Comic Book / Green Lantern

Glory to the Corps ^note  Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, Simon Baz, Guy Gardner, Alan Scott, Charlie Vicker, Jennifer-Lynn Hayden, Jessica Cruz, Keli Quintela, and Sojourner Mullein. By Phil Jimenez

"In Brightest Day, in Blackest Night
No evil shall escape my sight
Let those who worship evil's might
Beware my power... Green Lantern's light!"

— The Green Lantern Oath

Green Lantern is a DC Comics Superhero and one of the first to embrace the concept of a Legacy Character. Green Lantern has the unique ability to create objects out of solid green light, whose forms are limited only by the character's imagination. In addition, he can fire energy blasts, fly in deep space, generate force fields, and translate (almost) any alien language. All this is provided by a quasi-technological Power Ring, that must be recharged every 24 hours with a lantern-esque Power Battery. Oh, and it can't work on the color yellow (usually).

Created in 1940, the original Green Lantern was a railroad engineer named Alan Scott. The train he was traveling in wrecked when the bridge it was on collapsed due to sabotage. Alan was the only one who survived the wreck, thanks to the green lantern he was holding at the time. He fashioned his ring from a part of the lantern, which unknown to him at the time was constructed out of a magic metal made from a meteor that fell to Earth, later retconned into the Starheart.

Alan used his fists as often as he used his ring, and was more of a pulp hero than a sci-fi one. Along the way he picked up comic sidekick Doiby Dickles who accompanied him on his adventures, and he became one of the founding members of the Justice Society of America. Like most of the other DC characters of the time, he had adventures against regular criminals as well as super powered adversaries, and then his comic ended as super-heroes fell out of fashion in the late 40s. Alan was one of the mainstays of the All-American anthology series, as well as his own Green Lantern title. His solo series was cancelled in 1949, and his last Golden Age appearance was in issue 57 of All-Star comics in 1951.

However, in 1959, after the successful reinvention of the Flash, DC Comics revamped the title with a sci-fi bent, reimagining the hero as test pilot turned space cop Hal Jordan, who was given a Power Ring by a dying alien who crash landed on Earth (and was just one of many extraterrestrial peacekeepers serving the wise Guardians of the Universe). What most people know of the character originated during this era: the villainous Lantern renegade Sinestro, the living planet Mogo, alien drill instructor Kilowog (though those last two only came into the picture in the 80's), and aerospace entrepreneur/love interest Carol Ferris. Other characters were brought in as Green Lantern during this time. Lovable jerk Guy Gardner first appeared, was Put on a Bus, then came back full time during the Crisis. Stoic architect and former U.S. Marine John Stewart became a backup Green Lantern during the well-known "relevant" Green Lantern/Green Arrow issues, and then the main Green Lantern in the 1980s when Hal Jordan gave up the title. Alan Scott would also return, first as an Earth-2 counterpart to Hal, then after continuities got merged in the Crisis on Infinite Earths as a respected elder hero with only the loosest connection to the Corps.

Over the years, the Green Lantern title would gain infamy for being taken in a few controversial directions:

• In the '70s, Green Lantern shared his title with fellow DC Comics hero Green Arrow for a more socially-aware series that dealt with realistic topics. Notably, it featured Hal Jordan facing his ignorance about the plight of African-American oppression, and helping Green Arrow cope with his young sidekick becoming a drug addict. Although its activism seems outdated from a recent perspective, at the time it was groundbreaking to tackle such subjects in a superhero comic.
• In the mid-'90s, Hal Jordan became a supervillain called "Parallax" due to witnessing the destruction of his hometown, Coast City. After Parallax obliterated the entire Green Lantern Corps, a single new replacement was chosen in geeky graphic artist Kyle Rayner, who brought in a whole new generation of readers with his nerd-chic attitude and more imaginative use of his Green Lantern powers. Unfortunately, the new status quo overrode the old supporting cast, driving a wedge between Hal Jordan fans and Kyle Rayner fans.
• In the mid-2000s, DC Comics would return Hal Jordan to his former glory, by explaining that "Parallax" was actually the name of an imprisoned cosmic parasite that fed on fear and corrupted Jordan through his Power Ring. Furthermore, Parallax was blamed as the source of Green Lantern's infamous weakness towards yellow, by revealing that emotions of fear are attuned to the color yellow, as per a pseudo-mystical "emotional color spectrum" shared by all living creatures, with "green" attuned to the neutral emotion of "willpower". Later developments would merge the Jordan and Rayner eras, have the Guardians descend further into Knight Templar-hood, and introduce the rest of the spectrum and their corresponding Lantern Corps, such as Agent Orange or the Sinestro Corps.

The Green Lanterns are also frequent members of versions of the Justice League of America, with Hal, John, Kyle and Jade part of different incarnations of the main team, Guy in the Justice League International, and Simon in a secondary JLA team. Alan Scott is also a founding member of the Justice Society of America, which is either the League's predecessor or its Earth-2 counterpart depending on the era, as well his daughter Jade, who was part of the Earth-2 counterpart of Teen Titans, Infinity, Inc., and one the formations of The Outsiders. Also see The New Guardians (not related to the current title), which was tangentially related to the Lantern franchise (founded by the Guardians and including Hal's friend Tom as a member).

With a Corps of over 7,000 alien enforcers, you better believe there's a Character Sheet. And if you're still confused about why there's so many Lanterns or how willpower tastes like green, feel free to read the Synopsis. For a list of Green Lantern titles and storylines with their own pages see the franchise page.

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General trope examples:

• Aborted Arc
• Badass Creed

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No tropes shall escape my sight:

A - D

• Aborted Arc: See the separate page.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Guy Gardner's father was an abusive alcoholic who favored Guy's older brother Mace over Guy.
  • One of Hal Jordan's minor villains, The Crumbler, also had an abusive father. That was largely his motivation to turn to crime, mainly sabotaging his father's business as a means of revenge.
• Age-Down Romance: Green Lantern Corps member Arisia has herself aged up with the help of her Green Lantern ring so that she would be a suitable romantic partner with Hal Jordan, who originally saw her as too young.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot:
  • Zigzagged. Before forming the Green Lanterns, the Guardians tried a lil' automated help with the android Manhunters, who were so good at their job... they annihilated all life in Sector 666. After dispossessing the Manhunters, the Guardians proved they never learn by creating the cyborg Alpha Lanterns.
  • During War of the Green Lanterns, it is revealed that the Manhunters didn't go bad at all, but were reprogrammed by Krona to commit the massacre.
  • The Alpha Lanterns are a subversion. They never turn evil of their own volition, so far it's only been when under the control of an outside force (such as Cyborg Superman or Krona). Mind you, the idiotic decision to deaden their conscious minds via a direct link to the Book of Oa makes the manipulation a cakewalk.
  • On the other hand, some Lanterns, such as RRU-9-2 and Stel, are fully robotic; the latter even comes from a planet populated entirely by robots.
• Akashic Records: The Book of Oa and the GL Archives on Mogo store all the universal knowledge. In "The Killers of Krypton", John Stewart tells Supergirl that "If it is not in the archive, it likely didn't happen."
• All Your Colors Combined: The ultimate objective of Blackest Night is to get all seven corps of the light of the emotion spectrum together to find their source and get the white light of creation recreated to finish off the Black Lantern Corps.
• Ancient Astronauts: Earth's very first Green Lantern, a Chinese man named Jong Li, received his Power Ring during the Qin Dynasty (between 221 and 206 BC). Being a Chinese peasant living before the birth of Christ, Jong Li naturally thought the ring was a gift from the gods and his mission as a divine command.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Each of the seven shades associated with the Emotional Color Spectrum gets a physical manifestation of its power, which usually requires a sentient host to "bond" with. Parallax was this for fear (and the color yellow), and there's now one for every color, including Ion the Space Whale for the Green Lanterns.
  • On a broader note, all emotions are represented by the crystal-white "Entity" that allegedly seeded life throughout the universe, until hibernating in Earth. In practice, Nekron acts as its opposite number, despite christening Black Hand as the personification of Death.
• The Antichrist: Since an early age, Black Hand had an unnatural obsession with the dead and death, and was long destined to provide the "door" for the Black to enter our world. He just had to blow his own brains out and start licking Bruce Wayne's skull to do it.
• Art Attacker: The Tattooed Man has the power to bring his tattoos to life.
• Artifact Domination: The rings are actually sentient quantum-computers created by one of the most technologically advanced races in the universe. It's generally stated that the further away from the middle (Green) that a ring is, the more control it has over its user.
  • The Star Sapphire Corps actually captures and brainwashes foes in crystal "Conversion Chambers" and then indoctrinates them into the corps. The rings also attempt to take over the minds of their users; only very strong-willed Star Sapphires (like Carol Ferris) can resist being "...put on auto-pilot."
  • Red Lanterns are little more than rage-driven war machines. Most of them can only use the most basic functions of their rings (flight, life support) and very few of them act on anything other than pure rage. This is in fact deliberate on Atrocitus' part, and can be turned off. He just never bothered doing so.
  • The Indigo Tribe is shown to take violent criminals and chain them to their staves until the Indigo light forces them to become loyal and compassionate servants.
  • There can only be one Orange Ring of Avarice, because anyone who experiences its power becomes irrevocably rapacious; seeing to posses its power exclusively. It makes them incredibly greedy and gluttonous, desiring to own all they survey.
• Ascended Extra: A number of lanterns featured in Alan Moore's one-short shots became full out recurring characters. Most notably, Mogo the Planet Lantern, whose immense size, power, and memorability (due to being, well, a planet) have made him a critical player in many of the major sagas despite his debut being a silent role as the punch line in a 4-page joke short.
• Asshole Victim: Sure, the Sinestro Corps' invasion of Daxam in order to enslave the inhabitants is beyond reprehensible but the Daxamites are violently xenophobic assholes with an intense hatred for anything not them, which makes feeling any sympathy for them a difficult task.
• Badass Creed: Every lantern corps' oath, and all the variations thereof (with the exception of the Orange Corps' oath, which is more a child throwing a tantrum than it is a "badass" anything).
• Berserk Button: Don't try to pry into Larfleeze's past. It won't end well. And don't even think about either mentioning Mongul's name in front of Arkillo.
• The Berserker:
  • The entire Red Lantern Corps, save their leader Atrocitus, who can at least socialize (to an extent).
  • In the Red Lantern series of the DCU reboot, he tries to get a lieutenant, saving at least one more corpsman from this trope.
  • As Red Lanterns goes on, more and more of them get their minds back. Problem is, without the ring feeding their rage, and with the chance to socialise, some of them start loosing their anger.
• Beyond the Impossible:
  • The Guardians made sure that it would be physically impossible for a lantern to kill one of them. When Hal Jordan kills Krona they are shocked and afraid.
  • Simon manages to use his ring to will his brother-in-law out of a coma. The Green Lantern accompanying him says this should be impossible, as the rings cannot cure illness or raise the dead. He concludes that the ring probably chose Simon for a greater purpose. However, even he cannot bring back the planet Korugar and its inhabitants from the dead when the First Lantern destroys them.
• Big Good:
  • The Guardians of the Universe used to be this for the DC Universe but the more cynical modern take on them has them acting aloof and manipulative instead.
  • As of the Blackest Night arc, the Big Good for the DC Universe is The Entity, the embodiment of the Light (as in "let there be") that created the universe.
    • Light Is Not Good as it turns out — the Entity's unforgiving of deviation from its plan.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Truckloads of it. Most of the second-fiddle Lanterns (not limited to the Green Corps) aren't remotely humanoid (even if it's just from the neck down), except maybe for the communication capabilities. Amongst the odder examples, Bzzd is a sentient fly-like Green Lantern, Rot Lop Fan is blind alien living in a vast lightless expanse of space (he conceptualizes his job as being a member of the F-Sharp Tuning Fork Corps, swearing "In loudest din or hush profound / My ears catch evil's slightest sound. / Let those who toll out evil's knell / Beware my power, the F-Sharp Bell!"), Leezle Pon is a sentient smallpox-like virus (wearing a very small ring), Mogo is a sentient mobile planet (he doesn't socialize much to avoid causing a Colony Drop on other planets), and Dkrtzzy RRR is a sentient abstract equation conceived by a mad scientist who intended to prove the existence of willpower mathematically.
• Black Sheep: Cousin Doug "Hip" Jordan, from Tennessee, is the Black Sheep of the extended Jordan family, and is always engaging in some kind of criminal activity at the expense of the rest of the family.
• Body Horror: The process that creates Alpha Lanterns is... not pleasant. Especially not when an insane cyborg has subverted them for their own purposes.
• Body to Jewel: The Red Lantern Batteries and Rings are made out of crystallized blood.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Guy Gardner (post-Character Development), and Kilowog.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: A disturbing number of Green Lanterns have fallen victim to this trope at some point.
  • Anyone possessed by an emotional entity tend to follow the emotion in charge rather than their own logic. Parallax in particular loves turning decent people into terrorizing monsters.
  • Happens to the Alpha Lanterns just after Blackest Night, thanks to Cyborg Superman.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: John Stewart, throughout the Mosaic series. He's constantly addressing the reader, and once even notices that he's been drawn by a fill-in artist.
  John Stewart: ''Why do I suddenly look so different?"
• Break the Badass: Kyle Rayner once related to Green Arrow how Guy Gardner (a Green Lantern notable for not just being able to "overcome" great fear, but being honest-to-God fearless) used to tell funny stories about some of the truly ridiculous villains Hal Jordan used to fight. But, Rayner notes, "Guy never told any funny stories about Sinestro", the one villain who ever scared the crap out of Gardner.
• Break the Cutie: Kyle Rayner survived this, Hal Jordan not so much.
• Breath Weapon: Red Lantern can spew blood that burns like napalm from their mouths.
• Butt-Monkey: In crossover adaptations, Green Lantern (particularly Hal Jordan) is often the butt of jokes by other characters, replacing Aquaman as the default snark target.
  • All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder: Everyone else became Darker and Edgier to an absurd degree, but GL was just made fun of by everyone. Then had his throat crushed. By Dick Grayson (age 12).
  • Justice League: War: He's a No-Respect Guy and a Small Name, Big Ego. While he is heroic, he's almost constantly being taken down a peg.
  • The LEGO Movie: He's just a clingy fanboy of Superman.
• The Bus Came Back: This happens a lot during The Green Lantern, as Grant Morrison delved into Silver and Bronze Age storylines. Characters not seen for decades return such as Hal's old girlfriend Eve Doremus, former business rival Olivia Reynolds, and some of Hal's relatives like cousin Doug and uncle Titus. Even some Geoff Johns-era characters return, such as General Stone and Jillian "Cowgirl" Pearlman.
• The Cape: As far as Post-Crisis DC continuity is concerned, Alan Scott was amongst the first to exist.
• Captain Ethnic: John Stewart's initial stand-out attribute was being the first black Green Lantern, although he has outgrown it. Muslim recruit Simon Baz has some vibes of this, as well.
• Cats Are Mean: Red Lantern Dex-Starr, who's a blue housecat, and like all of his Red Lantern fellas is full to the brim of murderous rage and red-hot plasma that annihilates everything it touches. Before he got the ring, however, he was a sweetie.
• The Cavalry: Sometimes things get too bad for one Lantern to handle. When they do, a call for help is made, and just in the nick of time any number of bright green dots will appear in the sky. It makes sense; they're effectively cops, so they would call for backup from time to time.
