Fanfic / born of hell('s kitchen)

One day, Matthew Murdock discovers the shocking revelation that he is the father to an adolescent boy. Not only that, but fellow Defender Jessica Jones is the mother. As they regain custody of their son, they fight to give him a normal life. Unfortunately, they also have to fight off villainous elements who see him as an asset to be used.

Oh, and their son is named Peter.

born of hell('s kitchen) is hosted as a series of fics which is hosted on Archive of Our Own:

• maybe he is born of grit and hellfire which is complete.
• and its sequel and made of silk and steel which is complete.
• wings for the angel, knives for the devil is a non-canon Bad Future fic set after the events of and made of silk and steel.
• we're all hellions and saints, a One-Shot Fic going more into detail about the day Peter was conceived leading up to his traumatic birth.

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Contains the following tropes

• Accidental Hero: Downplayed. In HYDRA's file on Peter, it is revealed that one of the factors that protected him from kidnapping for the Winter Soldier Program was the constant tabs Jessica kept one him, HYDRA only too aware the of the threat level she posed for any direct assault.
• Actor Allusion: Peter compares Matt to Batman if the Dark Knight was cooler. Of course, it's referencing Ben Affleck playing Daredevil in the movie and Batman in the DCEU.
• Achievements in Ignorance: Invoked when Frank Castle muses that Matt and Jessica basically created what may be the most powerful superhuman on the planet "by accident", considering Peter's Combo Platter Powers.
• Adam and Eve Plot: A variant in the second story. HYDRA wants Matt and Jessica so badly because they're the only couple able to produce superpowered offspring, something that could give them the high hand in the race to futuristic weaponry and soldiers. Both Matt and Jessica really aren't enthused by this plan.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: An origin variant. Peter wasn't bitten by a radioactive/genetically modified spider, his powers were a case of Superpowerful Genetics.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: In this fic, the future Spiderman wouldn't exist without Daredevil and Jewel.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Courtesy of the Age Lift, Peter has no relationship whatsoever with Tony Stark, being merely in awe of his scientific mind. Also, his MCU teenage self never met or even interacted with anyone from the Netflix series.
• Affectionate Nickname: Jessica calling her son "spider-monkey" for being a hugger.
• Age Lift: Here, Peter is only a preteen due to be born much later, in 2013 rather than in 2001.
• Alcoholic Parent: Defied by Jessica who cuts down on drinking after reclaiming her son's custody, as she doesn't want for her seven-year-old to be negatively impacted by her addiction.
• Amicable Exes: Matt and Jess. In spite of fan demands, Word of God assure "this ship has already sailed" and as such, they're only good friends who happen to share a son.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • Right after seeing Malcolm having a row with Zaya, Jessica understands he's still floundering in his life and asks him what he truly wants. Malcolm almost answers "You" and promptly has a Love Epiphany.
  • Trish trying to defend her murder of Alisa while hurling verbal abuse to Jessica for not informing her she had found Peter back winds up exasperating Jessica so much that she bluntly declares she was protecting herself and Peter from Trish. When her sister insists she's not a bad person, Jessica asks her if Trish would shoot her in front of Peter if she thought Jessica dangerous. Trish noticeable avoids answering.
• Bad Future: The plot of wings for the angel, knives for the devil is set in a non-canon future after the events of and made of silk and steel where Peter, Jessica and Matt are taken by HYDRA. While Peter is found and brought back to his godparents, whatever happened to him left him so thoroughly traumatized that he doesn't remember what happened even as he enters his twenties. Years of searching for Matt and Jessica with the Avenger's vast resources have been fruitless, Peter suffering from guilt over his parent's fate.
• The Bait: In and made of silk and steel, Hawkeye correctly deduces that while Hydra are definitely after Peter for the Winter Soldier, they were also working to lure Matt and Jessica as well. While Matt and Jessica are unsuited for the Winter Soldier Program, they intend on turning them into Breeding Slaves so that they can produce mutants with Peter's powers that they can indoctrinate from birth into Hydra Agents.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Mixing the Murdock and Jones bloodlines result in this, mainly from the Jones side — with Jessica's adoptive mother being a Stage Mom and Trish currently interfering in her life with her reckless heroics — but the Murdock side also has its share of dysfunction — courtesy of Matt's emotional issues and his mother being guilty of Parental Neglect.
• Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: Arguably the main point to Matt and Jess's decision to take Peter's custody is seeing them avoiding the Parental Abandonment they suffered.
• Broken Pedestal: A minor example, but Matt privately admits to himself that Foggy’s words about Maggie’s choice not to be there for him have colored his old acceptance of her, to the extent that Matt concludes he'll only bring Peter to see her when Peter asks to see his grandmother directly.
• Bullying a Dragon: Discussed. When looking up the government files they find on Peter and his family, Tony and Natasha find out that the reason why HYDRA had decided not to kidnap and put Jessica and Matt through the Winter Soldier program was because they were both too crazy and dangerous to risk kidnapping, let alone controlling; Jessica's Healing Factor, Super-Strength and instinctual distrust of authority in general would mean they would have to put her through constant memory-wiping and antipsychotics to keep her from hulking out on them, while Matt's Super-Senses would make him nigh-impossible to ambush and his suicidal tendencies making him a lost asset waiting to happen.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Since they're not sure if Peter would want to call them mom and dad so soon after losing two sets of parents, Matt and Jess decide on this but tell the boy it's okay to be more familiar if it will make him feel more comfortable.
• The Cameo: Tony Stark and Pepper briefly appear to coo over "Iron Baby and the Justice League" in the first fic, although they have a larger role in the sequel.
• Child Hater: Kilgrave outright called Jessica's unborn child a parasite ruining her beauty, regretted it was too late for an abortion and wasted no time in forcing her to gave him away. Jessica later describes how he tortured several children merely for being here.
• Child Prodigy: Peter's homework sheets come from several grades up, and Jessica is quickly lost when she sits down with him for study.
• Children Are Innocent: Discussed. To Matt and Jess, Peter being innocent stems from lack of knowledge, and they strive to keep him ignorant by hiding their superpowers and other lives. Foggy disagrees with their stance, arguing that Peter's innocence comes from a lack of cynicism, so it would validate his optimism to learn his parents are genuine heroes.
• Children Raise You: Finding themselves responsible for an emotionally fragile, utterly dependent human being pushed Matt and Jess to firmly put their neuroses on the back-burner, there's no time for wailing with a kid at home, dammnit!
• Color-Coded Characters: Following their already established color schemes, Matt is red and Jessica is blue. As their son, Peter is both red and blue.
• Combo Platter Powers: Jessica's Super-Strength and Matt's Super-Senses come together in Peter to create a seven-year-old who can sense danger and theoretically take down a full-grown, well-trained adult if he wanted.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Kilgrave is really displeased when he constates Jessica is pregnant, asking if the father was still around and later forcing her to waive her parental rights off because he refused to share her with another person.
• Cuddle Bug: Peter enjoys holding hands, hugging and leaning against his parents. It's implied he wants to reassure himself he's wanted.
• Cuteness Overload: Peter tends to induce this among his entourage.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Matt was completely unaware his one-night stand resulted into conception, and Jessica literally couldn't oppose Kilgrave.
• Death by Adaptation: May Parker falls sick and dies barely two years after her husband.
• Department of Child Disservices: Averted. Social Services only took Jessica's baby on the assumption she willingly abandoned him, and when her and Matt later ask for Peter back in their lives, they're more than happy to comply.
• Detect Evil: Erik Gelden has horrible headaches when he meets a bad person. On the other side, meeting a genuine altruist is basically taking pain meds — he compares Jessica to Aspirin, and Jessica with Matt are outright Vicodin.
  • Peter's Spider-Sense starts screaming at him when Salinger walks into him, the experience described as "like someone was rubbing his whole body with poison ivy and stinging nettles and wool sweaters." It's rather logical, since an evil person is likelier to be a danger to him.
• Differently Powered Individual: Since it's the MCU, people often uses "gifted" or "enhanced". To Ned Leeds and Peter, a person with superpowers is automatically labelled "superhero" - justified on account of their young age.
• Disneyland Dad: Discussed and ultimately averted by Jessica. She briefly dreams of spoiling Peter rotten on the week-end, but knows it would put undue stress upon Matt and establish her as flaky.
