Manga / Great Teacher Onizuka

"But you need to be prepared... Our school is considered very prestigious, but internally, many problems are mounting... such as delinquency, bullying, problems with the opposite sex, and violence... even toward teachers. It is getting worse each year, and I can hardly handle it myself. Onizuka-kun, what I want from you is exactly what you showed us the other day: the German suplex."

— Chairlady Sakurai

Meet Eikichi Onizuka: Twenty-two years old, current virgin, black belt martial artist, former delinquent, and seeking direction. What better job for such a man than teaching? Easy hours, and the potential of after-school study sessions with beautiful high school girls... At least, so go Onizuka's daydreams. The truth is, as a new hire at Holy Forest Academy (surprisingly, not a Two-Teacher School), he's been put in charge of a class who believe it is their sole mission to run any teacher they're given right out of town.^note The last two teachers that they had attempted to commit suicide, and a third disappeared from the face of the Earth, just to give you an idea of how serious these kids are.

The manga dramedy Great Teacher Onizuka is the story of this (semi-indestructible) man and his continuing attempts to keep from being fired while straightening out the class which has been placed in his care. The series is humorous, if occasionally over-the-top, as the continual destruction of Vice Principal Uchiyamada's beloved Toyota Cresta (now a Toyota Crown Royal), will attest. Onizuka consistently gets into worse and worse scrapes, and just as consistently extricates himself with his own unique flair. The original manga by Tooru Fujisawa was serialized from 1997 to 2002 in Weekly Shonen Magazine, with an anime adaptation that aired from 1999 to 2000.

Often marketed as simply "GTO." Newcomers unfamiliar with the series should be aware it has (largely) nothing to do with the American muscle, Italian exotic, or Japanese import and sports cars, or the sportscar racing class.

A Live-Action Adaptation has also been made, toning down the abuse Onizuka takes (for obvious reasons) and distilling a number of storylines, leading to the real-life romances of the actors playing Onizuka and Azusa Fuyutsuki respectively. It was followed by a live-action movie in 1999, though only Onizuka's actor appeared in it. A second live-action series was released in 2012, with a second season in 2014. There was also a 4-episode live-action miniseries released in Taiwan. A sequel to the first live-action, titled GTO: Revival, is being released in 2024, with many of the original cast from 1998 returning.

An Interquel manga entitled GTO: Shonan 14 Days chronicles the adventures of Onizuka as he hides back in his hometown of Shonan, because he accidentally let it slip on national television that he almost buried a student of his alive. Luckily for us this means we got to see him in action once again. Another series titled Kamen Teacher, involves teachers in masks whipping delinquent classes into shape. It's heavily implied to be the result of Headmaster Sakurai's secret plan, set into motion near the end of GTO.

GTO: Paradise Lost, which has published since 2014 in Weekly Young Magazine, is the true sequel to GTO. The story picks up a year after GTO with Onizuka in prison retelling his reassignment by Holy Forest to a special class of equally dysfunctional teenage idols and his foray into the seedy underbelly of the teen idol business.

GTO is the sequel to Shonan Jun'ai Gumi!, released in English as GTO: The Early Years (due to the fact that the Second Installment Wins), which ran for 31 volumes (longer than GTO, mind you) and featured the high school delinquent adventures of a much more badass Onizuka and his best friend Ryuji Danma. Originally serialized by Tokyopop, GTO: The Early Years, Shonan Jun'ai Gumi was in danger of being Left Hanging when the company went belly up before being picked up by Vertical (who had published 14 Days In Shonan). Between Shonan Junai Gumi and GTO a single volume manga was released under the title Bad Company, chronicling the tale of how Ryuji and Eikichi first met. With the launch of GTO: Paradise Lost, Onizuka has now appeared as the main character of a total of five titles.

You can watch it legally on Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video.

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This show provides examples of:

