Comic Book / Immortal Hulk

Is he Man or Monster or... Is he both?

There are two people in every mirror.
There's the one you can see.
And there's the other one.
The one you don't want to.

The Immortal Hulk is a 2018 Marvel Comics series written by Al Ewing and illustrated by Joe Bennett, with covers by Alex Ross. It's a spin-off of Avengers: No Surrender starring a resurrected Bruce Banner... and the series has one of the most disturbing interpretations of The Incredible Hulk to grace the mainstream Marvel Universe.

A few years ago, Bruce Banner died. And then he came back... again and again. It wasn't even that difficult — all it took was a nudge, a prod, and the Hulk would come back to life before returning to death. And then, due to the Challenger, the Hulk returned permanently. However, the last time was something of a revelation to Bruce Banner, as it came with the knowledge of why he had been coming back: because the Hulk can't die.

So now Bruce wanders the country, trying to slip by unnoticed. And if someone shoots him, well, he'll die. And then night will fall. And the Immortal Hulk will rise, stronger, smarter, and more ruthless than he has ever been.

No more Hulk Speak. No more Gentle Giant. The Immortal Hulk is a horror comic.

As the series progressed, The Immortal Hulk deconstructed the nature of the comic book death, and explored psychological and even supernatural angles to the Hulk's powers, all of which were given a sufficiently horrifying twist befitting of a darker narrative. With the cast of the character's world reimagined, it becomes clear that Hulk's place in the Marvel Universe will never be the same.

The series ended with its fiftieth issue, which resolved the main plot arc, and was succeeded by a run by Donny Cates. It was accompanied by a five-issue spin-off miniseries, Gamma Flight, co-written by Al Ewing and Crystal Frasier, with art by Lan Medina.

---

Tropes included in The Immortal Hulk:

