Film / Kingsman: The Golden Circle

A proper spy movie.

"My name is Poppy Adams, CEO of the Golden Circle. We engage in an aggressive business strategy, invest in the latest technology, and take strict disciplinary action. I'm speaking to you today because our world leaders have let us all down, so we are coming out of the shadows and taking over. And to make sure no one gets in our way... Kingsman is crumpets!"

— Poppy Adams

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is a 2017 spy action film, directed by Matthew Vaughn and written by Vaughn & Jane Goldman. It is the second film in the Kingsman series and the sequel to 2015's Kingsman: The Secret Service.

When the Kingsman HQ is destroyed and most Kingsman agents are killed by Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore), a Martha Stewart-esque entrepreneur and leader of the villainous Golden Circle organisation, agents Eggsy / "Galahad" (Taron Egerton) and Merlin (Mark Strong) travel abroad and team up with their American counterpart, Statesman. With help from Statesman leader Champagne (Jeff Bridges), tech support Ginger Ale (Halle Berry), and agents Tequila (Channing Tatum) and Whiskey (Pedro Pascal), Eggsy and Merlin must take down the Golden Circle before Poppy and her minions can upend the world order.

The film also features Elton John as himself, and returning cast members Edward Holcroft as disgraced Kingsman recruit Charlie Hesketh and Colin Firth as Eggsy's (presumed dead) predecessor and mentor Harry Hart.

Previews: "The Ultimate Breakdown", Trailer (preview), Trailer 2.

See also: "That Time Archer Met Kingsman", an animated crossover shown at San Diego Comic Con 2017 with Eggsy meeting Sterling Archer.

The film is followed by a prequel set during World War I, The King's Man, which details the foundation of Kingsman. A script for a third Eggsy/Harry Kingsman film is ready.

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Kingsman: The Golden Circle provides examples of:

