Arrowverse: Barry Allen / Characters

Bartholomew Henry "Barry" Allen

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"My name is Barry Allen, and I am the fastest man alive!"

^{Click here to see Barry in his first Flash outfit.}

^{Click here to see Barry as the "Green Arrow".}

Species: Metahuman

Known Aliases: The Flash, The Streak, The Fastest Man Alive, The Scarlet Speedster, The Man Who Saved Central City, The "Blur", "Bart", Savitar (erased timeline), Oliver Queen / Green Arrow (alternate reality), Dark Flash, The Paragon of Love

Played By: Grant Gustin, Logan Williams (young, Seasons 1-2), Liam Hughes (young, Seasons 3-), Audrey Marie Anderson (as "Lyla Michaels-Diggle")

First Appearance: "The Scientist" (Arrow 2x8)

Voiced By: Alexandre Gillet (European French), Arturo Castañeda (Latin-American Spanish dub, Seasons 1-2), Luis Navarro (Latin-American Spanish dub, Season 2-present), Jun Fukuyama (Japanese dub), Scott Whyte (Freedom Fighters: The Ray)

Appearances: Arrow | The Flash | Flash vs. Arrow!^note(The Flash | Arrow) | Vixen | Heroes Join Forces^note(The Flash | Arrow)| Supergirl | Invasion!^note | Crisis on Earth-X ^note | Freedom Fighters: The Ray | Elseworlds ^note(The Flash | Arrow | Supergirl) | Crisis on Infinite Earths | Titans^notearchive footage

Nora: How do I fix this?
Barry: I don't know if you can, Nora. You made a mistake, you know? A big mistake. Sometimes in life, all we can do is just live with the consequences. So what you have ask yourself is... what kind of hero are you gonna be? One who takes a do-over after every mistake, or one who lives with it and moves forward?

— The Flash (2014), "Legacy"

The Fastest Man Alive.

An assistant crime scene investigator in Central City with a habit of being late. After the murder of his mother by a "man in yellow" and his father being framed, he develops an interest (some say obsession) in "impossible" crimes and events. He first appears in-universe in the mid-season 2 two-parter in Arrow investigating a break-in by a thief who apparently has Super-Strength, meeting Oliver Queen ("The Arrow" at the time) and his team.

After being struck by lightning, he falls into a coma and awakens as a "metahuman" with Super-Speed. With his newfound powers, he becomes the superhero known as the Flash, fighting crime, finding other meta-humans, and bringing hope to Central City. He's assisted by Joe West, the man who raised him after his mother's death and father's subsequent incarceration, the two people who helped him in his comatose state - Cisco Ramon, a tech expert who later gains precognition and portal generation powers and becomes "Vibe", and Caitlin Snow, a physician who develops a surly second personality by the name of "Killer Frost" - and later his childhood friend (and the love of his life) Iris West, Joe's daughter, once she learns of his secret. Along with many more along the way.

Barry goes through many ordeals in his time as the Flash: being betrayed by his mentor Harrison Wells (who was, in fact, the man in yellow who murdered his mother), his acquitted father killed by a speedster from another Earth, nearly losing Iris to an evil version of himself from the future, framed for murder by a criminal mastermind who nearly subjected the entire planet to his whim, and meeting his and his now-wife Iris' daughter from the future, Nora West-Allen.

Soon after Nora ceases to exist due to the machinations of his greatest archenemy, he faces his own mortality with an impending Crisis and prepares his team for a life without him. However, after managing to escape his fate during Crisis, but at the cost of Oliver's life, Barry continues to fight ahead for his friends and family.

see Arrowverse: Future Characters page for more on his possible future versions

see Arrowverse: Savitar to see his time remnant from a now-erased timeline

see DCEU: The Flash page to see the post-Crisis Earth-1 character who bears his name and background

see Arrowverse: Earth-2 page to see his Earth-2 counterpart

see Stargirl (2020) page to see Jay Garrick, the post-Crisis Earth-2 character who bears his codename

see Arrowverse: Team Flash to see Jay Garrick, the Earth-3 character who bears his codename

see Batman (1966): Heroes page to see the Earth-66 character who bears his name and background

see The Flash (1990) page to see the Earth-90 character who bears his name and background

see Arrowverse: Earth-X page to see his Earth-X counterpart

see New 52 page to see Earth-N52 character who bears his name and background

see Arrowverse: Other Earths page to see Tanaka Rei, the Earths-D characters who bear his codename