A-D

• Accidental Truth: The kid in issue 7 predicts what happens in the battle between the Hulk and the Avengers by acting out a story with his Captain Marvel and Iron Man toys. Their dialogue mirrors the real ones' stances on whether they should cross the Godzilla Threshold and use Project: Helios or not.
• Adaptational Diversity: This series features the debut of a black, female version of Jack McGee from The Incredible Hulk television series into the mainstream Marvel continuity: Jacqueline "Jackie" McGee.
• Aesop Amnesia: The first time Creel tries to use his powers with Gamma in the series, it wound up with him getting possessed and sent to Hell. Almost two dozen issues later, he does it again on a much grander scale in an attempt to protect Titania from the Hulk.
• After the End: Issue #25 shows a future wherein the Hulk is the last thing left alive at the end of the universe because he murdered all the rest while possessed by the One-Below-All.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg:
  • Dario Agger has an almighty Villainous Breakdown when Xemnu inevitably turns on him in issue 33, pleading for Xemnu to stop. He doesn't.
    Dario Agger: No! No. I'd—I'd have known! I'm protected against you! I—I remember being— Oh God. God, no! No! You can't do this—
  • The Leader, when he realizes the One Below All has got him in issue 42, tries begging Bruce to save him. Bruce isn't in any condition to help, though.
• Alas, Poor Villain: In sharp contrast to their earlier sadistic glee, the U-Foes almost come off as the victims when Joe Hulks out and fights them. Ironclad gets his hand broken and head smushed like Play-Doh, pleading for help all the while. X-Ray can only plead for Vector to do something to save their friend. When he does, Joe blinds him with sulfuric acid from Vapor. By the end, they're begging him to leave them alone.
• Almighty Idiot: In issue #39 Brian Banner explains that the One Below All doesn't really have a mind of its own, only a drive. It's pure id, needing someone else to provide the ego. While it has intelligence and knows what it wants, it lacks focus and needs hosts to direct it.
• Angry White Man: Amadeus Cho more or less namedrops the trope in Issue #26. Specifically, he refers to Bruce Banner as an "angry middle-class white guy" when reflecting on Bruce's plan for revolution. Fascinatingly enough, in said issue, Bruce is drawn to resemble William Foster from Falling Down, with other issues also having a bit of a resemblance.
• Ambiguously Evil: The Green Scar. In his return in issue #33, he gives a lot of evasive non-answers, doesn't bother freeing the captured Joe, and at one point refers to the Hulk as "you" rather than "us". Also, he's chained up the Devil Hulk and is torturing him. Savage Hulk's lie-detecting abilities go off several times, but he's not able to work out what's going on. At the same time, though, the Green Scar helps Hulk free Bruce from Xemnu's mind-control, and helps defeat him. Issue #37 confirms the evil part, with the reveal that the Scar is actually a disguised Leader.
• Ambiguous Situation: As the old woman recounts in issue 3, Hotshot insists that Jess was still alive in the hotel room when he left for the church, and he does not know how her neck got snapped.
• And I Must Scream:
  • What the Devil Hulk does to Doctor Frye when he finds out the flawed immortality serum that turned him into a gamma mutant also killed his son and gave a bunch of people gamma poisoning. Hulk rips off Frye's limbs and leaves him buried in the centre of a mountain to realize there are worse fates than death.
  • Del Frye isn't entirely dead. And he's in constant, agonizing pain. Pain the scientists at Gamma Base won't bother trying to cure because, essentially, they can't be bothered. Issue 23 reveals that between that and the months he spent underground, he's completely lost his mind. Issue 37 reveals that he's been stuck reliving the moment of his death on an endless loop.
  • At the end of issue 7, Hulk winds up in the hands of Fortean's mad scientist, chopped up into pieces kept in separate jars... and still alive.
  • The fate of Brian Banner, and presumably the others that the Leader has absorbed in order to possess, at the end of Issue 0.
  • Rick Jones and Del Frye's condition in issue 44. Jackie sees their souls are horrifically merged together.
• And Show It to You: Red Harpy rips out Hulk's heart. Then she starts eating it.
• The Anti-God: The-One-Below All is an entity that Mephisto has claimed to be far stronger than he to Doctor Strange and is presented as the evil counterpart to the Marvel universe's version of God, The-One-Above-All. It even uses the same line, "They are themselves but they are also me".The finale issue reveals that it's essentially the Hulk of The-One-Above-All.
• Anti-Hero: While previous Hulks usually ranged between Nominal Hero and Unscrupulous Hero, this one specifically seeks out people that have done bad things... and doles out his trademark punishment.
• Apocalypse How: The Bad Future shown in issue 25 is a Class X-4. The One Below All possesses the Hulk fully and turns him into a Cosmic Entity akin to Galactus for the next universe. He spends the next few billion years flying through space, smashing every planet, star, and source of life and light he can find. He succeeds in destroying the last remaining solar system, leaving the universe a dead, lightless void where he is the only thing that still exists.
• Arc Symbol:
  • The green door, as established in Avengers: No Surrender. It's something connected with death and dying, but Bruce has never been able to go through it.
  • Reflections, in both a literal and thematic sense, reflecting gamma mutates' alter-egos, and revealing both what we can face about ourselves and what we can't.
  • Eyes, in what you see in them, and what's looking out through them.
• Arc Villain: General Fortean, the partnership of Dario Agger and Xemnu, and Henry Peter Gyrich have all filled this role.
• Arc Welding:
  • Walter Langowski, the Sasquatch, was initially a man mutated by gamma rays before being revealed as inadvertently opening a portal to another dimension with his gamma ray machine and being possessed by a supernatural being from the other side. Here gamma radiation is associated with a "green door" that has something supernatural on the other side, and Walter seeks out Banner because something's happening to his Sasquatch persona.
  • Meanwhile, the fact Walter has been more frequently portrayed in Sasquatch form rather than his human one is explored, with the notion Walter's actually having difficulty turning back.
  • Issue 34 is nothing but arc welding. All of the Leader's actions, plots, and deaths over the last fifty years are tied together.
    • In that same issue, the Leader surmises that She-Hulk's infamous gray transformation was her actually dying in Civil War II and coming back through the Green Door, though she possibly repressed those memories.
    • The Immortal She-Hulk expands further to show that Jen had died and gone through the Green Door three times: the mobster bullet that led to Bruce giving her his blood which in turn resulted in her becoming She-Hulk, from the fight with Thanos in Civil War II (with her encountering her uncle Brian Banner, who explains the particulars of Gamma resurrection), and the Cotati killing her and inhabiting her skin in Empyre (where she encounters the Leader, who cheerfully threatens her with a permanent death with the Red Door, something that Jen can partially remember in the present day, with her being troubled with death and the illusion of immortality).
• Arc Words: "Is he man or monster, or is he both?" (the iconic blurb in Hulk's debut issue) and "The strongest one there is" (a famous Catchphrase of the character since his early days under Stan Lee) get reinterpreted as much more ominous and portentous lines heralding cosmic revelations throughout the run. Other, more arc-specific ones are:
  • "Am I a good person?" "What do you think?" Sometimes said by one person.
  • "The night is his time."
  • "Devil".
  • "This is where we've always been. Where everyone's always been."
  • "And when you hurt Banner...I take it personal."
  • "This is me."
  • "There are two people in every mirror. There's the one you can see. And there's the other one. The one you don't want to."
  • "Hulk is Hulk."
  • "Something is wrong."
  • "Welcome to Planet Hulk."
  • The refrain "Never stop making them pay", from World War Hulk, is resurrected but always in variants.
  • "For the Left Hand is Strength; but the Right Hand is Mercy."
• Art Shift:
  • Issue #3 is a "Rashomon"-Style story in which the art and atmosphere changes for each bystander's segment of the tale.
    • The Cop: Silver Age-style punch 'em up super heroics with lots of quipping and bombastic narration.
    • The Bartender: Subdued, indie "art-comix"-style minimalism with an emphasis on talking heads.
    • The Parishioner: Mushy, melodramatic romance, complete with a Pretty Boy Hotshot doing a lot of over-exaggerated posing.
    • The Priest: Jagged, intense and heavily shadowed horror.
  • #35 is a Breather Episode, so its guest artists draw in a more typical superhero style.
• The Assimilator: The Leader sort of eats / absorbs / drinks Brian Banner when he takes his hand. And Brian's still slightly conscious inside him afterwards.
• Assimilation Backfire:
  • The Hulk absorbing Sasquatch's gamma energy allows the One Below All to Body Surf into him. Then, the Absorbing Man doing the same to him passes it on to him.
  • The Leader's absorbing Brian Banner means that the One Below All, which had already possessed Brian, is able to possess him. "They are themselves, but they are also me", after all.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A side-effect of Leader's possession by the One Below All is, by the time Joe and Hulk wind up in the Below Place, he's become gargantuan.
• Aura Vision: Jackie's gamma mutation allows her to see souls... and worse.
• Bad Boss:
  • General Fortean demotes a monitor to janitorial duty just for momentarily expressing sympathy for Betty Ross. He also threatens to send his head scientist back to jail for raising his voice in exasperation.
  • Dario Agger doesn't mind if his underlings talk back to him... so long as they do it respectfully. And by that, he means remembering to beg for their lives once they're done. Otherwise, he smashes their heads to pulp. He's also not above killing them just because he's angry and needs to vent.
  • Gyrich lets Vapor of the U-Foes test her powers on some mooks (though they were apparently dumb enough to volunteer for it, and she keeps it non-lethal).
• Bad Future: Billions of years into the future, the Hulk (utterly controlled by the One Below All after fully eating away Bruce and Devil Hulk) kills off Franklin Richards and Mr. Immortal to take the role of Galactus's successor. Becoming a true Breaker of Worlds, in issue #25 it succeeds in destroying all life in the next universe, leaving a dark, dead, utterly broken abyss where it resides entirely alone. The last living being in that universe tries to Set Right What Once Went Wrong and avert this timeline... except they may only have created a Stable Time Loop.
• Badass Boast:
  • Puck (of Alpha Flight) gives a great one when Crusher Creel asks how he can be so composed after everyone ends up in The One Below All's hell.
    Puck: When I was eight, I hunted my first bear. Big grizzly. That was 1922, in the Yukon, and he kept us through a cold winter. In Spain, I fought bulls and fascists—and I let the bulls live. In Nepal, I hunted the tiger god and killed all fear in me. I've fought queens of dreams and the world's secret master. I've fought demons in Hell and stolen their thrones—and those thrones haven't bound me. And it all comes back to one thing. I was eight, full of bear meat and adventure—and I made a vow, Mr. Creel. I vowed I would live an interesting life. I think I've done okay so far, eh?
  • And another in issue #23:
    Puck: (smashing a brain in a jar) Tell them Puck sent you. They know me down there.
• Badass Normal: Joe Fixit is depowered so only has their human form when he's in charge. But he's also one of the personas with actual combat training and experience, not to mention a penchant for fighting dirty.
• Bait-and-Switch: At the end of issue 44, the U-Foes confront a pretty much dead Hulk. Ironclad grabs Vector and tells him "this ain't right"... because X-Ray hasn't had a shot at Hulk yet.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Jackie McGee wished to know how to become like the Hulk. Now she's learning all about the horrors that surround the Hulk and, as she points out, she can't seem to stop learning new and terrible things.
  • Back in the day, Doctor McGowan had always wanted to meet Daredevil. She got her wish when he busted up the drug lab she was working in.
  • Ironclad wanted a fight with a full-power Hulk. When the Cosmic Rays power up Joe, he easily bends Ironclad's hand and head.
• Beyond the Impossible: Vibranium absorbs kinetic energy. A few blows from the Hulk during his fight with the Avengers nearly overloads the Vibranium lining T'Challa's suit.
• Big Brother Instinct: Besides being violently protective over Bruce, Devil Hulk coldly warns Red Harpy to never hurt Savage Hulk ever again.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Fortean is keeping tabs on Betty Ross, and all of Banner's friends and associates. Betty is aware of this, and has taken steps to counteract it.
• Big Damn Heroes: Several times and for such a series dark in tone.
  • When Betty Ross becomes Red Harpy and helps Hulk against the new Abomination.
  • When Devil Hulk and his allies come to back up Gamma Flight during the assault on Shadow Base.
  • Green Scar Hulk appearing to stop Xemu when Xemu tries to take over Savage Hulk's mind.
• Big Damn Kiss: When Betty and Bruce reunite in issue 14, when Betty is still mad about Bruce not having contacted her for all the time since his revival back in Avengers: No Surrender.
• Bittersweet Ending: Jackie, Savage Hulk and Joe Fixit are able to stop the Leader's mad schemes and drag his human self back to the real world along with Banner. The One Below All reveals himself as the One Above All, who reveals that the Hulk is meant to be an engine of mercy along with being an engine of destruction, but the Hulks are certain he's just spouting crap. Walter Langwozski comes back to the land of the living in Dr. Samson's body and gets the Hulks and Jackie out. However, the Green Doors are all shut and all the Hulks save Savage and Fixit are dead, but we all know death is temporary in the Marvel Universe.
• Bizarre Alien Limbs: The aliens depicted in the next universe have free-floating flower like body parts they use as and call manipulators.
• Bizarrchitecture: Joe Fixit finds himself trapped in a lab whose walls are lined with tanks filled with gamma-irradiated animals.
• Blatant Lies: Henry Gyrich manages to say "trust me, I'm one of the good guys" with a straight face.
• Blood from Every Orifice:
  • The first hint Dr. Frye gets that his anti-death serum hasn't worked on Del is that the kid starts leaking green blood out of everywhere. And then he dies.
  • When Xemnu starts using his powers on the Hulk, he bleeds from his nose, eyes and ears.
• Body Horror:
  • What happens to Creel during his fight with the Hulk. His torso gets torn in half, leaving his skull and spine exposed. And he's still alive. And then during the fight, Hulk tears his spine out. And he still doesn't die.
  • Downplayed but present with Hulk from the end of issue 9 through to issue 13, having lost the majority of his muscle mass. His unnaturally lanky body just looks creepily off, but is a rather fitting look for the "Devil Hulk" personality and the horror focus of the series.
  • Some of Joe Bennett's Bruce-Hulk transformation sequences are this, namely the ones that don't look like someone growing or shrinking, but instead look more as if one of them's being absorbed into the other.
  • Issue 17 gives us a seething mass of Hulk, faces and limbs appearing from every which where, forcing Bushwhacker's plastic body through a pipe. It's not known whether he survived that beatdown.
  • In Issue 18, the "Abomination" Shadow Base created has a misshapen hand-face, the hands opening to reveal two half-melted faces belonging to Rick Jones repeating "help me kill me kill you help you".
  • Happens to Creel again in Issue 23, when the Gamma Base soldiers hit him with flamethrowers while he's turned to metal. It looks not unlike the T-1000 at the end of Terminator 2.
  • In Issue 33 we discover that Xemnu doesn't so much take nourishment from actually eating people as he converts them into freakish beings like himself. The result is a lanky, humanoid body of flesh and metal parts, with the neck and head effectively merged into one with no semblance of a mouth. Dario Agger's minotaur form undergoes its own unique process, and by the time Hulk confronts him he's now crawling on the floor with his own cybernetic parts, lacking a good portion of his skin and the flesh of his head draped over what twisted remains he has for a face.
  • After he makes the Hulk explode, Leader!Rick turns into a horrifically stretched and bent abomination.
  • All of the Leader's bodies have engorged heads and brains, with Del Frye's exploding through his skull as the villain takes control.
  • Hulk's transformation in the tie-in, The Threshing Place, is suitably horrific, as is the gamma-mutate he has to fight (which looks like it's a Hulk turned inside out).
  • What becomes of Bruce when the Leader takes him to the Below Place.
  • After Dr. McGowan slices Rick's body in half, the Leader merges it with Del Frye's body.
• Book Ends: The first issue and the final issue both end with Banner asking himself and the Hulk if he is a good person. "What do you think?"
• Boom, Headshot!: Betty is shot in the head thanks to her "killer" mistaking her for Bruce. She gets better.
• Brain in a Jar: The solar emitter units Fortean has are controlled by brains (and spines) in jars.
• Break Them by Talking: When The Avengers bring in She-Hulk to try and take the Immortal Hulk down, he is able to get the upper hand and defeat her by calling out how she has gone from being a gamma-fueled idealized form of Jennifer Walters' to literally the same kind of monster as the Savage Hulk. The words cut so deep that it gives Immortal Hulk the chance he needs to Megaton Punch She-Hulk halfway across the state.
• Brought Down to Badass:
  • Gamma Base and Bushwhacker use powerful sun-lamps to prevent Bruce from becoming the Hulk. Unfortunately for them, that doesn't stop Joe Fixit from taking over the body...
• Brought Down to Normal:
  • While Bruce Banner is still a scientist and a pretty smart man, he's no longer a super genius, which he attributes to the brain injury that killed him in Civil War II.
  • The Joe Fixit persona controls the "Banner" body rather than transforming into a Hulk, and lacks his old powers.
• Brutal Honesty: The new Hulk doesn't hold back. When Samson asks what happened at Shadow Base, Bruce dodges the question. When night comes, he asks Hulk, who immediately answers "ate a man".
• Bullying a Dragon: In issue #41, Gyrich does nothing but this, including threatening in increasingly over-the-top ways to kill Doc Samson. Who is currently in Sasquatch's body. He only backs off a little bit when Len implicitly threatens to kill him.
• Buried Alive: A particularly disturbing example: Hulk regenerates himself after a prolonged period of being dismembered, with the unfortunate Dr. Clive getting caught in the middle and being left to suffocate in his guts.
  • It gets worse. It's heavily implied that Hulk had actually absorbed Dr. Clive in order to properly resurrect Bruce, since when he turns back to normal when the sun rises, it's less "big green man shrinking" and more "symbiote vanishing from person".
• The Bus Came Back:
  • The third issue sees the return of Louis "Hotshot" Lembert and his girlfriend Jess "Jailbait" Harrison, a gamma-powered teenager that Peter David originally created. Jess dies under mysterious circumstances, and Louis hangs himself in his jail cell soon after.
  • Bruce's late unlamented father Brian is revealed to have returned in issue 5, having last been seen confronting the Hulk family in Chaos War.
  • Daredevil enemy Bushwhacker reappears, having been recruited by Shadow Base.
  • General Fortean, who pursued the Red Hulk in Jeff Parker's run, returns in issue 6, and surprise, has learned exactly the wrong thing after learning his mentor General Ross was a Hulk.
  • How shaken is the Hulk by his trip to Hell? Immortal Hulk is momentarily replaced by the regular Savage Hulk.
  • Issue 15 clarifies that the Devil Hulk is the same one that showed up in Bruce's Journey to the Center of the Mind during Paul Jenkins's run. The reason he doesn't look and sound like a reptilian monster is because back then Bruce's fear of him altered his appearance.
  • Issue #16 gives us the return of the Joe Fixit personality, albeit in Banner's body instead of his own.
  • Possibly foreshadowed in Issue #18; Banner writes down a list of all his current personalities and which bodies they've taken. The two personas written down under "Missing/Dormant??" are the Professor and the Green Scar.
  • Issue 20 features a brief non-speaking appearance from Bruce's mother Rebecca, also last seen in Chaos War.
  • Issue 25 sees the Leader's return to the main Hulk series, having last been seen in Hulkverines.
  • Issue 26 has a guest appearance by Amadeus Cho and Namor the Sub-Mariner and return of Dario Agger, CEO of Roxxon.
  • Issue 30 brings back Xemnu the Living Hulk.
  • The Green Scar shows up at the end of Issue 32, after Bruce has been brainwashed by Xemnu.
  • Issue 39 brings back Henry Gyrich as the new head of Gamma Flight. A few issues later, he brings in the U-Foes to hunt down Hulk.
• Butt-Monkey: Joe Fixit is robbed of his Hulk form and is often shooed away so Banner can take back control as the cast has little use for a mob enforcer who doesn't have any actual muscle.
• Call-Back:
  • When lamenting his brought down to normal status, Bruce laments he can't build the sort of super-scientific gadgets he built during the Greg Pak Hulk run.
  • The story arc suggesting an interdimensional aspect of gamma radiation harkens back to a much earlier issue detailing the early days of the Hulk, where there was nothing but speculation surrounding who or what he is. One of the theories mentioned in the narration proposed that Bruce's bomb punched a hole into another dimension, and the Hulk was what crossed over. The story arc here gives that theory some merit.
  • Just before the end of issue 6, Carol Danvers notes that the last time any Avenger saw Hulk, he helped save the world, and that's why they've been giving him leeway. But then Carol notes this is a different team of Avengers.
  • During the battle with the Avengers in issue 7, a shaken Thor notes to Cap that there is something more otherworldly to the Immortal Hulk, and that from science and natural law the mortal world has created something very close to a god, or the opposite. The Jade Giant, who is partially possessed by the spirit of Brian Banner, is amused.
  Immortal/Devil Hulk: Hnh. "Devil Hulk." Works for me.
  • The Arc Words, "the night is his time", are a reference to something Banner once said about Gray Hulk. "He's coming. It's... his TIME."
  • During their chat in issue 11, McGee brings up, as an example of the mercy the Hulk is shown, that time he was shot into space. She then adds "instead of just shot". Hulk doesn't respond to that.
  • The qlipoth of General Ross Hulk and Jackie encounter quotes what Ross said to Bruce in their first meeting, as shown in Incredible Hulk #312 - "A bomb's a bomb."
  • When The One Below All makes an appearance at the end of issue 12, it uses an inverted echo of what The One Above All said in the last issue of Ultimates Squared, only echoing the last line about love in the very next issue.
  • The beginning of issue 14, dealing with the funeral of General Ross, mentions the other two times he's apparently been buried, and how his funeral is barely attended thanks to that and the whole "attempted treason" thing when he was the Red Hulk.
  • Betty is still sore about being forcibly depowered by Doc Omega back during Gerry Duggan's Hulk run. The Ancient Order of the Shield she signed up with that pushed her to kill Bruce during that run has also cut ties with her. As it turns out, her depowering didn't last. She's also a little pissed about Hulk's apparent siding with HYDRA during Secret Empire (not knowing Hulk was being controlled at the time).
  • Samson thinks back over his death during Jeph Loeb's run and his temporary return during Chaos War. He came back permanently in time to see Amadeus Cho absorb the Hulk from Bruce, and then Bruce's death in Civil War II. Whatever there'd been between him and Betty back in the day, it's gone; now they're drawn together because they both need a friend, someone else who understands what they've gone through.