• Acrofatic: Sir Elton John is by far the least athletic person in this movie, but he pulls off some amazing martial arts moves in the finale despite wearing one of his famous fabulous outfits including heavy heeled boots.
• Action Girl: Roxy, who became an actual Kingsman agent before Eggsy. She dies alongside every other Kingsman agent aside from Eggsy and Merlin.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Champagne laughs when Eggsy compares Whiskey's lasso to skipping rope.
• Advertised Extra: Despite advertising making him out to be a main character, Channing Tatum has less than 10 minutes of screen time. Conversely, Elton John, who didn't really feature in the advertising at all, actually sticks around for almost the entire movie.
• An Aesop: Drugs Are Bad. But that doesn't mean people who take them, be it casually, or as an addict, are bad for using them or deserving of death.
• The Aggressive Drug Dealer: Poppy, in spades. A dealer that holds the millions of people who used her drugs as hostages to force full nation-wide legalization of recreational drugs is not really much of a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Early in the film, every Kingsman agent save for Eggsy (who was dining with the Swedish royal family) and Merlin (whose address wasn't listed in the stolen files used to target everyone else because the Kingsman database stored data on the support staff separately from data on the field agents) gets blown to smithereens by ballistic missiles sent by Poppy, forcing the remaining Kingsmen to team up with the Statesmen.
• Americans Are Cowboys: In contrast to the Kingsmen and their Lounge, Dinner and Siren Suits, Statesmen wear cowboy hats, use spy gadgets disguised as whiskey flasks, and even have extendable bullwhips as melee weapons. Whiskey wields revolvers and Tequila looks exactly like a modern cowboy ^note It's mentioned he was at one point part of the rodeo crowd, so he sticks to the aesthetic more than anyone else.
• America Saves the Day: Sort of. While Eggsy, Merlin, and Harry are the ones who undertake the bulk of the film's operations, they'd be sunk if it weren't for Statesman's resources since all of Kingsman's were lost during the opening. As of the ending, Statesman and Kingsman are officially partnered under one roof, sharing assets and allowing the London branch to rebuild.
• Amphibious Automobile: Eggsy's cab has an amphibious mode. Unfortunately for him, the shootout and car chase he just went through have torn off a door and broken all the windows, making the car itself a bit less than watertight. Fortunately, as the last film showed, Eggsy can hold his breath long enough to reach the underwater safehouse.
• And This Is for...: Before killing Charlie, Eggsy says that it's for Roxy, Merlin, the other Kingsman agents, JB, and his friend Brandon (who was killed with JB when Poppy's missile strike destroyed Eggsy's house). Doubles as "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Arc Words: "Manners maketh man" used both in The Secret Service and this film to emphasize that it's ultimately one's character that determines if one is a good person or not. This is illustrated in this film's very first scene, where the lower-class Eggsy is reaping the benefits of doing what's right no matter the risk or cost, while the upper-class Charlie has fallen on hard times due to his willingness to sell out others for his own benefit.
• Artistic License – Physics: The cable car scene. Due to conservation of angular momentum the spinning cable car wouldn't swing around like that. It would actually just stay at one deflection for a while.
• Aside Glance: Given in slow-motion during a fight scene by Elton John, while in the middle of a spinning kick.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Invoked by Elton John by playing, "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" on a Wednesday.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Statesmen's super tracker, able to provide GPS tracking, along with audio. The problem is that it has to be implanted on a mucous membrane (e.g., the inside of the mouth, nose, or an intimate portion of the human anatomy) to be absorbed into the bloodstream, which is not something that can be done in a casual brush-pass.
• Badass Transplant: Charlie's cybernetic arm, whose earlier version can be manipulated from a distance.
• Bad Boss:
  • Poppy isn't nearly as close to her goons as Valentine was in the first movie, often killing them in gruesome ways for minor infractions (or in one case, seemingly just to prove that she can), resulting in her outfit being comparatively small, to the point that Eggsy and Harry are able to blow through every single one of her employees other than Charlie in just a couple of minutes.
  • The President of the USA casually sends his adviser away to die with all the other infected drug users despite her working for him 20 hours per day, seven days a week. Her insane workload was the reason she got into drugs in the first place, which he doesn't give a shit about.
• Baddie Flattery: After Harry deduces ahead of time that Whiskey is working against them, the man compliments Harry's good instincts.
• Beergasm: After drinking a toast to Roxy from the Statesman whiskey in the Doomsday Protocol safe, Eggsy and Merlin marvel at the taste of the drink and decide to drink a toast for every fallen member.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Harry implies that Winston Churchill was one of Kingsman's founders.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Poppy Adams, a drug lord with the demeanor of a 1950s housewife, and one of the leaders of the Golden Circle drug cartel who spikes her drug supplies with poison, and plans to distribute the cure in exchange for legalizing drugs. We also have the US President pretending to give in to Poppy's demands, only to allow all drug users to die, and in the finale, Whiskey who intends to prevent the cure from being distributed, agreeing with the President's motive despite not actually working with him.
• Bilingual Bonus: Eggsy tries some poor Swedish during his meal with the Royal Family, although the royal family offers to just speak English for his sake.
  Eggsy: Dette er jättegodt! ^English This is mega-good/really good.
• Bittersweet Ending: Roxy, Merlin, and all of the other Kingsmen operatives are dead along with JB and Brandon, but Harry and Eggsy defeated both Poppy and Whiskey, saving millions of lives in the process. Ginger Ale become a Statesman field agent like she wanted, taking Whiskey's callsign in the process, and Tequila starts working for Kingsman to become a more refined gentleman and get away from his past drug use. The Statesmen help the Kingsmen to rebuild in London. Eggsy and Tilde get married.
• Black Comedy: Although the effects of Poppy's drugs are genuinely horrific (see this film's Nightmare Fuel page for details), they manifest comically. For instance, the mania stage, which in her own words is very distressing to the victims — said victims are made to dance aggressively. Channing Tatum dancing with none of his trademark proficiency is one of them. Elton John screaming at Poppy is comedy as well, but the poor man must be traumatized after all Poppy's put him through (from being held captive to experiencing her drugs' effects firsthand).
• Blatant Lies: In a mission to obtain some antidote for Poppy's tainted drugs, Eggsy poses as a client. Unfortunately, the company was expecting a Singaporean by the name of Wu Ting Feng. When asked by an incredulous staff member if Eggsy (with angular features and light skin, characteristics we later see the actual Asian Wu Ting Feng's are far from) is Wu Ting Feng, Eggsy lets out an awkward "...Yes".
• Book Ends: In the previous film, Eggsy, wearing casual clothes, has his Kingsman journey begin when he is led to a mirror by Harry. There, he told Eggsy that what he saw in the mirror was a man who could become better, and do something with his life. The ending of this movie has the same thing happen, only Eggsy is wearing a suit for his wedding, and Harry is talking about the good Eggsy has achieved due to his time in the Kingsmen.
• Boom, Headshot!: Thanks to Statesman's far more advanced technology, they have found a way to cure this. A person getting shot in the head can still be treated using the Alpha Gel, before bringing the body back to the base and applying nanomachines to fix the brain. It's still treated as a serious issue, as the process has a side effect which causes the patient to have amnesia, and the only way to fix it is to recreate a very traumatic experience to trigger the memories to come back.
• Bond One-Liner: Eggsy towards Whiskey, after the former shoved the latter into a meat grinder.
  Eggsy: Put Alpha Gel on that... dickhead.
• Bottomless Magazines: Or rather, Bottomless Cylinders. Whiskey dual-wields revolvers with presumably six shots each, yet he kills dozens of mooks in an awesome display of Gun Kata without reloading once. Only when he tries to off the last guy does the hammer hit an empty chamber, and that's of course just so he can show off some more with his lasso.
• Bring My Brown Pants: After Eggsy and Whiskey narrowly avoid crushing a retirement home with their runaway ski lift, one of the old men out front makes a comment:
  Old Man: That's the first decent shit I've had in three weeks.
• Call-Back:
  • When Merlin directs Eggsy to drive to an underwater rendezvous point, Eggsy protests that the windshield of his car has been blown out. Merlin reminds Eggsy of his ability to hold his breath, as demonstrated in his first training exercise.
  • Whiskey beats up some guys in a pub to teach them that "Manners Maketh Man." In that same scene, Harry even says "Do you know what that means?", and there is even a single shot identical to◊ the first film◊.
  • In The Secret Service, Tilde offered Eggsy anal sex once he returned to free her after saving the world. In The Golden Circle she's his girlfriend, and when he sets out to save the world again, she mischievously reminds him of what's waiting for him when he returns.
• Came Back Wrong: Eggsy and Merlin are overjoyed to learn that Harry's Back from the Dead, only to realize with dismay that he's not the man he used to be before his unfortunate encounter with Valentine. He mostly gets better, but his coordination is still faulty even into the final fight.
• The Cameo:
  • Samuel L. Jackson and Sofia Boutella reprise their roles as Valentine and Gazelle, respectively, for about five seconds via stock footage during an expository flashback about what exactly happened to Harry after Valentine shot him in the first movie.
  • Eggsy's mum shows up briefly during his royal wedding with Tilde in the epilogue.
  • Michael Gambon as the new Arthur.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Whilst Whiskey fights a bunch of guys in a bar, Eggsy, Merlin and Harry discuss Harry's health.
• Celebrity Paradox: James Bond movies exist in the Kingsman universe as Harry Hart and Richmond Valentine talked about them in the first film. Halle Berry played NSA agent Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson in Die Another Day.
