History Series / TheBoys2019

** This is [[spoiler:Victoria Neuman's]] superpower, allowing her to do this to anyone in her line of sight. It's not limited to the victim's head - the first episode of season 3 shows that she can do this to any part of a person's body, even the ''entire body itself'' - but she seems to prefer the head, presumably as it kills the victim instantly.

* ViralMarketing: The show is extremely good at this, releasing a whole host of (frequently hilarious) Vought content in the lead-up to each season and continuing throughout, including commercials, news segments, and music videos.

** [[Recap/TheBoysS01E08YouFoundMe You Found Me]]. [[spoiler: Homelander was organizing the entire super-terrorist scheme behind Madelyn's back, using A-Train as a courier to run the Compound V to various terrorist groups. Starlight has a [[CoolVersusAwesome face-off with A-Train]], while allying herself with the Boys by rescuing them. However A-Train knows what she did and is still alive to tell the rest of the Seven. By the end of the episode, Homelander murders Madelyn Stillwell to become TheUnfettered, while Billy Butcher finds that his wife has been alive the entire time, and is raising Homelander's son]].
** [[Recap/TheBoysS0207ButcherBakerCandlestickMaker Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker]]. [[spoiler:Starlight is outed as a mole and traitor to The Seven, and Lamplighter dies during the mission to rescue her. Homelander and Stormfront successfully convince Ryan to leave Becca, and Billy blackmails Jonah Vogelbaum into testifying against Vought. The Congressional hearing begins and Jonah Vogelbaum shows up to testify, then people's heads start exploding like Raynor's did.]]

* YellowPurpleContrast: In Season 2, Starlight and Stormfront are both female rookie members of The Seven. While Starlight has yellow accents on her costume and has powers based on yellow light, Stormfront has a purple-and-black suit and can project purple lightning. While they get along at first, their aspirations are completely at odds; Starlight genuinely wants to do good, while Stormfront is a Nazi whose atrocities go all the way back to [[spoiler: the Third Reich itself]].

* "VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfareIII": A-Train and Firecracker appear as playable Multiplayer and Warzone operators.

''The Boys'' is a television series airing on Creator/PrimeVideo and helmed by Creator/EricKripke of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' fame, based on Creator/GarthEnnis and Darick Robertson's [[ComicBook/TheBoys comic book of the same name]]. It premiered on July 26, 2019 and has run for three seasons. A week after Season 3's premiere in June 2022, it was renewed for a fourth season, which is expected to release on June 13, 2024.

** In February 2024, official Vought social medias released a new product - Homelander boots, with price od 777$ to raise funds for [[spoiler:his trial of murder.]] Not so long before that UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump did exactly the same thing for the same reasons.

* StudioEpisode: A subplot across the second season is the TroubledProduction of Dawn Of The Seven, a film meant to rehabilitate the Seven's image after a series of scandals in Season 1... but between having trouble casting the deceased Translucent, the dueling egos of Homelander and Stormfront, a rewrite by Creator/JossWhedon which does nothing to help the female characters, and [[spoiler:Stormfront being a ''literal Nazi'']] it was clear that the film was never going to do well.

* SynchronizedMorningRoutine: In [[Recap/TheBoysS0201TheBigRide "The Big Ride"]] there's a ContrastMontage between celebrity superhero Starlight in her luxury apartment versus her boyfriend Hughie Campbell, now a fugitive, doing his MorningRoutine in the subbasement cleaning closet of a gangbanger hideout.

** During filming of ''Dawn fo the Seven'', Homelander says that he likes the rewrites by [[Creator/JossWhedon Whedon]], who at the time was starting to become infamous for his portrayal of female characters and treatment of women on sets. It's also a dig at ''Film/JusticeLeague2017'', which Whedon was brought on to help rewrite and reidrect after Creator/ZackSnyder experienced a personal tragedy.

** In Season 2, a film writer proposes his idea for a Hans-Zimmer-scored blockbuster about the origins of the Seven, entitled ''Dawn of the Seven.'' Stormfront's feedback is that all the women are written to be "unknowable [[Creator/AlfredHitchcock Hitchcock]] bitches or Creator/MichaelBay fuckdolls" and blames it on the writer's "lifetime of jerking off to ''Film/{{Transformers}}''."

* ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfareII'': Starlight, Homelander and Black Noir appears as playable Multiplayer and Warzone operators as part of Season Four Reloaded DLC.

* LighterAndSofter: While the show features graphic violence and sexual depravity, it doesn't go anywhere ''near'' as extreme as the source material. This is exemplified by Starlight's CastingCouch experience. In the comics, she is coerced to perform oral sex on Homelander, Black Noir, and A-Train, while Queen Maeve's response in the aftermath is callously dismissive. Starlight has to keep quiet about the experience lest she is booted from the team. In the show, only The Deep coerces her, and Maeve actually gives her some bluntly honest advice. After Starlight makes veiled but public comments about her experience, Vought bows to public pressure and has The Deep ReassignedToAntarctica.

** Chelsea the suicide jumper, who Homelander was supposed to save, practically explodes upon hitting the pavement.

* MinorCrimeRevealsMajorPlot: A-Train liquefying Robin leads to the Boys discovering [[spoiler:Homelander's plot to seed Compound V all over the world, creating an endless number of supervillains for Vought's heroes to fight, and forcing the government to accept superheroes in the military since no one else is equipped to deal with them]].

** In Season two finale, [[spoiler:Rebecca shoves a knife on Stormfront's eye]].

** When Maeve asks The Deep to find the black box from Flight 37 to blackmail Homelander with, he fails to find it and instead brings her a Go Pro Camera a school of Halibut found. It's difficult to believe that not only did the Go Pro survived months of floating around in the ocean, but that it was found when the black box is still unaccounted for [[note]]For those who don't know, a black box is two devices that record flight data and the last 2 hours of nosie in the cockpit. They also are in cased in titanium and emit a locator beacon in case of submersion. Given that they spoke in the cockpit, it would prove that Homelander and Maeve were on the plane when they said they weren't[[/note]].

** The downside of having sex with a superhero? Many have a tendency for losing control of their powers near or during the climax. Depending on the power, this can have bad consequences for their sexual partner.

** In the show, the Boys (bar Kimiko) are regular humans [[spoiler:except in Season 3, where Butcher and Hughie go on Temp V)]], whereas they all are super powered in the comic. Naturally, writing a show where the Boys are just as strong and durable as their enemies would be a challenge, not to mention that every fight scene having super powers thrown in the mix would be ''extremely'' expensive to do well.

** Soldier Boy's character is drastically reworked. Both because the comic version isn't one person, but three, and because the comic version of Soldier Boy is a one-note walking gay joke and basically just exists so abuse can happen to him, which would neither fly these days, or make for a particularly interesting season-long arc.

** Lamplighter is mentioned numerous times over the first season. Most notably, he's the superhero who Starlight is replacing on the Seven. While we see a few depictions of him, he never actually shows up in person, and it's never made clear why he left. [[spoiler:At one point the Boys vaguely mention a op involving him that left Mallory's grandchildren dead. "The Bloody Doors Off" reveals that, he was ReassignedToAntarctica and now used as an orderly that incinerates unstable Compound V test subjects.]]

** When you are also backed by a multi-billion corporation and its marketing ''and'' legal departments, it is very easy to make people remain silent with their complaints or by outright forcing them to never mention anything by signing an agreement outside of court. Those few that insist on still making a fuss over the damage, destruction, or manslaughter get simply buried under litigation Vought can easily afford for years. Butcher does a small bit of investigating of concurrent crimes at the time of Robin's death proves internally it was false (and help recruit Hughie to his mission) but the uphill legal battle would still be brutal, thus much of the first season revolves around getting proof that A-Train is actually an addict and under the influence at the time of Robins death.
** In the past Butcher and his team were semi-sponsored by the CIA, but after several bad incidents (an attempt at blackmailing Lamplighter to give them a link inside the Seven lead to him killing [[TheHandler Mallory's]] grandchildren) they were forced to be more of a freelance team and have a difficult time keeping together at the start of the series. Butcher still has numerous contacts because of that past association, though many bridges were also burned. The Boys do end up guilty of or accomplices in numerous murders, robberies, blackmail and trespassing, which forces them to go deep underground once Vought becomes more aware of their existence. They do rebuild their relationships as they uncover legitimate evidence, [[spoiler: leading to all charges against them being dropped at the end of the second season, with talk of them heading an official counter-supe team for the CIA]].

