Characters / Arrowverse: Oliver Queen

Arrowverse Character Index
Star City: Team Arrow (Oliver Queen / Dinah Laurel Lance) | Family Members | Citizens | Criminal Groups (Malcolm Merlyn / Slade Wilson / Prometheus) | Independent Criminals
Central City: West-Allen Family (Barry Allen / Iris West-Allen) | Team Flash (Caitlin Snow & (Killer) Frost) | Citizens | Criminal Groups (Rogues / Clifford DeVoe) | Independent Criminals
National City: Citizens (Kara Zor-El) | Luthor Family & Associates (Lena Luthor / Lex Luthor) | Criminals
Freeland: Pierce Family | Citizens | Criminals
Gotham City: Bat-Family | Citizens | Criminals
Smallville & Metropolis: Smallville Citizens | Metropolis Citizens | Metropolis Criminals
The Legends: The Team | Current Members (Sara Lance) | Former Members (Leonard Snart / Mick Rory)
Organizations: U.S. Government | U.S. Military | A.R.G.U.S. | The D.E.O. | The J.S.A. | The League of Assassins | Criminal Groups (H.I.V.E. / Savage & His Followers)
Time Travel: Time Travelers (The Legion / Eobard Thawne / Damien Darhk / Savitar) | The Past | The Future
Miscellaneous: Other Locales | Metahumans (Firestorm / The Hawks) | Aliens | Mystics | Other Entities (The Speed Force & Forces of Nature)
The Multiverse: Other Earths | Earth-2 (Hunter Zolomon) | Earth-38 | Earth-90 | Earth-X | Bizarro World

Warning: All spoilers will be unmarked!

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Oliver Jonas Queen

"You have failed this city!"

^{Click here to see Oliver as "The Arrow".} 
"Lately, I've been feeling like there is nothing left. Except the Arrow."

^{Click here to see Oliver as "Al Sah-Him".} 
"He said I can do more as the new Ra's than I can ever do as Oliver Queen or the Arrow. That I would have unlimited resources. That I could make a difference, not just a dent."

^{Click here to see Oliver in his first Green Arrow outfit.} 
"Tonight, I am declaring my intention to stand with them. To fight for this city! To be the symbol of hope that the Arrow never was. I. Am. The Green Arrow."

^{Click here to see Oliver as "The Flash".} 
"Oh, Barry. What have you done this time?"

^{Click here to see Oliver as "The Spectre".} 
"Some might call me a ghost, a spectre that's in tune with the entire multiverse."

Species: Human ^note During May 2016, he was briefly empowered, as he learned to use Light Magic. During December 2018, he became a Metahuman due to Reality Warping. During January 2020, he became The Spectre shortly before giving up his physical form to recreate The Multiverse and dying

Known Aliases: The Green Arrow, The Starling City Vigilante, The Hood, The Arrow, سهم (Al Sah-Him, Arabic for "The Arrow"), "Tommy", Luchnik, Kapiushon, Barry Allen / The Flash (alternate reality), The Spectre

Played By: Stephen Amell, Jacob Hoppenbrouwer (young)

Voiced By: Sylvain Agaësse (European French), Alejandro Orozco (Latin American Spanish dub, until Episode 99), Armando Guerrero (Latin American Spanish dub, Episodes 100 and 101), Carlos Díaz (Latin American Spanish dub, Episode 102-present), Satoshi Hino (Japanese dub), Matthew Mercer (Freedom Fighters: The Ray)

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

"My name is Oliver Queen. After five years in hell, I returned home with only one goal — to save my city. For eight years, I fought alongside brave men and women striving for justice, but then the Crisis came and I had to become someone else. I had to become something else. I made the ultimate sacrifice, which helped birth an entirely new universe. Now my friends and family will have to go on without me and although I have become a Spectre, there is a part of me that will always be the Green Arrow."

A billionaire playboy more interested in girls, drinking and partying than doing anything with his life until becoming stranded on a (supposedly) deserted island for five years, during which he became a hardened killer. Oliver returned to Starling City and began a crusade to save the city as a vigilante, drawing in several allies to his cause.

After eight years of saving his city (and the world on more than a few occasions), he saved the entire multiverse during a dire Crisis. However, he did so at the cost of his life. Gone, but far from forgotten, his legacy lives on with every hero and vigilante that came after him.

see Arrowverse: Other Entities for more information on his time as The Spectre

see Arrowverse: Future Characters for more on his possible future version

see DCEU: Other Superheroes for the post-Crisis Earth-1 character who bears his codename

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

see Arrowverse: Other Earths to see his Earth-16 counterpart and the Earth-D character who bears his codename

see The Flash (1990) for the Earth-90 character who bears his codename

see Smallville: Clark's Allies for the Earth-167 character who bears his name and background

see Smallville: Earth-2 for the Alternate Universe Earth-167 character who bears his name and background

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

see Superman & Lois for Oliver, the character on an undesignated Earth who bears his first name