• Dramatic Irony: Matt and Jessica worry about ruining Peter's innocence if he ever learns his parents are enhanced. On Peter's side, the poor boy thinks he's a freak due to his growing superpowers and frets about his newfound parents hating him for this.
• The Dreaded: Matt and Jessica are both considered too dangerous for any HYDRA agent to confront directly, their collective hang-ups making them undesirable for brainwashing and their threat level incredibly high on account of their powers and dispositions.
• Education Papa: Matt inherited from his father Jack a strong desire to see his son achieve academic success, and is extremely proud from Peter gaining a scholarship for an elite school. His entourage has to reign him in a bit, pointing Peter also needs to work on his social life and grade skipping might impair this.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Kilgrave all over; not only does he force Jessica to sign away all rights to her own child, but it's noted that he never bothered to explain that the baby had been safely adopted because that would require him to understand why she found the loss so distressing in the first place.
• Eye Scream: When the Winter Soldier tries to abduct Peter from the Punisher, Castle hits the Soldier with a taser-blast just under his eye; Word of God notes that whatever part of Bucky might be inside the Soldier at this point would prefer that over being used to bring a child to Pierce.
• Family of Choice: When Peter is given back to his birth parents, their "family unit" is comprised of his platonically-linked parents, the other Defenders, their close friends (all of them collectively calling themselves the "Peter Parker Protection Squad") and in a loose-sense his paternal grandmother. That would have included Trish and Dorothy, but Jessica had estranged herself from Trish after she shot her mother in the Jessica Jones Season Two finale and Dorothy is too toxic of an influence for her to want anywhere near him.
• Foil: The Defenders and allies, contrasting with Dorothy and Trish Walker. On the Defender side, they're a Family of Choice who are very involved into Peter's life. Regarding the Walkers, they're kept away from the boy because they proved themselves unfit in spite of having a legal connection to him.
  • Matt and Jess. He's quite the Doting Parent while she's stricter. Eric also notices Jessica has more natural empathy but represses it, where Matt is turning it outwards so impacts more his surroundings.
  • Foggy and Ned, both best friends to a Murdock boy. The difference comes from their reaction to their friend's other life: Foggy obviously would like for Matt to focus more on his civilian life, but Ned is in awe of Peter's abilities.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Having to care for Peter helps Jessica to mature, but Trish stubbornly butting her way into problems out of her league because she naively believes her having superpowers can solve anything winds up causing a disaster. When they finally talk together, Jessica contemptuously calls Trish a child, lampshading the trope.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • As she's more focused on being a good mom to Peter, Jessica doesn't bother with answering back to Trish's phone calls or contacting her in any way.
  • In-canon, Jessica is put in Salinger's cross-hairs (and vice versa) because he wanted to kill Erik and she just happened to be there, Erik getting close to her as a means of protection. Here, Erik went to Trish for protection and Jessica winds up pitted against Salinger because he kidnapped Peter as leverage against Trish.
  • Jessica realizes Salinger hunting enhanced people means Daredevil would have been a target, if Matt didn't put the mask on the back-burner because he refused to neglect his newfound son.
• Foreshadowing: Peter's high levels of energy and tendencies to hit or hold very strongly for his age are noted several times by various people.
  • Matt and Jessica affectionally calls their son "spider-monkey", something Matt calls him due to the way he clings to him when he's half-asleep.
  • Peter names Black Widow as one of his favorite Avenger because spiders are awesome.
  • Peter has an explicit blue-and-red color scheme, just as his iconic costume.
• Freakiness Shame:
  • Matt briefly hesitates over taking his glasses off in front of his son, as his blank gaze often disturbs people. Fortunately, Peter doesn't care.
  • Peter himself is scared of his own nascent superpowers and convinced his parents will abandon him again if they were ever to learn what he can do.
• Generation Xerox: So far, Peter's life shares a disturbing likeness to his father's, as he's left orphaned rather young and has to contend with emerging superpowers he never asked for. More positively, his friendship with Ned Leeds is equivalent to Matt and Foggy's relationship.
• Give Him a Normal Life: Matt and Jess first reasoned Peter would be happier and safer with his adopted family, until May Parker's untimely demise forces them to ask for his custody.
