The Four Horsemen
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In General
- Achilles' Heel: Cutting off their rings defeats them, or at least breaks their physical forms.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Since Anna says that they will revert to their "day jobs" without the Apocalypse, this trope is most likely what they are in essence.
Word of God says that Lucifer drew these entities to him for the oncoming Apocalypse, rather than having always been their boss.
- Arc Villain: Except for Death, the Horsemen are only vital in the Apocalypse story arc, which ended in Season 5.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: All of them wear nice suits.
- Cool Car: Each one of them has one as a stand in for their horses.
- Cosmic Entity: Subverted. While they supposedly operate on a cosmic scale (at least, Death definitely says he is), they're all drawn to dealing with humanity because of the Apocalypse.
- Dark Is Evil: Subverted in that they aren't motivated by any sense of evil, they are just fulfilling their cosmic functions. War, Famine and Pestilence are all calamities that are anti-human life at their core. Death is a special case, in that he simply is a universal function with no reason to "work harder" by killing more people when he sees all deaths as inevitable and thus equal. Had they not been subjugated to serve Lucifer, they would otherwise have nothing to do with his machinations.
- Co-Dragons All of them are this to Lucifer, War and Famine in particular.
- Dragon-in-Chief: Lucifer has to cater to their whims to keep them content and complient since they could potentially overthrow him, and at least Death is actively plotting behind his back.
- Evil Wears Black: All of them seem to love the color black.
- Fingore: War and Pestilence both get their ring fingers cut off.
- Four Is Death: And you can add War, Famine and Pestilence.
- Gotta Catch Them All: The Horsemen's rings are the keys to trap Lucifer again. Fortunately, the boys already have the rings for War and Famine when they learn this.
- Humanoid Abomination: Each of them is an Anthropomorphic Personification of Death, War, Pestilence and Famine. They technically count as this.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: They view humans as this, except Death who just sees us as incredibly insignificant.
- Meaningful Names: They control whatever it is they are named after.
- No Ontological Inertia: Averted. Inherent concepts that the Horsemen personify cannot be erased, even with their deaths, as Death's death in Season 10 shows. Humans will continue to suffer from hunger, sickness, conflict, and death all the time.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: Four powerful beings that have to be beaten before going for Lucifer, the Big Bad.
- Ring of Power: All of them have one.
- Smug Snake: War, Famine and Pestilence.
- Time Abyss: Especially Death.
- Token Good Teammate: Death lacks the malicious delight of the other Horseman, is simply simply doing his job to maintain cosmic balance, and gives Dean invaluable assistance in fighting Lucifer.
- Warrior Therapist: Being both insightful and manipulative seems to be a common trait with them. War and Famine have scenes where they get into the heads of—respectively—Sam and Dean.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: War, Famine, and Pestilence are never seen or heard from again when they disappear after losing their rings.
Famine
Famine
James Otis
- Artistic License – Religion: He induces Horror Hunger that makes people indulge in their deepest desires to inevitable self-destruction. In lore, he was supposed to make food more expensive than commoners could afford.
- Bad Boss: He either uses the demons under his orders as sacrifice or as lunch.
- Big Eater: Since he IS hunger.
- Cool Car: A black Cadillac Escalade SUV.
- Creepy High-Pitched Voice: His thin and quavering old man voice only makes him creepier.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Courtesy of Sam and his demon powers, which Famine forced back on Sam.
- Evil Cripple: He has rotten teeth and is wheelchair bound. He used to be healthy, but the Haber process, which massively increased the world's food supply, crippled his health.
- Evil Old Folks: Big time.
- Evil Tastes Good: His favorite food? Human souls, but he could go for some demons too. And they are DELICIOUS!
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Doubled even. He manipulates Sam into consuming demon blood causing him to regain his powers. Sam then manipulates him into eating the souls of demons, and then destroys the souls while they are inside of him defeating him.
- Horror Hunger: A twist of his ring makes others hungry for whatever their weakness may be, alcohol, drugs, sex, etc. Or in Sam's case demon blood.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Not a big fan of our tendencies for always wanting more than what we can handle.
- Loss of Inhibitions: His ring can augment people's desires, leading to the Horror Hunger above.
Pestilence
Pestilence
Matt Frewer
- The Alleged Car: Appropriately, Pestilence doesn't get a Cool Car like the other Horsemen, but a run-down green AMC Hornet.
- Artistic License – Religion: Pestilence wasn't one of the Horsemen in the Book of Revelation, rather Conquest took his place, though he does have a philosophy of conquering life. In addition, Pestilence/Conquest rode a white steed in lore while here Pestilence drives a green car. In fact, one could actually translate Death as the Green Horseman.
- Composite Character: His philosophy regarding bacteria ("divide and conquer"), as well his overall Evil Plan and his role as The Evil Genius, makes him a blend of both Pestilence and Conquest the Horsemen, whom the latter of which is usually replaced by the former in modern media.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Thanks to the last bit of angel left in Castiel.
- Dragon with an Agenda: Has no qualms about disobeying Lucifer's orders when enraged enough.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Cares about his brothers, and is ticked off at Dean and Sam for what they did to War and Famine.
- The Evil Genius: Seems to be his role of the group, his plan considerably more intelligent and far reaching than Famine's or War's.
- Faux Affably Evil: Only superficially polite.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Pestilence considers that bacteria and microbes aren't chaotic or destructive, we are.
- Mad Doctor: Incubates his diseases inside the patients at a hospital he's taken over.
- Obfuscating Disability: His first scene has him walking into a drug store and presenting himself as an incredibly delirious old man with a really bad sneeze. However, when he walks out of the store after having spread whatever disease he had cooked up, he drops the act for smug satisfaction.
- Plague Master: Obviously.
- Sneeze of Doom: Starts a plague by sneezing all over a store clerk.
- Suddenly Shouting: He has quite a temper.If Satan wants them so bad, then he can GLUE THEM BACK TOGETHER!!!
- Troll: Is introduced sneezing over cough medication and then deliberately sneezes on the store clerk. He could have started the plague in any covert way but he wanted to be as gross as possible.
- Vanity License Plate: His is registered in Nevada and says "SIKN TRD" as he brings disease.
- Walking Wasteland: Sam and Dean become so sick they can't function, just from getting close to him.
War
War
Titus Welliver
- Affably Evil: Genuinely polite and easy going, and manipulates people into killing each other.
- Cool Car: A red Mustang. Bonus points for being the only Horsemen to drive a car actually named after a horse.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Thanks to Ruby's knife. ("C'mon, kids, you can't beat War!")
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Refers to his three brothers fondly and states that they're going to have "so much fun together."
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: War thinks that we only need a little push to kill each other."I'm jello shots at a party. I just...remove inhibitions."
- Master of Illusion: Uses his ring to confuse two groups of humans by making them think that members of the other group are demons.
- War God: Actually, he IS War itself.
Death