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#-C

• 10-Minute Retirement:
  • Oliver stops being the Hood for a few months while recovering from his fight with Dark Archer, and then again between Season 1 and 2.
  • Ollie retires from crime-fighting after season 3 and was absolutely happy to stay that way for good, but it's only six months before he's back in action at the beginning of season 4.
  • He retires again early in Season 6 because he realizes being the Green Arrow is getting in the way of him raising William, he passes the mantle of the Green Arrow on to Diggle. This one actually lasts from "Next of Kin" until "Thanksgiving". He only comes back after Diggle's nerve damage becomes unmanageable and he's benched.
• The Ace: It's repeatedly implied that he was able to coast through life as a kid because he was smart enough that he never had to really try at anything. It's not until he's put in life or death situations that he finally has to apply himself, and when he does he rapidly becomes an unstoppable badass, physically fit and able to remember bits and pieces of classical literature he barely bothered to read years earlier. Also, he's gorgeous, which makes things easier.
• Action Dad: He certainly fits the "action" part, although he doesn't actually know he's a father until Season 4 during the second Crossover with The Flash. The pregnancy was accidental and he was later told (falsely) that the mother miscarried.
• Action Hero: Considering he's a comic book superhero adaptation.
• Action Politician: The Arroverse's resident Badass Normal and original superhero, he served as Star City's mayor from the fourth Season Finale of Arrow up until the sixth.
• Action Survivor: When trapped on the island, before he Took a Level in Badass through Training from Hell.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Unlike most Green Arrow stories, the toll the time he spent five years away from home was more emphasized on this version, particularly his struggle to reconnect properly with his loved ones. Said five years is also portrayed more bleakly compared to other versions.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Green Arrow is canonically very physically fit and is noted to be handsome, but this version of him is blatantly portrayed as Mr. Fanservice in any given chance.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • One of the most competent depictions of the character to date. On top of his Improbable Aiming Skills, this version of Oliver Queen is one of the best hand-to-hand combatants in the world. The only thing less impressive than his comics incarnation is a less variety of trick arrows, but that is slowly being changed.
  • In Crisis on Infinite Earths he becomes a full-on Empowered Badass Normal as he accepts inheriting the mantle of The Spectre from Jim Corrigan, effectively becoming the most powerful hero in existence.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Compared to usual depictions, this Oliver Queen is far more aggressive towards criminals. He tends to savagely beat them up or put an arrow in them, which is in stark contrast to his comic incarnation who was all about second chances and seeing the good in others.
• Adaptational Modesty: As The Spectre, his costume covers substantially more than the comics version, which amounted to a pair of speedos and a cloak. Here Oliver averts the Walking Shirtless Scene.
• Adaptational Seriousness: Oliver Queen has a far more fun-loving and joking personality in the comics, while the Arrowverse play him generally as a Darker and Edgier Batman-Expy.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Somewhat. In present time, his hair is closer to brown than his comics blond. On the island, it looked lighter.
• 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. Do 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. Whereas in this continuity, they had a pre-existing relationship 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'.
• Aesop Amnesia: He still persists on keeping secrets in Season 4 despite the fact that it cost him Diggle's friendship at the previous season. This time, keeping his son's existence from Felicity cost him their relationship.
• Affectionate Nickname: Ollie. The only people to ever use it on the show are those who knew him pre-island (Laurel, Tommy, Sara, and Thea), the sole exception being Barry Allen. Not even Diggle and Felicity use it. Adrian Chase also calls him this occasionally, just to mock him. He wasn't happy with Earth-X Leonard Snart calling him "Ollie" either.
• Always Save the Girl: Something that is actually addressed as a problem, Oliver has a big weakness towards women, he even chose to help Laurel over Diggle in the first season which nearly led to a team breakup, and despite having put arrows in people who have done less he can't ever bring himself to kill or really even harm Helena. He nearly gets himself and Slade killed trying to save Shado, who was just fine on her own. If there is a woman and Oliver has feelings for her, you can bet he won't be thinking too straight.
• Always Someone Better:
  • His first two fights with the Dark Archer see him get summarily trounced.
  • Which becomes nothing when compared to his fight with Ra's al Ghul.
  • He insists he's the first masked crime-fighter, and Batman was only ever an urban legend.
• Aloof Ally: To Supergirl in the "Invasion!" crossover, who's turned off by his stern, no-nonsense demeanor when Barry introduces them. He later benches her and flat out admits to Kara that when he deals with something new (metahumans, now an Alien Invasion and The Multiverse), he has a tendency to push back and "claw back a sense of normalcy." After they fight alongside each other and drive off the Dominators, he later apologizes for keeping her at arm's length.
• Amicable Exes: Several examples:
  • He and Laurel "struggled" to be this throughout the first two seasons, they succeeded near the end of Season 2... and then switched back to a turbulent relationship throughout Season 3. They do finally succeed during Season 4, after Oliver has John Constantine restore a revived Sara's soul.
  • Played straight with Sara, who is probably the only of Oliver's previous lovers to not hold any form of grudge or resentment over him.
  • Double Subverted with Felicity. After they break-up, there are issues mostly on her part but they are eventually able to put their issues aside during the time of Laurel's death.
  • Played with concerning Samantha: She's polite but extremely harsh concerning their son, including refusing to let Oliver tell anyone about William when discovers him and only lets Oliver interact with him as "Mommy's friend". Given she doesn't know Oliver is the Green Arrow and about his dangerous life her demands are never explained. She and Oliver also have a fallout on her part when William is kidnapped by Damien Dahrk.
• Anti-Hero: Starts off as an Unscrupulous Hero, but gradually develops into a Pragmatic Hero. His death count is a lot higher in the earlier episodes, he wasn't above torturing targets for information, and his mission is mostly about stopping the people on the list his father gave him and bringing them to hard, cold justice. As the series goes on, he kills less often and helps out people who aren't necessarily part of his mission. But there is a reason most of the bad guys roll over and do as he tells them to when he comes for them.
• Anti-Villain: During his third and fourth years when he was 'dead', he was forced to work for ARGUS.
• Appropriated Appellation: Averted. Even in season 1, Oliver hated being called The Hood, even going so far as to make fun of the alias during a dinner party. Which is why starting season 2 he starts calling himself The Arrow.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Even after everything he's seen, Oliver believes Batman to be just an urban myth invented by the Gotham PD. It's obvious though that this is less skepticism and more of refusing to entertain the possibility of another successful vigilante without powers.
• Arch-Enemy: He's this to several present day's season's Big Bad — if he isn't in the beginning, he is by the end. The only one he doesn't have this sort of relationship with is Ra's al Ghul with the two of them instead seeing each other as Worthy Opponents (since their conflict was mainly Malcolm's fault).
  • Malcolm Merlyn. Oliver's first personal enemy, and the one who was most similar to him as an Evil Counterpart. Malcolm plays a huge role in ruining Oliver's life and setting him on the path of becoming the vigilante he is today. Malcolm was responsible for sinking the Queen's Gambit, leaving Oliver stranded on the hell that is Lian Yu for several years (and also making him indirectly responsible for what happened with Slade as well), the deaths of at least three important people in Oliver's life (Robert Queen, Tommy Merlyn, and Sara Lance), indirectly or not, and manipulating Thea so he could use Oliver to end his debt to Ra's al Ghul. One has to wonder why Oliver hasn't killed him yet. The only reason he's still alive aside from Joker Immunity, appears to be he's Thea's biological father along with Oliver adopting a Thou Shalt Not Kill policy in the wake of Tommy's death. Even then, the former reason barely holds any weight because Thea hates his guts too, and after everything Malcolm has done, it's highly doubtful anyone would hold it against Ollie for making an exception to the rule. On the other hand, despite his numerous attempts to redeem himself and justify his action to Oliver and Team Arrow, to no avail, Malcolm's hatred for Oliver rekindles after he gets humiliated, by beating him in a League challenge, resulting in him cutting off his hand and stripping him of the title of Ra's al Ghul. Eventually subverted as Malcolm comes to regret his feud with Oliver and offers him his help in saving his friends and family from Prometheus. However Oliver only accepted his help because he has no other choice, and he made it quite clear he's not forgiven him for aiding Damien Darhk in kidnapping William or his numerous other crimes; something that's vindicated with the revelation that Malcolm formed his own League of Assassins — the Thanatos Guild. In Elseworlds (2018), Oliver (or rather, Barry in Oliver's place) sees him in a fear gas hallucination out of all his nemesises.
  • Slade Wilson. While Oliver probably hates Malcolm more, Slade is a much more personal enemy. Slade was set on a never-ending vendetta to ruin Oliver's life, after he blames Oliver for causing Shado's death. While Slade did kill his mother in front of him, the biggest personal blow to Oliver at that point, Oliver has more-or-less accepted the fact that what happened with Slade was partially his fault (for not telling him the truth about Shado's death at first and not curing him of the Mirakuru when he had the chance), and can at least justify imprisoning him instead of killing him due to that and their formerly close relationship. Eventually subverted after the Mirakuru finally gets flushed out of his system, he comes to regret what he did and he pulls a Heel–Face Turn and becomes Oliver's friend and ally again.
  • Damien Dahrk. Although he's the Arrow Big Bad with the least personal connection with Oliver Queen/Green Arrow, his treacherous acts towards his friends and family earned him this status. He attempted to gas all of Team Arrow in front of Oliver, crippled Felicity and left her paralyzed from the waist down, kidnapped Oliver's illegitimate son William, and killed Laurel out of spite. It doesn't take long for all of Team Arrow to bitterly hate him and want him dead above all else.
  • Prometheus. He quickly becomes Oliver's most hated and personal enemy in a way that even outclasses Malcolm and Slade. He terrorizes Star City and kills several innocent people, recruits Evelyn into turning against Oliver, manipulates Oliver into killing Felicity's boyfriend Billy Malone, psychologically tortures him by breaking out Black Siren and having her impersonate the deceased Earth-1 Laurel (who was Oliver's First Love), and eventually forces Oliver to turn the city against his superhero identity, branding him a criminal. And all this while under the guise of False Friend DA Adrian Chase, who buttered him up to gain his trust, aiding him as one of his closest confidants within his administration and even helping Diggle get out of military prison. Once Oliver learns the truth, he is not happy, and with the charade gone the two don't even try to hide how much they hate each other. He then proceeds to set himself up as Oliver's greatest enemy, as he manages to do something that no villain preceding him had come even close to: breaking Oliver. He broke him so badly that Oliver no longer wanted to be Green Arrow and continue his crusade. And even as broken as he was, Oliver has come to hate Adrian so much that he was willing to let the Bratva establish a presence in Star City in exchange for killing his enemy. While Diggle snaps him back to his senses eventually, it becomes very clear that Oliver and Adrian's war only ends when the other is dead. Prometheus eventually kidnaps William and all of Team Arrow, forcing Oliver to recruit his old nemeses Malcolm and Slade to get them back.
  • To Cayden James of all people. Though it's very one-sided on Cayden's part, with him swearing vengeance on the Green Arrow did to believing the vigilante killed his son. The Helix least unleashes his wrath upon the city and causes it tumble into chaos, with Oliver completely at his mercy. Only the truth that Green Arrow was not the culprit convinces him to put an end to his reign of terror, where it's promptly revealed Ricardo Diaz is the true culprit who had been manipulating both him and Green Arrow.
  • Subverted and then played straight with Ricardo Diaz. Originally Diaz, despite the threat he posed, was seen by Oliver as just another thug he had to take down. But Diaz would not stop committing atrocities against Oliver, including killing Quentin and almost killing Felicity and William who were in witness protection as vengeance for Oliver destroying his empire. At that point, it became very personal between the two.
  • In Season 7, the head of the Ninth Circle Emiko Queen, Oliver's half-sister. Unlike the above, this one is quite one-sided. Oliver in no way hates his half-sister and wants to redeem her — since had Robert not cowardly abandoned her and her mom, they would've never have been so destitute that Emiko would've never had to start doing odd jobs for criminals as young as 11 which led to her meeting Dante. However, Emiko has nothing but contempt and hatred — seeing nothing more than the spoiled scion of the man who cowardly abandoned her and her mom and has what one would call a crazed desire to see him dead. Eventually Oliver comes to realize that Emiko made her own choices and she's beyond redemption — finding out that she knew Malcolm planned to blow up The Queen's Gambit and kept her mouth shut clinches it. He still tries to reach her, but sadly she dies before they get a chance to reconcile. He revived her when recreating the multiverse, however, and she becomes a better person.
  • To a lesser extent Count Vertigo. One recurring Villain of the Week who never stops coming back, as even when Vertigo is killed another will take up the mantle. Oliver has a very personal hatred towards the dealers of the Vertigo drug due to what it did to his sister Thea and has always viciously punished those who don the name.
• Arc Number: The number "5" is heavily attached to him, specifically;
  • He was away from home for five years after the yacht incident.
  • He has five prominent identities throughout the series; his actual identity (Oliver Queen), The Hood, The Arrow, Al Sah-him and Green Arrow.
  • His team is a Five-Man Band for most of the series.
• Arc Symbol: Boats/Ships are heavily associated to him in the flashbacks, signifying his journey to become a better person and hero.
• Arc Words: "I must/have to become someone else. I must/have to become something else." Details his gradual journey in a nutshell. Season Five finally reveals where this phrase came from: his last mentor before returning home, Talia al Ghul.
• Arrested for Heroism: Several seasons have Oliver being targeted by the authorities for vigilantism. For the first three seasons it is Quentin Lance and the SCPD who are hunting him, while in Season Six it's Agent Watson from the FBI.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: He's all but implied to have done so after giving up his physical form to defeat (or rather severely weaken) the Anti-Monitor and restart the multiverse, with his Spectre powers allowing him to still be spiritually intact. When his wife asks to join him in a possible future, he's allowed to be reunited with her in the afterlife.
• Assassin Outclassin': Done on multiple occasions, though most of the assassins aren't after him.
• The Atoner: For both his own and his father's mistakes.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: His appearance during the very first Crossover with The Flash involves him attributing his being still alive to this and trying to teach Barry how much being in their line of work requires it. He points out that Barry has the potential to be even better at it than he is, because his superspeed gives him all the time in the world to case out and analyze any given situation.
• Badass Biker: Occasionally ride bikes on both his civilian and vigilante life.
• Badass Normal: Oliver became the first known superhero of the Arrowverse with nothing but weapons, gadgets, intelligence, and pure skill. After killing Ra's al Ghul at the end of Season 3, he is in serious contention for being the best non-super warrior on all of Earth-1 — rather than it being impressive he can match up to certain people in one-on-one combat, it's impressive when someone matches up to him.
• Bad Liar: Oliver can be this at times, particularly when it comes to Felicity before he just gives up and lets her in on the secret. He is somewhat better at deceiving his family and friends (not to mention the police) but mostly that's because they write his odd behavior off as PTSD from the island.
• Batman Gambit:
  • Oliver realizes that eventually someone will put together the timing of his return home and the arrival of the Hood. So he purposely staged his supplies in front of a security camera, suspecting that he would get arrested on 'mostly' circumstantial evidence. Then, after being arrested and forced to wear a security anklet he throws a large party (ensuring multiple witnesses) and has Diggle appear as the Hood on the other side of town.
  • He does it again in the Season Two finale, taking Felicity's advice to make Slade overthink things. He takes it to mean distracting Slade by telling her she's the one he loves most in full view of the former's surveillance. Slade falls for it, and is hit by the cure Oliver gave her.
  • During the Arrow/Flash crossover, Oliver points out that this and experience are really the only advantages he has over Barry. It really levels the playing field between them.
• Battle Couple: Oliver/the Hood and the Huntress are this very briefly. Ollie and The Canary become this in Season Two.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Subverted with Oliver himself, who most definitely suffered a great deal of cosmetic damage and scarring during his time on the island (though played straight in that he somehow avoided any lasting damage to his face, and none of the injuries he's sustained since returning home have left any noticeable scars).
• Beleaguered Boss: While for the most of the series, Team Arrow is a very disciplined and polished team, Oliver ends up becoming this to the Team Arrow Recruits who are incredibly incompetent and frustrating, especially Renee.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Laurel in the beginning, much to her annoyance.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Oliver can be surprisingly charming, affable and sincere in his desire to help people. He's also an incredibly skilled combatant and has a ruthless streak a mile long. Mess with him, and you will go down.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Towards Thea since he absolutely crushes anyone who caused her harm, especially dealers of Vertigo.
  • Also towards Barry. When Barry asked for help to take down Eobard Thawne, Oliver rushed over to Central City, despite being busy taking care of the League of Assassins. When Team Legends and Team Arrow intend to make a move on the Dominators and want to go without Barry because they don't trust him after making a Cosmic Retcon, Oliver is the one who firmly stands by Barry's side and stays with him.