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#-F

10-Minute Retirement: Very briefly quit being the Flash due to getting his ass kicked in his first fight with Multiplex and Joe chewing him out. Fortunately, he gets his motivation back quickly.
100% Heroism Rating: As of "The Man Who Saved Central City", evidenced by the massive cheering crowd that assembles at the rally in his honor.
The Ace: Post-Season Three, he's become this, after finally moving past all the tragedy in his life. He's the fastest speedster in existence and beloved hero of Central City, has a fulfilling day job as a CSI for the CCPD, is finally Happily Married to his childhood best friend, the gorgeous Iris West-Allen, owns S.T.A.R. Labs, and by extension, is filthy rich.
- In "Elongated Journey Into the Night," Ralph Dibny directly comments on this after Barry and Iris narrowly escape a bomb which blows up Ralph's office.
  Barry: My fiancée and I almost died.
  Ralph: You landed West's daughter? Wow, everything's coming up Allen! The job! The girl!
Act of True Love: In "Into the Void," Iris loses her purple jacket to a black hole, which devastates her, because it was one of the last tangible things she had to honor Nora. While Barry enters the black hole to save the city, he stays an extra few moments, risking everything, including his life, the city, and another man's consciousness, in order to find the jacket for his wife to help her grieve.
Action Dad: He continues to be a hero in Central City while parenting Nora.
Authority in Name Only: Played straight at first, then later averted. Him being the owner of S.T.A.R. Labs allows him to offer an unused warehouse (with a distinctive shape) as the headquarters for the Justice League and, it's implied, meant that he was able to pay for a nice flat for himself and Iris.
Adaptational Badass: In terms of powers. This version of the Flash can time travel without needing the use of the Cosmic Treadmill. He also develops some Shock and Awe powers not usually seen in the Flash. Notably, this version of Barry Allen is literally the Fastest Man Alive, whereas in the comics, that title actually belongs to Wally West (and that Jay Garrick, Bart Allen, and even Jesse Quick all knew tricks that Barry himself never mastered).
Adaptational Curves: Inverted. In the comics, Barry has a straight-out Heroic Build ^note. Here, he more or less has a Geek Physique.
Adaptational Dumbass: Downplayed. Barry Allen in the comics is one of DC's smarter heroes, and as I Work Alone was in play he was responsible for all the scientific solutions he used in his fights and superheroing. He invented a suit that could shrink to the size of a penny to fold into his ring on his own rather than needing his suits gifted to him, and would do all the calculations on how to defeat an enemy on his own instead of having people like Cisco, Harry, and Caitlin do it for him. Though the show informs us that Barry is smart, too often he's shown asking them to do the math for him, making it appear he lacks the comic version's ability to do this math in a split second. Several stories, especially in World's Finest and afterwards, show that Barry can be competent without a team.
Adaptational Upbringing Change: In the comics, post-Rebirth, Barry loses his parents and goes to live with a family friend and policeman, Daryl Frye. In the show, the policeman who takes him in is Joe West, father to Barry's childhood friend/crush Iris West. This causes the two to be raised in the same household from the age of 11 on so that, while Barry knew he loved her since before they went to live together, Iris takes longer to recognize her feelings, assuming she only loves him like a brother until nearly losing him multiple times made her realize how much she truly loved him.
Adaptational Wimp: In season one, Barry still has yet to develop more powers and is too reliant on his friends to defeat the villains. He shows his Science Hero credentials in the first crossover with Supergirl, and takes several levels in badass over later seasons.
Adaptation Dye-Job: Barry Allen has light blond hair in the comics, but dark brown hair on the show.
Adaptation Personality Change: This Barry Allen is a lot more nerdier and geeky than he's usually depicted as.
- During their double date, Iris even notes Barry is just like Felicity - a member of the rare breed of "adorable nerds".
Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
- The Flash and (Green) Arrow. In the comics, Barry and Oliver didn't even know each other until they were both established heroes and Justice League members. Due to their very different backgrounds, they were never that close, with their friendship with Hal Jordan/Green Lantern serving as their main point of contact; in fact, Depending on the Writer the two actually had quite an antagonistic relationship born out of petty jealousy and contrasting political ideologies (Barry, being a cop, was fairly conservative in his views). Whereas in this continuity, they had a pre-existing friendship based on a past meeting prior to Barry gaining his powers. It is Oliver who most directly inspires Barry to become a masked superhero, and he even provides the inspiration for the name 'Flash'.
- Barry and Wally sometimes refer to one-another as brothers, owing to the fact Barry is both his brother-in-law and his foster brother. In the comics, Barry was explicitly Wally's uncle, and the two viewed one another as more akin to father-and-son. Even Wallace West—the Decomposite Character introduced in the wake of the show to adapt its version of Wally—is explicitly a surrogate son to Barry.
Aesop Amnesia:
- He often forgets to properly secure the bad guy after he's stopped them, even though it's nearly gotten him killed multiple times.
- A big part of Barry's Character Development in Season Two is learning to accept Nora's death and being a hero doesn't make him immune to tragedy. Unfortunately, Zoom killing Henry (the second parent to be killed by an evil speedster) coupled with the real Jay Garrick being the doppelgänger of his father pushes Barry over the edge and he decides to abuse his time travel abilities to save Nora, consequences for the world be damned.
- He lies to Patty Spivot about not being the Flash. As Iris rightfully pointed out in Season 1 when he did this to her, informing people actually would let them protect themselves.
- In Season 3, he accidentally goes into the future and sees Savitar killing Iris, but Jay is able to convince him that this is only a possible future and that he should just ignore it lest he accidentally creates a Stable Time Loop. However Barry begins having night terrors about it and when he realizes that the events leading to Iris' demise are about to happen he and Team Flash try to avert them — to no avail.
- Over and over again, Barry will speed over to a bad guy and start quipping at them instead of just grabbing and arresting them straight off. Despite the number of times it's led to them getting away, he never learns.
Affectionate Nickname: While "Barry" is already a shortened form of "Bartholomew", Joe and Iris often call him "Barr".
Age Lift: A bit younger than Barry's usual depictions, which is actually turned into a plot point when it's revealed that the "Man in Yellow" turned him into the Flash seven years early (giving Barry his powers in 2013 instead of 2020).
Agent Mulder: He was already this back in the days where the Shared Universe was still fairly grounded and before everyone accepted they lived in a sci-fi world. He was perfectly willing to accept that one guy with Super-Strength was behind the break-in at the Queen Consolidated warehouse, and actively seeks out weird cases.
Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Drunk Barry in "Girls Night Out", who loves chicken wings, obsesses over Titanic (1997), and constantly announces to people "I'M THE FLASH!". Thankfully, he's so smashed that no one honestly believes him.
All Love Is Unrequited: Downplayed. Felicity Smoak is genuinely fond of him, but he's more interested in Iris West.
All-Loving Hero: Barry sees the best in everybody, while refusing to blur the line between black and white. In "Tricksters", Joe tells him that this specifically is his most valuable asset, more than his physical superpowers.
- In "Rogue Air", Thawne reactivates the Particle Accelerator and Barry tries to move the meta-humans to another location, since he refuses to let any of them die even though most of them tried to kill him.
- Despite their past animosity, Barry even sees some good in Captain Cold of all people. And the events of "Family of Rogues" prove Barry right. He is genuinely saddened in "Invasion" when he is told of Snart's Heroic Sacrifice.
- Likewise despite his hatred of Ralph Dibny, justifiable on many counts, Barry is still able to eventually see the potential of a good person under all of the faults Ralph displays, and takes him on as his protege.
- Taken to the extreme in Crisis on Infinite Earths. It turns out Barry is the multiversal embodiment of this trope as the Paragon of Love.
All of the Other Reindeer: Henry wanted him to change his surname so people would stop giving him grief about being related to a (albeit innocent) murderer.
Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: Oddly, he plays this to his Earth-2 counterpart. The latter is a geeky, nonpowered CSI, while the former is an accomplished superhero. Crisis on Ininite Earths would reveal he's this for every version of himself and anyone else who uses the identity of the Flash, as he's identified as the Paragon of Love which makes him one of the seven greatest heroes in The Multiverse.
Arch-Enemy: Has several villains who hurt Barry on an extremely personal level that drove him past the Despair Event Horizon and made Barry develop an unparalleled level of hatred for.
- Eobard Thawne a.k.a. The Reverse-Flash, is Barry's original and most personal nemesis, being responsible for setting Barry's life on the course it took by murdering his mom and continuing to ruin Barry's life for years and years to come. Their destinies are so heavily intertwined that they will never be fully rid of one another — they both tried and realized it wasn't possible, something that only makes them hate each other even more. When Barry needs Thawne to help reset the timeline by murdering his mother (again), Thawne decides to twist the knife a little bit further by demanding that Barry tell him exactly what he needs him to do.
  Barry: I hate you.
  Eobard: And I hate you. And I sometimes wonder which of us is right.
  - Season 1: Following Thawne murdering his mom, framing his dad for it, he then manipulated Barry's life all while posing as the Team Dad Dr. Wells.
  - Season 4 makes it even more personal between Barry and Thawne; when Thawne, having managed wiggle out of his last RetGone again, travels to Earth-X and joins the New Reichsmen just For the Evulz and they invade Earth-1 during Barry and Iris' wedding to capture Kara so they give her heart to Overgirl. Barry actually has the chance to kill Thawne but turns it down both due to his Thou Shall Not Kill policy and the temporal complexities of Thawne's existence; even if Barry did kill him, Thawne would find a way to return. Barry has to just grimly accept that unlike Zoom or Savitar, Thawne will never be truly defeated.
  - Season 5 reveals just how much Eobard has managed to get under Barry's skin and the results aren't pretty: In the future, he's locked up in Iron Heights awaiting his execution and Nora West-Allen's mentor. She came to him due to lack of options — all the other speedsters disappeared after the Red Skies Crisis and naiveté: Iris kept Nora's true heritage a secret from her and because most records of Thawne's villainy have been hidden from the public. Even when she realizes the full extent of his crimes, she still continues their association because she believes he's sincere about wanting to atone before his death. Unfortunately, none of this matters to Barry when he finds out — he briefly locks her up in the Pipeline and then exiles back to the future, but eventually comes back to his senses. Then in "Legacy", it's revealed that Thawne essentially set Nora up to erase herself from existence by changing time.
  - Season 8 tops it all, however, when Thawne changes history in order to make himself the Flash and Barry the Reverse-Flash, stealing his enemy's life for himself and reveling in Barry's situation. After Barry undoes the damage and Thawne is at risk of vanishing completely, Barry is initially willing to let Thawne die, only to be talked out of it by Joe and saving his life (at the cost of draining all of Thawne's speed). And then, Thawne and the Negative Forces make a comeback, resulting in the near-death of Iris and the death of the reformed Time Remnant of Thawne from Legends of Tomorrow. He clashes with Thawne so much that he nearly causes Armageddon himself, finally having had enough of the Reverse-Flash by that point.
- Zoom a.k.a. Hunter Zolomon, the Big Bad of Season 2. For a while, Zoom managed to hurt Barry even more than Thawne and eclipsed him as Barry's most hated enemy. Posing as Jay Garrick and pretending to be Barry's ally and mentor, Zoom then proceeded to do break Barry in every way possible, both mentally and physically. First brutally beating Barry to a pulp and breaking his back, then parading his broken body around Central City for all to see. Then he repeatedly kidnapped those closest to Barry like Caitlin, Wally, and Jesse. But the cherry on the top was killing Barry's father, Henry, in the same spot that Thawne killed his mother, sending Barry into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge where for a moment he was hellbent to kill Zoom himself, something he never even felt for Thawne.
- Savitar, the Big Bad of Season 3. Cited by others to hurt Barry more than anyone else, where Team Flash discover that Savitar is responsible for murdering Barry's love Iris in a Bad Future, something they spend all season trying to prevent. This action would leave Barry a broken shell in the future unable to move on with his life. This is followed by Savitar tricking Wally to become trapped in the Speed Force, something which would haunt Barry with guilt for a long time. And then, it's revealed that Savitar is actually Barry himself, specifically a time-remnant who went rogue, making Savitar His Own Worst Enemy, in the most literal way possible.
Arc Symbol: Different kinds of prisons are heavily associated with him, signifying how he can't move on from the fateful night his mother was murdered no matter how much he tries.
Arc Words: "Not fast enough" in regarding the Speedster Big Bads of the first three seasons and not being fast enough to beat them for a time.
Armour Is Useless: Subverted, his suit was originally protective gear for firefighters. It doesn't work well in protecting against physical attacks such as Green Arrow's throwing knife or Zoom's claw to the gut, but it helps a bit against Captain Cold and company's weapons. It also completely protects Barry against the hand blasters that S.T.A.R gave Linda, when they disguised her as Dr Light.
Ascended Fanboy: Barry idolized superheroes like the Arrow, and was thoroughly delighted to meet the Arrow and his secret identity in person. A season later, he himself becomes a superhero, and gets to work alongside other heroes such as Supergirl and Firestorm.
Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: In the Season 3 finale, Barry agrees to go to the Speed Force in order to pacify it from causing a possible apocalypse. Averted in that Barry later escapes with the help of Team Flash and is still very much mortal.
Atrocious Alias: His own thoughts on his first alias, "the Streak", as he explains in "Fast Enough". When he visits Supergirl's Earth, he is not overly enthused when Cat Grant dubs him "the Blur". When he "suggests" the Flash, Cat points out a certain other meaning of that word. His reaction makes it clear he'd never thought of that before. Oh, before we forget, Cat also suggested "The Streak" before settling with "The Blur".
Awesomeness by Analysis:
- Displays this ability in the pilot, knowing a car's exact make and model based off of faint tire tracks left at a crime scene.
- After Mirror-Iris kicks him out for not stopping Joe from going into Witness Protection, he spends a single week piecing together that she isn't the real Iris and correctly deduces that she's impersonated her for over a month.
Babies Ever After: The series ends with Iris giving birth to Nora, and the final scene of the series is Barry telling the story of his journey as the Flash while at home with Iris and their baby daughter.
Badass Adorable: Barry is nerdy, lovable and incredibly endearing but DO NOT underestimate him as he can kick ass like no other.