• Glorified Sperm Donor: Jess didn't care for telling Matt she fell pregnant from their sexual tryst in a closet, and even wanted to raise Peter by herself initially. Matt is pretty appalled by her choice as she assumed he would reject the baby.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Jessica was ready to raise her son by herself in spite of him being the result of drunken sex. By contrast, Kilgrave's open disgust when he sees her heavily pregnant belly and blatant regret he can't force her to abort are clearly used to showcase how monstrous he is.
• The Hecate Sisters: May Parker is the Crone (she's dead and tried to guide her nephew into controlling his powers), Jessica Jones is the Mother (loving but firm towards Peter, and infuriated by any threat against her son) and Trish Walker is the Maiden (blonde and enamored with heroism yet too naive to make it work).
• Heroes Love Dogs: Peter rescues a pitt-bull female puppy from the gutter and adopt her. Based on Tom Holland's real-life dog Tessa.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: With parents considering themselves utter messes of human beings, no wonder Peter has such crappy self-esteem.
• Hero-Worshipper: Peter is a huge superhero fan, with his two favorites being Iron Man for the science, and Daredevil for being a street-level hero who's nice enough to not kill anyone.
  • Vido from the door next Jessica's openly admires her, but Captain America is fine too.
• Hiding in Plain Sight: Matt barely tries to hide his Super-Senses in front of Peter, justifying his ability to navigate the city or doing domestic chores by claiming it's because he had to cope with blindness — which is Truth in Television.
• Honourary Uncle: Karen, Foggy, Luke, Danny, Colleen and Claire outright dote on Peter and won't take kindly to a threat towards him.
• House Husband: Downplayed with Matt, who retires from Daredeviling to raise his son, obtained primary custody (with Jess having the kid on the week-ends) and is perfectly able to cook and clean on his own.
• I Have Your Wife: The reason why Sallinger kidnaps Peter? Because his aunt Trish has been hunting him down for his murders and he wants leverage to keep her and Jessica away from him. He definitely Would Hurt a Child and he lets them know it.
• I Want Grandkids: After witnessing Peter's sheer adorability, the Defenders give their blessing to Matt and Jess for nine more kids from the same mold. It's obviously Played for Laughs.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Invoked; Jessica tracked Peter down a year after his birth, but she never did anything to make contact because she felt that she wouldn't be a good mother for him and recognised that the Parkers were genuinely good people (although she notes that she would have stepped in if she felt they were bad parents).
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: It's noted that the Winter Soldier tends to revert to Bucky's personality traits more quickly if around children and the elderly, which Pierce didn't pay attention to because he was so eager to acquire Peter.
• In the Blood: From Matt, Peter inherited his awkward charm and desire to be a good person. From Jess, he has a rather mature viewpoint. Unfortunately, he also inherited their combined amount of self-esteem — or rather, utter lack of.
• Insanity Immunity: Downplayed. In HYDRA's file on Jessica and Matt, one of the reasons why they were rejected for the Winter Soldier Program is that their psychological profiles and personal demons would have made their brainwashing methods unreliable.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite the wildly different circumstances surrounding it, Sallinger and Jessica still wind up on each other's radar, Jessica still showing up to humiliate him at the gym he works at.
• Irony: Both Jessica and Matt agree to keep the fact that both of them have powers a secret from Peter until he is older, afraid that it would overwhelm him, unaware that Peter is hiding his own powers from them for the same reason.
• It's All My Fault: Malcolm spent seven years blaming himself for Jessica losing her baby. After all, that was saving him that puts her on Kilgrave's radar.
• Lies to Children: Peter's parents do this since their background is rather crazy, and they don't want to overwhelm him.
  • Matt makes no mystery of his acute senses and ability to live on his own, but he lets the boy think he's not really much better than the majority of blind people coping through compensation and careful planning.
  • Jessica only tells she had to give Peter away because of a bad man who hurt her and would have hurt him too. Foggy later slips Ella Enchanted into Peter's bedtime stories to introduce the kid to the idea of people being forced to obey someone and being damaged by it.