• 10-Minute Retirement: Right at the start, when Onizuka thinks he didn't get his job at Holy Forest, he decides to ditch everything and become a trucker. Not too long after, he receives word that Mrs. Sakurai accepted his application and he comes back pretty quickly.
• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The Cresta in Initial D First Stage-style, maybe as a parody.
• Absurdly Divided School: In Paradise Lost, Onizuka has to teach the G-class, where students are all teenage entertainers who are divided in three classes (A, B and C) ranked by celebrity and enjoying, for the higher ranks, more privileges such as being able to more easily leave during courses.
• Abusive Parents: None of the main cast have abusive parents (the closest might be Urumi's and Miyabi's neglectful parents), but nearly every kid at White Swan in 14 Days in Shonan comes from an abusive household. Also, it's implied Sho Shibuya was sexually abused by his mother.
• Accidental Misnaming:
  • Onizuka frequently calls Principal Uchiyamada "Xavier", after monk Fransisco Xavier, because of Uchiyamada's bald head. He doesn't do it on purpose at all, he seems to just associate the two in his mind for some reason.
  • He also can't seem to remember Teshigawara's name at all. His attempts to recall it don't even come close. Just to give an example of how bad it gets, he once refers to him as "Toxic Socks Warrior", without any sign that he doesn't think it's his actual name.
• Achievement Test of Destiny: Onizuka is required to get the highest score in the country on the National Scholastic Aptitude Test to keep his job. Fuyutsuki becomes a temporary Education Mama and his students try to come up with a way to help him cheat, but he ends up passing fair and square (after saving a girl from the yakuza and getting shot multiple times, which made him only have an hour left to take it).
• Adaptation Explanation Extrication: Urumi's "deep, dark secret" (that she's a test-tube baby and never knew who her father was) is never revealed in the anime (unless you understand French, and even then it's a tossup whether you understand what she means), which makes her motivations somewhat confusing.
• Agitated Item Stomping: Anko picks up a video game that Noboru dropped and takes it home to play it, but stomps on the case when she's no good at it.
• Almost Kiss: Onizuka and Fuyutsuki in episode 23. Also happens between Onizuka and Urumi, but he knocks himself out rather than get romantically involved with an underage student.
• Animal-Eared Headband: The three witch wannabe girls wear bunny, cat, and elephant ear headbands to look extra kawaii when giving Onizuka "poisoned" cookies.
• Armor-Piercing Response: What starts off Onizuka's transformation from a pervert who just wants to hook up with schoolgirls into a heroic teacher who wants to genuinely help his students. When Nanako Mizuki sets him up for blackmail by claiming she'd run away from home to get him to take her with him then gets him caught in a compromising position, a frustrated Onizuka asks her Was It All a Lie? Her answer causes an epiphany within him:
  Nana: Who would go to a teacher for help?
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: A police report included in Volume 8 mentions Onizuka's crimes: Reckless Endangerment of a minor (multiple counts), Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Big Rig, fishing without a license, Flagrant disregard for Toyota Crestas, vandalism of an arcade fortune machine, bungee jumping from the Bay Bridge, and launching bottle rockets from the classroom window.
• Artistic Age: The students of class 3-4 are in their final year of junior high, making them approximately 14 years old; this isn't too unrealistic in the early manga, which draws them with the mature-yet-still-scrawny builds you'd expect from teenagers in the later stages of puberty. The anime and later portions of the manga, however, depict them as looking akin to 16/17 year old high school students, which is jarring given Onizuka's early annoyances of teaching a class that's younger than he expected.
• Ass in a Lion Skin: Urumi disguises a harmless snake as a cobra, and it's mentioned she did the same with crabs, turning them into fake scorpions.
• Ass Kicks You: Done unintentionally by Onizuka to Urumi. While the two are standing on top of a high building Onizuka reaches down to pick up some spare change, and Urumi happens to be standing right behind him... causing him to accidentally shove her off the building with his rear, which results in him believing he's killed her. In the anime this even gets invoked where he immediately panics and imagines the events as a movie trailer entitled "Murder by Butt Blow", wherein the police investigate Urumi's "death" and theorize that the only way she could have been killed was by someone pushing her off a building with their butt.
• Ass Shove:
  • Onizuka hides a Treasure Map up his ass for a while before realizing what it is.
  • The class (specifically Urumi) punishes him for trying to use them as a free work force by forcing him to wear an S&M outfit. The whip naturally goes up his ass.
• As the Good Book Says...: Parodied in the opening to Volume 20:
  First there was darkness, and then the Great Force said "Let there be light," and there was light, and in the light there was the Great Teacher Onizuka, who said "Turn that damn light off, I got a Naomi Tani movie playing in here."
• Author Appeal: The author seems to have a spanking fetish. See Comedic Spanking below.
• Badass Boast: "I could squash all of you like bugs and not even break a sweat. Give me two seconds to take you all out." (Onizuka to Mayu's gang)
• Badass Teacher: The Trope Codifier. Onizuka takes on two classes who have managed to get every one of their previous teachers to quit, and wins. He jumps off a building at least 3 times to save his students, takes multiple gunshots to protect his students (and even kids that aren't his students), and beats up thugs threatening them, including the very students who were making his own life hell. In the very first episode, he transforms a class full of delinquents into a bunch of respectful students with some tough love.
• Beach Bury: Happens to Onizuka, in revenge for taking his students on a treasure hunt they wanted no part of, and lying to get them to come.
• Better Manhandle the Murder Weapon: A non-murder example where Teshigawara attempts to invoke this by conspicuously touching every surface in Azusa's apartment when Onizuka and Makoto catch him there when they're investigating her kidnapping. Of course, his suspicious behavior is a Revealing Cover Up that all but proves his guilt (which is probably exactly what Makoto intended).
• Be Yourself: Onizuka's message to Tomoko, who discovers she has Hidden Depths when he enters her in a Beauty Contest. He denies doing anything to make her popular, saying she did that all on her own.
• Big Brother Is Watching: The fancy PDAs that Daimon hands out to students and faculty tracks all transferred personal data that she uses to coordinate her Angel operations.
• Big "NO!": More a big "MY CRESTA!", but the intent is obviously the same.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Onizuka, unable to take one more second of Uchiyamada whining about his job and impeding him from saving Urumi from dying, finally tells him to SHUT UP with a Roundhouse Kick.
• Big "WHY?!":
  • By Uchiyamada after his Cresta is pulled out of Tokyo Bay.
  • In 14 Days in Shonan, Onizuka does this when he takes so long getting ready to sleep with Ayame that she's asleep when he gets back.
• Bittersweet Ending: The anime's Gecko Ending. The final two episodes of the anime involve the school going up against the school board for their attempts to cover up a teacher's affair with a student and their cover up of that same student's suicide to prevent the possibility that she was pregnant with the teacher's child from leaking. The conspirators also try to pin an attempted murder charge on Miyabi for stabbing the teacher when it is confirmed that, after hearing about his student love's suicide, the teacher tried to commit suicide as well. While the school faces being shut down as they refuse to turn over Onizuka for an (obviously fake) assault charge and Miyabi, Onizuka steps in and gets the media involved to cause a storm around the events to expose the school board's cover up. Then Onizuka takes the blame for the attempted murder despite his students having evidence that it was an attempted suicide and Miyabi finally coming around and trying to rescue him. Onizuka is nearly taken into custody but, as per the norm, he manages to escape as the teacher wakes up from his injuries. It's all but confirmed that the School Board will be unable to deny the charges of covering up the suicide and suicide attempt and all the students in class 3-4 are able to trust teachers. Onizuka goes on the run and ends up in the US at a California Junior High in charge of a class full of delinquents. Sadly it's implied that Onizuka will be unable to return to Japan after this despite his role in exposing the coverup and his students and Azusa will never see him again.
• Blackmail:
  • Nanako and a few of her classmates stage a compromising photo of Onizuka and a half-dressed Nanako, and try to blackmail him into paying them or quitting. He manages to beat some respect into them.
  • Urumi blackmails Onizuka for a while by threatening to reveal that he almost buried her alive.
  • Miyabi blackmails Mr. Sakurai for using a hidden camera to look up girls' skirts on the train.
• Blind Shoulder Toss: In one episode, Urumi tosses a bottle over her shoulder. It hits a Yakuza boss on the head.
• Bloody Hilarious: The earlier Running Gag of Principal Uchiyamada getting haematuria from self-perceived stress of Onizuka's misbehaviours. He grew out of this post Character Development though.^note Onizuka's friend Tsukai suffered the same condition in Shonan Junai Gumi when Onizuka and Danma were fighting.
• Bookcase Passage: The mayor in Shonan 14 Days has a secret rotating door built into the wall of his house. It barely slows down Onizuka, who just kicks through the wall.
• Bookends: In the beginning it was Onizuka who kept saving Yoshikawa's ass, but near the end it was he who managed to pull Onizuka from death through a "We need you" speech.
• Breaking the Bonds: Onizuka easily breaks the chains and handcuffs Mayu's gang have put on him.
• Bullying a Dragon: To test Onizuka's devotion to his students, Urumi throws a beer bottle at a Yakuza boss's head, picking a fight with his gang.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: In 14 Days in Shonan, Onizuka pretends to be Ayame, and uses a notepad to tell Shinomi how great he is.
• But Liquor Is Quicker: in 14 Days in Shonan, Onizuka tries to get Ayame drunk for this reason, but she just falls asleep.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Several, but vice-principal Uchiyamada gets especially cruel treatment. His wife has grown cold and seems to be having an extramarital romance, his daughter sees him as a gift dispenser, his own dog bullies him (and unfortunately shares the first name, appearance, and lecherous nature with the man who's giving Uchiyamada hell outside of home), his dreams of his brand new pearl white Cresta bringing his family back together are repeatedly wrecked... The Cresta also is repeatedly wrecked. In escalating degrees of destruction.
  • In Shonan 14 Days, the headmaster of the foster home system is also quite the butt-monkey, often getting accidentally injured because of Onizuka or his own libido.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Onizuka generally loves female beauty but big boobs are his favourite.
• Call-Forward: In GTO Shonan 14 Days, Onizuka's nose tends to bleed a lot. It's because of his aneurysm!
• Candid Camera Prank: In the Great Tomoko Oppai bonus chapters, Munakata pretends to kidnap Tomoko and has a candid camera show film Okinoshima's reaction.
• Canon Foreigner: The 1998 live-action adds a middle-aged teacher named Makoto Fujitomi, who becomes an ally of Onizuka after he helps Fujitomi stand up to his students. No corresponding character appears in the manga. There's also the Posthumous Character Takeshi, who was Miyabi's old boyfriend in the live-action.
• Car Cushion: Courtesy of Uchiyamada's good old Cresta. Lampshaded/subverted at the end of the series, when Uchiyamada himself drives the car closer so the student and Onizuka dangling off a curtain would survive if they fell, at the cost of his car. Doubly so because he had parked it away from the roof exactly to prevent this from happening again, and had in fact put an inflatable kiddy pool on the roof to protect it as extra protection measure. It didn't help; the car was still totaled.
• Car Meets House: At the end of Shonan 14 Days, Onizuka drives a truck through the gate and wall of the mayor's house.
• Cash Lure: A variant; Urumi puts a 10,000-yen bill on a small string-and-stick attached to Onizuka's headband, and tells him he can have the money if he catches it in his mouth while bicycling at 60 kph (with her riding on the back of the bike, of course).
• Catchphrase:
  • "Onizuka Eikichi, 22 years old."
  • The German Suplex is also something of a non-verbal "catch-phrase".
  • Also, the Vice Principal's variations of the theme: "My- my Cresta!!"
• Caught with Your Pants Down: Azusa, Naoko, and several students catch Onizuka masturbating in his room. He desperately tries to tell them it's Not What It Looks Like.
• Cavalry Betrayal:
  • Anime only. When the three punks who try to blackmail Onizuka are gloating about how much money they're about to get, they accidentally anger a large group of biker thugs who are going to wreck them for their arrogance, when Onizuka shows up and punches his way through the crowd, cowing the bikers who recognise his fearsome reputation. The students are practically crying with relief at being saved by their teacher, only for Onizuka to declare none of the bikers can touch them... because they're his prey.^note In the manga, the biker gang was one Onizuka had called up himself to punish the students.
  • Zig-Zagged later on in Episode 8. After his students at another school have pranked him (by gluing his fingers to bowling balls) and run off, they also find themselves threatened by a gang. Onizuka shows up and at first refuses to help, even going so far as making them bungee jump off a bridge to prove their manliness. However, he then punches all but one of the gang members off the bridge, and Drives Like Crazy after the last one (in the vice principal's Precious, Precious Car)
• Ceiling Cling: Onizuka hides on the ceiling when spying on Misuzu Daimon's base of operations.
• Censor Steam: In one chapter of Shonan 14 Days, Urumi and Shinomi take a bath together. The steam strategically covers certain parts, but doesn't leave much to the imagination.