Badass Bookworm: Police forensic scientist gets superpowers and fights crime.
Bad Liar: Joe and Iris seem to think so.
Battle Couple: Iris is a Badass Normal Action Girl, and she isn't shy about joining Barry in the field from time to time.
Beauty Is Never Tarnished: His face doesn't typically suffer anything severe, save for a few nicks and dings. Justified, as he heals at a much faster rate than your regular human.
Beard of Sorrow: At the beginning of Season 4, he has a beard which shows how broken he is from being in the Speed Force. Joe shaves his beard off in hopes of getting the Barry of always back. He regrows the beard in prison, and that still reflects his sadness on being helpless but preferring to accept the sentence until his innocence is proven.
Because Destiny Says So: Oliver thinks that the lighting bolt that struck Barry wasn't random. As it turns out, he was absolutely right.
Oliver: I don't think that bolt of lighting struck you, Barry; I think it chose you.
Being Good Sucks: Best exemplified in Season Two, where Barry manages to imprison a time traveling Eobard Thawne, in the Pipeline before he killed Nora or the the real Dr. Wells in his timeline. Unfortunately this causes time paradoxes so Barry has to let him go.
Berserk Button:
- Literally anything to do with Eobard Thawne, his most hated Arch-Enemy. When he finds out Nora has been secretly working with him, he goes into Tranquil Fury mode and locks her in the Pipeline and then banishes her back to the future — he could forgive Nora working with Thawne while she wasn't aware of what he did to the family, but continuing to do so afterwards is something he can't forgive. Even though the death of his mother no longer haunts him, his hatred for the Reverse-Flash will never leave him... in fact it only gets worse overtime; this in direct contrast to Oliver's relationship with Malcolm Merlyn — as much as Oliver hates Malcolm, he will work with him when the chips are down and no other options.
- It appears that being in a cage does, even unintentionally, make Barry a little miffed.
- And apparently any man even touching (or thinking about touching) Iris is sure to set Barry off, as evidenced by Beware the Nice Ones and Barry's reaction in "Elseworlds, Part I," when he and Oliver switch lives, resulting in the fact that Oliver is now Barry Allen and is married to Iris.
  Barry: I swear if you touch [Iris]...
  Oliver: I didn't touch her.
  Barry: [clenching his fist] You thought about it.
Beware the Nice Ones: Barry is generally a nice, sweet guy but if you cross him or hurt anyone that he cares about, he won't hesitate to kick your ass. Particularly, threatening his family, particularly the love of his life and wife, Iris, abruptly alters his demeanor from usually calm and collected into threatening rage.
- In "All Doll'd Up", after being kidnapped by Rag Doll and having his powers dampened by meta-human cuffs, Barry attempts to reason with Peter Merkel, until Merkel seemingly threatens Iris.
  Barry: Okay, well, I know people who can help you. People who can stop your suffering.
  Merkel: Suffering can't be stopped. Especially hers.
  Barry: [in an extremely threatening tone] If you touch Iris...
Beware the Silly Ones: Barry's a lovable goof, who enjoys messing around with his friends, as well as being something of a Pop-Cultured Badass. But if you go after the people he loves, he will show no mercy. He's been Taught by Experience, and is capable of being very cold and harsh if necessary.
Big Brother Instinct: Towards Wally; though the two didn't grow up together like he did with Iris, Barry is incredibly protective of him.
Big Damn Heroes: Starting to rival Oliver in these moments. Notably, he gets a pretty spectacular one each season during the crossover with Arrow where Barry will come in and save Oliver and Team Arrow from a main villain.
The Big Damn Kiss:
- Finally kisses Iris before going to save Central City from a tsunami, but when he accidentally travels back in time this is erased.
- Later shares one with her on the West's front porch after defeating Zoom, even with the two's silhouettes being eclipsed by a background light, yet this too is erased, due to Flashpoint.
- And shares yet another Lip-Lock Sun-Block variety when the two officially cement their status as a couple.
Big Eater: It turns out that his Super-Speed speeds up his metabolism too, and if he doesn't eat heavily, he collapses from hypoglycemia. He also can't get buzzed by alcohol unless he drinks ultra-high concentrated alcohol, and even then, it only lasts briefly.
Big Good: A role he shares with Oliver Queen. They're both the first public superheroes in the Arrowverse, and set examples for many heroes after them, while leading their respective teams. They are the two vital heroes of the Arrowverse, and without them, all hell would break loose. If you take the whole multiverse into consideration, he also shares the role with Kara.
Birds of a Feather:
- With Felicity Smoak. They're both super-excitable nerds who are awful at saying what they actually mean. He's also this with Patty Spivot for many of the same reasons. And later with Kara Danvers, as they're both super-excitable superheroes who absolutely love saving people and having adventures.
- During "World's Finest," he and Winn bond over being dorky Science Heroes.
Blessed with Suck: His speed power is a fantastic thing, except for one hitch. His metabolism is so high that even a heavy dosage of anesthesia has no effect on him, when he has to go in for surgery (including removing hundreds of barbed needles out of his body) he's going to feel all of the pain for the whole time. Also, depending on whether or not he can shift his perception from normal to Bullet Time at will, the procedure would feel like it's taking years.
Borrowed Catchphrase:
- He has used Oliver's Catchphrase "Suit up!" a few times over the course of the series, particularly in Season 3. A few occasions he also borrowed Oliver's "You have failed this city!" with one instance justified due to him being in Oliver's body.
- He sometimes borrows his own Phrase Catcher "Run, Barry, Run" and has used it for other characters who are new to being speedsters, such as Wally, Iris, and even Grodd.
Boy Next Door: He is considerate and selfless. In the case of Iris, literally next door, as he lived with her growing up.
Brains and Brawn: With Oliver, but it's played with. In their civilian identities, Barry is clearly the Brains being the scientist to Oliver's Brawn considering he's a martial artist. However the dynamic is reversed in their superhero identities, given that Oliver is the tactical Weak, but Skilled Badass Normal, while Barry is the Story-Breaker Power speedster who overlies on his powers rather than strategy.
Break the Cutie: While still trying to deal with everything that the Reverse Flash put him and those he's close to through during Season 1 and contending with all the crisis that Zoom and the Earth 2 Meta's are throwing at him currently, and that's without even touching upon the issues in his civilian life, makes Season 2 an immensely long one for him, culminating in his Despair Event Horizon at the end of the season.
Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu:
- While not to Cthulhu levels, Barry breaks his hand punching Girder in the face.
- The first time he fought Zoom he ended up with his back broken.
- Whenever Barry engages Savitar, he's always on the receiving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle, with Savitar dragging him around the city and pummeling him or punching him around the room with ease.
Broken Hero: By Season Three as the consequences of Flashpoint continue to take their toll not even counting all of his past failures which still haunt him.
Broken Pedestal:
- Barry idolized the Arrow but upon actually meeting him he is seriously off put by how much of a jerk Oliver can be. Similar things happen in subsequent crossovers with Barry's initial enthusiasm getting derailed by Oliver's more brutal methods. The pedestal gets rebuilt when Barry learns to see Oliver / The Arrow as an ally with his own strengths and flaws rather than an idol.
- The Flash becomes a Broken Pedestal to Iris when he brutally attacks Eddie while under a Hate Plague. However she quickly changes her mind after he saves Eddie from Cold and Heatwave.
- As of "Rogue Time", "Wells" seems to have finally become this to Barry; Barry knew Mason Bridge was investigating, claiming to know some very dirty secrets about him and that he'd reveal it all soon — and then Bridge mysteriously disappears. Barry doesn't think it's a coincidence and finally starts to grow suspicious of "Wells".
- The events of "Flashpoint" made Barry this to the other superheroes — specifically Cisco (who lost his brother), Diggle (whose daughter was changed to a son) and the Legends (who now have a new threat to deal with including one of their own partners) — since he was always held up to a higher standard by being the most virtuous of them all. However, his willingness to sacrifice himself to the Dominators if it meant they would leave Earth earns back their full trust and admiration.
- Barry became this to Nora, when he ran her to the future and left her there unceremoniously, after discovering that she had been working with Eobard Thawne. Up until this point, Nora idolized Barry, and not even Iris coming to the future to get her back consoled her. Instead, his betrayal left Nora feeling that he stopped loving her, which leads her to channel the Negative Speedforce, for the first time. Eventually, Barry reconciles with Nora, after he, Iris, and Joe save Nora, after the latter is betrayed by Joss Jackam and Brie Larvan.
Brought Down to Badass: The penultimate episode of Season Three shows that even without his powers, Barry has become a skilled hand-to-hand combatant, able to take out two highly-trained guards with relative ease. While not quite on the level of the members of Team Arrow, with or without his speed, Barry is nowhere near helpless. He also orchestrated an escape from the metahuman wing of Iron Heights Prison to attempt to save himself and other metahumans from being sold to Amunet Black.
Brought Down to Normal:
- Temporarily during Power Outage when Blackout drains the electricity from his body and depowers him. Fortunately Barry is able to recover from it and becomes even faster then before.
- Happens again in Versus Zoom when the titular Zoom forces Barry to siphon off his speed and give it to him or risk having his friends and family murdered. Barry reluctantly agrees and has the speed force drained from his body.
Brutal Honesty: Nice Guy Barry is utterly shameless in his distaste for his rival Ralph Dibny and has no issue expressing his opinion of the guy to his friends, family, and the man himself.
Bullet Catch: Barry is eventually fast enough to catch bullets, the first time he did so it was fired at his neck from behind and ended up grazing him.
Bully Hunter: He's aggressively anti-bully, especially since he had to deal with them a lot as a kid. Best shown in "The Flash Is Born" when he goes after one of his childhood bullies and now metallic metahuman, Tony Woodward.
Butt-Monkey:
- In the first episode alone he gets battered by a mugger, struck by lightning & goes into a coma for 9 months, all in the space of an evening, then wakes up to find that the woman he's in love with has begun a relationship with another man during said coma. But hey, he gets Super-Speed.
- Also in his own show. If someone suffers a tragedy or loses someone they love, chances are it's gonna be him.
Bunny-Ears Lawyer: It's implied in the first episode that Captain Singh only kept putting up with Barry's quirky tendencies and constantly running late because of his incredible deductive skills.
Came Back Strong: Of the non-death version. After Barry had his powers stolen by Zoom, he later enters the Speed Force and while inside learns to harness it's power effectively. The trip itself not only restores his connection to the Speed Force but increases it drastically as before Zoom was about four times faster than him and after he came back he was fast enough to beat Zoom who has his power plus what he stole from Barry before.
- After returning from his time captivity in the Speed Force for the six months, not only is he the fastest man alive once again, putting an impressed Wally's speed to shame, but according to Caitlin, everything from his powers to his vitals to his brain function has been increased.
Came Back Wrong: When he first returns from the six months in the Speed Force he speaks in non sequiturs and drawing strange symbols, leading the team to fear he has developed a form of psychosis. However after learning that Iris is in danger he regains his mental capacity "in a Flash!"
The Cameo: He makes a brief appearance in season 4 of Titans (2018) through archive footage.
Can't Kill You, Still Need You: It drives Eobard crazy that he needs Barry's speed to get back home and that he can't kill him like he really wants to.
The Cape: Barry is basically the counterpart to Oliver Queen's The Cowl. The two-part crossover of "Flash vs. Arrow" on The Flash and "The Brave and the Bold" on Arrow is an extended look at how Barry's city is clean and a nice place to be and had to be bombarded with metahumans before it needed a hero, one like Barry, who's sweet and kind, contrasting them with Oliver and his city. Once he's revealed to the public, he fully embraces being a symbol of hope for Central City. The one time he tries to be The Cowl it backfires in his face spectacularly.
Cassandra Truth: The only people who truly believed Barry's story about his mother's murder were... Barry and his father, who were the only people to witness it, and Iris, who was pushed to write about The Flash to reinstate Barry's belief in the impossible. Many flashbacks show a tearful ten year old Barry trying to convince people to let his dad go. Present-day Barry is still very bitter over this.
The Chains of Commanding: He can be very harsh and domineering to his proteges.
Character Development:
- Barry has become more confident, forceful and driven than he was during his first appearance on Arrow; stammering a lot less and interacting with more ease, which he might owe to his powers. According to the creators, it won't stop there...
  Andy Kreisberg: By the end of the year, he will come to resemble The Flash that we know from the comic books. That's really the arc for the first year.
- Word of God say that Season three will see Barry take another big step in his maturity, particularity when it comes to the facing the consequences of his actions, creating Flashpoint especially when it comes to his powers, and learning to move on and being stronger for it.
  Andy Kreisberg: Barry has to learn that people make mistakes. The question isn’t ‘Did you make a mistake or not,’ it’s ‘What are you gonna do about it?’ And if there’s nothing you can do about it, how are you gonna live with yourself?
- According to Grant Gustin and the creators, when Barry returns from the Speed Force, he will be a new man, with greater wisdom.
  Grant Gustin: When he was in the Speed Force, he experienced his whole life laid out in front of him from start to finish. So in some sense, he comes out very wise, kind of knowing everything, but he has no understanding of what he’s seen, so he comes out very jumbled and talking what he thinks makes complete sense, but just nonsense to the rest of the crew.
- He was obsessed with "The Man in the Yellow Suit" when we first met him and dedicated a large amount of his life trying to find him so he could clear his dad's name, even when literally everyone in his life told him to give up. Throughout the series he's gone from being obsessed with him, to fearing him, to hating him, to accepting that he's just a giant baby throwing a never-ending tantrum and feeling anything for him is a waste of time.
Chick Magnet: He's been involved, or at least had a Ship Tease, with four women in the first season alone, namely; Iris, Felicity, Caitlin and Linda.
Childhood Friend Romance: With Iris West — Barry had loved Iris before he even knew what love meant, and explicitly admits he had a crush on her even before his mother died. It takes some time, but they finally start dating at the start of Season 3.
The Chosen One: In Oliver Queen's own words, the force behind the lightning that struck Barry chose him for a reason. Additionally, Eobard Thawne keeps implying that there is something special about his speed. "The Runaway Dinosaur" confirms this by having the Speed Force itself state that it specifically chose Barry. However, due to Flashpoint, the Speed Force effectively un-choses him by making him occupy the prison he built for Savitar; otherwise the Speed Force would collapse. "The Last Temptation of Barry Allen: Pt. 1" seems to imply that at some point after Barry escapes it re-chooses him, especially since, during the Crisis, he is also chosen to be the "Paragon of Love."