• Living MacGuffin:
  • Everyone wants a piece of little Peter Parker, for good — such as his parents wanting to finally raise him — and bad — such as HYDRA sniffing around for a potential Superior Successor to the Winter Soldier — reasons.
  • Besides Peter, Matt and Jess are people of interest to HYDRA by virtue of creating a superpowered human through a sexual encounter.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • Any mentions of superpowers is carefully avoided in front of Peter, as his parents want to ease him into this reality in which dad and mom happen to not be run-of-the-mill people.
  • Amongst Jessica's circle, Malcolm and her neighbours are the only ones aware that she won her son's custody back, meaning Dorothy and Trish don't know anything about their adoptive grandson and nephew.
• Love Epiphany: When Jessica asks him what he wants, Malcolm suddenly realizes he wants to answer he wants her and has a brief Heroic BSoD in front of her. He later decides to not tell her anything, as he's currently a mess and she already has enough on her plate.
• Mama Bear: Jessica is a self-proclaimed asshole with Super-Strength who already lost seven years with her kid and doesn't plan on losing more. Anyone who antagonizes her should expect to be turned into very fine mist.
  • Karen doesn't have super-powers or martial art training. What Karen does have are Nerves of Steel and the Punisher on speed dial, and she will send him after someone's ass as long as he brings her adopted nephew home.
• Mistaken for Romance: After Eric saw Jessica talking and joking with Matt, he and Trish concluded Matt was her boyfriend.
• Moral Myopia: Salinger shouts to Jessica that he has grounds to have Peter ("her monster") arrested and locked in prison when he winds up getting himself hurt by Peter's runaway strength (two black eyes, three broken bones, a broken nose and a dislocated shoulder). Never mind the fact that Peter was his kidnap victim, is a minor, he did it purely for self-defense and Salinger was intending on hurting him to vent his anger over Jessica at the time.
• Morality Pet: Peter has a gift to bring the best out of his entourage, ranging from getting Matt and Jessica to tone down their more negative habits to Frank Castle even promising in advance not to kill anyone in front of him. Peter even manages to convince Frank to see the Winter Soldier as a victim rather than an enemy.
• Muggle Power: Sallinger holds a knee-jerk hatred for enhanced people and targets them for his murders. While his canon-counterpart's hatred for them is an incidental detail he develops from Jessica and Trish's interference and his general hatred for "unfairness", here it is established that enhanced individuals are his biggest priority.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Jessica knitting is taken from her actress' hobbies.
  • Tom Holland also possesses a pit-bull dog.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Like in-canon, Jessica harasses Salinger at his work-place and humiliates him in-front of his students. While here is can be argued that it was justified because Jessica is doing this in an emotionally compromised state, Salinger holding Peter hostage and Jessica having no idea where, it is not until she makes it back home does it sink in that she could have potentially goading a psychopath into hurting her son. When Salinger makes it back to his apartment, if it wasn't for Peter's Super-Strength, Salinger would have done something to him.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • It is revealed that HYDRA had orchestrated Aunt May's death in hopes of taking Peter for the Winter Soldier Program. This led to Matt and Jessica — two enhanced individuals they avoid because of how dangerous they both are — taking custody of him, making their plot to take Peter that much harder.
  • Alexander Pierce sent Bucky to kidnap Peter so that they could brainwash him into the next Winter Soldier, completely ignoring that the parameters of Bucky's brainwashing forbade him from being anywhere near small children lest the brainwashing wear off. All this accomplishes is Peter getting a new enhanced bodyguard. Not only that, but it leads to the Avengers getting involved.
• Not in Front of the Kid: Frank Castle takes care not to do anything in front of Peter that he wouldn't want a child to witness, ranging from killing to swearing, but when he lets off a Precision F-Strike Peter observes that Jessica's taught him that swearing is acceptable in the presence of adults who deserve it.
• Oh, Crap!: In and made of silk and steel, the Avengers as a whole have this when Natasha realises that the Winter Soldier's masters intend to use a brainwashed Peter to be Matt and Jessica's handler to ensure their "loyalty" as further assets and also "breed" more like Peter to be future killers.