• Big Brother Mentor: From "Tremors" onward, he is this towards Roy. He initially tries to be harsh and secretive, but it doesn't work out for him. He also becomes this to Barry when he revealed that he gained superhuman speed, inspiring him to become the Flash and offering advice about being a hero every now and then.
• Big Damn Heroes: Too many times to even count. Oliver loves making a dramatic entrance to save the day. Roy even lampshades this in "Unchained".
• Big Good:
  • A role he shares with Barry Allen. 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 multiverse into consideration, he also shares this role with Kara.
  • This is even more prominent in Season Five when he becomes Mayor of Star City and the leading force of good in both his civilian and superhero identities.
  • During Crisis on Infinite Earths he eventually becomes this for the entire Arrowverse, taking over the mantle from the Monitor himself after becoming the Spectre.
• Birds of a Feather: With Lyla. She shares his more realist worldview and pragmatic approach to saving lives and stopping dangerous people, to the point where she bears no ill will towards Oliver when he has to kidnap her and her daughter in order to fool Ra's Al-Ghul that he'd turned. She also very much sympathizes with Oliver when he clashes with the more idealistic Barry in "The Brave and the Bold" crossover, having had similar conflicts herself with Diggle.
  Lyla: There are people in the world who deal only in extremes...
  Oliver: And it would be naive to think that anything less than extreme measures will stop them.
  Lyla: Sometimes bravery isn't enough. Sometimes the world requires us to be bold.
  Oliver: Whatever the personal cost.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Oliver does this twice in "Honor Thy Father" once by throwing a kitchen knife and knocking China White's dagger out of her hand, and later he knocks the gun out of Detective Lance's hand with a arrow/flachette. And a variant in "Dodger", when he severs a nerve in the Dodger's arm to stop him using his Explosive Leash. Since he's started killing fewer people, this has become more of his signature.
• Blatant Lies: He tells some real whoppers particularly to Felicity and Diggle. Possibly because he's testing them to find out if they can be trusted, but mostly because he isn't a great liar.
  Oliver: I'm having some trouble with my computer and they told me that you were the person to come and see. I was at my coffee shop surfing the web and I spilt a latte on it.
  Felicity: ...Really?
  Oliver: Yeah.
  Felicity: 'Cause these look like bullet holes.
  Oliver: My coffee shop is in a bad neighborhood.
• Brains and Brawn:
  • When he was with Slade, he tended to use his relative modern day tech-savvy nature and manipulation tactics in contrast to Slade, who was a seasoned fighter.
  • He's the brawn to Ray Palmer's brains, being the trained warrior to Ray's Science Hero with gadgets.
  • Played with for Barry. 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 over relies on his powers rather than strategy.
• Breakout Character: The Arrowverse version of the Green Arrow really put the character on the map for non-comic readers. He is one of the most popular live action TV superheroes to date, with Stephen Amell receiving critical acclaim for his portrayal. This version of the character has also been included in various video games as downloadable content for Injustice: Gods Among Us and Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham with Amell providing the voice.
• Break the Badass:
  • In season 1 after falling to stop the Undertaking, which lead to the deaths of countless innocent people including his best friend Tommy, Oliver shuts down, saying that he should have died instead, and returns to Lian Yu in solitude for several months.
  • In season 2 Slade's efforts to destroy Oliver's life, ending with him shoving a sword through Moira's back, cause Oliver to breakdown to the point that he was willing to give himself up to Slade before Laurel and the team talked him out of it.
  • In season 5 after Prometheus tortures him and forces Oliver to admit that he likes killing people Oliver is left in a Heroic BSoD and returns to the team to inform them that he's done being the Green Arrow and he's shutting down the entire Team Arrow operation. While he does get better by the end of the next episode, he still feels he needs to earn back the right to wear green again.
• Break Them by Talking: He beats Prometheus not by straight-up fighting him to the bitter end, but by spilling the truth that his father disowned him, causing him to fall to his knees and asked to be executed. Oliver doesn’t go through with this and knocks him out and leaves him to the police instead.
• Broken Bird: The five years he was presumed dead were... unpleasant. First, he buried his father. Second, he got shot with an arrow. Third, he got tortured. Then it got worse. And he had to actually break a bird himself (literally — it was dinner).
  Oliver: These were FIVE YEARS! Five years. Where nothing good happened!
• Broken Pedestal: Has happened to him a few times.
  • For Laurel at the end of "Blind Spot" when her drug addiction is revealed.
    Oliver: She nearly had me believing that Sebastian Blood was a criminal mastermind. And the only reason I nearly believed her was because it was Laurel. I do have a blind spot where she's concerned. Not anymore.
  • Moira is also on the receiving end of this twice: first when her involvement in the Undertaking is revealed, and again when he finds out that she was covering up that Thea is Malcolm's daughter.
  • A huge one for Quentin Lance in Season 4, after he discovers the latter's Deal with the Devil with Damien Darhk, as Quentin was the one of the people who inspired him to run for mayor.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: The Brooding Boy to Felicity's Gentle Girl. Oliver is The Stoic and the Straight Man who is very cynical, sullen and brooding most of the time but Felicity, who is a Genki Girl and The Pollyanna who is very optimistic and upbeat in personality and temperament, has a habit of bringing out the much lighter and happier side of him. She always manages to make Oliver smile and laugh.
• Bruce Wayne Held Hostage: In "Legacy", Mayor Oliver Queen gets kidnapped by Tobias Church's gang and taken hostage, so Church could lure out Green Arrow and kill him.
• Bulletproof Vest: His costume seems to include this as a feature. Either that or the mooks are just that bad at aiming. Despite this, Moira manages to do quite a bit of damage at close range with a handgun, and the Dark Archer gets a couple of arrows through into Oliver's back.
• The Bus Came Back: During Crisis On Infinite Earths, Oliver becomes the Spectre and seemingly perishes to defeat the Anti-Monitor and restore the universe. However, three years later on Season 9 of The Flash, it's revealed Oliver is still active as the Spectre and meets Barry when he briefly dies. As the Spectre, Oliver is allowed to intervene when there's a threat to the Multiverse, as was the case with Ramsey Rosso/Bloodwork. So manifesting a body for himself on Earth-Prime, Oliver joins the heroes once again as the Green Arrow.
• Byronic Hero: Initially, he was a far more darker, more violent anti-hero, a distant Jerkass riddled with PTSD and survivor's guilt. Over the years, he has been reconnecting with people who have pulled him back more firmly into heroic status with a Thou Shalt Not Kill ethic.
• The Cape: In Season 4, he no longer wants to be The Cowl, having grown disillusioned with being a dark Anti-Hero and he becomes the Green Arrow to become a symbol of hope the way the Flash is to Central City since Star City really needs one. Though he goes back to being The Cowl after Laurel dies and he rationalizes that his Thou Shalt Not Kill policy was too soft.
• Cartwright Curse: Cheated on his then girlfriend Laurel with her sister Sara, who survives two near death experiences only to get three arrows in the heart, falling 6 stories and smashing her head. On the island, he started a romance with Shado that ended when she was killed by Ivo. After he gets back, his first steady girlfriend, Helena, is a mobster's daughter who turns into a psychotic vigilante. And when it looks like he finally catches a break with McKenna Hall, she gets shot by Helena and moves to another city to get the best physical therapy she can. When Oliver and Felicity get a Relationship Upgrade, the restaurant they are in gets blown up by an RPG. They end it soon after. In short, poor Oliver just can't catch a break with women. Lampshaded in the first episode of season 3.
  Oliver: Last girlfriend? She's in the League of Assassins. My girlfriend before that shot my girlfriend before that. Not exactly a catch at the moment.
• The Casanova: Oliver was one as well before he got lost on the island. He slept with Laurel's sister. That should be a giveaway. Sara also claimed that he was sleeping with ten other women, though that may have been an exaggeration.
• Catchphrase:
  • "[Name], you have failed this city!" which is mostly used while he's the Hood. Disappears with his turn to the Arrow, at least until season 3. He's picked it up again by season 5.
  • Oliver also has a tendency to say "Suit up!", lampshaded by Curtis who tries to use it himself.
  • Whenever a mook finds out Oliver's secret identity:
    Oliver: I'm sorry, but nobody can know my secret.
    Oliver snaps mook's neck.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • Cisco mentions Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles during the second season of The Flash (2014). Stephen Amell plays Casey Jones in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.
  • Injustice 2 appeared on Arrow being played by Felicity and William. Aside from the obvious fourth wall breaking of a DC game appearing on a show set in the DC universe, Stephen Amell actually appeared in Injustice: Gods Among Us voicing the premiere Green Arrow skin based off the Arrow version of Oliver Queen. So basically, William is playing a video game series which his father is featured in!
• The Chains of Commanding: Oliver's arc in Season 6 is about having to juggle being Star City's mayor, the Green Arrow, and a father to William. At first he decided to stop being the Green Arrow and cede the mantle over to Diggle. But Diggle's health problems forced Oliver back into green. The resulting stress of it all ends up compromising his leadership skills as he ends up alienating his former teammates away — even Diggle with his poor decisions, while as mayor his attempts to stop Cayden James and later Ricardo Diaz only play into their hands.
• Character Development:
  • The producers have said his main arc is transforming from the Arrow into Green Arrow. He initially starts out as The Hood (and is referred to now and then as The Vigilante), who kills those who he deems "have failed this city." The death of Tommy shifts him into The Arrow, where he adopts pacifist methods to honor his friend's memory. After his 10-Minute Retirement in Season 3, he decides to become a beacon of hope and be The Cape, similar to the Flash, becoming the Green Arrow.
  • The whole purpose of the flashbacks to Oliver's time on the island is to show how he went from "the male Paris Hilton" to the hardened, effective vigilante we meet at the start of the series.
  • At the start of the series, Oliver's reasons for becoming a vigilante were to honor his father's memory and seek justice against those who had exploited the under-privileged of Starling City, and was perfectly willing to kill to accomplish this. Over the course of the first season, he begins to actively fight crime in the city and goes from being a lone vigilante to working with Diggle and Felicity. By the start of the second season, he's primarily fighting crime and his motives for his vigilantism are no longer to honor his father's memory, but to provide a symbol of hope for the people of Starling City, even renaming himself the Arrow; furthermore, he has taken up a Thou Shall Not Kill stance to honor Tommy's memory. Starting with Season 4, his relationship with Felicity and a few stress free months help him become a happier and more understanding person, and he runs for Mayor in order to work to help Star City during the day in addition to his vigilante activities.
  • Outside of his vigilantism, Oliver starts the series closed off to his loved ones, and gradually begins to open up to them as he readjusts to his old life.
  • His arc over the first three seasons focused on him losing his I Work Alone attitude and allowing other people to join in his crusade to save Starling City. By the Season 3 finale he's content to go on a vacation with Felicity, knowing that Diggle, Thea (Speedy), Laurel (Black Canary), and Ray (the Atom) are more than capable of looking after Starling in his absence.
• Characterization Marches On: Retroactively - while he was a lot more brutal back in Season 1 as the Hood, and didn't have a problem with killing in general, it was never his to-go solution. In fact, he clashed over it with Helena. Starting with Season 5, where his past actions become an important plot point, Oliver's time as the Hood is more or less reimagined as him being a downright bloodthirsty and merciless Punisher-esque figure.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: True to his comic book counterpart, Oliver gains his expert archery skills while trapped on a deserted island for five years. Furthermore, training with Slade Wilson, Yao Fei, and Shado has given him near unstoppable fighting skills.
• Chick Magnet: The women he's been involved with so far are (in no particular order); Laurel, Sara, Felicity, Shado, Isabel, Helena, McKenna and Samantha Clayton whom he got pregnant and Moira exiled to Central city. Said women are the only ones who appeared on-screen — it's implied that there are a lot more.
• Childhood Friends: He, Tommy, Laurel, and Sara all grew up together.
• Childhood Friend Romance: With Laurel and, technically, Sara.
• The Chosen One: In Crisis On Infinite Earths Oliver gets chosen by Jim Corrigan to succeed him as The Spectre.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome:
  • Eventually admits that he doesn't just don the costume to help people, but also because it makes him feel complete. This leads to a conflict with John, who thinks that if Oliver isn't doing this 100% for the city, then he isn't the hero it deserves.
  • It's on full display in Crisis, when he absolutely refuses to evacuate Earth-38 until all the civilians are safe when the Monitor starts teleporting everyone else away, and instead fights to the last breath against the Anti-Monitor's army, costing him his life but saving a billion lives in the process, by the Monitor's estimates. Hour Three even further cements this trait. Despite Mia, Constantine and Diggle successfully finding him and being just about to restore his soul to his body, Oliver without hesitation agrees to take up Jim Corrigan's mantle and become the next Spectre to save the multiverse.
• Clark Kenting: He covers his face with paint and a hood, keeps to the shadows, and uses a voice changer if talking to someone who might recognize him. However, it isn't impenetrable and he isn't always careful with his targets.
• Color Character: He finally dons his canonical Code Name starting Season 4.
• Color Motif: Green obviously.
• Combat Pragmatist: He doesn't hesitate to kill when need be, but he also leaves a few living so they can talk about what he did. Really lends into his reputation as a Terror Hero.
• Comically Serious: Oliver can have these moments at times, especially when he's teaming up with one of the more enthusiastic superheroes of the Arrowverse such as Barry, Ray, Curtis, or Kara. Not surprising since he's the closest thing Arrowverse has to Batman.
• Composite Character: He combines aspects of other DC characters with the comic book Oliver Queen, namely:
  • Batman, particularly the Nolan-movie Batman, including a past history with Ra's Al Ghul. This portrayal of Oliver is far more serious, driven, obsessive and mission-orientated than his comic book counterpart and much more bent on cleaning up a corrupt city, and is more of a night-time hero who sneaks around in the shadows, all traits owed more to the Dark Knight than the Emerald Archer. His darker, more complex and more lively backstory along with his season 1 insistence that the "Arrow" persona is the real him and that Oliver Queen died on the island also sound more Batman-ish. His Arch-Enemy Slade Wilson is hell-bent with making him lose everything he cared about, which sounds very similar to the plot of The Dark Knight Rises. Season 3 even has Ra's al Ghul seeking to make Oliver his heir. That and the fact that a lot of his enemies are Rogues' Gallery Transplant from Batman's Rogues Gallery ^note the Al-Ghuls, Huntress, Prometheus, Solomon Grundy, Firefly, Deadshot, Dollmaker, Anarky, KGBeast, the Suicide Squad.
  • He's often referred to as "the vigilante", something that harkens back to the crime-fighting Legacy Character in the comics. His shooting skills and use of motorcycles specifically match those of Greg Saunders, the first Vigilante.
  • His animosity with Slade and (brief) relationship with the Huntress also makes him parallel to Dick Grayson, whom Stephen Amell is actually a fan of. Him being Slade's "Sidekick" on the island flashbacks and him using eskrima sticks (at the time) for melee combat also supports this. Furthermore, in the comics, Slade's eye was shot out by his wife. Here, Oliver stabs it with an arrow.
  • Crisis on Infinite Earths has Oliver becoming the Arrowverse version of The Spectre, inheriting the mantle from Jim Corrigan. His Spectre costume itself, which lacks the Walking Shirtless Scene, seems to take after the Hal Jordan Spectre.
• Covered with Scars: Over about 20% of his body. Doesn't stop many a Shirtless Scene, and is discarded altogether by Season 2.
• The Cowl: Very much so, especially in the second season.
  • Made especially clear in his cameo from the pilot for The Flash, where he says Barry can be The Cape, a figure that inspires people rather than staying in the darkness and striking fear into the hearts of criminals like him.
  • 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 nice and had to be bombarded with metahumans before it needed a hero, one like Barry, who's optimistic, sweet and kind. This is contrasted with Star City and Oliver, a violent city on the brink of destruction that needed an equally violent hero to keep it in check.
    • Barry also rebuts it at the end, saying that while the Arrow may not be able to inspire people, Oliver Queen certainly can.
  • The third season ended with Oliver taking yet another 10-Minute Retirement, because he was tired of being the Cowl. When he comes back at the start of season four, he rebrands himself the Green Arrow, hoping to be a symbol of hope, rather than of fear, for the people of Star City. He also adopts this in his civilian life and [decides to run for mayor.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • To the point where he decided to store his blood in his hideout, in case he ever needed an emergency transfusion.
  • If that wasn't enough, it's established in Season Two's "City of Blood" that if the Foundry was ever compromised or destroyed, he had another lair just in case. Felicity and Dig find him there, sulking, through Amanda Waller's help after Slade had murdered Moira.
  • Reveals to keep a kryponite arrow in his arsenal in case an an evil version of Kara showed up (or, presumably, if she ever went bad).
  • During Season 8, Oliver sets to work creating a weapon capable of killing the Monitor and at the same time, manages to create an arrow capable of stunning and temporarily incapacitating him, which he uses just before performing his Last Stand on Earth-38.
• Crimefighting with Cash:
  • He uses his companies wealth to amass high-tech equipment in his crusade to fight criminals. However he can take a less direct approach as well, such as using his family's fortune to buy a priceless jewel to serve as bait for a jewel thief.
    Oliver: You know us billionaire vigilantes... we do love our toys.
  • After losing his family's wealth, Oliver has swapped this out for Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! while serving as Star City's mayor and can use his authoritative position to help in crime-fighting.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Downplayed. Prior to his League training Season Three, while Oliver was still a formidable hand-to-hand combatant, his melee ability wasn't quite up to the level of his archery. Malcolm actually invokes this and emphasized this aspect of him still needed training.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: As part of his Secret Identity. "I'm shallow!"
• Cynicism Catalyst: Being trapped on the island and going from an easygoing, womanizing party boy to a vigilante atoning for his family's sins.