  • The Hulk explains that the Hulk that appeared during Secret Empire was a previously-unseen personality, a wordless ball of rage that didn't care who it hurt, that didn't see people at all. He confirms he is indeed the Devil Hulk from Paul Jenkins's run, and the different appearance and speech patterns he had when he first showed up was thanks to Bruce's fear of him temporarily reshaping him.
  • In issue 18, Samson brings up Amadeus Cho's theory about why no civilians get killed in the Hulk's rampages: Bruce is subconsciously working to make sure it doesn't happen. Devil Hulk responds it applies to other Hulks.
  • Rather than her Red She-Hulk form, when Betty transforms after getting shot by Bushwhacker she becomes a composite of her Red She-Hulk and Harpy forms.
  • In issue #20, Brian Banner lists off the other gamma-touched who've passed through the One Below All's down-below: "the delinquent" (Rick Jones), "the quack" (Doc Samson), "the old goat" (General Ross), "the copycat" (possibly the Abomination, Sasquatch, or Amadeus Cho), "my sister's idiot child" (Jen Walters), and Betty Ross.
  • Issue #20's Flash Forward is based on an alternate universe where the only survivors are the Hulk and Mr. Immortal, first seen on a single screen in a single panel in an issue of Exiles fifteen years before. Apparently Bruce ended up outliving Craig.
  • Jackie's narration in issue #23 states that her father's health started really declining on the exact same day the Hulk got that presidential pardon and big shiny statue.
  • Issue #24 begins with a recounting of the origins of Galactus and then the Hulk and the Fantastic Four, to tie-in with the far future Hulk forcibly making himself the Galactus of the next multiverse.
  • In the Absolute Carnage tie-in Bruce and his alters have a conversation with Venom in their mind about joining forces. Devil Hulk manifests in the scaly orange Hulk form he's shown in prior appearances on the mental plane.
  • In his appearance in issue 26 Amadeus Cho mentions his own time as the Hulk and disappearance of the Green Scar.
  • Also in #26, Namor and Bruce talk about old times, even quoting a line all the way back from their first meeting in Avengers #3.
  Bruce: I don't go for all the flowery talk, but I hate humans too.
  • Issue #34 is one long call back, of all the Leader's plots and schemes over the years (blowing up Middleton, his resurrections, his deaths, his time with the Intelligencia, his time with the Thunderbolts, the deal with Mephisto...)
  • Issue #41 has Ben Grimm and Joe Fixit discussing among other things, that time Ben went to Heaven in Mark Waid's run on Fantastic Four, his bar mitzvah and becoming rich in his own solo series from way back when.
  • In issue #43 Vapor brings up X-ray's "gamma-negative rays", which he reveals are just cosmic rays by another name.
• Call-Forward: Langowski's flashbacks in issue 4 show college-aged Bruce buying tons of purple pants, declaring he'll never need to worry about what to wear again. Well, he turned out to be right on that score.
• Came Back Wrong: In issue 22, Rick Jones comes back from death... he just doesn't come back to life. He's a gamma zombie, and he makes it pretty clear he was aware when Fortean had his corpse dug up, and he remembers it all. Issue 23 reveals he also got a few extra goodies, such as the ability to float and shoot wall-melting blasts of gamma out of his hands. Then issue 33 reveals it's not Rick after all.
• The Cameo: Crusher Creel's lawyer, who helps get him into the situation with Gamma Base, is one of the Krask siblings, Marvel's greasy lawyers par excellence.
• Canon Immigrant: Jack(ie) McGee, Jeffrey Clive, and Del Frye from the The Incredible Hulk show and the Dogs of Hell from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Daredevil.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Immortal Hulk's ability to absorb gamma radiation, established back in No Surrender when he depowered General Maverick, comes back in issue 5, when he depowers Sasquatch. And it's turned against him in issue 10 and 11 by Fortean's lab people, and the One Below All.
  • In the first glimpses of Shadow Base, there's a shot of an animal skeleton that's bright green. Several issues later, the lab techs show off a gamma-enhanced mouse to Creel. And in issue #16 Hulk and Doc Samson run into some more of their "Hulkimals".
  • Blurring the line between this trope and Chekhov's Gunman is the corpse of Walter Langowski, killed during Fortean's rampage through Gamma Flight's base, and kept on ice by Puck in case he comes back. He doesn't, but Doc Samson borrows his body. Though at the same time, Puck wonders what became of Walter.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • In issue 9, mention is made of someone at Gamma Base called "Red Dog". They appear in the next issue, and it's Crusher Creel, sporting an upgrade.
  • Through the Hulk's stay in Hell, an unidentified voice narrates through the issues on the definition of the words "Hulk" and "Satan". The voice returns in issue #20, and at the end of the issue turns out to be the Metatron, also known as the Voice of God.
• Citywide Evacuation: The Avengers evacuate Georgetown, Iowa before their battle with the Hulk. This was the right call, as they cross the Godzilla Threshold and use Code: Helios, destroying the town.
• Clark Kenting: Discussed in Issue #43 where Joe explains how he manages to stay in hiding in spite of Bruce Banner and the Hulk being wanted by the authorities. Bruce has a pretty nondescript face, meaning anything from a mustache, to a trucker hat, to a pair of shades, to a toothpick in the mouth, to a loud shirt can be enough to make people not put two and two together. Plus, what are the chances of the guy who just stole your wallet and credit card and the recently sighted Hulk being one and the same?
  Joe: Just another guy with one of those faces.
• Close on Title: A recurring stylistic touch of this series, either because the titles are thematic summaries ("Or Is He Both", "His Hideous Heart") or because they're spoilers for the events of the issue ("Time of Death", "It's Joe").
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: The rather skinny-looking Bruce Banner here looks a lot like Edward Norton from The Incredible Hulk.
• Comic-Book Time:
  • Fortean's day in the limelight issues suggests the events of everything from around Fall of the Hulk to the modern-day took place over five years, a slight compression given Fall began in 2010.
  • The Leader's issue, meanwhile, dates the accident that transformed Samuel Sterns as occurring "15 years ago". For reference, he first appeared in the comics in 1964. Which would mean everything between '64 and 2010 is a timetable of ten years.
• Composite Character:
  • Betty's newest form, the "Red Harpy", combines elements of both her Red She-Hulk and Harpy forms.
  • After escaping the Leader, Doc Samson returns to life by possessing Walter Langkowski's corpse to become Doc Sasquatch. The result looks like a green Sasquatch with a longer mane similar to Samson's hairdo.
• Conflict Ball: In issue #35, Gamma Flight attacks the Savage Hulk, even as Jackie screams at them to stop because he didn't cause what happened, and is just as scared and horrified as the few survivors of the gamma blast. Of course, when personalities such as Absorbing Man and Titania are involved, and the Leader egging everyone on... things rapidly get worse.
• Connected All Along: The finale issue has a running flashback to a scientist's early experiments with discovering gamma radiation that reveals Bruce and the Leader are distantly related.
• Contemplate Our Navels: Once "Hulk in Hell" starts there is narration explaining the theological history of morality and the Satanic Archetype, with specific references to Zoroastrian and Judaic belief systems. Who/whatever the narrator is, they close out the arc by addressing Bruce as "Bruce Banner of Earth".
• Continuity Nod:
  • The arc of exploring the supernatural qualities of gamma radiation harkens back to when the Hulk was visited by an alternate future self during a period where he was suffering Sanity Slippage from lingering shrapnel in his brain. His future self explained then that there's always been mystical aspects of the Hulk.
  • The scalpel the Shadow Base scientists use to slice Banner apart is named "Jarella II", after Hulk's long-dead girlfriend (for extra nastiness, it's a visual pun - they use it to slice up his heart).
  • Puck has a pretty casual reaction to winding up in Hell. Of course, he's been to one of them before.
  • Rick Jones' qlippoth is carrying a harmonica, just like the one he was playing in Incredible Hulk #1 before Bruce ran out to rescue him. The cover of issue #16 is another homage to that scene.
  • During his recounting of their history together, Brian Banner reminds Bruce of that time in Chaos War he was resurrected and sent after the Hulk.
  • The end of issue #12 evokes one of the Hulk's other names from Greg Pak's run, the Worldbreaker... with all the apocalyptic meaning it carries.
  • Issue #14 starts off with the funeral of General Ross, who was killed over in Captain America. Betty notes that Steve Rogers isn't there for the eulogy as Rogers was framed for his murder.
  • In McGee's reappearance in issue #16, it's noted the last big Hulk sighting involved him talking to raccoons in Manhattan.
  • Issue #18 has a slew of past references:
    • Jackie mentions a piece called "Elf Army Invades Earth".
    • Bruce wonders what happened to Marlo Chandler.
    • Bruce checks off his personalities' current status, listing the Professor and Green Scar as "Missing/Dormant??".
    • Samson and Titania discuss her history of trying to kill his friend.
    • Bruce gets cut off talking about how Devil Hulk's choice of name could be worse, like starting to call himself the Maestro.
    • Similarly to Doc Green and the original Red Hulk, when Bruce hulks out this issue he doesn't keep his newly grown mustache, nor does the Hulk have it as a reflection.
  • In Issue #19, among Betty's flashbacks of her relationship with Bruce is a (clearly ironic) one to her first line back in The Incredible Hulk #1:
    Betty: Oh daddy, don't be so unfair! Dr. Bruce Banner is one of our most famous scientists! I'm sure he knows what he's doing!
  • In issue #20, Fortean's attack on Hulk involves two war wagons, the same machine Glenn Talbot tried to kill the Hulk with way back when. This time, however, they're dealing with two gamma mutates, neither of whom subscribe to Thou Shalt Not Kill.
  • At the end of issue #24, the future Hulk notes that the now dead Mr. Immortal was meant to be a placeholder for the also immortal Franklin Richards, who was apparently supposed to live until the end of time then merge with Galactus (as established in Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four).
  • The protagonists of issue #25 describe the Breaker of Worlds' apparent motivation as being "never stop making them pay".
  • In issue #26 Bruce mentions the X-Men's new mutant nation and Doc Samson brings up She-Hulk's current status in Avengers. In the same issue Dario Agger talks about how Roxxon pretty much got away with a slap on a wrist for betraying the human race to Malekith.
  • In issue 43, Shaman asks Leonard Samson to not refer to him by his real name, as he tries to keep his personal life and superhero career separate. He would know how important such a separation can be; throughout the Alpha Flight comics, he has suffered a very tumultuous relationship with his daughter Talisman after she tried to follow his footsteps in superheroics.
  • Absorbing Man's acknowledgement that his powers are so incredibly vague that there "are no rules" and sometimes "not even guidline" picks up on an important part of the backstory of the Earth X continuity.
• Copied the Morals, Too: The qlippoth of Rick Jones created by the One Below All in the Below Place is just as loyal to Hulk as the real one, and transforms into A-Bomb to help him fight off the other monsters sent after him.
• Cosmic Horror Story: The series does this with gamma radiation. In the second issue, when Del Frye was injected with a gamma-irradiated serum, he saw a "green door" that was "below everything" before dying. The next issue, Lew Lembert also mentions a "green door" but this time with what's beyond it: the One Below All. According to Brian Banner in issue 12, his research into gamma energy hypothesized a third form that energy takes when it's neither a wave or a particle, but when he had a nightmare of the Green Door and the One Below All he denounced it out of fear. Issue #25 is an entire issue of the concept: the last survivors of a dead universe, faced with an unstoppable monstrosity they cannot comprehend.
• Covers Always Lie:
  • Issue #7 shows Doctor Strange among the assembled Avengers confronting the Hulk. He had left the team by the time the issue was published.
  • Issue #39 has Green Scar and the Hulk fighting, surrounded by Bruce, Professor Hulk, Joe, Glow, Goblin, Guardian and the Maestro. Nothing like that happens inside.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • General Fortean's people are made to monitor Bruce's friends and associates, including the presently very dead Rick Jones' grave (just in case, apparently).
  • Betty is wearing her old Red She-Hulk outfit underneath her civilian clothes, since it's bulletproof. She also has a magic item to block surveillance, knowing full well Fortean is watching her.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Dr. Clive dies once the pieces of the Hulk gather around him during his regeneration.
• Cruel Mercy:
  • The Hulk doesn't kill Tommy Hill... he just breaks most of his bones and leaves him in a coma. If he's lucky, he will never walk again. If he isn't, he will never wake again.
  • Neither did he kill Dr. Frye. Just told him how his quest for immortality cost him everything he held dear, then tore his arms and legs off, and buried him alive.
  • Nor the Puppet Master over in Fantastic Four, equally breaking his bones.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Red Harpy tearing out Hulk's heart turns out to be partly this, giving Hulk's healing factor a jump-start after Abomination's acid disabled it.
• Cumulonemesis: The One Below All forms itself out of a mass of green clouds when the Devil Hulk and his allies are trapped in the Below-Place. It then proceeds to vomit up a swarm of qlippoths all as big and mean as the Hulk.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Hulk's fight with the Avengers is even worse than his fight with them in Avengers: No Surrender. He tears apart a Hulkbuster Armor, dents Ghost Rider's car, nearly overloads Black Panther's Vibranium Armor, punches Thor so hard he cracks his skull and knocks a tooth out, launches She-Hulk two miles away and pounds Captain America's shield so hard that Cap's nose starts bleeding from the impact.
  • The Thing whales on a weakened Hulk with no resistance. Joe Fixit has to take over to get him to stop.
• Cutting the Knot:
  • Red Harpy has a very direct approach to problems, usually involving dismemberment. Case in point: New Abomination's stomach acid? Remove the stomach. No more stomach, no more acid.
  • At the end of issue 23, Hulk gets a face-full of said acid. He solves the problem by tearing his skin off before the acid can melt it.
• Dark World: When the Green Door is opened and the Hulk and others are pulled through, they end up in "Hell", which is the lowest point of creation, stated to span the entire multiverse, and is a dark reflection of the many versions of reality, full of hollow lifeless versions of people. The hollow people are just husks that talk and act out the memories of the people they represent with no real sentience or consciousness.
• Deader than Dead: In issue 24, Hulk kills Fortean, and he gets dragged down to Hell. While there, Joe Fixit snaps his neck. Hulk and Doc Samson get back up, but Fortean stays dead.
• Death Amnesia:
  • In issue 20, Bruce and Brian have a little chat in Hell. Brian explains Bruce has been there all the other times he's died over the years, and they've had similar conversations, but Bruce doesn't remember them.
  • Issue 34 shows it from the Leader's perspective. He just assumes he was willing himself back to life each time.
• Death Is Cheap:
  • For Bruce Banner, certainly — and it's Played for Drama and Played for Horror in equal measure. Being an incredibly-powerful, unkillable killing machine is every bit as horrifying for him to experience as it is to everyone else in the setting to live through.
  • One of the themes, especially in issues 14 and 15, with 14 dealing with everyone's reaction to General Ross's latest death, and then Betty's own reaction to Bruce's coming back to life, and 15 focusing on Samson's own Unexplained Recovery from Civil War II, and how upsetting it is not just when someone dies, but comes back, both for their loved ones, and the person who came back.
  • In issue 21, Fortean kills Doc Samson and Langowski. The next issue shows Len, still gamma powered, is up and about, with the note his resurrections are getting quicker. Walter... not so much, but Puck notes they're waiting around, since Alpha Flight members have experience with dying and not-dying. Meanwhile, Rick Jones comes back... partly. In issue 23, Samson gets filled with lead again. He gets better in issue 24, noting he'd been holding off on it in an attempt to stay dead.
  • Ironically averted with Thunderbolt Ross who was recently killed in a different title Captain America - in response to an ask in the letters column Al Ewing said he is reluctant to resurrect the character, not wanting to undermine the impact his death had in that book.
  • Further discussed in #26 with Amadeus Cho wondering if would come back to life if he died and Banner warning him to not try since neither Walter nor Fortean came back, so there are seemingly no hard rules on who gets to return and who doesn't.
  • It becomes increasingly complicated in issue #37 when the Leader demonstrates the ability to flip the Green Door to a Red Door, cutting off the ability for gamma mutates to resurrect (using the recently killed Samson as a test subject), and trapping them in the "Below Place".
• Death Glare: Betty spends a lot of issue 14 glowering at Fortean whenever she gets the chance.
• Death of a Child: Children are not off limits in this series, with the first issue opening with a 12-year-old girl being shot and killed.
• Deconstruction: The series deconstructs several elements of the Hulk mythos as well as some from super-hero comics in general. Since this is a horror series, many of these tread into Nightmare Fuel territory.
  • Death Is Cheap is horrifically deconstructed when it's learned that the reason the Hulk and gamma mutates keep coming back is because death has a metaphorical revolving door for them to keep walking out of. Made worse is the fact that it's due to an Eldritch Abomination that is The Anti-God, which is only bringing them back so it has pawns it can use to enact its own plans. There's also the trauma of having to experience death in all of its pain and terror only to come back repeatedly and realize it's going to keep happening again and again and that you may end up surviving thousands of years past the ends of your friends, loved ones and everything you ever held to be important.
  • I Did What I Had to Do is also given a harsh look from various angles and sides. The Avengers try to bring in Bruce and end up tangling with the Hulk. They can ultimately only win when they use a Kill Sat to hit him with a superbeam of solar energy which ends up not only killing Bruce (again), but destroys what's left of the town they were fighting in. Later, the opposite side is looked at with General Fortean, who believes he is absolutely justified in doing anything to fight the Hulk, while acting like a Knight Templar. However, it turns out that Reggie is actually mentally disturbed and everything he says it just an excuse to bring order to his world at any cost. It's only at the end when he's in the Below-Place that he realize the horrible mistake he made in pursuing Gamma-based weapon research, which ends up damning himself for all time.
• Demonic Possession:
  • Walter Langowski is killed in issue 4, and comes back to life controlled by Brian Banner. Who is himself being empowered by the One Below All.
  • Happens to Crusher Creel during his own fight with the Hulk.
  • In the bleak far future of issue #25 it's revealed that the Breaker of Worlds is an utterly hollow being, any trace of the soul of Bruce Banner and the Hulks long since eaten away. All there is left is the vast abyss of hate that is the One Below All.
• Depending on the Artist: Hulk's mug may not always be pretty to look at, but with this particular take's emphasis on his brow and "classic" Hulk hairline, he comes off more similar to typical depictions of Frankenstein's Monster than anything else.
• Devil Complex: The narrator of "Hulk in Hell" apparently views Devil Hulk as the true Satanic Archetype, with the potential to go either way, the accuser or the adversary.
  • On top of all the other Satanic references, in the opening pages of #33 Banner rapturously envisions the idea of a Hulk that had no restraints - "What would happen, I wonder? What would happen if I let go?" - which manifests as a multi-limbed city-killing monstrosity with three conjoined faces, not unlike Dis, the Satanic archetype that waits in the final circle of Dante's Inferno.
• Didn't See That Coming: Dario Agger had merely been planning to fleece the US government for some money, meant to be spent on anti-Hulk measures, do absolutely nothing with it and pocket the cash (which, frankly, probably is more sensible than actually trying to attack the Hulk). He just didn't expect the Hulk to have an axe to grind against Roxxon.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In the stinger of issue 24, the future Hulk reveals he killed Mr. Immortal. And Galactus. And Franklin Richards. Then he eats the living personification of the multiverse, the Sentience of the Cosmos.
• Dirty Coward: Dr. Clive spends most of issue 8 with a smug grin, and gloating over the dismembered Hulk, but when Hulk escapes he immediately pleads that he's sorry and that they made him do it.
• Dismembering the Body: Dr. Clive does this to the Hulk, not in connection with killing him (because, as the book's title says, it's becoming clear the Hulk can't be killed), but because it would seem to be the only way to contain him.
• Dissonant Serenity: In issue #36, Leader-in-Rick's body is turned into a distorted mass of flesh, but he barely seems to notice.
• Doing in the Scientist:
  • Zigzagged; This series explores a supernatural quality of gamma radiation and how it relates not only to the Hulk but all gamma mutates. Puck ultimately concludes that gamma radiation combines both science and magic, as it is scientifically understood yet still capable of unpredictable phenomena like turning people into living metaphors of their psychological issues.
  • Brian Banner tries doing this when in Hell. Hulk doesn't agree with him.
  Hulk: Look at you trying to figure me out. Learn the rules. Find the secret. You think you ever knew what I was, old man? Here's your special theory, dad. The only equation you need. HULK. IS. HULK!
  (Hulk blows Brian and the One Below All away with a gamma clap)
• Double Standard: During Issue #11, Jackie McGee reveals that she views the Hulk as the ultimate example of white privilege-cum-outrage and that she wants to be a gamma-irradiated bruiser so her own indignation can rampage against what vexes her without consequence. Partially justified, as she still feels a great deal of pain and anger in regards to her town being destroyed by the Hulk and how her father eventually died as a direct consequence. She hates feeling that she has no means of expressing this anger, while the Hulk is notorious for his destructive rages and is frequently shown mercy by the superhero community. She drops this once she spends time with Hulk and begins realizing how much being the Hulk has cost him (i.e. virtually everything that mattered to him.)
• Dramatically Missing the Point: A flashback in issue #23 has General Ross and Major Talbot showing Fortean a young Jackie as an reminder of the people they're supposed to be protecting from Hulk attacks. Fortean takes it as a reason to ignore any moral qualms he might feel instead.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • The detective that interviews Jackie at the hospital in issue #4 quite literally walks past Bruce as he tells her to contact him if she sees Bruce.
    Detective: (as a man with a trucker's cap walks by him) Though, ah... if you do find Bruce Banner, Ms. McGee... ...we'd sure love to talk to him, you know?
    Jackie: Yeah. (leans back and closes eyes as the man sits down next to her) Yeah, me too.
    Bruce: Good timing, then. (Jackie's eyes snap open)
  • In issue 35, the Leader keeps attributing his various resurrections to his own indomitable nature and The Power of Hate, rather than what's actually causing it. It's not until towards the end he learns what it is.
• Dutch Angle: Joe Bennett on occasion uses a comic panel layout version of this throughout the series.