  • Taken to extremes in Blackest Night, where the cavalry was every other Corps.
• Character in the Logo: Green Lantern's logo has had either his lantern or his ring's symbol in the logo. The Golden Age Green Lantern (Alan Scott) also had his face inside the lantern in his logo.
• Character Shilling: Widespread shilling for Kyle Rayner appeared when he replaced Hal Jordan. Turned right back around when Hal fans grew up and took over the mantel as writers. Suddenly Hal's the greatest lantern who has ever lived.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: Sodam Yat was officially created by Alan Moore as part of a prophecy detailing the end of the Corps. It took around twenty-five years for him to make his official comic book debut. Mogo got a similar deal.
• The Chooser of the One: The Rings individually seek those who can overcome great fear, and Mogo helps them determine moral individuals.
• The Chosen Many: The Green Lantern Corps is the former Trope Namer.
• Christmas Episode: A story had Larfleeze (an Orange Lantern who represents avarice) discovering Christmas and attempting to celebrate it. Hilarity Ensues. It ends with a bit of a Tear Jerker, however...
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Sodom Yat was built up to be a big character. He was capable of fighting Superboy-Prime, wielder of Ion, an utter badass, a major player of the Emerald Warriors series... and then he just vanished after the New 52 reboot.
  • Anya Savenlovich, a Russian woman chosen by Kyle to help form a new Green Lantern Corps during the 90s, only for it not to work, before disappearing off into space.
  • Tom "Pieface" Kalmaku, Hal's mechanic sidekick and chronicler of his Green Lantern adventures has not been seen or heard from in years.
• Clark Kenting: This happened to Kyle AGAIN in the first issue of Green Lantern: New Guardians, where rings from every Corps identified him by name in front of a crowd of people.
• Close on Title: Every issue of the John Stewart-centric Green Lantern: Mosaic has the story title on the last page.
• Cold Sniper:
  • Sinestro Corps member Bedovian, who can snipe targets from three Space Sectors away.
  • Green Lantern John Stewart can become this, when needed.
• Color-Coded Emotions:
  • Red = Rage... specifically the kind spawned from injustice (seriously, you can't help but feel bad for Atrocitus when you know his backstory).
  • Orange = Avarice... manifested as an all-consuming greed and hunger (hence why only Larfleeze represents it, and wrestles Lex Luthor for its control).
  • Yellow = Fear... including (pretty much specifically) the terror instilled in others.
  • Green = Willpower... as a sort of neutral zone between all emotions.
  • Blue = Hope... which, while powerful, is useless without willpower to enact it.
  • Indigo = Compassion... but it brainwashes you into a zen-like trance.
  • Violet = Love... except sometimes it's more of a psychotic devotion.
  • Black = Death... or the vampiric absence of any emotion.
  • White = Life... the overwhelming extreme of all emotions.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Saint Walker asks that he not be treated as special by the Blue Lantern recruits just because he was the first, they start talking about how even his humility sets him apart.
• Concentration-Bound Magic: A Lantern's Power Ring is described as the most powerful weapon in the universe, capable of creating literally anything so long as the user has the imagination and concentration to do so. However, the more complex the construct, the more effort and concentration it takes to maintain. Should the user's will or concentration falter, the construct can shatter or dissipate.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: One Green Lantern is powerful enough to pacify Superman, but all four of Earth's Lanterns together are a lot weaker than they should be (though still not easy to beat). The Green Lantern Corps as a whole, however, get their butts handed to them on a weekly basis, often leaving the last remaining Lantern to save everyone else.
  • Subverted in Sinestro Corps War, where the Green Lantern Corps get utterly trounced, until the Guardians revoke the "no-kill" policy.
  • Played straight with the Manhunters, who have no problem crippling a single Lantern like Hal, but are destroyed in droves if they ever fight a GL in packs.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • Alan Scott is the original Green Lantern and is still a capable hero in his old age.
  • Guy Gardner becomes a tough old man who still gets into fights he prevails in the "Where Are They Now?" epilogue of the "Wrath of the First Lantern" arc that concluded Geoff Johns' run.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Larfleeze is quite possibly one of the more goofier characters in the books, and while the other Corps all agree with this to a fault, they also realize that when his greed kicks in, it is not a pretty thing to deal with.
• Custom Uniform: When the Space Police concept was developed, every Green Lantern wore the same uniform, with only the domino mask optional (Katma Tui didn't wear it, while John Stewart did). Since about the mid-80's and the original dissolution of the Green Lantern Corps after the Crisis, most Lanterns wear different outfits, which is justified by them being formed by the Ring's energy around the user's body, the only things identifying the uniform being the Corps' symbol and the prominent use of green. The same applies to other Corps.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Played straight with the Alpha Lanterns at first. Once, great and loyal Lanterns, after being robotisized, they don't even act like their former selves, doing whatever the Guardians command, even expelling Laira on their order or committing murder. Ultimately subverted, since their minds still exist, just buried under layers of Guardian programming, and with that gone, they start acting like they used to.
• Daddy's Girl: Jade thinks highly of her father Alan Scott.
• Danger Deadpan: Hal Jordan in the DC: The New Frontier miniseries.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The modern take on Sinestro explores this, as far as him wanting to instill "order" throughout the universe as the motive for his villainy, which often plays out like an Evil Plan.
  • Technically, the Black Lanterns fulfill this as well. As evil as they appear, there is no intelligent malevolence in their motives. Nekron is beyond good and evil, and just wants to end all life because it's trespassing on his territory.
• Dating Catwoman: Borderline, as Carol Ferris had a Split Personality that turned her into Star Sapphire.
  • John Stewart is NOT dating Fatality, despite her borderline obsession with all things John Stewart; even BEFORE she was in the Star Sapphire Corps and still out to kill him she had no problem with stripping near/completely nude and grinding against his lap... while he HAD a girlfriend!
    • They do eventually begin dating after Wrath of the First Lantern.According to the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue in Green Lantern #20, John & Yrra get married & grow old together.
  • Alan Scott married Rose Canton, knowing that she had an alternate personality of the Thorn, but believing at the time that she had been cured. She became the mother of Jade and Obsidian. She killed herself and Alan later married Molly Mayne, who had been his enemy the Harlequin. Alan seems to have a propensity for this trope. Both of these were retcons from the 80s. During the Golden Age, the Thorn was a Flash villain, and the relationship between Alan and Harlequin was more Foe Romance Subtext than Dating Catwoman.
• Death by Origin Story: Abin Sur's impending death on Earth led the Green Lantern ring to choose its first human bearer (not counting Alan Scott, whose ring is of a different origin.) He's managed to stay dead and his death has even recently given Hal Jordan the nemesis Amon Sur, who blamed Hal for his father's death.
• Death Is Cheap: Deconstructed in Blackest Night. It turns out it was Nekron all along that has been allowing heroes to return from the dead, which effectively makes them sleeper agents for his cause.
  • But Hal one-ups his claim by affirming that, while Nekron did allow them another shot at living, it was him and his resurrected friends - like Superman and Green Arrow - who decided to accept a second chance, meaning they could as well refuse to come back and stay dead.
  • That, and there are numerous other characters who died in some way but came back, and Nekron has yet to take credit for those resurrections. Most of the characters whom he claims responsibility for, such as Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Arrow, are just the most well known cases.
• Death Seeker: The Cyborg Superman was an astronaut named Hank Henshaw, whose consciousness was bonded with technology after a deep space catastrophe. Now, all he wants from life is for it to put him out of his misery, something he's denied over and over again. Needless to say, he's extremely pissed about it.
• Deathbed Confession: Kyle Rayner and Connor Hawke's "Hard-Traveling Heroes" arc had them search for Kyle's missing father Aaron. They run into a man claiming to be Aaron who manipulates Kyle into assisting him into a domestic terrorism plot. After the scheme is thwarted and the man ends up dying, he confesses to Kyle that he's actually his uncle Zachary pretending to be his nephew's dad.
• Demoted to Extra: Jillian "Cowgirl" Pearlman, Hal's fellow pilot and love interest prior to Blackest Night. She disappeared without any explanation as Geoff Johns shifted his focus to the various ring corps. She did eventually get a cameo, and then turned up in an issue written by Grant Morrison that let readers know what the character had been doing in the interim, but has not regained main character status in the Green Lantern books.
• Determinator: NO MAN ESCAPES THE MANHUNTERS!!
  • Guy Gardner is singled out by the Oans to be Lantern #1 of the Honor Guard for this reason. He's not the most imaginative, not the most heroic, and definitely not the brightest, but he has no fear whatsoever.
  • The Green Lantern Corps' ring may be powered by willpower.... But Alan Scott wrote the BOOK on willpower!
• Distaff Counterpart: Star Sapphire often functions as a female analogue to Green Lantern. With the advent of the other "Emotion Corps", they're everywhere. Take your pick.
• Dressed in Layers: Jordan used to wear his Lantern uniform under his clothes, but eventually realized it's not worth the bother when he can simply use his power ring to change his clothes into his uniform instead.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Kilowog, to new members of the Corps. Justified, since the average lifespan of a Green Lantern is a few years, at most.
  • Prior to him, there was Ermey, who was blatantly a version of the Trope Namer in space, who was even harsher than Kilowog.
• Dying Dream: The third edition of Green Lantern Corps Annual had a story titled "Guardian Angel" where a Green Lantern named Shingo-Wol appeared to overcome his power ring's weakness towards the color yellow to defeat an entire yellow battalion, but on the last page it is revealed that he hallucinated his victory and was actually killed by the yellow soldiers.
• Dying to Be Replaced: Most Green Lanterns get their rings because their predecessors were killed. Either their predecessor lives long enough to choose a successor before dying or the ring automatically searches the universe for a new recruit after the current bearer dies.