D-H

• Dating Catwoman:
  • Helena — In season 1. Even after he discovers that she's the mysterious assassin who injured his mother and is trying to instigate a bloody war among the city's criminal factions.
  • Also in season 1, Oliver starts a relationship with Detective McKenna Hall, who immediately after gets assigned to help catch the Hood. She doesn't know Oliver's the Hood, though.
  • He had an one-night stand with Isabel Rochev. Though granted Oliver didn't know Isabel was evil at the time, and he didn't actually have feelings for Isabel, treating it as only a fling.
• Deadpan Snarker: Most of Oliver's humor is more subdued.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Though he's aware of the horrible things they did and their secretly unhappy marriage, Oliver nevertheless loved both of his parents and cherished the memories he had with them. He even admits to Barry that he would bring them back if he was ever given the chance to and true to his word, his Lotus-Eater Machine has the two of his parents alive and well.
• Decomposite Character: Legends of Tomorrow reveals that his role as Connor Hawke's father in the comics is given to Diggle.
• Dented Iron: With over 20% of his body covered in scars, he's still capable of fighting off super-powered monsters and running down a motorcycle on foot.
• Determinator: It's almost disturbing how willing Oliver is to hurt himself to take out his foes. One example of such occurs during the season 1 finale, where he defeats Malcolm Merlyn by stabbing himself through the shoulder.
• Despair Event Horizon: Six days of extensive physical, emotional, and psychological torture at Prometheus' hands, followed by the soul-crushing realization that he enjoys killing people utterly breaks Oliver's spirit to the point that, after crawling back to the team, he tells them that he's shutting everything down and giving up being the Green Arrow.
• Deus ex Machina: Thanks to Oliver, Post-Crisis Tommy, Moira, and Quentin are alive, Emiko is alive and not at all evil, Sarah Diggle exists again, Dinah and Rory have their powers back, the Queen family mansion and fortune are restored, Star City is crime-free for twenty years, and his children and his friends' children get to live happy lives instead of enduring the dark future they came from Pre-Crisis.
• Did Not Think This Through: Agrees to Samantha (who lied to him for years) and her terms that William be kept secret despite the fact that a) she would never know if he told the team (people he can actually trust) the truth, b) contacting any lawyer, including the one on his team would get him some rights beyond being "Mommy's friend" and no longer at Samantha's mercy especially if he revealed he never knew William existed and c) His fiancée and his enemies would eventually notice him popping down to Central City to visit a random child. Rather predictably it all blows up in his face.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: He manages to temporarily incapacitate the Monitor with a taser arrow in Crisis on Infinite Earths before the latter is able to teleport him off Earth-38, and then single-handedly takes on the Anti-Monitor's army of Shadow Demons with his bare hands at the cost of his own life.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • Oliver himself is an example, though he's not even aware of it. His mother paid the girl off to say the baby died.
  • Oliver did this to his daughter, Mia but he did it to save the world.
• Domino Mask: He finally starts wearing one at the end of Episode Nine of Season Two, recognizing the need to better conceal his identity. His first one was a gift from Barry.
• Driven to Suicide: At one point he contemplated suicide during his stay on the island while hallucinating an image of his dad talking to him. While Oliver isn't actively suicidal, his lack of fear of death and disregard for his own safety in certain instances suggests that some part of him wishes he actually had died on that island.
• Empowered Badass Normal:
  • In season 4 he learns light magic to counter Damien Darhk's dark based magic.
  • He gains Barry's Super-Speed for most of the Elseworlds crossover.
  • In Crisis On Infinite Earths, he becomes The Spectre.
• Even the Guys Want Him: When discussion with Felicity about Oliver, Barry gushes about Oliver in a way that sounds like he is attracted to him.
• Experienced Protagonist:
  • Unlike many other heroes, who had a great deal to learn before beginning to fight crime, Oliver is already extensively trained when he begins his vigilante activities. This is all thanks to his five years spent missing, where he had a long line of mentors to teach him how to fight.
  • There's also the fact he is the very first hero of the Arrowverse. This is highlighted numerous times during the very first Crossover with The Flash. When Barry was struck by Bivolo's Hate Plague and was required to be stopped by Oliver, their respective team members except Felicity (who is close to both and thus more concerned about the situation happening than the possible outcome) had an argument with Diggle invoking this very trope in the discussion.
    Caitlin: I just hope they (Thawne and Joe) can turn Barry back before he kills Oliver.
    Diggle: Me, I'd be more worried with what Oliver might have to do to Barry.
    Caitlin: Barry has super powers. Oliver has a bow and arrow.
    Diggle: Do you have any idea how many people Oliver killed with that bow and arrow?
    Cisco: Re-curve bow arrows can travel up to 300 feet-per-second, so, like, 200mph? Barry can run three times that fast.
    Diggle: Whatever. Oliver's been doing this a lot longer; my money's on experience.
    Cisco: My money's on speed.
    Felicity: Please tell me you're not actually having this conversation right now?!
  • And Oliver invokes this trope himself when he and Barry prepare for their rematch.
  • It is subsequently lampshaded in the 2016 crossover, where everyone votes in Barry as the leader (including Oliver himself), only for Barry to keep stuttering and Oliver to unsubtly tell him what to do.
• Fake Defector: Fakes joining the League of Assassins near the end of Season 3 in an attempt to destroy it from the inside.
• Fights Like a Normal: In Season 9 of The Flash, long after after Oliver becomes the god-like Spectre, he arrives on Earth to assist Barry, once again donning his traditional Green Arrow attire and fights using his traditional hand-to-hand combat.
• Fire-Forged Friends:
  • With Kara Danvers after they fight alongside each other against the Dominators. He even apologizes for his cold behavior towards her and she in turns reassures him that his enduring through so many hardships is why people looks towards him as "their rock."
  • With Ray Palmer, despite initially being romantic rivals for Felicity and Ray trying to apprehend Oliver after being framed for serial murders by Ra's Al-Ghul. Their relationship eventually warms to the point where Oliver provides guidance to Ray in his first solo outing as the Atom, helping him to rely less on his tech and more on his instincts. When Ray is later approached by Rip Hunter to help stop Vandal Savage, Oliver is the person he turns to for advice.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: After five years fighting for his life on a remote island, Oliver has trouble reconnecting with his friends and family whose lives moved on without him. He also doesn't get most pop culture references.
  Oliver: What's Twilight?
  Tommy: You're so better off not knowing.
• Foregone Conclusion: He will die in "Crisis on Infinite Earths" as part of the deal he made with the Monitor to save Barry and Kara.
• Friendly Rivalry: With Barry Allen.
• Genius Bruiser: Being one of the top Badass Normals in the Arrowverse is a given. In terms of intelligence, while he's a long way off from the many nerds in the franchise, he has amassed an extensive amount of skills and knowledge during his 5 years away from his home. He's a master tactician, proficient at scanning the environment to draw conclusions, and a master of psychological manipulation to goad enemies into defeat. He can also fool a lie test, has a very strong resistance to pain, and an expert torturer. Plus, Oliver's initial Book Dumb nature can be attributed to being Brilliant, but Lazy as he learns exceptionally quickly.
• Genius Ditz: Downplayed as he was never entirely The Ditz, but during the first few season 1 flashbacks, Oliver was The Load. Yao Fei had to save him from everything, he couldn't fight at all, and he got his ass handed to him on multiple occasions. All that said, after Oliver teams up with Slade Wilson, it is shown that Oliver is in fact capable of coming up with clever plans and ideas (some of which seem to impress Slade himself). Such as suggesting to lure Fyers' men into one location to ambush them. It was also his idea to take the circuit board to use as collateral against Fyers.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: His mother notes that he always tries to see the good in everyone even if they don't deserve it.
  • This caused trouble when he failed to realize how obsessed Helena was with avenging her fiancé
  • Possibly subverted with Isabel Rochev, whose vendetta meant that she would do anything to spite the Queen family with or without Oliver's trust.
  • Again with his vow to protect Malcolm Merlyn when he said he didn't kill Sara, but still is a mass murderer and had a drugged, groomed Thea kill Sara.
  • He also underestimated how far Ra's al Ghul would go to force Oliver to succeed him as the head of the League of Assassins
• Good Is Not Nice: As the Arrow, and before that, the Hood. In the words of Barry Allen, the Arrow is "kind of a douche". He tries to get better as of Season 4, but slips back into it in Season 5 falling Laurel's death.
• Good Parents: When he meets his future children, he seeks to have a good relationship with them and he is very accepting of them.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: One of Oliver's less obvious traits is he never curses, despite other members of Team Arrow frequently slipping around terms like "bitch" and "bastard".
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • He's not happy when Barry turns up and hits it off with Felicity, being noticeably grumpy about her visiting him in Central City. Lampshaded by Diggle.
    Diggle: I think you didn't have a problem with Felicity's performance until she met Barry Allen.
  • Crops up again when Felicity starts dating Ray in Season 3. His reaction when he sees them kissing can only be described as a temper tantrum. (This case is less sympathetic, as Oliver had refused to start a relationship with Felicity himself and she was only trying to move on from his rejection).
  • Played for Laughs in Elseworlds (2018), when Oliver is insistent that Batman is just a myth made up by Gotham PD. He's clearly just jealous that there might have been another Badass Normal cleaning up a Wretched Hive active before him.
    Oliver: [as Barry and Kara laugh] I'm the original vigilante!
• Guile Hero: Aside from physical combat, he attempts to use trickery and manipulation to defeat the villains.
• Happily Married: To Felicity Smoak as of Crisis on Earth-X.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Zigzagged. His Training from Hell and traumatic experiences have made him the World's Best Warrior, but he shares his universe with beings that are vastly more powerful than him and didn't need intensive effort to get said power. This is shown most prominently in Season 3, where after he implemented a long, complicated infiltration of the League of Shadows that alienated his friends, Barry arrives in the finale to beat down almost every assassin in Nanda Parbat in under five minutes.
• Heartbroken Badass: On the island, Shado's death puts him in this territory. Off the island, Laurel's life falling apart, the death of Moira, his mother and Sara's murder puts him back there. After Laurel dies, he breaks even more, even regressing a bit on his Thou Shalt Not Kill stance.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: His Green Arrow costume is very leather-y compared to his original gear.
• The Hero Dies:
  • Averted. He does comes Back from the Dead the following episode.
  • Played straight in Crisis on Infinite Earths, when he dies at the end of the first hour.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • After nearly being killed by the Dark Archer, Oliver suffers from a form of PTSD, too afraid of losing his family and friends to fight effectively.
  • He goes through an even worse one near the end of season two after Slade Wilson murders his mother right in front of him.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In Crisis on Infinite Earths, he single-handedly fights the Anti-Monitor's army with his bare hands in order to buy enough time for roughly a billion citizens of Earth-38 to evacuate to Earth-1 before the Earth is destroyed.
• Hero with Bad Publicity:
  • Progressively subverted over time, especially after "Year's End", but he still isn't this without reason.
  • He does this intentionally to the Green Arrow in "Fighting Fire With Fire," giving the public a target for Billy Malone's murder and allowing him to remain in office as mayor.
• Heroes' Frontier Step:
  • In Elseworlds (2018) he asks the Monitor to give him a tool to save Barry and Kara, since they are both morally good and a good chance to stop the upcoming Crisis.
  • In Crisis on Infinite Earths, he persists on fighting the Shadow Demons even when the Monitor considers it a lost battle. In order to ensure the evacuation of as many Earth-38 inhabitants as possible, he incapacitates the Monitor with a special arrow and continues fighting the Shadow Demons to his last breath. His sacrifice ensures the salvation of a further billion lives.
• He's Back!:
  • In Season One, he encounters his Evil Counterpart, the Dark Archer (secretly Malcolm Merlyn), and suffers a brutal beatdown; he escapes alive, but the next episode shows him struggling to regain his confidence and focus. Eventually, his confidant John Diggle gives him a much-needed pep talk about drawing strength from his loved ones, and he recovers in time to don his costume and stop Firefly.
  • In Season Two, having failed to stop Malcolm from destroying the Glades and watched his best friend Tommy die in front of him, Oliver retreats to the island of Lian Yu, where Diggle and Felicity Smoak have to convince him to come back and save his family's company. Through reconnecting with his mother and sister while confronting his guilt over Tommy viewing him as a murderer, Oliver adopts a new Thou Shalt Not Kill approach, ultimately making a Big Damn Heroes return as the Arrow to save his sister from four murderous copycats.
  • In Season 5, during the episode "Disbanded", after being thoroughly tortured and broken by Prometheus, Oliver goes into withdrawal, disbanding the team, and willing to make a deal with the Bratva to have Adrian Chase killed. John manages to get through to him with a Rousing Speech, reminding him that Oliver helped him out of a similar situation not too long ago. Oliver's spirit gets revitalized and he puts the team back together, complete with uplifting music to signify his return.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Tommy and Diggle. Roy and Barry to a lesser extent.
• He Who Fights Monsters: By the Season Five flashbacks, Oliver has progressed to the point where he's willing to torture a helpless man (a criminal who was an accessory to the use of sarin gas, but still helpless) to death as "practice". This was after the man gave up the information that Oliver wanted. A sickened Anatoly compares him to the likes of Slade or Ivo. He eventually did managed to rein himself in by the time Season One happened, but a person can still see shades of it even back then.
• Hidden Depths: A dark variant. Oliver is capable of a level of ruthlessness and cruelty that he's honestly uncomfortable with, to the point that the initial goal of the Big Bad of season 5 is to try and break Oliver by getting him to confess that he enjoys killing. To put things in perspective, Oliver once skinned a man alive... to prove to himself that he could. This even shocked the Russian gangster he was working with at the time.
• Hollywood Healing: For some reason, he has a very rapid time on healing himself. This is notable during his fight with a Hate Plagued Barry where the latter gave him multiple Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs which he did suffered for quite a while but appears fine after Bivolo's capture, and, of course, his duel with Ra's where he was Impaled with Extreme Prejudice and kicked-off from a cliff and it only took him about two weeks to fully recover, where in real life said injuries are fatal. However, given that Maseo said that he asked Tatsu "to come there so, she could bring Oliver back from the dead," it's unclear how much of this is Hollywood Healing and how much of it is due to other, as yet unknown, factors.
• Honest Corporate Executive: In Season Two when he assumes control of Queen Consolidated.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • His team-up with Malcolm in Season 3, lampshaded by everybody.
  • He dropped out of the mayoral election late in Season 4, to stop Darhk from killing William. Once William is returned to his mom and Darhk is arrested, it's pointed out he could rejoin the race, but he declines on the flimsy premise that voters hate flip-floppers.
  • He refuses to give into Fyers' torture and continues protecting Yao Fei despite barely knowing him.
• House Husband: Between Season 3 and 4, he became this to Felicity.
• Hunk: He is very handsome and has a muscular body and broad shoulders.
• Hypocrite:
  • During the first season, he condemns Helena and the criminal in "Salvation", Joseph Falk ('the Savior') for killing criminals without giving them a chance to change... despite him started out his crusade doing the exact same thing. To his credit, he seems to have realized this, as in Season Two he's trying to avoid killing, though he isn't always successful.
  • In Season Two, he criticizes Barry Allen for keeping his reason for being interested in paranormal cases a secret. Felicity immediately calls Ollie out on keeping pretty much everything a secret.
  • In Season Two, Oliver yells at his mother about keeping Thea in the dark about her parentage - despite the fact that he is lying to his family about more than a few things.
  • He tells Laurel in Season 3 she can't be on Team Arrow because she's untrained. Laurel went to him for exactly that a few episodes before that and Ollie refused to train her. In fairness however he and Sara went through Training from Hell that nearly destroyed them and neither of them would wish it on anyone else. Add in that Quentin has already lost one daughter so training Laurel up to put herself in danger is clearly something to avoid. His reluctance to let her join up is proved to be justified in Season 4 when Laurel is killed.
• Hypocritical Humor: He gets really annoyed when Barry pulls the same trick Oliver did on him by shooting him in the back with remote-controlled arrows. It's somewhat justified in that a) he shot Barry to prove a point, whereas Barry did it for fun and b) he feels that Barry is treating his skills and identity as a joke.