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Matt and Jess had a sexual encounter into a closet at law school, both of them wasted silly. Jess confesses her surprise she got pregnant, since Matt was that drunk.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Hogarth is openly surprised when Jessica buys a new flat and informs the lawyer she won't be available for the week-end from today, pointing it's rather a radical change. Still, she doesn't pry into Jessica's personal life.
• Papa Wolf: Malcolm verbally, coldly tears Trish to pieces when he understands her incompetence at being a superhero just put Peter into danger.
  • Right after Salinger abducts Peter, Matt is immediately ready to let the Devil out and unleash seven levels on Hell on him.
  • Frank Castle, fresh off a car wreck, fights the Winter Soldier and manages to knock him unconscious to rescue his young charge.
• Parental Love Song: Matt sings a Catholic hymn to lull Peter to sleep, but it's obvious he's not referring to God when he's talking about "the treasure in my heart".
• Parents as People:
  • Matt and Jess are completely aware they're flawed and could potentially damage their (already emotionally fragile) son. It's a bit reconstructed as this awareness leads them to work on improving themselves and becoming genuine Good Parents.
  • Foggy is rather salty regarding Sister Maggie, pointing she watched her son spiraling into self-destruction and anger issues without helping him. On the other side, she's certainly trying to have a good relationship with Matt now, and is genuinely happy to meet her grandson.
  • May Parker genuinely loved Peter and raised him well as long as she could, but her advice regarding superpowers were from the "conceal, don't feel" variety, which didn't help her adopted nephew's fragile self-esteem.
• Parents Know Their Children: Matt never imagined he could have a child somewhere until he stumbled upon Peter and realized the kid smelled just the same as him.
• Pet the Dog:
  • The Punisher immediately accepts to help Karen when she asks him to protect a kid and later rescue said kid from a Serial Killer.
  • It's a brief moment, but Costa from Hogarth's warmly congratulates Jessica after being informed she's a mother.
• Pregnant Badass: Jessica tried to make her hero's debut while eight months pregnant with Peter. It didn't end well for her, but not because of the baby.
• Race Lift: Spiderman is traditionally a mutate - meaning his powers developed because of outside stimuli - in Marvel canon. Having Superpowerful Genetics here make him more of a mutant - as he gained his powers from his parents.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Luke Cage is Harlem's Unbreakable Hero. He also uses heart-eyes emojis to marvel at a cute kid on the Defenders' group chat.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Foggy basically gives one about Sister Maggie to Matt as he observes his lack of respect for Maggie being willing to watch Matt struggle to cope with life in the orphanage rather than be there for her son herself.
• Related in the Adaptation: Here, Peter was adopted by the Parkers. His birth parents are Matthew Murdock and Jessica Jones.
• Rules Lawyer: As part of the plan to give Matt and Jess custody of Peter, Foggy reasons that they can avoid mentioning Kilgrave's abilities and focus on the truth that Jess only gave Peter up under duress and Matt didn't even know about his son until now.
• Scary Black Man: Peter's first reaction when introduced to the very big and muscled Luke Cage is anxiety, only for Jess to reassure him the trope is actually a subversion and that Luke is a total Nice Guy.
• Secret-Keeper: His Aunt May was the only person to know about Peter's powers for a time, having made Peter agree not to tell anyone about it for fear of what would happen. Before Jessica figures it out through deduction, his best friend Ned was the only person who knew after May died.
• Secret Word: Whenever Peter's spider-sense goes off, he claims it to be an "asthma attack", a code May had taught him to convey to May when it happens. Peter would eventually use this code with Jessica (who doesn't know at the time) when Salinger is present.
• Shout-Out:
  • The blind-dog Peter finds was named "Tinkerbell" before he renames it "Tessa". The irony isn't lost on Jessica.
  • Karen proposes that they track Salinger's history based on the method of analysis described in The Silence of the Lambs, starting with tracking his first victim.
• Sibling Yin-Yang:
  • Here, Jess is working on being a decent mother and sees her life improve for it, with her friends coming together to support her choice and offer guidance. While Trish flung herself into vigilantism and was hit with a nasty backlash, ultimately alienating her own family.
  • Jokingly discussed when the Defenders beg for more cute kids in their lives, Jessica muses Peter is just so good that a younger sibling would probably be the Antichrist to balance everything.