• Cerebus Retcon: Done gradually. During one of his later admissions to the hospital, the eponymous character gets what looks like a serious nosebleed until everyone comes to the conclusion that it was only because he was turned on by the nurses' uniforms and got a peek under their skirts after "pretending" to fall down. Later in the same chapter, a panel suggests that the nosebleed actually is as serious as it first appeared. In the final story arc, the audience learns that Onizuka has had chronic internal bleeding and cerebral aneurysms in the head for quite some time, which shines a different light on some of the nosebleed gags throughout Great Teacher Onizuka as well as the various head injuries, comedic or serious, he has gained throughout the entire series.
• Character Development: Most of the cast, thanks to Onizuka.
• Chekhov's Skill: Happens often, as one of Onizuka's gifts is to recognize the potential hidden in his students that either no other teacher has acknowledged or that the students themselves are not aware of. For example, Cloudcuckoolander Tomoko turns out to be an awesome actress because she played with dolls to help ease her loneliness and made up all sorts of crazy stories about them.
• Chairman of the Brawl: One of Hidemi's kidnappers smashes a chair over Onizuka's head. It's a No-Sell.
• Chaste Hero: Onizuka, unintentionally (at least when it comes to females he's actively pursuing) and to his immense chagrin.
• The Chikan: The vice-principal was introduced molesting Azusa on a train.
  • Onizuka intended to do the same when he was beaten to it.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Onizuka, of course. He'll perv out shamelessly over his female students, but he also genuinely cares about them and has their best interests at heart.
• Chronically Crashed Car: The Vice-Principal's beloved Toyota Cresta/Crown, which is constantly damaged and destroyed by accident, provides the page image for this trope.
• Cigar-Fuse Lighting: In 14 Days in Shonan, Onizuka spits lighter fluid on a group of yakuza hitmen, pours a Vapor Trail on the ground, and flicks his cigarette onto it. Cue Man on Fire.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Miyabi, in her backstory; Urumi is pretty terrifying, too, if she thinks that Onizuka is making moves on someone else.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Tomoko, whose trips to cloud cuckoo land is a mask for the loneliness she feels.
• Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: A variation, since he wasn't giving anything up, but it seems every English word the sleep-learning tape taught Onizuka had something to do with him wanting Azusa, who was sleeping right next to him ("desire", "touch", "insert"...).
• Comedic Spanking:
  • Onizuka punishes the three schoolgirls Anko, Naoko and Mayuko for bullying and humiliating Noboru. It involves tying them by their hands, spanking them (in the anime only) and taking pictures of them butt-naked after letting Noburu write apologetic words on their ass (on their panties in the anime). Their humiliation is played for laughs.
  • Later on, in a slightly less humorous situation, he punishes Ai Tokiwa and a few of her fellow "Angels" by spanking as well.
• Continuity Nod:
  • An offhand remark by Onizuka to Moritaka mentions that Saejima "likes to stick pencils up his nose", referencing a painful incident from GTO: The Early Years.
  • One of Tomoko's dolls bears a striking resemblance to a younger Onizuka from Shonan Junai Gumi
  • Tomoko is contracted to the entertainment company "Pink Elephant", which was an Informed Obscenity in a filler chapter of Shonan Junai Gumi.
  • In Chapter 183, Kunio says "Save me, Doraemon!", referencing an event over 150 chapters ago when Onizuka pretended to be Doraemon to save him and his friends.
  • 14 Days in Shonan brings back the visual metaphor of showing penises as turtles.
  • In Shonan 14 Days, Onizuka gets in trouble for his story of burying a girl in the forest. Said girl was Urumi back when she was toying with him.
• Cool Car: Misuzu Daimon first appears driving a Ferrari Testarossa.
• Cool Bike: Onizuka, as a former Bōsōzoku, has a custom Kawasaki Z400GP, which he and his friends rebuilt from scrap in the prequel Bad Company. His best friend Ryuji rides a Honda CBX, though he got it unmodified as a gift. In GTO, Ryuji actually runs a motorcycle shop.
• Corner of Woe: When the new headmistress rescinds his permanent teaching position and demotes him to assistant homeroom teacher of Class 3-4, Onizuka does this a few times.
• Corrupt Politician: The mayor of Fujisawa in Shonan 14 Days takes countless bribes, is willing to force foster kids to go back to abusive parents just to make himself look good for reelection, and spends government funds on a Bookcase Passage, a Jet Pack, and a vacation with hostesses. His secretary is disgusted at how corrupt his boss is, and tells Onizuka exactly where he needs to go to catch him, plus giving him a laptop full of evidence.
• Cosmetic Catastrophe: Azusa, trying to impress Onizuka in Okinawa, decides to apply makeup. She overdoes it and ends up looking like a Ganguro. It gets worse when the next day, right before they leave for the school vacation in Okinawa, her face is so white with makeup that she looks like a ghost.
• *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": In 14 Days in Shonan, Uchiyamada slips a disc when he's about to attack Eikichi (his dog) for getting him into trouble. And then the dog pees on him.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Parodied in 14 Days in Shonan, where Shinomi ties Onizuka to a cross◊ and puts clothespins all over his skin to punish him for spying on her in the bath (and for calling her hairy).
• Crying Wolf: In 14 Days in Shonan, Miki acts out and uses the emergency button her father (a high-ranking police officer) gave her, to get his attention. Unfortunately this makes him not respond when she really is kidnapped, until Onizuka arrives and tells him in person.
• Cult: Class 3-4 so traumatized their previous teacher, Ms. Kahara, that she joined a cult.
• Cut-and-Paste Note: Miyabi makes one revealing Urumi's secret and posts it in the school. Uchiyamada does one exposing Onizuka later. It's pretty clear who wrote it in both cases.
• Dating Catwoman: Noboru and Anko, his former bully.
• Daydream Surprise:
  • When Onizuka is having a job interview with Uchiyamada and the latter is rejecting him with insults, we are shown our hero punching the vice-principal in the face and totally beating him up. He was just daydreaming this.
  • Uchiyamada also has a waking nightmare when Onizuka catches him being The Chikan; in the fantasy, he loses his job and reputation, stabbing Onizuka in a fit of murderous rage.
  • Teshigawara fantasizes about showing Fuyutsuki his Stalker Shrine of her, and her being into it. Then it cuts back to show that he's imagining it.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Azusa gets this from time to time, which gives the audience a chance to look into her character a bit, and saves her from being a young, cute and idealistic Satellite Love Interest.
  • Uchiyamada's personal life gets examined, parts of which build up sympathy for the poor guy.
  • There are a number of intermezzos showing a first-person view of Onizuka as he's visiting his 'friend' Saejima. These pieces invariably show the crooked cop trying to pull Onizuka into pyramid schemes, black market dealings, smuggling and a lot worse, all the while pretending it's all perfectly legal. Saejima later got his own spinoff, Ino-Head Gargoyle.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Onizuka's main method of converting students to his side. Also happens fairly regularly in Shonan Junai Gumi. Hell, this was part of how Onizuka and Ryuji became best friends in the first place.
• Destination Defenestration: Onizuka throws one of the yakuza kidnappers through a fourth-floor window.
• Dirty Old Man: Most of the male teachers. Well, basically almost any male who may qualify as old. It says something that Onizuka, in all his lecherous behaviour, is mild in comparison.
• Disguised in Drag:
  • Onizuka dresses as a Joshikousei to infiltrate Anko and her friends' karaoke party. They see through it pretty quickly, but not in time to escape their punishment.
  • When Teshigawara kidnaps Fuyutsuki, Onizuka puts on a wig and the wedding dress that he'd put on her, and lies in wait, sitting on the bed facing away from him. Teshigawara doesn't realize who it is until he gets close enough for Onizuka to clobber him.
  • Onizuka does this again in Shonan 14 Days, when he even more unbelievably impersonates a teenage girl (Sakurako) to beat up her father when he tries to molest her. The father does notice Onizuka's shoulders are unusually broad for a girl, but not in time to avoid an ass-kicking.
• Dog Food Diet: In 14 Days in Shonan, Ikuko's abusive mother, aside from beating her and burning her with cigarettes, also forces her to eat nothing but cat food.
• Don't Eat and Swim:
  • PE teacher Fukuroda states this as fact when he sees Onizuka nonchalantly eating lunch before racing him in the pool. He still loses to Onizuka.
  • Fujiyoshi mentions a time Murai did this at the beach and threw up on the train ride home.
• Doomed New Clothes: To celebrate being made a permanent member of the teaching staff, Onizuka buys an expensive white suit, which gets covered in dirt from a passing car as he's heading to the school to show it off. To make things worse, the car is driven by the new principal, who rescinds his permanent status.
• Do Wrong, Right: When Onizuka catches Miyabi playing hooky and shoplifting, he shows her how to do it properly.
  Onizuka: Now this... this is shoplifting. [dumps a hundred nail polish bottles down her shirt] And now you run!
• Driven to Suicide: All the freaking time. It's almost always stopped in time, usually by Onizuka. Let's see, there's Noboru (twice), Onizuka briefly (when he had to work picking up body parts off train tracks), that guy who jumped in front of Onizuka's new car, Urumi (twice), Miyabi (twice), Teshigawara, and Sho Shibuya.
• Eerie Anatomy Model: In Chapter 39 and Episode 12, Onizuka vandalizes the brand new anatomy model by cutting off its skinless half and reworking it into a costume, ostensibly to dress up as Baron Ashura. In the anime but not in the manga, he unintentionally scares Azusa with it.
• Elopement: Urumi asks Onizuka to run away together with her, and they end up going all the way to Hokkaido before he realizes how crazy the idea is.
• El Spanish "-o": When Onizuka is pretending to be a Dirty Communist terrorist, he adds "-ski" to the end several words.
  Onizuka: Da to za revolution, you capitalist dogs! The Red Fang are here to liberate-ski the pro-liberal proletariat-ski!
• Engineered Public Confession: Kikuchi plays a recording of Anko and her friends talking about bullying Noboru through the PA system to show the school what really happened.
• Escalating War: Ultra-bitch Miyabi goes further in her plans each time to topple Onizuka.
• Even Bullies Have Standards:
  • Anko strongly disapproved of Miyabi's attempts to get rid of Onizuka not because she supported the teacher, but because she manipulated her friends and the entire class to do so.
  • In the 1998 series, despite almost letting Miyabi get raped, Toudo is disgusted with his father's corruption, and sends evidence to the prosecutor's office.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Uchiyamada's car eventually explodes just by having Onizuka and Miyabi fall on its roof.
• Exiled to the Couch: In Shonan 14 Days, Uchiyamada's wife forces him to sleep in his car after she finds him in a hostess club.
• Extra-Long Episode:
  • The first episode is 48 minutes long, almost twice the length of all the other episodes. None of the characters in it except Onizuka and Danma are ever seen again.
  • The finale of the 1998 live-action is almost an hour, compared to the usual 40-45 minutes.
• Extremely Protective Child: Kunio to his mother Julia. This pertains to an interesting variation of the trope as he never knew his father but, because his father left his mother while she was still pregnant, Kunio is adamant on believing that all older men are skirtchasers and will do everything in his power to protect his mother. His stance is put to the test when Onizuka dates his mother. This logic ultimately backfires when Onizuka states that Kunio is simply running away from his problems while dragging along his mother. When Kunio's actions almost kill Julia by oncoming truck, she is saved by Onizuka, lowering his stance. Kunio's pride is reduced even lower when Onizuka says the date was a one-time deal.
• Eye of Newt: One member of a trio of witch-wannabes drinks a Love Potion and accidentally sees Onizuka first. They try to use black magic to negate the power of the spell. Ingredients include bat wings (procured from the science department), toad warts (ditto), and Onizuka's pubic hair (uh...).
• Faked Kidnapping: Onizuka and some of his students plan to do this to Miyabi to get her absent father's attention, but before they can call him someone else calls the cops and tells them they're terrorists.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Invoked by Onizuka, who gives Dirty Cowards Mr. Fukuroda and Mr. Sakurai the credit for beating up the Brute Club, just in case Headmistress Daimon uses the fight as an excuse to fire him. She sees through his Blatant Lies, but can't prove anything.
• False Rape Accusation: Miyabi accused Mr. Ōgi of sexually assaulting her and taking pictures of it after he turned down her advances. This led to Takumi attacking him and getting expelled, Ōgi getting fired, and Class 4's reign of terror against teachers. In the end she confesses the truth.
• Fanservice: From Male Gaze to Shirtless Scene, everyone is served!
• Fan Disservice: Onizuka spends an awful lot of time with his ass exposed.
• Fast-Roping: When Onizuka decides to have a game of paintball with his students, two of them elect to arrive in this manner.
  • Also done by Onizuka to foil Urumi's plot to kidnap Aizawa and her cronies for ransom in order to fund Onizuka's promise of a field trip to Okinawa.
• Ferris Wheel Date Moment: Urumi drags Onizuka out on a not!date, and tries to kiss Onizuka, but he's too honorable to go through with it and so knocks himself unconscious. Which is pretty impressive, considering he got into teaching solely so he could hook up with hot Joshikousei.
• Festival Episode: Upon finding that a matsuri is going on at a local temple, Anko suggests to Noboru that they check it out. She uses it as an excuse to change into her yukata and spend the evening with him without actually calling it a date.
• Finger Poke of Doom: Onizuka flicks one of Mayu's gang in the face and sends him flying backwards fifty feet.