Chronic Hero Syndrome: He's compelled to save people. This gets deconstructed in Season 3 when he sees a future in which Iris will die and his desire to save her causes severe lapses in his judgement.
Clark Kenting: Cleverly averted, as most of the people who get a clear look at him in action already know about him. When he has to appear in front of people not in the know who might recognize him, he vibrates his face so it becomes a blur, and also his vocal chords.
Clear Their Name:
- Knows his father is innocent and won't rest until everyone else knows it too.
- Due to DeVoe's scheming both he and Team Flash had to clear Barry's name in his homicide charge against Clifford.
Cloudcuckoolander: Has a vested interest in weird crimes which can't be explained with pure fact and logic, due to his mother's death being such a case. Detective West repeatedly tells Barry to stop looking into such cases & accept that his father killed his mother, not a "ball of lightning with a man inside."
The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: Considering Barry himself becomes the fastest man alive and Clyde Mardon can control the weather, Detective West realises that Barry was right about everything upon seeing it for themselves.
Comes Great Responsibility: Best demonstrated at the end of "Don't Run" where after being implicated by The Thinker in the murder of Clifford DeVoe, and the police banging on his door, while he starts powering up to take off, stops himself, knowing full well that running would only make him look all the more guilty, and make his and Iris' life even harder than it will be already.
Comically Invincible Hero: Tends to happen with ordinary powerless criminals. Whenever they run into Barry or The Flash, not only do they get defeated but they get humiliated, special mention goes to the reoccurring unlucky mugger who keeps running into Barry, who ended up getting stripped down to his underwear.
Composite Character:
- This version of Barry Allen can be very impulsive and reactive much like his grandson Bart, the fourth Flash.
- He can also be very forgiving to enemies like Snart and sympathize with them just like Wally West. Having Zoom as an Archenemy is also a trait he shares with comic book Wally; his moments of having a smarmy Smug Super attitude also harkens to Wally's attitude in his early years.
- In the post-Flashpoint timeline, it is revealed that a future time remnant of himself is Savitar.
Convenient Coma: Spends nine months comatose after getting struck by lightning, though the superspeed that he acquires from the particle accelerator explosion more than makes up for it.
Cope by Pretending: Barry is exceedingly optimistic in the months following his daughter, Nora's death, and it becomes quickly apparent that he, and Iris, are coping with her death by pretending things aren't that bad, because they know they'll see her again when she's born. It all comes to a head when Cisco insists that Barry has to consider letting Chester P. Runk die to save the rest of Central City, and Barry explodes, yelling that he won't lose anyone else. He and Iris then speak about the fact that it was unhealthy of them to avoid grieving Nora.
Iris: I know that we keep saying that we're fine, but I miss the Nora that was, Barry, not the Nora that will be, and I think you do too. I think that's why you've been working so hard all summer.
Barry: I thought that if I could keep people safe it would make up for how much I miss [Nora].
Iris: You know the only way we're going to get through this is if we carry this burden together. It's the only way, Barry.
The Coroner: He works for the CSI unit of the CCPD.
Cosmic Plaything:
- Much to his chagrin his life is so intertwined with Eobard Thawne's, that when he attempts to stop Thawne's villainy before it even begins it causes no end of temporal paradox because their two time lines are in reverse.
- It's something of a sick joke that he can't stop evil speedsters from killing his loved ones: Thawne killed Nora when he was 10 (and going back in time to stop him just breaks the universe), Zoom killed Henry right in front of him, but was too slow to stop it, and Savitar kills Iris with Barry being powerless to rescue her (or so he thought). The poor boy's cursed. It's implied that the time with Zoom was because the Speed Force felt a need to put their champion through a Secret Test of Character.Thankfully, Iris managed to be saved, by HR pulling a Heroic Sacrifice.
Crazy Jealous Guy:
- He is temporarily turned into one of these when hit by Bivolo's Hate Plague, attacking Eddie in front of Iris. He's completely horrified by what he did when his friends turn him back to normal.
- In Elseworlds, his enthusiasm about being the Green Arrow dies down when Oliver mentions that he woke up with Iris.
Create Your Own Villain: By creating and then negating Flashpoint, Barry created a "ripple" that led to creation of the Stable Time Loop that created Savitar.
Cruel Mercy: He saves Thawne's life, by stealing his speed, effectively sentencing in Thawne's own words, to hell on Earth.
Dangerous Forbidden Technique:
- He can travel in time, but this ability is very problematic since he may harm the timeline and create more problems than the ones he sought to solve. Barry officially forswore this technique in "Enter Flashtime".
- A derivative of the time travel is the creation of Time Remnants, which creates cloned versions of the speedster which were convinced to come. The problem is that the time remnants would have the memories of the original and would see the original having the nice things that they will never have.
Deadpan Snarker: Barry can throw in a snide comment when the moment calls for it.
Despair Event Horizon: He hits it at the end of Season 2 - not only does he lose his father, but when the real Jay Garrick turns out to be his dad's double you can practically see Barry die inside. At that point, he decides he just can't take any more punishment and goes back in time to save his mother, setting the Flashpoint story in motion.
Determinator: This goes far beyond flipping cars to catch local Central City bad guys. Give him the slightest glimmer of hope or the smallest possibility of getting out of an impossible situation, and there is nothing Barry won't do to save anyone from his closest friends all the way to the entire Multiverse. No less than The Monitor regards this as one of The Flash's greatest qualities.
Didn't Think This Through: When he shows up on Earth-38, Cat Grant decides to name the new hero. Barry, having gone through this already, tries to ease her away from "The Blur" by suggesting "The Flash." She retorts that The Flash "sounds like someone whose only superpower is jumping out of an alley in a trench coat." The reaction on Barry's face suggests that the thought really hadn't occurred to him beforehand. When Barry later introduces himself to Lucy Lane, he noticeably does not identify himself as "The Flash."
Died on Their Birthday: Wally West, under the control of Ramsey Rosso, kills Barry on his birthday in "It's My Party And I'll Die If I Want To". However, this is only temporary, as Oliver Queen brings him Back from the Dead.
Dimensional Traveler: Depending on the Writer, his Super-Speed allows him to cross The Multiverse at will.
Disappointed by the Motive: In season 2, Barry, holding a time-travelling version of Thawne captive, finally confronts him and asks why he hates him so much. Turns out Eobard is an Ascended Fanboy Gone Horribly Wrong: he used to admire the Flash, to the point he found a way to replicate his powers so he could be him... only to find out through his ability to time travel that he was destined to be his worst enemy, and then embraced it out of spite. Barry is understandably disgusted he caused so many people to die for such a petty reason.
Barry: That is why you killed my mother? That's why you ruined my life? Because you couldn't be me?
Ditzy Genius: He's has a keen mind and is undeniably brilliant in the field of science, but he has a severe lack of common sense out the battle field, having a tendency to charge into battle blindly and get his ass kicked. He's also had quite a few Idiot Ball moments, such as recruiting Snart to help in a metahuman prison transfer. It doesn't work out.
Doom Magnet: A rare example of this trope Played for Laughs with the yearly Crisis Crossover. By 2016, Team Arrow takes his yearly fall visit to Star City to ask for their help with resigned exasperation.
Oliver: You come to Star City, you ask for my help...
Barry: Okay...
Oliver: And then inevitably, immediately, we end up up the creek!
Barry: Okay, that's fair, thank you.
Dork Knight: He's a bit awkward and is prone to geek-outs, but he's brave and has a big heart. He also can be dangerous if he wants to.
Dramatic Irony: In "Godspeed" the moment that is the catalyst of his daughter's journey into Superheroine-hood is a message he left with Gideon, seemingly mere moments before the incident that led to his disappearance or possible death, that no matter what happens he has and will always love Nora. Almost the very next scene in the episode the present Barry pretty much disowns Nora, and banishes her to the future, not even giving her a chance to say goodbye to Iris.
The Dreaded: The Flash is this to many metahumans. Wells reveals a list of the metahumans on his world, and there are hundreds if not thousands. Earth 1 should have far more because the Earth 2 particle accelerator explosion was contained unlike Earth 1's. However, the vast majority of the metahumans are in hiding out of fear of the Flash.
- Also, even to Zoom at some extent, giving his Big "NO!" upon seeing Barry attempting to regain his powers and his rush off to try stop him.
Dude, Where's My Respect?: Not as the Flash, but in his day job most of the CCPD (sans Joe and Eddie) seems to take him and his forensic work for granted.
- Get's even worse, with his Cosmic Retcon of the timeline by the addition of Julian Albert, his professional nemesis and superior!
Dude, Where's My Reward?: The Flash has saved countless people and all he has to show for it are two murdered parents and a nearly murdered fiancee. Iris actually has to remind that the Universe doesn't keep score.
Early-Bird Cameo: Had a two episode guest appearance on Arrow before headlining his own show.
Early-Installment Weirdness: In the "Pilot", when Barry first gained his speed, he didn't have any lightning trailing behind him as he ran. This continues until he first dons the Flash suit and faces off against Clyde Mardon.
Earn Your Happy Ending: While technically not an ending, after all the shit both he and Iris have been through and all the obstacles the two had to overcome, by the end of Crisis on Earth-X the two can finally call each other husband and wife.
Elite Zombie: As Dark Flash, Barry is a great deal more powerful than the standard Blood Brother.
Endearingly Dorky: Portrayed this way ever since his first appearances on Arrow, having a tendency to get himself tangled up in his social life and tripping over his own words.
Establishing Character Moment: On his own show, the first time we see him as an adult, working a crime scene, shows us his brains, dorky nature, and tendency to run late.
Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: The Reverse Flash, Barry hates Thawne more than anyone or anything, and very nearly let him die. Even then when he saved him, he took away Thawne's speed, essentially as Thawne considered it subjecting him to hell on Earth.
The Everyman: Of a sort. Barry is a lot geekier than the average Everyman character, but that fits with the show's target audience of comic book/sci-fi fans.
Everyone Can See It: Over the course of Season One, many characters who have seen him and Iris together can tell that Barry is in love with Iris. For the first nine episodes, only one person was oblivious to his affections. Unfortunately for Barry, that person was Iris herself.
- Likewise while it became clear to everyone, even poor Eddie, that Iris was always just as in love with Barry, both he and Iris had remained oblivious to the fact their entire lives.
Fake Shemp: A few cameos he has on Arrow involve him only appearning by using his Super-Speed to avoid physically bringing Grant Gustin. It happens when he proves to Singh that the actual Green Arrow is consulting with him and to bring Oliver and Diggle to Cayden James.
Fatal Flaw:
- His Chronic Hero Syndrome when combined with his time travel abilities makes for a very bad combination. It's repeatedly stressed that he could really screw up the timeline if he wanted to, as the Season 2 finale demonstrated.
- He can also be a little too easy to emotionally provoke, especially when it comes to his loved ones being threatened, to the point that he ignores the potential consequences of his actions. Finding out Nora's been working with Thawne clouds his emotions so much, he locks her in the Pipeline without a second thought and later banishes her to the future, which leads to her using the Negative Speed Force.
- Barry is really bad at dealing with personal loss, although this is somewhat understandable given the frequency his loved ones are killed right in front of him.
First Love: He is both this and Second Love to Iris; while Iris entered a relationship with Eddie Thawne first and loved him a lot, it's been confirmed that she was in love with Barry long before she had even met Eddie, and simply hadn't realized it yet.
Fish out of Water: Zig-Zagged when he traveled to Supergirl's Earth. One one hand, he doesn't need to adjust as much despite being Trapped in Another World, as both Earth-38 and Earth-1 are set in regular Present Day unlike Earth-2. On the other, none of the people from his Earth have counterparts there or if there are, they have other names.
Flash Step: No pun intended. There's a reason why he was nicknamed "the Streak" at first. To normals, whenever Barry uses his speed, all that's seen is a trail of lightning.
Foil: Of a sort to Felicity Smoak. Both of them are the Endearingly Dorky heart of their teams, with both being quite smart and geeky. However, while Felicity is the sole smart member on her team of Action Heroes and serves as Mission Control, Barry on the other hand is the single superhero on his team which consists of geniuses who all serve as his Mission Control. This later gets subverted where more members get added to both teams' rosters, so Felicity isn't the sole genius and Barry isn't the sole field member.
Foreshadowing: When he messes about with the chemicals in the lab, making comments about how it's dangerous to have them so close together, Felicity responds that maybe he shouldn't be touching them. Cue a lightning strike and Barry looking out at it for a few seconds. This is a nod to the most well-known of Barry's origin stories: getting doused in chemicals after a lightning bolt knocks him into it. At the end of "Three Ghosts" in Arrow, this is indeed how Barry gets his powers, with the lightning bolt being generated by Star Labs' overloaded particle accelerator.
Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: His eventual status after creating Flashpoint and having it undone. He patches things up with his family and team, but no one forgets this mistake, and Iris brings it up when calling Barry out in Snow Pack.
Fragile Speedster: Comparatively. Despite being more resistant to harm than the average person thanks to his super speed, Barry will still injure himself if he runs into something at said speed, as part of his inexperience. West outright tells him in the second episode, "You think because you can run real fast that you're invincible?"
Freak Lab Accident: See above: he warns Felicity about how to avoid them. Then, as you may have guessed, Irony kicks in and he is the victim of one.
Freudian Excuse: He couldn't help his dad get acquitted of his mother's murder, so he when he gets his powers he jumps at the chance to help people over the city.
Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Season 5 has him banishing Nora to the future after it's revealed she was working with Thawne, without consulting anyone, not even Iris. Although the team understands that Barry is still in pain over his childhood, and acknowledges that Nora was still working with Thawne despite knowing full well who he was, they refuse to defend this act. By the end of Snow Pack, even Barry himself admits he went too far.
Friendless Background: Prior to meeting Oliver and becoming the Flash, Barry's only friend was Iris with whom he grew up with. Which makes him hurt even more when he realizes how he messed up the lives of Cisco and Caitlin after Flashpoint.
Friendly Rivalry: With Oliver Queen.
Future Badass: If Thawne's 2024 news article is any indication.