• Stacy's Mom: Played for Laughs when Ned comments on Jess being very pretty.
• Stalking is Love: What Matt does after learning he had a son was to spy on the kid to ensure he was alright, calling it checking on. He later discovers Jessica doing the same. Since neither is particularly well-adjusted, this is not exactly surprising.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Foggy is quickly convinced by Matt's claims about being related to Peter, noting the kid is very much Jack Murdock's grandson.
• Superior Successor: Peter is much more powerful than both his parents — at seven-year-old, he's already able to push his mother around if he's not careful, and his Super-Senses are implied to verge on straight-out precognition. And he's still growing up, so there's plenty of space for improvement.
• Super Breeding Program: Faithful to their Nazi roots, HYDRA would like to get a hold on Matt and Jess (who managed to produce enhanced offspring on their own, and on a level easily surpassing the Avengers) in order to have more Super Soldiers through their coupling. Both the concerned people are thoroughly disgusted and freaked by the possibility.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Peter inherited both his mother's Super-Strength and his father's Super-Senses, but it's much stronger with him.
• Tell Me About My Father: Peter mainly hears about his maternal uncle Phil and his paternal grandfather Jack, in the context of their similarities.
• The Three Faces of Adam: There's Foggy as the Prophet (the well-adjusted guy giving advice to his best friend), Matt as the Lord (the man juggling his responsibilities) and Peter as the Hunter (the youth fretting about his future and identity).
• Textile Work Is Feminine: The very tomboyish Jessica actually crocheted several blankets and scarves for her son.
• Traumatic C-Section: Kilgrave refused to touch the pregnant Jessica for two days, then got impatient and dragged her to the hospital for a caesarean instead of waiting for her to naturally give birth. Compounded with the fact she was brainwashed into dumping her baby right after, Jessica understandably doesn't have good memories from this day.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Trish's desperation to become a vigilante ultimately leads her to endanger her adoptive nephew.
• Wacky Fratboy Hijinx: A very embarrassed Matt confesses he has no idea about the identity of Peter's birth mother, as he tended to drink and flirt rather more in his law school days than now. The mother is ultimately revealed to be Jessica Jones, whom he seduced into closet sex — she still can't believe he managed to shoot straight enough to knock her up, that's how plastered he was.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 2 of and made of silk and steel is when Jessica and the other Defenders realize that Peter has powers.
  • In Chapter 5 of and made of silk and steel, Peter escapes Salingar and runs into Frank Castle.
  • In Chapter 7 of and made of silk and steel, Frank and Peter's attempt at fleeing the state is suddenly stopped when The Winter Soldier shoots out their tires to kidnap Peter.
• World of No Grandparents: Downplayed, since three of Peter's biological grandparents are dead, leaving only his paternal grandmother Maggie Grace alive. Jessica is rather bitter over it, musing Alisa would have known her grandson (even from behind bars) if not for Trish, and flat-out refusing to let Dorothy learn about Peter as she's too much of a toxic influence for a healthy relationship to be possible.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Kilgrave often forced kids to harm themselves out of pettiness. Foggy later advices Jessica to tell this to the courts when asking for Peter's custody back, as no jury would blame her for wanting to put her newborn son as far as possible from the guy.
  • Salinger often targets enhanced people's families, and he excludes no one. So everyone panics when he abducts Peter right after school. Later, when Jessica humiliates him, Salinger fully intended on venting his anger on Peter, only for Peter's runaway Super-Strength to push him back before he could.
  • Word of God confirms that the Winter Soldier's sudden appearance in Chapter 7 of and made of silk and steel was to kidnap Peter on Alexander Pierce's orders, and that the part of him that's Bucky would rather "be tased in the eye" than let Pierce use the boy the way he intends.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Matt appears on TV to beseech the man who kidnapped his son to let the boy go, and for people to help in the search. Because if something can kick New Yorker ass in high gear, that's a blind man crying for his son to be found alive.
• You Remind Me of X: One of the first things Jessica tells Peter about her family is the fact his uncle Phil was just as big of a chatterbox as him.
  • Jessica's reaction to Tessa when she's confronted to the fact the puppy is a blind stray is to think about a freshly-orphaned Matt.

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