• Fingertip Drug Analysis: Saejima tries to give Onizuka bags of what looks like cocaine, but Kikuchi pokes his finger in them and tasting it, finds out it is just flour.
• Five-Finger Discount: At least one student has a habit of shoplifting because she feels neglected by her workaholic parents.
• Foster Kid: The Shonan 14 Days arc of Great Teacher Onizuka has Onizuka hiding and working inside the "White Swan" foster care center where it tries to whole-heartedly raise several misbehaving but good-at-heart youths (especially some with experience with Abusive Parents) in a safe environment. A big later issue within the arc is the attempt of politicans and previously mentioned self-centered abusive parents trying to pull the children out of the foster care for their own selfish motives.
• Framing the Guilty Party: In 14 Days in Shonan, Urumi frames Sakurako's abusive father for counterfeiting, since there's no guarantee that he'd be sent to prison for long, even with the evidence they have of his physical and sexual abuse of his daughter.
• Free the Frogs: One of Urumi's past "classroom terrorism" pranks was releasing tens of thousands of roaches in the teachers' office.
• Freudian Excuse: Every single bully/unsympathetic character is given a backstory explaining their behavior.
  • Teshigawara tries to justify his doings to Onizuka and Fuyutsuki by talking about his Freudian excuse. They both refute it and insist that he is just a loser who indulges in self-pity and that this is not a reason to act like a psycho.
  • Shibuya has the most literally Freudian Excuse of all — he was the victim of incestuous abuse from his mother.
  • Mr. Uchiyamada has his shares of this as well, and unlike Teshigawara, they're actually very effective and really makes you understand why he acts the ways he do.
  • Subverted when Onizuka confronts Mayu's gang and every member starts shouting why they hate all teachers. It is subverted because some of their reasons are very petty, and Onizuka calls them loser idiots that blame everyone else for their behaviour and their troubles, and states he also got expelled and had a ton of troubles with teachers and cops, but he got his act together.
  • Almost all of the foster kids in Shonan 14 Days have deep-seated issues from their terrible childhoods. Some of them act out violently, especially Seiya, Miki, and the Sakaki twins.
• Game-Breaking Injury: Mainly in the final volume of the manga where Onizuka is targeted by a group of baseball bat wielding motorcycle riders who hit him in the head multiple times. What really makes this fight dramatic is that Onizuka is suffering from a brain condition in which if he suffers one more major blow to the head, he will die. The biker gang is well aware of this information.
• Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: Onizuka and his most loyal students try a bunch of these (with Kikuchi and Urumi often pointing out that something wouldn't work) when he has to come up with 8 million yen in a week. Saejima is always trying to rope Onizuka into one of these, usually an obvious Ponzi scheme.
• Gilligan Cut: Inverted. Onizuka says that Ryuji will lend him 8 million yen, "even if he has to chop off a finger to do it." Immediate cut to Ryuji saying "And where would I get 8 million yen? Chop off a finger? Dude! 8 million yen?! Are you high or something?"
• Going Commando: Tokiwa and the Angels corner Azusa, steal her panties, and cut off the bottom of her skirt with scissors. Then they send a mass email to the whole school telling everyone that she's not wearing underwear.
• Going to the Store: When Anko goes out to meet Noboru, she tells her mother that she's going to the store. Her mother wonders "You took a shower to go to the store? And is that my perfume?"
• Goldfish Scooping Game: At the summer festival, Noboru expresses sympathy for the goldfish (as they obviously don't live very long compared to pet store fish). This wins him major points in Anko's eyes.
• Gonk:
  • Onizuka in intense moments of surprise, exasperation, fear, hunger, or pretty much anything else. A lot of the male cast, in fact.
  • The main examples: other Fukada girl (nicknamed "Jaws"), the biology teacher (nicknamed "Chihuahua") and Takao (aka "Big Red").
• Good Behavior Points: One of the central aspects of Misuzu Daimon's new regime is the usage of a point system to determine teacher pay, which naturally hits unconventional teachers like Onizuka the hardest (the demerits for dyed hair, being Asleep in Class, misusing school equipment, etc. add up to -100, meaning he'd get zero pay that month). He manages to flip the script by actually earning more than 100 points by getting a Hikikomori to return to school.
• Goofy Print Underwear: Onizuka wears boxers with pandas on them in Chapter 158.
• Gratuitous English: Mr. Sakurai/Sakurada often says some English words in his speech, just inserting them randomly and for no reason. Even complete exclamations like "OH MY GOD!" But at least he seemed to be aware of what he was saying.
• Gratuitous French: Urumi is fluent in French in-story. This gives a Bilingual Bonus^note or Reality Has No Subtitles plot hole in the scene where Ms. Fujimori is introduced, since the dubbed version doesn't give any subtitles. Translated, she says: I would never forgive myself, you perhaps forgot it! What you said to me that day, your father is a test-tube in the freezer.....What a coward, you!
• Groin Attack:
  • Onizuka gets bitten by a snake on his "thing". Fortunately it was a non-venomous one made to look like a cobra.
  • Anko and her clique used to practice some variations of this on Yoshikawa. Though Anko insists it wasn't her, but Mayuko, and she "just kinda... watched...".
  • In Shonan 14 Days, Urumi puts remote-detonating firecrackers in Onizuka's underwear. She lets Shinomi press the button for catharsis.
• Group Picture Ending: The final panel of the last chapter is a group shot of Onizuka, his students, and Fuyutsuki.
• Gyaru Girl:
  • A trio of seniors (appearing somewhere between kogal and ganguro) called the "Black Stars" briefly appear in Chapter 64.
  • Yoshiko Uchiyamada adopts a tanned and bleached-blonde style after her first appearance.
  • Anko's childhood friend Rinka is also a gyaru and her boyfriend Mah is a gyaru-oh.
• Hands-On Approach: Onizuka once tries this on Fuyutsuki to teach her how to play video games.
• Hard Head: Onizuka's head is the body part he gets hit in the most, and it tends to have little effect. The damage has been accumulating over the years, though (see Game-Breaking Injury above). On rare occasions he's actually seen biking with a helmet.
• Headless Horseman: One of the "ghosts" in the Kimodameshi is a headless biker, played by Onizuka.^note Wataru Takagi actually played a headless biker in Ghost Stories.
• Hellistics:
  • Onizuka is on a train on the way to his last-chance interview for a teaching position. He spots an old man fondling a woman's behind and, being the direct sort, headbutts him. Good coincidence: the young woman is also applying for a position at the same school and is grateful for his help. Bad coincidence: the old man is the principal of the school and the one interviewing him.
  • Interestingly enough, Onizuka is for seemingly unrelated reasons the name of the man's wife's and daughter's pet dog, who hates him and has apparently been trained to pee in his shoes. ...Actually, both this series and its chronological prequel do a lot to show everybody getting in everybody's (even their own) way regardless of whether they're trying to. The closest thing there seems to be to a moral is something like "You can only help being your own bad guy, so admit who you are, loosen up, live free and dirty, and accept the world will still dish out grief."
• Help, I'm Stuck!: In 14 Days in Shonan, Onizuka is sneaking into White Swan late at night through the bathroom window, but gets stuck just as Ayame comes in to take a bath.
• High-Pressure Blood: To keep from falling asleep while studying, Onizuka wears a headband with spikes facing his forehead. When he falls asleep onto the table, he immediately wakes up screaming and spouting blood.
• High Turnover Rate: Warning: being the teacher of one of the worst classes in the school may be hazardous to your health. Side effects include: madness, suicide attempts, cult-worship, eating disorders, brushes with death, public humiliation (which, considering this is Japan, is a Fate Worse than Death) and broken arms.
• Hikikomori: Onizuka encounters one such shut-in, Yuuki Miyamori. He's the son of a yakuza boss and believes that people were only his friend out of fear of his father. Noboru realizes that Yuuki is an otaku when he asks the family about his activities and learns that he only leaves the house to buy train schedules because he's a Rail Enthusiast. He then becomes Yuuki's first real friend.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Murai is on the receiving end of this twice in one chapter. First he tries to trick Onizuka into eating a cockroach, but it ends up in his spoon, and then Onizuka jostles him so the spoon slips into his mouth. Then he tries to set a tripwire so Onizuka will fall and have his face sliced open by scissors, but Onizuka appears behind him and pushes him into the room. He only narrowly misses losing his ear.
• Hollywood Healing: Onizuka is able to recover from life-threatening injuries easily, and this surprises the others who emit the hypothesis he could really be an alien or demon. (Well, his name is Onizuka...)
• Hospital Hottie: Naoko. She takes advantage of it, getting all the boys to buy the products she's selling by playing up her sex appeal, and the girls by selling them cosmetics with the implication that they can look like her if they buy them.
• Hostess Club: Uchiyamada takes some of the Dirty Old Men on the school board to one where the waitresses are bottomless and wear very short aprons over mirrored floors.
• Hot-Blooded: Onizuka. Especially when played by Steve Blum.
• How Dare You Die on Me!: Urumi does this, even threatening to kill herself, when Onizuka has his Game-Breaking Injury and enters a coma.
• How Unscientific!: Onizuka is momentarily possessed by ghosts after he takes on the very stressful job of picking up the remains of those who committed suicide by jumping in front of trains. Miyabi and Fujiyoshi also meet the ghost of a child killed in a road accident, though they don't realize it until after seeing a sign talking about his death.
• How We Got Here: GTO: Paradise Lost has Onizuka starting in prison already, and tells his story to another inmate.
• Huge Schoolgirl: Fuyumi Kujirakawa. She has a Meaningful Name, as "Kujira" means "Whale".
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming:
  • Each chapter and episode of the anime is called "Lesson [#]".
  • Each chapter title in 14 Days in Shonan is the name of a Japanese pop song.
• Idiot Hero: Onizuka, big time.
• Impersonating an Officer: In 14 Days in Shonan, Urumi, Onizuka, and Katsuyuki all impersonate police officers at some point.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Vice-principal Uchiyamada.
• Innocent Innuendo:
  • Zig-Zagged. School Nurse Naoko Moritaka is shown making orgasmic faces and saying things like "No...no more! I can't take it!" but it's shown she was actually donating blood. It turns out she does get turned on by this though.
  • At Tomoko's apartment, Miyabi hears a scream and then this conversation:
  Tomoko: Teacher, no! You can't do that!
  Onizuka: Come on, just a little bit. What's the worst that could happen?
  Tomoko: Nooo! Stop! Don't touch there! I'm losing control... Ah. Oh. Ahhh.
  Miyabi runs in, to find them playing a video game.
• Instant Fish Kill: In one chapter of 14 Days in Shonan, Onizuka cuts a power line and uses it to electrocute fish for a barbecue. He also ends up electrocuting a shellfish poacher, who he has to give CPR to.
• Intentionally Awkward Title: Chapter 65 is titled "Expand your Butthole" or some equivalent depending on the translation.
• Interquel: Shonan: 14 Days takes place after the Teshigawara arc in Great Teacher Onizuka.
• Interrupted Suicide: Several students and at least one teacher try to kill themselves during the series; thanks to Onizuka, nobody succeeds.
• Intimate Healing: Onizuka gets into a sleeping bag to share his body heat with Urumi after saving her from her suicide attempt. Unfortunately for him, he's too unconscious to enjoy the act.
• Invincible Hero: Onizuka, obviously. The man has been shot and stabbed and yet, he still manages to win all his fights.
• Invisible Parents: Several students' parents are never seen, notably Kikuchi's and Noboru's (Kikuchi's mom is seen briefly in the live-action).
• Itasha: In the first chapter of GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, Onizuka paints a portrait of Haruhi Suzumiya on Vice-Principal Uchiyamada's Precious, Precious Car.
• Japanese Delinquents:
  • Onizuka and Ryuji used to be this, and the previous manga Bad Company and Shonan Junai Gumi is all about their adventures as delinquents.
  • Onizuka's class in the pilot episode is full of delinquents, though he gets them to clean up their behavior (and the school) after a little tough love.
  • Mayu has a gang of delinquents, and gathers more than a hundred for his "payback" plot against the teachers.
• Joshikousei: All of the female students.
• Karma Houdini: The kids in Onizuka's class (Anko, Murai, Urumi, Miyabi, etc) get away with terrorizing and generally ruining the lives of several teachers before Onizuka shows up, but somehow it's all swept under the carpet like it never happened once Onizuka won them over.
• Kawaiiko:
  • Tomo-chan. She's 14 and still collects dolls and likes cute things.
  • Later Tokiwa fakes one. Complete with a bunny backpack.
• Kick the Dog: Aside from multiple evil actions which are "okay" because they're targeted towards "enemies", Miyabi is quite fond of this, especially with her treatment of Tomoko and once using her good-natured hard-working classmate Fujiyoshi as a pawn in her plan.
• Kid Detective: Azusa's younger sister Makoto is in her high school's detective club and manages to solve her sister's kidnapping with uncanny speed.
• Kimodameshi: Onizuka sets one up during the Okinawa class trip, with plenty of Japanese horror movie references sprinkled throughout. It also references The Thing (1982), with a head-spider that has Onizuka's facial features!
• Kissing In A Tree:
  • Kusano and Fujiyoshi taunt Anko with this after she's just admitted to liking Noboru.
  • Onizuka taunts Kikuchi and Tokiwa after he basically pushed their faces together into an Accidental Kiss (or was it accidental?).
• Kitschy Local Commercial: Onizuka makes several low budget local commercials starring Tomoko, in order to give her a start in show business.
• Lap Pillow: Anko gives one to Noboru in Chapter 177 after accidentally swinging her purse into his face.