** Black Noir's attribute of being the only one strong enough to [[spoiler: kill Homelander]] are instead given to Soldier Boy. But unlike comic-Noir, Soldier Boy goal to [[spoiler: kill Homelander]] out of a deal with The Boys, instead of it being his sole reason for being.

** Homelander [[spoiler: forces Stan Edgar out of the company and]] takes over management of Vought International, ''the entire corporation''. He does it purely for being in charge and not having anyone looming over him. But since he's a a FlyingBrick with potentially no formal education whatsoever, not to mention business one (or even basic acumen), the very first board meeting goes completely sideways, for he has no idea what the other board members are even ''asking for''[[note]]And they are not asking tough questions, either[[/note]]. The only thing he can come up with is [[AppealToForce scaring them into compliance]], but it is made crystal clear he has no idea how to run the whole thing even on the most basic level and didn't even anticipate such situation.

** Billy gains a blackmail material on Popclaw after she [[spoiler: accidently kills a man while having sex with him]].

* ClusterFBomb: Everyone here swears like they've got a big quota to meet. Even the seven year old kid gets in on the action.

** Hughie is mentally a child as he's still treated like one, holds onto his childhood with both hands, and is shown to be living a stagnant lifestyle while with his girlfriend, Robin, who had to ask him out on a first date because he never took the initiative to do so. After Robin is killed, Hughie's mundane life is pulled from under his feet and he tumbles down to adulthood when he experiences injustice for the first time when A-Train doesn't get any punishment for Robin's death and Hughie realizes that his own father can't provide the closure he's looking for. When Hughie kills Translucent, it signifies the [[BreakTheCutie loss of his innocence]] but it doesn't make him feel like an adult, as it instead leaves him with severe [=PTSD=] that only gets worse in season 2. His relationship with Annie has him slowly growing more mature as he starts taking the initiative and shedding his naivete while still maintaining his optimistic determination.
** Before her initiation into The Seven, Annie was sexually naive and idealistic about justice. After being forced to perform oral sex on The Deep, Annie tumbles into adulthood after learning the inherent depravity of supes, the blatant hypocrisy and injustice brought in by Vought International, and the story has shaken her faith in a higher power. As she's forced to stay quiet about the assault, portray herself as virginal, and hold herself to an unrealistic standard. Starlight makes her first adult decision by breaking-character during a seminar to reveal how she was sexually assaulted by The Deep. Like Hughie, Starlight's loss of innocence doesn't harden her in the way it was intended to, as it makes her ruthless, violent, and manipulative.

** A scene of Soldier Boy's in universe film ''Red Thunder'' was released on social media with a parody of the kind attached to various Disney and Warner Bros. properties.

* ContrivedCoincidence: In Season 3, The Boys learn that the Russians killed Soldier Boy during the Cold War using some sort of anti-supe weapon, and they investigate it as a possible lead to kill Homelander despite the low odds of success. [[spoiler:They don't find the weapon, but instead they unexpectedly find Soldier Boy who somehow now has an anti-supe power, so the plot continues]]. Made even more contrived by the fact that later in the season the viewer learns [[spoiler:there never was an anti-supe weapon at all: Soldier Boy was originally defeated with nerve gas during a betrayal by his team]].

* BothSidesHaveAPoint: In season 3, the Boys' internal conflict regarding Soldier Boy. MM and Starlight want him taken out, while Butcher and Hughie team up with him against Homelander. On the one hand, Soldier Boy is extremely unstable and leaves corpses in his wake whenever his powers get out of control, and MM has as legitmiate a grievance against him as Butcher has against Homelander or Hughie against A-Train. On the other hand, Soldier Boy is their best chance against Homelander, who is far worse and an active threat against Ryan's safety.

''The Boys'' is a television series airing on Creator/PrimeVideo and helmed by Creator/EricKripke of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' fame, based on Creator/GarthEnnis and Darick Robertson's [[ComicBook/TheBoys comic book of the same name]]. It premiered on July 26, 2019 and has run for three seasons. A week after Season 3's premiere in June 2022, it was renewed for a fourth season, which is expected to release sometime in 2024.

** [[spoiler:Butcher's motivation too. He hates Homelander with a fiery passion.]]
* OrangeBlueContrast: A-Train wears blue, his rival Shockwave wears orange. At their race in Episode 3, the stadium and fans present are evenly divided between the two colors.