• Chekhov's Gun: A very large number that all pay off in the climax.
  • The drugs Eggsy's friend and Tilde are seen using turn out to be poisoned by Poppy.
  • One of Eggsy's newspaper first pages in his office is about Elton John being missing. He has been kidnapped by Poppy, and plays a role in the end.
  • The land mines around Poppy's base end up killing Merlin.
  • The molten gold at Poppy's base is used to destroy the second robot dog.
  • Subverted with the hole Charlie made in the bowling alley, as Harry is stopped before he can get through it.
  • The program preventing the robot dogs from hurting Elton John is used to stop one long enough for Harry and John to kill it.
  • The meat grinder in Poppy's diner.
  • Eggsy's watch can "hack anything with a microchip" and is usually used for finding and opening electronic locks. Cybernetic limbs also contain a lot of microchips...
• Chekhov's Gunman: Charlie, who was simply Eggsy's rival in the last film, becomes a major threat to the Kingsmen by telling Poppy of their existence and personally leading the operation to hack into the Kingsmen's files in order to allow her to decimate the entire agency.
• The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: Nobody takes Harry seriously when he claims that Whiskey is sabotaging their efforts, so of course it turns out his instincts were correct during the finale.
• Combat Stilettos: Of all people, Sir Elton John - As Himself, no less - pulls off a very impressive Get-the-hell-out-of-Dodge fight in a flamingo-esque costume complete with very Glam-Rock puppy heels that are at least two inches high. The finishing move is particularly painful to watch— a gravity-defying flying kick to the face of one of the guards. But it's hilarious since it's Elton John. All to the sounds of a live version of Saturday, after confusing his guards by varying the text with Wednesday, Wednesday… because it is Wednesday and he's realising that the sounds of a firefight outside might mean he'll be rescued.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Just like his predecessor, Eggsy has started keeping a Superhero Trophy Shelf of newspaper front pages from days he completed major missions. As before, the headlines have nothing to do with the assignments.
  • When Merlin suits up as a Kingsman agent for the first time, he and Eggsy exchange dialogue similar to when Eggsy first suited up.
    Eggsy: Lookin' good, Merlin.
    Merlin: Feeling good, Eggsy.
  • When Harry saves Elton John and suggests saving the world merits free concert tickets, he is instead offered a "backstage pass" (with a kiss), mirroring Eggsy's save of Tilde in The Secret Service.
  • The fight in Poppy's diner is a stylized oner set to music just like the church scene.
• Contrived Coincidence: Conveniently, the only survivors of Poppy's attack are also two of the three people that stopped V-Day and revealed the previous Arthur's betrayal.
  • Poppy seems to control every known substance in the world to such a degree that millions of random users are affected by her altered samples. That's not even getting into the insane logistics that would require random street pushers to be able to acquire her products.
• Cool Car: Eggsy's black cab (a car known primarily for trundling around London with minimal fuss), has a luxurious passenger compartment (complete with liquor and cigars), is brimming with spy gear, and has the performance of a rally car. Plus, it can turn into a submarine.
• Cool Plane: The Statesmen have the Silver Pony (an F-22A Raptor, used by Whiskey to follow Eggsy and Merlin), as well as a standard private jet with a formidable arsenal of close-combat weapons and a fully stocked bar.
• Crazy-Prepared: Statesman embodies this as much as Kingsman does, even down to the agents' cowboy hats that are stocked with emergency medical supplies.
• Curse Cut Short: Arthur delivers a pretty specialist example, as he suddenly realises that a cruise missile is about to blow him up.
  Arthur: Oh, FU—
• Darker and Edgier: The villains are much more threatening than they were in the first film and are noticeably less comedic.
• Death Is Cheap: Statesman's "Alpha Gel" is a highly advanced medical device capable of healing the most grievous of wounds, including shots to the head. This was used to save Harry in the first film, and to save Whiskey when he is shot in the head by Harry. Unlike Harry, Whiskey does not appear to suffer any debilitating side effects. Justified because Harry, despite having been revived quickly, had still been out of action for a year due to his amnesia, and was missing an eye, whereas Whiskey recovered his memory quickly and got straight back to action.
• Diabolus ex Machina: The Statesman-issued mine detector works well enough for Eggsy, Harry, and Merlin to sneak past the minefield that borders Poppy's base, but it failed to detect the one last mine that Eggsy unfortunately steps on, even though he is the one who's holding the detector, which leaves no other choice but for Merlin to perform a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Disposable Pilot: Eggsy actually has a chauffeur when the movie begins. Needless to say he doesn't last long. Of note is that he still manages to be badass because when Eggsy's shoe blade ends up jammed in his neck by accident, all he does is look slightly annoyed. He probably would've survived, had the blade not been poisoned.
• Disproportionate Retribution: While Poppy — being a cold-blooded drug dealer and murderer — gets off easier for threatening and killing so many by dying of an accidental overdose during interrogation, Whiskey — who has a hell of a good Freudian Excuse for wanting all drug users in the world to be gone — suffers far worse when Harry and Eggsy hurl him all the way through the meat grinder during a fight.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The President's blasé if not outright disdainful attitude about the death of hundreds of millions of illicit drug users (from casual to hardcore) could recall some of the articles resulting from politicians dealing with opiate epidemics in their cities and states, and the cost impacting their budgets.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set: Poppy somehow hijacks all TV transmissions in at least the US to deliver her demands to the POTUS.
• Don't Explain the Joke: Poppy has a tendency to do this.
  Poppy: The Kingsman are crumpets. Get it? Like toast, but British.
• Double Tap: During the cabin fight, Whiskey shoots one mook in the head, then shoots him in the heart too as his corpse is dropping to the ground.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Roxy is initially built up as part of the usual team, but then gets killed off very abruptly. Unlike Merlin, she doesn't even get anything remotely resembling a Dying Moment of Awesome. The same happens to all the other Kingsmen except Eggsy and Merlin, but those deaths don't hit nearly as hard because those guys were never more than nameless holograms.
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • After finding that all that is in the Kingsman's Doomsday Vault is a bottle of Kentucky Bourbon, Merlin and Galahad proceed to drink a toast to every fallen comrade they can think of until they are good and hammered. Then Eggsy sees the Kingsman symbol stamped on the inside of the bottle's label, revealing the distillery's true nature.
  • Tilde is seen smoking pot after she ghosts Eggsy for having had to get intimate with a target. Sadly, this gets her infected with Poppy's virus.
• Drugs Are Bad: You did some drugs? Well, guess what, you're infected with a fatal disease that causes you to dance uncontrollably and make your eyeballs explode. After one of Eggsy's friends recovers, he looks at his crystal meth pipe and says this:
  Liam: I'm never touching that fucking thing again!
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Merlin, who takes Eggsy's place on a landmine, then lures in some of Poppy's goons and blows them up with said mine to give Eggsy and Harry an opening to get inside Poppy's base. All while singing "Take Me Home, Country Roads," to boot.
• Egopolis: Poppy's base is dubbed "Poppy Land" and features 1950s-esque establishments all named after her.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Unsurprisingly, the Statesmen have one very similar to the Kingsmen's, to the point of it being a Suspiciously Similar Substitute after the latter gets blown up.
• Emergency Stash:
  • After Poppy's cruise missiles wipe out Kingsman, Eggsy and Merlin initiate the "Doomsday Protocol" by visiting a wine shop and opening a hidden safe. It contains only a bottle of Statesman whiskey, which they take as a morbid joke and proceed to get shitfaced To Absent Friends — especially since it's really good whiskey. But once they hit the bottom, Eggsy notices the words "Distilled In Kentucky" printed inside of the label with a Kingsman logo in the place of the letter "K", prompting the two to make contact with the Statesman organization — whose address is clearly printed on the label: Distillery № 414-7th District, Louisville, KY.
  • The Statesman agents later find one in their own headquarters: an umbrella bearing a Kingsman label with a Statesman logo in the place of the letter "S".
• "Eureka!" Moment: Eggsy has one on how to restore Harry's memories when he looks at pictures of himself with his dog and remembers Harry's love for his old pet.
• Exploited Immunity: Poppy's robot dogs are programmed to recognize Elton John as a friendly. When Harry is threatened by them, this is used as a distraction to give him time to get the better of them.
• Eyepatch of Power: Deconstructed. Harry now sports an eyepatch, to illustrate he survived taking a gunshot straight through his eye. He later receives a pair of glasses with a black lens that covers his ruined eye. Sadly, without proper depth perception, the highly trained One-Man Army now struggles to aim his shots properly, and in his first fight scene, he is caught completely off guard by an attack from his blind side. He gets better over the course of the story and seems capable enough in the final fights, but the failures early on are shown to put quite a damper on his confidence.
• Eye Scream:
  • The aggressive virus in Poppy's drugs kills the infected with what looks like massive brain hemorrhaging, accompanied by their eyes popping like balloons.
  • During the flashback which shows Statesman saving Harry, we get a good look at the gaping hole where his eye used to be. Later in the film, when he switches the eye patch for his new glasses, the scar tissue shown ain't pretty, either.
• Failed a Spot Check: Both Kingsman and Statesman somehow managed to not know shit about the world's biggest drug cartel until it launched cruise missiles at them and almost wiped one of them out completely.
