Series / Ash vs. Evil Dead

Come on! Come on! Let's go space truckin' Come on!

"Pablo, I'm gonna tell you something I've never told anyone. Thirty years ago, my friends and I spent the night at a cabin. We found the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, the book of the dead. Certain passages were recited. It awoke something in the woods. Something evil. I was the only one to escape. But now, the evil has found me."

— Ash Williams, "El Jefe"

Ash vs. Evil Dead is an American horror comedy series created by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell for the Starz network. It is set in the Evil Dead franchise and serves as a sequel to The Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead 2 and (starting with Season 2) Army of Darkness. ^note Rights issues at the time the series started prohibited them from referencing that film, but they were able to be resolved before Season 2 began filming.

The series stars Campbell reprising his role as Ash Williams, the aging lothario and chainsaw-handed monster hunter who has spent the last 30 years following the films avoiding responsibility, maturity and the terrors of the Evil Dead. When a Deadite plague threatens to destroy all of mankind, Ash is finally forced to face his demons — both personal and literal.

The cast includes Ray Santiago as Pablo Bolivar, Dana DeLorenzo as Kelly Maxwell, Jill Marie Jones as Amanda Fisher, Michelle Hurd as Linda B. Emery, Ted Raimi as Chet Kaminski, Pepi Sonuga as Lacey Emery, Lee Majors as Brock Williams, Joel Tobeck as Baal, Arielle Carver-O'Neill as Brandy Barr, and Lucy Lawless as Ruby.

The show premiered on October 30, 2015 and ran for three seasons, ending on April 28, 2018. According to Campbell, this will be the last time he appears onscreen as Ash, though he has continued voicing him in games such as Dead by Daylight and Evil Dead: The Game and has stated in 2023 he'd come back to portray the character if Raimi would direct a new Evil Dead movie and reprised the role for a Voice-Only Cameo in Evil Dead Rise the same year. Campbell also said he is open to voicing the Ash character in an animated series, and in July of 2022, said a series was currently in development, but no other details have been confirmed.

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Tropes:

• Abandoned Hospital: Baal kidnaps Ash and takes him to an abandoned mental hospital to brainwash him and lure his friends there so he can destroy the Necronomicon they're carrying. Lampshaded by Kelly when she sarcastically comments that the place looks "totally not scary at all".
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Ash and Brandy travel through a massive sewer system beneath the small town of Elk Grove in the Grand Finale.
• Accidental Incantation: The entire plot of the series is kicked off when Ash and a random one-night stand decide to try reading random passages from the Necronomicon while stoned.
• Accidental Misnaming:
  • Ash mistakenly calls Pablo "Pedro" in "The Dark One." He chalks it up to having recently hit his head.
  • Ash also accidentally calls Baal "Bill" a few times. He tries to correct himself a few times, but keeps lapsing back.
  • Ash also calls his daughter "Sandy" and "Mandy", since he didn't have the time to remember that her name is Brandy.
• Accidental Murder: A member of the Knights of Sumeria once visited Brock Williams to tell him that his son Ash is The Chosen One. Brock didn't buy a word of it, then accidentally shoved the guy down a flight of stairs, apparently killing him. He just boards up the basement door and forgets about it. When Ash opens up the door years later to investigate, it turns out that the fall didn't actually kill the guy, since he still had enough time to draw a set of spells on the wall, being able to sustain himself on cans of Spam that Brock had been stockpiling.
• Actor Allusion:
  • In "Bound In Flesh" the Necronomicon asks Ash if he thinks he'll become President after he's done fighting Deadites. In Fargo, Bruce Campbell played Ronald Reagan.
  • Ash's conversation with his father in "Home" references The Six Million Dollar Man. Ash states, "I'm better, stronger..." and his father finishes, "Faster?" Both Ash Williams and Steve Austin have their right arms replaced with a "bionic" one.
  • While partying in Jacksonville at the start of "Home" Ash is wearing a Hawaiian shirt nearly identical to the one Campbell wore in My Name is Bruce.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Pablo's Uncle clearly can barely stand Ash. But when Ash replies to his statement that people underestimate him with the line "They end up either in my bed or dead", he chuckles.
• Adaptational Villainy: The episode "Home Again" gives Professor Knowby this treatment, depicting him as having been driven somewhat mad by the Necronomicon, chaining his possessed wife up in the basement, and luring one of his students into the basement and trapping her in a bear trap in an attempt to offset Henrietta's possession.
• Admiring the Abomination: Lionel Hawkins can barely contain his glee when Ash shows him the Necronomicon.
• Ancient Order of Protectors: Season 3 introduces the Knights of Sumeria, an order of knights who have been fighting the Deadites for centuries.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: The Deadites are summoned in the first episode because Ash and some random chick decided to read random passages from the Necronomicon while stoned.
• Alien Blood: Eligos has bluish-green blood.
• And the Adventure Continues: The series ends with Ash waking up from medical suspended animation in the future and driving off with a Knight of Sumeria to combat the Dark Ones, who are "on the move".
• Anti-Hero: Thirty years of survivor's guilt has pushed Ash into becoming a lazy, womanizing loser who lives in a trailer and spends most of his nights lying about himself to pick up floozies in bars. He's still great at fighting Deadites, though. Somewhat subverted in season two, when we learn that part of the reason he is the way he is is because everyone in the town thought he simply murdered everyone, and call him Ashy Slashy. They even made up a creepy song about him that the young kids sing.
• Artificial Limbs: For rights reasons, nothing specific to Army of Darkness is specifically mentioned in Season 1; therefore, Ash has traded in the fully functional mechanical hand for a much more mundane wooden prosthetic. After Ash loses his wooden hand to Amanda in "Books From Beyond", Pablo spends part of the next episode building a mechanical replacement using a Nintendo Power Glove. At the end of the series, Ash wakes up in the future and he's been given a bionic hand that's almost indistinguishable with his natural hand.
• The Alcoholic: Ash's old pal Lem has been "nine days sober" when we first see him. By the next episode, he's drinking kerosene. To be fair, he's a Deadite by this point.
• Almost Kiss: Ash and Amanda in "Fire in the Hole" before Pablo interrupts.
• Anyone Can Die:
  • Subverted. Numerous side characters die every episode, but the regulars always make it out in one piece. Double subverted in "Ashes to Ashes" when Amanda is killed.
  • Happens again in Season 2. In "Last Call" Ash's and Cheryl's dad, Brock, is killed off. In "Trapped Inside" Chet is killed by Deadite!Cheryl, who herself is again killed by Ash and in "Ashy Slashy" Pablo, Lacey and Thomas are all killed. Thomas by Baal, Lacey (who has become a deadite) by Kelly and Pablo by accident (during the ceremony to defeat Baal, Baal slices him in half with his claw while thrashing around. He gets better, though.)
  • In Season 3 every main character is killed by the Kandarian dagger at some point. Since this sends them to the Deadlands instead of outright killing them, they all manage to come Back from the Dead.
• Ass Shove:
  • In "The Morgue," Ash suffers this at the hands of a corpse's possessed intestines, which strangle him and shove his head up the corpse's ass, much to his horror:
  Ash: Oh God, I'm in the butt!
  • In season 3, Ash becomes a victim of this when he gets dragged into the coffin of Candy Barr. Candy is a Deadite at this point, so she fingerbangs Ash with a very long talon.
• Asshole Victim:
  • The paranoid survivalists that Ash and company encounter aren't treated totally unsympathetically even though they try to kill them out of fear that they're government agents. The protagonists manage to clear up the misunderstanding without directly killing any of them. However the pair who get the most brutal and protracted deaths of the group were set up to be the least sympathetic; one threatening to rape Kelly and the other being a former convict who turned the group against heroes when he recognized Amanda.
  • The teenagers who stole Ash's Delta are killed by it. Also qualifies as a Karmic Death.
  • Ash's dad probably qualifies. He's a Dirty Old Man who treats his son terribly (even if the two reconcile right before he dies), and in "Unfinished Business" we learn in a flashback that he remorselessly committed manslaughter a few years before the events of the series.
  • In "Judgment Day," Ruby is killed by the Dark Ones. Considering all the shit she's pulled, like trying to turn Brandy against Ash and killing Professor Knowby, she's unlikely to be missed. Ash certainly has No Sympathy to spare for her.
  Ash: [mockingly] Poor Ruby! I'm melting! Fuck off, bitch!
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: At the end of "Judgement Day", the Dark Ones use the Necronomicon to summon Kandar the Destroyer, a roughly Godzilla-sized demon which proceeds to lay waste to Elk Grove in the following episode.
• Back from the Dead: Pablo, Kelly, Brandy and Ash are all killed by the Kandarian dagger in Season 3. They all manage to return from the Deadlands and come back to life one way or another.
• Badass Normal:
  • Ash was already one of these when he started fighting Deadites while still a nebbish college student. That fact that he picks it back up with (somewhat) relative ease in his 50s just further cements this.
  • Pablo and Kelly as well. Especially Kelly. Although Pablo gains supernatural powers as of Season 2.
• Badass Transplant: Ash's chainsaw hand.
• Bad Black Barf:
  • Kelly spits some up in "Brujo", indicating she's got something in her. Also makes a nice Call-Back to the series lore on what that entails.
  • In season 2, Pablo projectile vomits black sludge when he starts converging with the Necronomicon.
• Bad Boss: Mr. Roper, manager of the Value Stop, fluctuates between this and a beleaguered Mean Boss depending on whether or not he's dealing with Ash; on the one hand, he's generally dickish, ignorant, and seems to enjoy power-tripping his junior employees like Pablo and Kelly, but Ash is such a terrible, lazy worker (he's taken multiple phony sick days on the pretense of caring for "his dear friend, Eli", his bearded dragon) that the guy doesn't have much recourse besides getting tough, and since Ash has seniority, Roper can't just fire him. Transitions completely into "bad" territory when he turns into a Deadite in "Bait", as he retains enough of his old self to gleefully admit he's always hated Ash and thinks he's a "sad old failure" as he attempts to murder him.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: In "Judgment Day," the Dark Ones show up during Ash's showdown with Ruby and Kaya, and promptly kill them both. They even expel Kaya's soul from Kelly's body in the process, which Ash needed to be able to bring her back from the dead. Ash takes advantage of the distraction to steal the Necronomicon and make a break for it.
• Ballroom Blitz: Ash has a battle with Ruby and an Evil Doppelgänger at his daughter's High-School Dance.
• Batman Gambit:
  • Kelly's mother was turned into a Deadite, but "Bait" sees her act completely normal and kind to Kelly and her father. As Ash correctly notes, it's all to lure him to the house and get him to lower his guard.
  • Ash pulls off a doozy against Baal in Season 2, tricking the demon into thinking Ash has been broken by his reality-changing mind games, only to reveal he never fell for it, even for a minute, and that it was all part of his plan to get Baal and the Necronomicon in the same place all along.
  • Baal returns the favor the very next episode, possessing Pablo's corpse so he can trick Ash into traveling back in time. By resurrecting Pablo via time travel, they accidentally succeed in resurrecting Baal too, and on top of that Baal is reunited in the past with both the Necronomicon and a version of Ruby that wants to birth demon spawn with him all over again.
• Bedlam House: The Season 2 episode "Delusion" has Ash wake up in one.
• Big Bad:
  • Season 1: Ruby, as it turns out.
  • Season 2: The demon Baal the father of Ruby's demon children. Past Ruby hijacks this role again in the finale.
  • Season 3: Ruby again, though the Dark Ones steal the role in the last two episodes.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Played With at the end of Season 2. Baal and the younger Ruby are the joint antagonists, clearly intending to bring their children into being to bring ruin to the world. Though it's a mutual affair the finale pulls it more into a Big Bad Ensemble with Baal believing himself the one in charge and Ruby sick of him to the point she's trying to undermine him.
• Big Damn Heroes: Subverted for laughs. Ash and Pablo charge into Kelly's house ready for a fight, but her family is fine or so it seems.
• Black Comedy: Oh, so many examples to list. A good example would be the scene in "Morgue" where Ash fights against a corpse's possessed guts, who promptly proceed to shove Ash's head into said corpse's butt, making Ash stumble around with the corpse stuck on his head, a la Mr. Bean.
• Black Eyes of Evil:
  • Kelly, when possessed by Eligos.
  • Ruby flashes these after revealing herself to be evil.
• Bloody Hilarious: In typical over-the-top Raimi fashion, the show has swimming pools' worth of fake blood.
  • When Ash repeatedly stabs a Deadite in the neck with a broken bottle in "Bait", he has the misfortune to be under them at the time, getting showered in torrents of gore. Later, Suzy Maxwell is cut almost in half by Ash, spattering blood on Kelly and Pablo huddling on the other side of the room.
  • When Pablo is grabbed by a Deadite wearing combat armor and a helmet in "Fire in the Hole", Kelly is forced to pump dozens of rounds into its body, turning the creature into hamburger. Even after it's dead, an absolutely drenched Pablo is still punching its open neck wound while screaming in terror.