I-M

• Iconic Attribute Adoption Moment: It takes a while for Oliver Queen to adopt the Green Arrow's Domino Mask. He wears greasepaint and goes In the Hood to hide his identity, saying when asked that a mask would fall off. Barry Allen takes up the challenge and makes him one as a present, which Oliver finally dons in the Season 2 episode "Three Ghosts".
• I Did What I Had to Do: During the five years he was legally dead, he had to lose conventional morality in order to survive. Coming back after this, he was so used to killing people to live that he was mostly running on instinct when fighting.
• Idiot Ball: Dating Susan Williams, a very tough and thorough reporter who makes life hell for politicians so much so she discovers that he was in the Bratva and is the Green Arrow. Lampshade repeatedly by Thea.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Has many. Notable examples:
  • Sara, all of Season One. Ultimately subverted as she's not actually dead, though he thinks so for a while.
  • Tommy, Shado, and his own mother, as of Season Two.
  • Laurel, as of Season Four. Part of why he starts killing again in Season Five is due to the belief that if he had killed Damien Darhk sooner, she would still be alive. Also, his complicated feelings regarding Black Siren (such as his desire to trust/redeem her) stem from his guilt of failing his Laurel.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Courtesy of Ra's al Ghul.
• Important Haircut:
  • After coming home from Lian Yu. Officially speaking.
  • After falsely joining the League of Assassins.
  • He shaves his head and grows his beard out during the prison arc in Season 7. After he is released at the end of "The Slabside Redemption," he returns to his short beard.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Given the premise of the show, Oliver is quite possibly the best marksmen in the Arrowverse. Some of his feats include:
  • Shooting several bouncing tennis balls with arrows and pinning them against the wall.
  • While in the middle of a gunfight with Deadshot having to take constant cover, he manages to shoot an arrow into Deadshot's eyepiece.
  • Severing the detonation cord held by Shrapnel using an arrow.
  • Shooting an arrow into the tip of a civilian's handgun.
  • Shooting arrows of other archers out of the sky.
• Informed Ability: Oliver is multilingual, being fluent in English, Russian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Spanish, Tibetan, and Arabic. While this is shown onscreen, what's informed is Oliver's Mandarin accent was so perfect it fooled a blinded Chinese guy into thinking Oliver was actually a native Chinese speaker. To anyone who actually speaks Mandarin, Stephen Amell sounds more-or-less like any average Westerner speaking the language. His Russian pronunciation isn't that much better either.
• Informed Attribute: Oliver's Jerkass party boy image, which seems to have been very true before the island but not carried over no matter what assumptions people make. Most likely, people saw what they expected to see.
• Informed Flaw: In the first episode a doctor mentions "at least twelve fractures that never properly healed". Somehow this never shows to hinder him at any point of time.
• In Prison with the Rogues: While Oliver Queen had been arrested several times on suspicion of being the Hood/Arrow/Green Arrow, he always managed to evade custody before reaching prison. That is until Season 6 where he has finally run out of cards to play and is left with no choice but to publicly out himself as the Green Arrow and accept arrest at the hands of the FBI. Oliver gets incarcerated into the same prison housing many of the rogues he had locked away including Bronze Tiger, Brick, and Derek Sampson. Brick ends up leading a revolt where Oliver is forced to fight his rogues again.
• In-Series Nickname: Frequently gets nicknamed "Robin Hood", unsurprisingly considered who he's based off.
• In the Hood: The source of his Appropriated Appellation.
• Insecure Love Interest:
  • It's heavily implied, if not outright stated that the reason why Oliver cheated on Laurel so much is because he felt she was too good for him and she would one day see that, and eventually leave for someone else. What didn't help was that Laurel was already pushing for them to settle down, something that pre-Island Oliver clearly wasn't ready for. Laurel stuck by him regardless, and it was only after the Gambit did she really sour on him. This trait continues throughout Season 1 due to his vigilante activities, hence why he was supportive of her relationship with Tommy, even though he was still in love with her himself. In the 100th episode celebration, he tells "Laurel" via Lotus-Eater Machine that, while he loves her, he isn't the good man she loves, and that she always deserved so much better than him. Judging by how "Laurel" begs him to stay even after that, it's possible that even though Oliver doesn't see it himself, he has always been the good man she thought he could be, the man she loved.
  • Heavily implied, as he questions why Felicity would choose to be with him when someone like Ray Palmer, who unlike him matches her intellectually, is better suited for her.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite many differences between himself and his counterpart from Smallville in terms of background and personality, they have lived very similar lives to each other in comparison to the comic book version. Both were cynical powerless vigilantes who were good friends with a more optimistic superhero with powers, ended up in relationships with women who acted as mission control to their teams as opposed to their comic book love interest Black Canary, and eventually each had a child with their respective wives with neither one being Connor Hawke who is his son in the comics. Also unlike in the comics they essentially replace a more famous superhero in their respective universes, with it later being revealed that said hero had already established himself and been active for years.
• Instant Expert: Downplayed. Oliver doesn't instantly master any particular skill, but he still has a really fast rate on both learning and improving them. It only took him three weeks to progress far enough in his League training for Ra's to declare he was ready to ascend and take his place as the Demon's Head.
• Irony:
  • He laughed at the prospect of being called Green Arrow during his first year of being a vigilante. Now, he adopts the moniker as a shift from being The Cowl into The Cape.
  • Of the three Merlyn/Queen progeny, he is the one most alike to Malcolm Merlyn. He is extremely talented at combat and has done many of the... less-than-moral things Malcolm has gotten up to over the years, such as torture. Tommy didn't have the stomach for such things and since he was never trained, it's unclear if he had any aptitude for combat. Thea is skilled and has an inner darkness to her, but it's offset by her temper and a stronger moral fiber. The irony in all this is that Oliver is the only one of the three to share not so much as a jot of Malcolm's blood.
• It's Not You, It's Me: After Hong Kong, he didn't return home because he feared the darkness within him would corrupt his family. After torturing General Shrieve for hours in revenge for Akio Yamashiro's death, Oliver realized what he was capable of should he ever fully give in to the darkness, and didn't want to put his friends and family through that. He didn't want to face the possibility that the good man they all saw in him, the good man that Laurel had loved, Tommy had cherished, and Thea had admired, had died on the shores of Lian Yu. His torture at Prometheus' hands and the admission that he enjoys killing makes his reasoning all the more clear — the person Oliver feared the most has always been himself.
• It's Personal: He had this type of conflict with every season's Big Bad, barring Ra's al Ghul. Season 5 in particular embodies this; Prometheus has basically dedicated the rest of his life to ruining and destroying Oliver's, and unlike Slade, he's not bothering with the city, going for a more... intimate approach. The entire season is nothing more than a prelude for what is arguably the biggest grudge match in the history of the Arrowverse.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Pushed Tommy and Laurel together, even though it was obvious he still had feelings for Laurel. Does the same for Felicity and her other love interests as he feels she's better off without him.
• Jerkass: As a result of his time on the island (and elsewhere), Oliver is pretty seriously broken and traumatized, he pushes people away, often roughly, has great difficulties trusting people and deals with them harshly as a default. However, some of it is a facade.
• Jerkass Has a Point: When he tries to get out of working at Queen Industries by pretending to be a drunken playboy, he makes a fairly valid point: He's not even remotely qualified to manage an international corporation.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • He's been pretty deeply damaged by his time on the island, but he's been reconnecting with people thanks to Diggle, Felicity, his family, and now Barry. He's rediscovering his humanity, using more gentle methods in his vigilantism, and evolving from a phantom of dark justice to a truer hero with each passing season. (i.e. Adopting a Thou Shalt Not Kill policy in the second season, being pushed not to torture people by Barry in the third, learning to trust his teammates and adopt a more hopeful, humane and responsible ethos in the fourth...)
  • It shines through in the Invasion crossover when everyone blames Barry for altering the timeline, even though most of them were guilty of the same thing. Oliver, of all people, sympathizes and empathizes with Barry, not blaming him at all. He even admits that he would have done the same thing because of how he knew how Barry felt about losing his parents. His Lotus-Eater Machine actually verifies how sincere he is, as his ideal reality is almost exactly the same as Barry's Flashpoint timeline.
• Judge, Jury, and Executioner: As The Hood, this was his main characterization. Passing judgement on those who were outside the law's jurisdiction due to their power. Diggle even calls him this word for word in a flashback of the fifth season.
• Just Like Robin Hood: Discussed. He's been accused of this but hotly denies it. In fact he's not actually in this to redistribute the wealth of his victims but to get 'their' victims justice and prevent them from hurting more people.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: He has dealt with the consequences of this numerous times, but keeps repeating it.
• Kick the Dog: While he has done numerous morally ambiguous things over the years, torturing a helpless Mook to death via skinning was definitely the one action there was absolutely no justification for, especially since the guy gave him the information he wanted pretty quickly. He continued for practice!
• Killed Off for Real: He dies in the first episode of Crisis on Infinite Earths, courtesy of the Anti-Monitor's army, in order to allow more time for Earth-38's evacuation.
• Killing Your Alternate Self: In the Crisis On Earth X crossover, he offs his cold-hearted, fascist Earth-X doppelganger, Oliver-X during the Final Battle when his Nazi forces invade Earth-1.
• Knight Templar Big Brother:
  • Oliver's sister takes drugs and drives under the influence, causing her to crash. As a civilian, Oliver pulls all the favors he can to try and get Thea out of jail time. As the Hood, Oliver hunts down The Count and ... Don't even indirectly mess with Oliver's sister, or it's going to go down very badly for you.
  • Lampshaded in "Darkness on the Edge of Town":
    Oliver: [to Roy] Hi, I don't know if we've met. I'm Thea's disapproving older brother.
  • At the beginning of Season Two, Oliver is unwilling to hood up again, because he doesn't want to increase his body count and dishonor Tommy's memory, even after Hood copycats kill the mayor and threaten Laurel. Then, they kidnap Thea. Cue one pissed-off Arrow (non-lethally) beating the living crap out of the copycats.
  • This ends up being his Fatal Flaw and downfall. See Nice Job Breaking It, Hero below.
  • In Season Three, a flashback reveals when he briefly returned to Starling City he was made aware of Thea's drug abuse. Oliver went and confronted Thea's dealer, telling him to back off. But upon the dealer retaliating, Oliver broke his neck.
• Last Stand: In Crisis on Infinite Earths, when the Monitor teleports all the heroes off Earth-38, deeming it a lost cause and needing to save resources for the next fight, Oliver fires a trick arrow that incapacitates the Monitor, then single-handedly fends off the Anti-Monitor's army with his bare hands in order to buy more time to protect the Quantum Tower and allow more survivors to evacuate. His actions help save one billion lives, but at the cost of his own.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In "Taken", when Oliver introduced Vixen in her live-action debut, he says that he'd met her in an "animated" adventure. Bonus points for Steven Amell barely being able to keep a straight face while uttering the line.
• Legacy Character:
  • In an odd example, he's actually a Legacy Character to himself, as he fakes his death as his Arrow persona, before returning to his city as the Green Arrow under the guise that he was a different man taking up the mantle.
  • He later picks Mia to take up the mantle of the Green Arrow and to be his true successor
• Legally Dead: Oliver is this during his five years on the island. The second episode even features him going to court so he can be legally revived.
• Leitmotif: The theme song, of course.
• Le Parkour: He makes frequent use of this.
• Let's You and Him Fight: During the very first Crossover with The Flash, Barry has been hit with the Hate Plague and they get into a fight. It ends in a draw.
• Light Is Good: After returning in Season 4 and becoming the Green Arrow, Oliver vows to be a symbol of hope and to fight during the "light of day". Late in the season he also learns light based magic called "Light of the Soul", to counteract Damien Darhks's dark based Blood Magic.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Laurel was this to him during his five years away from home. She gave him a picture of her to always keep her close right before the voyage, and Oliver never once parted with it — in times of hardship, he would always look at it to remind himself that he needed to survive, to live and get back to her. For example: after Kovar drugged him during his final year on the island, Oliver was given a pistol with a single shot, and was dangerously close to pulling the trigger on himself, no thanks to the hallucination of Yao Fei egging him on. It was the image of Laurel that stopped him; she reminded him that he had people waiting for him at home, and that if he pulled that trigger, it would spitting on the deaths and sacrifices of everyone who endured with him on that journey — including that of his father and Sara. Hence, when Laurel dies a few years after he returns home, he does not take it well. Her death is the one that affects him the most, causing him to regress back to killing and pushing him that much closer to a breakdown. It is made very clear that, with her gone, Oliver really can't take much more tragedy in his life before he falls apart completely.
• Long-Lost Relative: He has a child with a woman whom he cheated Laurel on. He did not know that his mother bribed the woman to stay out of his existence and Ollie only finds this out when his child is already nine years old.
• Looks Like Jesus: Mostly around the late 2000s. More so after the yacht incident.
• Love Makes You Stupid: He is very prone to making dumb decisions when loved ones are involved.
• Made of Iron: The amount of injuries Oliver sustained while on the island would have probably crippled most people. Likewise, in the premier he cuts his way through Adam Hunt's cadre of bodyguards, defeats his The Dragon, leaps out of a skyscraper, ziplines to safety... and reappears at his party a scant three minutes later looking none the worse for wear. Though granted he doesn't walk away unscathed, having accumulated his fair share of battle scars all over his body, making him more closer to Dented Iron.
• The Mafiya: The third episode reveals that Oliver has the rank of captain, because he saved the life of Anatoli Knyazev (who in the DCU is the KGBeast), who was a prisoner of Ivo's on the Amazo. Whether Oliver's relationship with the Bratva was damaged beyond repair by the events of the Mirakuru attack in the second season remains to be seen.
• The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Dates the Huntress, she leaves due to his disapproval of her methods. Dates McKenna, she leaves after being shot during a confrontation between Oliver and Helena. Attempts to date Felicity in the season 3 opener, but when they're attacked, he takes it as a sign that he could never live a happy life as Oliver Queen and they tearfully call it off... for while.
• Master-Apprentice Chain:
  • Yao Fei Gulong, Slade Wilson, Shado, Maseo Yamishiro, Ra's al Ghul —> Oliver Queen —> Helena Bertinelli, Roy Harper, Team Arrow recruits (Curtis Holt, Evelyn Sharp, Rene Ramirez, and Rory Regan), Mia Smoak.
• Master of the Mixed Message: He alternates between telling Laurel to stay away, and having ice cream with her. Also does this to Felicity, to the point that when their Unresolved Sexual Tension comes to a crossroads in the season 3 premiere, she demands he stop "dangling 'maybe's" with her.
• Meaningful Rename: In Season 4 he finally becomes the Green Arrow.
• The Mentor: Being an Experienced Protagonist, Oliver has taken it upon himself to train younger emerging heroes as well.
  • The first student he takes in is Helena Bertinelli/Huntress, training her to shoot and providing her trademark crossbow, although she turns out to be a A Pupil of Mine Until She Turned to Evil
  • Roy Harper/Arsenal is his next student and Oliver's first true sidekick. He takes him in after Roy gets subjected to Mirakuru, where Oliver teaches him to control his strength and how to shoot arrows.
  • Once Barry Allen becomes the Flash, Oliver gives him some Boxing Lessons for Superman. Barry being too reliant on his speed, tends to charge blindly into battle, so Oliver taught him to be more cautious and analyze the situation before engaging enemies.
  • Provides guidance to Ray Palmer in his first solo outing as the Atom, helping him to rely less on his tech and more on his instincts. When Ray is later approached by Rip Hunter to help stop Vandal Savage, Oliver is the person he turns to for advice.
  • In Season 5, Oliver takes in a whole new batch of recruits for Team Arrow, including Curtis Holt/Mr. Terrific, Evelyn Sharp/Artemis, Rene Ramirez/Wild Dog, and Rory Regan/Ragman. His first lesson for them is teaching them to function as a team, before gradually honing their individual skill sets.
• Metaphorically True: His five years on Lian Yu also included time in Hong Kong and Russia which happened because of events on the island so in a sense he never left.
• Mirror Character: Oliver and Prometheus are distorted, mirror images of each other. Their respective crusades are driven by the desire to avenge their fathers, they both went through hell to become skilled combatants, and they both take pleasure in killing.
• Moral Myopia: Oliver doesn't seem to notice that he applies this often. He's capable of cold-blooded murder in taking out his targets but doesn't allow anyone else the same leeway. This is somewhat justified as he wants to keep others from turning down his path of darkness, from which there is no return. He adopts a Thou Shalt Not Kill policy in Season 2, only to fall right back into actively killing by Season 5 in the wake of Laurel's death.
• Morality Chain:
  • He has controlled Diggle when he becomes too brutal with the villains.
  • A few episodes seem to imply that Oliver's survival and return to Starling City prevents his loved ones from circling the drain. In Earth-2, where he didn't survive The Queen's Gambit sinking, his sister Thea died of a drug overdose, while his best friends Tommy and Laurel both turned evil.
• Morality Pet: Several. Notable examples are Thea, Tommy, Laurel, Diggle, Felicity, Roy, William, even Barry Allen. Oliver's the Crazy Morality Pet Lady of the DCTV Universe.
• Movie Superheroes Wear Black: Averted. He wears a variation of his costume from the comic in a darker shade of green.
• Mr. Fanservice: Especially with many a Shirtless Scene.
• Multi-Ranged Master: Throwing knives and a bow and arrow.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • Originally, it was watching Sara Lance die -— while he was cheating on his girlfriend with her. His girlfriend, Sara's sister. As of Season Two, this has been surpassed by best friend Tommy's death during the Undertaking and rendered moot when Sara turns up alive and well as the Canary.
  • Post-Season Four, it's the death of his First Love, Laurel Lance, the aforementioned sister of Sara. To compound the guilt, Laurel was also the woman Tommy loved and died for — in the end, Laurel's death would render the sacrifice of his best friend ultimately meaningless, since she would die only 2-3 years later.
• My Greatest Second Chance:
  • After learning that there could be a way to cure Mirakuru, he still chose to try and kill Slade anyway, even though curing him could have potentially prevented most of the events of the second season, or at least greatly diminished how much of a threat Slade could be. Oliver now working to get the antidote made so it can be used on the similarly addled-up Roy seems to be him making sure something like that doesn't ever happen again.
  • Is attempting to do this with Laurel's Earth-2 counterpart, Black Siren. It's obvious that Oliver's desire to redeem her is because he sees her as a way to make up for failing his Laurel.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits:
  • Tommy gets a nonverbal version, over Thea. Which becomes Hilarious in Hindsight considering how, in the following season, it's revealed post-mortem that Tommy was Thea's half-brother.
    Tommy: Have you noticed how hot your sister's gotten?
    [Oliver gives him a Death Glare]
    Tommy: Because I have not!
  • Subverted with Roy, though. In fact, he's counting on Thea being a Morality Chain for him.