• Last-Name Basis:
  • Only Onizuka's closest friends (mainly Ryuji, Nagisa, and Saejima, who have known him since the days of GTO: The Early Years) call him by his given name Eikichi. Understandable, since he's a teacher, though one with a very informal style.
  • The kids vary whether they're referred to by first or last name, but Kikuchi is almost never referred to by his given name, Yoshito.
• Laundromat Liaisons: Urumi first meets Onizuka with a Sexy Surfacing Shot from a pond in the park. He takes her to a laundromat to dry her clothes, and she pretends to seduce him, before calling the cops.
• Like an Old Married Couple: In 14 Days in Shonan, everyone else at White Swan can see the Belligerent Sexual Tension between Onizuka and Shinomi, though they of course deny it.
• Lonely Rich Kid:
  • Nanako's parents started out poor and nice and became less pleasant as they got rich. Onizuka solves the family problem without bankrupting them, however. With a sledgehammer.
  • A number of characters including Urumi and Miyabi fit the bill as well. While their parents aren't gone except Urumi, who doesn't know her father as anything more than a sperm donor, they're emotionally detached from them to the point they act out. Granted they have more issues than just this trope, but GTO prefers a cornucopia of issues for its characters.
  • Another one of the minor characters that Onizuka helps is the son of a Yakuza boss who has become a Hikikomori because he didn't want to be ostracized by his peers because of his dad. (Later, he gets over it, and uses the fact that Daddy is in the Yakuza as a leverage point against bullies.)
• Malicious Misnaming:
  • Tomoko gets called "Slo-mo-ko" (Toroko in Japanese) by the rest of the class because they think she's a Brainless Beauty.
  • Miyabi and the other anti-teacher students sometimes use negative versions of the title, like "Garbage Teacher Onizuka" or "Great Target Onizuka".
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Nanako finds a lot of objects in Onizuka's apartment that show he masturbates frequently, even using an instant noodle cup. Fuyutsuki and others even stumble on Onizuka masturbating while watching a porn movie, and he tries his best to tell them it's Not What It Looks Like. He hasn't changed much since he was a hormone-driven teenager.
• The Merch: In-Universe. Onizuka gives Tomoko her start in show business by entering her in a beauty pageant, and when her popularity exploded because The Runner-Up Takes It All, he was waiting right outside with pre-made Tomoko merch to make a quick buck.
• Misplaced a Decimal Point: Urumi says this to her math tutor when he thinks he's solved a ridiculously complex equation she posed to him. She says if he solves it within five minutes, she'll give him her panties.
• Mistaken for Gay:
  • Uchiyamada worries that Onizuka grabbing and embracing him will make people think they're gay. Of course, Onizuka was just getting a good grip so he could suplex Uchiyamada into the floor.
  • Invoked by one of the students by putting a convincing poster of Onizuka and Vice Principal Uchiyamada on the school bulletin board. It took another photo that was suspicious on closer inspection to have this jossed.
• Model Scam: Subverted. Tomoko thinks this is what's going to happen to her, but ends up getting discovered by a real talent agent.
• The Mole: Kinoshita is one for Misuzu Daimon. Then he turns out to be a Double Agent. The Angels also serve as moles among the student body.
• Monster Mash: Played for comedy as Mayu's arm wrestling challenge escalates into this.
• Molotov Cocktail: Teshigawara makes some during his Sanity Slippage and attempted takeover of the school. Onizuka grabs one, bites off the wick with his teeth, relights it, and throws it at the water tank to douse all the others.
• Mood Whiplash: In Chapter 99, Noboru and Anko are trapped in a cave with an underwater entrance and have no idea how to get out. Cut to the others looking for them, Urumi riding Onizuka like a horse with an S&M whip up his ass and a ball gag on.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The shark-toothed small people who often show up.
• Mugging the Monster: A couple of punks try this on Onizuka right at the beginning of the first episode. Counts as an Establishing Character Moment.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Onizuka has one of these moments when he thinks he's accidentally killed Urumi and has taken her body to the woods to hide it.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: Mr. Sakurai has one of these when he jumps into the sewer canal to avoid being caught by the police.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In an omake for Volume 12, Onizuka is asking Urumi if he or Sorimachi is better-looking. Sorimachi is the actor who played Onizuka in the live-action TV adaptation of GTO.
  • In a later chapter, he tells a Hospital Hottie that she looks like Nanako Matsushima, who played Azusa.
  • In 14 Days in Shonan, while pulling a …But He Sounds Handsome, Onizuka describes himself as looking just like Sorimachi.
  • Azusa dressing up as a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl may be a reference to Nanako Matsushima starring in The Ring (though she didn't play Sadako). Coincidentally, her second live-action actress, Miori Takimoto, also starred in a Ring film (Sadako 3D 2), though after starring in GTO.
• Naked Apron: While cramming under Fuyutsuki's coaching, Onizuka fantasizes about her wearing one while cooking.
• Nails on a Blackboard: Onizuka does this to get his class to stop gossiping about him several times.
• Naïve Everygirl: Surprisingly in this series full of schoolgirls, a teacher, Azusa Fuyutsuki.
• Nerd Glasses: Hiroshi Uchiyamada/Various students.
• New Transfer Student: Chapter 163 introduces two new tranfer students, Sho Shibuya and Ai Tokiwa.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The Childhood Friends trio of Tomoko, Urumi, and Miyabi is this.
  • Tomoko is the nice one, partially due to Dumb Is Good but also just being a genuinely nice person, hoping to remind Miyabi that We Used to Be Friends.
  • Miyabi is the mean one, hating all teachers and getting the whole class to join her in driving them to quit. When most of her classmates have "betrayed" her by coming around to Onizuka's side (and he himself has shown her kindness), she doesn't stop, and reveals Urumi's secret to the whole school.
  • Urumi is the in-between, though she has some Token Evil Teammate and Manipulative Bitch moments, especially in retaliation for Miyabi's more horrible actions.
• Non-Residential Residence: Onizuka lives in a space at the top of the roof access stairway of Holy Forest Academy.
• Noodle Incident:
  • What happened to class 2-4 to make it full of problem students, though the incident does eventually come to light in the final chapters.
  • Also, what happened to Mayu to make him sickly.
  • One bonus page from Volume 8 is a police report mentioning Onizuka washing his boxers in a holy fountain.
  • "GTO - Shonan 14 Days" gets its story from one of these. At the end of the "Teshigawara" arc he wound up in the hospital for a gunshot wound, but escaped soon afterwords. He went missing for 14 days, and when he came back, there was a wanted poster floating around with a man that looked a lot like him.
• Nosebleed: The North-American manga edition bothers to explain the Old Wives Tale about sexual arousal giving nosebleeds.
• No Swastikas: Surprisingly, the American dub kept the swastikas on the bosozoku's scarves in Episode 19. And it's not a manji backwards Buddhist swastika either (卍). It's a full-on tilted Nazi swastika◊.
• "Not So Different" Remark: It's mentioned in chapter 107 that Mr. Uchiyamada used to be a idealistic teacher who wanted to help his students with their problems, just like Onizuka, but after helping too many ungrateful bastards to count, and becoming more self-aware of Japan's declining morals, he got tired of being the helper.
• Not What It Looks Like: When Azusa and the others finally find Anko and Noboru, she'd just grabbed him in her arms to get away from some bugs — oh, and they're both in their underwear to dry off.
• Offended by an Inferior's Success: Pretty much all the other teachers (except Fuyutsuki and Chairwoman Sakurai), but especially Teshigawara and Vice Principal Uchiyamada, hate that Onizuka succeeds as a teacher despite being a former delinquent who hasn't changed much, went to a "third-rate college" (where he didn't even study, just paid someone else to take his exams)^note though they might not know that, and pulls outrageous stunts, often involving violence (and damage to Uchiyamada's Precious, Precious Car). They especially hate that the Chairwoman protects him from most consequences, or at least gives him a chance to fix things instead of immediately firing him.
  • Teshigawara in particular is jealous of Onizuka's romantic relationship with Fuyutsuki, who he feels entitled to, despite just stalking her, while Onizuka actually becomes her friend first. There's also an element of classism, since Teshigawara thinks that being a politician's son and going to Tokyo University makes him better than others.
• Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date: Onizuka plays hooky to take a stressed out Fuyutsuki rowing, but he claims he does this all the time by himself when he's feeling stressed. And then the boat turns out to be leaky. He also takes Murai's mom on a boat date. It doesn't leak that time, but the date's still ruined, this time by having to rescue Murai, who jumped in the water to stop the date, despite not being able to swim.
• Omniscient Morality License: Onizuka is a Class S holder of one! No matter what crazy, illegal, unethical, immoral thing he has in mind, it always turns out for the best for his students and all is always forgiven.
• One Judge to Rule Them All: Warning Productions during the talent search Onizuka sets up for Tomoko, though she also does give the best, and most moving performance (ad-libbing completely off script and using action figures as props).
• One-Man Army: Onizuka - so badass he armwrestled 99 local hardcore delinquents (some of them not exactly looking human) one after another.
• One-Sided Arm-Wrestling: Look up at One-Man Army.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • This is subverted with Mr. Sakurai and Mrs. Sakurai (in the manga only), who are unrelated, and two female characters named Naoko, though one is just one of those two girls hanging with Anko.
  • Two girls named Fukada are the focus of one chapter in which Kunio gets hooked up on a blind date with one of them. Too bad for him it's not the one he likes.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Onizuka:
  • Teshigawara empties a gun in Onizuka's chest... he gets better. And not without kicking his ass first, and even jumping from a building to save him from suicide.
  • Not to mention going on a 14-day long adventure immediately afterwards, if the Shonan 14 Days spin-off is to be believed. In which he gets stabbed and shot again.
  • Onizuka shrugs off being hit by a truck, jumps off a building onto a car (twice), receiving only a broken arm that he doesn't even notice until it's pointed out the next day (and does push-ups on it), and even then continues to play computer games like a god (while keeping track of his winning streak on his still-untreated and horrifically swollen arm). He's also survived a number of gunshot wounds that should have been fatal.
• Only Sane Woman: Though she appears in only one episode, Fuyumi Kujirakawa is one of the only female students who is more grounded and sane.
• Otaku - Noboru Yoshikawa - a gaming otaku; Yoshito Kikuchi - a computer otaku, and Onizuka has his otaku moments.
  • Not to mention The Gundam Brothers.
  • Ryoichi Mizuhara and Headmaster Fukumizu from 14 Days in Shonan are model airplane enthusiasts.
• Ouija Board: In Chapter 25 Onizuka plays one with his class.
• Pac Man Fever: The anime shows Onizuka playing Ape Escape. That said, the sound effects were just generic game-like sound effects, nothing from Ape Escape.
• Paintball Episode: The second half of Chapter 76 shows a four-way paintball battle in the school between Onizuka and Murai, Fujiyoshi and Kusano, Kikuchi and Urumi, and Yoshikawa and Tomoko. Tomoko and Yoshikawa win.
• Panty Thief: A Running Gag in 14 Days in Shonan involves Uchiyamada's dog Eikichi stealing the panties of a young woman whose clinic he's in, while she's wearing them.
• Papa Wolf: Woe betide to those who dare to harm Onizuka's students.
  • Somewhat justified, in that in Real Life, if something happens to one's students, it can end up being your fault no matter what. Lawsuits abound, you get a bad reputation, etc.
• Parental Incest:
  • It's very, very heavily implied that Sho Shibuya was sexually abused by his mother; nobody believed him when he went to the authorities, so he murdered her (or at the very least attacked her with murderous intent) and then attempted suicide.
  • In Shonan 14 Days, Sakurako's father is implied to have molested her in the past, and almost does again when he regains custody (before Onizuka and the others can stop him).
• Parent with New Paramour: Kunio Murai's Berserk Button is any man (especially his homeroom teacher Onizuka) dating his Absurdly Youthful Mother.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Onizuka's revenge on Anko and her clique for Noboru. Though to be fair, that revenge was quite tame compared to what they did to him...
• Pervert Alliance: the Musashino Kinky Club, a select group of respectable citizens with perverted desires, and Urumi attempts to sell them Miyabi and her two friends in order to help Onizuka to pay a trip to Okinawa for the school.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: In 14 Days in Shonan, Onizuka sneaks into White Swan through the bathroom window just as Ayame is coming in to take a bath. He hides himself in the bathtub, and when she inevitably finds him, tells the truth and points out that his eyes have been closed the whole time. She seems to forgive him, and asks if she or Shinomi has better breasts. Onizuka says she does, which gives her all the proof she needs that he really did peep on her. She throws a clothes iron at his head.
• Pet the Dog: Tomoko serves as the "dog" for both Miyabi and Urumi (somewhat literally in Urumi's case, as lampshaded by the observers), and Urumi herself gets one at the end of her arc when it's revealed that the picture she hid behind a massive firewall was a picture of young Miyabi, Tomoko, and Urumi as friends.
• Playboy Bunny: Onizuka talks the naive but kind-hearted Tomoko Nomura into putting on such an outfit. He then leaves her in a crowded street without telling her what he has in mind. When she gets picked up by dodgy-looking guys, she thinks Onizuka wants her to become a porn actress. She's specifically cosplaying the character Cutey Honey (complete with hairstyle), whose outfit may have been influenced by this trope.