• Bittersweet Ending: Ash saves the world but has to leave behind his daughter and best friends. He awakens to a new life in a post-apocalyptic world where he'll still be fighting evil, but with a suped-up Classic and a cyborg babe sidekick. Groovy!
• Blown Across the Room: Ruby is blown across the room by a shotgun blast in "Tales From The Rift".
• Blue Is Heroic: Ash almost always wears his blue button-down when battling deadites. Even the handful of times he's caught in a fight without it, he's always wearing some form of blue, either a Henley or a jacket.
• Bond One-Liner: Evil Ash after mortally wounding Amanda with a meat cleaver.
  "Now that's what I call cleavage!"
• Book Ends:
  • The series starts and ends with the use of Deep Purple's Space Trucking, as Ash gears up for his night out. The only difference is the series ends with Ash fully embracing himself as a hero, rather just having a night out getting drunk and high.
  • The Teaser of the first episode and the Cliffhanger of the penultimate episode are an Oh, Crap! moment where Ash lets out an elongated "Fuuuuuuuck!"
  • The final word spoken in both the first and last episode is, of course, "Groovy".
• Borrowed Catchphrase:
  • In the second episode of season one, when Kelly reveals her mother is still alive, Ash tells her if something is too good to be true, it probably is. Later, after her mother has revealed she's a deadite and has killed her father before Ash killed her, Kelly takes Ash's words to heart, and repeats them almost verbatim on multiple occasions, usually when a deal is being offered to them.
  • Upon seeing Kelly for the first time, Ash declares her "Filthy, AND fine." The phrase is spoken by multiple other characters throughout the series run, Including Brock Williams and the Ashy Slashy puppet. Kelly even lampshades it during the confrontation with Ashy Slashy.
• Bottomless Magazines: Flip-flopped. Amanda's backup Derringer fires twice as many shots as it should be able to in "El Jefe" but when Ash is firing his boomstick at Deadite-Suzy Maxwell in "Bait", he fires off both barrels, tries to fire a third time, and realizes he's empty.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Baal brainwashes Ash into trying to kill Pablo in "Ashy Slashy", since killing Pablo will "destroy" the Necronomicon etched into his skin. Ash doesn't actually succumb to the brainwashing, but plays along as part of a Batman Gambit.
• Breaking In Old Habits: When Ash grows back a "brand-spanking-new hand," he adds, "Or... a brand-new spanking hand?" with a smirk.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: When Kelly and Pablo confront the good and evil versions of Ash at the end of season one, they're torn over which one to kill until the real Ash tells them to shoot them both, so the evil twin is dead and he doesn't have to deal with killing the deadites anymore. After shooting the evil version, Kelly tells him that she knew then he was the real Ash becuase the only person Ash would lay his life down for is himself. (And he's racist, but not towards Asians, because they give great massages.)
• Brick Joke: In the second season, Ash is accosted in the first episode by a homeless man in Elk Grove who claims Ash ruined his life. When they go back in time to the 1980s towards the end of the season, the homeless man is revealed to have been a yuppie in a three-piece suit who witnesses their arrival. Ash gives the man a bottle of liquor, despite the man's protests that his family has a history of alcoholism, and tells him to drink it to forget what he's seen. He's last seen chugging the bottle, revealing he wasn't lying when he told Ash he ruined his life.
• Broad Strokes: The Evil Dead (1981) came out in 1981, and Evil Dead 2 in 1987; the exact date of the original cabin incident remains a nice, round "about 30 years ago" when it is mentioned in the present day.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Ash's sister Cheryl (or rather, her Deadite form) from the original Evil Dead came back for an episode of Season 2.
  Deadite!Cheryl: "I'm gonna make like a tree and fuck you!"
  • Also, in the process, season two Also picked up Ted Raimi's Henrietta Knowby for a return appearance in the final two episodes.
• Byronic Hero: Ash's primary motive is to get the book translated and banish the Deadites from this existence again, and thus is reluctant to get himself into any unnecessary complications like saving individual people when the whole world's at stake; while he's not depicted as wrong by any stretch for believing this, he can sometimes come across as callous or self-absorbed when stating his intentions. This is most apparent in season one, episode two, "Bait," when Ash refuses to help Kelly when she fears her father is in danger. He only changes his mind when Pablo convinces him that Kelly took the Necronomicon with her. While he's initially pissed at Pablo's subterfuge, he admits at the end after he saves Kelly from her deadite mother that he's not sorry he came and helped her.
• Call-Back:
  • In the first episode, Ash recounts to Pablo the general events of The Evil Dead (1981) and how he lost his hand back in Evil Dead 2.
  • Kelly's mother softly singing "Hush, Little Baby" in "Bait" recalls Henrietta trapped in the fruit cellar.
  • In "Bait", Ash attempts to fire three consecutive shots from a double-barreled shotgun, resulting in a Dramatic Ammo Depletion moment. This is likely a nod to the multiple times he was able to fire a double-barreled shotgun repeatedly without reloading in Army of Darkness.
  • Ash plants makeshift crosses on the graves of slain Deadites, as he's done in previous incarnations... but finds out this time that the original people were Jewish. This itself gets an in-series Call-Back when it helps clue Ash in that Kelly is possessed after she asks Ash to kill her and bury her with a cross, when Ash knows she is Jewish, as the people Ash buried earlier were Kelly's parents.
  • Ruby in order to get Amanda to help her claims she is the daughter of Professor Raymond Knowby, the scientist who originally found the Necronomicon, and the younger sister of Annie from Evil Dead 2. In season 2 it's shown that the murderer of Professor Knowby was in fact Ruby herself.
  • Sounds and musical cues from the films have turned up in the show. One such example is the sample of Big Ben from The Time Machine, heard in the first film when Ash comes out of the cellar after getting ammo for the shotgun and he looks at the cabin's clock, can be heard in the background when Ash comes into the Books From Beyond store.
  • Ruby is shown to be in possession of Ash's possessed severed hand in "Brujo".
  • Ash's sister Cheryl from The Evil Dead (1981) factors into the second season, including mention of her death by tree, which nearly befalls the two main female characters as well.
  • Ash encounters Henrietta from The Evil Dead (1981) at the end of season two. During their fight, she even takes on the same long-necked demonic form.
  • "Home Again" has Ash recall how he went back in time during the medieval period, either referencing the second or third film or both.
  • "Home Again" is rife with call-backs since the characters have traveled back in time. Ash drinks from a boiling teapot to flush out an evil creature living in his stomach, just like he did in Army of Darkness, Ash fights Henrietta Knowby, just like he did in Evil Dead 2, and the infamous rape tree from The Evil Dead (1981) returns to attack Kelly and Ruby.
  • In "Second Coming", Ash gets the upper hand against Baal by distracting him with an incorrigibly stupid comment, just like he did with Ruby back in "The Dark One".
  • In episode 1 of season two, Ash gives a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to a bar in his hometown that begins with "Listen up, you degenerate screwheads!"
  • Also in episode 1 of season two, Ash uses his belt as a grappling hook in the opening fight scene, just like he did in the opening fight scene in Army of Darkness.
  • In season three, Pablo is able to figure out that the Kelly he meets at the school is possessed by another spirit when she doesn't remember they kissed earlier in the season.
  • A deadite repeats the famous "dead by dawn" phrase in the Grand Finale.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: The Evil Dead certainly do, or at least it's just a matter of time.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Ash finally confronts his dad, Brock, in "Last Call", complaining that he never stood up for him when the entire town pegged him down as a crazy serial killer. They make amends at the end of the episode after Ash saves Brock from a Deadite.
• Canon Discontinuity:
  • In season 1, the show was not allowed to directly reference anything from Army of Darkness, which is why Ash works at "Value Stop" rather than "S-Mart" and doesn't have his prosthetic gauntlet hand. The show does work around this prohibition by calling the shotgun 'boomstick' and obliquely referencing Ash's trip to the Middle Ages because it also occurs at the end of Evil Dead 2. However, the audience is clearly expected to assume that some version of the film's events did happen.
  • The series makes it clear that the beginning of Evil Dead 2, which shows Ash only with his girlfriend Linda instead of the whole friend group, is non-canon. It's worth noting that, as said by Bruce Campbell well before the show was announced, this was pretty much always the case since that beginning segment was just a simplified recap of the first movie that was filmed because the film makers were unable to get the rights to the first film at the time due to legal issues. The series however tries to have its cake and eat it too, as all the flashbacks Ash has in regards to Linda's at the cabin and her demise throughout the course of the series feature Denise Bixler's Linda from ED 2 rather than Betsy Baker's take from the first film, even though her appearance itself is made non-canon. The Linda head that Ash argues with in episode eight of season one has an actress (Rebekkah Farrell) who's made up to resemble Bixler as well.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Season 2 does this to the original movies — Ash being the Sole Survivor of a massacre with no witnesses just makes everyone think he went crazy and killed all of his friends.
  • Throughout Season 3, Brandy adamantly refuses to believe Ash's insistence that Mrs. Prevett, her trusted guidance counselor, is actually Ruby, his enemy... until "Twist and Shout," where she sees Ruby survive and regenerate from being impaled on Ash's chainsaw with her own eyes. Also, she refuses to believe Ash when he says there's an evil version of him until they both show up at the dance in the gym and have a brief battle.
• Catchphrase: At the end of "El Jefe", Ash drops perhaps his most famous one-liner from Evil Dead 2 and the works that have followed it.
  Pablo: How does it feel?
  Ash: Groovy.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: Ash is attacked by Deadites while attempting to make a "deposit" at a sperm bank.
• Celebrity Paradox: Season 2 has Ash's dad watching Spartacus: Blood and Sand ; Lucy Lawless, Stephen Lovatt, and Joel Tobeck all played significant roles in Spartacus throughout its run.
• Ceiling Cling: Ash does this in episode 9 of season 2 to hide from the POV monster.
• Cerebus Syndrome: After mostly being played for Black Comedy, the show gets darker and more serious from "Ashes to Ashes" onwards when Ash and co. return to Knowby's cabin.
• Chained Heat:
  • Ash and Amanda spend the majority of "Fire in the Hole" handcuffed to each other.
  • Ash and Ruby's captive are both stuck to the same sink in "Baby Proof", and it becomes this trope when Ash decides to Bring the Anchor Along.
• Chainsaw Good:
  • When not using his boomstick, Ash's weapon of choice is a chainsaw that serves as a replacement for his severed hand.
  • The Season 2 finale features a chainsaw duel between Ash and Baal.
• Chekhov's Gun: In "The Killer of Killers", Ash tells Pablo to remind him to refill the chainsaw's gas tank. "The Dark One" reveals that Pablo forgot to do this, causing the chainsaw to run out and switch off right before a possessed Pablo can kill himself with it.
• The Chew Toy: Heather. Poor, poor Heather.
• The Chosen One: It seems like there are a select few humans that have a natural talent for killing demons and fighting evil. Pablo states they are called El Jefe. Ash is one, though his "light" is very weak. It also appears Ruby is one but she's actually a Dark One.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Linda B. and Ash get a Relationship Upgrade at the very end of Season 2, only for Season 3 to begin with Ash going Oops! I Forgot I Was Married with Linda never being mentioned again.
• Combat Tentacles: While investigating the Creepy Basement under his father's old hardware store, Ash is attacked by tentacles protruding from the wall and ceiling. They can also double as Naughty Tentacles as they grab an alarmed Ash in his "hammy" and some other... places.
• Comically Missing the Point: Ash attempts to seduce a waitress so he won't have to pay his check at a diner. When the waitress warns Ash that her husband is the restaurant's imposing cook as a way of telling him to get lost, Ash mistakenly assumes she's warning him so he'll know to be secretive about their affair.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Ash takes the unending stream of horrors he faces in stride, with only the Ass Shove in "The Morgue", the death of Pablo in "Ashy Slashy", and the appearance of Kandar the Destroyer in the Grand Finale really rattling his nerves in any way.
• Continuity Cavalcade:
  • The last three episodes of the first season return to the cabin from the first two movies, and as such are full of visual and audio nods to those films, as well as quick flashbacks triggered by them.
  • The last two episodes of the second season also have Ash and company return to the cabin, this time just a short while before the events of the first film.
• Cool Car:
  • Ash's yellow 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 doubles as The Alleged Car. It's the same car he's had throughout the franchise. Raimi's car during college, nicknamed "the Classic," was featured in the original Evil Dead films and has become a Creator Thumbprint for most of Raimi's career. In season two, the car gets a whole episode devoted to it where it becomes possessed. Ash even refers to it as "the Classic" in dialogue.
  • Ruby drives a modern red Dodge Challenger muscle car.
  • In the future, a revived Ash gets a Mad Max-style battle car which has rocket thrusters, shotguns, a machine gun turret and a ram plate that has "Hail to the King!" written on it. Also merges with The Alleged Car, as the battle car is the modified Delta.