E - J

• Earth Is the Center of the Universe:
  • Actually, Oa is the center of the universe, but Earth is the center of the multiverse and would trigger the end of all reality if it fell. As of Blackest Night, our little backwater planet is the vacation home of the Entity that created all life.
  • Earth is also considered the most diverse planet in the universe, for some reason, with more variety in flora and fauna than most entire solar systems. May be hanging a lampshade on the fact that most alien worlds in the DCU are a Single-Biome Planet Of Hats.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Happens with some regularity:
  • Sinestro (with Sector 3600) destroys the rebuilt Bolovax Vik (Kilowog's home planet), along with the spirits of Kilowog's race.
  • John Stewart's failure to save Xanshi in Cosmic Odyssey.
  • Kyle Rayner destroying Oa during his fight with Parallax.
  • During War of the Green Lanterns, John kills Mogo, the sentient planet, in order to stop Krona from using him to recruit any more mindless soldiers to his army.
  • During Wrath of the First Lantern, Volthoom destroys Korugar, to leech off of Sinestro's emotions. Mogo, incidentally, manages to rebuild himself thanks to John & Fatality. The only Korugarians who survived were Sinestro & his daughter Soranik, and a handful of others scattered across the galaxy.
  • And then, Oa was destroyed AGAIN in Lights Out, thanks to Relic draining the central power battery.
• Eldritch Abomination: Subverted. All of the emotional personifications like Parallax and Ion very well seem to be creatures beyond mortal comprehension, except they're all really the ascendant forms of the first organisms to ever "feel" their respective emotions. Parallax really was a locust-like bug once, Ion was some kind of primordial fish, etc.
  • Played straight with the Entity and Nekron, who are the seed of all life, and the void between it.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Sort of. Each of the rings seen has different powers, and interacts with other rings in different ways. For example, Orange can absorb Green constructs but not Violet or Blue. Blue supercharges Green and nullifies Red, but is close to useless on its own. Yellow is devastating to a Green Lantern that hasn't figured out how to overcome fear (and can be dangerous even afterwards), and so forth and so on.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Guy Gardner's middle name of Darrin.
• Emerald Power: Well, duh.
• Enemy Mine: You will get a migraine from trying to keep up with the number of villains that have teamed up with the Green Lantern Corps over the years, either to stop a greater evil, or just because it made more sense to have them as a partner at that time than an enemy.
  • Since Blackest Night, this has almost become the status quo. First all the corps came together to fight off the Black Lanterns, then Sinestro's put back on the Green Corps and goes to Hal Jordan for help, plus there's the "New Guardians" team...
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Sinestro for Hal, and later the Sinestro Corps for the Green Lantern Corps as a whole.
  • Nero for Kyle
  • Arkillo for Kilowog
  • The Controllers for the Guardians
  • The Green Lantern archetype has also had an Evil Counterpart from another universe named Power Ring.
  • The Black Lanterns are the Evil Counterpart of ALL the other corps.
  • Kyle's first evil counterpart was Effigy, a troubled youth who used the fire powers given him by the Controllers for his own pleasure. Writer Ron Marz said he was intended to be Kyle's "Sinestro" but not just "The guy with the yellow ring"... which Nero ended up being!
  • The Guardians of the Universe to the Templar Guardians, due to subtly going mad due to their removal of the emotions & their inability to deal with the shocking current events.
• Evil Cripple:
  • Hal Jordan's adversary Hector Hammond has advanced psychic powers, but at the cost of being unable to move under his own power.
  • Baron Tyrano is confined to an iron lung, yet that doesn't stop him from being a formidable enemy of the Green Lanterns.
• Evolutionary Levels: The origins of Hector Hammond and the Shark are that they were respectively an ordinary human and an ordinary shark who were transformed into more advanced beings by Applied Phlebotinum.
• The Exact Center of Everything: Oa, the home planet of the Green Lantern Corps, is located in the center of the universe. In the Anti-Matter universe, that position is taken by the planet Qward.
• The Exile: Hal Jordan was exiled from Earth for a year by the Guardians, as punishment for not responding to a distress call from Ungara because he was helping Carol Ferris with business problems. Normally such an offense would have meant expulsion from the Corps, but his exemplary record saved him from that fate.
  • He was later expelled from the Corps much later due to his cavorting with "known enemies of the Corps" (read:the New Guardians) and managing to will his ring into killing Krona, who was then like a Guardian in all but name.
  • Post-Convergence, Hal was on the run without his ring for a year's worth of issues during the aptly-named "Renegade" storyline, though this time it was his idea in order to take the fall for the rest of the Corps, whose reputation had suffered after the events of the Third Army and the Durlan war. Kilowog is in on the plan, so Hal has someone to vouch for him. As of DC Rebirth, Hal has forged a new ring and is back in uniform.
• Expy: Sort-of. Apparently, the "model" for Hal's looks was Paul Newman and the one for Sinestro's was David Niven.
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • Sinestro used to be the single most respected member of the Green Lantern Corps, until he took a shortcut in his work by enslaving his home planet.
  • The Manhunters were also the Guardians' original fighting force, until they decided they worked better alone, and without morals.
  • As of Rise of the Third Army, the Guardians themselves.
• Face Your Fears: Green Lanterns "possess the ability to overcome great fear", so this is a big theme at some points. Nowadays, doing so will also allow a Green Lantern to now directly affect the color yellow, which means any villains trying to attack with yellow weapons to a new Lantern so strengthened in spirit is in for a big surprise!
• Fallen Hero:
  • Hal Jordan, during Emerald Twilight and Zero Hour, though some things were changed during Rebirth.
  • Sinestro was one of the greatest Green Lanterns until he used its powers to take over Korugar.
  • Yalan Gurr, in one story explaining the origins of Alan's Lantern, was like Sinestro, the greatest and most well-regarded Lantern alive, until the Guardians removed his ring's weakness to yellow. Gurr quickly went mad with power, and tried to take over medieval China.
• Flanderization: The Guardians Of The Universe have always been distant and aloof, but were once wise and respected, having created an organization of star-patrolling peacekeepers that has survived for eons. With each passing year though, they become more incompetent, single-minded, and corrupt, lying to their members, holding their own mysterious agendas, and constantly having their mistakes blow up in the faces and inevitably needing to be saved by the Earth Lanterns (and then clearly resenting the aid). One comic even had a Guardian admit he didn't remember why they started the Corps in the first place. By this point, it's a genuine curiosity how they got an organization as advanced and well-functioning as the Green Lanterns working outside of dumb luck.
  • Well, they had been doing this for several billion years. They'd hit their limit
• Flying Firepower: The entire Green Lantern Corps can do this. A notable example is Kilowogg; despite having the ability to construct objects with green energy like other Lanterns, he prefers using raw, unshaped blasts.
• Genius Bruiser: Even without his ring, Kilowog is both superstrong and a technological genius..
• Glorious Mother Russia: Kilowog helped create the Rocket Red Brigade for the Soviet Union, due to his then-interest in Communism.
• Godzilla Threshold: During War of the Green Lanterns, with basically every other member of the Corps having fallen under Krona's control due to Parallax infecting the main battery, Hal, John, Guy and Kyle's only available weapons are the rings of Sinestro, Carol, Atrocitus, Walker, Larfleeze and Indigo-1, requiring them to join the Sinestro Corps, Indigo Tribe, Red Lantern and Blue Lantern Corps respectively and basically hope for the best.
• Good is Not Nice: Even the Entity, the embodiment of life itself, isn't morally conventional, given the fact that part of its plans to preserve life, it revived powerful villains and tasked one of them with a murder and another with an assault. It's also become clear that for some of the revived heroes, the second chance given to them is by necessity not a gift but a loan.
• Greed: The emotion the Orange Light represents is avarice, which is why Larfleeze is the only real Orange Lantern (as one who has the power of greed would be unlikely to be okay with sharing the power).
• Green Rocks: Despite all the differences between Alan Scott and all the other Green Lanterns that would follow, it's interesting to note that even in his 1940 origin story, the source of Alan's power is extraterrestrial Green Rocks. A burning green meteor crashes in China, and it is first formed into a lamp, then a lantern, and finally comes to Alan Scott to grant him power.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Most female aliens. Ironically, the only one with green skin is Jade, a human.
• Handsome Lech: Hal Jordan, at his worst. Guy Gardner, though mostly in his own mind.
• Happily Married:
  • Alan Scott and Molly Mayne, the Golden Age Harlequin, at least prior to Doomsday Clock.
  • John Stewart and Katma Tui were also happily married until Star Sapphire killed Katma.
• Heart of the Matter: The Starheart, source of the Golden Age Green Lantern's power.
• Heel–Face Brainwashing: The Indigo Tribe can take individuals of dubious morality and turn them into peace-loving hippies, whether they want to be or not. This includes themselves, at least until Indigo-1 eventually proves that one can go about wielding the Indigo light with genuine compassion.
• Heroic Willpower: All Green Lanterns have this, as their rings are quite empowered by it.
• Hero's Evil Predecessor:
  • Sinestro is the Evil Predecessor to either Hal Jordan (greatest Lantern) or Soranik Natu (Lantern of Sector 1417). ** The Manhunters were basically robots that were built to police the galaxy before the Green Lantern Corps were founded. They decided to try to kill everyone.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • Kyle and Guy; so much so that when it looks like Kyle has died in Blackest Night, it crosses the Despair Event Horizon for Guy and he accepts a red ring, then goes completely Ax-Crazy berserk on just about everyone around him.
  • Vath Sarn and Isamot Kol, in spite of the two of them being from two different species. Two species who hate each other.
  • Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen
  • The Lanterns also get along famously with The Flash family:
    • Alan Scott and Jay Garrick
    • Hal Jordan and Barry Allen
    • Kyle Rayner and Wally West