• Potty Emergency: Onizuka keeps ringing the doorbell at the Kanzaki household until Urumi lets him in, at which point he moves to the bathroom faster than the eye can see.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: A memorable one from when Onizuka is about to go to town on Teshigawara's ass:
  Onizuka: Welcome to the new, most painful moment of your life!
• The Precious, Precious Car: Uchiyamada's Cresta.
• Product Placement: Onizuka's a fan of Ape Escape and Wild ARMs, and is a PlayStation gamer in general, if the anime's to be believed.
• Punk in the Trunk: Mayu has a girl hide in the trunk of the car he "gives" Onizuka, and then calls the cops to report a kidnapping.
• Purely Aesthetic Era / Present-Day Past: The fashion trends, pop culture, and level of technology in the original manga is implied to be from the late-1990s and the early-2000s, during the original run of the manga. Shonan 14 Days, however, feels more at home in the late-2000s and early-2010s, which is jarring as it's supposed to be set between major events in the original manga. Likewise, Paradise Lost is set in a decade where social media, smartphones and tablets are the norm, despite being set in the immediate school year after the original.
  • Another noticeable example is Uchiyamada's Toyota appearing as a late-2000s Crown Royal in the opening pages of Shonan 14 Days, only to inexplicably revert to the original Cresta design in following appearances in the manga. Paradise Lost finally officiates the Crown Royal as Uchiyamada's car.
• Put on a Bus: Maruyama (more like Reassigned to Antarctica, since he's sent to run a school in Hokkaido). Tomoko in the live action (though she comes Back for the Finale).
• The Queenpin: In Shonan 14 Days, Lady Moryo is much more fearsome than her husband, who the Sakaki twins have wrapped around their fingers. She takes no lip from them.
• Quickly-Demoted Woman: Ai Tokiwa.
• The Quincy Punk: Onizuka dresses like one, complete with a mohawk, to teach Urumi a lesson.
• Ram by Braking: The guys who kidnapped Hidemi do this to try and stop Onizuka from following them on a scooter. It destroys the scooter, but he manages to cling to the roof of the car.
• Rape as Drama:
  • The attempted rape of Miyabi and her friends is one of the manga's most chilling moments, as is the coldness with which Urumi arranged it.
  • Ai Tokiwa's backstory, and attempted again by the Brute Club.
  • Also, Sakurako was abused by her father.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Souichi Aragi in Paradise Lost has a lot of connections in the entertainment industry and Yakuza, so much that he's considered The Don of the entertainment industry. But the moment Onizuka hijacked an actress who's been getting sexual harassment from one of his talent agencies, he told the agency head to let it go, since such conduct is so unbecoming. And when said head takes matter further and ordered a hit from the Yakuza, once Onizuka brought the matter up to him, he was pissed and used his connection to call the hit off.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Onizuka gives a truly epic one to Uchiyamada in Chapters 140-141, when he and Noboru have been rushing to save Urumi from dying, and Uchiyamada has been speeding after them (and later clinging to Onizuka's legs to stop him), babbling about how his job is the most important thing.
  Onizuka: SHUT UP!!! There's a girl out here dying and all you can think about is your career?!? There's a word for teachers like you! GARBAGE!! [...] Call the police! Call the board of education! Call anyone you like! Just don't you dare call yourself a teacher. Not in front of me. Not ever again!! Four hundred students in ten years so each one's worth one four-hundredth?! Listen to yourself! Is that why your mother made you work so hard?! So you could spout off crap like that?!? For you maybe they were all just one in four hundred... just another slab of flesh in the long line at the registration table. But to them, you were their homeroom teacher. The only one they had!
  • He gives another one to Miyabi's father, calling him out for neglecting his family.
  Onizuka: You are a piece of work! Even with a knife pressed to your little girl's neck, you keep spitting out the bullshit! I say you were just too scared to go home. You didn't want to face the mess that your family has become. Easier to stay away. Isn't that right, daddy?
• Refuge in Audacity: Most of what Onizuka does.
  • The first example that springs to mind is in episode 1 when a gang is holding and threatening the students who tried to blackmail him. Not only does he get them out safely he does so after having a serious man-to-man chat with them about the relationship between teacher and student in between torturing them with two flashlights strapped to his forehead for no clear reason. All with the willing assistance of the gang in question. As a result of this he is praised for being the first teacher to reform that delinquent class. The entire class praises him for his hard work, voluntarily cleans the school each day and commends him to the school as someone who must graduate as a teacher.
    • In the manga, Onizuka snapped and called the gang out himself; he realises it was a mistake the next morning. Then he gets praised.
  • When Kikuchi makes lewd photoshops of him, instead of blowing up, Onizuka recognizes his talent and asks him to make some for his personal use, even offering to pay.
  • To get Miyabi's neglectful parents to pay attention to her, he stages a kidnapping and (unintentionally) involves the police and military. It escalates to the point that he tells Mr. Aizawa to shoot himself if he really loves his daughter, which he does.
  • In The Movie, to deal with a student being bullied, he not only encourages a fistfight between the boys, he has their classmates place bets on the outcome.
• Road Apples: There are a good number of gags involving Onizuka and his "depositions". Once a teacher tried to punch him and Onizuka used a cardboard box with a sample of his feces for a medical examination to shield himself. Cue the unfortunate teacher urgently needing a bath.
• Running Gag:
  • Principal Uchiyamada's beloved Toyota Cresta/Crown being damaged.
  • Onizuka referring to his Nakama from his high school days while saying how they'd always be there for each other... only to be turned down.
• Save Our Students: GTO is a fairly downplayed example despite the name. Onizuka doesn't teach them how to do well in school and ace all their tests or whatever, but rather teaches them about the moral principles necessary to live a good life. And usually by accident, at that.
• Save the Villain: Onizuka all the time, whether to students trying to make his life hell (Miyabi) or to someone who shot him multiple times (Teshigawara). He also saves Daimon from a burning building, by riding through it on a motocycle.
• Saving the Orphanage:
  • In the 1998 live-action, the final two episodes involve a plot by a corrupt Education Ministry official to tear down Seirin Academy and replace it with sports facilities, putting all the teachers out of a job. Despite being fired in the penultimate episode, Onizuka leads an occupation of the building by his class to stop the demolition. They succeed when evidence of the official's corruption comes to light and he's arrested.
  • In Shonan 14 Days, White Swan Group Home is the target of the corrupt mayor's attempts to shut it down and reunite kids with their parents — never mind that Abusive Parents are the reason for many of those kids being in foster care.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: An editor's note in one chapter notes that the Gundam trio are actually saying "crunch crunch crunch" out loud, it's not just the sound of their footsteps.
• Scare 'Em Straight: In Shonan 14 Days, Onizuka, with the help of Kikuchi, Urumi, and some of the White Swan kids, constructs an elaborate illusion to make Miko Sakaki think she's wanted for murder, as a way to get her to finally realize that she's not alone and she should care about other people. He even gets a yakuza kingpin to play along (though that may have been his wife's decision).
• Scary Flashlight Face: A creepy old guy Onizuka got to tell a scary story does this right before the Kimodameshi in Okinawa.
• Scary Shiny Glasses:
  • Suguru Teshigawara.
  • Yoshito Kikuchi.
  • Uchiyamada when he's talking about his beloved Cresta.
  • Anko's mom.
• School Festival: The last chapter of the manga has the students making a giant sculpture of Onizuka and Uchiyamada for the festival. In the 1998 live-action, he organizes one in the finale while he and the students are occupying the school to save it from being torn down.
• Seashell Bra: Two of the assassins in 14 Days in Shonan are Femme Fatales wearing only seashell bikinis and bandanas over their lower faces.
• Seppuku: Urumi threatens jigai with a pen (or mechanical pencil) to get her way, even drawing blood.
• Sex Sells: After Tomoko becomes an actress, she stars in a cell phone commercial where the camera mostly focuses on the phone held between her boobs.
• Sexual Euphemism: In Urumi's fantasy where she and Onizuka elope to Hokkaido, and they live in The Alleged House:
  Urumi: Oh, teacher! Here, let me help you erect your plank!
  Onizuka: Oh, Urumi!!! I'll help you fill the well! Oh, yes!
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Onizuka pushes Anko to realize and express her feelings towards Noboru, and uses the Test of Courage to pair up them and several other couples.
  • Makoto for Onizuka x Fuyutsuki.
  "Maybe you could be his super-sucker, then he wouldn't buy that kind of stuff anymore."
• Shockingly Expensive Bill:
  • Urumi is blackmailing Onizuka, and orders him to take her and some of her classmates to an expensive sushi restaurant, where they order several platters of expensive fatty tuna. Eventually, Onizuka snaps and buys five more servings for himself and starts eating like there's no tomorrow. Cue heroic music. Then he orders five more servings of abalone and sea urchin. And a sashimi boat. And 10 MORE servings of salmon roe, ark shell, and sweet shrimp. His plan from the beginning was to Dine and Dash, which he does, still clutching the sushi boat, with his students running behind him, pursued by the chef. Then he gets hit by a car and forces the driver to pay his bill.
    • And then goes back to the same restaurant and orders more food''. The bill (which the driver has to pay) ends up being over 200,000 yen.^note More than $1800 in 2021 currency.
  • In Shonan 14 Days, Uchiyamada and Fukumizu go to a cosplay club that turns out to be a "clip joint" charging them over a million yen. And then Eikichi (his dog) drags Uchiyamada's wife and daughter inside.
• Shopping Cart Antics: In 14 Days in Shonan, Onizuka puts Ayame into a shopping cart and pushes her at high speed as they run from a group of yakuza assassins.
• Shower of Angst: Miyabi, after being "betrayed" by her teacher.
• Shout-Out: Tons. See the page for a full list.
• Silent Scapegoat: Class 2-4's former teacher, accused of taking humiliating pictures of a handcuffed and naked Miyabi, resigned rather than explain that he'd been framed by her, jealous that he was going to marry someone else.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Often a particularly jaded character (such like Urumi, Miyabi, Ms. Daimon...) will go in a rant about the rotting of the society, Adults Are Useless or abusive/perverted creeps, kids are delinquents, you can trust nobody or they shall abuse you or take advantage of you...
  • Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: Only for being confronted with the opposite trope and being told they are just blind cynics and that mindset is one of the roots of those troubles.
    • Onizuka went so far as to tell Urumi her outlook is not logical. It is cowardly.
• Sitting on the Roof: One of the stock sets is the school roof. A third of their time is in class, another third on the roof and the remainder is everywhere else. Justified, since Onizuka lives in a room right next to the roof entrance and it's the only place on campus he can go to smoke. In 14 Days in Shonan, he and the other residents hang out on the roof of White Swan a lot.
• Skewed Priorities: Rather than seeking immediate medical attention for the bullet wounds in him, Onizuka goes and takes the National Scholastic Aptitude Test first.
  • Even worse in the live-action. Murai has just been beaten unconscious, but do Onizuka and Miyabi take him to a hospital? (Or at least call his mother?) Nope, they spend the next several hours until dawn searching for her lost necklace. And then he goes and takes the test, while bleeding out from a stab wound.
• Skinship Grope: In Shonan 14 Days, Urumi feels up Shinomi while they're both bathing together.
• Sleazy Photoshoot: In the side story "GTO: Great Tomoko Oppai", the shifty talent agent Munakata starts putting Tomoko in risque photoshoots, all in the name of publicity and getting her name out there. This angers her manager, Okinoshima, who is determined to keep her from being exploited.
• Sleep Cute: One chapter features a scene with the entire class piled on top of each other like this.
• Sleeping Dummy: Onizuka sticks a crossing guard cutout in his hospital bed when he sneaks out. In 14 Days in Shonan, he sticks Uchiyamada's dog (also named Eikichi) under his blanket with only a wig poking out.
• Slimeball: Munakata, who talks his way into becoming Tomoko's Smooth-Talking Talent Agent and starts putting her in more risque situations, to her former (now assistant) manager Okinoshima's consternation.
• Snowball Lie: Miyabi's False Rape Accusation of Ōgi started Class 4's anti-teacher campaign in the first place, and quickly got out of hand when Takumi attacked Ōgi and got expelled. It got harder to tell the truth the deeper they got, and Miyabi embraced her role as a "classroom terrorist" so that she would be the only one responsible for coming up with all the plots.
• Socially Scored Society: As part of her plan to "improve" Kissho Academy by removing the undesirable elements among teachers and pupils, Misuzu Daimon sets up a point system under which actions she deems beneficial will be rewarded while other will cause point loss, with a floor under which the student is expelled or the teacher is dismissed.
• Spaghetti Kiss: The inside cover pages of each tankobon feature original sketches, and one is of Urumi nibbling on half of a Pocky as a very surprised Tomoko is eating the other end.
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace:
  • Kunio thinks his mother's getting married, so he hurries to the place where it's being held and starts a rampage. She's just posing for a photo shoot.