G-L

Gadgeteer Genius: Not to the extent of Cisco, but he can put together some impressive tech:
- He will eventually create the AI Gideon, which will later be standard issue on all Time Master vessels.
- While he was on Earth-38 he created special ear plugs to counter out Silver Banshee's scream and helped the National City police devise containment cells for metahuman criminals.
Geek Physique: In contrast to his muscular comic-book counterpart, Barry is a boyish-built guy and shows a fair amount of self-consciousness whenever he gets compared to more heroically built heroes such as Oliver Queen ("His arms are like, twice the size of yours...") and Hunter Zolomon ("Your shirt looks so small on him...").
A God I Am Not: Executed beautifully in one line.
Mardon: I didn't think there was anyone else like me.
Barry: I'm not like you. You're a murderer.
Good Colors, Evil Colors: As the Dark Flash, he has black lightning.
Good Feels Good: Barry loves helping people.
Good Is Dumb:
- Barry isn't dumb by any stretch, but he suffers from a lot of Idiot Ball moments, usually in regards to rushing blindly into battle or being unable to see the painfully obvious in how suspicious "Dr. Wells" is. It's only until he sees the headline that Mason Bridge, the reporter who's been going after Thawne is missing. Then he finally sees the painfully obvious.
- He once made a deal with Captain Cold thinking he could be trusted. It blew up in his face, big time!
- He did have his moments in his early days, like trying to punch a villain made of poisonous gas.
Happily Adopted: While adopted at an older age under distressing circumstances, Barry did end up being a true part of the West family. Reciprocated by Joe, who admits that Barry brought a lot of joy and warmth to the West household.
Happily Married: He shares a loving, healthy relationship with Iris West, the love of his life. They are very supportive of each other.
Has a Type: When looking at the likes of Iris, Linda, Felicity and Patty, he seems to be attracted to smart, perky and tough girls.
Healing Factor: A side-effect of Barry's power, which speeds up his healing process.
- Comes in incredible handy in "Revenge of the Rogues". In order to defeat the Rogues, he needs them to fire their guns at each other. Ultimately, the only way to do this is to briefly endure their fire and ice blasts coming at him from each side before running out of the way. Given that the guns were absolute zero and absolute heat, this would have easily killed any normal human.
- Vandal Savage stabbing him in the hand doesn't slow him for a second, and he doesn't even have a scar moments later.
- When Black Siren and Dr Light respectively shattered his eardrums and burned out his retina, it took him respectively a couple hours and less than seven hours to heal from them completely.
The Heart: Barry is this for the entire Arrowverse.
- Barry has a real knack for getting through to anyone.
  Iris: Whatever you said to Ralph must have landed. He risked his life to save Caitlin and Cisco, thanks to you.
  Barry: I just brought out what was already inside him.
  Iris: You seem to have that effect on a lot of people.
- Barry is deemed the Paragon of Love in Crisis on Infinite Earths, and later on, he determines that this is because of his own connection with his wife.
  Barry: I may be the Paragon of Love, but that's only because [Iris is] my heart.
Heart Broken Badass: In the Bad Future where Savitar wins, without Iris, after Barry does eventually defeat Savitar and avenge her death, he closes himself off from the rest of the world, and holes up inside STAR Labs pinning after her, while his family, friends and Central City crumbles apart without him.
Future Barry: [to Present Barry] You want answers Barry? How's this? You will go back. You will do everything you can think of to save her. You'll even create time remnants of yourself, but he's gonna kill them all, mostly. And then on the night of May 23, Iris West will die in your arms. In that moment when she takes her last breath, it will feel like an eternity. And it will break you. She's the love of your life Barry. She was the love of my life. There'll be nothing left at all but stopping Savitar. So no, you won't be there for Joe, you won't be there when Caitlin becomes Killer Frost, when Savitar destroys Wally. You won't be there for any of them. But one day you will stop him, but by that point he'll have already won, because everything that you've ever loved will be gone, including yourself.
Hero of Another Story: He is this by default every time he does a Crossover to the other shows. However the most noticeable example of this is when he first appears on Supergirl (2015), as at the time the show aired on CBS meaning he was the hero of a show from a different network.
Heroic Self-Deprecation: While it isn't blatant, it's clear that Barry has very little self-esteem, and on some level, feels he doesn't deserve to be happy (which was lampshaded by Caitlin in "Crazy for You"). Savitar is the culmination of all that plus three seasons worth of stress and tragedy. The amount of internalized self-hatred it takes for you to willingly terrorize a version of your past self and recreate the greatest tragedy of your life by murdering your One True Love just so you can exist — well, it's honestly a miracle Barry isn't suicidal yet. Although, seeing as Barry didn't hesitate to suggest killing himself when he found out that he was Savitar, it might not be such a miracle.
Hero Protagonist: Of the show, considering that the series revolves around Barry and his journey as a superhero.
He's Back!: After returning from the Speed Force in "The Flash Reborn", Barry ends up in a delusional state where he talks gibberish and scribbles strange symbols on the wall of any room he's in. Wanting him back, Iris intentionally lets herself get kidnapped by the Samuroid. A distraught Joe tells Barry "Iris is gonna die", which finally snaps him out of his delirious state. A newly restored Barry races out of STAR Labs faster than he has ever gone before and saves Iris, finally himself again.
Iris: You came back to me.
Barry: Always.
Heterosexual Life-Partners:
- With Cisco. The two hit it off immediately as friends, functioning as each other's wingman and even briefly moved in together in Season 3. They're so close that Barry asked Cisco to be his best man for his wedding with Iris.
- With Oliver. Oliver was his first mentor and one of his inspirations for becoming a hero. While he isn't as close to Oliver as he is with Cisco, the rapport they share is strong enough that Barry is the only person that didn't know Oliver pre-island to call him "Ollie".
Hidden Depths: "Crazy For You" and "Duet" reveals that he's a damn good singer, probably enough to land him a career as one or even a Broadway star.
His Own Worst Enemy: Possibly the most critical component of Barry's story arc for the first three seasons. It's been repeatedly stated that Barry himself is his own worst enemy, not whoever the villain or whatever the disaster he faces. His own inability to cope with the tragedy in his life and move past all the trauma he's faced has caused him constant problems, culminating in the biggest mistake of his life: Flashpoint. As the result of this mistake, it becomes literal to even greater heights: the Season 3 Big Bad, Savitar, is a rogue time remnant as the result of a Stable Time Loop created from the ripple effect of Flashpoint. Savitar hates his past self so much that he's willing to recreate the very tragedy that defined his entire existence in order to ensure it: the premature death of Iris West, the love of Barry's life. To be willing to go so far to get back at someone who essentially is you, in all aspects, takes an unbelievable amount of internalized self-hatred.
Hope Bringer: To the people of Central City. When he fully reveals his existence to the whole city, he embraces this. This can be especially shown in "The Man Who Saved Central City".
Hopeless Suitor: Believed himself to be this to his best friend Iris West, whom he had been love with for years. He wasn't — Iris remained oblivious to not only his feelings, but also her own. Once he finally confessed and she started thinking about it, she refused to accept that she might love him that way as well, as she didn't want to acknowledge the possibility she was choosing the Wrong Guy First. Barry learning that he wasn't a Hopeless Suitor (via Time Travel) is what prompted him to break off his relationship with Linda Park.
Horrible Judge of Character: One reason why Barry grabs the Idiot Ball a lot is because he has a tendency of seeing people in the best light. Besides Thawne, he also thought that Snart is a man of his word despite a huge criminal record and he didn't realize that the Arrow has no qualms about torturing people even though he's followed up on news about the Arrow and knows that Oliver has an extensive body count.
Hyper-Awareness: His brain can work at Super-Speed, which allows him to perceive things more slowly than they really are. It automatically activates when he's running, though he can willingly use this ability outside of Super-Speed if he needs to.
Hypocrite Has a Point: When meeting Ralph, te states that one cannot destroy people's lives and call it noble. The frase is true, but Barry has done morally gray things in the past, like the false imprisonment of metahumans.
I Am the Noun: In the opening narration he refers himself as "The Impossible".
I Can't Dance: Barry tells Felicity that he really is not much of a dancer in his introductory episode in Arrow, but he appears to have been extremely modest in saying that, as he demonstrates skillful tap-dancing while stuck in a musical with Kara in "Duet," and he confidently leads Iris in a very graceful and romantic slow dance in "All Doll'd Up."
Iconic Sequel Character: Was only introduced during the second year of the Arrowverse but by the third year, he now has his own show which, near its Season Finale, is now wildly considered as a More Popular Spin Off. By the fourth year, he practically becomes the entire franchise's Series Mascot.
Idiot Ball: Grabs it occasionally when things are at their worst and can't see any better options
- In "Rogue Air" he made a deal with Captain Cold to transfer metahumans from the Pipeline to Oliver's prison on Lian Yu, naturally Cold double crosses him in the end.
- In "Flash Black", he outdoes himself by time traveling back to Season One to get Eobard Thawne's help to get faster. It actually works, but only after Barry majorly screws up and Thawne gives him what he wants just to get rid of him.
- Also in "Versus Zoom" where he actually manages to capture Zoom, but rather than knock him out immediately, he can't resist bragging about how smart his plan was. Naturally this gives Zoom time to escape.
I Let Gwen Stacy Die:
- The fact that he was unable to help either of his friends, Eddie or Ronnie, have him questioning whether or not he truly is The Hero Central City has made him out to be come the beginning of Season 2.
  - Adding to his hurt is that both men were the hiancée and husband of two of his best friends, Iris and Caitlin respectively, though neither of them blame him for what happened.
- Later applies during the weeks following his trip to Earth 2, where he was unable to save Earth 2's Joe and pretty much all of Earth 2 from Zoom and his minions after closing the breaches for good.
- Also applies to his mother and father; the former of whom he had to allow die in order to create a Stable Time Loop and the latter who was murdered right in front of him without him able to do anything do stop it. At the end of Season 2 he decides to undo Nora's murder after getting thoroughly broken by the Trauma Conga Line he experienced.
- He is very sad when DeVoe possesses Ralph's body, until it is shown Ralph was in DeVoe's mind and he regained control of his body with Barry's help.
In a Single Bound: By building up enough momentum, Barry can leap really high. He utilizes this in the first episode to save Joe and Eddie from falling debris.
In Prison with the Rogues: A short arc of several episodes during season 4 has Barry ending up imprisoned in Iron Heights after being framed for the murder of DeVoe; the same prison where all of the metahumans he catches are incarcerated. Since nobody knows he's the Flash, he is initially put in a regular cell. Then warden Wolfe discovers he is the Flash and has him locked in the metahuman wing with power dampeners, where he's celled up with the bus meta rogues he had been rounding up in that season. They, however, don't know yet that he's the Flash. After Barry learns that Wolfe is Evil All Along and plans to sell all the metas to Amunet, he uses his scientific skill to break him and all the other metas out before Amunet arrives. The metas eventually confront Wolfe and since they had reached an area outside of the Power Dampener's range, they're all ready to take revenge. So to save his own skin, Wolfe reveals to the metas that Barry Allen is the Flash and he was the one who locked them all up, to begin with, causing the metas to all turn on him. Barry is only saved by Becky Sharpe who had a Heel Realization and turns against the other bus metas using her luck manipulation. Unfortunately, the success is shortlived where DeVoe himself shows up and kills all of the bus metas by draining their powers, while taking Becky's body for himself.
Insult of Endearment: While Ralph initially called him "Rookie" as a belittling insult, it ends up becoming an affectionate nickname after they truly become friends.
Intangibility: He learns how to phase in "Tricksters", allowing him to pass through walls or bisect objects with his hand.
I Should Have Been Better: Fast as he is, he's not fast enough to save everyone so when somebody dies on his watch, he takes it hard.
Informed Ability: Barry is supposed to be very smart, but this is rarely shown since he hangs around so many geniuses. Doesn't help that he's impulsive and grabs the Idiot Ball regularly (especially when it comes to ill-conceived time travel attempts).
Irony: Ralph Dibny blames him for ruining his life. Per Word of God, Ralph was killed in the original timeline by the Particle Accelerator explosion and was subsequently revived by Flashpoint — meaning he owes Barry his life.
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
- Barry has loved Iris all his life, and all he ever truly wanted was for her to be happy. Even after learning that she loved him more than she did Eddie, and finding out they were Happily Married in both another timeline and in the future of the current one, he still allowed her to make her own choice to be with Eddie. Of course, Eddie and Iris simply weren't meant to be.
- Also his reasoning for letting Patty Spivot leave Central City to achieve her dream of being a CSI rather than revealing his secret to convince her to stay.
I Will Find You: Barry promises this to Iris in "Liberation," when he learns that Iris has been trapped in a Mirror Dimension, and despite the fact that she cannot see or hear him. She also makes the same promise to him on the other side of the mirror.
Barry: I'm gonna get you back.
It's Personal: Barry's relationship with his Arch-Enemies.
- Barry Allen and Eobard Thawne have been at war with each other over the course of several timelines, and their enmity is the most personal in all of the Arrowverse. Only Oliver's relationships with his respective Arch-Enemies come even close to the amount of hate Barry and Eobard have for each other. They would give almost anything to kill each other, but are unable to since their timelines are so heavily intertwined — killing one at the wrong moment would wipe out the other from existence and cause a paradox of massive proportions. This fact only makes them hate each other even more.
- Hunter Zolomon deliberately invoked this trope in Season 2 to make sure Barry got faster and faster for his own plans. By the end, it was so personal that Barry wanted to kill him with his bare hands (he let the time wraiths have Zolomon instead). Unlike his conflict with Eobard, the "personal" part is mainly confined to Barry's end. While Zolomon seems to resent Barry for suffering a similar childhood tragedy only to retain a somewhat stable home life with the Wests (unlike Zolomon, who was sent to an Orphanage of Fear), when it comes down to it, Zolomon messed with Barry For the Evulz rather than out of any desire to settle a personal grudge.
- Savitar claims this is the conflict between him and Barry, but other than trapping him in the Speed Force, there hasn't been much revealed about why that is. Turns out that Savitar is a time remnant of Barry and he needs Iris to die to ensure his own existence.
- DeVoe a.k.a. "The Thinker" outright admits to him that he is going to make Barry's and his one loved ones life a living hell, and due to his superior intellect, he has the ability.
Jack of All Stats: His superpowers aside, he can function as The Medic like Caitlin or a Gadgeteer Genius like Cisco, but still isn't as strong as either of them in their respective fields. Then Julian waltzes in and shows he's not even the best there is at his own field, forensic science.
Jerkass Ball: Barry is understandably pissed at Nora, for her correspondence with Eobard Thawne. What isn't understandable, even to his own wife, is him locking up his daughter in the pipeline without allowing her the chance to explain or defend herself. But even more so, Barry disowning Nora and abandoning her to the future, no matter what she did is despicable, especially considering he didn't include Iris in the decision, or even let her say goodbye to Nora.
Jerkass Has a Point: In his initial approach to Nora's affiliation to Thawne, he acted in an angry way. However, he still said some true statements:
- Iris was being hypocritical when accusing him of acting on emotions. She was rightfully upset for Barry's approach, but she was about to do to Barry what the latter did to Nora.
- Nora working with Thawne is a danger to everyone. It is revealed that Thawne actually used everyone to get rid of his Power Nullifier.
Jumped at the Call: Very eager to use his powers to help people.
Just Friends: He and Iris had been dancing around each other for years, and Iris remained oblivious to it until Barry confessed to her. Then everybody else started pointing out to her how intimate her "friendship" with Barry was.
Kirk Summation: The farther along Barry goes as a hero, the more he's able to win over villains with his words. Some include Cicada, Abra Kadabra, and Mirror Monarch.
The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Even after he develops his powers, he still thinks Oliver Queen's grappling arrow is cool and relies on him for support.
The Lab Rat: His day job at the Central City PD.
Late for School: Or perhaps Late For Absolutely Everything. At first, though he likely won't have to deal with that for too long. Even with Super-Speed he's still late to crime scenes, mainly because of other heroics.
The Leader: Co-leaders with his wife, though obviously the only leader when it comes to actual superheroics, and at his best is a mixture of all four types, especially after four years of being a superhero. Where Barry typically falls down is level-headedness, as he can be prone to doing things on his own or being impulsive. Luckily, Iris is usually there to push him in the right direction.
Leitmotif: He has a bit of a connection to the show-exclusive song Running Home To You. He sings it while proposing to Iris, and later asks Kara to sing it when he marries Iris in Crisis on Earth-X. In the third season finale, his time remnant Savitar pulls a brief Dark Reprise on it while describing his plans.
- He also has a theme proper, introduced in "The Fastest Man Alive," often used when he's being awesome.
Let's You and Him Fight: In Flash vs Arrow, Barry has been hit with the Hate Plague and they get into a fight. Ends in a draw, as the fight is interrupted before either can secure victory.
Lightning Bruiser: Puns aside, he's super fast and can hit hard through either throwing a lot of punches or his supersonic punch. When returning home from the Speed Force, he has almost literally become this, able to take Girder's hits and recover quickly.
The Lost Lenore: The Bad Future Barry locks himself inside STAR Labs, refusing to do his part to protect Central City, and spend the rest of his days pining and mourning Iris. Present Barry is quick to slap some sense into him, reminding him the promise they made to Iris.
Love Hurts: He's flat-out told by Oliver that it won't end well with Iris and at the end of Flash vs Arrow she never wants to see The Flash again, but she changes her mind after the Big Damn Heroes moment he pulls against Captain Cold and Heatwave.
Love Makes You Evil:
- Thankfully averted, while he openly struggles with making some very bad decisions like letting Plunder walk free and intentionally killing Grodd for selfish motives, in an attempt to alter the timeline and save Iris, she calls him out for his selfishness. More so she outright admits that she would rather die at Savitar's hands than let him sacrifice his values that make him Central City's hero.
Iris: Your humanity, showing mercy? That is what separates you from everyone else. That's the reason that everyone looks up to you. Don't compromise who you are. Ever. Losing what makes the Flash, the Flash... my life isn't worth it, if that's the cost to save me.
- He was possibly considering accepting to give Carver to Eva McCulloch in exchange for Iris. Nash decided to intervene before Barry could decide and was even more frightened when Harry states that the Barry he knows wouldn't have considered that deal. Nash brings up that Iris wouldn't have accepted that he traded another person's life to get her back.
Love Makes You Stupid: His feelings for Iris cause him to make some really stupid decisions that often come back to bite him in the bud.
- Best example of this is in "Rogue Time," when Barry tries to flirt with Iris (even though he should have known better than to do something like that in different circumstances and in a different time line) and she says he is "too late," and then later Eddie punches him for trying to steal Iris from him.
- He seems to have gotten better about it in "The Trap," when he learns that he and Iris get married in the future and he doesn't try to steal Iris from Eddie. In fact it's Iris who brings it up in conversation, and they both muse what their lives would be like if Thawne hadn't screwed with them.
- In Season 3, he proposes to Iris in an attempt to change the future where she's killed by Savitar — they weren't engaged in that future, and when she finds out she breaks it off.