E-H

• Eldritch Abomination: The One Below All, the counterpart to the One Above All. Like its benevolent counterpart, it is simultaneously one bodiless individual and a multitude of hosts it acts through. Just horrifically evil and corruptive, rather than benevolent and loving. It can't assume an actual form, but uses other beings, like Brian Banner, as faces.
• Eldritch Location: Hell. As least as our heroes see it, it looks like a ruined cityscape, and shells of loved ones appear to taunt and mock anyone who winds up there.
• Emotional Regression: Though the Devil Hulk is usually the one in charge at night, if he suffers enough emotional or physical distress the child-like Savage Hulk persona inexorably asserts itself.
• Empty Shell: Another running theme of the series, introduced during the cast's trip to Hell with the narration on qlippoth, musing on the corruption of sin.
  • Subject B, the new Abomination created around Rick Jones, which displays rudimentary intelligence, but isn't really Rick. Langowski mutters in issue 21 that it might as well be a qlippoth.
  • What the Hulk becomes as a Galactus-like entity in the next universe, having been hollowed out by the One Below All billions of years before the end of the previous one.
• Engineered Heroics: The Leader causes the Hulk to explode during a press conference, and then shields some of the attendees with his body to leave both witnesses and to further strengthen his impersonation of Rick Jones.
• Epigraph: Every issue begins with a quote relating to what happens within.
• Establishing Series Moment: The gas station robber gunning down a 12-year-old girl, then Bruce (as his eyes are turning green), then the cashier.
• Even Evil Has Standards: One of Dario's underlings is reluctant to use the fact that Charlene McGowan is trans to slander her since it's none of their business. Dario kills him for this moment of kindness.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Fortean is reluctant to do anything to Betty Ross, even when she's got Bruce at her house, on the day of her father's funeral. However, after that, he's perfectly okay with trying to kill her.
  • When Joe Fixit confesses to Betty Ross that he basically abandoned Bruce Banner to the Leader in Hell, a dumbfounded Betty immediately flips out so badly she becomes Red Harpy and starts verbally chewing Joe out for doing something so evil. This, despite the fact she had been hostile to Banner since her entry into the series and the fact she was literally writing off their past as a textbook toxic relationship beforehand.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Potentially one of the series' many themes.
  • One of Fortean's plans for getting at the Hulk involves digging up Rick Jones' corpse, and mixing it with some of the Abomination's corpse to create a new Abomination to sic on the Hulk. At the end of issue 21, he decides to touch it... and it absorbs him.
  • Dario Agger learns too little too late that trying to take an advantage of a being that can induce Fake Memories can horribly backfire.
  • Of course, the Leader finds out the hard way after warnings from everyone that there is no alliance or partnership with the One Below All, only domination.
• Evil Knockoff: The One Below All assails the Hulk with hollow copies of Rick Jones and Ross to enrage him to the point that he'll sever ties with Banner completely, who has been separated from him. Though hollow Rick ends up helping the Hulk.
• Exact Words: On the subject of "subconsciously calculating so as not to kill people", Hulk acknowledges that while it's "a little screwy", it does make sense. For the other Hulks, anyway.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: As Dr. Clive rants to the Hulk's remains about how they are going to turn him into their weapon due to their studies on his body, he slowly comes the horrifying realization that this was planned:
  Dr. Clive: Oh god. You let us do this to you. You wanted us to... to test you. Because if we know what you can do... ...so do you.
• Eye Motifs: There's a lot of focus on characters' eyes, and what it says about them.
  • The Hulk's are clear and full of rage.
  • Agger's are dull red orbs, reflecting his cruelty.
  • Xemnu has a ring of furless skin around his eyes, which shows that his guise of a friendly hero is a lie.
  • Gyrich wears reflective shades, hiding his eyes and making him seem even more smug. That they're also drawn as deep red probably also isn't a good sign.
• Eye Scream:
  • Brian Banner in Sasquatch's body jabs out Hulk's eyes in their fight. Fortunately for Hulk, they soon heal.
  • In issue 11, Bushwhacker shoots out one of Hulk's eyes. He does it again in issue 14.
  • Joe Fixit throws some gamma mutated ants into Bushwhacker's eye in their fight, though it only freaks him out for a moment.
  • Hulk gets a face full of the new Abomination's acidic spit in issue 19, and the audience gets a lovingly drawn look at the results.
  • While fighting Fortean in the Abomination shell, Hulk puches his thumb into Fortean's eye socket.
  • Mixed with the above, the Leader's eyes burst into flames when the One Below All possesses him.
• Eyes Never Lie: The only visible physical change between Bruce Banner and Joe Fixit is that Bruce has brown eyes, while Joe's are grey.
• Face–Heel Turn: In the Time of Monsters one-shot, Tammuz initially wanted to use his new power to help his village. After they kill and eat him, he decides to just destroy them.
• The Faceless: Curiously, while Rebecca Banner is shown and heard in flashbacks, her face is never seen, always being obscured by shadows (or in the case of Bruce's flashback to her death, by a narration box). When she appears to Bruce and Brian in Hell, she's facing away from them and doesn't turn around.
• Fate Worse than Death: Dr. Frye discovers something that scares him more than oblivion - being buried alive in the heart of a mountain, forever.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: At the end of issue 31, Doctor McGowan and the Hulk talk about the Savage Hulk persona, only exclusively referring to him as "the big guy". What seems to be a nod to the movies soon turns a lot sinister when the Wham Line is dropped.
• Flash Forward: The end of issue 20, which offers up a glimpse of what "Immortal Hulk" truly means. The end of issue 24 and issue 25 show what happens afterwards.
• Flaw Exploitation: Fortean and his scientists manipulate Crusher Creel into being their guinea pig, using his pride to stop him backing out when he starts to get cold feet.
• Flipping the Bird: Hulk manages to do this with his disembodied hand in the eighth issue.
• Foreshadowing:
  • At the beginning of issue 2, Bruce talks about the "ghost state", when you've got radiation poisoning but feel fine. Later in the issue Hulk raises the possibility Dr. Frye never noticed the adverse side-effects of his gamma poisoning because he was in a ghost state of his own from his research.
  • Jackie's reaction to Walter's story in issue 4.
  • Also, when Jackie runs in to Doctor Banner, she never once actually looks at him. Turns out in the next issue that the Hulk noticed.
  • In issue 5, the Hulk roars that David Banner only has the power he gives him by being afraid of him. A while down the line, the One-Below-All, which David serves as a mouthpiece for, states it has "all the power you give me."
  • The Rick Jones qlippoth Hulk and Jackie meet is more capable of apparent independent thought than the ones of Jackie's dad or General Ross. Come issue 13, it (he?) even tries to help the Hulk out.
  • The opening quote of issue 20 is from Timothy Leary's The Psychedelic Experience on rebirth, which is a key theme of the issue, and becomes very pertinent at the end. Also pertinent (albeit probably not to Ewing's story) is that among the gamma mutates Brian Banner lists as having passed through the One Below All's 'below-place' is "the old goat".
  • In issue 20's Flash Forward, the mystery voice lists some of the moments that led Bruce to that point, including what could be Fortean wearing the Abomination shell as armor as the 'Horseman of War', and the Hulk sitting himself down on Fortean's 'steel throne' in issue 24, along with 'the beast of myth and the Hulk-that-was' (Dario Agger and Xemnu The Living Hulk) and 'the thing in the tube and the thoughtful man' (Which probably refers to the Leader and what he was holding at the end of Issue #25).
  • The closing quote to issue 25 (written in mirror-writing) hints at the event that brought it about.
  • Amadeus Cho in #25 mentions he will be keeping an eye on Bruce, possibly hinting at their their future confrontation. The fact he and Namor end up with opposite opinions on Banner's new plan may also foreshadow them fighting on opposite sides in Greg Pak's upcoming Atlantis Attacks miniseries.
  • In issue #33, Hulk literally explodes out of Banner's body when he breaks through Xemnu's brainwashing. Rick and Betty's reactions are largely indifferent after all that's happened, but Rick notes that this has happened to Bruce before and expresses a scientific interest in the permutations of these types of transformations. The end of the issue reveals he's being controlled by the Leader.
  • In Issue #11, the narration poses the question "But does God have a Hulk?" at on point. The final issue establishes that The One Below all is more or less the The One Above All's Hulk.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Inverted; the One Below All, when it is shown, still doesn't present its true form lest it shatter mortal minds, but it specifically chooses forms that discomfort witnesses the most. For the Hulk this is his abusive father, for anyone else it's a Nightmare Face.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: After the Leader prevents his soul from returning to his own body, Doc Sampson jumps to Walter Langkowski's still deceased body. Several issues later it's revealed that Walter's soul has managed to find his way into Doc Sampson's body.
• Gender Flip: Jack McGee of the The Incredible Hulk (1977) is now Jackie McGee. Also counts as a Race Lift.
• Genre Throwback: Immortal Hulk is heavily inspired by the Atomic Age horror comics of yesteryear, specifically the earliest portrayal by Lee and Kirby, but with a contemporary spin.
• Global Warming: During the Roxxon arc, the Hulk commits himself to fighting this by attacking institutions that aren't otherwise facing repercussions for contributing to it. Meanwhile Roxxon is 'deliberately' causing it, despite being perfectly capable of switching to renewal energy, because they expect the collapse of society to be more profitable overall due to the increase in business to their weapons division. Moreover, Dario states that the 12-year deadline (a hotly-discussed at the time climate prediction that called for certain emission reductions within the timeframe to avoid certain levels of warming, often sensationalized as being the point at which The Endof The World As We Know It would happen) was actually an under-estimation disseminated by Roxxon.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Not that he was exactly the most sane individual to begin with, but that time the Leader apparently Ascended to a Higher Plane didn't do him any favors.
• Good Is Not Soft: In an interesting both sides way in issue #3 where the Hulk flattens the Bartender's car for being rude to Banner, from which he learns that the Hulk is a jerk. And to be fair he is not wrong.
• Go Out with a Smile: Whoever (or whatever) killed Jess Harrison, when the cops find her corpse, she's got a peaceful smile on her face. While her neck's been completely twisted around.
• Grand Theft Me: The One Below All's ultimate plan is to steal the Hulk's undying and limitlessly strong body so it can survive into the next iteration of the cosmos and ravage it until it's the sole being in all of existence.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: A weird\creepy variant in that the Hulk beats the Absorbing Man with his own spine.
• Groin Attack: Joe Fixit knees Bushwhacker in the nards after punching the enhanced cyborg in the face doesn't work.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Hulk rips the new Abomination in half in issue #20, revealing the dessicated body of Rick Jones inside.
• Hate Plague: As Walter and Jackie are looking for the Hulk, two patrons at the bar they're in suddenly start fighting for no reason whatsoever, ending when one fatally stabs Walter. It later turns out to be the One Below All, using them to get into Walter.
  • It happens again in issue 36 when the Leader makes Gamma Flight fight the Hulk.
  • And yet again the second and third times the Hulk fights the Avengers, causing them to attack despite attempts at cooperation. In the former, Red Harpy is able to convince She-Hulk to help Hulk and friends teleport away by pointing out how irrational the other Avengers are being. In the latter, Susan Storm is able to block the effect by surrounding the Hulk in a forcefield, allowing everyone to calm down.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Issue 34 shows the Leader, after winding up in the Below Place again, trying to reach out to Bruce, as happened back in the Paul Jenkins Hulk run, but when Bruce brushes him off due to circumstances, the Leader decides to just go full on bastard.
• He Had a Name: What is the first thing out of the Hulk's mouth when facing Tommy Hill in the climax of Issue #1?
  Hulk: Sandra Ann Brockhurst. That was her name. She was twelve.
• Hero with Bad Publicity:
  • Roxxon manage to make the Hulk look bad through a mix of engineered Kaiju attacks and a large dose of Laser-Guided Amnesia.
  • The Leader does it by blowing up a small town, making it look like the Hulk suddenly went into overload.
• Hollywood Acid: The new Abomination spits out acid which can overcome the Hulk's healing factor. And in order to synthesize it, it needs to eat people.
• Hope Spot: Issue #38 has Devil Hulk, in full-on Papa Wolf mode, burst free of his mental prison, ready to kick The Leader's ass. And then, in issue #39, Savage Hulk stops him, because he doesn't want Devil or Bruce to hurt Brian Banner, allowing the Leader to tear Devil Hulk to pieces and make off with Bruce.
• Hulking Out:
  • Rick Jones' biography, which Jackie McGee reads at one point, has an acknowledgement that witnessing this happening is not a pretty sight.
  • While on the run with Bruce and Rick's corpse, Betty turns into Red Harpy whenever Bruce tries to talk to her, insisting "this is me".
• Human Sacrifice: Adad from Time of Monsters throws Tammuz to the "Great Green Eye" in hopes of appeasing the Mother Goddess. When this nets him a Hulk feast, he plans to raid nearby villages for more sacrifices.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: Issue 25 is from the point of view of a Starfish Alien who encounters the Hulk in the far future. Although the Hulk is now a cosmic entity on the level of Galactus if not greater, the alien observes his very human anatomy as he moves and expresses with the kind of unfamiliarity humans would have about them.
• Hypocrite: Much like General Ross — who tasked him with carrying on his fight — Fortean chases the Hulk with the intent to destroy him no matter what is destroyed in the crossfire, despite it being established that Hulk doesn't kill innocents despite astronomical property damage. Unlike Ross, Fortean sees no problem executing civilians that witness his plans in motion and even goes as far as to resurrect the Abomination using the corpse of Rick Jones for the sake of creating a weapon to kill him. Then he winds up wearing the Abomination shell himself.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Devil Hulk assures a suicidal Banner that while he has a gruff way of showing it, at the end of the day, he'll always love him... because someone has to.

