History Theatre / OedipusTheKing

* ATragedyOfImpulsiveness: Prior to becoming a king in Thebes, the eponymous character kills (unbeknownst to him) his father for basically cutting him off at the crossroads (and being a complete {{Jerkass}} about it). He marries his mother, completing the other half of the famous complex, at leisure though.

* AtTheCrossroads: Oedipus has an encounter at a crossroads that ends violently.

* AntiHero: Oedipus comes across as one nowadays, though he might not have at the [[ValuesDissonance time of the play's writing]]. It's hard to tell, since one rule of Greek tragedy was that the hero must always have {{pride}} as a FatalFlaw, which the Greeks considered the worst sin possible. His behavior is normal for a king, though.

** Jocasta also has one, namely, doubting the Oracle. She doesn't technically accuse the gods of lacking prophecy, but merely the oracles of lying about the gods' will, but [[ValuesDissonance even that is too much for the ancient Greeks]]. She might have survived the play had she not goaded Oedipus into disrespecting fate; once she puts two and two together she ''immediately'' tries to make him stop for his own good, then runs off and kills herself.

->''There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex\\
You may have heard about his odd complex.\\
His name appears in Freud's index\\
'Cause he... ''loved'' his mother...''
-->-- "Oedipus Rex", ''Music/AnEveningWastedWithTomLehrer''

* ContrivedCoincidence: The sole survivor of Laius's entourage just so happens to have been the shepherd who saved Oedipus from death as a baby. Had this not been so, Oedipus would never have learned the truth. {{Justified}} since the shepherd is an agent of [[YouCantFightFate Fate]].

* OedipusComplex: TropeNamer: Freud named his (in)famous complex after him because his murder of his father and marriage to his mother were both outside his conscious awareness. However, the play isn't actually an example of this, as Oedipus wasn't around his parents for more than a day or two as a child, and thus had no way of knowing that Jocasta was his mother. Interestingly, Jocasta at one point comments that it's not especially unusual for people to have dreams of sleeping with their mothers, meaning the trope itself is OlderThanTheyThink.

''Oedipus Rex'' redirects here. If you're looking for the character archetype that this play named, it's OedipusComplex. If you're looking for "Jocasta Complex" or "Laius Complex", we just call that ParentalIncest and OffingTheOffspring here, plain and simple.

* RiddlingSphinx: The myth of Oedpius is the TropeMaker. The play itself takes place many years after Oedipus solved the riddle of Sphinx, but the deed remains a source of hubris as Oedipus brags about it at the beginning of the play.