• Fanservice: The fact that the Statesmen's human tracking chip only works when placed on the target's mucous membrane is as blatant an example as it gets, especially since said target is a drop-dead gorgeous blonde hanging out at a music festival full of sex, drugs and rock'n roll. Three guesses where the chip gets inserted eventually, and the first two don't count.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The film opens with a rendition of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" as a mournful bagpipe dirge. At the film's end, Merlin dies in a Heroic Sacrifice while loudly singing his favourite song by his favourite singer: Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads".
  • At the end of Eggsy's scene with his friends, the camera pans to a stash of cannabis which transitions to Poppy's estate. This hints that the drugs his friends are using ultimately come from Poppy's empire.
  • During the ambush in Italy, it looks like Whiskey deliberately knocked the antidote out of Eggsy's hand, but then proceeds to kill all of Poppy's henchmen. This hints how while he never worked for her, Whiskey was trying to stop the others from getting the antidote.
  • After listening to the recording of the President saying he plans to let all the drug users die, Whiskey seems to agree with the plan for a moment. And he shows up at the very end to stop Eggsy and Harry from releasing the cure to save everyone due to his hatred of junkies.
• Forgot About His Powers: Just like Eggsy, Harry wears a watch that can hack any electronically controlled gadget from afar, yet he resorts to all sorts of desperate defensive measures to fight off Poppy's robo-dogs instead of just hacking them into submission. Maybe he couldn't get close enough for long enough?
• Freudian Excuse: Whiskey at least has a reason for being Straight Edge Evil and trying to sabotage the mission: his pregnant wife was killed in the crossfire between two meth heads trying to rob a convenience store.
• Gatling Good: The movie opens with a car chase between Eggsy and a trio of SUVs armed with roof-mounted miniguns. Later, the protagonists are confronted by a squad of mooks, some of which are equipped with man-portable miniguns. Neither example sounds like or fires as fast as an actual minigun would.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Whiskey kills one of Poppy's mooks by cutting him in half at the waist with his electrified lasso.
• Handicapped Badass:
  • Charlie lost an arm and his vocal chords from the events of the first film, and has robotic replacements offered by the Big Bad. He's now The Dragon to Poppy and one of the most dangerous members of the Golden Circle.
  • Played for drama with Harry. After being shot right through the eye, the former One-Man Army is now half blind, suffering from hallucinations, and out of practice due to having amnesia for a year. Unlike Charlie, he does not get any snazzy prosthetics and has to adapt to it the old-fashioned way. He's eager to get back into the action, but struggles to overcome his handicap while the other characters question his physical and mental abilities. However, by the time they get to Poppy's lair his hand-eye coordination has improved greatly, and apart from a few clumsy moments he's a serious threat to his enemies again.
• Hate Sink: The President is The President of the United States during Poppy Adams's attempt to legalize all drugs by poisoning drug users and holding the cure for ransom. The President, however, plans to let all the millions of drug users die to "win the war on drugs". He lies to the public and Poppy, promising to legalize drugs with no intention to follow through, despite his Vice President's warning that children could die. Even after he finds out that she is infected too, The President proudly proclaims that all the "degenerates" deserve to die. After the day is thankfully saved, he is promptly impeached and arrested.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: The Statesmen have ludicrously managed to keep their operations more a secret than their British counterparts in spite of their much flashier gadgetry and how they all wear cowboy hats.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: Happens quite a lot, and almost all of it during the climax.
  • Poppy's grenade launcher-wielding robot waitress gets blown up by its own grenades when Harry uses his electrified bola to snare the grenades and send them back.
  • Harry also kills a lot of Poppy's goons with one of their own guns.
  • Harry beats one of Poppy's robotic dogs when it was distracted by Elton John, because it's programmed to see him as friendly and not to attack him. Poppy overrides the program eventually, but by then it's too late. He also beats the other robotic dog by melting it with the boiling gold in the "salon" that Poppy uses to "make over" her new henchmen.
  • Charlie beats himself up with his cybernetic arm after Eggsy manages to hack its controls.
  • And finally, Poppy dies through an overdose of her own tainted heroin, courtesy of the Kingsmen.
  • Merlin notes to Eggsy that he trained Charlie well enough that he'd be difficult for even Eggsy to kill. This bites the Kingsmen in the ass in more ways than one: Charlie's knowledge on basic workings of the Kingsman agency leads to the destruction of all major Kingsman facilities, as well as the deaths of every Kingsman sans Merlin and Eggsy in the initial attack. Throughout the rest of the film, Charlie is dangerously genre savvy: he's learned not to pass up trying to kill Eggsy at every opportunity, destroys an entire lab to prevent another chance for the Kingsmen and Statesmen to obtain an antidote and acts as one of the final obstacles to releasing the antidote worldwide. Indirectly, all of the above means Charlie's actions also lead to Merlin's death.
• Home Base: In addition to Kingsman HQ beneath a London tailor, the Statesman HQ is hidden underneath a whiskey distillery in Kentucky.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • Eggsy refuses to get intimate with a target unless Tilde is okay with it. He could've just not told her. Of course, even though she firmly establishes she isn't okay with it, he still goes through with it, as there's just too many lives at stake. However, he goes just as far with Clara as he needs to to get the job done, and then abruptly leaves.
  • Merlin's Heroic Sacrifice is because Eggsy's father did the same for him and Harry. Harry tries to take his place because it was his mistake but Merlin used up all the freezing spray.
• Idiot Ball: The heroes grab it firmly when they decide to pull the antivirus phial from its protective housing in the middle of hostile territory just so they can exchange some philosophical banter about it. Unsurprisingly, it ends up destroyed about half a minute later. Though it might have been deliberate on Whiskey's part to sabotage the mission.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: Angel is required to kill his old friend who brought him to the Golden Circle by putting him into a meat grinder alive. And after the Initiation Ceremony described below, Poppy serves him a cheeseburger with a patty made from his victim's meat.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Two goons are impaled all the way through when the massive scissors on the exterior of Poppy's Salon come falling down, courtesy of our heroes.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Eggsy and Merlin assume this is what the Doomsday Protocol wants them to do when they find a Statesmen whiskey bottle in lieu of procedures or plans.
• Initiation Ceremony: Poppy's new recruits are forced to endure a brutal induction ceremony that includes their teeth being ground down, their fingerprints getting burned off, and being given the Golden Circle's eponymous mark by having molten gold poured directly onto the skin. All of this is done without anaesthesia, naturally.
• Irony: Ginger Ale has repeatedly tried to become a field agent, but Whiskey keeps voting her down. After he betrays Statesman and is killed, she is promoted to take his place and code name.
• It Has Been an Honor: Harry says this to Merlin before the latter's Heroic Sacrifice.
• It's All My Fault: Verbatim from Merlin after Poppy sends missiles to wipe out the Kingsman agents. Second use in the film is a variation from Eggsy ("This is all my fault!") when Harry shoots Whiskey, because he lobbied for Harry to go out in the field again, thinking Harry would be ready.
• It's Personal:
  • Tequila does not take kindly to someone carelessly spilling Statesman whiskey.
    Tequila: That's a '63 Statesman Reserve. Now it's personal.
  • Eggsy is out for Charlie's blood after learning that he's responsible for providing the locations of Kingsman bases for Poppy to blow them all up and killing his closest friends and allies. When he finally beats Charlie, he then snaps his neck in cold blood to avenge his friends.
• Kick the Dog:
  • During the breather in the fight at the cabin, Harry appears to be having an episode and Whiskey's response is to shout degrading things at him (although admittedly, he was under significant stress at the time). Later he has another one when he wakes up from his Boom, Headshot! and tells Ginger Harry did it. When Ginger's confused by this, he snarls at her that she screwed up fixing Harry and runs off, leaving Ginger looking guilty and heartbroken.
  • Charlie, amid all of his other despicable actions, pulls one of these when he kills his girlfriend apparently simply because she cheated on him. Her leading the Kingsman to the base might also have been a factor, but she did this completely unknowingly.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": The mines surrounding Poppy's base are like this. Merlin pulls off the "freeze the mechanism" trick to buy Eggsy a split second to get off it. In a slight twist there still isn't enough time to escape the blast radius, so Merlin uses that time to take his place.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Harry's memory regresses to before he joined the Kingsmen and he believes himself to be a practicing lepidopterist^note butterfly researcher due to side-effects of the nanomachines that healed him. Whiskey also goes through this after recovery from his headshot courtesy of Harry, though Ginger Ale is able to quickly get his memory back by showing him a picture of his dead wife.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The Statesmen appear to be aware that they are spin-off bait. Champagne admits that the Kingsman came first, as their founder was inspired to create their own intelligence agency by their Kingsman tailor.
• Legacy Character: Both Kingsman and Statesman follow the practice of passing code names on to the successor of a deceased agent.
  • After Harry was shot point-blank in the head, Eggsy took his place as Galahad. Things get confusing when it turns out that Statesman saved Harry's life.
  • After Whiskey's death, the name is passed on to Ginger Ale.
