. However, her actions provide an alibi for the remaining club members who are supposedly out of town in hiding but actually double back and murder her.

** A rather odd inversion in season 5: When the Sons try to infiltrate a Neo-Nazi group, they're asked about their motivation. Tig says, without flinching, "I watched a bunch of Niggers burn [[spoiler: my daughter]] alive", an answer that satisfies the group. The inversion is that the confession isn't supposed to be dismissed as outlandish (quite the contrary), but that it isn't a motivation for Tig to join the group.

** SAMCRO has a similar history to the The Hells Angels MC. Both founded by veterans (WWII instead of Vietnam in this case) in California, and originally had more counterculture leanings before becoming a straight up organized crime syndicate. The Hells Angels also have a vicious rivalry with the Mongols MC (founded by Hispanic Vietnam War veterans), similar to the feud between SAMCRO and the Mayans. Sonny Barger even has a recurring role as an old SAMCRO member.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: If the League of American Nationalists had just waited for the Sons in Redwood to implode, Clay and Jax would have fallen out irreversibly and Jax would have gone nomad, leaving for good. Instead, they rape Gemma - the worst possible target they could have picked, being Clay's wife and Jax's mother - and united the Redwood chapter in special hatred of the League, whom they prompty deal with after that. And it gets Ethan's daughter Polly killed into the bargain, where normally the sons would have left her alone as they left other family members of rivals alone.

**

** Hilariously, in a deleted scene, Bobby scolds Half-Sack for beating up his competition as it will probably cost him any future gigs at the location in question due to fear of reprisal and suggests Half-Sack's action may lead to him losing any chance of joining SAMCRO. This was cut, probably for not adding anything of real value to the storyline.

** [[spoiler:When Chibs tells Jax and Bobby about the reason for Juice's betrayal, they both roll their eyes [[note]] Bobby scoffs YouHaveGOTToBeKiddingMe word-for-word [[/note]] and laments never having changed the rule against black members. In the final season, SAMCRO does start patching in black members, but they acknowledge that the other charters will object]].

* ''Series/MayansMC'' (2018-): A series based on the Mayans that premiered on September 4, 2018 on FX, 10 years after the airing of the Sons of Anarchy pilot.

''Sons of Anarchy'' is a television drama series from the Creator/{{FX network|s}}; it was created by former ''Series/TheShield'' writer Creator/KurtSutter. The series, which can be described as "''{{Theatre/Hamlet}}'' [[JustForFun/XMeetsY meets]] the [[AllBikersAreHellsAngels Hells Angels]]", focuses on the criminal exploits of the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle club in the northern California town of Charming.

* RatedMForManly: Yup, definitely.

* ManOnFire: One of Jimmy O'Phelan's lieutenants suffers this fate in "Firenne."

* CorruptingPornography: Explored. SAMCRO gets involved in the porn business when Jax takes over the Cara Cara studio, seeing it as a fast way to make legitimate money. Clay finds it personally offensive (pretty hypocritical, since he wants to expand their profits by trafficking drugs), especially when the Sons start hanging out at the studio most of the time. The studio also introduces the club to various unsavory characters, including a porn producer who murders the previous owner Luann; Ima Tite, a high strung porn star who causes repeated problems for the studio; and a group of underground torture porn specialists. On the more positive side, the actual productions are usually seen as just everyone having fun and enjoying themselves.

Like ''The Shield'', ''Sons'' has a rich supporting cast of characters balancing out the ''Hamlet''-esque drama; other bikers include [[GeniusBruiser Bobby Munson]] (a bookmaker/Elvis impersonator by day and a biker by night), [[TheBrute Tig Trager]] (Clay's right-hand man and chief enforcer who has some bizarre sexual habits), [[TheLancer Opie Winston]] (Jax's best friend, whose interests are also split between the club and his family), Opie's father [[CoolOldGuy Piney]] (who founded the club along with John Teller), [[TheCracker Juice Ortiz]] (a Hispanic computer geek from Queens), [[GlasgowSmile Chibs Telford]] (a Scottish former Army medic and one-time member of the IRA), and [[AxCrazy Happy Lowman]] (a ruthless triggerman for the club).

* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Almost none of the Irish characters in the IRA storyline were played by actual Irishmen. Their various fake accents range from "almost tolerable" to "Where'd he get that accent from? A Lucky Charms commercial?" The worst is probably Titus Welliver as Jimmy O'Phelan.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: If the League of American Nationalists had just waited for the Sons in Redwood to implode, Clay and Jax would have falled out irreversibly and Jax would have gone nomad and left for good. Instead, they rape Gemma - the worst possible target they could have picked, being Clay's wife and Jax's mother - and united the Redwood chapter in special hatred of the League, whom they prompty deal with after that. And it gets Ethan's daughter Polly killed into the bargain, where normally the sons would have left her alone as they left other family members of rivals alone.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Vic Trammel, a Deputy Sheriff on the Sons' payroll, suddenly stops appearing after season 2 with no explanation.

* AngryBlackMan: Lampshaded by Tig and Clay when they plan to frame the One-Niners.
-->'''Tig''': Blame it on the angry black man.
-->'''Clay''': It's the American Way.

On the civilian side, there is [[TheMedic Tara Knowles]] (a doctor who was Jax's childhood sweetheart, who serves as the chief threat to Gemma's control over her son), corrupt Police Chief [[CorruptCop Wayne Unser]], the straight-as-an-arrow deputy (and potential successor) [[ByTheBookCop David Hale]], his brother [[CorruptHick Jacob Hale]], a prominent member of the community who has his eye on profiting from the town, and a number of law enforcement agents as the show progresses.

* ContrivedCoincidence: In season seven, Jax is able to manipulate the outcome of a land deal August Marks is heavily invested in because he just happened to have killed Marks' partner in a case of mistaken identity.