I-L

• I Did What I Had to Do: A pre-emptive declaration. Fortean says he's proud to "make the hard decisions" (translation: kill any witnesses to his made-to-order horror show, regardless of just how many corpses that might make). It also manages to overlook the pretty big issue that he wouldn't need to kill people if he hadn't unleashed a murderous gamma mutant undead in the first place.
• I Have a Family: Tommy tries this in issue #1 when the Hulk is about to kick his ass. It doesn't help.
• I Lied: Doc Samson tells Gyrich he didn't know the location of Shadow Base, but the next issue reveals this was a lie.
• I Have No Son!: Zigzagged. Despite Brian referring to young Bruce as a monster, when Rebecca offered to take Bruce to aunt for a while he refuses on the grounds that no matter what he is Bruce is still his son.
• I'm a Humanitarian: The village in Time of Monsters kill and eat a Hulked-out Tammuz. In their defence, they thought he was just a beast.
• Immortality Seeker: Dr. Frye became this after his wife's death, and developed an immortality serum based on Bruce Banner's research. It works on him, with horrible consequences, but kills his son and makes his corpse radioactive, killing everyone who gets too close. And several issues later, it turns out it had worked on his son... just not in the way he'd hoped.
• Impromptu Tracheotomy: The possessed Sasquatch slashes Bruce's throat with a claw to bring out the Hulk.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Gyrich is not at all happy about having to ask the Avengers for help.
• Infectious Insanity: Amadeus Cho came up with a theory of Hulk Syndrome, to explain why so many people with Gamma Powers - himself, Doc Samson, She-Hulk - develop some form of Split Personality, at least temporarily, believing gamma makes their minds take on some aspects of the person from whom they got their powers, Bruce Banner, particularly his Dissociative Identity Disorder. Samson, however, believes gamma is causing Hulk Syndrome and Banner has it on top of his DID.
• Insistent Terminology: As Hulk puts it, if he has to be called "the Big Guy" now, Bruce Banner is "Stupid Banner".
• Invincible Boogeymen: Already close to this, the Hulk truly embodies this trope in the Bad Future, having become an apocalyptic threat to what little remains of the universe through sheer unstoppability.
• In Their Own Image: The One Below All's ultimate goal as shown in issue 25 is to make all of creation as hollow as they are and finally be alone.
• Ironic Echo: In his introduction, Darrio Agger declares business has "winners and losers". When Xemnu inevitably turns against him, he repeats this phrase to Agger.
• Ironic Echo Cut:
  • As Agger boasts about his B.E.R.S.E.R.K.E.R. goons, he states they don't feel fear, while the readers sees the Hulk working through four guarding a Roxxon facility, one of whom is quite clearly bricking herself.
  • In issue 34, the Leader's narration states he's not afraid of dying. The first caption on the very next page? It's how he was afraid.
• Just Following Orders:
  • The thugs working for General Fortean with the job of murdering any civilian who sees the new Abomination try doing this when they run into Red Harpy. It doesn't work.
  • In issue 23, Doctor McGowan tries pleading for the lives of her scientists by saying they were just doing their jobs.
• Pistol-Whipping: Joe, the leader of the biker gang in the first issue, whom were a victim of a full-on Mook Horror Show from Devil Hulk. Delivers one to an unfortunate tenant in his hideout with a deagle, when that same guy says that the being that was disposing of most of their guys was "the devil", Joe immediately dismisses him as a crackhead, before delivering the blow. Oh how wrong he was.
• Proportionately Ponderous Parasites: Weaponized for Roxxon, all the Kaiju they release on Houston have been infected with intestinal parasites that drive them wild with hunger, if you get eaten you'll be dealing with them too. When the Kaiju are slain the heros then have to deal with the parasites that come swarming out, so things go from bad to worse very quickly.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Discussed in issue 26 where the CEO of Roxxon, Dario Agger pretty much brags about how Roxxon got away with siding with the Elves during the War of the Realms and decided to no longer hide his minotaur form because "no one important cares" as he puts it. Eventually, Xemnu absolutely mangles him while noting that Agger is as expendable to him as all of Agger's employees were.
  • It's acknowledged by Bruce in the same issue that this is a major problem in current human societal systems that are ruining the planet. Various "entities" engineer and profit from disaster and human weakness with no consequences, with only brief moments of justice where the powerful and rich pay fines of pocket change. Instead, Bruce firmly notes that he and Hulk will start off their anti-society war by teaching said entities true consequences.
  • [McGee] envies the Hulk for being able to let out his destructive rage and traumatize countless people and yet still (intermittently) be a respected member of the superhero community. Later, her internal narration describes how surreal the Baxter Building and superhero community feel, such as the commonness of Let's You and Him Fight and the way all hero-on-hero conflicts are ultimately forgiven.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Bushwhacker, working for Fortean, interviews a rural man who just narrowly survived an encounter with the Hulk, and once he's done shoots him in the head.
  • Red Harpy rips out the Hulk's heart when he's blinded and crippled. Making it worse is that it's the childlike Savage Hulk, not the Devil Hulk, who doesn't understand why "Betty" is acting the way she is, and was pleading for her to help him. The next issue reveals it was a Cruel to Be Kind gesture, to kick-start his healing factor, but Devil Hulk is still pissed at Betty for putting Savage Hulk through that.
• Kill and Replace: After Brian Banner and the One Below All's attempt at using Bruce to escape from the Below-Place was thwarted at the end #13, the former was forcibly absorbed and replaced as the One Below All's main agent by the Leader, who has been impersonating Brian ever since #20.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Betty is shot partway through saying "Bruce, I'm sorry. But I-". She doesn't stay dead for very long, though.
• Killed Off for Real: By the end of the series, all Hulk variations are dead save for the Savage Hulk and Joe Fixit, who has taken over the original Red Hulk body for himself. Furthermore, Banner and other gamma mutates no longer have access to the Green Door ,thus when they die, it's for good now. Or at least until another writer wants them.
• Kryptonite Factor: Cosmic Rays are toxic to gamma mutates and the U-Foes use them to disentegrate the Hulk's flesh. Joe Fixit, now being part of the human side of hulk, absorbs them to bring the Hulk back at full power.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • When the subject of the idea that Hulk subconsciously calculates things so as to avoid hurting folk is brought up in issue #18, it's immediately pointed out this is ridiculous. But, then again...
  • Joe Fixit, who's been out of circulation for a while, comments on the Hulk's movie-synergy given nickname of "the Big Guy" with a sarcastic "since we're calling him that now".
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Xemnu, the Living Hulk, uses his powers to make everyone forget who the Hulk is. Including the Hulk(s). Only Savage Hulk and the Green Scar manage to remember.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In issue #35, after what went down with Xemnu, Roxxon goes entirely bankrupt. Of course, knowing them, it won't stick for very long.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Given that Status Quo Is God in the Marvel universe, Dario concludes that Roxxon can be as cartoonishly evil as they want without any lasting consequences.
  • Amadeus Cho's theory that people with Gamma powers who periodically develop a Split Personality may be caused by them getting it from Bruce Banner, who has Dissociative Personality Disorder, seems like a roundaround way to address how Marvel writers like to recycle Hulk's plots or plot-points for characters connected to him.
  • Amadeus points out to Bruce how, despite multiple Hulk personalities now manifesting at once, Green Scar and The Professor aren't among them, and they wouldn't allow Devil Hulk's Pay Evil unto Evil if they were.
  • In Issue #35, Savage Hulk actually has an outburst at reporters for hailing him as a hero and Avenger in spite of the fact that they also keep hunting and hurting him. This can be seen as commentary on how Marvel seems to flip-flop between Hulk being a beloved icon or a monster in-universe.
    • In the same issue, a lot of the commentators seem to enjoy Savage Hulk because he is uncomplicated and smashes only bad guys like Roxxon. This appears to be Al Ewing pointing out how many people in and out of universe enjoy the surface-level view of the Hulk being a big dumb superhero brute rather than exploring any of his themes or the deeper psychological implications of Bruce Banner's situation.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Instead of turning into anesthetic to ease Ironclad's pain like Vector tells her to tells her to, Vapor turns into sulfiric acid which Joe inhales harmlessly. She regrets it when Joe breathes her out in Vector's face, blinding him.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Issue 41 has Thing and Hulk brawling, until Joe manages to take the wheel and get Ben to stop. All he can do is sheepishly mutter that Hulk started it by hitting him.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Issue 47 has Joe in a rematch with the Avengers, who having already taken a terrible beating from the Hulk at great cost to win, are now fighting more lethally, especially since they're in a populated area. They're more than a little callous compared to last time, which partially fuels Jen siding with Joe and Gamma Flight against them at the last moment.
• The Little Detecto: Doctor McGowan produces a device that detects gamma radiation, showing that Jackie has become a gamma mutate.
• Living Lie Detector: The Hulk claims that he can smell lies, including the ones we tell ourselves, a claim Thor backs up after his fight with him.
• Logical Weakness:
  • During their first battle, the One Below All takes on the form of a living cloud of Gamma Bomb fallout to both overpower and intimidate the Hulk. While hideously strong, he's still a cloud and is vulnerable to what usually happens to clouds when the Hulk claps his hands together.
  • While Xemnu initially has trouble rewriting the Savage Hulk's memories due to his atypical mind, since Xemnu is powered by childhood nostalgia and Savage Hulk is partly a *manifestation* of childhood nostalgia, Xemnu is able to affect him after he draws enough power from all the people under his spell.