  • For Volkswagen fans, Professor Knowby drives a nice, powder blue VW beetle at the end of the second season. It becomes less cool after he's gorily killed inside of it, however. It becomes even MORE less cool when we see on the post credit scene of the final episode of seaon two that it's been abandoned in place at the site of the cabin for 30 years to rust, presumably with what remains of Knowby's corpse rotten inside of it.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Ash probably should have known better than to read from the Necronomicon to try to impress a girl after all these years. It also would have helped if his father had just told the Knight of Sumeria trying to warn Ash of the coming dangers before the events of the series where his son had moved, instead of attacking him and accidentally murdering him.
• Covered in Gunge: Practically Once per Episode, which is rather true to the franchise as a whole.
• Crazy Survivalist: The Militia in "Fire in the Hole" are a bunch of anti-government whack-jobs who are stockpiling heavy ordnance in their forest encampment and think the Deadites were created by airborne contaminants designed by the government.
• Creator Thumbprint:
  • Ash's yellow, 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88, which was Ash's car in the Evil Dead film franchise and became Sam Raimi's creator thumbprint throughout his career, appearing in all of his films. Raimi calls the car "the Classic," and Ash refers to it with this name as well.
  • "Shemp's" brand beer is a reference to "Fake Shemp," a term Sam Raimi coined in the credits of Evil Dead for actors who stood in for other actors who dropped out in the midst of filming. Raimi later expanded the meaning to credit a variety of bit players in his works. The term is itself a reference to actors who stood in for the ailing Shemp Howard of The Three Stooges.
• Creepy Doll:
  • In "El Jefe", Ash is attacked by the Evil possessing a Little Lori doll. Ash doesn't really begin to panic until Lori picks up a boxcutter off the warehouse floor like a spear and charges him.
  • Also, The Ashy Slashy hand puppet from season two, when it reveals it's alive to Kelly...Then tries to KILL her.
• Creepy Mascot Suit: Ash's high school alma mater mascot becomes possessed in the Season 3 premiere.
• Crowbar Combatant: Ash uses a crowbar to fend off a possessed Bear Trap in "Ashes to Ashes".
• Cuckoos Nest: In "Delusion", Ash wakes up in a mental asylum where his doctor tries to convince him that all his experiences with the Deadites and the Necronomicon are delusions that "Ashy Slashy" created to cope with his brutal murder of all his friends back at the cabin. He'll see orderlies and patients around him as people he knows (such as Kelly as a female patient, Pablo as an orderly, and Ruby as a nurse) before they change back for brief flashes. It's really all an illusion created by the demon Baal to break Ash's mind.
• Cue the Rain: Exaggerated in the Season 2 premiere, where a torrential downpour appears out of nowhere the exact second Ash drives past the welcome sign to his hometown.
• Cutting Back to Reality: Brandy's hand becomes possessed, and she is forced to cut it off with a circular saw similar to what Ash was forced to do to his possessed hand. Turns out it was only a hallucination brought on by demonic forces though.
• Danger Takes A Back Seat:
  • Deadite-Roper hides in the Delta's back seat in order to ambush Ash while he's driving.
  • When Professor Knowby tries to escape the cabin in 1982 with the Necronomicon, he's killed by that time period's Ruby who hid in the back seat of his car.
• Dark World: People who are killed by the Kandarian dagger end up in a lifeless mirror version of our world with an unsettling Sickly Green Glow and inhabited only by some indescript shadow monster that feeds on new arrivals. The physics don't make much sense either, like trying to go through a door that may open to the other side of town—and it constantly changes.
• Deadly Rotary Fan: A possessed Lieutenant Boyle throws a kid into a ceiling fan that slices him to bits, then delivers a Bond One-Liner.
  Boyle: A new member for my fan club!
• Deal with the Devil: In "The Dark One", Ruby offers Ash a truce, to finally live a normal life again, in exchange for not interfering in her plans to unite the world's evil under her rule. Much to Pablo and Kelly's dismay, Ash accepts.
• Death of a Child:
  • In "The Killer of Killers" when Deadite-Boyle at the diner grabs a kid who was trying to run away and throws him into a ceiling fan that chops him up.
  • In "DUI," the fourth episode of season 2, All but one of Lacey's school friends are killed by the possessed Delta. The final girl is taken over by a deadite and decapitated by Ash when it attacks Brock.
  • In "Ashy Slashy," the eighth episode of season two, Baal betrays Thomas and Linda B. by killing Lacey and turning her into a deadite. Kelly has to put her down.
  • "Family," the first episode of season three Sees Brandy's best friend Rachel turned into a deadite and kiled by Ash. Another kid who is deadite fused with the school's cougar mascot costume is killed by Kelly.
  • "Twist and Shout," the third season's seventh episode has a number of kids at the school dance slaughtered by the Evil Ash in an attempt to frame the good Ash as a psycho killer.
  • Season three episode eight, "Rifting Apart," Has Pablo forced to kill the deadite version of one of the kids from the dance when Ash brings the wrong corpse to the hardware store basement in his attempt to bring back Brandy's spirit from The Rift.
• Decapitation Presentation:
  • Ash does this with the head of the Deadite that attacked his father, having finally proven to his dad that demons are real.
  • In the second season finale, Ruby from the 1980s does this with her present self's head, tossing it into Ash's lap.
• Demonic Possession:
  • Deadites are evil spirits that possess the bodies of the living and the dead.
  • Kelly is possessed by Eligos in "Brujo" and "The Host". He's a lot more subtle about it than the Deadites, though.
  • Also, Kelly spends most of the latter half of season three with her dead body possessed by the spirit of Ruby's associate, Kaya, while Kelly's own spirit is trapped in The Rift.
• Desecrating the Dead: Happens more than once, thought it's usually to prevent the dead body from coming back to an active threat because if it's evil or deadite status.
  • Amanda, who Ash intends to dismember but she gets revived as a deadite before he's able to. Deadite Amanda turns into The Dragon for Ruby for the last two episodes of season one.
  • Ash Chops up his evil twin towards the end of season one to prevent it from doing what Amanda does.
  • The possessed Delta 88 ends up doing this to poor Brock in "DUI" in season two. After running Brock over at the end of the third episode, the fourth episode opens up with the distraught Ash attempting to put the remnants of Brock's brain back in his shattered skull and find Brock's missing eye. The Delta returns to try and run Ash over. It misses Ash, but it gorily runs over Brock AGAIN, and the resulting blood splatter of the tire running over Brock's destroyed skull turns into the animated graphic that sprays the screen before the opening title.
  • In the ninth episode of season two, Past Ruby throws the decapitated head of present Ruby at him towards the end of the episode.
  • Subverted in the third episode of season three. Ash goes to pay his respects to Candy Barr, and she turns deadite and pulls him into the casket and he ends up having to fight her. At least, the AUDIENCE knows that. Everyone who was attending the funeral thinks this is what Ash was doing when he pops out of the casket when the fight is over, leading him to sheepishly cover for himself by saying people express grief in different ways. Brandy is less than amused.
• Destroyer Deity: In the series climax, the Dark Ones summon Kandar the Destroyer, a skyscraper-sized demon whose only purpose is to bring about the end of the world.
• Did You Actually Believe...?: Baal mocks Ash for believing he would honor their deal to settle things via Good Old Fisticuffs, without resorting to using any of his demon powers.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Ash claims that he will rarely ever think of the long-term effects of his decisions such as his Deal with the Devil with Ruby and all the viewers know that he will have to sooner or later return to fix it. A big example comes in the latter episodes of season two. Ash seemingly hallucinates the dead Pablo urging him to go back in time and stop his younger self from reading the book. Ruby and Kelly are less than enthusiastic, but Ash aims the Delta for a wall and says they'll all meet Pablo if Ruby doesn't open a portal,so she does. Later, after Pablo is seemingly ressurected, Baal slits Pablo's skin and reveals to the shocked Ash and Kelly that the attempt to kill him in the prior episode failed, and he was still alive and hiding in Pablo's corpse and HE was the one that convinced Ash to do so, taking advantage of the fact that Ash was shitfaced drunk and high so he'd believe Pablo talking to him was a hallucination. While Ash is able to defeat Baal and save Pablo, his actions result in present day Ruby being killed by her past, still evil, counterpart, and Past Ruby finds a way to save herself and jump to the present day, being one of the major antagonists of season three.
  • In a more minor example, Ash is sent into a morgue to retrieve the Necronomicon, which has been stashed inside a dead body, and realizes after getting to the morgue that he never asked which body the book was hidden in. He guts all the corpses in the entire morgue, only to realize when he gets to the last one that it is plainly obvious the book is inside his torso and he wasted a huge amount of time cutting open the rest.
• Diner Brawl: In episode six of the first season, Ash and Amanda find themselves fighting off deadites in a diner.
• Dirty Old Man:
  • Just because he's old enough to be a grandfather doesn't mean Ash is closed for business. Quite the opposite, he's more open for business now than he was in all of the prior films.
  • His father, Brock Williams, is arguably even worse, having no qualms whatsoever of getting in on with a teenager (which was really a disguised Deadite, but still...), and having "Brock Williams has wood" as the slogan of his firewood business. He also shamelessly hits on Kelly when he first meets her until she shoots him down.
  Brock Williams: You can call me Cock.
• Disability Superpower: Ash claims that after losing his right hand, his remaining hand has become more "sensitive."
• Don't Think, Feel: Ash gets the upper hand against Eligos with the mantra, "Shoot first, think never."
• Don't Try This at Home: The episode "Last Call" ends with a warning from Ash himself not to try the "Pink Fuck" for yourself.
  "Hey, you knuckleheads, Ash Williams here. If someone offers you a drink of Pink Fuck, throw it away, cause it's bad shit. It will mess with your brain, and not in the good way. Be smart, and stay safe out there."
• Doom Magnet: Virtually all of the secondary characters that Ash and his company meet along their journey are killed before they leave. This is lampshaded in the second season. Extends to the main cast eventually as Amanda, Ruby, Pablo, Kelly and Brandy all manage to get killed off, although Pablo, Kelly and Brandy all come Back from the Dead.
• Dramatic Ammo Depletion: Pablo confronts Kelly (who's possessed by a demon) at the high school dance, but can't bring himself to shoot her. She steals his gun and has no problem firing several shots at Pablo instead that all miss. Just when she has him cornered, the gun has run out of bullets.
• Dramatic Drop:
  • Ash drops the bag of weed he finds in the Necronomicon in horror when he realizes he did another Accidental Incantation in the series premiere.
  • Ash drops Henrietta's shackles dramatically when he overhears that she's already become possessed right after she finally convinces him to free her.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Amanda tells Ash how she is glad that Ruby was always honest with her, all the while we watch as Ruby somehow survived and rose out of the pit. Later revealed to be because she is a Dark One herself.
  • Also, everything "Ruby Knowby" tells her about Ash is a complete fabrication when we find out she's not avenging her family, she's the one that WROTE the Necronomicon.
• Dramatic Thunder: A huge amount in "Bait", punctuating nearly every sentence when Ash is interrogating Kelly's mother.
• Dressing as the Enemy: In "Episode 7" Pablo dresses up as one of the nutjob militants, taking the gas mask off one who turned into a Deadite. This doesn't last for long since Kelly makes an entrance with a machine gun immediately after he drives into their camp, so it was probably all for nothing.
• Driven to Suicide: Kelly's mom claims to have driven off of the bridge on purpose to get away from Kelly. Since this is a Deadite, there is a chance she's lying to screw with Kelly.
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • Kelly does this in "Last Call" after an Innocently Insensitive comment from Pablo makes her despair at how empty her life has become.
  • In "Home Again," Ash is shown drinking heavily and smoking PCP-dipped joints after Pablo's death.
  • He also does so towards the beginning of season two when a couple of high school kids steal Ash's beloved Delta.
• Drowning Pit: Kelly is trapped in a concrete chamber filling with blood in the Season Two premiere.
• Drugs Are Bad: Zig-zagged.
  • Ash unleashes the Deadites after getting high on pot.
  • Eligos, in Kelly's body, tries to get Pablo to let his guard down via a mixture of weed and flirtation, planning to murder him with a makeshift shotgun bong.
  • Ash has a spirit journey on ayahuasca where he gains some knowledge, though he's almost murdered by a demon-possessed person while hallucinating.
  • In the final episode, Ash takes a bong hit and then refuses to give his daughter one, saying that drugs are bad and he doesn't want her to make his mistakes.
  • Following the "Pink Fuck" episode credits, "Ash" warns the viewing audience to not ever drink any Pink Fuck themselves, referencing how bad it is.
• Due to the Dead:
  • In "Bait," after killing Kelly's Deadite-possessed parents, Ash takes the time to give them both a proper burial. Unfortunately, he makes them cross-shaped grave markers, and they're Jewish.
  • In "The Host," after Pablo's uncle is killed by Eligos, Ash and the gang make him a funeral pyre.