• Leitmotif: The tune of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Road" is used many times in the film after Merlin reveals that it is his favourite song. It is first played over the opening logos with bagpipes ^note A Scottish instrument commonly associated with funerals to foreshadow Merlin's death, where he sings the song out loud with a Victorious Chorus backing him up.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: While Valentine was busy kidnapping celebrities in the previous film, Poppy figured it was a good opportunity to nab Elton John without anyone putting serious effort into finding him.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: Eggsy and Charlie in the finale. After the latter loses his cybernetic arm, Eggsy keeps one of his own arms behind his back while he beats the crap out of Charlie with the other. He drops this in the end, opting to finish Charlie off as brutally as he can.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Whiskey's electrified lasso looks like lightning caged in a whipcord and has cutting power on par with a lightsaber when active, going through metal, glass and flesh like it was tissue paper.
• Lightning Lash: Agent Whiskey's aforementioned Lasso.
• MacGuffin: Doesn't crop up until fairly late into the film, but once Poppy reveals her evil plan to the world, everything related to the antivirus turns into one. First it's a single phial grabbed from a secret lab, later the suitcase that's required to distribute Poppy's stockpiles all over the world.
• Magic Antidote: One dose of Poppy's antivirus can take a victim of her virus from stage 3 to totally cured within seconds.
• Manly Tears: Averted by Eggsy, who can't help but despair at the initial losses from Poppy's initial attack on Kingsman. He calls out Merlin for seemingly not reacting and Merlin tells him to pull himself together until the mission is over. Averted again by Merlin when the both of them down the bottle of Statesmen whiskey while finally processing their losses.
• Match Cut: The movie absolutely loves this kind of slow transitions: a zoom to bag of weed turns into the Cambodian jungle, a hole in the bowling wall becomes the ruins of Eggsy's flat, a bottle of whiskey cut to the Stateman's factory (whose main tower is shaped like a bottle), etc.
• Meaningful Background Event: Several. At one point a tabloid paper showing that Elton John has gone missing appears on Eggsy's wall, and later during the Glastonbury festival an extra can be seen with the blue rash before it's properly introduced.
• Meaningful Echo: Clara tries to seduce Eggsy by assuring him that "what happens in Glastonbury, stays in Glastonbury". He repeats the sentiment to her when he meets her and her boyfriend Charlie in Poppy's secret lab in Italy. Charlie, understandably, isn't happy and tells her that "what happens in Italy, stays in Italy" just before he blows up the whole lab with her inside from the safety of a helicopter. She obviously doesn't get the hint.
• Meaningful Name: Many drugs have been known to be synthesized from the poppy plant. Poppy herself even wears an apron patterned in pictures of poppies at one point.
• Mecha-Mooks: Poppy's robotic dogs.
• Moe Greene Special: The reason why Harry is wearing an eyepatch now.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • A whole scene is devoted to Eggsy's first dinner with Tilde's parents, Sweden's royal couple. It's lighthearted and funny to watch him con his way through the conversation with remote support from Roxy at Kingsman HQ. Then Poppy's long-range missiles strike, the Kingsmen get all but annihilated, and Roxy dies a very, very sudden death without even a chance of escape.
  • Eggsy gives Harry a sweet Precious Puppy, which the psychologically regressed Harry beams at with positively childlike happiness. Then, Eggsy takes out a gun...
  • Poppy's Do Not Adjust Your Set scene is a bit of a mood rollercoaster. It comes immediately after Whiskey kicks a bunch of redneck bigots' asses in a cool Curb-Stomp Battle. Then, she discloses her drugs' horrifying effects on the victims by stage. But it doesn't have to be that way, she chipperly broadcasts, and reveals a cure, which is shown being used on a paralysis-stage Elton John as hopeful music swells.
    [dramatic pause]
    Elton: ...WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME, YOU FUCKING BITCH?!
    [Poppy adjusts her glasses, ignoring Elton, trying to still look dignified]
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Poppy's robot dogs, again. Their jaws are essentially down-scaled industrial meat grinders chock-full of rotating blades, teeth and other pointy bits. Even their palate and the space where normal dogs have a tongue are nothing but murder implements.
• Neck Snap: How Eggsy kills Charlie.
• New Old West: Statesmen dress like cowboys and drink booze (and are even codenamed after such drinks). Whiskey fits The Gunslinger archetype, and also fights with a lasso.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Eggsy has a disturbing habit of making things worse for his own side.
  • Charlie survived the events of the first film due to Eggsy's jolt frying his Explosive Leash, causing the self-destruct mechanism to only take his arm and vocal cords.
  • Eggsy's driver dies because in his frantic fight against Charlie on the backseat, Eggsy's poisoned shoe blade gets snapped off and ends up in the driver's neck by accident.
  • Roxy and the rest of the Kingsmen die because Eggsy Failed a Spot Check and forgot Charlie's cybernetic arm had detached from him and was still in the taxi. Even if Eggsy didn't consider that it could be controlled remotely, it still would have been a good idea to put it somewhere isolated for study.
  • During the lead-up to the finale, Eggsy's failure to find a safe path through Poppy's minefield results in Merlin's death.
  • Triggering the implants at the end of the last film may have been a good idea at the time, but it also left a vacancy in the White House, opening the way for a US president willing to let a massive chunk of the world's population die from Poppy's virus just so there'd be no drug users left and he could claim victory for the War on Drugs. Granted, his predecessor couldn't have been much better, since he was willing to go along with Valentine's plan, but at least we never saw him Kick the Dog the way this president did.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Charlie's attempting to settle scores with Eggsy in person at the beginning of the movie gets the Kingsmen started on investigating the Golden Circle and provides them with a lead by looking into his associates. If he'd just left the Kingsmen alone, they wouldn't have started investigating Poppy's operation until after she made her broadcast, with no leads and no time to find any.
  • Not to mention, Poppy's vicious attack on the Kingsman's members and facilities. If she had just taken out a few key buildings and poisoned them instead, they wouldn't have had to raid the Doomsday safe and wouldn't have teamed up with Statesman (an entity they didn't know existed until now). So by the time the film ends, Statesman has officially partnered with Kingsman as a joint business, allowing them the resources and ability to rebuild their operations once again.
• No Endor Holocaust:
  • Despite Valentine's attempt at genocide and the worldwide riots, and the Kingsmen's resulting killing of all the world leaders who allied with him, the world has kept on chugging with seemingly no disruption.
  • At least one of Poppy's cruise missiles hit a building in the middle of London (Saville Row, even), yet we never hear anything about civilian casualties. Might be justified by downtown London being almost empty at night.
• Not So Above It All: Merlin of all people turns into a blubbering mess after the attack on Kingsman and half a bottle of whiskey. Hypocritical Humor at its finest, considering the lectures about keeping emotions out of the game that he keeps giving Eggsy on a regular basis.
• Obvious Villain, Secret Villain: The remaining Kingsman agents (Eggsy, Merlin, and Harry) team up with their American equivalent, Statesman, to stop drug lord Poppy Adams' plan that involves killing the world's drug addicts on a mass scale. When they have a chance to disperse an antidote to her toxin, they are stopped by Statesman Agent Whiskey, who is more than happy to let all the addicts die (his wife had been accidentally killed by junkies during a robbery), and he fights them over control of the antidote.
• Oddly Small Organization: Like their cousin organization the Kingsmen, the Statesmen have only a dozen or so field agents — enough that they could sit them all around a single table for a meeting.
• One-Handed Shotgun Pump: Tequila does this with a lever-action rifle, flip-cocking it à la John Wayne or the Terminator when he finds Eggsy and Merlin above the Statesmen's HQ.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Eggsy's brutal execution of Charlie to avenge the deaths of his friends is one of the darkest moments in the film. Eggsy even says that he's abandoning his gentlemanly acts just for this once to savor the moment.
  Eggsy: For the record, Charlie, I'm more of a gentleman than you will ever be. But right now, it's time we drop the "gentle" bit. This is for Kingsmen. For my mate Brandon. For Roxy. For JB. And for Merlin. Goodnight, bruv. [snaps Charlie's neck]
• Parasol of Pain: The rainmakers return with a previously unseen Grappling-Hook Pistol function.
• Patriot in Exile: Poppy Adams would be one of these, being an American-born CEO of a ruthless international drug cartel, forced to go into exile and hiding in the middle of nowhere and getting no fame or recognition because recreational drugs are illegal. She's a massive fan of the 1950s American lifestyle and culture and longs to use her master plan to legalize drugs so that she'll be a respected and welcomed businesswoman in her home country, despite being hated by millions both at home and abroad for all the death she's caused.
• Poe's Law: The Evil Plan — a drug cartel poisoning its customers and holding the victims hostage to force legalization, only for President Evil to decide to stall negotiations until all of the "junkie scum" is dead — is just a little over-the-top, right? Actually, the reality is far worse; during The Roaring '20s, The Government poisoned massive amounts of alcohol themselves.
  The President: We appear to give in to her demands, and then we let the junkie scum die.
  Wayne Wheeler: ...the government is under no obligation to furnish people with alcohol that is drinkable when the Constitution prohibits it. The person who drinks this industrial alcohol is a deliberate suicide.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Charlie's girlfriend reams him out for having told her not to do drugs, but not explaining why. Since she didn't have a clear idea of the risk, she gave into temptation and now has the blue vein disease.
  • Merlin and Eggsy nearly wind up executed by Tequila because the Kingsmen and Statesmen are largely ignorant of each other's existence; the only clues are a bottle of whiskey and an umbrella in their respective Doomsday Protocol safes that hint where to go, without any sort of instructions or even a Trust Password to give to their opposite number. As a result, when they blunder into the Statesmen's HQ, Tequila reasonably thinks they are enemies and mops the floor with them.