M-P

• Madness Mantra:
  • Bushwhacker keeps saying "I can take him. It'll be a rush." as a very pissed Hulk bears down on him in issue 14.
  • The "Abomination" Shadow Base creates doesn't seem capable of speech at first, simply hunting Banner while grumbling "Hhlll-Kk" through its misshapen hand-face. But when the hands open, it reveals two half-melted faces belonging to Rick Jones repeating "Help me kill me kill you help you".
  • Issue 0 has The Leader saying "welcome home" as he makes Brian Banner experience his death over and over again.
• Male Gaze: Played with in that Betty does still gets this in the traditional manner, but she also gets the Male Gaze in her Humanoid Abomination Red Harpy form◊ making for a bizarrely sensual yet somewhat disturbing effect.
• Mandela Effect: In-Universe, this is discussed by Doc Samson and Charlene McGowan in regards to Xemnu's effect on the populace.
  McGowan: "The Magic Planet." A show everyone remembers, but nobody watched. It never existed, Len. It's all in our heads.
• Mass Hypnosis: In Issue 31 Xemnu is employing his mind control powers to brainwash the watching populace into believing he is a fictional character from a childhood show.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • In the climax of issue #1, we have Tommy pleading to the Hulk "I'm not a bad guy. Am I?" and Hulk responding "What do you think?". The issue ends with Bruce repeating both lines as he looks at his (or, rather, the Hulk's) reflection in a bathroom mirror.
  • During the fight with the Avengers, Black Panther tries zapping Hulk, claiming "this will bring you back to your senses". Problem is, Hulk hadn't lost them in the first place, so it just makes him mad(der). A few pages later, Hulk bludgeons T'Challa with the Hulkbuster's arm, throwing his words back at him.
  • When Xemnu and Darrio Agger are talking, Agger tells him not to bother using his hypnotic powers on him, since he "knows how the sausage is made". When Xemnu inevitably turns on Agger, as the man pleads not to be eaten, Xemnu states "you know how the sausage is made" back at him.
  • The close of issue #50 ends with [[spoiler:an inverted reprise of issue #1, this time with Bruce pondering whether he's a good person before asking (whoever he's talking to - himselves, or the sunrise, or the One-Above-All, but most implicitly, the reader): "What do you think?" As above, so below.)
• Meat Puppet: Issue 33 reveals that the Leader has been controlling Rick Jones' body the entire time from Hell, playing the part of Bruce/Hulk's wise-cracking best friend to manipulate them for his own plans.
• Me's a Crowd: By issue 37, The Leader is controlling the bodies of Rick Jones, Del Frye and the Green Scar. Though by the mid-point, he starts flubbing a little, as a result of having to divert his attention four different ways.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: A gamma thing in this series; Bruce, the Hulk and Walter all see their alter-egos in their reflections, and the Hulk sees Brian Banner's reflection first in place of Sasquatch, then in place of himself. In issue 18, it turns out Bruce sees the Hulk in his reflection all the time, and complains that as a result he never knows whether there's something on his face.
• Mirror Character: Abigail's narration in issue #50 suggests this is the case for the Fantastic Four compared to Banner and his supporting cast; a exceptional family who gained superpowers from building a rocket that exposed them to cosmic rays, vs a dysfunctional family who gained superpowers from building a bomb that infected them with gamma radiation. This extends to their public images as heroes and antiheroes, and their divine connections, as Franklin Richards is destined to be the last living being in the universe, but in the timeline of the One-Below-All's victory he is killed by Bruce Banner in order to replace him. Without directly recognising the parallels, the Fantastic Four intervene at a critical moment to tell the Avengers to stand down, then open the dimensional portal to the Below Place for the Hulk to be able to confront the One-Below-All.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: After several issues of Fortean being a Bad Boss to everyone at Shadow Base, they finally realize he's gone nuts when he kills two of his own troops for no reason, and let the Hulk do his thing.
• Mook Horror Show: The Hulk's rampage through the Dogs of Hell is presented like this: someone screaming off-screen, another guy bursting in, babbling about the devil, giant green hands tearing through a wall, the Dogs of Hell pumping bullets into the monster to no avail, Tommy Hill running for his car, then finally... silence, as everything falls quiet. Then Tommy turns, and sees the Hulk.
• Mortality Phobia: Dr. Frye developed this after his wife died; unable to make himself believe in any sort of afterlife, he became terrified of the concept of Cessation of Existence.
• Motive Rant: Issue #26 mostly focuses on on Bruce Banner gives when he tries to convince Amadeus Cho to join him and Hulk, listing various societal issues (see Status Quois God and Karma Houdini) that he hopes he can, if not fix then smash whatever is standing in the way to a solution.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Savage Hulk, after the Leader's torn Devil to shreds. He's too consumed by guilt and horror to stop the Leader making off with Banner.
• Myth Arc: The conflict with the One Below All begins with the first appearance of the Green Door and runs until the last issue.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The first issue is titled "Or Is He Both?", which comes from the cover of the very first issue of Incredible Hulk: "Is he Man or Monster or... is he Both?"
  • The second issue features Buscema's diner. Sal Buscema had a 10 year run as the main Hulk artist.
  • Outside of Jackie McGee, Dr. Frye and his son Del are both shout-outs toward the character Del Frye, the original Hulk in the two-part episode "The First" in the live-action series.
  • When confronted by the Avengers at the end of issue #6, Bruce gives a darker variation of a certain line from the 2012 film:
    Captain Marvel: But to set the Hulk free, Bruce Banner has to die. And that's just not going to happen, Bruce.
    Bruce: ...But that's my secret, Captain. I'm already dead.
  • When we see the grave of General Ross in issue #14, it states his year of birth as 1962. That's also the year when the character (as well as Hulk himself) first appeared, in Incredible Hulk #1.
  • Issue 16 features the Hulk fighting a host of gamma-irradiated animals, which is not just a homage to the "Dogs of War" comic story (where the Hulk fought Hulk dogs) but also to the 2003 Hulk film which it inspired. Similarly the psychological exploration of the Hulk, involving military conspiracies, an abusive father, bad dreams and communing with his alter ego through reflections are also things emulating that adaptation.
  • Fortean calls a Hulk in the story "incredible".
  • Dario Agger concludes that he "needs a Hulk" to beat the Hulk, so approaches and makes a deal with Xemnu the Titan, previously known as Xemnu the (Living) Hulk.
  • Xemnu's brainwashing makes the world believe he was a character from a beloved children's tv show. He did much the same thing in his first modern appearance, in Marvel Feature #3, which also saw him battling the Hulk who was with the Defenders at the time. He also once again claims to hail from a "magic planet".
  • As part of Xemnu's brainwashing he makes Bruce start going by his first name, Robert, which was accidentally retconned in from script errors in his earliest days.
  • The Hulk exploding in Georgeville, Iowa thanks to the Leader appears to be a reference to the Leader setting off a Gamma Bomb in Middletown, Arizona in Incredible Hulk #345.
  • One that may just be an incredible coincidence is the very name of the series. Here's some dialogue from the first Hulk story:
    Ross: Fan out, men! We've got to capture that- that Hulk!!
    Narrator: And thus a name is given to Bruce Banner's other self, a name which is destined to become — Immortal!
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "The One Below All" sounds like an inverse of "The One Above All", who is essentially capital-g God over the entire Marvel multiverse, so what does that make it?
• Natural End of Time: Issues 23 shows the end of the current Marvel universe, where the Sentience of the Universe is present to create the new Galactus for the Ninth Cosmos. Banner possessed by The One Below All shows up to hijack the process to make sure there won't be a Tenth Cosmos.
• Necessarily Evil: Issue 26 more or less has Bruce Banner's plan be this. He sees that the human world is being driven toward self destruction despite the efforts of brilliant minds such as Stark, Brashear and Richards. He also notes Wakanda and Krakoa will basically let humanity kill each other. As such, he as the Hulk is basically going to tear down and destroy the old establishment, so that the newer generation can fix the problems. Understandably, Cho has doubts.
• Neck Snap: Doctor Frye manages to break Bruce's neck. Meaning he has to deal with a very angry Hulk.
• Never My Fault:
  • Even when he is in Hell itself, Brian Banner still refuses to admit his circumstances might be even partially his fault, instead blaming the Hulk (who he sees as separate from Bruce) or the One Below All.
  • When his head scientist is appalled at what the new Abomination is doing, General Fortean dismisses any responsibility for it, putting all the onus on the scientist. Just a reminder that it was Fortean's idea the whole way.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Lampshaded; in issue 31, Creel absorbs the jump ship but concentrates on absorbing its form, managing to adapt its rocket jets into his legs for flight. He points out the fact that he was empowered by a chaos god and not only is he sure there aren't really any rules to it, he's unsure there are even guidelines.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Fortean's reaction to seeing Red Harpy? Awe.
  Fortean: What she's become. The weapon she's become. Incredible.
• Nighttime Transformation: Part and parcel of returning to the Hulk's roots.
• No Mouth: X-Ray is drawn so that his eyes are his only facial features.
• Not in This for Your Revolution:
  • Shaman helps out Gamma Flight and Leonard Samson in issue 43, but makes clear that he has no stake in their conflict and is only aiding them in order to hopefully help his old friend Walter Langkowski, who still has not resurrected and has instead had his body possessed by Samson.
  • In the same issue, Joe states he doesn't care about Bruce or the Hulk's agendas, and would much rather spend his time just enjoying himself.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • In the "post-credits" in issue #20, Fortean is let known that something has stolen Thunderbolt Ross's body from the grave.
  • After an issue of smugly beating down an already weakened Savage Hulk, the expressions of the U-Foes when Cosmic Ray-powered Joe Fixit resurrects at standard Hulk strength are uniformly horrified.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Bruce's brief "Robert" persona hints that his current crusade to end the various societal injustices of mankind is just a healthier way of channeling his more primal and persistent desire to simply end...mankind.
• One Degree of Separation: Issue 21 reveals Fortean was part of the unit fighting the Hulk the night he destroyed Jackie's house, and she was used as an example by Ross of why he fought the Hulk.
• Orifice Evacuation: Bleeding over into Chest Burster: When Savage Hulk escapes the mindscape by crawling through a tunnel, it manifests in the real world as his fingers coming out of Banner's mouth. The rest of him bursts Banner's torso into goo. It's made worse by the fact that Hulk's speech bubble while this is happening comes from inside of Banner's chest.
• Page-Turn Surprise: One page of issue #8 ends with the Hulk's cut hand in a jar (the Jolly Green Giant had just been cut into pieces by scientists) snapping its finger to break the glass. The next page shows all the pieces flying back together around a scientist, and fusing again onto him, and back into the Hulk's body.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: This is Hulk's new method of crime-fighting, judging by the Cruel Mercy he gave Tommy Hill and Dr. Frye.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Dr. McGowan doesn't get much leeway with Fortean looming over her, but she does mention she has tried to help Del Frye, even though his mind is apparently too far gone for it to be of any use. Rick Jones at least tells her he appreciates the effort.
  • Henry Gyrich manages to combine this with Kick the Dog; he has enough decency to ensure the U-Foes only use lethal force on the Hulk (who can take it) and merely disable any bystanders or accomplices that get in their way... but he doesn't raise much objection to them using downright brutal methods to do so, like bathing them in tear gas.
• Plot Detour: Absolute Carnage: Immortal Hulk concerns how Bruce is involved in Carnage's rampage and how Ross was involved while his title was gearing up to fight Fortean. The Hulk even points out how he feels their involvement in the event is contrary to what he wants to do.
• Police Brutality: Joe Fixit and Savage Hulk blow their cover while on the lam when they see two Rabid Cops roughing up a hapless teenager for being a Hulk supporter, transforming into Hulk-form to teach them a lesson and subsequently alerting the U-Foes to their location.
• Portal Cut: In order to evacuate Shadow Base, Dr. McGowan teleports all of the staff. She sets the teleportation to have a six-foot radius, neatly cutting the Leader-possessed Rick in two.
• Possessing a Dead Body: Doc Samson and Sasquatch do this to each other when Green Door shenanigans prevent them from resurrecting in their own bodies.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The Leader is able to take control of the Green Scar persona in Bruce but doesn't try to possess the other hulks and instead opts to imprison them in Bruce's psyche. This makes sense as the Green Scar is the strongest form Bruce can take (The Devil Hulk is too dangerous and atypical for Sterns to even try messing with, and Sterns makes sure he is imprisoned first and that his prison is the strongest) and it's a strain for him to try and control multiple people. He can safely handle possessing two people but three is pushing it and he would never be able to control more than that.
• Pun: In Issue #0, the gravekeeper tells Brian Banner "someone else used to tend these plots." The gravekeeper plays the same role as Stan Lee, doing double-duty, since they're in a graveyard, but also talking about a change in writers (since it's part of the wrap-around, segueing into a reprint of Incredible Hulk issue 0).
• Punch-Clock Villain:
  • Dr. McGowan is not by any means a bad person, and is repeatedly shown to be appalled by what Fortean makes her do... but she doesn't have a choice in the matter (and Fortean just ignores her attempts at being sensible).
  • In issue #23, Jackie notices that Dr. McGowan's scientists have, in amongst the scientific equipment and reports, scattered "World's Best Dad" mugs and golf reports. Thanks to Fortean's managerial policies ("do as I say or else"), they're forced to follow his unpleasant orders, and McGowan pleads for their lives.
  • The flashback that opens issue #31 shows McGowan during her time in an MGH lab, working for Wilson Fisk. She tries using her time there to do more positive things on the side, which her higher-ups approved. Then Daredevil burst in on the scene...