• Eldritch Location: The cabin becomes so infested with Deadite activity that it turns into this.
• Electroconvulsive Therapy Is Torture: Baal subjects Ash to this as part of a ploy to make Ash Brainwashed and Crazy in "Delusion".
• Enemy Mine: Season 2 begins when Ruby summons Ash for help because her demonic children have grown powerful beyond her control.
• Evil All Along: The ending of "Bound in Flesh" reveals this to be the case with Ruby.
• Evil Costume Switch: When Ash (though he's faking it falls under Baal's control he switches his brown pants blue shirt look and wears an outfit that looks like camo-pattern that's in tatters.
• Evil Is Not a Toy:
  • Lionel learns this the hard way when he summons the demon Eligos without having the banishing incantation ready in case the circle breaks. Ash himself also qualifies, since having Lionel summon Eligos for information was his idea in the first place.
  • In "Home," it's revealed that the demonic children Ruby forced the possessed Pablo to spawn at the end of Season 1 have turned on her and now want the Necronomicon for themselves, forcing her to call Ash in to help clean up her mess.
  • One of Lacey's friends in season two finds the necronomicon on the floor of the Delta after the kids steal it and reads from it, resulting in her being deadite-possessed, as well as the Delta, which runs amok and kills most of her friends, and Ash's dad Brock.
  • The evil is unleashed again in season three when a woman finds the Necronomicon at the remains of the cabin and takes it to an Antiques Roadshow-type program and the appraiser makes the unwise decision to read some of the incantations.
• Evil Phone: In "Judgement Day" Brandy's cellphone gets possessed by a Deadite.
  "I'm sorry sweetie, but your call cannot be completed until you're dead!"
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Everyone just calls Pablo's uncle "Brujo."
• Express Delivery: The Evil Doppelgänger of Ash that Ruby impregnates herself with comes to term in only a day or two.
• Eye Scream:
  • The Deadites are fond of going for the eyes.
  • In the first episode, "El Jefe" deadite Vivian is milimeters way from stabbing her talon-like fingernail in Kelly's eye. Averted, as Ash intervenes.
  • In episode two, "Bait," Kelly's father is killed by deadite Suzy with a fork in the eye. Ruby then messes with the fork to torture the deadite form of Kelly's father for information in the subsequent episode, "Books from Beyond."
  • Ash notably winds up getting his eyes sewn shut during his Vision Quest in "Brujo."
  • Kaya uses her thumbs to gouge out Zoe's eyes in "Judgement Day", and later tries to do the same to Ash.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: At the start of his Vision Quest, Ash hallucinates that there is an eyeball in El Brujo's mouth.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Lucy Lawless naked covered in ash and climbing out of a funeral pyre.
  • Also Lucy Lawless with her breasts exposed and her front torso completely torn open.
• Feeling Their Age: While still able to hold his own against Deadites, Ash is in his 50s by this time and it shows. He mentions in the first episode that he needs to take some cardio because his heart is "jackhammering like a quarterback on prom night," and in "Ashes to Ashes," he's revealed to have, among other minor handicaps, a trick knee and bum shoulder. Also, a badass Lock-and-Load Montage near the end of season two includes one shot of Ash rubbing Ben-Gay on his neck.
• Fingore:
  • When Ash's car becomes possessed in "Last Call", the doors slam shut and slice off a teenager's fingers.
  • Candy Barr gets her fingers sliced off by a cymbal thrown by a deadite... and her head along with them.
  • Brandy gets a thumb bit off by her possessed phone in "Judgement Day".
• Flaying Alive: Ruby flays the skin off a Knight of Sumeria to create another page for the Necronomicon.
• Flipping the Bird:
  • One of the first things Ash does with his new prosthetic hand.
  • In "Second Coming", Ash's severed hand is regenerated thanks to time travel shenanigans, only for it to be cut off and possessed again. Naturally, the first thing it does is flip Ash off.
• Foreshadowing: In the pilot, the very first Deadite Amanda meets claims to know who she is, in a cryptically creepy manner. Seven episodes later, in "Ashes to Ashes", Evil Ash reveals that they knew from the start that she was meant to aid Ash.
  • Also in the pilot, when Amanda and her partner, John Carson, come across the creepy house and are attacked by the deadites, Ruby's red Challenger can be seen in a brief shot when they first arrive, tipping off that there's more to her than meets the eye, on top of being played by Lucy Lawless.
• For the Evulz: Demons and Deadites seem to like doing evil things just because they find it funny.
• Foreseeing My Death: After picking up a connection to the Necronomicon, Pablo is plagued by visions of his demise in Season 2, which finally occurs in "Ashy Slashy".
• Frame-Up: In Season 3, Ruby gives birth to an Evil Doppelgänger of Ash, who starts killing people in Elk Grove so they can frame Ash as a Serial Killer.
• Functional Addict: Ash is revealed to smoke weed and frequent bars, but is still able to hold down a job. However, part of the reason he isn't fired for his incompetence and general laziness is because he has seniority over the manager, Roper. Pablo even lampshades when he tries to convince Ash not to go on the run by saying now that Kelly's hired, he has a second person that can cover for him when he sleeps on the job or comes in late for work or doesn't come in at all.
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": Candy's funeral in season 3 is a fine example of Black Comedy.
• Full-Frontal Assault: In "The Morgue" Ash gets attacked by a possessed naked corpse's intestines.
• Gag Penis: The body the Necronomicon is stashed inside in "The Morgue" has a very large penis with a piercing on the end. It inevitably gets dragged across Ash's face during a fight later in the episode.
• Gargle Blaster: The "Pink Fuck", a drink invented by Ash and Chet that seems made entirely of alcohol, sugar and ketamine.
• Gender-Blender Name: Ash sarcastically thanks his father for naming him Ashley, with his middle initial J also being revealed to stand for Joanne.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man:
  • Kelly to Heather in "The Dark One" when the latter begins to scream hysterically upon being plagued by hallucinations of being swarmed by bugs. Kelly then goes on to say that she's Always Wanted To Do That.
  • In "The Mettle of Man," Brandy gives one to a despairing Ash, slapping a beer can out of his hand in the process.
  • Pablo also does it to Ash in "Last Call" in season two, urging Ash to go and save his father after Brock goes into the bar bathroom with a deadite in disguise.
• Ghost Reunion Ending: Parodied in the season 2 finale when during the rally that Ash's hometown organized for him, the ghosts of Ash's deceased friends and family show up in the audience in imitation of Return of the Jedi.
• Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: Linda B. reciprocating Ash's playful flirtations? Good adultery. Her husband Thomas having a fling with a prostitute a few years back? Clearly bad adultery that gives Baal a chance to blackmail him (and serves to make sure that Ash's Lovable Sex Maniac attributes are still morally right).
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Ash and Baal stake the fate of the world on a fistfight in the Season 2 finale, though Baal resorts to cheating with his demon powers when things don't go his way.
• Gorn: The trailer alone features just as much blood and gore as The Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 put together!
• Grand Theft Me: Ruby spends the first half of Season 3 looking for a host body for Kaya, another Dark One. Kaya winds up possessing Kelly after Ruby stabs Kelly with the Kandarian dagger.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Dark Ones, the high demons who wrote the Necronomicon in the first place. Their escape from the underworld in the last two episodes of the show signifies The End of the World as We Know It.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: Parodied and discussed. When Pablo and Ash use a broken beer bottle in "Bait" to try and kill a Deadite, it's barely effective against a supernatural creature unfazed by blood loss (at most, it just gets stains all over the Oldsmobile), and Pablo hesitates after Ash gives it to him in preparation for another fight.
  Ash: Things get hairy, use your bottle.
  Pablo: Um... I-I don't think it's a very good weapon, Jefe. You had to stab Roper, like, fifty times.
  Ash: Hey, I was sharpening it for you.
• Groin Attack:
  • A deadite bites off the penis of one of the teenagers who stole Ash's car.
  • Ashy Slashy the Perverse Puppet bites Kelly's crotch at the start of their fight.
  • Ash kicks a possessed Henrietta Knowby in the crotch, but she gleefully shoves his foot further inside to disgust him.
  • At a sperm bank, Ash is on the receiving end of a testicle grab from a demonically possessed porn mag.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Poor Pablo, at the end of "Ashy Slashy" is sliced in half by Baal's razor-sharp demon claw.
• Handicapped Badass: Ash may have been forced to amputate his hand in Evil Dead 2, but he replaced it with possibly the most iconic Badass Transplant of all time.
• Happy Place: Ash is made to find his to find his center. Turns out his happy place happens to be Jacksonville, Florida.
• Haven't You Seen X Before?: In "The Killer of Killers", after Ash equips his chainsaw hand in front of Amanda, he turns to her and asks "What, haven't you ever seen a guy with a chainsaw hand before?"
• Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist: Ash, after he moves to Jacksonville.
• He Had a Name: Kelly does this with Dalton's name before tossing a hand grenade at Ruby during their fight in "Tales From The Rift".
• Healing Factor: Ruby is immortal, able to recover from a shotgun blast blowing a hole clean through her head in a matter of seconds.
• Heel–Face Turn: Ruby in season two when the demon spawn end up being to much for her to handle. She ends up partnering up with Ash, Pablo, and Kelly for the entire season, and sacrifices herself near the end to help them escape. partially-subverted in season three. Ash must once again contend with evil Ruby, but this time, it's the version they encountered in 1982 who figured out a way to come to the present day. The closest she gets to a Heel–Face Turn is to taunt the dark ones that Ash will destroy them as they're killing her.
• Hellgate: A portal to hell appears in the trunk of Ash's Delta in "D.U.I."
• Heroic BSoD: In the series finale, "The Mettle of Man," the pressure of being the Chosen One finally catches up with Ash, who understandably freaks out about having to fight monsters and demonic entities, get covered in bodily fluids on a regular basis, and watch his friends and family die by the score.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In season 3, while the main characters are trapped in the netherworld and hunted by a Living Shadow that eats the souls of everyone who winds up there, Dalton sacrifices himself for the sake of a distraction to give Ash and his friends a chance to escape back to the world of the living.
  • Also, Ash, in the series finale, seemingly is doing this when he faces off with Kandar, especially because he's given up the magnifying glass necklace gift for Linda that he always carried around for his own protection to Brandy. Ends up averted when the seriously wounded Ash is placed in medical stasis by the remaining members of the Knights of Sumeria for an unknown amount of time, and wakes up in the dystopian future primed and ready to keep up the deadite fight.
  • Present Ruby sacrifices herself in 2X9 to distract her past version that didn't have her Heel–Face Turn in season two. Ends up an All for Nothing until past the halfway point of season three, as Past Ruby found a way to come to the present day and made Ash's life a living Hell for quite awhile before her true intentions were laid bare for all to see.
• Heroic Suicide: Ash kills himself with the Kandarian dagger so he can travel to the Deadlands and rescue Kelly and Brandy.
• Hero with Bad Publicity:
  • From "Bait" onwards, Ash is wanted by the police, who believe him to be behind the murders caused by the Deadites. On top of that, Ruby convinces Amanda that Ash killed her family in order to gain ahold of the Necronomicon.
  • It's also revealed in "Home," the Season 2 premiere, that Ash is reviled by virtually everyone in his hometown of Elk Grove, who believe that he went crazy and killed his friends during the cabin incident in the first two movies, and mockingly call him "Ashy Slashy."
  • Ash does himself no favors when a kid comes to the bathroom in the aftermath of "Last Call," runs out screaming Ashy Slashy is going to kill them all, and Ash runs out to defend himself with his bloody chainsaw arm and holding the head of the deadite he killed. When he sees the ensuing panic, he at least realizes the optics and throws the head behind the bar.
  • Past Ruby in season three uses this incredibly effectively against Ash throughout most of the season, posing as a guidance counselor and setting herself up as the only true friend of Ash's daughter, Brandy. She lies about why Ash killed Cheryl, makes her believe that Ash is a murderer and bad father, and later raises Brock from the dead and has him pose as Brandy's seemingly-nonthreatening grandfather. Brock never appears threatening when in view of Brandy, so when Ash finally attacks and kills him, Ash appears to have murdered him, rather than protected her. She also births an Evil Ash clone which she sends on a rampage in front of Brandy at the school dance to not only convince Brandy, but the authorities, that Ash is the psychotic killer everyone thought, and makes it seem that Ash murders her with the chainsaw when she confronts him to "protect Brandy" during the dance in front of Brandy and the other students present. The only thing that finally turns the tide in Ash's favor is that he kills the evil clone in front of Brandy and the other witnesses, and Ruby, incensed that he's managed to foil her main plan, stands up with her intestines falling out, revealing she's immortal while chewing Ash out.
• He's Back!: When the Deadites have him and his friends trapped in his trailer and Kelly is being choked, Ash finally decides to stop running. And the arrogant blowhard reveals himself to be one of the greatest demon slayers of all time.
• High-School Dance: Ash's daughter attends one which inevitably turns into a Ballroom Blitz.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Baal is finally defeated when Ash stabs him with his own claw.