N-R

• Never Found the Body: During his five years on the island, he was presumed dead.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Sadly, he was not able to see his wife Felicity again before perishing.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His forcing Roy to break up with Thea inadvertently causes the last bit of Season 2 and ultimately Season 3, which includes Thea finding out her parentage, Isabel Rochev taking over Queen Consolidated, the creation of Slade's Mirakuru army, Roy going on a Mirakuru rampage, the death of his mother, Deathstroke's army destroying Starling City, the city almost being nuked by ARGUS, and Sara going back to the League of Assassins.
• Nice to the Waiter: Even as the spoiled party guy he was before the island, Oliver seems to have a good relationship with his family's staff. Prior to letting her in on the secret he is also nothing but charming towards Felicity despite his odd requests.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Delivers one to Brodeur's bodyguard after the latter almost kills Laurel.
  • Oliver's modus operandi. While he has softened over the years (mainly on the killing front), he isn't nearly as squeamish about crippling and/or severely harming enemies as his super-powered counterparts, especially if he's angry. If a villain managed to the avoid this fate, they were either: a) skilled combatants in their own rights, b) had superpowers, or c) very lucky.
• Non-Idle Rich: Besides his nighttime activities, he also runs a nightclub in the first season and takes over as the co-CEO of Queen Consolidated in the second. As of Season Five, he's become the mayor.
• Not Quite Dead: Loses the duel to Ra's Al Ghul in "The Climb", and after being stabbed through the chest, he is kicked off the edge of the mountain. The fall was cushioned by snow and he was kept alive through the cold slowing down his blood loss.
• Not So Similar: In the end Oliver isn't that similar from Prometheus — he became a killer out of a need for survival, the fact that he liked it being irrelevant, and once he recognized how far he was falling, he tried to stop, with mixed results, and he still actively tries to atone for his sins. Prometheus became a killer by his own choice out of his desire for revenge, and when he realized how far he was falling, rather than pulling back, he went all in, as evidenced when he killed his wife for trying to convince him to stop; and just to sink the point in further once his cover was blown he murders the agents assigned to protect him, and cheerfully whistles as he makes his escape.
• Not So Stoic: He can be quite frightening when he loses his cool.
• Not Wearing Tights: Oliver's first costume, in the opening minutes of the Pilot, is essentially a dark green leather hoodie. When he starts his vigilante work, it's expanded to basically a full-body leather outfit, with a hood and green face paint.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Upon his return from the island, he immediately tries to hide that he's changed by acting like he did 5 years ago. Whilst he drops it as it becomes more apparent to those around him that he's no longer that guy, he still invokes this trope to help hide his vigilantism. It's gradually faded out over the years, especially during his campaign for mayor.
• Odd Friendship: With Barry Allen, AKA The Flash. Surprisingly, they're close in age, 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.
• Odd Name Out:
  • To Thea's blood relatives; Malcolm (her father), Moira (their mother) and Thomas aka Tommy (her paternal half-brother).
  • In the island Flashbacks, especially in Season 2, with Slade, Shado and eventually Sara (Yao Fei was never with them when they were a group).
  • To date, he's the only member of Team Arrow whose given name starts with a vowel. There's John (Diggle), Felicity, Roy, Sara, Laurel, Malcolm and Thea. This gets more noticeable when his titular show is also the only show ^note The Flash (2014), Vixen, Supergirl (2015), Legends of Tomorrow and retroactively Constantine. in the Arrowverse which starts with a vowel.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Ra's wants him to be his successor and won't take "No" for an answer.
• Oh, Crap!: Has a damn near perfect expression when he sees Laurel has set him up in a police sting at her office at the end of "Identity".
• One-Man Army: Courtesy of his extremely high-level skills in ranged and melee combat, Oliver is capable of fighting off large numbers of people singlehandedly. It's even lampshaded by the Team Arrow recruits in season 5 after they try to stop him from going through with one of his plans by force, and he effortlessly beats them down and continues on his way.
• One True Love: Oliver has the rare case of two. The two great loves of his life are Laurel Lance and Felicity Smoak.
  • With Laurel, they were Childhood Friends who eventually became more. However, Oliver's insecurities made him feel unworthy of Laurel, which caused him to act out and cheat on her. Despite that, he loved her, so much so that she was his Living Emotional Crutch during his five years away from home, with a hallucination of her even talking him out of committing suicide — one of Oliver's goals was to get back to her, so he could, at the very least, apologize for how he treated her. Even though they never truly got back together afterwards, they still loved each other. Unfortunately, he and Laurel are also implied to be the Star-Crossed Lovers version of this trope. Several of their doppelgangers have gotten together on different earths, but the relationships never worked out. While Earth-X Oliver and Laurel are implied to have only broken up, Earth-2 Oliver and Laurel were engaged only for the former to die when the Gambit sank on their earth, which was the last straw for the latter in her Start of Darkness. On Earth-1, Laurel died before they could back together, which devastates Oliver more than any other death in the series; he's completely unable to move on until he gets another chance to say goodbye to her in the Dominators' Lotus-Eater Machine. Even so, he still regards her death as his greatest failure, and it's confirmed that some part of him will always be in love with her for the rest of his life. Eventually, his death in Crisis on Infinite Earths will reunite him with Laurel once again, this time for good.
  • With Felicity, she provided levity in his increasingly dark life, especially when he was estranged from Laurel. After Laurel's death, she took her place as his main support, proving to be another source of strength during his hardest moments. Thankfully, unlike with Laurel, Oliver did get be with Felicity, marrying her and even having a child with her. Alas, his relationship with Felicity is just as ill-fated as his one with Laurel. Before they could really begin the rest of their lives together, the Monitor takes Oliver away, and Felicity never sees him again, with Oliver confirmed to die in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Ultimately, over twenty years later she has the Monitor take her away as well so she can be with him.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After having been captured, tortured, and both mentally and emotionally shattered by Prometheus, Oliver becomes briefly broken enough that he makes a deal to allow the Bratva to come to Star City, steal pharmaceutical drugs to create their own addictive street drug, and try to assassinate Prometheus/Adrian Chase.
• Open-Minded Parent: When Future William confessed to being gay, he is not disappointed whatsoever and admitted that he was waiting for him to come out.
• Papa Wolf:
  • First shown when Damien Dahrk kidnaps William. In the final episodes of Season 5 when Chase does the same, this time Oliver has no restraint to beat the crap out of him.
  • One of the reasons he wants to avert the Crisis is to ensure that his children have a place to live.
• The Paragon:
  • As one of the original public vigilante of Earth-1^note Batman was unknown outside Gotham and regarded as an urban legend, while other heroes like Ted Grant or the Justice Society of America were relatively unknown or operated in secrecy, Oliver ends up inspiring numerous other people to step up to the mantle of being a hero, including the majority of Team Arrow (Roy, Laurel, Curtis, Rene), Barry, Ray Palmer, and presumably numerous others. Indeed, [[spoiler:in the Season 8 premiere, the Monitor explicitly refers to Oliver as a Paragon even among heroes, a select breed of heroes who are needed to save the multiverse.
  • Crisis takes this even further where a whole team of Paragons gets assembled to save the Multiverse. While Oliver himself doesn't end up being a Paragon (most likely by virtue of dying before the existence of Paragons was revealed), he ends up getting an even greater honor when he gets chosen by Jim Corrigan to replace him as the Spectre and instead leads the Paragons as the Big Good.
• Perma-Stubble: Once he was back home, he developed this, both mustache and beard versions.
• Phrase Catcher: "You Missed" is said when he shoots trick arrows, often a moment before the arrow explodes.
• Physical God: In Crisis On Infinite Earths, Oliver ends up becoming The Spectre, a god-like entity with Reality Warper powers and possibly the most powerful being in the multiverse save for GOD himself.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Oliver had sexual/romantic tension/relations with almost every female he met and bonded with during his five years away from home — except for Tatsu Yamashiro. Mainly because Tatsu was already married to his friend and handler Maseo. After she defrosts on him, they become close friends and confidants, with Tatsu even trusting him with her son Akio.
• Playboy Has a Daughter: Oliver Queen pre-series and early series was a wild, indiscriminate playboy. One of his early series conflicts is him cheating on his girlfriend Laurel with her younger sister, Sarah. Around the same time, he had a fling with Samantha Clayton, the mother of Oliver's son, William. Through the first half of the series, it was not uncommon for any female villain to have a previous romantic connection with Oliver. In the final two seasons, it's revealed that Oliver and Felicity have a daughter named Mia. Unfortunately, according to Mia, Oliver went missing when she was a baby and never returned. So, the time where they're trying to figure out the weird hoodoo that brought adult Mia and William twenty years into the past is all the time they'll get together. Oliver tries to make up for his future absence as much as he can in the time that they do have together.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: While he did read a few of the Harry Potter books, he's surprised to learn that there were movie adaptations (this can't be entirely put down to his five-year absence, either; five of the movies had been released by the time he shipwrecked on Lian Yu).
• The Pornomancer: Formerly. He was a notorious Chick Magnet and Casanova before the yacht incident.
• Pragmatic Hero: In Season 3 he has no problem forming a temporary alliance with Malcolm in order to defeat Ra's Al-Ghul. This causes alot of friction with the rest of Team Arrow.
• Pride: He admits to Diggle that the reason why he tried to protect Malcolm even after he was taken by the League of Assassins was because of pride. He hated the fact that there was someone out there who beat him.
• Prison Changes People: After spending the first half of season 7 in prison, Oliver Queen becomes a lot more concerned with how the consequences of his actions affect others, including the people he's helped put in jail. Oliver becomes less volatile, now preferring slower, methodical investigation that leads to legal, lawful prosecution and talking in order to de-escalate potentially violent situations rather than his previous method of making demands and putting arrows in people who don't comply. In contrast to the eponymous name, the Green Arrow has barely used his bow and arrow post-prison. Additionally, the biggest change is that Oliver is now deputized and working with Star City PD instead of acting as a vigilante as he did in the first six seasons.
• Private Eye Monologue: Provided by Oliver for the first few episodes. It's dropped after he has someone to listen to his plans.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • At one point on the island, he came across someone tied up in a cave who claimed to be a student stranded on the island. Out of fear that he might be working for Fyers, Oliver leaves him there to die. In the penultimate episode of Season One, we find out he was right to be worried.
  • In Crisis on Earth-X Oliver is able to hurt Overgirl, because he shoots kryptonite arrows at her. After Oliver learned that Supergirl literally couldn't be hurt by any of his or his friends' attacks a year ago and that Evil Counterparts from alternate universes exist, he decided to stock up on his arsenal.
• Punny Name: Oliver is evocative of "Olive", a shade of green.
• Reality Warper: In Crisis On Infinite Earths he gets granted the godlike powers of The Spectre and is able to will things to happen in The Multiverse, including recreating a new Multiverse.
• Really Gets Around: Mostly before the yacht incident. Not so much in the present day scenes.
  • He doesn't get much on screen action, but it's implied Oliver has dated, and presumably slept with, nearly every major female character in the series, even the ones he met post-island.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Oliver naturally takes up the mantle of leadership, it becomes very obvious in the third crossover with the other Arrowverse shows, where even after appointing Barry as leader, Oliver keeps giving him cues on what to say next. Sara even asks if they're ignoring how Oliver is telling Barry what to say.
• Red Baron: Before he designated himself a codename, he was known as "The Hood" or "The Vigilante" by the media and the police.
• Related in the Adaptation:
  • While his comic counterpart later adopted Mia Dearden, she's not related to the Queens by blood. Mia's counterpart Thea is his biological half-sister in this edition.
  • He also becomes Walter Steele's stepson in this version.
  • He is married to Nyssa from near the end of Season 3 by the laws of the League of Assassins, though it's officially annulled in Season 6. He becomes romantically involved with and eventually marries Felicity Smoak, a Firestorm supporting character. In the comics, he's only been married to Dinah Laurel Lance.
  • Inverted with Connor Hawke, who is not his son in this version (though the Arrowverse made Connor and his biological son here a Decomposite Character, anyway).
• Relative Button: You'd think Malcolm would have known better than to press his.
• Renamed the Same: When he joined the League of Assassins he was given the codename "Al Sah-him", which means Arrow in Arabic.