  • In the live action adaptation, Onizuka drags Miyabi to interrupt the wedding of the teacher she has a crush on, even pounding on the windows a la The Graduate. She, however, Cannot Spit It Out until Onizuka motorbikes her off a bridge (there was a net underneath).
• Spooky Photographs: When Onizuka temporarily takes a job picking up the remains of people who jumped in front of trains, Kikuchi takes a photo of him that shows him surrounded by ghosts.
• Spotting the Thread: Kikuchi and Urumi notice some inconsistencies in the Frame-Up Miyabi's gang did with Onizuka and the class trip money, like having a typed note from Fujiyoshi despite his family being too poor to afford a computer, and realizing that the photos were taken in the nurse's office at their own school.
• Spy Cam: In Shonan 14 Days, Urumi advises Miki and Sakurako to put a phone with video recording inside a stuffed animal, to get evidence of Sakurako's father's abuse so he'll be arrested.
• Staged Pedestrian Accident:
  • Onizuka's students think he's doing this when he gets hit by a car after trying to Dine and Dash and demands the driver pay for his medical bills (and the Shockingly Expensive Bill from the restaurant), but he indignantly points out that if he was faking it, he wouldn't be bleeding that much.
  • Later on, Fujiyoshi mentions doing this to steal a fancy car.
• Stalker Shrine: Teshigawara has one... no enshrined discarded tea bottles though.
• Statuesque Stunner: Fuyumi Kujirakawa, though she's self-conscious about her height.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Tomoko's sleazy manager Munakata often does this to her assistant manager Okinoshima, leading to several Right Behind Me moments.
• Stocking Mask: Okinoshima wears one in his Imagine Spot of him attacking Munakata in a dark alley.
• Storefront Television Display: In 14 Days in Shonan, Miko walks past a storefront of televisions playing an interview with Onizuka, where he names her as the person suspected of burning down the White Swan group home. It turns out to be a pre-recorded video broadcast to only those screens, as part of an elaborate Scare 'Em Straight plan.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Fuyutsuki dresses as one to scare the students for the Test of Courage in Okinawa.
• Suntan Stencil: Onizuka teaches his students how to do these in Okinawa, and makes an embarrassing Sweetie Graffiti one on Murai's back.
• Super Window Jump: When rescuing Miyabi and her friends, Onizuka combines this with Dynamic Entry and Fast-Roping from a freaking blimp to crash through the hotel suite window.
• Survival Mantra: Tokiwa keeps repeating "I am strong! I'm not afraid of men!" and writing it on the wall when she's having a panic attack.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Onizuka, lots of times, but most triumphantly in chasing Fuyutsuki to Hakuba:
  Onizuka: But I swear, I wouldn't have dreamed of digging around in your panty drawer or anything! *panties come out of his pocket* Oooh, what is this?!
• Take That!: When the three "Gundam Brothers" are using various Gundam series to analyze Urumi's personality, one of them says "the ones who watch that are kids" about G Gundam and another says that Zeta Gundam indicates "destructive impulses", a reference to the very high angst-quotient of that show. Additional humor is lent to this by the fact that one of the three is voiced by Amuro Ray himself.
• Talking with Signs: In 14 Days in Shonan, Onizuka is spying on a bathing Shinomi, who hears him but thinks he's Ayame, the other woman who's a caretaker at White Swan. He can't speak, or he'd reveal his male voice, so he grabs a sketchbook and writes that he has a cold. When she asks about the new guy who's staying there (Onizuka), he does a …But He Sounds Handsome, saying Onizuka "looks just like Sorimachi".
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Onizuka punishes Anko and her friends for abusing Noboru by tying them up and pulling down their underwear, writing stuff on their butts, and taking photos to blackmail them, just like they did to Noboru.
• Tattooed Crook: In 14 Days in Shonan, Seiya's mother's abusive boyfriend has a full-back tattoo, and he has the same one forcibly done to Seiya.
• Teacher/Student Romance:
  • Played straight with Erika and her lover, which kicks off the entire plot.
  • Miyabi's backstory with Ogi.
  • Defied by Onizuka himself, despite several of his students (like Urumi) actually wanting to.
• Tears of Fear: Urumi finally cries for real (not Crocodile Tears) when she thinks she and Onizuka are about to fall from the overpass to the pavement and die.
• Teenage Pregnancy: Kunio's mother was 13 when she got pregnant.
• Teens Are Monsters: One of the reasons Onizuka's often quite extreme form of punishments are even tolerable, outside of Rule of Funny, is the sheer unrepentant cruelty displayed by many of his students.
• Teen Genius: Urumi, of course. Also Kikuchi.
• Thanks for the Mammary:
  • When preventing her from running into a wall of water and drowning, Noboru accidentally grabs Anko's breasts. She's too terrified at almost dying to give him an Unprovoked Pervert Payback.
  • When saving her from hypothermia, Onizuka accidentally grabs Urumi's breasts, but it's clear that he's trying to transfer body heat to her rather than grope her. Later, she wakes up naked in a sleeping bag with him on the way to the hospital, and smiles as she moves the unconscious Onizuka's hands to cup her breasts.
• This Is a Work of Fiction: In one chapter, a note between panels mentions: "The characters in this story are fictional. Any similarities to people living or dead is completely coincidental and quite bizarre." Another chapter mentions "Any resemblance to people or events in your life means you're an extremely strange individual."
• Those Two Guys:
  • Murai's two friends, Fujiyoshi and Kusano.
  • Also two pairs of Those Two Girls - Naoko and Mayuko for Anko, and Saeko and Chikako for Miyabi. They fit the trope even better than Murai's friends, since the guys sometimes do get to play a more important role on their own, especially Fujiyoshi.
  • Those three girls who dabble too much in witchcraft.
• Too Hungry to Be Polite: At the sushi restaurant, Onizuka shoves whole platters of sushi into his mouth with both hands, and messily washes it down with green tea, unbothered by it running down his chin.
• Took a Level in Badass: Uchiyamada, of all people, is influenced by Onizuka so much that he stands up to a sleazy pop singer and goes to the woods to look for a girl. And stands up to a bunch of thugs that want to run him out of town.
• Tormented Teacher: The students of Class 3-4, manipulated by Miyabi into hating all teachers, have driven every one of their homeroom teachers to quit before Onizuka comes on the scene. One of them even joined a cult, and another attempted suicide. One student makes fake naked photos of Onizuka and puts them up around the school, and another gets a snake (fortunately, not a venomous one) to bite his crotch.
• Totem Pole Trench: Onizuka and Sho Shibuya do this to beat up Sho's bullies.
• Tsundere:
  • After the Okinawa incident and her character development, Anko became a Tsundere Type A. Before she was cruel and mean-spiritied, but she had no love interest.
  • Azusa Fuyutsuki is a Dere type.
  • Shinomi in Shonan 14 Days. Pretty similar to her personality in GTO: The Early Years.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm:
  • Uchiyamada threatens to take over Class 3-4 and enforce his rules once Onizuka flunks the test and is fired. Of course, this doesn't happen, and Onizuka shows up right as Uchiyamada finishes his rant.
  • Happens for real when Misuzu Daimon takes over as principal.
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Subverted: it is hinted that Yoshiko Uchiyamada may be the butcher's daughter, not the vice-principal's. Which makes sense, since her mother is not too hot, either.
  • Or it's another of his paranoid delusions. And maybe her mom was a looker back in the day.
• Umbrella of Togetherness: Murai has a flashback of Fukada sharing her umbrella with him, which started his crush on her.
• Unconfessed Unemployment: This happens to Teshigawara's father: he was a politician who got disgraced in an unspecified fallout in which he ended up being The Scapegoat. Said father still "goes to work" every day, acting as if he's still a big mover and shaker, and even his son doesn't know the truth.
• Undead Child: Fujiyoshi and Miyabi stumble onto one at a road crossing late at night. They don't realize it until they wonder why a kid would hang around so late alone and they see a signpost telling about a child being killed here in a road accident.
• Unusual Euphemism: Fukumizu, the headmaster of the foster homes in Shonan, fantasizes about Ayame and "bombing her Pearl Harbor"
• Useless Bystander Parent: In 14 Days in Shonan, Seiya's mother did nothing to protect him from her abusive boyfriend, even after he forcibly gave Seiya a full-back tattoo. Onizuka calls her out on this when Seiya almost shoots the guy.
• Vehicular Kidnapping: In 14 Days in Shonan, Miki is being harassed on the street when a guy in a van pulls up and scares them off. He offers her a ride, and she gets in, only to find out that he's a kidnapper who's abducted several girls off the streets already for a child pornography ring.
• Visual Innuendo: At one point Onizuka wears an elephant costume with the trunk coming out of his crotch, and then sprays Mrs. Oda from it when she walks in.
• Wacky Homeroom: Let's see. There's a Bully Magnet, a "slow" girl who has Hidden Depths, a prankster who uses photoshop to embarrass his teacher, a Teen Genius, and an Alpha Bitch who's made it her mission to destroy Onizuka...and then there's Onizuka himself.
• Wallpaper Camouflage: During a paintball game in the school, Onizuka and Murai disguise themselves with this.
• Watch the Paint Job: Vice Principal Uchiyamada's Toyota Cresta/Crown is destroyed repeatedly, to the point of being a Running Gag.
• Webcomic Time: GTO ran from 1997 to 2002, but covers less than one year in-universe. And then the Interquel GTO: 14 Days in Shonan supposedly takes place in 1998, but has pop-culture trends more like those of the late 2000s-early 2010s, when it was published. The sequel GTO: Paradise Lost, despite taking place only one year after the original manga, is set in a world where social media and smartphones are the norm.
• We Named the Monkey "Jack": The Uchiyamada family dog was originally named DiCaprio, but Yoshiko renamed him Eikichi. She hadn't met Onizuka yet, but Uchiyamada frequently projects his antagonistic relationship with Onizuka onto the dog.
• What a Drag: In Chapter 65, it looks like Onizuka is dragging Urumi behind his bike, but it's quickly shown she's strapped to the front, and it was a blonde mannequin he was dragging. Later on, when Onizuka lets her drive his bike, his coat gets caught and he's briefly dragged along.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: At the end of Chapter 78, Onizuka wakes up in his underwear in a pile of trash, with a 10,000-yen bill in his boxers. He has very little memory of the previous night, when Miyabi and her cronies (with the help of Mr. Sakurai) got him drunk and made him lose the 1.12 million yen for the class trip.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Murai and Fuyutsuki call Onizuka out in two separate occasions when he forgets his morals in favor of his career.
  Murai: Yo, teach. I think you've lost it. You're making it sound like if she dies it's her own fault. Up till now, whatever stupid shit you pulled, we've been behind you... because you never let anyone else get hurt doing it. But what's got into you? This is uncool. You're acting like a grown-up.
  Azusa: Will you just stop it?! Points, points, points! Even you, Mr. Onizuka! Is money that important to you all?! Even more than your own students?! Is that all being a teacher means to anyone?! Collecting a paycheck?!
• Wheelchair Antics: When Great Teacher Onizuka broke his foot, he passed the time by engaging other wheelchair-bound patients in high-speed races.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Minami Kikukawa is a training teacher who would love teaching in a private school because in a public school she would have got to deal with troubles such like bad students and administrative corruption. Fuyutsuki quickly warns her that she is Tempting Fate with that naive attitude. After meeting the Class Four students, she realizes things are not so simple.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit:
  • Tokiwa doesn't even bother to get a bruise or two, being an innocent-looking little girl, while her victims are mostly male delinquents. Onizuka's stupidity helps a lot.
  Onizuka (after looking at a bunch of guys covered with blood and the obvious culprit faking crying): Girl's tears win!
  • Whereas Miyabi's gambit backfires horribly, causing one student to be arrested for assaulting a teacher and said teacher quitting the school rather than explain his innocence.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Onizuka sure loves that German Suplex. So does Makoto Fuyutsuki!
• Writers Cannot Do Math: Some of these examples might be due to translation errors. See also Purely Aesthetic Era and Present-Day Past.
  • Assuming Onizuka's canon birth date of August 3, 1975 (from Shonan Junai Gumi) is still correct, he would be 22 in late 1997 through mid-1998. Since Japanese school years start in the spring, it's likely he began teaching at Holy Forest in early 1998.
  • However, the students' birth dates don't match their ages if the majority of the plot takes place in '98, instead matching their ages at the time the material with their birth dates was published. For example, Tomoko's birth date is given in a 1999 chapter as 1985, but this would make her 12 in 1997. Plus, there's the added Translation Induced Plot Holes caused by aging up some of the kids from 14 to 16 in the English translation, presumably to lessen the squick factor of Teacher/Student Romance with them.
  • Uchiyamada was canonically born in 1946, his father dying in WW2. However, he mentions the class of '57 being "real troublemakers". He would have been 11 years old then.
• Yakuza: Mentioned briefly, GTO became a teacher because the only other path he thought he could succeed at was organized crime.
  • Well there is that part where he stops a kidnapping and beats up five Yakuza guys. And then aces an exam with multiple bullets in him.
  • There's also the time Urumi picks a fight with some yakuza and Onizuka has to grab her and flee.
  • The yakuza have a more prominent role in Shonan 14 Days, where two of the foster kids are living with a yakuza boss.
• Yandere:
  • Urumi showed signs of this when she slit her wrists when she discovered Onizuka had his Game-Breaking Injury.