  • Reformed and now-mortal Ruby meets her demise by her own past self in the pentultimate episode of season two.
• Homage: In the last scene of the season 2 finale, Ash is celebrated by a crowd and looks out to see the transparent ghosts of his loved ones saluting him, an homage to a similar scene with Luke in Return of the Jedi. The cut of Ash's jacket is also suspiciously similar to Han Solo's iconic jacket.
• Hope Spot: In the finale, Kelly has been revived, and the Ghost Beaters are all together again...Then they discover the Army intends to nuke Kandar, which will only make it more powerful...And Ash realizes that the only way to stop Kandar is if he faces it himself, which means he has to say goodbye to the Ghost Beaters and take on a fight he likely won't survive. While he does, he's separated from his daughter and his friends indefinitely, as the series ends before we discover if they got back together.
• Humanity on Trial: The Deadites' claimed motivation this time around.
  Deadite: We found you, Ash. It is time to test the mettle of man!
• Humanoid Abomination:
  • Eligos, a blue emaciated humanoid who flickers like a malfunctioning TV.
  • Ruby, who’s a Dark One, but looks completely human except possessing Black Eyes of Evil, Super-Strength, Healing Factor and an immunity to fire.
  • The demon children, who have coal-black skin, have dark pits for eyes and can transform into Living Shadows.
  • Baal, who looks completely human except when you take into account the facts that he can wear the skin of those he kills to disguise himself, comes from the same place as the evil force and other demonic creatures encountered in the series, possesses Super-Strength, and growls monstrously when frustrated or angry, shows that he’s just as inhuman and unnatural as the rest of his colleagues
  • Marcus, the Knight of Sumeria who ends up becoming a grotesque, The Thing-like creature.
  • When the Dark Ones finally appear, they take the form of people wearing hooded robes, which just enough of their faces visible to know that they're not human. They don't even appear to be entirely physical, moving around more like ghosts.
• Idiot Hero: Ash is a bit of a doofus, has no formal combat training of any kind, and is generally a complete asshole. But when it comes to killing Deadites, he's still the best hope humanity has.
• Ignored Expert: In "Bait," Kelly's mother has come Back from the Dead and is apparently normal. Ash is instantly suspicious that she's a Deadite, but both Pablo and Kelly blow him off; needless to say, Ash is soon proven right.
  • Amanda also follows this trope until she sees him slay a diner of deadites in the first season's sixth episode.
  • The survivalist group in "Fire Down Below" falls into this as well when Ash shows up.
  • In season two, Sheriff Tom Emery follows the trope, in part because of Ash's prior history with his wife, Linda B. Subverted in the fourth episode, when Tom actually witnesses Ash kill a deadite to save Linda, but agrees to a deal with Baal to keep his affair with a prostitute a secret, and because, let's face it, he still hates Ash.
  • Brandy also falls into this for a little more than half season three, though it's in part because Past Ruby has been posing for two years as a guidance counselor and become Brandy's most trusted friend, and takes advantage of Ash's Hero with Bad Publicity past to fool Brandy, going so far as to raise Brock from the dead and force Ash to kill him in front of her (Brandy doesn't know he's reanimated,) and later, birthing an evil Ash which she sends off to slaughter the kids at the dance.
• I Call It "Vera": Ash apparently calls his boomstick and chainsaw "Moe and Larry".
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Ash knows how to operate a tank in the Grand Finale thanks to Battlezone the arcade game.
• "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight:
  • Pablo gives this speech to Kelly, when she's possessed by Eligos.
  • Cleverly subverted in "Ashy Slashy".
• The Illegal: Pablo absent-mindedly mentions he's "seen a lot between Honduras and here" in "El Jefe." After Ash mentions he once claimed to be from New Jersey, he immediately backpedals.
  • Comes up again in season two, when Ash says Pablo can be a hero, but not like him, because he's not an American citizen.
• Imposter Exposing Test: Pablo reveals Kelly is possessed in "Twist and Shout" by asking to have their First Kiss, when in reality he and Kelly already have kissed.
• Improbable Use of a Weapon: Kelly when possessed by Eligos using Ash's shotgun as a marijuana pipe to try and dupe Pablo into smoking it the same way and allow Eligos to blow his head off when he does.
• In-Series Nickname: Pablo refers to Ash as "El Jefe" more than he calls Ash by his actual name.
  • In season two, Kelly refers to Pablo as a "Powerful Vagina," in part due to his birthing demon spawn at the end of season one. It's truly a term of endearment from Kelly.
  • Kelly is referred to as "Filthy, AND fine," by more than one character in the series, first by Ash himself. In the final episode After Kelly is raised from the dead, and temporarily looks like Keith Richards, Ash says at that moment she's filthy and NOT fine.
  • The trio refer to themselves as the "Ghost Beaters," throughout the entire series run, coined by Pablo.
• In Spite of a Nail: Ash's time travel journey at the end of Season 2, which results in the destruction of the cabin and the Necronomicon being lost in the woods for 30 years, seemingly doesn't affect the events of the Evil Dead franchise in any way. Lampshaded by Pablo in the Season 3 premiere.
• Innocently Insensitive: In "Last Call", Pablo attempts to compliment Kelly on how comfortable she is with her own life by commenting on how she doesn't need a job or family or home, but this just makes Kelly realize how little she has in the world.
  • Ash sometimes invokes this when trying to comfort people after the death of a deadite-possessed loved one.
• Inspector Javert: Amanda Fisher, who believes Ash is responsible for the Deadites killing her partner; in a way, he is responsible, but is also trying to stop it. Even after directly encountering a demon with Ash, her top priority is arresting him. It takes actually seeing Ash fight the Deadites in "The Killer of Killers" for her to believe he's one of the good guys.
• Ironic Nursery Rhyme: Turns out the residents of Ash's hometown wrote one about him after word got out that he killed and dismembered his friends during their camping trip.
  Ashy Slashy, hatchet and saw,
  Takes your head and skins you raw!
  Ashy Slashy, heaven or hell,
  Cuts out your tongue so you can't yell!
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Ash has spent 30 years living in a trailer park and trolling bars, trying to ignore his true calling as a slayer of all things evil. He even goes off on a rant to this effect in the Grand Finale:
  Ash: Pablo, how may times you heard me say this, huh? Why me?! Who am I?! Nobody. Nobody! Guy from Elk Grove, Michigan. Where the fuck is that? In the middle of jack-shit nowhere, that's where! You know what? I got news for you. I didn't ask for this! You think I want this horse shit? Be covered in blood 24/7? Who the fuck would want that?!
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite being a general pervert and idiot who unleashed the Deadite plague all on his own this time around, Ash still wants to fix his mistakes and protect his friends.
• Key Under the Doormat: The "car key in the driver's sun visor" variant is seen when Pablo has to commandeer one of the militia's vehicles.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Ash's dad is killed by the Sentient Delta right after he changed his mind about Ash, and is ready to share some life-changing secret.
  • Happens again in the finale of season two when Brock appears and Ash is convinced it's Baal in disguise. Ash drowns him in a bathtub before he can tell him what he needs to. In fairness to Ash, Baal has posed as both Chet and Cheryl prior to Brock's appearance.
• Kitschy Local Commercial: Ash stars in one for his combo hardware and sex toy store. It came out perfect, and only took 22 takes!
• Knight of Cerebus:
  • While Deadites are terrifying, fights with them can often be played for Black Comedy. Eligos, Baal, Evil Ruby, and Evil Ash, on the other hand, are dead serious opponents, and their presence always results in people's deaths.
  • Ruby reveals herself as a Dark One in the episode of the same name, which quickly becomes the darkest in the series so far.
  • While first season Ruby is fairly evil, she doesn't hold a candle to the havok wreaked by Past Ruby in season three when she comes to modern times to make Ash's life Hell and try to usurp him as the Chosen One with an evil doppleganger.
• Lamprey Mouth: The Deadite-possessed intestine that attacks Ash in "The Morgue".
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • In the Season 2 episode "Delusion", as Ash is trapped in an illusion created by Baal, he points to various continuity errors in the Evil Dead Trilogy to try and convince Ash he is not El Jefe.
  Ash: The sun doesn't kill the Deadites. Except for that one time it did work.
  • At the end of Season 2, the characters travel to the past to get rid of the Necronomicon before Ash ever has the chance to find it in the first place. They succeed, but when they return to the present, the world is exactly the same as they left it. In the Season 3 premiere, Pablo points out that it doesn't really make much sense.
• Large Ham: Bruce Campbell, because he's... Bruce Campbell.
  • Not to mention Ted Raimi gets in on the act as Ash's alcoholic, stoner buddy Chet.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Austin in "Fire Down Below." After capturing Kelly, he tells her he's going to "make her pregnant later." Kelly is less than enthusiastic about this, even saying it would make his sister jealous. Less than 30 seconds later, Austin is killed by deadite Lance. Turns into double karma later, as Austin comes back as a deadite himself and gets blown away by several of the group, including Kelly, near the episode's end.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: In the Season 2 finale, Ash proposes this to Baal, stating that Baal couldn't take him without his immortality and demonic powers, with the two making a blood pact that supposedly renders Baal Brought Down to Normal so the two can fight with Good Old Fisticuffs. Needless to say, Baal quickly resorts to such measures as the Shapeshifter Guilt Trip, outright mocking Ash for thinking he'd actually honor the deal.
• Like Father, Like Son: When we meet Ash's father, it's clear where Ash got his Dirty Old Man attitude from.
• Limited Wardrobe: No matter how much Ash's iconic deadite hunting outfit (and Kelly's and Pablo's outfits per season) get blood covered, goo covered, or damaged, they're always crisp and clean in the next episode. Also, the characters follow a particular color scheme. Ash wears Blue Id Heroic, Kelly is almost always in something that's purple, and Pablo is almost always in something that's green.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Ash freezes the possessed Mrs. Lam's head with nitrogen and then shatters it with the metal cannister.
• Living Shadow: The Demon Spawn can become shadows.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: Ash does this occasionally when suiting up and arming himself to hunt deadites. Interspersed with the equipping and holstering of weapons, Ash may also chug a beer, apply some shoe polish to his gray hairs, or smear ointment on his aches. The montage also sometimes shows him changing into his regular evil-hunting blue button-down shirt, if he's not wearing it already.
• Look Both Ways: Ash's dad is Killed Mid-Sentence by a Sinister Car just as he's about to reveal some life-altering secret to Ash after reconciling their relationship.
• Love Triangle: While not an overly romantic series, most of the characters seem to have at best an adolescent's control over their hormones, so a couple are inevitable:
  • Ash and Ruby both develop an interest in Amanda over the course of Season 1. Amanda eventually seems to return Ash's feelings, though she shows an interest in Ruby after becoming a Deadite.
  • Even though Kelly only wants to be Like Brother and Sister with Pablo, she shows a surprising amount of resentment when he stops pining over her and transfers his romantic attention to the more receptive Heather. Though Heather's gruesome death in the Season 1 finale sort of derails that relationship.
  • In season three, we get Kelly, Pablo, and Dalton.
• Luke, You Are My Father: Ash finds out in the season 3 premiere that he has a daughter, Brandy, from a marriage he forgot he had with a woman in town. Parodied in an Imagine Spot the next episode when he worries about the possibility of numerous other children he didn't know about showing up on his doorstep, all with a shit-eating grin on their faces.
  Ash: Jesus in Anaheim!
• Made of Iron: All the heroes, but especially Ash, take tremendous beatings and get right back up for more. This becomes borderline parody in some cases, such as when Ash loses his new hand in 2X10 but still manages to defeat Baal without dying from blood loss.
• Made of Plasticine: On the other hand, the above trope doesn't apply to most of the unfortunate victims throughout the series.
• Make Way for the New Villains: Ruby is killed by the other Dark Ones in the penultimate episode, and they summon the villain of the Grand Finale. Had the series been renewed for a fourth season, the Dark Ones would have served as the main antagonists.
• Medium Blending: In "Booth Three", the exposition told by Dalton is 2D animated.
• Meta Guy: Kelly often snarks about the horror movie situations she finds herself in ("Sure, that building is not scary at all", "Oh great, another dark hallway").
  • One moment she's caught off guard is in that same episode when she comes across the Ashy Slashy puppet, and calls it adorable and plays with it, only for it to reveal it's alive and try to kill her.
• Make Sure He's Dead: On multiple occasions, Ash and his group chop up the bodies of Deadites to ensure they won't rise again.
  • After pinning deadite Lance to a tree in "Fire down Below," Pablo punches Lance's face several times before trying to remove his mask to make sure he's dead. Everything seems fine, then Lance suddenly revives, and attacks Pablo before Kelly finally blows him away. The shell-shocked Pablo then humorously gets into a virtual beatdown with Lance's corpse before Kelly snaps him out of it.