S-Z

• Sadist: After nearly a week of torture at Prometheus' hands, Oliver admits that he kills people because he wants to and because he likes it. He's devastated by the realization, which utterly breaks his spirit. Later conversations with his allies convince Ollie that this is just something Prometheus convinced him of, and that he isn't really a sadist; hence why he was willing to abandon that tactic at the urging of his friends.
• Sadistic Choice: Thrice so far. On the island, Ivo forces Oliver to choose between Shado and Sara. Slade later forces Oliver to choose between Thea and Moira. The second is an Invoked Trope, as it is a deliberate reconstruction of the first choice. Near the end of Season 3, Ra's Al-Ghul has been framing him up and gradually turned the city he tried so hard to protect against him to push his back against the wall just to make Oliver so desperate to accept Ra's' offer to be his heir.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The Savvy Guy to Felicity's Energetic Girl. Oliver is more serious and stoic while Felicity is more upbeat and energetic. Due to their opposing personalities and temperaments, they balance each other out nicely.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: For someone with a deep voice, Oliver has a surprisingly high-pitched scream, best displayed when he's kneecapped in "Seeing Red."
• Secret Identity: And at first, he maintained one ruthlessly. He's gotten softer about it, though. By Season Two, he is assisted by Diggle and Felicity and states that they both need secret identities, since he is now CEO of his family's company. He ousts himself in the Season Six finale as a part of a deal with the FBI to bring down Diaz; they help him he surrenders into their custody.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Allowing himself to be taken in by Agent Watson in exchange for help to bring down Diaz in Season Six; Diaz's empire was destroyed but the man himself got away to plot his revenge, and ousting himself means he made Felicity and William targets for vengeful criminals forcing them into witness protection, and with him locked up he's in no state to protect them.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Every time he and Barry are together, his "tough-as-nails" demeanor/personality is often highlighted. The same can be said towards his best friend Tommy Merlyn, especially after Oliie returns from Lian Yu. Interestingly, he was the Sensitive Guy to Slade's Manly Man during the island flashbacks.
• Serial Romeo: Even when he's not in Casanova mode, he still has a tendency to end up falling quickly in-love with women, especially after he officially came home from the island. This, coupled with his Always Save the Girl mentality above, got called out by Diggle way back in Season 1.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran:
  • Oliver definitely suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. And although he's trying to maintain his guise as a Spoiled Brat, his family can tell that his act is not very genuine.
  • In "Identity", Slade comments on this after Oliver had killed his first person on the island that wasn't in self-defense.
• Shirtless Scene: At least Once an Episode. All the better to show you he's Covered with Scars, my dear.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: In the Season 2 flashbacks: Ivo has given all the information he has and has asked Sara to kill him. When Sara can’t do it, Ivo starts to go on a Motive Rant... and Oliver grabs the gun and shoots him dead mid sentence.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: Much to Barry's initial resentment and later, the new recruits in season 5. Comes with it being how he was taught, too. Oliver really doesn't know any other way to teach, so if the pupil isn't eager to learn, it causes problems. That's why Roy actually took to his teaching well, especially after the Mirakuru got out of his system.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: His first Green Arrow costume had this look. Though he brought back the sleeves between Seasons Four and Five because he realized that having his arms exposed was an Awesome, but Impractical look.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism
  • Oliver starts out on the cynicism scale, and slowly moves into the idealism scale in seasons 1 and 2. an example would be in the eighth episode of the first season, Vendetta. where Oliver thinks he can save Helena Bertinelli from her path of rage, hatred and vengeance (much to Diggle's objection). Oliver fails though. by season 3, he is full on an idealistic hero. making use of his "The Arrow" alter-ego to be a symbol of hope for Starling City.
• The Soul Saver:
  • After he takes his Thou Shall Not Kill policy he goes out of his way to convince others to not kill those who've wronged them as he knows firsthand what killing does to the human psyche, since all of his constant killing has given him a taste for blood.
  • Even before he adopted that policy, he tried to do the same for the people he cared about. When Sara was about to Mercy Kill Ivo, Oliver took the gun from her and did the deed himself. He had no desire to make the little sister of his First Love and a woman he loved stain her soul like that, and told her as much. Unfortunately, circumstances separated them, and Sara ended up becoming a killer anyway.
  • In Season 1 he stops Lance from shooting the man who kidnapped Laurel, reminding him that he should stay better than him.
• Speed, Smarts and Strength: Oliver forms one of these with Barry and Kara, collectively called the Arrowverse Trinity, with Oliver being the Smarts since he’s the tactical Badass Normal and de facto leader.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Laurel Lance. The two honestly did love each other and always would, but were never able to move past the baggage of their first go at a relationship together. When they finally did, Oliver was in a relationship with Felicity at the time. After he and Felicity broke up, he and Laurel were finally in place to restart their romance — only for Laurel to die before the thought could enter either of their minds. Rather understandably, Oliver has a hard time moving on from Laurel's death after all that; he's only able to do so when he tells "Laurel" from the Dominators' Lotus-Eater Machine all the things he couldn't say to his Laurel.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Oliver loved doing these as the Hood in Season 1, seemingly vanishing into thin air after having conversing with someone.
• The Straight and Arrow Path: Lampshaded by the police, who find using a bow and arrow in the modern day pretty ridiculous and insane.
• The Stoic: Oliver is really damn good in keeping his emotions in check.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guy: Scolds Barry for nicknaming his criminals, not casing the scene before rushing in and in general, treating crime fighting as a game. Justified, as Star(ling) City is much more dangerous than Central City in the sense that the criminals are much more numerous and much more ruthless.
• Strong and Skilled: Oliver himself would ascend to this in Crisis On Infinite Earths after he becomes the The Spectre, making him the most powerful hero in the multiverse. Oliver already being a contender for World's Best Warrior ends up an Empowered Badass Normal when he gets granted the god-like Reality Warper powers of the Spectre, making him a Person of Mass Destruction on multiversal levels. Not only is he able to fight evenly against the Anti-Monitor (the closest the series has to an The Anti-God) but he's able to recreate the destroyed multiverse.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Had this problem in Season Four. While it was justified at the beginning of the season since he had been out of the game for six months at that point, it became increasingly less so as the season wore on. It was especially egregious considering the fact that he and Thea were having problems with the likes of Anarky when Oliver killed Ra's al Ghul by himself last season, with no aid whatsoever. Thankfully corrected in Season Five — Oliver is depicted as the best combatant currently on the show that season, with the only villain managing to fight him on even keel without any help/handicap being season Big Bad Prometheus.
• Supporting Protagonist: On the island, at first. He started to grow up a bit more and meet some interesting people along the way.
• Supreme Chef: In addition to his cooking skills learnt when he was lost in the island, he became a skilled cook during his 10-Minute Retirement in Ivy Town. His souffle's have been praised.
• Surpassed the Teacher: Constantly. No matter if Yao Fei, Slade Wilson, Malcolm Merlyn, Talia or even Ra's al Ghul, eventually he became a better fighter than all of them.
• Survivor Guilt: How he feels about some of the dead people he was close to. The biggest example is Tommy, where he outright says that "it should have been me" in a spirit true to this trope.
• Tattooed Crook: Both variants.
  • He has a tattoo over his heart marking him as a captain in the Russian mob; a gift from Anatoli Knyazev for saving his life. After sadistically torturing him, Prometheus burns it off, turning it from a symbol of a great victory into one of failure and defeat.
  • The dragon tattoo on his left shoulder is a copy of the one Shado had. Slade branded him with it to remind him of his crime. During the six months he spent with Felicity, he has it removed, as a sign that he has finally moved past what happened and no longer feels the need to bear that cross on his back.
• Team Dad: He does not cut his team any slack and is determined to whip them into shape with constant discipline. But at the same time he'll move heaven and earth to keep them from coming to harm.
• Terror Hero: Thanks to the influence of his many Morality Pets, he appears to be toning this down. Heck, Barry even got him not to torture Captain Boomerang for information on the locations of his bombs!
• That Man Is Dead: By Oliver's own admission, he died on his first day on the island, and the man who came back was someone entirely different.
• They Killed Kenny Again: He supposedly died three times already. First during the Queen's Gambit accident. Second during his loss to Ra's Al-Ghul where he was revived by Tatsu. Third and last was at the hands of Vandal Savage which was negated by Barry Allen via Time Travel. In Crisis on Infinite Earths, he finally gets Killed Off for Real at the hands of the Anti-Monitor's army.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill:
  • Starts distancing from killing since the later episodes of Season 1 and decides to stop killing to honor Tommy Merlyn due to the latter' disappointment on learning Oliver was a murderer. He was forced to break it in "State v. Queen" to save Felicity from Count Vertigo, and he was visibly shaken after the deed. Totally averted in season 1, especially in the first few episodes, where he had no problem killing villains or any of their guards or underlings. The season 1 island flashbacks also detail his transformation from sheltered playboy to ruthless killer-by-necessity. This causes problems for him in Season 3 when Malcolm manipulates Thea to kill Sara. Naturally everyone wants to kill Malcolm, except Oliver.
  • After he's adopted this policy there have been two major exceptions: Ra's Al-Ghul, who had to be killed to stop him from destroying Starling City as part of an arcane ritual and Damien Darhk who was an Omnicidal Maniac, murdered thousands of innocent people and made it personal for Oliver after he killed Laurel.
  • As of Season 5, he seems to have gone completely back from that stance, killing mooks left and right, because he feels had multiple chances to kill Darhk and prevent Laurel dying, though he resolves this into being willing to kill as a last resort; however when Prometheus manipulates him into killing Detective Billy Malone (Prometheus had kidnapped him and dressed him up like himself knowing that Ollie would shoot on instinct) he changes his mind, disturbed on having accidentally killed an innocent man. In the Season 5 finale, Oliver does not kill Prometheus as that is exactly what Prometheus wants.
• Together in Death: After his death in Crisis on Infinite Earths, over twenty years after his death, his Second Love and wife, Felicity, will be taken by the Monitor to join them as well.
• Token White: Becomes this in Season 3's flashbacks. Justified as he's in Hong Kong.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Before the wreck of the Queen's Gambit, Oliver was a useless playboy. He came back a hardened killer and excellent fighter. Since then, he's continued to grow and improve. In the first season, his every fight against Malcolm Merlyn was a Curb Stomp with Merlyn the victor.
  • By the fourth season, Oliver has grown to the point that he's capable of taking down Merlyn without breaking a sweat. Which makes sense, considering that in Season 3, Oliver managed to kill Ra's al Ghul in a one-on-one sword fight — the same Ra's al Ghul that was outright stated to be the best technical fighter on the planet, and who Malcolm pitted Oliver against because Malcolm himself was terrified of facing him in any way.
  • Taken to far greater heights than before in Crisis when Oliver momentarily stuns the Monitor and holds off an army of Shadow Demons with his bare hands long enough to save a billion people. Hour Three goes even beyond that when Oliver is chosen by Jim Corrigan to become the next Spectre and accepts, becoming effectively the most powerful hero in the multiverse.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Typically the Arrowverse's resident Comically Serious hero, but he mellows out after finding someone he cares about. Barry is pleased to find out that Oliver has allowed himself to feel happy.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Oliver's intelligence takes a hit once Felicity joins the team, as he's no longer the one required to do any of the analytical thinking. In Season 1, Oliver manned his high-tech computers himself to track criminals, by Season 4 he says he has difficulty even logging on. This in particular is possibly a Justified Trope, as Felicity is skilled in Hollywood Hacking and thus would have upgraded some of the software.