• Post-Climax Confrontation: So the Golden Circle has been destroyed, the leader is dead, and all that needs to happen is a password is put into a laptop to send the cure out to the world. But then Whiskey appears to stop Eggsy and Harry. He isn't some sort of double agent, but he does agree with the US president's view that all drug users should die, as his wife and unborn son were killed by junkies robbing a store. So he serves as the final confrontation.
• Power Fist: Charlie now wields one that's part of his cybernetic arm. A later, upgraded version even allows him to shoot his fist.
• Power Glows: Whiskey's electrified lasso glows an awesome shade of ice-blue when active and cuts through just about anything with contemptuous ease.
• Precision F-Strike: Eggsy drops an F-Bomb right after discovering Harry survived his Boom, Headshot! in the last film.
• President Evil: The POTUS is all too happy to let the people poisoned by Poppy's drugs die, since, as far as he's concerned, they deserve it for using drugs in the first place and in his mind this leads to a complete victory in the War on Drugs. He even sends his own adviser off to die after she's revealed to be poisoned. After the antidote is delivered, the adviser that he sent to die reveals his plans to the public and he is promptly impeached.
• Product Placement:
  • All news broadcasts are from Fox News. Fox produced the movie.
  • Poppy has some amazing tech of her own, and yet she also uses a mundane Apple laptop.
• Put on a Bus: Tequila gets thrown into cryostasis for most of the film after he's revealed to have been tainted by Poppy's drugs.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Although Poppy dies before she can find out this has happened, her master plan to have the millions of legal and illegal drug users (or people tangentially affected by drugs, such as babies from women that used while pregnant) hostage hits a massive snag when the POTUS decides it's best to let them all die. Had it not been for the Kingsmen obtaining the antidote, all Poppy would have obtained is going down in history as the architect of a world-wide genocide and she would have also completely annihilated her financial base.
• Radar Is Useless: The destruction of Kingsman consists of ten cruise missiles fired apparently from at least a couple hundred miles at sea at targets up and down Great Britain, including at least two in Greater London. Her Majesty's Armed Forces and NATO should've been going apeshit at this, but not only is there no reaction from them, there isn't even any apparent reaction from the London police.
• Rags to Royalty: Eggsy started the first movie as a petty English criminal. He ends the second movie as Swedish royalty, due to marrying the Swedish princess.
• Re-Cut: The original cut ran 221 minutes; almost four hours long. Among the eighty minutes worth of deleted or reedited material were an an alternate ending where Merlin survives, a character played by Vaughn regular Vinnie Jones, and a different version of the President, played by the same actor but with radically different characterization.
• Recycled Soundtrack: The electric guitar piece from "Rage and Serenity," a track created by Henry Jackman for Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class, is used when Harry regains his memories of Eggsy and Kingsman.
• Red Right Hand: In a somewhat literal version, Poppy's Dragon Charlie (who survived his chip's explosion) has a Terminator-esque robotic right arm.
• Remember the New Guy?: A tiny example, but in the first movie, Eggsy had two best friends he hung out with. In the sequel, a third one is added. And he is the one who dies when Eggsy's house gets destroyed by rockets.
• Replacement Goldfish: After Eggsy's pug JB died in the missile strike on his house, Tilde gets him an adorable pug puppy as a replacement.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Right there in the Tagline, in reference to Harry Hart/Galahad's survival after seemingly having his brains blown out in the last film.
• Repurposed Pop Song:
  • The first trailer uses Frank Sinatra's 1969 recording of "My Way" to illustrate the film's '60s / '70s aesthetics. Doubles as a near Actor Allusion for Taron Egerton; in Sing, his character Johnny's big scene with his dad was during this song.
  • The film itself incorporates the tune of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" as a Leitmotif for Merlin.
• Rescue Romance: Eggsy's Rescue Sex from the end of the previous movie has turned into a serious long-term relationship, eventually leading to marriage.
• Revealing Cover Up: Charlie attacking Eggsy kickstarts the plot, allowing Poppy to hack the Kingsman system and kill most of them. The issue is, the Kingsmen had no clue anything was afoot until Charlie showed up, and throughout the movie, their knowledge of his involvement is what allows them to track down their leads, find Poppy's facilities and save the day. If the Kingsmen remained ignorant of Charlie's survival, or at the very least his involvement in their massacre, or if Poppy herself had simply left them alone, they would have been in the dark about Poppy's scheme until her public broadcast, had no leads with which to track her down, and would have had no time to find her before her scheme came to fruition.
• Rewatch Bonus: At the beginning, a lovely bagpipe melody plays as the title rolls, being easily dismissed. Then on re-watch, the song you'll realise that you heard was a bag-pipe rendition of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads", a Leitmotif for Merlin, which is his favourite childhood song that he even sings when performing his Heroic Sacrifice.
• Riches to Rags: Charlie implies that he lost a lot when Eggsy and Merlin killed his family in the previous movie. In absolute terms, he was nobility, and now he's just an enforcer for a drug queenpin.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: No, Statesman is not working for or with a Big Bad, unlike what Harry suspects. That includes Agent Whiskey, but he is a Rogue Agent with a personal agenda.
• Room Full of Crazy: The walls covered in detailed butterfly drawings and accompanying text further emphasize that the person living in that room is not in his right mind. Even after he gets his memories back, the other characters continue to question his sanity.
• Rule of Cool: What the whole movie runs on, just like The Secret Service did before.
• Running Gag: After Harry gets his memories back, the fact that there are two Galahads is constantly brought up.
• Separated by a Common Language: When discussing the Statesman-brand bourbon with Tequila and Eggsy, Merlin grouses that "real" whisky comes from Scotland and is most definitely not spelled whiskey.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: While the first movie took place mostly in Britain, this film largely deals with the Kingsmen going to their American counterpart: the Statesmen.
• Serendipitous Survival: Eggsy was visiting his girlfriend and her parents during the time Poppy Adams sent missiles to the homes of Kingsman agents, allowing him to survive.
• Series Fauxnale: While only the second film in the franchise, there's already enough things happening to make it appear as if this could very well serve as the ending to the films' story. Most if not all of Kingsman is gone, Eggsy and Harry are the only agents left to keep it alive, Eggsy marries Tilde and it's heavily implied that Tequila is joining Kingsman to fill its numbers if not just straight up replacing Eggsy in the organization. And there is still a third film to be made.
• Serious Business: Tequila takes great offense when he realizes that Eggsy and Merlin damaged a cask full of 50 year old bourbon.
• Shoe Phone: Eggsy's suitcase conceals a rocket launcher and a machine gun, Harry's bullet-proof umbrella returns, now featuring a grappling hook function, and there's a special Kingsman-branded eau de Cologne that can go boom. On the Statesmen side, you have a minesweeper baseball bat and baseball grenades.
• Shoot the Rope: During Eggsy and Harry's fight with Whiskey, Whiskey lassos Eggsy's neck then throws the rest of the rope into the running meat grinder so that it pulls the latter in with it. Harry directs a shot that cuts the rope during his Gun Struggle with Whiskey just at the right time.
• Shout-Out:
  • A machine gun and a missile launcher hidden in a suitcase? Sounds familiar...
  • The names of the robot dogs? Bennie and Jet.
  • The dogs have Cylon eyes.
  • The villain's organization has gold as a main symbol, referencing other spy films that also have gold as their theme or name (Goldfinger, The Man with the Golden Gun, Goldeneye, Austin Powers in Goldmember).
  • Two James Bond references happen in the opening cab fight/chase; Charlie is thrown out of the cab, leaving his robot arm dangling behind (similarly to Tee Hee's fate in Live and Let Die) and Eggsy's cab turning into a submersible after he drives it into a pond (The Spy Who Loved Me).
  • Another James Bond shout-out is when Eggsy and Whiskey use a parachute of the US flag when they slide down the ski slope. In The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond skies off the side of a cliff and uses a parachute of the UK flag.
  • The song "Word Up" is also featured in Johnny English Reborn.
• Signature Headgear:
  • Part of the Statesmen's uniform: they all have to wear tailored cowboy hats, by Texas Hatters no less.
  • At the end, Tequila, who has moved to London to work with Kingsman, wears a bowler with his Kingsman suit.
• Skewed Priorities: Eggsy's Fatal Flaw in the film, which actually leads to devastating results each time it happened:
  • He leaves Charlie's robotic arm in the car because he's in a hurry to go to his friend's birthday party, unknowingly allowing Charlie to remote-control the arm and hack the Kingsman network, leading to Poppy destroying all Kingsman bases and killing Eggsy's closest friends and pet dog.
  • When he has to get intimate with a target, he takes the time to ask Tilde, his girlfriend, for permission first, when it was really not needed. And this leads to a falling out between the two that ends up with Tilde poisoned by Poppy's drug virus.
  • He carelessly exposes the fragile antidote tube from its secured capsule just to closely examine it, allowing Whiskey to slap it out of his hand and breaks it on the ground.
  • When he sees the entrance of Poppy's base, he gets too distracted to notice that he's not out of the minefield yet, and leads to him stepping on a mine even with the mine detector in his hand.
• Slow Electricity: A rare example not centered on a citywide blackout. Whiskey's electric lasso usually activates instantly, unless it's wrapped around a good guy's neck, like Harry's in the climax, which gives him just enough time to get it off before it can relieve him of his head.