Tropes specific to the Live Action Adaptations:

• Adaptational Backstory Change:
  • In the 1998 live-action, Murai knows who his father was — a well-known biker who died in an accident (and was actually married to Murai's mom). In the manga and anime, he's never identified, as he abandoned Julia when she became pregnant and isn't an important part of either of their lives anymore.
  • The reason for Class 3-4 hating teachers, which was unrevealed at the time, is changed in the 1998 series to Miyabi's boyfriend Takeshi dying in a motorcycle accident after being forced to leave the school once he could no longer be a star baseball player. In the manga, the reason is Miyabi becoming infatuated with a teacher and making a False Rape Accusation when he rejected her advances.
  • In the 2012 series, Onizuka didn't even consider becoming a teacher until Mrs. Sakurai asked him to, and that was after he helped out both Noboru and Anko just out of the goodness of his heart.
  • In the 2012 live-action, Noboru and Anko are Childhood Friends, adding another dimension to their relationship.
• Adaptation Distillation: The Live Action version trims the cast down to a small handful, which is also further segregated depending on the episode and makes some remarkably accurate guesses on what some of the students' (then unrevealed) teacher-bullying motives are.
• Adaptation Name Change: In the 1998 series, several characters' given names are changed, like Suguru Teshigawara becoming Yuu, Julia Murai becoming Tsubasa, and Ryoko Sakurai becoming Akira.
• Adapted Out: The 1998 Live-Action Adaptation doesn't include Urumi Kanzaki, as she hadn't been introduced yet at the time of production. The 2012 remake includes her, as well as the characters that didn't show up in the anime for similar reasons (Mayu Wakui, Misuzu Daimon, Ai Tokiwa, and Sho Shibuya).
• Age Lift: The kids in the 1998 series are 16 or 17, rather than 14. Murai's mom is age lifted to 34, meaning she had him at the much more normal age of 17, rather than 13. Onizuka is 26 rather than 22.
• Composite Character:
  • In the 1998 series, Onizuka's two closest friends Danma and Saejima are combined into "Ryuji Saejima". Anko's character is also combined with Miyabi.
  • In the 2012 series, this time Nanako is combined with Anko.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: In the 1998 live-action, Uchiyamada's daughter Yoshiko dates Onizuka, though none of them know how the other two are related.
• Enjo Kosai: It's a dramedy about teacher-student relationships that takes place in late 90s Japan. Of course it's going to have this. One episode of the live-action series is entirely focused on it. Miyabi talks her friends Erika and Chikako into doing enjo kosai to get money, and just stealing and running away while the guy's in the shower. Chikako ends up on a date with Onizuka, who gets wise to her plan and tells her that her first time should be out of love, not money.
• Framing Device: The Movie is presented as a story partially narrated by Kaoru, a reporter Going for the Big Scoop who follows him around a small Hokkaido town, thinking he's a fugitive criminal.
• Heel Realization: In the finale of the 1998 live-action, the other teachers (minus Onizuka, who was fired, and Fuyutsuki, who quit in protest) are moping about being fired due to the school closing down when they see him on TV leading a sit-in to save the school. They realize that despite being fired, he cares about the students more than any of them. They decide to join his protest, and so does Uchiyamada after seeing the broadcast separately.
• Prank Date: In the 1998 series, Miyabi's new boyfriend Toudo combines the Setup for Humiliation type with Malicious Trap. He shows her a wonderful time at an amusement park they sneak into after closing... until the stroke of midnight, when he reveals it was all a prank, and his friends come out of hiding (one of them with a video camera). Toudo tells them they can do whatever they want with her, at which point Murai runs out of hiding and is immediately beaten up. Fortunately, Onizuka arrives just in time to save Miyabi.
• Treated Worse than the Pet: The Uchiyamada family (mother and daughter) seems to give more respect to their dog Eikichi than to the father.

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