M-R

MacGyvering: When left without his powers, Barry is still capable of using this to get out of tight situations.
- In "True Colors", needing to escape the metahuman prison wing, Barry takes a pair of batteries, bed springs, and a bottle of water. He electrolyses the water, creating hydrochloric acid, which he then uses to short out the lock of his prison cell.
Made of Iron: Barry flip-flops between this and Super-Toughness. At times he only receives minor injuries from what should be fatal attacks for normal humans, while at other times he doesn't even have a bruise after taking attacks that should have outright crippled or killed ordinary peole.
- An example for the former would when he was fighting Black Siren, who can level buildings with her scream. The villainess blasted him for with sonics measured over 250 decibels, which is several times over what is needed to kill an ordinary human, but came off with nothing more than busted eardrums and was able to almost completely recover in less than a minute. An example for the latter would be his fights with Grodd, like one instance when Grodd threw him through a brick wall without Barry suffering any injury.
Magical Defibrillator: When Cisco's heart momentarily stops after going into anaphylactic shock from bees stings, Barry uses the lightning he generates while he runs to restart Cisco's heart.
The Main Characters Do Everything: He seems to be the only forensic scientist the CCPD has. Averted in Season 3, where he gets a very rude and insufferable coworker.
Master-Apprentice Chain: He is mentored by Oliver Queen, Eobard Thawne, Hunter Zolomon, Harry Wells and Jay Garrick. He wpould later become a mentor for Jesse Quick, Wally West, Ralph Dibny and Nora West-Allen.
The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: He's learning this the hard way during his dates with Linda. Oliver Queen warns him as such in the first crossover.
Oliver: Guys like us don't get the girl.
- However, Iris becomes his partner, in every sense of the word, after learning about his true identity, and they get married during Crisis on Earth-X. Before the wedding, Barry tells Oliver that he was wrong about his mindset that superheroes couldn't get love.
Maybe Ever After: With Iris, according to Gideon, and the article from the future, and her doppelganger on Earth-2, she at one time may change her surname to West-Allen. In the episode Trajectory Iris even makes a casual mention of a possible wedding between her and Barry, showing he's not the only one open to the idea. As of the end of The Runaway Dinosaur the two have become the Official Couple.
The Medic: The biochemistry knowledge he obtained in his forensics background evidently carried over to this, and it allows him to save Oliver's life when he first finds out about his Secret Identity.
Memory Gambit: In "Cause and Effect", after discovering Savitar a time remnant of Barry, Cisco decides upon erasing Barry's memory until the time passes that Iris is in danger Though Cisco erases too much of his memory so that Barry can't even remember who he is, so the plan backfires and they end up restoring Barry's memory anyway.
The Mentor: Helped Jesse Quick, Wally West, Ralph Dibny and his own daughter Nora to master their powers. Oliver, Thawne, "Jay Garrick," the real Jay Garrick, and Harrison Wells were all this to him, though Thawne and Zolomon were Evil Mentors.
Messianic Archetype: The Chosen One of the Speed Force, a tragic past filled with doubters, gaining true friends, family and loved ones, was believed to be dead in a attempt to regain his powers, but came back to save the worlds.
Mirror Character: Of Eobard Thawne in that they both have a tendency to let negative emotions like wrath, hate, and anger dictate their conduct — this is seen in Season 3 with Barry's Bad Future self, Savitar and later in Season 5 when Barry essentially disowns Nora for having Thawne as her mentor — it doesn't matter to Barry that Nora just wanted to meet her dad, help catch a criminal he never could, and avert his disappearance on the Crisis on Infinite Earths. All that matters to Barry is that his daughter worked with the man who killed his mother and nothing else.
Misery Builds Character: Deconstructed; all the tragedies Barry face only make him weaker as they happen in such frequency that Barry has little time to process them: due to the traumatic circumstances of Nora's death it took a long time for Barry to finally accept her death, then Henry was murdered in same spot as Nora was, and barely a year after Henry's death, Savitar kills Iris which in a Bad Future was the last straw as it just broke Team Flash. When it's revealed that Savitar is a time remnant of Barry, it implies that all these events happening in such a quick succession facilitated his transformation into a Tragic Villain, desperate to ensure his own survival even if it meant forcing his past self to suffer the same tragedy of losing the love of his life. However, it's reconstructed as of "Finish Line", where Barry attempts to reform Savitar, chooses not to allow all the pain and suffering break him, and willingly sacrifices himself to the Speed Force to prevent it from collapsing, the implication being that you can always choose hope and belief over rage and grief.
Morality Pet: To Oliver Queen. One of many Oliver has.
Motor Mouth: It's hard to get him to stop once he starts talking.
Mr. Fanservice: While not as exploited as Oliver, Barry is a good looking man, and the show doesn't shy away from displaying the fact that Lightning gave him abs. Examples include...
- He doesn't have a shirt on much of the time whenever Star Labs is running tests on him.
- In "Plastique" he strips down to his boxers in an alley. Yeah, "The Flash" indeed.
- "Borrowing Problems From the Future" displays him and Iris in bed together, wearing nothing but his pajama bottoms.
- A deleted scene in "Don't Run" features the two rushing back to Central City from their honeymoon in Bali decked out in beach wear, with him in an open button-down shirt.
- To bookend the episode, "Harry And The Harrisons" Barry is in underwear before discussing with Iris about the exposé against DeVoe.
Murder by Inaction:
- Tragically, he has to let his mother die in the first season finale to keep the timeline he knows.
- It's invoked later on when he tells Zoom he "would have" done anything he could to save him, if he had simply asked instead of trying to trample the city.
- In Armageddon, he seriously considers letting Thawne suffer his last Ret-Gone, although he doesn't go through with it.
My Future Self and Me: Being a speedster capable of time traveling, this has happened on a few occasions.
- Back on the night of Nora Allen's murder, a young Barry sees his mom being surrounded by two speedsters, with one of those speedsters being a future Flash who proceeded to save young Barry's life from the Reverse-Flash.
- In "Fast Enough", Barry travels back to the night of his mother's murder, adding up to a total of three Barrys. There was Barry from the future, trying to save kid Barry from the past, and the present Barry trying to save his mom from being murdered by Reverse-Flash. However, Future Barry signals to present Barry not to intervene.
- In "Flashback", Barry travels back to a year ago during the episode "The Sound and the Fury", where he sedates his younger self and attempts to take his place to consult Eobard Thawne, however past Barry eventually awakens and returns, leading the two Barrys to have a very amusing interaction.
- In "The Race of His Life", Barry goes back to the night his mother died (again), only this time he does save his mother's life. Which now totals four Barrys, as the season 1 Barry from 2015 is there too, though he disappears from existence once season 2 Barry of 2016 changes history.
- In "The Present", Barry travels to the future by accident and witnesses Savitar killing Iris, while a Future Barry isn't fast enough to stop this from happening.
- In "The Once and Future Flash", Barry travels to the future and meets the Future Barry of 2024, who's a lot more grimmer than his younger self due to having to face the loss of Iris.
- In "I Know Who You Are", it's revealed Savitar is actually a time remnant of Barry Allen who has become corrupt and evil, which means the entire season Barry has been fighting a version of himself.
My God, What Have I Done?: He has this reaction, after seeing all of the ramifications he's caused to the timeline when he created Flashpoint.
My Greatest Failure:
- His trusting of Eobard Thawne, may also be a huge one, since he believed it is what lead to the deaths of Eddie, Ronnie and a lot of other people in Central City.
- In the same vein, his trusting of Hunter Zolomon, as this lead to the death of his father.
- In Season 2 he regrets not saving his mom back when he had the chance. He rectifies it at the end of the season. Which unfortunately leads to an even greater failure ....
- Flashpoint, every time he finds out another shift in the timeline that causes his friends pain, he is always willing to take the brunt of the blame.
- His Bad Future-Self's inability to save Iris.
- In Season 4, failing to save Ralph and letting him get his body stolen by DeVoe especially after Barry promised to keep him safe and talked Ralph out of killing DeVoe which is what led to his downfall.
- In Season 5 he abandoned his own daughter, and his measures put her in danger.
Nerd Action Hero: He'll geek out about science and zombie movies and then save your life with his powers.
Nerds Are Sexy: Considering that he is a scientist who is a combination of Lovable Nerd and Mr. Fanservice, Barry definitely qualifies as a very attractive nerd.
Never Gets Drunk: Thanks to fast metabolism, the most Barry can get is a slight buzz, and that's from drinking heavy, heavy alcohol. In "Girls Night Out", Cisco had to concoct an elixir to get him genuinely drunk.
Nice Guy: He's very friendly and empathetic, and he'll put his life on the line for strangers and friends alike, and is quite possibly, aside from Kara the nicest hero in the Arrowverse. But, as always, Beware the Nice Ones.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Has a terrible habit of being emotionally provoked, intentionally or otherwise, into causing potential extinction level events.
- In the season 1 finale, Eobard Thawne proposes a plan — using Cisco's Rip Hunter-esque time machine, Barry goes back in time and saves his mom and in turn Eobard returns to his own time, the entire story between them retconned from time. Barry agrees, travels back to the past, then backs out of saving Nora at the last minute when another future Barry warns him off, returns to the present and stops Thawne from going home. This leads to a fight in which Eobard has Barry on the ropes until Eddie shoots himself to erase Eobard's "current" existence. Thawne then disappears…and a black hole, a singularity forms over the city, from the resulting paradox. Barry tries to stop it with his speed but can only slow it down at best, so Ronnie has to sacrifice himself to close it completely by defusing Firestorm within the event's center. As Nice Jobs go, this is a particular crown jewel, and let's not get into how it lead to opening Earth-1 to an even more dangerous speedster and his minions, the events of Season 2.
- When Zoom murders Henry before his eyes right before the season 2 finale, Barry is angered and provoked into agreeing to a race with Zoom... which will generate enough energy into a stolen pulsar device to destroy every other universe. It takes the rest of the team figuring this out, holding him back, going through a failed alternate plan, and voicing their concerns for him to regain a sound enough mind to figure out how to actually beat Zoom and avert the disaster.
- Right after the above situation was cleared up, Barry is so thoroughly broken at this point that he goes back in time and follows through on saving his mom from Thawne. This AFTER it's been explained dozens of times (and demonstrated a few, for those who watch Legends of Tomorrow) how messing too far with time is a terrible idea, and AFTER the Speed Force outright told Barry that his mother's death and his becoming the Flash led to his saving countless innocents. Even those who didnt't know the comic book version of what happens when he does this figured out this wouldn't end well...
- So, how not well did things end? The West family and Team Flash are all screwed up. Joe is a drunk who's always hung over and late for work and on the verge of being fired. Cisco made a fortune off an invention, S.T.A.R. Labs is Ramon Industries now, and he has a new girlfriend/assistant…but he's incredibly pompous, pretends not to care about people, dislikes Wally and Iris, doesn't know Barry or Caitlin, and speaking of which, Caitlin doesn't work there, she's an eye doctor. Why does Cisco dislike Wally and Iris? Wally is Kid Flash, Iris is using her reporter connections to feed him info, and they came to Cisco for help building Wally's suit before but he doesn't want to get involved. Meanwhile, Barry using his speed also accelerates his assimilation into the new timeline, meaning every time he thinks of an old memory afterwards he ends up forgetting it and blanking out. He helps Wally take down The Rival (Edward Clariss) but Wally is near-mortally wounded in the process. All the while Eobard, from the speed-dampening cell Barry put him in, keeps taunting Barry about how he screwed up everything. Once Barry finally sees he didn't stop his loved ones' suffering, he agrees to let Thawne go back and kill Nora again in order to "fix" things. However…
- Because Barry was collapsing due to his memory blanks, Eobard got to be "the hero", meaning the Reverse-Flash now had free reign to make subtle changes, ensuring that Barry's misery just keeps on going even after the timeline was mostly restored. The end results were: Joe didn't tell Iris about Francine; she found out on her own and has been pissed at him for months. Cisco's brother Dante was killed in a car accident, he's still grieving over it, and he's mad at Barry's refusing to change the timeline to save Dante. John Diggle doesn't have his baby daughter Sara, he has a son, John Jr., instead, the same one who becomes Connor Hawke by 2046 according to the Legends' visit to the Star City of that hypothetical future — a post-apocalyptic gangland dystopia. Also, a strange masked man called Dr. Alchemy is finding the Flashpoint-exclusive metahumans (first one being The Rival) and experimenting on them to give them back their powers. This will affect Wally in the future, but since the others don't want to know about their Flashpoint lives he doesn't tell them this immediately. The resulting leftover skin husks are being investigated by a new partner of Barry's at CCPD who's frosty with him because can tell he's hiding something^note and therefore doesn't trust him. And speaking of frosty, Barry doesn't learn about this for awhile, Caitlin is becoming Killer Frost. He also wanted to go back in time and "fix" these things too, but was intercepted by Jay Garrick, his dad's doppelganger, who had to teach him from experience about moving forward responsibly instead of constantly trying for do-overs and just making everything worse. And then Season 2 of Legends of Tomorrow shows even more horrible consequences: because a time remnant of Thawne was spawned in this new timeline, he formed an alliance with Damien Darhk and proceeded to nuke Manhattan in 1942, extending World War II by a couple of years and millions of casualties. The Legends had to go back to that time period to prevent it from happening despite the warnings of Hourman, the results of which caused Rip Hunter to go missing and nearly killed the rest of the Legends. Not to mention that Darhk and Thawne are just half of a Legion of Doom with Malcolm Merlyn and a version of Leonard Snart who never became a hero. Then it turns out later his time travel mess-ups also resulted in a calamity on another planet whose victims considered it an act of war and responded with an ALIEN INVASION OF EARTH. When Barry Allen makes a mistake, he goes big.
- There's the matter of the Season 3 Big Bad Savitar, who's actually a time remnant of Barry who exists because of a Stable Time Loop ... that only came to be because Barry's time meddling created a "ripple" that allowed it to come into existence.