• Militaries Are Useless: When the Deadites begin to appear worldwide, various military forces are called in to battle them. However, they're forced to withdraw due to casualties sustained by infected soldiers killing their own and none of their weapons can put a scratch on Kandar. The American military opts to nuke it before Ash tries to stop the officer leading the national guard from doing so. When the officer makes it clear they're going to do it anyway, Ash finally decides to face Kandar by himself with the Kandarian dagger. He wins.
• Mini-Me: The felt hand puppet of Ash called "Ashy-Slashy" in season 2 was given to him in the hospital to convince Ash that the demons were all in his head and he actually did go crazy during that night in the cabin during the events from the first film. Of course, that wasn't true, and the puppet was just a tool used by Baal to try and break Ash. Later "Ashy-Slashy" becomes possessed and attacks and tries to kill Kelly right after she compliments how adorable it is.
• Mirror Match:
  • Ash vs. Evil Ash in "Ashes to Ashes" plays this beautifully, with each of them using their knowledge of Ash's weaknesses to inflict maximum damage on each other.
  • "Home" plays it even straighter when Kelly is confronted by a (possibly hallucinated) demonic version of herself. They literally hit each other with matching moves.
  • Ash vs. another Evil Ash in "Twist and Shout", although it's wrapped up rather quickly with a Boom, Headshot!
• Mirror Scare: A Deadite attacks Ash in "Bait" when he stops to admire his own face in the rearview mirror.
• Mistaken for an Imposter: Ash immediately attacks Pablo after bringing him back to life in "Second Coming", assuming it's all another one of Baal's tricks.
• Mister Sand Man Sequence: Ash goes back to the 80s, a world populated by arcade machines and the words ""Don't stop! Believin'!"
• Mortality Ensues: In the second season, Ruby loses her immortality that has kept her alive for centuries by that point, forcing her to ask Ash and co. for help when her demon offspring turn against her. She's eventually killed for good by a younger — and still evil — version of herself.
• Mushroom Samba: Ash goes on a pretty serious one in episode 4 to try and find an answer to his Deadite problems, after he is given ayahuasca by Brujo. He starts seeing everything distorted and hallucinates things such as Brujo chewing on an eyeball.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Pablo designs a mechanical hand for Ash, something similar to but legally distinct from the iron gauntlet hand that Ash builds in Army of Darkness.
  • In "Ashes To Ashes" we get an Evil Ash, grown from his severed possessed hand.
  • After that Evil Ash gets defeated, Ash prepares to chop the body up while musing that he's getting disturbingly used to dismembering clones of himself. This was a rather daring move, since a murky legal situation made it unclear whether AoD was actually canon.
  • In "The Dark One", Deadite Amanda gives the classic "I'll swallow your soul" line.
  • In "Home," Ash calls the patrons of the Elk Lounge Bar "Inbred, degenerate screwheads."
  • In "Delusion", the hallucinatory Kelly asks if Deadites can be hurt by sunlight. Ash says no, but then remembers "that one time" when sunlight did seem to drive off the evil force, referencing the second movie.
  • In "Home Again", Ash can't remember if he found the Necronomicon lying out in the open on a desk or in the cabin's cellar with Scotty, referencing one of several changes between the original movie's plot and its retread in the prologue of Evil Dead 2.
  • Also in "Home Again," Ash has to face off once again with Henrietta Knowby (once again played by Ted Raimi).
  • In "The Mettle of Man," after killing Kandar the Destroyer, Ash wakes up in a Mad Max style post-apocalyptic future. This is obviously inspired by the originally scripted ending to Army of Darkness, which would have had Ash take a potion to get back to the 20th century by sleeping but overshoot the mark and wake up in the future.
• N-Word Privileges: Mr. Roper, the store manager, claims he can call Ash a "retard" because his gardener "is a huge one".
• Never Accepted in His Hometown: As revealed in Season 2, Ash is shunned by virtually everyone in his hometown of Elk Grove, including his own father, due to the events of the first two movies; no one believed Ash's story about the Deadites and the Necronomicon, thinking he just went crazy and slaughtered his friends and sister. Ultimately averted by the end of Season 2, where he's managed to convince the town of the truth and is now a hero.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: This is generally how Pablo's connection to the Necronomicon functions.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Ash unleashes another Deadite plague that threatens to destroy humanity after getting high with a girl one night and trying to pass off passages of the Necronomicon Ex Mortis as poetry to impress her.
  • "Books From Beyond" has a two-fold example. First, Kelly is duped by Amanda into uncuffing her, with Amanda stupidly trying to arrest Ash and causing Eligos to escape his binding circle, kill Lionel, and nearly killing Ash.
  • In season 2, both Ash and Pablo do it when they decide to listen to the Necronomicon and end up unleashing Baal.
  • Also in season two, episode two, Ash collects the Necronomicon but leaves it in the Delta, ostensibly because he knows deadite Lillian Pendergrast is in the house. However, A pair of kids he insulted earlier in the episode steal the car while he's talking with Ruby. In the next episode, one of the thieves' girlfriends finds the book and reads from it, leading to the Delta becoming possessed, and almost every kid but Lacey being killed by it, and Ash's father Brock being killed by it when it runs him down while Brock is standing unaware in the street. Ash later has to kill the girl that read from it when she becomes deadite possessed and attacks Brock. Also, Ash is forced to 'kill' the Delta to stop it. It gets repaired later.
• Nitro Boost: In "Brujo," Ash uses a Nitro Boost to outrun the Evil Force as it's chasing the group on the road; doing so nearly burns out the Delta's engine.
• No Dead Body Poops: Averted with the intestine-possessed corpse in "Morgue", much to Kelly's chagrin when she has to get into the car with Ash.
  Kelly: (Revulsed by Ash's smell) Oh shit! What happened in there?!
  Ash: Huh... Let's go with colonoscopy.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Kelly delivers one to a deadite using kitchen tools to vent her frustrations in having been possessed by a demon. Lampshaded by Ash, who tells Pablo he thinks Kelly needed that.
• No, You: Ash's response to being told to "stop being a bitch" is, "You're being a bitch!"
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: In "Books From Beyond," Eligos is explicitly mentioned to be the weakest demon that Lionel could find to summon in the Necronomicon, and he still proves to be too much for Ash to handle, using Teleport Spam and nearly killing him. It also possesses Kelly, nearly killing Pablo in Kelly's form a few episodes later and killing the Brujo before Ash finally stops it.
• Not What It Looks Like: Ash's father comes back as a Deadite, resulting in a rather messy fight that leaves Ash standing over a hacked-up corpse drenched in blood. When his daughter Brandy walks in, suffice to say, this doesn't look very good.
  • When Ash, being attacked by the Eliogos-possessed Kelly during his spirit walk defends himself under the influence by throttling Kelly, Pablo, not realizing, knocks Ash out to close out the episode, and he's tied up in the next episode while the Brujo tries to exorcise him. Thankfully, they realize it's Kelly who's posssesed before she can kill Pablo.
  • Also, season two, episode three. Ash saves Brock from being killed by a deadite, and one of the kids invited to the party walks into the bathroom and sees the aftermath, then runs out screaming that Ashy Slashy is going to kill them all. Ash being Ash, he runs out to defend his actions while carrying the decapitated head of the deadite in question, realizes, and throws it behind the bar as the kids panic even further. Brock defends him, at least.
• Now or Never Kiss: Between Kelly and Dalton before Dalton makes his Heroic Sacrifice in the Deadlands.
• Nuke 'em: The military plans to nuke Kandar the Destroyer in the Grand Finale.
• Off with His Head!: A truly ludicrous number of people are decapitated in this show, both as Deadites and as human beings.
• Oh, Crap!: Too many to list. One in particular comes in the series finale when Ash and Pablo discover a nuke is going to be fired at Kandar the Destroyer, and Pablo tells Ash that it will only make him stronger.
• Once More, with Clarity: "Second Coming" revisits several scenes from the previous two episodes, revealing how Baal possessed Pablo's corpse and then tricked Ash into traveling back in time.
  • Episode four of season one shows how Kelly became possesed by the demon Eligos Ash had summoned.
• One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Ash learns he has a daughter due to a long-ago one with a woman in town. Then the mom is killed off by Deadites on the same day he learns this, so he's now her only parent. Since Ash is a Hero with Bad Publicity, father-daughter time is difficult.
• One-Steve Limit: Subverted. We see Ash's girlfriend Linda from the films in flashbacks and in the form of her talking, severed head in seasons one and two, while meeting the new character Linda B at the beginning of season two, who serves as Ash's love interest. Lampshaded by Ash in the fourth episode, when he's rehearsing a speach he plans to tell her and says he always knew she was one of the Linda for him, seemingly making it clear that Ash likes dating women named Linda.
  • Season one features Ash's love interest Amanda Fisher, who dies as a human in episode eight, and is killed as a deadite in the final episode of season one. In Season two episode six, while being mindcrewed by Baal in the asylum, Ash meets Kelly in the form of one of the patients, yet she tells him more than once that she's "Not Kelly, she's Amanda." It's never made clear if the name is intended to invoke memories of Fisher.
• Oops! I Forgot I Was Married: In the Season 3 premiere, Ash realizes he married Candy Barr (and promptly forgot about it) during a drunken bender in Branson.
• Organ Autonomy: In "The Morgue," while retrieving the Necronomicon from the corpse Ruby hid it in, Ash gets attacked by said corpse's possessed intestines, complete with Lamprey Mouth.
• Orifice Evacuation:
  • In "The Host", Eligos exits Kelly's body through her mouth.
  • In "The Dark One", this is how the book-possessed Pablo is forced to "birth" Ruby's demonic children.
• Papa Wolf: In Season 3, Ash discovers he has a daughter, Brandy, and becomes immensely protective of her. Even going through the Dark World to rescue her after Ruby kills her.
• Parental Hypocrisy: During the Grand Finale, Ash takes a hit off of a bong, but refuses to let Brandy have any on the grounds that Drugs Are Bad. When Brandy calls him on it, Ash informs her he doesn't want her to pick up his bad habits.
• Passing the Torch: In the series finale, expecting that he's going off to his death, while saying his goodbyes, Ash tells Kelly that she is ready to step up and be a leader of the Ghostbeaters prior to his showdown with Kandar. Partially subverted. While Ash doesn't die in the final battle, he's seriously injured and put in medical stasis by the Knights of Sumeria. At episode's end, he wakes up many years in the dystopian future. While he's still ready to do battle, Pablo, Kelly, and Brandy are long gone by that point.
• People Puppets: Ash's evil demonic offspring decapitates a woman, then crawls up her... nether regions, and proceeds to use the hollowed out corpse as if it were a suit of Powered Armor. Ash takes a hell of a beating at first, before he realizes that the corpse makes for a pretty handy prison.
  • In season one, Deadite Amanda uses the two hikers corpses as talking dummies to taunt Pablo and Kelly by smashing her hands into the back of their heads.
• Perverse Puppet: In "Delusion", Ash receives one of himself (named Ashy Slashy) from Dr. Peacock, a disguised Baal, who tries to convince him that he is indeed crazy, and apparently murders two people on behalf of Ash. Kelly later encounters the puppet while looking for Ash, where it transforms into a Deadite (complete with felt teeth and white button eyes, no less).
• Police Are Useless: As revealed in "Books From Beyond," Ash is a firm believer in this. Since Amanda's Inspector Javert tendencies led to Eligos escaping and nearly killing everyone, it's not an unjustified belief.
  • The Knights of Sumeria count as well. For being the ancient protectors of the Chosen One and fighters against evil, they are downright horrible at their jobs. They've clearly failed to protect Ash in any way at any point during the movies and first two seasons, and every time they show up they're gruesomely killed off roughly five minutes later.
• Potty Failure: Kelly end up peeing herself during a exorcism to rid her of Eligos in “The Host".
• Possessing a Dead Body:
  • Baal secretly possesses Pablo's corpse at the end of "Ashy Slashy", in a Batman Gambit to get himself resurrected when Ash travels back in time to resurrect Pablo.
  • In season 3, Kelly is killed in a fight by Ruby, who then repurposes her deceased body to channel the spirit of one of her allies from the evil dimension she hails from. Ash later tries to rescue her from the netherworld, but she can't pass the dimension threshold because her body is still being occupied by someone else.
• Possession Levitation: Pablo levitates off the ground after he's possessed by the Necronomicon in "Trapped Inside".
• Powerful Pick: Used to great effect in "Fire in the Hole."
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Just like in Army of Darkness, Ash likes to spout off a lot of these before a fight.
  • Before battling a possessed old woman.
    Ash: Yo, granny! Hope you took Geritol, 'cause it's time to dance!
  • Facing down Kelly's mother:
  Deadite: Now the three of you will perish together! Evil will walk the earth!
  Ash: Yeah, well, your cooking was shit!
  • Kelly gets one in "Killer of Killers", when she and Pablo show up in time to save Ash and Amanda from the latter's Deadite boss:
  Kelly: Hey, asshole! (Deadite turns around to see Kelly and Pablo holding Ash's weapons) Order up! (They toss Ash his weapons)
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Ash, upon realizing he's unleashed the Deadites again, has only one thing to say.