  • Superman and Batman technically count for this list. Apart of being this trope already, both had been Green Lanterns in Elseworlds (Last Son of Earth and In Blackest Knight respectively), both became White Lanterns in Blackest Night and both became part of Sinestro Corps for a short time (Batman first before rejecting the ring but later embraced it for a short time in Forever Evil (2013), and Superman also became a Sinestro Corpsman for the Elseworld of Injustice: Gods Among Us as well as near the end of Sinestro's ongoing series in the New 52).
• Hive Mind: The Orange Lantern Corps are essentially constructs made by the Corps' sole member Larfleeze of everyone he has slain, each of them devoted entirely to obeying his whim.
• Hive Queen: Agent Orange, the sole real Orange Lantern, is the intelligence behind the constructs that make up the Corps.
• Holy Halo: Green energy shields, at that. Occasionally, the GL insignia on each member's chest will project a holographic logo, which is meant to emulate the police sirens during a chase.
• Home Field Advantage: The living planet Mogo is a planet sized Home Field Advantage.
• Horror Host: Sinestro Corps member Lyssa Drak serves this role in a back-up feature of Geoff Johns' run titled Tales of the Sinestro Corps, each installment having her read the story of a member of the Sinestro Corps from the Book of Parallax that describes a particularly gruesome murder the Sinestro Corpsman committed and/or how they came to be recruited into the Sinestro Corps. The first three installments served to lead up to the Sinestro Corps War arc and consisted of Lyssa telling the newly recruited Amon Sur about Despotellis, Bedovian and Karu-Sil, a fourth installment featured as the back-up story for the Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special that begins the aforementioned arc has Lyssa tell the reader a considerably biased account of how Sinestro was expelled from the Green Lantern Corps and the fifth and final installment, serving as the back-up feature for the Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Superman-Prime one-shot, has Lyssa Drak try to scare expecting Green Lantern couple Amnee and Matoo Pree by telling them a story where Sinestro Corps member Kryb takes a Green Lantern's child after killing her and her husband.
• How Do I Shot Web?: The Corps has training facilities to teach Lanterns how to properly use their rings that are optional in the older stories and mandatory for the modern ones.
• Human Alien: Green Lanterns Sodam Yat (from Daxam) and Zale (from Bellatrix) look exactly like a Caucasian and African human respectively. Fatality (currently of the Star Sapphires, from Xanshi) also looks like an African human.
  • In fairness this trope is Older Than Television. The Daxamites are actually the descendants of Kryptonians, who have been human aliens since The Golden Age of Comic Books.
• Human Alien Discovery: An inversion occurs in the Elseworld Superman: Last Son of Earth, in which the human baby Clark Kent crashes on the planet Krypton and was adopted by Jor-El and renamed as Kal-El, later becoming the Green Lantern of his planet and sector, and recovering his memories from the Earth.
• Humans Are Special: The Guardians hold this opinion, even if publicly they talk about humans being "barbarians."
  "Savage brutes? You call them savage brutes, Salakk? Shame on you. To say that the Humans from Earth are nothing more than savage brutes is to ignore their legacy of heroism, their ability to overcome, and their absolute willingness to die for the benefit of others. In the hundred thousand years since the human species arose on that planet, Earth has produced over thirty different Green Lanterns, and all but two of them were members of the Homo sapiens species. Tell me, Salakk, can you name a single species in all the galaxy that has done the same? Can you name a single world that can say the same?" — Ganthet, revealing the ''real' opinions of the Guardians regarding humanity.
• Humorless Aliens: The Guardians, so much that at the end of In Blackest Night (not that one), we get this gem:
  ...and four cycles later, in the recreation complex, Katma Tui realized that for the first time in many years' service, she had heard a Guardian make a joke. She felt vaguely uneasy for the rest of that day.
• Idiot Hero: G'nort may be a Green Lantern, but he's not very bright.
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: Larfleeze of the Orange Lantern Corps was this, locked away in his own filthy paradise in Vega System for eons until the Guardians and Lanterns came a'knockin'. Now free to roam the cosmos, Larfleeze is too in love with his self-indulgence to realize he could probably take down every Lantern Corps by himself.
• I Minored in Tropology: In All-Star #2, Alan Scott suddenly has the medical knowledge to both perform an autopsy and fabricate a cure for a drug that is turning men into very strong and obedient soldiers for an (implied) Nazi agent. The explanation? He took a few years of pre-med in college.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: Green Lantern Rings make anything you imagine happen by the power of will.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Well, Bolphunga the Unrelenting fits the first and last part since there is no 'Joke Villain'.
• In Name Only: What Green Lantern Hal Jordan was to Green Lantern Alan Scott. The two characters shared some common elements (the name, the power ring, the oath and the basic power set), but were otherwise conceptually very different. Alan's power came from a centuries-old magic lantern while Hal was a member of an intergalactic peace-keeping force. Later writers like Denny O'Neil would retcon Alan's power as being linked to the Guardians via the Starheart, which the Guardians had sent to another dimension where Earth 2 happened to be. DC finally just retconned Alan Scott's history altogether in New Fifty Two, making his power something linked to the Earth and green, growing things.
• Inspiration Nod: With DC Comics being based in New York City the name Green Lantern is likely a reference to the New York City Police Department's use of green lights on either side of the main entrances to all of their precinct houses. According to the NYPD's website:
  "It is believed that the Rattle Watchmen, who patrolled New Amsterdam in the 1650′s, carried lanterns at night with green glass sides in them as a means of identification. When the Watchmen returned to the watch house after patrol, they hung their lantern on a hook by the front door to show people seeking the watchman that he was in the watch house. Today, green lights are hung outside the entrances of police precincts as a symbol that the ‘Watch’ is present and vigilant."
• In Spite of a Nail: The very first Guy Gardner story had Hal Jordan informed that Guy would have become Abin Sur's successor as Green Lantern of Sector 2814 had Hal not been closer to where Abin Sur crashed. Jordan is then shown a simulation of how things might have been had Guy been given Abin Sur's ring, where Guy fights the same villains Hal did and the only significant difference at first is Guy using a different oath. Ultimately, Guy succumbs to a yellow plague that wiped out the adult population of a planet he visited while leaving the children unharmed, forcing him to choose a successor before the plague kills him. The result is Hal Jordan becoming a Green Lantern in this timeline anyway.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: Hal once fought the Incredible Hulk in the "Ultimate Access" mini-series. Then there's the Star Trek/Green Lantern crossover between DC and IDW.
• Internal Affairs: The Alpha Lanterns, cyborg investigators who mirror the tactics and perspective of the Manhunters a bit too much. Or at least, that was the Guardian's plan. In practice, the Alpha Lanterns are much, much more of a hindrance to the Corps than a help.
• Intoxicated Superpower Snag:
  • In the classic story "Snowbirds Don't Fly", Hal is ambushed, knocked out and exposed to heroin by a drug dealer. When he wakes up and tries to fly away, his powers instead manifest by creating a gigantic, monstrous version of himself. Hal barely manages to create a barrier around himself before the abomination can squeeze him in its hands.
  • In "The Powerless Power Ring!", Hal begins to lose control of the titular source of his powers. He becomes unable to snag his targets with his light constructs, his energy blasts become unusually destructive, and he begins to feel dizzy shortly after using the ring. The ending reveals that this was the result of him ingesting toxic mushrooms.
• Invocation: Green Lantern oaths, which are traditionally said when charging Rings from a Power Battery. Ones also exist for all the other corps known, save the White Lanterns (since at present the only White Lantern is Kyle).
• It's Been Done: In-universe, the Controllers and the Zamarons have tried their hand at making knock offs of the Green Lantern Corps. The Zamarons have been more successful with the Star Sapphires then the Controllers have been with any of their attempts. In fact, most of them were killed when they tried to make a Lantern Corps using the Orange Power Battery, promptly being torn apart by Larfleeze's Orange Lanterns the moment they tried to take it.
• Jerkass:
  • Guy Gardner's characterization in the '80s consisted of being an arrogant and belligerent douchebag who constantly got into fights with the other heroes and frequently insulted Hal Jordan and John Stewart due to believing himself a better Green Lantern than either of them.
  • Turytt, a Green Lantern introduced in Geoff Johns' run, picks fights with Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner because he's a hotheaded asshole who's prejudiced towards humans. Even taking into consideration how a lot of the Green Lantern Corps' problems can be traced to occurring after the inducting of human recruits (such as Hal Jordan going crazy and forcing the Corps to disband in Emerald Twilight or Fatality having a vendetta towards the Corps because of John Stewart's failure to prevent the destruction of her homeworld Xanshi), he still goes way out of line due to believing this means the Corps shouldn't allow humans at all, never showing the slightest gratitude for the things Hal, John, Guy and Kyle did right and refusing to acknowledge that many of the human Lanterns' screw-ups weren't entirely their fault.
  • Some of the Black Lanterns are major pricks, due to the fact that they use the personalities from their former lives to induce emotion in their targets before killing them.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Guy Gardner in the '90s and beyond was still a bit of a jerk, but considerably more considerate and caring for others.
  • Hal is this, too, though not quite to the same extent.
• Jive Turkey: John Stewart in his early appearances used a lot of urban slang.
• Joke Character: G'nort. Bolphunga the Unrelenting.
  • In G'nort's case, he's regarded as a joke in-universe, and the other Lanterns usually can't stand him, often sending him on long missions, in isolated sectors. When the Justice League meet G'nort on an alien planet, Hal just silently groans and facepalms through the whole encounter.
• Jumped at the Call: Guy Gardner. Other GLs, when they lose their rings, get all mopey and feel useless. Gardner, when he lost his ring, went out and stole a yellow one from the vault of the Oans (a ring that could only be recharged by fighting other Green Lanterns), which got him his own ongoing, then when he broke that ring fighting Parallax, he unleashed his hidden alien DNA to become Warrior, then briefly joined the Corps' secret black-ops squad, and eventually got a new green ring. Gardner doesn't just jump, he knows where The Call lives and he will hunt it down.