• Torture Technician: Oliver is trained and skilled in the use of torture to break down and terrorise particularly intransigent crooks when the situation calls for it. He starts to grow out of using this thanks to Barry's influence.
• Training from Hell: How is a Spoiled Brat able to hold his own against... everyone? Oh, right, five years alone (except for a few mentors) on an island against an army of merciless killers, some of whom are bonafide supervillains in their own right. And if you thought the Island was bad, wait until you see what the League does to him after he leaves.
• Tranquil Fury: He expresses this when he goes after the first Count Vertigo. After wordlessly beating down every man working under him, he sticks Vertigo's own syringe into his shoulder to give him an overdose, right after quietly growling, "Enjoy the fruits of your labor."
• Trauma Conga Line:
  • Season 3 is hell for Oliver. He ends up getting killed for defending Malcolm by Ra's al Ghul, brought back and then offered his job. He refuses and ends up framed with his secret identity exposed, having his apprentice arrested and needing to fake his death, and his sister being stabbed, forcing him to take the offer to save her.
  • Season 5. See Arch-Enemy above. Let's just say Prometheus really hates Oliver Queen, and leave it at that.
  • In fact, a person could argue that his life ever since the Queen's Gambit went down has been nothing more than an endless line of pain, despair, and loss, with very few bright spots in-between. Even a quarter of what he went through during those five years would've been enough to break lesser men, and what he's suffered in the last five years since returning only compounds it. With how horrible his life has been the last decade, Oliver Queen resembles a Cosmic Plaything whose misfortune is only equalled to that of Barry Allen's (who is a literal Cosmic Plaything).
• Two Guys and a Girl: He loves being part of this dynamic for some reason. ^note  Him, Tommy and Laurel. Him, Slade and Shado, later him, Slade and Sara on Lian Yu. Him, Maseo and Tatsu in Hong Kong. Him, Diggle and Felicity as the original Team Arrow. Him, Roy and Sara later him, Roy and Laurel as Team Arrow's main combatants. Him, Barry, and Kara in the "Invasion!" crossover
• The Unfettered: He may not kill any more but there's still plenty he'll do to keep his city safe, like destroy his friendship with Team Arrow in order to make sure his plan to destroy the League of Assassins goes unhindered.
• Unflinching Walk: In "A Matter of Trust", Oliver slowly walks out of Derek Sampsons' base as explosions go off behind him.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Felicity. Until The Fallen.
• Unstoppable Rage: Briefly enters one when Brodeur's bodyguard/hitman almost kills Laurel.
• Unwanted Harem: Downplayed, but this still got brought up a bit in Season 2 and 3. Oliver had to deal with being with being lovers for both Sara and Laurel, all the while Felicity was developing feelings for him too. By season 3 Sara has been taken out of the picture, while Felicity has become his main love interest, but it's established that Laurel isn't quite done with Oliver yet either. And that's not even getting into Oliver's one-off love interests like McKenna Hall, Helena Bertinelli, or Susan Williams.
• Upper-Class Twit:
  • Oliver invokes this to hide his activities as the Hood. He further cultivates the image (and other related aspects of his Secret Identity) by claiming to want to start a night club in an old Queen Consolidated warehouse... then doing absolutely nothing/making zero progress towards actually turning it into anything. Eventually Tommy steps in to assist with the renovations, having noted that no progress is being made. At which point the night club actually gets finished. This is even lampshaded in the second season, when Moira dismisses Ollie's involvement in the club as just being a hobby.
  • Before Lian Yu, Oliver was actually one, failing out of four Ivy League schools, constantly in the tabloids for his "bad-boy" behavior, and never learning basic things like how to do laundry. Obviously, five years in hell remedied that problem rather quickly.
• Uptown Guy:
  • Technically to every girl he was linked with. The only woman who may have been "in league" with his family's social status is Helena Bertinelli, who came from a mafia family. The Lance sisters, McKenna, Samantha and Taiana all appear to be from middle-class families. Felicity apparently was poor but is a Self-Made Man, while both Isabel and Shado apparently came from families that are "between upper and middle class".
  • Inverted in his relationship with Felicity in Season 4, as he lost his family fortune back in Season 2 while she's become the owner and CEO of multi-billion dollar company Palmer Tech.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Although a playboy, a cheater, and kicked out of multiple schools, young Oliver was a likeable kid who never really wanted to hurt anyone (and mostly didn't). Then he spent five years in hell.
• Vigilante Man:
  • His role as "the Hood", which gives many an Appropriated Appellation including the word "vigilante". However, he rarely stoops to Vigilante Execution, if ever (though, him and Diggle did plan on one to Deadshot, but that got scrapped).
  • In Season Two, he realizes how fundamentally screwed up everyone else considers this, and decides not to act in a Vigilante Man manner anymore, instead simply helping the police do their jobs without killing if possible.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • Slade — at one point they considered each other brothers, much like Oliver and John Diggle's relationship in the present day. This past friendship is one of the two major reasons why Oliver ultimately spared Slade's life after his defeat.
  • Anatoli, in Season Five, but they later reconcile.
  • Subverted with Adrian Chase, who was a False Friend straight from the beginning, even if it took several episodes for Oliver to learn the truth.
• Weak, but Skilled: "Weak" relative to superpowered individuals like Barry. It's telling that in "Flash vs. Arrow," Oliver's superior experience, combat skill, and tactical thinking allows him to hold his own against a Brainwashed and Crazy Barry despite being severely outclassed, and that's taking into account Oliver wasn't fighting to kill.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Surprisingly, or perhaps not, he feels this way toward Detective Lance.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: In the first season, Oliver had no qualms about killing mooks as he preferred to leave the villains themselves alive. He tries and fails to communicate this policy to the Huntress, both on his own poor communication and Helena's crusade against the mob. Eventually, after he swears off killing for good, he admits that this policy wasn't much better than just killing indiscriminately.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Oliver gets a few about his actions from the people who find out his secret, and from Detective Lance while in costume.
  • About half of season 3 consists of his team yelling at him for his tunnel-vision when it comes to protecting Thea, especially regarding the hypocrisy of his lies and his dealings with both Ra's al Ghul and Malcolm Merlyn.
• Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: From Queen Consolidated at first. He later gets more fancy tech from Felicity or Ray Palmer.
• Will They or Won't They?: With Laurel during Season One: They Do only to call it off. He moves into this territory with Felicity from Season Two onwards; They briefly do in the season 3 premiere before an RPG attack on Oliver on their first date spooks him into calling it off with her too, but the door is still ambiguously open as the season progresses and even after Felicity gets in a relationship with Ray Palmer... Then they get together in "The Fallen" and end the season that way. In late season four however, they call it off, only to get back together in season six.
• The Worf Effect:
  • As the premier Badass Normal in the Arrowverse, he is an occasional victim of this to showcase how dangerous metahumans and/or aliens are in comparison to normal humans.
  • He was also a victim of this during the first four seasons of Arrow when it came to each season's Big Bad, each of whom had a significant advantage over him (Malcolm and Ra's had more training and experience, Slade was dosed with the Mirakuru, and Darhk had magic). Season Four also had him on the giving end when he casually curb-stomped Malcolm Merlyn in a sword duel, to showcase how far Oliver had come as a combatant.
  • In Season 4, he seemed to suffer from this whenever encountering Lonnie Machin, who would be able to hold off him and multiple members of Team Arrow, while always giving Oliver the slip. This finally gets corrected in the first episode of season 5, where Oliver takes him down on his own.
  • On the giving end of this during the "Invasion!" crossover. When most of the Legends, Team Arrow, and Supergirl were brainwashed by the Dominators, Oliver was able to hold off Sara, Thea, and Diggle at the same time, with the former being the only one that was even remotely close to a genuine challenge for him.
• Working with the Ex: Several times, with several women.
  • He frequently approaches Laurel to be his legal intel during the beginning of his vigilante career up until the Season 1 finale. After a tense start at Season 2, they were able to work with each other again during the middle of the season. Throughout Season 3, their relationship gets a little rocky again when Laurel repeatedly tries persuading Oliver to let her become a vigilante and join Team Arrow. Fully in play in Season 4 until her death.
  • After their bitter breakup, Helena blackmails him on working with her to kill her father. Oliver grudgingly complies when she took Tommy and the people at Verdant hostage.
  • Technically with Nyssa as they are still married by League of Assassins law despite the fact that Oliver does not recognize their vow. It did not stop her in helping him take down her father during the Season 3 finale.
  • Double Subverted with Felicity. She leaves Team Arrow late in Season 4 specifically because of her lingering feelings for him. It takes Laurel dying for her to get back on the team for payback.
• World's Best Warrior: Possibly. Oliver has almost been consistently portrayed as the best "normal" combatant in the Arrowverse following Season 3. This was after being trained by and later killing Ra's al Ghul, who was stated to be the best assassin on the planet — Oliver was chosen specifically because Ra's believed that he had the potential to surpass him. He outright curb-stomped Malcolm Merlyn, another Ra's al Ghul, (who was curb-stomping him in Season 1), and this was while he was holding back to avoid killing Malcolm. In Season 5, the only people who manage to get the best of him mainly lucked into an advantage, such as superior firepower or a distraction. The only opponent that actually manages give him a decent fight in a fair setting is Prometheus, who was trained by Talia al Ghul (a former member of the League of Assassins and a candidate for Ra's herself, not to mention one of Oliver's former mentors), and even then one could make the argument that in a fight to the finish Oliver would still win. Despite lacking any powers, he is also capable of engaging metahumans, mystical enemies, or other individuals who should have clear advantages over him, yet Oliver still comes out on top. In short, Oliver Queen is very likely the top Badass Normal in all of the Arrowverse.
• World's Strongest Man: After he becomes The Spectre, Oliver is hands down the most powerful hero in existence, having multiversal levels of power. Particularly notable in that he was already the World's Best Warrior, making him Strong and Skilled.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • In a deliberate contrast to every other major villain on the show, Oliver seems to view Ra's al Ghul in this light and doesn't hold any strong personal enmity against him, despite how he attacked Thea, manipulated Oliver into becoming his heir, and tried to destroy Star City (all of which would've never happened if it hadn't been for Malcolm's machinations). When Talia helps Prometheus capture him, Oliver straight up tells her that Ra's would be deeply disappointed with what she's done, despite it all being done to avenge her father.
  • Quentin made it his mission to make Oliver's life hell but Oliver himself was always sympathetic to him and regretful of the things he put Quentin's family through. Oliver understood Quentin was a good man despite his flaws and respected his morals.
• Wrongfully Accused: Has happened to his vigilante alter-ego on several occasions.
  • In Season 3, Ra's al-Ghul frames the Arrow for killing, in order to turn the city's authorities against Oliver and force him to have no choice but to turn to the League of Assassins. Oliver ends up choosing imprisonment over joining the League, but Team Arrow has Roy Harper take the fall instead by having him pretend to be the Arrow.
  • In Season 5, Prometheus manipulates Oliver's every move and has him kill Detective Billy Malone, by dressing him up as himself. When the authorities find out and put a hit for the Green Arrow, Oliver has to choose on who takes the fall for the blame. Oliver picks the Green Arrow and declares him a criminal who would be brought to justice.
• You Are Number 6: During his stint in prison after confessing to being the Green Arrow, the guards refer to him exclusively as "Inmate 4587".
• You Can't Go Home Again: He was stuck on Lian Yu for "five" years in-order to survive. While working with Waller in Hong Kong, he willing allows himself to shut himself off from Starling City and his family, after seeing the deep pain they are all in. Previously, he was about to come back home and announce he was alive and well, but decides not to.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: Facing scandal charges for covering up the murder of Detective Billy Malone and not wanting anyone else in his office to take the fall, Oliver throws the Green Arrow under the bus to take the blame for the crime. It works and the Green Arrow becomes public enemy No. 1.

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"For five years I've had only one thought, one goal. Survive."

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