  Ash: ...Fuuuuck.
  • Then again when he realized Eligos was trying to trick him to kill Kelly.
  • His Bond One-Liner after killing Deadite!Henrietta is a simple "Fuck you!"
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Ash not only starts his fights by talking smack, he sure as hell finishes them that way.
  • Before killing a possessed groundskeeper who smashed through a door:
    Ash: Mommy should've taught you to knock.
  • Before decapitating his possessed boss with an oncoming car:
    Ash: Thanks for the heads-up!
  • Forcing his shotgun down the throat of a demon spawn and pulling the trigger:
    Ash: Someone needs to wash your mouth out, kid. And that someone is me.
• Properly Paranoid: Despite everyone claiming otherwise, Ash believes Kelly's mom is a Deadite after she seemingly turns up back from the dead, claiming to have had amnesia for the 6 months after she seemingly died in a car accident. He turned out to be right.
• Pulling Themselves Together: Kelly takes out Ruby with a grenade, which severs one of her arms and legs. Ruby's Healing Factor is still working fine however, so all she has to do is re-attach the missing limbs.
• Pun-Based Title: "Ashes to Ashes" has Two Ashes in it.
• Puppeteer Parasite: In "The Dark One", the Necronomicon's severed face attaches to Pablo's, and turns him into Ruby's tool.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Subverted, thankfully, in Kelly's case, twice.
  • In 1X7, "Fire Down Below," one of the survivalists tells Kelly he's going to "make her pregnant later." Kelly is less than enthusiatic. Thankfully, said survivalist gets killed less than a minute later, and is killed again, in part by Kelly, when he returns as a deadited for some Laser-Guided Karma.
  • In 2X10, Past Ruby laments that Ash is leaving Kelly to be defiled and devoured by the demon spawn if he loses the fight with Baal. Kelly argues that the deal was that she was only going to be devoured, and defiled was NOT mentioned. Ruby counters that "It was implied." Thankfully, Ash wins the fight.
  • Invoked in 1X10. Pablo, with the cover of the Neconomicon stuck to his face, is forced to puke/birth the demon spawn. He begs Ruby to be released in his lucid moments in between, and eventually is so traumatized by it he begs Ash to kill him.
  • Also, Baal's M.O. plays with this. He uses his power to mind screw at least one female officer with the Elk Grove PD and then slices and peels off the poor woman's ENTIRE skin to wear and pose as her.
• Razor Floss: Ash is able to slice clean through a Deadite's skull with the strings of a harp in the Season 3 premiere.
• Red Baron: Pablo's nickname for Ash is El Jefe ("The Boss"), because that's what his shaman grandfather called the man who's destined to battle evil.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Pablo, when possessed by the Necronomicon.
• Redemption Rejection: During the second season finale, Ruby gives her 1980s past self a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech, informing her of what will happen to her in the future if she continues down the path she's going. 1980s!Ruby not only turns Present!Ruby down flat, but stabs her in the gut with the Kandarian Dagger, later presenting Ash with Present!Ruby's severed head.
• Red Shirt:
  • Three hikers stumble on the cabin in the final two episodes of Season 1, mostly so the Deadites will have some people they can kill who aren't Ash, Kelly and Pablo.
  • In Season 3, Dalton, a Knight of Sumeria comes to protect the chosen one Ash. Dalton lasts just 3 episodes before he's killed off. After that, more Knights of Sumeria show up... and end up getting killed even more quickly.
• Refusal of the Call: Ash initially refuses to fight back against the Deadites and fully plans to just start running from them again.
  Pablo: You can't outrun evil, Ash!
  Ash: Watch me!
• Remember the New Guy?: The series seems to be headed down this road with the introduction of Ruby Knowby, the hitherto unspoken of sister of Annie Knowby from the second film. Subverted in 1X9 when Ruby reveals she's not a Knowby at all. She's a dark one who WROTE THE NOCRONOMCON, and has been lying to them all the whole time.
• Rent-a-Zilla: At the end of the series, what the Kandarian Demon turned out to be. It's the size of a building, is Nigh-Invulnerable and even breathes fire (which it uses to shoot down an A-10 Thunderbolt). Ash kills it by hijacking a tank, saboting the Kandarian Dagger into a tank shell and shooting the demon with it.
• Resurrection Sickness: A literal case in "Judgement Day." After being resurrected in the previous episode, Brandy ends up repeatedly vomiting, which Pablo describes as "the residual effects of coming back from the dead." Ash doesn't suffer the same effects for some reason, claiming he never gets a hangover either.
• Revival: The series picks up right where the Evil Dead films left off, plus a 30 year Time Skip, with a now middle-aged Ash forced to assume the mantle of Unlikely Hero once more and battle the horrors of the Evil Dead.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: Ash and the gang run into a heavily armed militia in "Fire In The Hole" who react to the appearance of Deadites as well as one would expect.
• Rousing Speech: Brandy gives one to Ash in "The Mettle of Man", doubling as Get A Hold Of Yourself Man:
  Brandy: Enough! I don't know much about this Evil Dead crap, and I know even less about why it chose you, but it did. You're the Savior of Humanity, so get on your damn feet and own up to who you are! In the short time that I have known you, I have seen things that I never thought existed. Seen you do things that I never thought possible. You taught me to trust you. You taught me to believe in you, and I do. Please, don't let me down now.
• Rule of Cool:
  • Ash's chainsaw cuts through clothes, skin, and human bone like a knife through butter, just cause it looks cooler that way. Though the series sometimes subverts this. In one case, Ash gets the chainsaw stuck in a wall. Later, when fighting Henrietta, he stabs her in the gut and she gushes out so much pus and fluid it chokes the chainsaw and kills it.
  • Pablo built a fully functional prosthetic hand out of a Power Glove. At least now Ash's artificial hand uses modern technology. Just go with it.
• Rule of Funny: Ash didn't bury, lock or destroy the Necronomicon, or take any other preventative measures, basically because it was funnier for Ash to accidentally summon another Deadite plague by reading the thing while high to try and impress a girl.
• Rule of Three: Amanda on her own being menaced in a place where there's a taxidermized deer head. The third time ends with her being impaled.
• Running Gag: Ash keeps mistaking Baal's name for "Bill."
  • Ash's Let's Get Dangerous! Lock-and-Load Montage featuring at least ONE goofy thing because it's as important as kicking ass.
• Secret Relationship: Chet appears to have had something going on with Cheryl before she went to the cabin and got possessed and killed. In Chet's final episode alive, it's hinted at extremely strongly, with him at one point saying when deadite Cheryl is licking his neck that it doesn't feel nearly as good as it used to. He also seems to be about to confess as much to Ash before Cheryl kills him.
• Seeing Through Another's Eyes: Pablo has a vision where he sees through the eyes of the Necronomicon in Season 3.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: In "Home Again," Ash decides to use the Necronomicon's magic to travel back in time to 1982, before the events of the first film, and prevent his past self from finding the Necronomicon in the first place, thus negating Pablo's death. Ash being Ash, he doesn't seem to care that it may negate the deaths of Cheryl, Scotty, Linda, and Shelley, as well as others.
• Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: During their Final Battle, Baal messes with Ash by taking on the forms of Chet, and Cheryl. He also seems to do this with Brock, but after Ash drowns him, Baal shows up safe and sound at the doorway, and Brock's corpse disappears to reveal Ash's chainsaw hand to use in the final battle.
• Shear Menace: Amanda gets stabbed through the hand with a pair of scissors in "El Jefe".
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Ash's buddy Chet, who tries to give Pablo a pep talk by relaying his struggles coming to terms with what he did serving in the military, but winds up Drowning My Sorrows instead.
• Shoot Out the Lock: Ash shoots the padlock of the cellar open in "Second Coming".
• Shoot the Mage First: The very first person Eligos kills when freed from the circle is Lionel, the only one present who can read the incantation needed to banish the demon. With the others he takes his time to torment them first.
• Shovel Strike: Ash wounds Deadite-Lem with a shovel in "Fire in the Hole."
• Shown Their Work: The last leg of the first season takes us back to the cabin. It's a new set with mostly new props, but the production crew actively combed over old photos and sought out identical items in order to recreate what had been seen in the movies.
• Sink or Swim Fatherhood: In season 3, Ash is visited by Candy Barr, one of his old flames, who tells him that they conceived a daughter years ago who's a teenager by now, Brandy. Her mother dies not much later at the hands of the Deadites, leaving Ash to suddenly figure out how to be a father. He tries to be a "cool dad" to Brandy, but considering he frequently has to fight the forces of evil and hacking up monsters with a chainsaw, the results... are sub-optimal.
• Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror
• Soul-Sucking Retail Job: Ash is still stuck in the same type of retail job he had 30 years ago. Now he's a lowly stockboy at Value Stop. He's become such a basketcase that he's barely hanging on to that job.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Ash fighting a Deadite-possessed doctor and centerfold model in a sperm bank in "Booth Three" is set to "Take on Me" by A Ha.
• Spirit Advisor: Ash's dead father Brock Williams appears to him as a ghost in season 3 to provide him clues on the evil going-ons in the town.
• Spiritual Antithesis: To Evil Dead (2013). The 2013 revival was a pure horror film with rare moments of humor like the original film; meanwhile, the show is a Comedy Horror in the same vein as Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.
• Spiritual Successor: While the show is an official sequel to the Evil Dead films, it takes Ash's modern characterization from My Name is Bruce, a parody of the Evil Dead films in which Bruce Campbell plays himself as a pathetic washout living in a trailer.
• Spot the Imposter: Kelly and Pablo have to do this with Ash and Evil Ash in "Bound in Flesh". They eventually figure it out when the real Ash tells them to shoot them both so that he doesn't "have to put up with this shit anymore", since the real Ash would only sacrifice himself for his own sake.
• Spotting the Thread: Eligos tries to trick Ash to kill Kelly as he is possessing her. Though Eligos tells Ash to make a cross for her grave. Ash, knowing Kelly is Jewish, instantly realizes it's Eligos trying to mess with him.
• Staking the Loved One: Kelly is put in a position where she nearly has to do this twice, first with her mother and then with Pablo, but someone else ultimately does it for her both times. Ash has to do it to both his sister (again) and his father, but it doesn't bother him all that much since he only sees them as Deadites and knows they're already gone.
• The Starscream: Past Ruby is revealed to be this to Baal in the Season 2 finale.
• Staying Alive: The evil Ruby from the past in the Season 2 finale.
• Suck Out the Poison: In "Home Again," Ash's leg is temporarily possessed, and after deciding not to cut it off like he did his hand, resorts to this, cutting the leg open with a pair of scissors and sucking out the demonic poison.
• Status Quo Is God: A minor example. Ash gets his right hand back via time travel shenanigans, only to lose it all over again in a Duel to the Death the same episode.
• Suddenly Speaking: The Necronomicon starts speaking in "Bound in Flesh" after being exposed to Evil Ash's blood.
• Supernatural Hotspot Town: Elk Grove, thanks to being the birthplace of The Chosen One Ash as well as being the current location of the Necronomicon.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: After Kaya is evicted from Kelly's body, she spends a good deal of time during the episode as a corpse before Pablo can rescue her spirit from the Rift. When she returns to her body, due to the fact her heart hasn't been beating and her blood has settled, she looks sheet white and corpse-like until she's moved around and they get upstairs to the street and her blood has realistically had time to circulate through her body again. Kelly lampshades her appearance herself when she first revives, saying she looks like Keith Richards, while Brandy compares her to Iggy Pop.
  • Through the midway point of season two, The townspeople of Elk Grove and Ash's father Brock realistically assume Ash just went nuts and murdered Shelley, Linda, Scott, and Cheryl, as "deadite possession" is a bit hard for the townspeople to swallow. Apparently there wasn't enough evidence left from the original deaths to convict Ash, however.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Ash is working at ValueStop, not S-Mart, at the beginning of the series, as they didn't have the rights at the time to reference Army of Darkness. Towards the end of Series 2, when Ash suggests time travel to bring Pablo back from the dead he alludes that "he's done it before".
• Summoning Ritual: The Necronomicon is chock-full of instructions on how to summon a myriad evil entities from The Underworld in which they reside, this being the reason it was created in the first place.
  • The series is set in motion when Ash reads one of the incantations while intoxicated to impress a girl, summoning the Deadites once more.
  • In the episode "Books From Beyond" Ash has Lionel summon the demon Eligos to find out how to reverse the previous summoning. This ritual is far more elaborate and involves drawn circles and lines that must not be broken. This turns out to be a bad idea.
• Swiss-Army Appendage: Ash's new prosthetic hand has a laser pointer, a screwdriver, and a flashlight built into it.