K - O

• Kick the Dog:
  • Though he is being portrayed more sympathetically, Sinestro does occasionally do this to remind readers that while he might be justified in questioning the Guardians' authority, he is still a villain. He killed Red Lantern Laira just when it seemed like Hal might have calmed her down and taunted Hal about it and then he later stabbed Ganthet.
  • During The Revolt of the Alpha Lanterns, Cyborg-Superman makes one Alpha Lantern hold their power ring to their head in order to make Ganthet do as he says. When Ganthet complies, Henshaw has the Lantern blow their own head off anyway. And later on, when Ganthet's performing surgery on another, Henshaw rips out several of it's organs, just because.
• Kryptonite Factor: Infamously, the color yellow. This was later retconned to be caused by Parallax, a cosmic entity that embodies fear, which in turn is locked to the color yellow. Eons ago, the Guardians trapped Parallax within the Central Power Battery that fed all Power Batteries and Power Rings in the GLC. Over time, the entity was able to exert enough influence to cripple any Green Lanterns in contact with its favorite hue. Currently, Green Lanterns still have trouble with yellow objects, but it's no longer impossible to affect, just more difficult.
  • Since that discrepancy has been taken care of, each Lantern Corps have inherited a weakness against some other color of emotion. For example, Blue Lanterns have the only rings capable of quenching the flaming blood of the Red Lanterns, Green Lantern rings suck against Sinstro's custom yellow rings, and Indigo Lanterns can use any other color against its user.
• Last of His Kind:
  • Kilowog is the last survivor of his race after his home planet, Bolovax Vik, was destroyed during the Crisis. However, it was briefly restored by Kilowog, only for Sinestro to destroy it once again. Currently, the remnants of the race exist within Kilowog's psyche due to Kilowog's Bizarre Alien Biology, but can only really communicate with them while he is on Mogo.
  • Fatality is the last survivor of Xanshi, which John Stewart kinda-sorta helped to destroy.
  • Finally, Kyle for awhile was the last remaining Green Lantern and Ganthet was the last Guardian.
  • And according to the modern take on the Legion of Super-Heroes, Sodam Yat will be the last Green Lantern in the 31st Century.
• Lawful Stupid:
  • The Guardians occasionally cross into this realm.
  • Up until Brightest Day, the Alpha Lanterns lived here. For example, when the Black Lanterns are trying to feed on the Central Power Battery, Kyle comes up with a plan to release a Red Lantern prisoner on them, if only to buy time. And it works... until Alpha Lantern Chaleson sees the loose prisoner, and promptly executes him.
  • Justified, slightly, since the Alpha Lanterns were forced to obey the Laws of Oa by their programming, with no room to think independently.
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition:
  • The Green Lantern Corps' oath tends to go something along the lines of "In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight", and other oaths tend to have light/dark (or some other juxtaposition) in them as well.
  • This becomes literal in the Blackest Night saga with the White Lanterns and Black Lanterns, who also overlap with Life/Death Juxtaposition. The Black Lanterns devour the other Lanterns' light, and their entity is Nekron, who is the shadow cast by the light of life and emotion. He believes that the natural state of the universe is darkness and death. Naturally, this is countered by the White Entity, who empowers White Lanterns.
• Light Is Not Good: Played straight with the Red Lantern Corps, Agent Orange, and the Sinestro Corps, who are all part of the light of the emotional spectrum.
  • Almost none of the Corps are straight-up good guys. The Green Light is held by the Guardians, who have a reputation of causing as many problems as they solve. The Star Sapphires are getting better, but have a history of Love Makes You Crazy. The Indigo Tribe is believed to be largely made up of sociopaths who have to have emotions forced on them by the Indigo Light (and even if they're not they're creepily detached anyway). Only the Blue Lanterns haven't made any dick moves so far, but they're also shown to be utterly ineffectual without piggybacking on another light.
  • Invictus is an angel (not the mythological kind; an alien).
• Living Mood Ring: The Phantom Ring is a special Lantern Ring that grants access to all parts of the Emotional Spectrum at the risk of draining your life force, and incidentally turns its wearer into this. The wearer's powers and appearance shift to what emotion they're experiencing at the time — so, for instance, if someone is scared their costume becomes yellow and they gain the powers of the Sinestro Corps.
• Love Cannot Overcome: Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris have done this to each other repeatedly over the years, since his identity as Green Lantern and hers as the domineering, villainous Star Sapphire frequently complicate their underlying mutual love.
• Love Makes You Crazy: The de facto trouble with the Star Sapphire and its Corps. The Star Sapphire itself is a symbiotic crystal that bonds with women in desire, at the cost of making them psychotic. Things got a bit better when the Zamarons started filtering the violet light of love through Power Rings, except now there's the Predator, the emotional entity of love, whose nature, despite the name, is actually somewhat benevolent. According to Carol it's the host that makes the Predator's love evil not the other way around.
  • It's worth noting (and is noted in the comics) that love is on the far end of the emotional spectrum (along with Rage) and the further along you are, the more power the emotion has over you.
• Loyal Phlebotinum:
  • At certain times in Green Lantern history, and Depending on the Writer, the power ring will only work for the Lantern who is currently in possession of it.
    • Hal Jordan was the exception to this rule, since Kyle's ring was constructed from the fragments of his old ring.
  • Power rings will choose their successors when their wielder dies. Though more recently it has been revealed that Mogo actually helps direct this process. Hal Jordan is one of the notable exceptions. Abin Sur actually triggered the search mechanism as he was dying and had a chance to introduce himself to Hal.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Green Lantern Corps reveals that Soranik Natu's father is Sinestro. Apparently, Natu's mother thought that being the daughter of their planet's dictator would screw her up, so she was put up for adoption.
• Mad Scientist: Krona, who's even called the "Mad Guardian".
• Magic Meteor: Hector Hammond found meteor rocks and used their powers for evil.
• Meaningful Name: Sinestro. Atrocitus, Nekron.
• Metaphysical Fuel: Lantern rings draw their power from the emotions of all life in the universe.
• Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Powerfully telepathic arch-villain Hector Hammond's body is imprisoned (he's serving multiple life sentences) and is supposedly under the effects of a psionic inhibitor... but Hammond's mind is so powerful that he can still telepathically control people hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the prison without ever leaving his cell.
• Military Superhero: Both Hal Jordan and John Stewart are former military, but except for his DC: The New Frontier incarnation, it's not a big aspect of Hal's background. John, however, is VERY much this trope. He's a retired Marine, and you better not forget it.
  • In fact, John's status as this has pretty much overtaken every other aspect of his personality. Rare is the occasion when John's background as an architect gets brought up any more.
• Mind Rape:
  • Done to Ganthet by the other Guardians after War of the Green Lanterns to rid him of his emotions and personality.
  • Done by Volthoom on the Lanterns to gather up emotions relating to the seven colors to rebuild his power.
• Misplaced Retribution: One story's antagonist is the Aerialist, who's under the delusion that someone at Ferris Aircraft murdered his beloved (the death was in fact a freak accident) and therefore seeks revenge against the company. It's notable for being one of the few times Hal Jordan thought the Insanity Defense would actually work, even citing the M'Naughten guideline.
• Missed the Call: Guy Gardner, initially, was among the candidates chosen by Abin Sur to replace him as Green Lantern of Sector 2814, but Hal Jordan got the ring instead due to being closer to the area. In Booster Gold, this is revealed to have been due to Booster and his time traveling.
• Monkey Morality Pose: War of the Green Lanterns has a bit where Hal Jordan creates constructs of three Guardians where one covers his mouth, one his eyes and one his ears.
• Most Common Super Power: If you're a humanoid female of any alien race, and have the option to join the illustrious Green Lantern Corps, you will have these. It's practically a minimum job requirement.
• Mr. Fixit: Kilowog can repair any machinery when he puts his mind to it.
• Multiple-Choice Chosen: When then-Green Lantern Abin Sur is dying on an alien planet (Earth) he finds two men exactly equally qualified to be the next Green Lantern. The only reason he chooses Hal Jordan instead of the other one is that Jordan is nearer. Later, that other one (Guy Gardner) becomes Earth's "backup Green Lantern" and still later a Lantern in his own right.
• Murder by Inaction: It's established in the Secret Origins of Super-Villains 80-Page Giant and the character's Villains Month one-shot that Sinestro's predecessor as Green Lantern was Prohl Gosgotha, who crash-landed to Korugar mortally wounded and gave his ring to Sinestro so he could use it to defeat a Weaponer of Qward. Once the deed was done, Sinestro quickly grasped the power he had and refused to give the ring back to Gosgotha so he'd inherit it after Gosgotha died from his injuries.
• Must Make Amends: In The DCU, we had Hal Jordan completely lose his sanity and decide to fix his failure to save Coast City... by killing the Green Lantern Corps (They came back), killing Sinestro (He came back), and then killing the universe (it came back)... so he could remake reality "right". Fittingly, after all this nonsense, he got better and went on to try and make all of that right, and ended up sacrificing himself to save the world (of course, he came back). Then a few years later, Geoff Johns retconned the whole thing to Jordan being possessed by a killer space bug made out of fear, but...
• My Greatest Failure: Hal (Coast City), John (Xanshi) and Kyle (Alex DeWitt) all have one.
  • Alan Scott has a lengthy monologue in the JSA series about how his greatest failure, and indeed that of many JSA members, is how they relate to their children. In his case, his son Obsidian was trying to kill him and destroy the Earth at the time, so Alan had a point. His is one of the few cases where he's able to correct his failure and restore his relationship with his son.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Happened to Guy Gardner in the Emerald Fallout arc in Guy Gardner: Warrior, when he sees a vision of Oa's destruction, and Hal killing Sinestro, after his yellow Power Ring begins to malfunction.
• Mysterious Backer: The Guardians of the Universe.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Sinestro and Atrocitus.
  • Subverted with Sinestro's former ally on Korugar, Arsona (geddit?), who's actually a good person. Just understandably bad tempered, after having trusted Sinestro before he took over his home planet.
• Nemesis Weapon:
  • The renegade Lantern Sinestro originally wielded a ring that was composed entirely of the "yellow impurity" in the standard-issue GL rings. In more modern continuity, Sinestro and his Sinestro Corps wield rings that tap into fear, the antithesis of the willpower the modern Green Lantern rings tap into. Further, under Geoff Johns's tenure, this was expanded into six other Lantern corps that tapped into other emotions, some of which were Nemesis Weapons to one another, including Black Hand and the Black Lantern Corps, whose rings drive them to consume emotion on the grounds that the blackness of death is the absence of emotion.
  • And in the old days, Hal Jordan also contended with Evil Star, whose weapon contrasted Hal's ring by making its wielder evil and insane while Hal's ring reflected Hal's supposed fearlessness.
• Nested Mouths: Parallax has nested jaws.
• '90s Anti-Hero:
  • Guy Gardner as Warrior, though that might have been a Stealth Parody.
  • Also, Jack T. Chance, whom Hal describes as "being reprimanded more than Guy Gardner".
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Occurs with a considerable frequency and in many alien races. Particularly notable in the case of the Guardians and the Zamarons. Both are descended from the Maltusian race, which may have been the first sentient organic race in the universe. The Guardians were originally the males of the race, and the Zamarons the females (although this has since been retconned somewhat). The two split up billions of years ago. In that time, both have individually diverged physically. The Guardians, who pretty much fly at all times, have become small and possess very short legs, much as one would expect. But the Zamarons, who have not borne any children in aeons, still have fairly impressive cleavage. This is all the more striking when one considers that the new female Guardians are barely distinguishable from the males.
  • Although recently it's been revealed that current forms of the Guardians aren't natural for them at all, but rather a result of some weird process that makes them ultra-powerful midgets. Most exemplified by Krona, who was tall and buff mere years ago, but now has evolved himself into a Guardian form. If the Zamarons did the same, they would probably look like the female Guardians.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: Members of the Green Lantern Corps are allowed to customize their uniform pretty much however they choose so long as they keep the green-black-white color scheme and the Lantern badge is clearly visible.
• Noodle Implements: The Controllers have been cited as responsible for the creation of the Darkstars, but also the invention of the Beta Men and the Effigy Platoon, which seem to be knockoffs of the Omega Men and another knock off of the Green Lantern Corps specifically.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Black Hand, who was just a creepy necrophile before Blackest Night (at least once Geoff Johns retconned him).
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The Guardians have shades of this at times.
• Obviously Evil: C'mon, he's named Sinestro and has a Snidely Whiplash mustache, along with the red skin and pointy ears! Not that he really admits to being evil, though.
  • The leader of the Red Lanterns is called Atrocitus. As in atrocity.
• Odd Couple: A number of the Lantern partnerships. From Vath and Isamot, originally hailing from opposite sides in a war, to Mogo, a planet, and his partner Bzzd, a tiny fly-like insect.
• One-Gender Race: The Zamarons and the Guardians could be considered this. They're really from the same race, the Maltusians, with the Zamarons being the females who decided to defend and fight for love and the Guardians being the males who decided to maintain order, but they live in totally separate societies and don't interact unless it's to butt heads. Kyle Rayner, when resurrecting the Guardians, chose to make half of them female in the process, and they've been that way in the comics since (although Geoff Johns retconned it so the Guardians were always half-female).
  • On a lesser level, the Star Sapphires, started by the Zamarons, only have female members. Geoff Johns says men can join, "but most are not worthy."
• The Only One:
  • This happens to the Corps every so often. When Hal Jordan was still a rookie, the villain Legion had defeated the entire corps with its gigantic yellow suit of armor, but Hal figures out that if he covers Legion in mud, his ring will work on him. When cracking the armor open turns out not to have been the best idea, Hal flies into the central power battery and supercharges his ring, giving him the strength to defeat the villain on his own.
  • After the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the GLC is reduced to the three Lanterns of Earth and a small handful of others spread around the universe. When the sole remaining Guardian is driven mad by solitude, it's pretty much up to Hal to save the day again.
  • After Parallax obliterated the entire Green Lantern Corps, a single new replacement was chosen in geeky graphic artist Kyle Rayner.
  • In First Flight Sinestro has destroyed Green Lantern battery, all of the remaining Green Lanterns are left powerless. Only Hal was able to get green elements power working again and fight Sinestro one on one.
• Only Sane Man: Among the Guardians it's Ganthet and then his lover Sayd, the only ones to value emotions and not ignore an "end of existence" prophecy.