- Banishing and disowning his daughter Nora not only does make her closer to Thawne, but also motivates her to use the Negative Speed Force.
No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: His battle with Oliver during the very first Crossover, a Brainwashed and Crazy Barry lays one on Oliver through a flurry of punches.
Noodle Incident: There was one time as a kid where he tried out for his school's football team. He and Joe have agreed never to speak of it. He also implies during "Duet" that he met Superman at one point.
Not Me This Time: In Elseworlds (2018), the other heroes find out that the reality-bending shenanigans they're dealing with this time have nothing to do with Barry.
Oliver: [after waking up in Barry's house with Iris] Oh, Barry, what have you done this time??
Not So Similar: From Eobard Thawne. Despite their many similarities there are some key differences, Eobard is a fatalist while Barry is a firm believer in that you can Screw Destiny.
Now or Never Kiss: Knowing that what he is about to do, (actually stop Thawne from killing his Mom), the entire time line will change, and the next time he sees her, things will be radically different between the two, he seizes the opportunity to finally share a real kiss with Iris, and let her know how much he loves her one last time, before he leaves. Later shares this with Flashpoint Iris, knowing that allowing Eobard to fix the timeline will result in her being Ret-Gone'd, he shares one with her before leaving Flashpoint behind.
Odd Friendship: With Oliver Queen, AKA The Arrow. They're not far apart in age (Oliver is about 4 years older), but Oliver's age and experiences make him the older, gruff, almost unwilling mentor to Barry's eager kid. In their first crossover (not the backdoor pilot), they both feel out of place in one another's series, as Oliver is the brutal cowl and Barry the idealistic cape. They're the DC Television Universe equivalent of Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent.
Official Couple: With Iris West starting The Flash Season 3. They clearly love and support each other and are essentially the Arrowverse's flagship super-couple.
Oh, Crap!: When he travels back in time to the previous night in "Out of Time", he is visually perplexed and frightened. Same with "Flashpoint", the aftermath of "Flashpoint", et al.
Older Than They Look: Earning him the nickname "Babyface". He's 25 at the start of the series.
Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Barry seems to be the only crime scene/forensics tech CCPD has. In "The Man in the Yellow Suit" he mentions that he had a double major in physics and chemistry in college.
Once Done, Never Forgotten: For creating "Flashpoint", which is the albatross hanging over his head when it comes to speedster-inflicted changes to the timeline, prompting him to only use time travel as a last resort from then on.
One Head Taller: At 6'2", he towers over Iris, 5'4", his primary love interest.
One-Man Army:
- In the Arrow Season 3 finale, he's able to take out the League of Assassins like they were nothing.
- He was able to defeat dozens of Zoom's metahuman army during the penultimate episode of his show's second season.
One-Steve Limit: Averted, as the Dark Flash alias already got used by Eobard Thawne while he was a member of the New Reich on Earth-X. Played straight with a young Barack Obama during an episode of Legends of Tomorrow.
One True Love: Iris West. They were married in the original timeline, their Earth-2 counterparts are also married, and Flashpoint Iris fell for Barry almost immediately. While Barry is capable of feeling genuine attraction to other women and can feel strongly for someone else, in the end, Iris is the love of his life. He can't bear the idea of living without her, be it as a friend or lover. Other relationships he attempted prior do not work due to this, and not even alternate timelines or universes or a memory loss can change his love for Iris.
Barry: You've always been there as a friend, as a partner, as the love of my life. You're my home, Iris. And that is one thing that will never change.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- To characterize how much despair Henry's death has caused him and how much he has come to hate Hunter Zolomon, Barry outright admits to Joe that he doesn't want to just kill Zoom — he wants to make him suffer. Considering that Barry is usually merciful and only resorts to killing as a last resort, this was enough to alarm the rest of the team into locking him up in the Pipeline until Barry calmed down.
- Barry is nominally a Nice Guy who's willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Thus, his belligerence when Ralph Dibny comes up is surprising to everyone except Joe (who is the only one on the Team to know their history). He is so naked in his hatred of the guy that it's extremely off-putting to Iris and Caitlin, who are disturbed at how easily Barry grabs the Jerkass Ball when Ralph is in the picture.
- In Season 6, he is so worried about Iris that he seems considering trading Joseph Carver's life to get Iris when Mirror-Singh offers such deal. Nash Wells decides to teleoper the Team and Carver to S.T.A.R. Labs and rebukes Barry for not rejecting the deal right away. Normally he wouldn't consider such deals, but he is afraid of losing Iris that he seemingly does this time.
Open Secret: His Secret Identity borders on this as the series goes on. One character (who runs a company that competes with Star Labs) casually reveals that she knows Barry is The Flash, and when he asks how the response is "I'm not stupid". Even Cat Grant was quick to pick up on it after meeting him only once, as she described him and the Flash appearing and disappearing in National City at the same time as too coincidental, and him being so sickeningly nice "he was either a superhero or a Mormon." It doesn't help that Barry is pretty casual about revealing his identity to people anyway, often for reasons as trivial as boosting their morale.
Our Hero Is Dead: The Flash got infected by Bloodwork early in Season 6 and became his servant. It doesn't stick though.
Papa Wolf: Attack his daughter and he will make you hurt. Cicada temporally paralyzing Nora is the closest that Barry has ever come to murdering someone in cold blood. Had Nora not rushed in and stopped him, he probably would have beaten the man to death. When Thawne was revealed to have knowingly sent Nora to a certain death for his own agenda, he corners him against a wall.
Parental Abandonment: Barry's mom was murdered when he was eleven, and his father was convicted for the murder.
Patient Childhood Love Interest: Barry has been in love with Iris West all his life, and waited years for her to notice his feelings and — hopefully — return them. It's actually implied that this would've happened and/or Barry would've taken the initiative to finally confess to Iris during the pilot had he not gone into a coma when he did.
Phrase Catcher: Barry's been told some version of Run, Barry Run so much times that it borders on By the Power of Grayskull!.
Platonic Life-Partners:
- Barry has this relationship with Caitlin; despite being close friends, both have other love interests and have no romantic feelings for each other. Aside from a few occasional Ship Tease moments, they never show any intention of wanting to get together. May not be the case as of season 3 onwards, as Caitlin shows a lot of resentment for Flashpoint turning her into Killer Frost, and when Killer Frost takes over completely, Barry soon learns that she joins Savitar. Needless to say, siding with the speedster that's trying to murder his fiancee probably won't do wonders for their relationship. Then it turned out Savitar was an evil future version of Barry, meaning even as Killer Frost Caitlin still trusted him, fully cementing them as this trope.
- Barry also has this with Kara and Felicity.
- Iris thought they were this, as Just Friends. She started deliberately ignoring her feelings when it was becoming increasingly obvious (to her; it's outright stated everyone around them knew what was going on for years) that their relationship was not platonic — on either end.
Play-Along Prisoner: When falsely accused by DeVoe of murdering him, Barry accepts being imprisoned in Iron Heights outside of the metahuman wing.
Pop-Cultured Badass:
- The fastest man alive likes "Pokerface" by Lady Gaga. He's got a blog according to Eddie and a Facebook account according to Cisco.
- He also has a zombie movie scale and even rates one film at a 4.
  Iris: There's a zombie movie scale?
Positive Friend Influence: Due to being an All-Loving Hero who sees the best on people and an inspiring figure, he has made Leonard Snart, Harry Wells and Ralph Dibny regain their inner goodness and become better people.
Power Incontinence: He has great deal of control over his abilities... except his ability to travel through time. While his future self is implied to be able to time travel at will, present day Barry can't. It takes a disaster like Weather Wizard's tidal wave to push into a state of emotional distress so he can go fast enough to do it, and even then he really has no control when he'll go back and it's less like he's going back in time and more like he's rewinding time. The only time in Season 1 he exhibits more precise control when he went back to save his mom, and that was due to the controlled environment of the the Particle Accelerator and Thawne's coaching.
- However, Barry becomes better with practice, to the point where he can visit multiple stops in the past with accuracy almost to the second.
The Power of Friendship: The STAR Labs gang realizes that his devotion to his loved ones are what give him greater strength.
The Power of Love: Barry and Iris's love for each other quite literally saves the world on numerous occasions.
- In "Mother," Barry has just destroyed the Artificial Speedforce and is without his speed, while Iris is in a trance-like coma, due to being pulled out from the Mirrorverse against her will. When Barry is sitting at Iris's bedside, a jolt of electricity passes through Barry and Iris's fingers, and Barry realizes that the speedforce lives on in Iris. Thus, Iris, as an organic source of the speedforce, is able to give Barry back his speed and cause a rebirth of the speedforce, which in turn also brings her back from her trance-like state.
Power Trio:
- With Cisco and Caitlin, the three core founding members of Team Flash who have been present in every incarnation of the team.
- With Oliver and Kara, the Arrowverse Trinity, being the Speed, Smarts and Strength variety with Barry serving as Speed given he’s the resident speedster.
Pretty Boy: In comparison to Oliver's more rugged, masculine Hunk aesthetic, Barry, while just as cut and handsome, is much leaner and has softer features.
Properly Paranoid:
- His gut instinct on meeting Jay Garrick was to throw him in the Pipeline. Turns out he was right, when "Jay" turns out to be "Hunter" who happens to be Zoom.
- He often worries about his loved ones' safety, since his various enemies have no qualms kidnapping or killing them.
- After everything he's been through, no one can argue him immediately locking up Julian after learning he was "Alchemy" wasn't a natural precaution, even if Julian was unawares of his alter-ego.
- He crosses the line multiple times, but his suspicion of the seemingly ordinary and nice DeVoes proves completely warranted.
- In Season 5, his anger about Nora working with Thawne turned out be justified; Nora didn't have any malevolent intentions, but Thawne was manipulating Nora for the sole purpose of wriggling out of his scheduled execution at Iron Heights.
Rank Up: Averted in the first five episodes of Season 3 in his day job as a CSI tech after he fixes the timeline; were despite his experience and intelligence he's been demoted to junior lab tech by his new coworker Julian, who's in charge of investigating all metahuman crimes and forces Barry to do all of the mundane paperwork while he does all the lab tests. Eventually he and Julian become friends and they act as equal partners.
Reality Warping Is Not a Toy: Learns this in regards to time travel. When Barry travels to the past, he always has good intentions but in acting on those good intentions he unintentionally creates a butterfly effect that brings massive changes to his timeline. These consequences include an alternate timeline where almost everything is different from his original timeline, turning John and Lyla's daughter into a son, Cisco's older brother getting killed, and Thawne gaining the idea on how to escape his power dampeners.
Rebuilt Pedestal:
- In Invasion the heroes respect him again when he is willing to sacrifice his life to get the Dominators away.
- For Nora, after he and Nora reconcile, when he, Iris, and Joe save Nora from herself and her new villainous friends-turned-foes, post his drastic decision to leave her in the future after discovering her betrayal, namely that she was working with Thawne.
The Redeemer: A central theme of the series is Barry's near-infinite optimism allowing him to help others see the error of their ways. The more experience he has, the more it succeeds.
Red Baron: Appropriately, the "Scarlet Speedster/Knight". Also, the "Fastest Man Alive". "The Man Who Saved Central City" is also frequently used in Season 2.
Red Is Heroic: Barry's entire Flash costume is red.
Red Ones Go Faster: If the color of his costume is not obvious enough. It's actually downplayed a lot, with several other speedsters with different color outfits (Reverse-Flash and Wally - yellow, Zoom - black, Savitar - silver), all being faster than him at some point.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: He's considerably more energetic and outgoing than the serious, brooding Oliver.
Related Differently in the Adaptation: In this version, he was adopted into the West family after his mom's death and his dad's falsely-charged imprisonment rather than having Iris's family as merely in-laws once they get married. Because of the use of this trope with Wally West, Wally is now Barry's brother-in-law rather than nephew.
Relative Button: Mess with Iris as Girder learned, or either one of his Dads as Weather Wizard and the Trickster found out respectively, and you will be sorry. As the Papa Wolf example shows, he is also very protective of Nora.
Reluctant Retiree: At the end of "Finish Line" he's forced to give up being the Flash, because without an occupant in Savitar's Speed Force Prison, the Speed Force will collapse on itself. Barry takes it in stride though, as he's see it as necessary to atone for Flashpoint.
Required Secondary Powers: The Speed Force provides all the other essential powers required for Super-Speed to function, notably Super-Toughness to keep him from burning up from air friction and Super-Reflexes so he can react in accordance with moving at such high speeds.
Ripple-Proof Memory: He's able to remember how time was before he changed it.
Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After Zoom kills his father (in the spot where the Reverse-Flash murdered his mother no less), Barry straight up loses it and beats the shit out of his time remnant. The rest of the episode has him transitioning between this and Tranquil Fury, to the point that the team locks him up in the Pipeline for a time because they believe his anger would do more harm than good.
Rookie Red Ranger: Even has the red costume to boot! Barry becomes this when he's put in charge of leading the various heroes against the Dominators at Oliver's behest. Despite being the most powerful one in their group after Supergirl, Barry has some obvious problems with being The Leader, relying on Oliver to spell out his Rousing Speech for him.
Barry: Cool, all right, well, I guess as Team Leader, first thing to do is start out by...
Oliver: Doing a test run.
Barry: Let's do a test run. Yeah, let's do a test run.
Oliver: Against Supergirl.
Barry: Against Supergirl, all right? Test run against Supergirl.
Sara: Are we just supposed to pretend like we don't hear him?
The Runaway: After his dad was convicted, and he was given to Joe he would often run away to try see his dad.