Q-T

• The Quisling: Dario Agger once again cuts a deal like this. His agreement with Xemnu is for help brainwashing the populace to advance his plans, in exchange for leaving the husk of the planet that's left when he's done with it as well as any survivors for Xemnu to convert into beings like him.
• Race Lift: Jack McGee from The Incredible Hulk (1977) was a white man. Jackie is a black woman.
• "Rashomon"-Style: Issue three involves Jackie interviewing multiple witnesses over the Hulk's latest sighting in confronting Hotshot. The different interviewees and their accounts are depicted in different art styles.
• Recognition Failure: In issue #40, neither Joe or Hulk remember Henry Gyrich. Though, admittedly, Hulk's got the justification of being a little distracted by his own guilt. Joe does eventually remember them,
• Re-Cut: The six-issue Immortal Hulk Director's Cut miniseries, reprinting the first six issues along with the artists' pencils, sketches, and character designs.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Bruce points this out rather bitterly in issue 26. Reed Richards, Tony Stark and Adam Brashear are all technological geniuses, but none of their efforts at green tech ever seem to catch on. The same applies to advanced nations like Wakanda and Krakoa; no one in power wants to hear about any solutions they might have to offer.
• Resurrective Immortality: What the Hulk has. If Banner gets killed, the Hulk will rise from the dead when night falls. Walter, Betty and Samson have it too, and per Brian Banner, so do Rick, General Ross and Jen Walters.
• Retcon:
  • Issue 6 has Bruce say he actually did get killed in the explosion that unleashed the Hulk, but came back thanks to his Resurrective Immortality, as seen in No Surrender.
  • When Brian Banner talks about his past in issue 12, he says he feared having children would break some kind of spell, rather than his previous fear of passing on a "monster gene", and reveals he had an encounter with the Green Door.
  • Issue 15 has the Hulk state the version seen during Secret Empire was in fact a new, different personality from the others.
  • Peter David's The Incredible Hulk #81 (2005) retconned the Devil Hulk into being nothing but an illusion conjured by Nightmare. The Immortal Hulk #15 ignores this by revealing that the Immortal Hulk is the true form of the Devil Hulk. Additionally, the Immortal/Devil Hulk is actually the Hulk seen in the Hulk's first few adventures.
  • Devil Hulk is shown to be not a single-minded creature of destruction. He has strong fatherly love towards Bruce and is fiercely protective of him. Devil Hulk's previous negative portrayals in the mindscape are explained as the result of Bruce's traumatic childhood, which makes him (and other personas) immediately view a father figure like a devil.
  • Whether She-Hulk's Comic Book Death in the opening of Civil War II was one of those things writers have gone back and forth on (actual death, near miss or Only Mostly Dead). Issue 34 weighs in with the Leader figuring it probably was an actual death, with her massive shifts in personality since then being due to her suppressing the memory of the experience (The Leader doesn't know about the Death Amnesia at that point).
• Revisiting the Roots: Not only is Bruce Banner Walking the Earth once again, but the book revisits the horror tone of the earliest Hulk comics. Instead of the "wounded child" or "bar-room brawler" interpretations, this Hulk is a smirking monster who enjoys taunting people about their unspeakable desires. And he's back to hulking out at night. (He tries the rage hulk-out in issue #1, but it doesn't trigger; as shown in Avengers: No Road Home, the stress-based transformation only works at night.)
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • Basically everything about the way Green Scar acts and what he says in Issue #33 after knowing that he's actually the Leader.
  Savage Hulk: What does white-thing want with boy? Who is boy?
  Green Scar: He's you, you moron—I mean, he's us.
  • After his reappearance in issue #18, Brian Banner seems much more prone to bombastic ranting than before, where previously he was more sullen and angry. Because it's actually the Leader wearing him as a Brian-suit, and his personality is shining through.
• Rogues' Gallery Transplant:
  • General Fortean was originally an antagonist of the Red Hulk over in Hulk before setting himself against Bruce here.
  • Fortean's main agent is Bushwhacker, who is best known for fighting Daredevil and the Punisher.
  • Fortean actually discusses it in one of the issues, talking about himself and about Thunderbolt Ross being reassigned to handle Captain America. Fortean believes Ross was always too close and too personally invested in the problem of the Hulk, and he himself was too close to Ross to capture Red Hulk, and they will both be more effective now that it's Nothing Personal. Considering both he and Ross got themselves killed, he couldn't be more wrong.
  • Dario Agger/Minotaur, the CEO of Roxxon, was a major Thor antagonist during Jason Aaron's run, and now he's up against the Hulk.
• Running Gag: Dario Agger has decided to remain in his Minotaur form permanently, and keeps offhandedly crushing things (cups, tablets, lackeys, etc.) as soon as he is done with them.
• Scissors Cuts Rock: Hulk tears the new Hulkbuster limb from limb.
• Secret-Keeper: Immortal Hulk: Great Power shows that Devil Hulk has never forgotten that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, even though every other personality was affected by the mind-wipe that came about in the aftermath of One More Day.
• Semantic Superpower:
  • It's revealed that the Absorbing Man's powers are pretty much this. Since his powers were bestowed to him by a trickster god, it's fitting that there are very few (if any) rules limiting how much or what he can absorb with his power. Over the course of the series, he absorbs Brian Banner's consciousness, all of the radiation in Hell, and the properties of a jet rather than just the material, turning him into a Mini-Mecha.
• Shout-Out:
  • Seeing the dismembered Hulk's heart, Fortean's head scientist decides to quote "The Telltale Heart".
  • At the beginning of their fight, Hulk wonders if Creel is quoting Rocky IV, and follows up by quoting it himself.
  • The monsters that the One Below All pukes up include Brundlefly and Emil Antonowsky.
  • Bruce has picked up a Wham!! t-shirt from somewhere when issue 16 opens.
  • After Hulk sees Doc Samson struggling against a Hulked-out bat...
    Hulk: Yeah, yeah. I've seen the movies. The bat guy always wins.
  • One of the experiments in Shadow Base shown in issue 17 are gamma mutated ants that look exactly like glowing green Arachnids.
  • The user name and password to the Shadow Base's computers? GIGER/HR and no5tR0m0.
  • Bruce wonders why so many of the Hulks talk like Ralph Meeker in Kiss Me Deadly.
  • When the One Below All reveals itself to Par%l, its speech is similar to that Nemesis the Warlock gave to Brother Gogol to seal the Terminator's fate.
  • In Shadow Base, Puck violently disassembles a cyborg that's identical to Cain, in the exact same manner as the film.
  • Dario's office features a collection that seems to include the Bottled City of Kandor, Excalibur, the Ark of the Covenant, a photo of Aleister Crowley, and the Lament Configuration.
  • The Kaiju are named for two effects artists in monster movies ("Harryhausen" and "O'Brien") and two horror writers ("Lovecraft" and "Bradbury").
  • The Kaiju monsters are infested with man-sized parasites. Those infesting Lovecraft resemble Elder Things.
  • One of the people in the television montage of civilians under Xemnu's brainwashing resembles Bart Simpson. Behind him is a lookalike for Nelson Muntz, Milhouse van Houten with Lisa Simpson in the background. Their schools name is blocked by speech bubbles but appears to be Springfield. The reference is driven home when he uses the word "Embiggen".
  • Dario winds up strongly resembling Brundle Pod courtesy of The Fly (1986).
  • The idea of Xemnu's Magic Planet being a creepy children's show that adults remember having watched as kids despite it never having actually existed is a nod to Candle Cove.
  • Jackie sees several "phantasmagorical fauna" at the gamma bomb test site with her new gamma powers, one of which resemble's Norris' head from The Thing (1982).
• Sky Face: The One Below All shows a superlatively sinister version of this shows up during shots of the The-Below-Place is seen. Two glowing eyes and a parting of the clouds for the massive maw.
• Sizeshifter: The Breaker of Worlds, being a cosmically empowered entity, can go from big enough to smash planets to big enough to crush stars like they were grapefruit.
• Slasher Smile: Hulk gets a lot of these, and the creepy factor is complimented by Hulk's face having a much more garish appearance than it usually does.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Most of what Xemnu says comes off as standard intelligent Super-Villain. However, he occasionally speaks like a cartoon character or a small child, usually while doing something especially evil.
  Xemnu [discussing an employee he ate]: I converted him. Since I internalized the conversion process... It nourishes me. And I was vewy, vewy hungwy.
• Spikes of Villainy: Exactly how villainous the Green Scar is can be debated, but when he assumes control of Hulk's body to fight Xemnu, bony spikes resembling the Green Scar's iconic armor erupt from the side of Hulk's arm.
• Split-Personality Takeover:
  • At first, the case with Joe seems like this. In the next issue, though, he reveals that "Devil" Hulk let him out on purpose.
  • Played with in the case of Devil Hulk and the others. He took over after Banner's deaths between Civil War II and Secret Empire, and is generally averse to handing back the metaphorical wheel. He's perturbed in issue #31 when the Savage Hulk manages to hold off switching for some time.
  • In issue #33, the Green Scar locks up Devil Hulk, and Joe Fixit, leaving only the Savage Hulk and himself. Issue #35 shows Joe at least got let out again, but Devil's locked up even further.
• Split-Personality Team: The main four active aspects of Banner function like this. Bruce is the main aspect active during the day, with Joe Fixit stepping in when he cannot handle the situation. Devil Hulk is active at night, but able to handle the wheel to Savage Hulk if he needs more brutal strength.
• Spotting the Thread:
  • The bartender in issue #3 managed to figure out that Bruce was the Hulk because, after he locked up for the night, he discovered that his car had been smashed to shit in the parking lot down the road.
  Bartender: So, yeah. I mean, I don't know how he knew. But that's confirmed. It was him. (Beat) And he sucks!
  • In issue #32, Doctor McGowan approaches Samson with security footage of her specifically mentioning Daredevil as the hero who caused her to go to prison, though she herself remembers Xemnu and has no memory of even saying anything about old Horn-Head. Increasingly suspicious, Doctor Mcgowan discusses the Mandela effect^note  A term for false memories entering the public consciousness, named after the titular world leader who some remembered as having his funeral in the 80's, some time before he actually died, pointing out that while everyone can remember the beloved children's show "The Magic Planet" where Xemnu starred, they struggle to remember exactly if they actually watched it.
  • In issue #40, Jackie finally manages to point out the suspiciousness of Hulk's exploding in issue #37 mixed with Rick Jones' behavior. Of course, it becomes a bit redundant as seconds later Doc Samson clues everyone in on what's happening anyway.
• Starfish Aliens: The alien inhabitants of the next universe shown in issue 25's Bad Future are intelligent crystalline amoebas who communicate using a form of Touch Telepathy via Floating Limbs which resemble actual starfish.
• Status Quo Is God:
  • Banner discusses this with Amadeus Cho, pointing out that no matter what anyone does, what anyone builds, it never gains traction and the rich continues to get richer and only gets a slap on the wrist for their actions.
  • Thanks to the machinations of his enemies, the Hulk's public reputation is back in the toilet by the end of the book. Bruce's counterculture, scientific advancement, and environmental efforts are all wiped away, and he slips away from the small victory party at the end to once more wander the world alone back to his lighter pre-Immortal mindset.
• Stepford Smiler: Jackie McGee notes that even as a gamma zombie, Rick Jones is trying to maintain a cheerful, upbeat demeanour, but she can see he's pissed.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Enforced. Due to the numerous superheroes around, Bruce questions why he needs to put everything down and fight Roxxon's giant monsters in Issue #29. When there are literally hundreds of superheroes and teams with teleportation technology, individual superheroes aren't going to be motivated to handle a crisis that isn't happening in their vicinity. Of course, since Roxxon is targeting him specifically, they deliberately timed the attack so that every other hero is busy, forcing him to fight.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In stark contrast to the Hulk comics' usual fantastical stance of radiation exposure granting superpowers (which the series goes out of its way to provide an explanation for), Issue #20 acknowledges what happens when severely radioactive critters are around giving off massive amounts of radiation — this results in huge radioactive fallout from their presence, which isn't good for anyone still standing around (at least, anyone who isn't immune).
• Swiss-Cheese Security: In issue 17 both Joe and Fortean point out the flaw in having a room locked behind a steel door with an aquarium for the wall adjoining the hallway.
• The Moral Substitute: Issue #28 has Roxxon plan to try and do this to the Hulk. They note that the traditional tactics of commercializing the Hulk will fail and thus they decide to try and "make their own". Cue Roxxon going to an island of monsters and meeting up with Xemnu.
• The Stinger:
  • The post-letters page "Everyone is a Target" tie-in to Absolute Carnage in issue #20 is a one-page follow up of one of Fortean's monitors telling him something: Something just happened at General Ross's now very empty grave...
  • Issue 24 closes on its title page... and then goes on for a few more pages, showing the Hulk in the very far future.
  • Issue 25 closes out with a quote, before going on to reveal how the far future events are affecting the present.
  • Issue 33 reveals that Rick Jones hasn't really come back to life and another consciousness is controlling his body. The closing page shows that this person is none other than the Leader, who is in Hell and holds the Green Door in the palm of his hand.
• Terse Talker: Betty, as Red Harpy, only tends to speak in short sentences of about five to eight words at a time, if that.
  • Discussed in #47 when Jen tries pleading to Betty, saying words are hard to form in her current condition. Betty denies this, claiming words are puny things not big enough to convey what Hulks intend, so they learn to say a lot by saying little. Jen finds herself agreeing, surprised at someone else getting it.
• There's No Kill like Overkill: In order to stop the Hulk, Iron Man uses a killsat which takes out the entire town the Avengers find him in. Everyone's aware of how awful a solution this is, but it's the only way they can think of to stop him.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: Shaman requests that Samson use his codename instead of his real name as he would like to keep superheroics separate from his personal life.
• They Killed Kenny Again:
  • Thanks to how the Hulk's immortality works, Bruce Banner is likely to die in most issues.
  • The same occurs with Doc Samson.
• Title Drop: Happens a lot with this series' issue titles.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Bushwhacker wants to have fun with killing the Hulk/Banner, despite Fortean's insistence that the Hulk be neutralized as quick and effectively as possible. Doubles as Revenge Before Reason as when the Hulk went to Hell Bushwhacker was so traumatized by what he saw that he wants Banner to suffer.
  • Issue #33 reveals that Dario Agger's "shielded" mind was just another of Xenmu's Fake Memories meaning Agger literally walked into Monster Island to recruit one of the most powerful psychic beings on Earth completely unprotected.
• Torso with a View: The priest's story in issue #3 has a moment where Hotshot blows a hole clean through the Hulk's torso, complete with loving description. And then, despite his spine being gone, it heals.
• Transformation Horror: Hulk's transformations were never exactly pretty but now the full disgusting process is on display as the comic returns to its horror roots.
• Transformation of the Possessed: When the One Below All possesses someone it usually operates subtly until found out, in which case it forces a hideous deformation on the possessed to unnerve witnesses.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Issue #12 begins with a flashback to Bruce's childhood, when Brian walks in on Bruce assembling a not-LEGO set of a Gamma laboratory, which is supposed to be several years ahead of Bruce... and without even using instructions. Naturally, this angers Brian. He leaves before seeing Lil' Bruce smashing the set in a rage.
• Turned Against Their Masters: The hollow Rick Jones replica rebels against the One Below All and transforms into A-Bomb because the bond Rick has with Banner is so powerful that it transcends facsimiles.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: In issue #40, it turns out some idiot decided it was a good idea to put Henry Gyrich, king of the Obstructive Bureaucrat, in charge of Gamma Flight.