P - S

• The Paragon Always Rebels: Sinestro was a model member of the Green Lantern Corps before going renegade. Hal also qualifies prior to the Retcon that Parallax was a fear entity that corrupted him instead of just being the supervillain alias he adopted after he went crazy over the Guardians trying to punish him for violating their rules by attempting to use his ring to revive Coast City.
• Passion Is Evil: The coda of the Guardians. The Green Light is the center of the spectrum and the most stoic. The other lights are further from the spectrum (with red and violet being the extremes). Red Lanterns and Star Sapphires represent Rage and Love, specifically, and since their colors are on the far ends, their emotions control them. The more powerful the emotion, the more it controls the Lantern. A frequent theme in the mythos, especially when the Guardians became despotic and started condemning emotions and the other Lantern Corps turned up as Foils.
• Phlebotinum Battery: A Green Lantern ring is charged by a lantern connected to the central battery on Oa. The ring has a limited power life span and they have to recharge it every so often (the exact time changes based on the continuity).
• Pink Is Erotic: The Star Sapphire Corps wear Stripperiffic pink outfits. They are driven by lust in one of their more negative phases and are often featured in sexual imagery. For example, Carol Ferris stripping naked in front of Hector Hammond while giving a speech about how perverted men are and Fatality having sex with John Stewart in an open field).
• Pinned to the Ground: On the cover of Vol. 3 #112, Fatality pins down Jade with her foot raising her spear to deliver a Coup de Grâce.
• Planet Baron: Thaal Sinestro had his homeworld of Korugar locked up like a safe before he met Hal Jordan, thanks to his Green Lantern abilities giving him both the opportunity and power to do so.
• Plot-Relevant Age-Up: In a 1987 issue of Green Lantern Corps, Arisia subconsciously uses her Power Ring to age herself to adulthood to get Hal to like her, due to her crush on him.
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • John Stewart's debut had him and Hal Jordan confront a racist senator with hopes of running for President named Jeremiah Clutcher, who intended to stoke racial tensions to get to the White House and refers to black people as "darkies" while claiming it's scientific fact their brains are inferior to those of white people during one of his rallies.
  • Frank Laminski is established from the start as a racist jerk, with the "Secret Origin" arc of Geoff Johns' run that served as an updated retelling of Hal Jordan's origin introducing Laminski referring to Thomas Kalmaku by his infamous "Pieface" nickname (and is called out for it to reflect the changed sensibilities of the time). When he resurfaces in the "Phantom Lantern" arc of Green Lanterns, he is also shown to resent the Muslim Simon Baz and the Hispanic Jessica Cruz for being recruited into the Green Lantern Corps instead of him.
• Psychic Surgery: Star Sapphires can heal two lovers this way.
• Psychoactive Powers: Lantern rings of any color respond to the wearer's corresponding emotion.
  • Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: Or fails to respond to a lack thereof. For example, Kyle Rayner loses his powers when his confidence is shattered by Megaddon.
• The Psycho Rangers: The Sinestro Corps. In some cases, more literal than others, with Sinestro Corpsbeings chosen to deliberately mirror members of the GL Corps.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Guy Gardner wasn't just put on a bus from 1977 to 1985, he was hit by a bus and rendered comatose for years.
  • Charlie Vicker was put on a bus, only occasionally returning for backup stories featuring Corps members. Who? Vicker actually predates Guy Gardner as Green Lantern, having made his first appearance in GL #55, September 1967 as opposed to Guy Gardner's first appearance in GL #59, March 1968. Vicker was made Green Lantern of a sector that didn't contain Earth, which may be one reason he faded into obscurity.
  • Jillian "Cowgirl" Pearlman, Hal's love interest for the first three or four years of Geoff Johns' run on the title. She disappeared with no explanation from the cast come Blackest Night. Turns into Chuck Cunningham Syndrome when she disappears completely after Brightest Day.
• Race Against the Clock: One or more of the GLs face deadlines like this from the Guardians or some local authority often enough; in Final Crisis, for example, they are given 24 hours to save the universe.
  • In the 1981 miniseries, Tales of the Green Lantern Corps, the GLCs only had 24 hours to stop Krona and Nekron, after the Central Power Battery was destroyed.
  • In Blackest Night, Ganthet reveals that any Lantern's Power Ring can deputize someone for 24 hours.
• Rainbow Motif: The emotional spectrum covers every color of the rainbow, with the Green Lantern Corps' rings powered by will, the Red Lantern Corps' emotion being rage, the Orange Lantern Corps being greed, the Sinestro Corps being fear, the Blue Lantern Corps hope, the Indigo Tribe compassion and the violet Star Sapphires using the power of love.
• Really 700 Years Old: Arisia was eventually retconned as actually being over 100 years old to remove the unpleasant undertones of Hal pursuing a relationship with her when she was initially established as being a teenager.
• Really Gets Around: Hal Jordan has slept with a lot of women.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: The Guardians, originally. Subverted in recent years as they have become cold and distant at best, and Manipulative Bastards at worst. Thankfully, straight examples still exist with Ganthet and Sayd.
• Red Is Violent:
  • Atrocitus and in general all Red Lantern Corps are represented by this color, being the rage their main emotion.
  • Also Guy Gardner, who's a Fiery Redhead. And he's covered by red as Warrior and as a Red Lantern.
• Red Shirt Army: Due to Conservation of Ninjutsu, masses of any lantern are pretty much cannon fodder.
• Retroactive Legacy: Jong Li, an ancient Chinese monk, was the first human Green Lantern ever. He was the star of Green Lantern: Dragon Lord, a 3-issue limited series by Doug Moench.
• Rogue Drone: Scar, the rogue member of the Guardians. A physical disfiguration — a scar on her face by an enemy — is what triggers her deviation from the rest of her race. Dying and becoming an undead will do that to you.
• Ruritania: Sonar's homeland is a fictional Eastern European country called Modora.
• Save the Villain: Blue Lantern Saint Walker is introduced by him telling Hal Jordan that they need to save Sinestro, who is either going to be executed by the Green Lanterns or murdered by the Red Lanterns.
• The Scapegoat: Hal takes on this role after the Guardians severely damaged the reputation of the Corps by trying to create the Third Army, and after the Durlans made things worse. He steals the gauntlet of Krona and "goes rogue", planning to take the fall for the rest of the Corps, so they can regain their reputation as stalwart and trustworthy lawmen.
• Series Continuity Error: Any time a modern Green Lantern series refers to Hal still wearing Abin Sur's ring, the writers are wrong. Hal had his ring destroyed and replaced three times during the Silver Age alone, and that wouldn't be the last time it happened. The Guardians issued every Green Lantern a new ring in Green Lantern/Green Arrow #90. Hal's ring was destroyed by Lord Malvolio during the Action Comics Weekly Green Lantern run, and Hal destroyed his own ring at the end of Emerald Twilight, after which Ganthet reformed it for Kyle Rayer. And of course during the Rebirth-era Green Lantern series Hal had a ring formed from his own willpower. Hal hasn't worn Abin Sur's ring in years, and in fact did not wear it all that long before it had to be replaced.
• Sexy Jester: The various incarnations of the Harlequin are an attractive woman wearing a clown-like costume.
• Shaping Your Attacks: The bulk of the Green Lantern powers.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: The Green Lantern Vath Sarn seems to show some signs of PTSD, more-so than his partner, and fellow veteran from the Rann-Thanagar War, Isamot Kol.
  • Vath discovered his greatest fear through Mother Mercy: the planet Rann without war or strife, rendering soldiers like Vath redundant. He was drawn holding a gun to his head, about to kill himself because he felt he had no other use.
• Shout-Out:
  • Kyle Rayner once created Gurren with his Power Ring in Countdown To Final Crisis [1]◊. He also created a Patlabor in Sinestro Corps War.
  • Allegedly in Green Lantern (Vol. 4) #25, the sound effect "EEEPAAAA" can be found. This is a shout out to The Simpsons Movie, in which Comic Book Guy says that "EEEPAAAAA" is a sound effect from a Green Lantern comic book.
  • The names of two GL Corps members, Arisia and Eddore, are also Lensman shout-outs — specifically, to the home worlds of that series' two Precursor races.
  • In one JLA story, Kyle's mind wound up in the body of the Martian Manhunter. Upon mastering the Manhunter's shapechanging powers, Kyle transformed himself into various other fictional Martians, such as Marvin The Martian and Tars Tarkas.
  • The form taken by a host of the Butcher bears more than a passing resemblance to Khorne.
  • Isamot's name is a Sdrawkcab Name of one of the writers of the series (Peter J. Tomasi).
  • A yellow-lantern named Imecsub appears for a couple panels before getting crushed to death, bearing a passing facial resemblance to an actor.
  • One issue of Secret Origins told the origin of the Golden Age Green Lantern; three sailors are shown bringing the lantern from China. The sailors are quite obviously from Terry and the Pirates.
• Sigil Spam: The members of the various Lantern Corps usually have their Corps sigil across their chest.
• Signature Device: All Green Lanterns: will have two elements: the Green Lantern uniform and the Green Lantern Ring. The latter sometimes creates the former when put it on. This was later spun off into an entire spectrum of different-colored Lanterns, all of which have their own rings.
• Sinister Scythe: Nekron, the Big Bad of Blackest Night, wields a scythe that has a Power Battery built in.
• Skyscraper Messages: The residents of Coast City tint all their lights green to show support to Green Lantern.
• Solar CPR: Blue Lanterns can rejuvenate dying stars.
• Space Police: The Corps are a classic example, as were the Manhunters before their Face–Heel Turn.
• Space Sector: Members of the Green Lantern Corps are assigned to guard one of 3600 sectors of space (in fact, explicitly referred to as "Space Sectors"), each of which is given a number (Space Sector 2814).
• Spectral Weapon Copy: This is Green Lantern's whole shtick. He can form a Hard Light version of anything he can imagine. Guns, bombs, nuclear missiles, you name it. Or hit you with a spectral truck or literally drop a bridge on you, he's flexible like that.
• Split Personality: Carol Ferris (has since been retconned as the Star Sapphire influencing her).
  • Also occasional foe Dr. Polaris.
• The Spock: Depending on the Writer, the Guardians are either this played straight or deconstructed. Most recent characterizations show their coldly intellectual designs as badly flawed due to completely misunderstanding emotion.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: The Green Lanterns are capable of creating anything they can imagine. Weapons are easy to imagine.
• Star Killing: The Sun Eater, created by the Controllers, devours suns.
• Starfish Aliens: A few members of the Corps, most notably Dkrtzy RRR, a sentient mathematical equation.
  • One of the Sinestro Corps recruits was a literal one of these, a spawn of Starro. Word of God says Starro was not happy about this.
• The Starscream:
  • Mongul of the Sinestro Corps. Subverted in that Sinestro had a backup plan in case of an insurrection or attempted leadership coup. It doesn't end well for Mongul.
  • And before Mongul came onto the scene, Superboy-Prime was the Starscream, planning to betray the Sinestro Corps' "guardian", the Anti-Monitor, and kill him in revenge for the Anti-Monitor's destruction of Prime's entire universe.
  • Sinestro himself played the Starscream as well, back when he was still a Green Lantern. He had major plans to dethrone and murder his superiors, the Guardians, due to his belief they were doing a poor job running the universe (which, all things considered, probably isn't far off).
  • Bleez began sowing seeds of discontent among the Red Lantern horde once the ongoing series started, which partially resulted in Atrocitus restoring her intelligence. She's made her ambitions much more apparent since then.
• Star-Spangled Spandex: Kyle's second Ion costume.
• Starter Villain:
  • Alan Scott had Albert Dekker, a corrupt businessman who destroyed a railroad after losing a contract and died of a heart attack when Scott showed up to seek vengeance.
  • Hal Jordan has a group of unnamed saboteurs attempting to destroy an experimental plane, who get arrested at issue's end.
• State Sec: The Alpha Lanterns of the Green Lantern Corps fit this trope. Created to act as an Internal Affairs force for the GLs, they are armed with two power rings, made into cyborgs with Manhunter technology that allows them to drain other rings of power, have built in power batteries to negate the need to recharge, and have their personalities erased in favor of a direct mental link to the Book of Oa and Central Power Battery, thus removing any impurities which may color their interpretation of the Guardian's laws. Which may prevent them from becoming Knight Templar Well Intentioned Extremists powerful enough to take down the entire GLC (seriously, with the rest of that description they're practically asking for it), but doesn't make the Guardians look particularly heroic...
  
  As it turns out, the Alpha Lanterns hasn't prevented that at all, especially not with Cyborg Superman taking control of them. Earth's GLs, quite understandably, gave a collective What The Hell Guardians somewhere between "Manhunter technology" and "personality erased". (Although the Alpha Lanterns themselves insist their personalities haven't been erased, just intensely focused; but then, they would think that, wouldn't they?) Their extreme resemblance to the Manhunters shows that even when you are semi-omniscient and immortal, you can't learn from history.
  • In Final Crisis, Granny Goodness possesses Alpha Lantern Kraken, captures Batman, and tries to steal the Central Power Battery. Real infallible, and Hal Jordan points it out.
• Story Reset: Often....very often...
• Straw Vulcan: The Guardians have been used this way in recent stories, with their rejection of emotion being emphasized at the same time as their inability to run their own corps.
• Stripperiffic: The uniforms of the Star Sapphire Corps. This applies across all member species.
  • Carol herself finds this irritating. She may wonder why some of the others in her corps wear comparatively conservative Silver Age versions of the outfit. For example, Miri Riam wears a distinctly "50's space girl" style costume, thus averting the somewhat naughty implications regarding Zamaron attitudes about the role of women in the universe. Unfortunately, and perhaps validated by their past histories, this may suggest something about the relationships that certain Star Sapphires such as Carol and Fatality have with the men in their lives.
  • Also, possibly the Zamarons themselves, who have recently abandoned their Ancient Greek knockoff armor in favor of a less-restrictive and slightly updated I Dream of Jeannie look. Guy Gardner seemed very pleased.
  • Lampshaded at one point when the four human lanterns found themselves forced to double-up and don rings from the other corps. Guy gets a violet ring and grumbles when putting it on that he doesn't want to find himself suddenly wearing a pink thong!
  • This was changed after the New 52 reboot. Fatality now sports a much more modest update of the Star Sapphire uniform, complete with pants; and Carol changed to a full bodysuit.
• Sudden Name Change: Carol Ferris's father was originally named Willard, but from his second appearance onward, he was renamed Carl.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: The Guardians. You have to admire a race that can make a starship capable of flitting across the galaxy in an afternoon, with integrated offenses and multispecies life support, in the form factor of a ring.
  • At least until they do something equally, breathtakingly STUPID.
• Summon to Hand: Green Lanterns have had their power rings fly towards their ring fingers on occasion.
• Superheroes in Space: The basic premise of the series starting from the 60's on.
• Superhero Team Uniform: The Green Lanterns wear similar green and black costumes, which are extensions of the rings themselves.
• Superpowered Evil Side:
  • Carol Ferris' initial period as Star Sapphire had the latter being a crazy alter ego who'd use her powers to do things Carol had little control over.
  • Dr. Polaris is a man named Neal Emerson who periodically has episodes where he becomes a manic supervillain with magnetic powers.
• Survival Mantra: When Green Lanterns are hard pressed and in danger of succumbing to their fear, they can draw strength from remembering their oath and often, the worshipers of evil's might will once again learn the hard way to beware their power.