• Someone Has to Die: Eggsy invokes No One Gets Left Behind, but Merlin is adamant that I Will Only Slow You Down. Cue Heroic Sacrifice.
• Southern Gentleman: What the Statesmen are (or are meant to evoke), given their cowboy motif.
• Spectacular Spinning: When Charlie picks up a bowling ball to throw at Eggsy with his cybernetic arm, he starts spinning his fist including the ball at the wrist at high speed for no apparent reason.
• Spies Are Lecherous: Inverted with Eggsy', who's loyal to his girlfriend. One time, his mission required him to have sex with the target (in order to secretly implant a tracking device); he feels the need to inform his girlfriend first, making their relationship sour.
• Stepford Suburbia: Poppy's base is deliberately designed to look like an archetypal 50s community. She runs the place out of the diner.
• Straight Edge Evil:
  • Despite being a drug lord, Poppy does not touch her own product and prevents her own minions from doing so. Eggsy kills her via a lethal overdose of her own heroin that delivers an accelerated version of the poison.
  • Poppy's plans involve poisoning her drugs and ransoming their lives in exchange for the President legalizing all drugs. The President, however, has no plans on actually agreeing to the deal and sees the deaths of all those who used recreational drugs as a good thing.
  • Whiskey tries to stop Eggsy and Harry from delivering the antidote since he also hates drug users, his pregnant wife having died in a shootout between meth tweekers.
• Stealth Pun: The man who's fed through the meat grinder at the beginning of the film is named Charles. So when he goes through it, he becomes ground Chuck.
• Still Got It: A non-verbal example: After seeing butterflies several times, missing with throwing the tankard, getting beaten down and realizing he isn't quite up to scratch just yet (and being told his coordination will return in time), Harry shoots a soldier down when he, Eggsy and Whiskey hide in the hut after stealing the antidote. Harry takes a moment to appreciate himself.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Roxy and J.B. (Eggsy's pug).
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Poppy's robot servants comprise, amongst others, a '50s-waitress-shaped bot whose primary function consists of performing the standard induction rites on any new recruits. When the Kingsman finally track down and assault the base, however, the thing doesn't hesitate to whip out a semi-automatic grenade launcher and join the defence.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Harry received a Moe Green Special in the previous film, but was rescued by Statesmen, and now has an Eye Patch Of Power. He now has no depth perception, no vision on his left side and is rusty from lack of training due to recovering from his wounds. When he tries a Call-Back to the "Manners maketh man" thing in an American bar, the thrown glass completely misses the guy's head and he is easily overpowered by his gang. Merlin tells him that it will take him a while to get his coordination back.
  • After defeating Poppy, Eggsy and Harry inject her with contaminated heroin to force her to give up the password to release the antidote, like a Truth Serum. Because she's not a heroin user, it makes her too loopy to talk, then she dies of an overdose.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Eggsy assaults Poppy's HQ with a nifty suitcase... that contains a machine gun and a missile launcher, and can be unfolded to form a man-sized, bulletproof riot shield.
• Steven Ulysses Perhero:
  • Minor one, but the guy named Whiskey? His real name happens to be Jack Daniels.
  • Likewise, certain drugs have long been derived from opium poppy seeds. Guess what plant the Big Bad is named after and what her modus operandi is.
• Tainted Veins: Those poisoned by Poppy's drugs have dark blue veins that cover their entire body.
• Take That!:
  • One of the pundits on Fox News lists Poppy's many personality flaws (ruthlessness and Lack of Empathy among others), followed by the conclusion that they mark her out as the perfect CEO... and a perfect psychopath.
  • Singapore is mentioned as the recipient of the antidote. Singapore is known as a country with very strong anti-drug laws.
  • The official novelization takes the Jerkass President and turns him into a blatant Donald Trump expy.
• Taking You with Me: Merlin, upon stepping on the landmine, lures the henchmen over to him with a badass rendition of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and sets it off when they're near, blowing them up along with him.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Averted. Harry's "Manners Maketh Man" speech goes very badly when one of his opponents punches him in the jaw before he finishes.