S-Z

Sad Clown: According to a comment from executive producer Greg Berlanti.
Berlanti: Barry lost his mother at a very young age, his father was sent to prison for murdering his mom, he went through a lot of stuff - on the surface he's bubbly and upbeat and seems like an optimist, but deep down maybe there's no hope left.
Sanity Slippage: After his time spent in the Speed Force, the Barry that came out in "The Flash Reborn" appeared to be delusional, spouting nonsensical strings of sentences while drawing symbols on the wall.
Science Hero: Barry works in a science lab and he saves innocent people on the side using his science know how. Best shown in his debut episodes on Arrow and in his time on Earth-38 with Supergirl without his support team. He just prefers to be collaborative with his heroics.
Second Love: He is Iris' second romantic partner after Eddie kills himself to stop Thawne, although both loved each other since much earlier.
Secret Identity: According to Grant Gustin, Barry will try to keep his activities as the Flash secret from certain people but most of the people in his social circle will know the truth.
- By the end of the 1st season, his identity barely qualifies as "secret", as literally every main character on the show, several villains, and at least four characters from Arrow all know who he is.
- Gets even worse in Season 2 with Wally, Jax, two ex-girlfriends (one of whom Barry revealed his identity to just to give her a morale boost), the Big Bad (who discovered his identity before they even met), the head of a rival science lab (who thought his secret identity was so obvious she didn't bother explaining how she knew), and a former villain who got retconned into an ally due to time-travel all knowing who Barry is. It's starting to border on Everybody Knew Already.
Secret-Keeper: Mutually with Oliver Queen/The (Green) Arrow. This extends outside their superhero schtick, as he's the first person Oliver tells that he fathered a child out of wedlock about a decade prior. Felicity found out too, but Barry's Time Travel negated her finding out about it and postponed it to a later time.
Seeker Archetype: Was this to some extent before he got his powers — seeking answers about "the impossible" to prove his father was innocent of his mother's murder.
Self-Deprecation: Mocks the name "Leonard", saying it's nearly as bad as "Bartholomew", which is his given name.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: His future incarnation went back in time to save his mother's life from the Reverse-Flash, yet this action created the skirmish that ended with Reverse-Flash killing her. Even so, this is probably a good thing — the one Reverse-Flash was trying to kill was Barry himself as a little boy.
Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Every time he and Oliver are together, he's usually depicted as the sensitive one.
Series Mascot: He is widely considered as the face of the Arrowverse (despite the name).
Sherlock Scan: Particularly evident in the early episodes, especially the pilot before he became the Flash. As Barry looks over the crime scene, the clues he spot are accompanied by visual text to show Barry's observations (much like how the Trope Namer does so). He was able to discern exactly what type of car the Mardon brothers used in their getaway from a robbery from analyzing a tire track, and figure out a vague location from a piece of excrement mixed with the track; all within a minute and without the use of any equipment. In later episodes Barry occasionally uses his forensic skills to do deductions but those instances were rare.
Shipper on Deck:
- Barry encourages Kara to go after James Olsen after meeting them for the first time.
- He notices the budding interest between his father and Dr. McGee. Unfortunately, Zoom puts a stop to it from becoming anything more.
- He's enthusiastic to see Joe's budding interest in DA Cecile.
- Before going to the Speed Force in Season 3, he encourages Cisco to be with Gypsy.
Ship Tease: With Felicity Smoak in Arrow. Also a few times with Caitlin. Both ships are sunk once Caitlin gets married and Felicity ends up with Oliver. More recently a brief one with Kara Danvers, though it goes nowhere due to her being on another Earth and it is made clear it's Iris who Barry loves.
Shock and Awe: He can shoot lightning starting Season 2 after Hunter Zolomon (under his "Jay Garrick" guise) teaches him.
Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Ralph Dibny. Ralph is one of the few people Barry has no issue being hostile to right off the bat, and throughout Ralph's debut episode their grudge against one another is blatant enough that even Iris was left aghast at how belligerent Barry was being (though Ralph wasn't acting any better). The source of their rivalry was That One Case: about year or so before the start of the series, Ralph was a detective for the CCPD and Barry had just joined the force as a brilliant rookie CSI — they ended up working together on a particular case that was remarkably similar to Nora Allen's murder: a woman was stabbed to death, and her husband was the primary suspect. However, there was no evidence to tie him to the crime. So, Ralph, sincerely convinced the guy was guilty, planted a knife with the victim's blood and the suspect's fingerprints to get him convicted. While he was being lauded as a hero, Barry, off-put by the similarities to his mother's case and suspicious of how suddenly such damning evidence turned up unexpectedly, tested the knife, found that the serrations didn't match the wounds on the victim, and busted Ralph, getting him fired. Years later, they still hate one another, their animosity only increasing once Ralph learns how successful Barry has become in the interim. Even after coming to an understanding, they make no secret of the fact that they still dislike each other. Unlike the personal, downright visceral hatred Barry has for his Arch-Enemies above however, the mutual loathing Barry and Ralph have for each other is Played for Laughs. And as the season goes on, it slowly vanishes completely, with the two becoming genuine friends.
Smug Super: Rare is the episode when he doesn't stop to get off a pithy quip before arresting the villain of the week. He also occasionally shows it in other ways.
(Regarding the salmon ladder) Honestly, I don't know what's so hard about this.
Socially Awkward Hero: He has trouble relating to other people.
Spear Counterpart: To Felicity Smoak. Both are Endearingly Dorky, have a tendency to babble, and are brilliant in their respective scientific fields.
Spiky Hair: It's like it's always in clay dough.
Stepping Stones in the Sky: Does this in the Season 1 finale, jumping on debris to enter and unravel the singularity.
Story-Breaker Power: Every time he crosses over to Arrow since becoming the Flash, he has a tendency to fix problems that Team Arrow are dealing with in an instant. Even in his series he has begun to show shades of this, since he has become incredibly fast and can even stop time.
Strong as They Need to Be: Barry has shown incredible feats in speed, including being so fast that he was able to punch a hole in time. He was even fast enough to take Weather Wizard from his hideout all the way to STAR Labs before the latter even knew what happened. Yet he will still somehow not be fast enough to take out the any other Villain of the Week in a similar manner, even when they have far less dangerous abilities, if for no other reason than that it would be very boring to the viewers.
Strong Family Resemblance: His adult self is stated to look almost exactly like his grandfather did as described by Nora Allen when Barry time travels into the past.
Superhero Origin: His is told in the Arrow episodes "The Scientist" and "Three Ghosts", and is expanded upon in the pilot episode.
Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Star(ling) City is full of ordinary criminals with no superpowers, with the occasional metahuman (which still pale in comparison to the ones running rampant in Central City). If Barry lived in Star City his Super-Speed could probably allow him to clean up a season's worth of Oliver's problems in a few minutes. The few times he has come to visit Oliver, he usually makes his presence known by effortlessly rescuing Team Arrow from the bad guy they're struggling against. The only reason Barry isn't always around is he's usually preoccupied with dealing with more dangerous metahumans over in Central City that are well above what Team Arrow goes up against (and because Arrow would be a pretty boring show, otherwise).
- Similarly with Supergirl: Kara could definitely use another experienced hero with super speed from time to time, but despite Cisco creating a communications device that can reach Earth-1, she never calls him in (though a throwaway line in Crisis on Infinite Earths implies that they've teamed up more often on Earth-Prime).
Supernaturally Young Parent: Thanks to his future daughter Nora travelling back in time. She's old enough to look like she's the same generation as her father.
Superpower Lottery: Easily the Arrowverse's most powerful superhero of Earth-1. His Super-Speed gives him a variety of applications and often serves as a Story-Breaker Power. The only heroes able to match up to him are Supergirl, Superman, and J'onn from Earth-38 (and it's hinted that when he really gets going, he can outpace any of them).
Super-Speed: His primary ability is to move at high speed.
Super-Speed Reading: Uses it to help Caitlin look for clues on the "F. I. R. E. S. T. O. R. M." project.
Swapped Roles:
- In Crisis On Earth-X Part 1, it's Barry's turn to give Oliver advice on the life of a superhero, telling Oliver he deserves to have a happy ending by marrying the girl he loves. Oliver even lampshades this.
Oliver: I'm supposed to be the all-knowing mentor.
- In "Run, Iris, Run", when Barry and Iris accidentally swap powers, it's Iris' turn to be the speedster out in the field, while Barry serves as Mission Control who guides her through her every action.
Swiss-Army Superpower: His Super-Speed isn't just for running. Over the course of his show, he learns how to phase through solid objects, create vortexes, propel gusts of wind, throw lightning, conjure swords, turn his hands into vibroweapons, Time Travel, make "time remnant" clones of himself and even stop time.
Talking Is a Free Action: Denied. He frequently takes the time to talk to his opponents when he has them down but not beaten…and almost just as frequently gets made to pay for it.
Tall, Dark, and Handsome: He stands 6'2, has a brown hair and has been constantly shown as attractive.
Team Dad: Because he created them, the Forces sometimes refer to Barry as father.
Thou Shalt Not Kill:
- He prefers saving lives to taking them. It doesn't matter if a person is some innocent bystander or the Villain of the Week; he'll try to save them.
- However this is averted in Season 2 with the Earth-2 Metahumans — specifically Atom Smasher and Sand Demon. However this is a special case: because a) they're far more dangerous than Earth-1 metahumans, b) they each have an Earth-1 doppleganger so they can't send them to Iron Heights without raising awkward questions, nor can they send them back to Earth-2, c) killing Sand Demon was an accident on Barry's part. Most metahumans were sent to Iron Heights anyway and Singh learns about the existence of Earth-2.
- Subverted several times later on in the series, where Barry is fully intent on killing a particularly heinous villain including Zoom, Grodd, and Savitar. In every case he either can't go through with it or some other factor takes care of the villain for him at the last minute.
- In "Crisis on Earth-X" he has the chance to kill Thawne but passes it up because of the Timey-Wimey Ball nature of Thawne's life; merely telling his arch-nemesis to Get Out!.
Time Stands Still: He has access to "Flashtime", a skill that allows him to stop time but allows him to put someone he wants into that time to assist him.
Token Super: Subverted from the very beginning. Barry Allen was apparently the only superpowered character for Team Flash early in the series, so Barry was out in the field to fight against the villains, while everyone else served as Mission Control. However, "Harrison Wells"/Eobard Thawne is a weakened speedster who hid his power, Cisco is revealed to have been affected by the Particle Accelerator and Caitlin Snow turned out to obtain Killer Frost in her childhood. It is later more explicitly averted when the already powered members use their powers clearly and powered characters have joined the team.
Took a Level in Badass:
- Does this during his fight with Clyde Mardon.
- Runs across the surface of the bay in order to carry Plastique's body far enough away from Central City so it doesn't destroy the city when it explodes.
Caitlin: You just walked on water. Puts you in some pretty interesting company!
- Goes even further after losing his powers to Blackout and regaining them to new heights. Before then, he had to make a massive running start to break the sound barrier. Afterwards, he is able to Flash Step to avoid lightning. Even Caitlin notes that his cells are generating more energy than they were before.
- In "Out Of Time", he needs to protect the city from a tidal wave headed its way. The solution, according to Caitlin? Run back and forth on the beach to generate a second tidal wave in the opposite direction to cancel the first one out. However, this requires going faster than he's ever had to before, to the point where he unintentionally goes back in time. Barry can now travel back in time.
- In "Tricksters", Thawne vocally instructs him how to vibrate his body in order to phase through solid matter, a technique that Thawne himself had already demonstrated in the previous two episodes. Then at the end of the episode his Awesomeness by Analysis kicks in and he remembers the aforementioned detail.
- His fight and victory against Eobard/Reverse-Flash in "Reverse-Flash Returns" is definitely one, after spending pretty much all of Season 1 being pummeled by him.
  - Though this is somewhat justified since not only is Barry more experienced than he was in season 1, but Eobard Thawne is less experienced, due to this version being from an earlier point in Eobard's life. From Eobard's perspective, he's actually the one who takes a level in badass and defeats the Flash.
- By season 3, Barry has reached Quicksilver levels of speed, and is capable of redirecting bullets from multiple gun shots, midflight.
- His return in Season Four gives him his biggest speed boost to date, where he truly becomes the Fastest Man Alive, faster than any speedster ever to appear. Caitlin theorizes that during his time in the Speed Force he absorbed a lot of speed.
- "Enter Flashtime" has him spend almost the entire episode in Bullet Time, and bring others into it as well.
- By Season 8, especially with its emphasis on "leveling up", he's fast enough to rescue everyone from a derailing train in seconds, and be back to Central City before his coffee's even gotten cold. During this time, he's gotten much better at fighting superpowered enemies like Despero and the Royal Flush Gang, taking much less hits in fights and being able to defeat foes on his own much more. The only supervillain he couldn't take down himself during this season was Deathstorm and that was justified due to being more of Caitlin and Killer Frost's personal enemy.
Took a Level in Cynic: In general, Barry has become less cheerful and dorky after Season 1 due to the many traumatic experiences he has had.
Took a Level in Jerkass:
- Briefly in Season Two, as he's still dealing with the fallout of Season One. He goes back to his cheery self soon enough though...mostly, since some damage is still there. Iris pushes him to trust in people, but most of all, in himself, once again.
  Iris: It's because he [Jay] reminds you of Harrison Wells.
  Barry: I trusted that man for months. We all did. And you know what? Eddie is dead. Ronnie is dead. And a whole lot of people in this city are dead, because we trusted him. I'm not going to let us make that mistake again.
  Iris: Barry, not everyone is Harrison Wells. And besides, you defeated him, because you trusted in people. Because you believed in them. This team that you have here? They will follow your lead; they'll do what you say. But if they think that you don't believe in them, it won't be long before they don't believe in you.
- In "Godspeed," Barry makes the drastic decision to return Nora to the future with a half-hearted goodbye, telling her that he doesn't trust her at all, after learning she was working with Thawne. He doesn't inform Iris of this, leaving her understandably devastated and infuriated.
  Iris: I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye!
Tornado Move: He can produce cyclones using his arms. He learned it from Eobard Thawne under his "Harrison Wells" guise.
Trainstopping: In "Untouchable", Clive Yorkin uses his powers to destroy an overpass and drop rubble onto a track in the path of an oncoming train. To keep the passengers safe, Barry grabs firmly onto the train and vibrates so fast it causes the train to phase through the rubble safely.
Trapped in Another World: He finds himself stranded on Supergirl's Earth for a few days after accidentally running fast enough to break the dimensional barrier. Fortunately, he comes back to Earth One almost immediately after leaving.
Tragic Time Traveler: It'd be easier to count the ways that Barry traveling through time, intentionally or otherwise, hasn't caused him and his loved ones to go through significant baggage.
Trauma Conga Line: Poor Barry has suffered quite a lot in order to become The Flash. First his mother was murdered and his father was wrongfully accused of her murder. Then he finds out that his mentor was in fact his Archenemy and the one responsible for his mother's murder. He is given a clear chance to save her life but ultimately has to let her die in order to create a Stable Time Loop. At the start of Season 2 he begins working alone after his guilt over Ronnie and Eddie's deaths. Then he finds out that Zoom was in fact "Jay Garrick" in disguise who proceeds to steal Barry's speed and then later on murder his father. And at the end of the season he finds out that the Man in the Mask is in fact the real Jay Garrick, the Earth-3 Doppelganger of his father, which finally breaks him completely. By the end of the season he's so broken and riddled with despair that he decides to undo his mother's death just so he can have a modicum of peace.
- Even come season 4 after having eveything he ever wanted, he admits to Iris he is so focused on stopping DeVoe, because he fears he too will take something or possibly everything away from him.
True Companions: He and Kara. When she needs help with Livewire and Banshee, he assists her, even though he has nothing to do with her Earth. Likewise when Barry breaches into her living room, and informs her he needs her help on Earth-1, Kara, without knowing any of the details, doesn't flinch in dropping everything and accompanying him back to his Earth.
Twinkle in the Eye: It is quickly becoming a trademark that whenever the Flash is about to do something utterly ridiculous, awesome, or both with his speed, lightning bolts are seen sparking in his eyes.
Two First Names: Being a DC Comics based character, he has a last name that is traditionally used as a first name.
Unfortunate Names: Needs to have it pointed out by Cat Grant that his alias makes it "sounds like someone whose only superpower is jumping out of an alley in a trench coat." When Barry later introduces himself to Lucy Lane, he noticeably does not identify himself as "The Flash."
Uniqueness Decay: Originally the very first speedster of his world (or at least the first one known to the public), but it didn't take long until a whole lot more appeared. His claim of being 'the fastest man alive' also usually only holds water for a short period of time, though he eventually comes out on top.
Unlucky Childhood Friend:
- Other than his father being framed, being this is his personal dilemma. He seems to be working this out as of episode 12.
- Averted by The Runaway Dinosaur as he and Iris finally decide to get together. "Flashpoint" retcons it to a later moment.
Unresolved Sexual Tension:
- With Iris West, for most of their lives up until the end of Season Two. Barry was in love with Iris for years, and constantly missed the signs that she felt the same way, at least subconsciously.
- He also had some with Patty Spivot at the beginning of Season Two that was resolved within a few episodes.
Unskilled, but Strong: Barry has his super speed, but he doesn't have a lot tactical or martial arts training. This tends to let him get hit by surprise attacks a lot. This gradually gets averted over time, given that Oliver has been training him.
Vitriolic Best Buds: He and Ralph may still snark at each other, but the two have come to a point where they have finally buried the hatchet.
Wall Run: His Super-Speed allows him to run up an inclined plane like the walls of buildings. By season 2 he's become very proficient at this and can run along the side of skyscrapers with ease.
Weak to Magic: In the season 1 crossover with Arrow, Barry assumes his metahuman ability makes him immune to Roy Bivolo's anger inducing powers. In reality, it actually makes him more susceptible. The whammy interacts with Barry's enhanced biology and makes him dangerously angry and violent and very difficult for his non-powered team and allies to deal with.
Weirdness Magnet: Well, not so much a "magnet" since he readily goes looking for the weirdness. To be fair, he never thought he'd actually become the weirdness in the process.
"Well Done, Son" Guy: Given that he has three father figures (in the first season, Joe West, Henry Allen, Eobard Thawne), he gets a lot of this. However, it's also frequently inverted, with Barry telling Joe and Henry how much they mean to him, especially Joe.
What the Hell, Hero?: Delivers this to Thawne, calling him out on his Manipulative Bastard tendencies and general selfishness.
Wild Card Excuse: Caitlin Snow comes up with "Lightning Psychosis" as a way of explaining all his strange behavior.
Willfully Weak: It's indicated several times that he holds himself back due to combination of self-doubt and the bad memories of his mother's death, combined with a subconscious awareness of how dangerous his powers are.
Windmill Crusader: How Joe and perhaps the entire CCPD thinks of him, before he got his powers.
With Great Power Comes Great Hotness: Getting struck by lightning also made his body more toned than before, to quote the man himself:
Barry: Lightning gave me abs?
The Worf Effect:
- To show off how dangerous an evil speedster is, they tend to be faster than Barry. Zoom and Savitar in particular stand out — Zoom decimated Barry in their first fight, temporarily crippling him. Savitar was so fast that Barry running at super speed was slow motion to him, and he ruthlessly curb-stomped Barry in their first and second fights (though he didn't beat him savagely like Zoom did).
- Was on the giving end during the "Invasion!" crossover. Every single hero except him and Oliver were brainwashed by the Dominators, forcing them to keep the others at bay until they could jam the signal. Barry quickly took out Mick, Ray, and Firestorm, and was able to match and manipulate Supergirl into destroying the Mind-Control Device. For all his faults, there is a reason why Barry is one of the two top heroes of the Arrowverse.
- The Speed Force stands out most of all for obvious reasons. No matter how powerful Barry is compared to other speedsters, it's made clear he is utterly outmatched by the Speed Force. As the Speed Force coldly reminds Barry, she is his "lightning", the source of his powers, and not even he, the most powerful speedster in the series, has any chance against her in a fight. Notably, she can move at speeds that seems to be less of super-speed and more like teleportation, something he has never shown in the series to where she would make him look slow in comparison, and even goes as far as to be able to see him while he is speeding towards Iris as though he's barely moving at all before casually absorbing his lightning and using it to almost kill Fuerza. He's so powerless before her that she doesn't even have to beat him down at all, she just casually leaves him unharmed after demonstrating how Barry's powers is of no threat to her, and when he actually fights her along with the other Forces of Nature, he gets swatted aside so badly to where he becomes mostly a background fighter with no seen contribution to the battle, whereas the other Forces can at least put up somewhat of a fight, and the one hit he lands on her is when she had been hit by the Still Force.
World's Strongest Man: Just like how Oliver Queen is the World's Best Warrior, Barry Allen is, by far, the most powerful superhero in all of Earth-1, and has the potential to be the fastest character in all of the Arrowverse. This is only reinforced when Savitar, without a doubt the most powerful speedster/character ever introduced on the show, is confirmed to be a time remnant of Future Barry.
Worthy Opponent: What Hunter Zolomon came to see him as by the end of season 2, especially after learning about the similarities between the two of them.
You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Even after he gets his powers, he still has doubts as to his capabilities in part because of Joe's disapproval of his heroics.
- In a conversation with Caitlin, he admits that he thinks that best part of him is the Flash, and not his civilian identity.
Caitlin: With or without your speed, you're still you Barry.
Barry: No I'm not. I'm not the best version of me.
- Gives one of these to Oliver when he feels that what he does as the Arrow is consuming him. Barry assures Oliver that he can inspire people not as the Arrow, but as Oliver Queen.
- Constantly receives these from Iris and Joe, when his confidence is lacking or he needs a morale boost.
  Iris: You cannot keep doing this to yourself. Constantly going over the 'what ifs,' you'll go nuts. Everyone in this building needs the Flash right now: my dad, Wally, even Cisco and Caitlin. So be strong like I know you are. I know you don't want to be the leader right now, but you have to be.
  Barry: I told you I couldn't do this without you.
- One of the reasons he seeks out and offers to train Ralph, a man he unabashedly hated at the time, is his ability to see the makings of both a superhero and a good man.
You Are in Command Now: It's revealed in Season 2 that Eobard Thawne left S.T.A.R. Labs and all its assests to Barry in his will.
You Killed My Father: Barry initially wanted to kill Eobard Thawne for killing his mother and Hunter Zolomon for killing his father, but is eventually against the idea.
Younger and Hipper: A fair bit younger than Barry Allen is usually depicted as. It's explained in-universe that Eobard Thawne made the particle accelerator accident that gave him his powers occur nearly a decade earlier than it was supposed to. This younger Barry also relates better with the target audience of teenagers and young adults.
Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: He has a morose expression when Zoom congratulates him for using the memory of his parents to capture him.
You're Not My Father: After Joe comes down hard on Barry for risking his life by fighting other metahumans and engaging in dangerous heroics, Barry fires back by saying he is not Joe's kid and that his father is still sitting in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Later, Barry lists all the things Joe has done for him and says that while Joe's not his father, he is a "Dad."

"To understand what I'm about to tell you, you need to do something first. You need to believe in the impossible. Can you do that?"

Characters / Arrowverse: Barry Allen

Bartholomew Henry "Barry" Allen

Species: Metahuman

Known Aliases: The Flash, The Streak, The Fastest Man Alive, The Scarlet Speedster, The Man Who Saved Central City, The "Blur", "Bart", Savitar (erased timeline), Oliver Queen / Green Arrow (alternate reality), Dark Flash, The Paragon of Love

Played By: Grant Gustin, Logan Williams (young, Seasons 1-2), Liam Hughes (young, Seasons 3-), Audrey Marie Anderson (as "Lyla Michaels-Diggle")

First Appearance: "The Scientist" (Arrow 2x8)

Voiced By: Alexandre Gillet (European French), Arturo Castañeda (Latin-American Spanish dub, Seasons 1-2), Luis Navarro (Latin-American Spanish dub, Season 2-present), Jun Fukuyama (Japanese dub), Scott Whyte (Freedom Fighters: The Ray)

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Characters / Arrowverse: Barry Allen

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Bartholomew Henry "Barry" Allen

Species: Metahuman

Known Aliases: The Flash, The Streak, The Fastest Man Alive, The Scarlet Speedster, The Man Who Saved Central City, The "Blur", "Bart", Savitar (erased timeline), Oliver Queen / Green Arrow (alternate reality), Dark Flash, The Paragon of Love

Played By: Grant Gustin, Logan Williams (young, Seasons 1-2), Liam Hughes (young, Seasons 3-), Audrey Marie Anderson (as "Lyla Michaels-Diggle")

First Appearance: "The Scientist" (Arrow 2x8)

Voiced By: Alexandre Gillet (European French), Arturo Castañeda (Latin-American Spanish dub, Seasons 1-2), Luis Navarro (Latin-American Spanish dub, Season 2-present), Jun Fukuyama (Japanese dub), Scott Whyte (Freedom Fighters: The Ray)

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