T - Z

• The Symbiote: All the color entities.
• Take a Third Option: The Zamarons capture Carol Ferris and Jill Pearlman, two of Hal's girlfriends, and try to make him choose which of the ladies will be his mate... which will make the chosen girl be possessed by the Star Sapphire symbiote (again). What does Hal do? He plants a kiss on the Zamaron Queen, which makes Star bond with her instead.
• Tap on the Head: Hal Jordan is infamous for this.
• Targeted to Hurt the Hero:
  • Major Force kills Kyle Rayner's girlfriend Alexandra DeWitt and leaves her remains in the fridge for the hero to find, as revenge for Kyle getting in his way.
  • Major Force would enact the same tactic a few years later, murdering former Green Lantern Arisia Rrab by suffocation in order to torment her friend Guy Gardner (who at the time operated as the hero Warrior). However, due to her alien physiology, Arisia did not actually die, but rather entered into a state of dormancy that she later recovered from.
• Thematic Rogues Gallery: The emotional spectrum in general.
• This Loser Is You: The whole point of removing Hal Jordan in the 1990s and replace him with Kyle, a completely clueless novice without the faintest idea of how to be a superhero, was to write stories of this type.
• Token Evil Teammate: Arkillo in the New Guardians.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Sinestro Corps has the Book of Parallax, which contains everything every Sinestro Corpsman has ever done or will do in the name of causing fear.
  • Later on we see the Book of the Black, penned in the tainted black tears of Scar, an undead Guardian. It tends to react if anyone tries to read it, usually by dragging them inside and making them re-live old memories.
  • Likewise, the Red Lanterns have a Book of Rage.
  • There is also the Book of Oa which predated both of the above appearance-wise which tells the story of every Corps member, prophecies concerning the Corps, and the new Ten Laws. Of course, it's more of a Great Big Book of Everything as it isn't ominous... usually.
• Took a Level in Badass: Johns has pulled this with a number of characters. Sinestro went from being a good arch-enemy to Hal and already badass to becoming a full-blown Magnificent Bastard. Sodam Yat gaining the powers of Ion, even Black Hand gaining his own superpowers pre-Blackest Night was a nice level up in bad ass.
  • Prior to this, Sinestro rarely had speaking roles in comics, and was often depicted as a Palette Swap variant of the Joker. Now, he's straddling the line between Anti-Villain and Anti-Hero, despite Word of God saying much of his characterization is based on Adolf Hitler.
• Trampled Underfoot: During a fight with some Green Lanterns, Chun Yull grows to monstrous size and tries to stomp on two lanterns. He misses Jruk, and Feska protects herself with a pyramid-shaped shield, leaving Yull screaming in pain with a hole in his foot.
• Translator Microbes: One of the powers that the rings grant users is the ability to translate between any sentient being and the wielder of the ring.
  • It doesn't always work. The language of the Indigo Lanterns, for example, can't be read by them.
• Unwilling Roboticisation: After Blackest Night, the Alpha Lanterns go on a recruitment drive. This is the result. It also nearly happens to John Stewart, but he's lucky enough to avoid that one.
• Very Special Episode: The "relevant" period in the '70s with Green Arrow. Showed up again during Judd Winick's run as writer in the Modern Age, though Winick's versions of said stories were widely panned for being way more Anvilicious than the O'Neill/Adams stories, which used science fiction allegory for their stuff.
  • The series originally had tendencies toward this anyway, though lapsed into Values Dissonance now. Carol was originally unambiguously Hal's boss, and was never shown to be less than competent at this. Tom Kalmaku was an Inuit, not only entrusted with Hal's secret identity, but also the source of his power and, in one story, fills in as a replacement Green Lantern. Both of these characterizations date back to the late 1950s. The dissonance is due to Carol being most known for being a crazy stalker to Hal when she was Star Sapphire, and Tom for being called (what is now an extreme slur) Pieface.
• Villainous Vow: Just as the Green Lantern Corps, the other Color Lanterns have their own oath to invoke the power of the Corps, specially Sinestro Corps, Red Lanterns and Black Lanterns are the most fitted to this trope, since these three factions are eviler than the other Corps, especially the latter Corps.
• Virus and Cure Names: The Green Lantern Corps includes a sentient smallpox virus, Leezle Pon, who fights off the evil Sinestro Corps virus Despotellis.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen.
• Weaksauce Weakness:
  • The colour yellow for modern Green Lanterns. Fortunately it's not really as much of an issue since experienced GLs can easily overcome it.
  • For Alan Scott, it was wood. As Raj puts it:
    "So I can take out both [Alan and Hal] with a no. 2 pencil?"
  • Alan's weakness started out as a counterpoint to his immunity from metals, with flanderization taking hold over time. At first it was a case of being able to shrug off bullets, while at the same time being unprotected from organic items like a club or a fist. Later issues of his Golden Age series would describe wood as "Green Lantern's greatest enemy!" Later issues retconned this, explaining his Lantern belonged to a legendary Green Lantern and Earth's first Green Lantern who was nearly killed by a yellow monster, so the Guardians removed his ring's weakness to yellow, making him invincible. He soon went drunk with power and started tyrannizing the people he was to protect, so the Guardians made him weak to wood so the villagers could club him to death.
  • The reason for the weakness to yellow varies over the years. Usually it's a result of an impurity in the power source's battery, but some issues claim it's there deliberately to keep Green Lanterns from getting too full of themselves. Other issues claim it's a mental construct for rookies which can be overcome by experienced GLs.
• Weaponized Offspring: There's a villain called Evil Star who makes Starlings that are dwarf copies of himself.
• Weapons of Their Trade: Butcher, the embodiment of the Red Lantern Corps, may use an axe most of the time but true to his profession, he also has a belt full of cutlery tools, including a rather menacing cleaver.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • The Guardians tend to dip into doing cruel things that they justify as being for the greater good more often than not.
  • Thanks to Geoff Johns, Sinestro counts big time, believing that the Guardians are more trouble than they're worth and rationalizing the actions of his Corps as doing what needs to be done when the Green Lanterns aren't comfortable with doing so.
• Wham Episode:
  • War of the Green Lanterns - Fallen Guardian Krona re-corrupts the central battery with Parallax, turning the entire Lantern Corps (Save Ganthet & the 4 human Lanterns) into his slaves, and infecting the Guardians with the other emotional entities; John kills Mogo to stop anymore brainwashed Lanterns being recruited, which leads to Sinestro losing his yellow ring and rejoining the Green Lantern Corps, whilst Hal kills Krona (Which shouldn't be possible due to the Guardians using failsafes to prevent the Lanterns from turning on them) to free the other Guardians, who dismiss him from the Corps to protect themselves in case he went rogue.
  • The 2012 Annual - The Guardians give Black Hand a power boost so that he can kill Hal & Sinestro, getting the two of them out of the way before they use their Third Army to destroy the various Lantern corps.
    • Wrath of the First Lantern - Korugar is destroyed, Mogo is back in business, Hal dies, becomes the new Black Lantern and gets Nekron to kill Volthoom, Sinestro takes Parallax into him and slaughters the Guardians save for Ganthet & Sayd and leaves Oa for parts unknown, the Templar Guardians emerge from their eons long entombment, and the following #21 issues all have new creative teams.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Whatever happened to Hal's girlfriend, Jillian "Cowgirl" Pearlman? Her last appearance was before Blackest Night began to ramp up, and she hasn't been seen since. The nature of her relationship with Hal remains unresolved.
• What If?: A story from Comic Cavalcade #6 features an Author Avatar of writer Alfred Bester, who tells the reader that his wife insists that Green Lantern and Doiby Dickles are just lucky, not smart. To disprove it, he offers a "hypothetical story" that shows three different encounters with a group of gangsters, dependent on which way Alan and Doiby turned at an intersection. So there are three What If? scenarios put forward. In the end it's revealed that it was all hypothetical, and that Alan and Doiby never left the apartment building at all.
• What Could Have Been: Shortly after the emotional spectrum reveal, ads circulated showing a grinning Mongul collecting and wearing rings from across the spectrum. Fans noted that Mongul was one of the few characters who could conceivably master each emotion in the spectrum, albeit twisted versions of some. This storyline never came to pass, however, and Mongul only ever wore yellow rings.
• Wingding Eyes: Corps. men of every color often have their Lantern symbol reflect in their eyes when using their power of strongly feeling the emotion they represent.
• Women Are Wiser: The author's reason why the Star Sapphires are all female. Then again, the Sapphires use energies at the far end of the spectrum and are more likely to act crazy as a result.
• The Worf Effect:
  • In Green Lantern: Rebirth and Sinestro Corps War, the first thing Sinestro does upon showing up is beat the hell out of Kyle Rayner, even on the latter occasion when Kyle has a huge power boost. This is done just to make Sinestro look badass.
  • Alan Scott was often a victim of this during the modern day JSA series. Theoretically he should be the most powerful man on the team, but he was often the first to go down when the villain attacked. Occasionally justified since anybody with a lick of sense would plan to take Alan out fast.
• Yandere: The Star Sapphire takes advantage of emotionally-troubled women and turns them into this. Some are better about it than others... and some seal entire planets in crystal to stay with their loves forever.
• Younger Than They Look: Arisia artificially aged her body, to make her relationship with Hal more acceptable. Her species was later retconed to age more slowly than humans, so in terms of year count, she's technically legal. The relationship is still a little suspect, since she's clearly portrayed as an adolescent.
• Your Magic's No Good Here:
  • When GL and Zatanna travel to the pocket dimension of Ys, they're initially handicapped by the fact that neither GL's power ring nor Zatanna's magic operates correctly under that dimension's rules.
  • Green Lantern Rot Lop Fan comes from an area of the galaxy without light, so there is no concept of "green" or "lantern." He becomes F-Sharp Bell instead.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The Blackest Night.
• Zombie Puke Attack: Red Lanterns can vomit "corrosive plasma". Note that RLs just barely pass on the undead stipulation, they die if they take their rings off.

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