• Technology Porn: The lovingly rendered sequence of all the moving bits and parts in Charlie's new cybernetic arm when Poppy presents it to him wouldn't feel out of place in any Iron Man movie.
• Theme Naming: While the Kingsmen are named after Arthurian Legend, the Statesmen are named after alcoholic beverages. Meanwhile, the head of their support staff is named after a soft drink.^note Specifically, Ginger Ale, which was used as a mixer during prohibition. In other words, Ginger Ale supports alcohol.
• To Absent Friends: Eggsy and Merlin toasting to those killed by Poppy's missiles, until intoxication ensues and Merlin starts Inelegantly Blubbering.
  Merlin: [weakly] I think we should drink to Scotland. [takes the whiskey bottle]
  Eggsy: [taking bottle from Merlin] I think we've probably had enough, to be honest.
• Too Dumb to Live: Angel. Breaking the number one rule in the drug business (never get high off your own supply) when you have a boss who already established her zero tolerance policy for failure by forcing him to kill one of his colleagues (and eat his flesh in hamburger form!) is ill advised. Bonus points for taking drugs that are poisoned and would have killed him anyway even in the unlikely event he didn't get caught.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • Harry not being dead — none of the advertising even tries to hide it.
  • As well as the swarm of drones flying past the Statue of Liberty were actually carrying the antidote, though it was implied by the trailers that they were bombs.
• Tranquil Fury: The look on Eggsy and Harry's faces immediately following Merlin's death.
• Trash the Set: The trailer shows the Kingsman HQ being demolished by a missile attack.
• Truth Serums: The "endgame" serum that Eggsy and Harry use on Poppy is a mixture of heroin, to make her unguarded, and a fast-acting variant of her genetically-engineered virus. As it turns out, the heroin overdose kills her before the virus does, but not before acting as a truth serum that provides Kingsman with the vital access code.
• Twerp Sweating: The King of Sweden drills Eggsy over historical and technical topics to see what sort of man Tilde is dating. Eggsy passes with flying colors thanks to Roxy feeding him information through his glasses.
• Unknown Rival: Poppy spends the entire movie, right up to her death, without any knowledge of the Statesmen's existence.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Eggsy, Merlin, and Harry hold a normal conversation... while Whiskey is dishing out a Curb-Stomp Battle against a bunch of rude drunkards.
• Variable-Length Chain: Whiskey wields a whip that can retract into its handle.
• Victory Sex: Tilde implies victory anal sex has become her standard reward for Eggsy whenever he saves the world.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • Whiskey's willingness to let all junkies to die makes more sense considering his wife and unborn child were killed by junkies robbing a store. It's not shown whether it would actually work, but his logic is no different than what Lord Batman said about taking power and making a world where no 8-year old would lose their parents just because of some punk with a gun.
  • Poppy is completely batshit, but she makes good points about the War on Drugs being a total sham.
• Walking Spoiler: After playing coy at first, the filmmakers didn't make it a big secret that Colin Firth will return as Harry Hart, despite the character dying by Moe Greene Special in Kingsman: The Secret Service. Harry's appearance at the ending of the first trailer, a shot that has little to no fanfare, for example.
• Wham Line:
  The President: We appear to give in to her demands, and then we let the junkie scum die.
• Wham Shot:
  • Colin Firth's Harry Hart/Galahad showing up Back from the Dead after being shot in the head in the last film.
    Merlin: Oh my god. Harry?
    Eggsy: Fuck me.
  • Tilde finally calls Eggsy back... and she has blue veins all over her.
• With My Hands Tied: When Eggsy disarms Charlie of his bio-mechanical arm (Charlie's only advantage), he says that to prove he's a gentleman, he fights him with his right arm behind his back. He still manages to deliver the final neck snap, left-handed.
• The Worf Effect: All Kingsmen suffer from this seriously whenever they go up against a Statesman. Tequila easily wipes the floor with Eggsy and Merlin during their first encounter. Later, in the final battle, Whiskey gets tag-teamed by Eggsy and Harry and still puts up one hell of a fight.
• Worf Had the Flu: In the final fight.
  • In the case of Harry, he's still recovering from the side effects caused by the nanotechnology used to save him. Even after he gets his memories back, he still has a tendency to get distracted by illusions of butterflies that hinders him in the field, losing his left eye does a number on his aiming skills, and the combination of synthetically developed neural pathways and lack of exercise over the year has resulted in a lack of coordination and practice that severely affected his previously shown abilities as a capable fighter.
  • For Eggsy, he had just had a brutal fight with Charlie, getting repeatedly punched and slammed by a mechanical arm.
  • Could also be used to justify why Statemen agents beat Kingsmen whenever the two fight; when the two sides make contact, Statesmen are all at their peak while Harry is recovering after a year of relative inactivity, Eggsy is the agency's newest known field operative and Merlin likely doesn't operate in the field much.
• Would Hit a Girl: Poppy claims that Harry and Eggsy, being gentlemen, wouldn't hit a lady. Harry says that might be true, but he wouldn't consider a drug-dealing murderer much of a lady.

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"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

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