U-Z

• Under New Management: During a montage in issue 31, there's a Roxxon-sponsored podcast. In issue 35, with Roxxon out of the way, the podcast has a new corporate sponsor: The just-as-shady Alchemax.
• Unknown Relative: The final issue reveals that Banner and Stern are cousins, but the infidelity that caused the separation leaves it ambiguous as to who the father of Beatrice Banner's child is.
• Villain Protagonist: Devil Hulk took advantage of Banner's recent deaths and resurrections to take over Banner's system of personalities, including replacing the Savage Hulk as dominant gamma persona.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • In Issue 33, Dario Agger breaks down into begging when he realizes that he has never been protected from Xemnu, only made to believe he was.
  • In issue 42, the Leader panics when he realizes he is going to be little more than a Meat Puppet for the One Below All, begging an incapacitated Bruce to save him.
• Visual Pun: Roxxon CEO Dario Agger is a Minotaur who deliberately breaks everything he touches; a bull in a china shop.
• Walking the Earth: Bruce Banner, as per usual. This time round, he's doing it to bring some justice into the world through the Hulk, to atone for his sins.
• Wham Episode:
  • Issue #4. As it turns out, Walter Langowski's attempt at making a second Hulk was a bit too successful; he dies on the operating table... and then turns into Sasquatch. This issue also sees Bruce meeting Jackie for the first time... because he arrived at the hospital fully aware that this was a possibility, with the issue ending with him saying they need to evacuate the hospital.
  • Issue #5. Brian Banner's returned from the dead, possessing first Walter, then the Hulk when he absorbs Walter's gamma radiation.
  • Issue #6. The Avengers finally catch up to Banner... who proceeds to turn and attack them.
  • Issue #10. Hulk realises that when the gamma bomb that created him detonated, it first partially opened the "Green Door" (a gateway to the realm of The One Below All). The possessed Creel absorbs a massive dose of gamma energy, allowing him to fully tear open the door and bringing everyone present to Hell.
  • Issue #33. The Savage Hulk emerges as the dominant Hulk persona, with Devil indefinitely held captive at the mercy of Green Scar. Not only is Agger defeated, but it's revealed that Rick Jones is actually the Leader, who in turn is in Hell, emerging from the skin of Brian Banner, and holding the Green Door in his hand.
  • Issue #38. The Leader, possessing the Green Scar persona, tracks down a weakened Bruce Banner in the hellscape and intends to use his green door to "make Bruce suffer", presumably before finishing him off once and for all and closing his door so that he can't use it to resurrect. Off in the distance, a fully-aware devil hulk, having been contained in a metallic prison by the Green Scar persona in a previous issue, somehow amps himself up, causes the prison to explode while he jumps out of it (with fire and smoke following in his wake), and lands right in front of the possessed Green Scar as he approaches the green door. Sterns can't help but cower in fear before the sight of the devil hulk, as the latter reiterates to Sterns that hurting the Savage Hulk and most of all, Bruce, makes him very angry. Then we see that the devil hulk has taken on his classic reptilian/demonic appearance and seemingly dwarfs the Green Scar in sheer size.
  • #42 reveals that Jackie McGee is a gamma mutate, similar to the Hulks.
• Wham Line: At the end of issue #4, Bruce lays the cards on the table to Jackie after she informs him of Walter Langowski's situation:
  Bruce: Walter... he wanted to turn himself into a second Hulk. You see? His gamma structure is just like mine. Exactly like mine. And now the sun's gone down.
  • Issue #6 has this gem:
    Bruce: But that's my secret, Captain. I'm already dead.
  • In Issue #10, after the Green Door opens:
    Hulk: Where are we? Isn't it obvious? We're where we've always been. Where everybody's always been. Welcome to Hell.
  • In Issue #16, Bruce Banner goes gray and says he's not Bruce Banner.
  • "What the Hell's a Hulk?" As said by the Hulk.
  • #38: "You hurt the Big Guy. And you hurt Banner. You hurt Banner, Sterns. And when you hurt Banner...I take that real personal."
• Wham Shot:
  • In issue #5, the Hulk demands to know who's possessing Sasquatch, and Sasquatch tells him to look behind him. The Hulk turns, looking into a window... and sees Brian Banner reflected in Sasquatch's place.
  • Issue #14 has a big one: Bushwhacker attempts to assassinate Bruce before he can transform but can't determine which heat signature is his in a shielded house, and despite Fortean ordering him to cease fire because it's now night, he takes the shot... and shoots Betty Ross. And despite Bushwhacker's insistence that he can take the now pissed-off Hulk, Fortean orders him to get out because...
    Fortean: It's night, you damn fool! Did you fall asleep during retraining? Unless the sun's up - he doesn't die! None of them die!
    (The seemingly-dead Betty's eyes begin glowing bright red...)
  • The end of issue 15 has Hulk and Samson reaching a graveyard. Specifically, the site of Rick Jones' grave. Which is busted wide open.
  • Issue 16 reveals that Betty Ross, after getting shot, is now a hybrid between her two alter-egos, Harpy and Red She-Hulk.
  • The splash page at the end of issue 16 sees the depowered Bruce smirking, opening his eyes (now grey), and delivering a Wham Line: "I ain't Bruce Banner". Topping it off is the issue title below: "IT'S JOE".
  • Issue 20 closes with another busted open grave: that of "Thunderbolt" Ross. Which is covered with some red and black residue.
  • In panel 22 of Issue 21, General Fortean, against the wishes of the scientists present, reaches for the "shell" of Specimen B. After musing about "ruling over chaos" some more (a running theme in the issue), we get a shot of him having been absorbed into the new Abomination. He's sitting on a throne of what appears to be flesh, and looks to be in control of the body he now inhabits.
  • Issue 27 ends with The Devil Hulk basking in the sunlight.
  • Issue 32 closes with Savage Hulk angrily trying to smash his way free from "Robert" Banner's Xemnu influenced mind, with the familiar green figure of the Worldbreaker himself, the Green Scar, appearing to lend a hand.
  • Issue 37 ends with the Leader counting down from three, using each of his three bodies to do so. The final word and shot goes to the possessed Green Scar, looming in the mindscape over a freshly killed Savage Hulk.
  • Issue 38's last panel shows that not only has the Devil hulk persona broken out of his imprisonment done by the possessed Green Scar/Samuel Sterns, but his appearance in the hellscape has taken on the reptilian and demonic flavor seen in older Incredible Hulk storylines. When he suddenly lands in front of Sterns, Sterns looks absolutely frightened at the Devil Hulk.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Fortean executes Doc Samson and a depowered Walter Langkowski before reporting that "there were no human casualties", seemingly referring to gamma mutates.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Amadeus Cho theorizes that disappearance of the Professor and Green Scar, Banner's two most heroic aspects, may be their way to voice disapproval over what Bruce and Devil Hulk are doing. He also points out that even if the established system they're dealing with is heavily flawed, "angry white middle class men" who have started talking about violent revolution as Bruce is currently doing is not a situation that has often had many beneficial results for others throughout history.
  • In issue #35, the Savage Hulk calls Bruce out on his many attempts to get rid of the Hulks or even outright kill himself over the years. Bruce acknowledges Hulk has a point.
  • Joe isn't happy with Savage Hulk after his desire for Brian Banner's love got Bruce taken, Devil Hulk killed, and the two of them imprisoned by Gamma Flight at the end of Issue #39.
  • Joe furiously calls out Ben Grimm for attacking and hurting Savage Hulk, who despite appearances is ultimately just a little kid.
• What You Are in the Dark: A major theme of this series is of people indulging their vices whenever they get the opportunity/capacity to do so.
  • The first issue opens with a guy desperate for money, killing a little girl. He swears it wasn't by accident, but even he can't be sure.
  • When Hulk faces the She-Hulk, he gives her a Breaking Speech combined with a "Not So Different" Remark, which shocks her for some time.
  • When Betty Ross turns into a monstrous fusion of her Harpy and Red She-Hulk forms, she goes on a killing spree. Jackie McGee pleads with her to restrain herself, but she simply says, "This is me." However, she spares the sole living innocent she encounters, the hotel's busboy.
  • Issue #28 shows the point of view of a conservative Roxxon security guard who longs for the good old days, and privately admits to himself that he's just waiting to be given an excuse to use violence to protect himself and his way of life from the young people in Hulk masks who are protesting against his employers. Even when he identifies one of the protestors as his teenaged daughter, he raises his gun and thinks that if he shoots, it won't be his fault as long as he felt threatened because "the devil got into her".
• Whole-Plot Reference: Issue 8 is meant to evoke Issue 21 of Alan Moore's run of Swamp Thing, The Anatomy Lesson, where the "corpse" of the hero is cut up and studied by the villains to reveal truths about their biology. And, much like Swamp Thing, after learning the truth Hulk kills his tormentor via smothering. Though unlike Swamp Thing, Hulk didn't do this in a fit of existential madness.
• With Friends Like These...: How Hulk feels about the Avengers. Within the same issue where Captain America declares that he thinks of Hulk as a friend and founding Avenger, Savage Hulk really doesn't share the sentiment and rants that in spite of claiming that they're his friends, they keep hurting him over and over again.
• Writing Indentation Clue: In issue 17, Banner is able to get the login for a computer by using this method on a note-it lying next to the terminal.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: The personnel on board the Alpha Flight space station in Issue 40 are under the assumption that the Hulk still simply changes sizes when transforming, and imprison him with restraints that take that into account. They clearly haven't been caught up on the buttloads of Body Horror that the Hulk regularly even weaponizes up to that point lately and thusly get a gruesome wake-up call from Joe Fixit that they are actually in a horror comic by exploding out of Hulk's chest.
  Joe Fixit: This guy... this guy ain't kept up, has he?
• Xenomorph Xerox: The Leader in Bruce's mindscape in issue #39 uses a second mouth that comes out of his unfolded face to consume the egos of others. When threatened he fights back by growing insectoid claws. He maintains this form back in the Below Place. Combined with his elongated cranium and lithe body he highly resembles a xenomorph.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Absorbing Man in issue #40.
  Absorbing Man: ... You gotta be kiddin' me! We're on a space station with guns that break the windows?!

---

What do YOU think?