• Synchronization: In season 3, Pablo gets possessed and bites Kelly in the leg. A demonic Pablo face grows out of the wound, meanwhile the real Pablo is trying to catch Brandy. When Kelly stuffs the face to shut it up, she sees that the real Pablo starts choking. She realizes that possessed Pablo and the face on her leg are linked. So she forcefeeds gasoline into the face and lights it. This causes the real Pablo to cough up fire and gives Brandy time to stab him with the Kandarian dagger.
• Tank Goodness: In the final episode of season 3, Ash straps the Kandarian dagger to a tank shell and uses it to obliterate Kandar.
• Tap on the Head:
  • Pablo knocks out Amanda by smacking her on the back of the head with a bone when she attempts to arrest Ash in "Books from Beyond".
  • Ruby's captive in Season 3 knocks out Ash with a sink when he suggests capturing her demon child alive instead of just killing it.
• Third Wheel: Pablo and Kelly run into a trio of Australian hikers while looking for the cabin, a couple of recently engaged Sickeningly Sweethearts and their female friend who hates camping, the woods, and having to put up with them.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Ash repeatedly states this to his friends telling them he should go to the cabin alone or they might all die. However since they have been through everything thus far they want to see it to the end. Ash finally does ditch them in "Fire in the Hole", only for them to track him down in "Ashes to Ashes".
• Time Travel Episode: The second season episode "Home Again" involves Ash and co. going back in time to 1982 to prevent his younger version from ever using the Necronomicon at the cabin to summon the Kandarian demons. They remain in the past for the remainder of the following episode, "Second Coming".
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The time travel events in the second season finale by all rights should have created a Cosmic Retcon that undid the entire franchise, yet when the protagonists return to the present, nothing has changed beyond Pablo being alive again and Ruby once again becoming an antagonist. Pablo lampshades this in the Season 3 premiere, when he admits that this doesn't make much sense.
• Toilet Humour:
  • During his fight with Amanda in the diner Men's Room, Ash falls face-first into the urinal trough.
  • In "Ashy Slashy", Kelly gets her face shoved into a bedpan by the Ashy Slashy puppet.
  Ashy Slashy: Don't be so pissed! Some people pay good money for this sorta thing, you know.
• Token Evil Teammate: As of Season 2, Ruby, though she goes through a Heel–Face Turn as Character Development.
• Token Trio: The main heroic trio consists of a white man, a Honduran-American man, and a Jewish woman.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Necronomicon Ex Mortis, a cursed tome bound in human flesh, inked in human blood, and filled with incantations to summon demons and other evils.
• Too Dumb to Live: The teens who taunt "Ashy Slashy"^note (really an evil Ash clone) in "Twist and Shout".
  • Also, the teens in the second season that steal Ash's Delta, particularly the one that finds the Necronomicon on the floor of the car and reads from it.
  • Chet. Poor Chet. Even after getting pummeled and attacked by deadite Cheryl, and being told by Ash to stay upstairs where it was safe, he decides to go downstairs for a beer run and gets accosted once more by deadite Cheryl. It doesn't end well for him.
  • When reuniting with Candy Barr who reveals that the two have a child (in-wedlock) together, Ash dismisses this as impossible as he used the same condom 100 times in one year.
• Torso with a View: One of the teens who stole Ash's car in "Last Call" gets a hole punched through his chest by one of the Delta's flying hubcaps when it becomes possessed by the Necronomicon.
• The Tooth Hurts:
  • In "El Jefe", Ash gets a tooth knocked out by a Deadite-possessed Creepy Doll. As it turns out, he was wearing dentures, and replaces them at home.
  • When Kelly gets possessed by Eligos, he chews out her teeth and spits them at Ash. After Eligos has been slayed, Ash optimistically points out that they were probably wisdom teeth that were coming out anyways.
• Trademark Favorite Drink: Ash is fond of Shemp's beer, a nod to Bruce Campbell's love of The Three Stooges and Sam Raimi's creation of the term Fake Shemp.
• Trash the Set:
  • In "The Dark One", Kelly sets the cabin on fire, finally destroying it.
  • Thanks to time travel, this happens again at the end of the following season. The climax of "Second Coming" sees Baal's defeat resulting in the cabin and everything in it being consumed in flames and Dragged Off to Hell.
  • In the Grand Finale, most of Elk Grove is demolished by Kandar.
• Treasure Chest Cavity: As revealed in "The Morgue," Ruby hid the Necronomicon inside a corpse at the hospital morgue.
• Twin Threesome Fantasy: Jokingly cited by Ash, being his usual self, when he runs into two versions of the immortal Ruby from different time periods (2016 and 1982) and wonders out loud if it would technically qualify as a threesome or not.
• Ultimate Job Security: It's established in "El Jefe" that Ash is a not the best employee at Value Stop, having done such things as take phony sick days using his pet lizard as an excuse. If he were not a senior employee, he would have been fired by now:
  Mr. Roper: You think you can't get fired 'cause you have seniority? Well... okay. Technically, you're correct.
• Unusual Pets for Unusual People: Eli, Ash's bearded dragon. Season two reveals that Ash had one as a college student as well, but it died of sorrow (or starvation) after he ran off.
• Vanity License Plate: Ash's Oldsmobile's front plate reads "GROOVY". The rear plate is a standard Michigan license plate, though.
• Villain-Beating Artifact: The Kandarian dagger.
• Villain Has a Point: While it isn't exactly fair to place the blame on him, Ruby does make a valid argument that no matter how good Ash's intentions may be, he has a tendency to leave a trail of horribly mauled innocents in his attempts to stop the evil. The scene at the Western Moose diner is a good example, where six people met a gruesome end simply because it occurred to Ash to stop there to eat.
• Villainous Breakdown: Ruby undergoes one in "Twist and Shout." Ash manages to kill the clone she spawned to make him look psychotic and take his place as the Chosen One, and Ruby becomes so enraged that after she convinced Brandy that Ash murdered her, she gets up, WITH HER INTESTINES SPILLING OUT to chew Ash out for mucking up her plans and telling him how lucky he is.
  • Baal starts to have one after making his hand-to-hand combat bet with Ash in the season two finale. He gets so beat down by Ash that he has to resort to cheating tactics in order to win the fight. Ash still ultimately beats him.
• Villainous Rescue: The Dark Ones show up and kill Ruby and Kaya, interrupting Kaya just as she is about to kill Ash via Eye Scream.
• Vision Quest: Pablo's uncle guides Ash through one in "Brujo" in an attempt to discover how to stop the Deadites. Then the Eligos-possessed Kelly hijacks it in an attempt to kill him.
• Visionary Villain: Ruby wants to use the Necronomicon to unite all the world's evil under their rule.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Kelly pukes out Ash's car window at the start of "Brujo." In the subsequent episode, she projectile vomits during the exorcism.
• Wall Crawl: Deadites are able to scamper around on all fours on both walls and ceilings.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: The live broadcast in the Season 3 premiere where the Necronomicon is read ends with this when demonic forces are unleashed.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Ash desperately wants his father to believe that he's a badass demon hunter... or at the very least, that he isn't a serial killer responsible for what happened to everyone at the cabin.
• Wham Line: From the Cliffhanger ending of "Bound in Flesh", when the ritual supposed to destroy the Necronomicon is instead clearly unleashing something:
  Ash: You don't know what you're doing!
  Ruby: Of course I know what I'm doing. I wrote this book.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • After getting together with Linda B. at the end of season 2, she disappears without even a passing mention in season three.
  • The Michigan State Police who were tracking Ash's movements from the trailer park killings and beyond, seemingly stop their investigation, despite the fact that Boyle and eventually Amanda are also possessed and end up being killed by Ash before the season ends.
  • Also, Scotty, Cheryl, Linda, Shelley, Annie Knowby, etc. Since Ash goes back in time in the season two finale and destroys the cabin and seemingly the Necronomicon before his younger self arrives to the cabin with Cheryl, Scotty, and the rest, and the incantations are read, technically, all of the characters killed in the first two films SHOULD be alive, as the book was never read from while they were present, and the cabin itself was destroyed and sent to Hell....And due to the wibbly-wobbily, timey-wimey stuff. Instead, Ash makes a wager that he ends up winning with Baal, and only Pablo returns from the dead. In fact, nothing in the present day has changed when Ash returns with Pablo and Kelly.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • After the whole mess with Eligos in "Books From Beyond," Ash chews out Kelly for uncuffing Amanda, since it was due to Amanda's interference that Eligos was able to break free and kill Lionel.
  • Ash himself is on the receiving end of this from Pablo and Kelly in that same episode, since it was his bright idea to summon Eligos for information to begin with.
  • In the Season 1 finale, Ash forms a truce with the Big Bad. Almost understandable when it saves his friends - less so when he may have doomed the whole world, and he's laughing with joy on the car ride to Jacksonville. In fairness, Ruby seems to have been trying to hold up her end of the bargain, but the spawn she created became too powerful, she lost her immortality, and had to cry to Ash for help.
  • Ash makes a deal with Baal for a one-on-one fistfight. If he wins, Baal, Ruby, and the demon spawn go to Hell. If he loses, Ruby basically begins the apocalypse while Kelly is devoured, and worse, by the demon spawn. Lampshaded by Kelly herself. Good thing Ash manages to win.
• Where It All Began:
  • "Ashes To Ashes" has Ash returning to the cabin from the first two films. The remainder of the first season takes place there.
  • Season 2 takes it even further, as the last two episodes feature Ash, Kelly, and Ruby traveling back in time to the days just before Ash first found the Necronomicon, to try and stop his younger self from reading from it.
• Whole-Plot Reference: "Last Call" and "D.U.I." are essentially Ash vs. Christine.
• Wild Teen Party: Ash throws one in "Last Call" in an attempt to flush out the teens who stole his car.
• Will They or Won't They?: Pablo and Kelly. Pablo overtly has the hots for Kelly, but Kelly seems to see Pablo as a friend. In two episodes of season three, one when Pablo is possessed by a deadite and recovers, and the series finale, when Pablo brings Kelly's spirit back from The Rift, the two of them kiss. However, the series ends before we see where it went.
• Workplace Horror: The series pretty much kicks off when a possessed doll attacks Ash while he's pulling a shift at his workplace, Value Stop. Also, Mr. Roper is possessed by the evil while shouting out the door for Pablo and Kelly to get back to work.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Ash, even if that child is a demon. He even gave the demon child a countdown to get out of the way before he shot it, and even after he reached zero still tried to convince it to go away so he wouldn't need to shoot it. It isn't until the demon child attacks him does he decide to kill it.
  • Played with in season one, episode six. [[spoiler: A teen caught in the bathroom at the diner attempts to make a run for it past Amanda's deadite-possessed superior, and said superior tosses the teen into a spinning fan where he's chopped up by the blades.
  • Ash Is forced to kill Brandy's school friend in the first episode of season three when she's possessed by a deadite. Kelly kills a possessed student who merged with the 'Cougie,' the school's mascot.
  • The Evil Ash spawned by Ruby kills multiple kids during a school dance to frame the real Ash as a homicidal murderer.
  • Pablo kills a deadite-possessed student corpse from the high school dance when Ash is in the rift.
• Wrecked Weapon: In "Judgment Day," Ruby crushes Ash's chainsaw.
• Wrench Whack: Pablo faces off with a deadite high school student in season three in the hardware store using a pipe wrench while Ash is trying to find Brandy in the rift.
• Writing Around Trademarks: The show will occasionally make veiled references to Army of Darkness in spite of being prohibited from directly referencing it due to copyright restrictions. In episode 9, Ash says "Chopping up my evil clone. Maybe someday that'll feel weird." This is an indirect callback to him doing so in Army of Darkness, though officially it could be explained as Ash simply finding nothing weird anymore. In "Home Again," Ash also mentions getting sent back to the Middle Ages, but does not elaborate. The show gets away with this because it also happens at the end of Evil Dead 2.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: The militia members in "Fire in the Hole" all know there's something deeply wrong with Lem, but being paranoid conspiracy theorists, they wrongly assume he's been infected with some kind of airborne chemtrail mind-control virus by the U.S. government, and wear gas masks to avoid contracting it; pointedly, the member in the woods wearing the gas mask is not only the next to be possessed as a Deadite, but because he has his mask on, the other guys don't see him coming.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: In "Last Call", Ash reconciles with his father, who finally realizes Ash was telling the truth all these years... and is then run over and killed by the possessed Delta.
• Your Head Asplode:
  • How Ash finally kills Eligos in "The Host".
  • Brandy stabs a deadite in the jaw with the Kandarian dagger in the Grand Finale, causing its head to swell and explode.
• You No Take Candle: In "El Jefe," the Creepy Doll talks like this ("Little Lori hate you! Little Lori kill you!").
• Your Eyes Can Deceive You: In "Episode 4" during Ash's Mushroom Samba to find the way to defeat the Deadites (the solution is inside him), he goes blind. Brujo tells him the following:
  Brujo: The key to look inside yourself is too see without sight.

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"It's good to see you, Jefe."
"Good to be back."
"How does it feel?"
"Groovy."

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