Series / Reaper

Meet Satan's favorite tools.

Reaper is an Urban Fantasy Comedy series that ran on the The CW from September 2007 to May 2009. It starred Bret Harrison, Tyler Labine, and Missy Peregrym, and with Ray Wise in the role of Satan.

Meet Sam Oliver. He's a college drop-out working at the Work Bench with his two best friends, Ben and Sock, and the woman who he's had a crush on since high school, Andi. Then he turns twenty-one and learns that his parents accidentally sold his soul to the Devil before he was born. Now he has to work for the Devil as a bounty hunter for escaped souls.

One could call it a comedic Spiritual Successor to Brimstone.

The show was cancelled after the second season. There were talks to continue the series as a comic book, though nothing seems to have materialized on that front.

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This series provides examples of:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Sam, Ben and Sock once had to search the sewers for an escaped soul made of green nuclear-waste goo. The sewers were fairly dank and smelly, but they were easily big enough for three people to walk through.
• Action Survivor: Every mortal in the cast.
• Affably Evil: The Devil seems to treat Sam like a son, giving him advice on dating, although he can be mean, too.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: The show plays with this trope with Nina. She's a demon, so as she says herself for one thing she can't help but be a little attracted to evil, and for another 'bad boys' are what she's used to by default. She's initially attracted to Ben because of his caring nature, but is put off a little when he gets too clingy. She even lampshades the trope, saying bad boys "treat you like crap, but at least it's exciting". She eventually decides to go back to Ben, but kisses Sam after being attracted to the dark side she thinks he has from being the Devil's son. This later comes back when Nina seems attracted to Morgan, but this turns out to be a ruse so she can lure Morgan to a group of demons so she can kill him.
• Ambigously Bi: Sock has only shown to have romantic (and sexual) relations with women. However, he's also made a lot of suggestive comments towards various other male characters along the way, including his friends and Morgan. Out of the three, he's also the most prone to Freudian Slips around gay-demon couple Steve and Tony, which one could misread as him fumbling to not out himself on some level.
• Ambulance Chaser: One of the villains was one who returned from the dead with leech powers. Bloodsucking attorney indeed.
• Animated Tattoo: One of the escaped souls.
• Animation Bump: The live-action equivalent: the Pilot was directed by Kevin Smith.
• Anti Anti Christ: The presumed spawn of Satan is fairly depressed to learn that it's his apparent destiny to end the world. He takes comfort from the fact that he's not really all that good at anything, so he'll probably suck at that, too. Subverted in that Sam is not the only son of the Devil. Satan's been around a long time, and has a lot of kids. And he's disappointed in each and every one of them.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking / Disproportionate Retribution: The old sins.
  Devil: Did you know I used to get the people that ate shrimp? Just ate shrimp. Do you have any idea how immensely unsatisfying that is?
• Ascended Demon: Had a group of demons who were trying to overthrow Lucifer through being nice. One of them apparently ascended to angelhood after death, though the finale indicates that angels can be pretty ruthless too.
• Asshole Victim: Sam has to save his old Sadist Teacher from an escaped soul wanting to kill him in revenge, and it would have been better had they just let him get killed first. Fortunately he got his comeuppance in the end.
• Babies Make Everything Better: Averted in "I Want My Baby Back", where the baby of an escaped soul is the primary conflict of the plot. The boys get away with dumping the kid off on Tony who is apparently a natural parent (as all gay demons are bound to be), but this only works for so long as The Devil wants the baby's soul in Purgatory, and it's generally a bad idea to take things back from demons.
• Badass Normal: Sam's friends do not have superpowers, but the three of them are able to capture souls with ease with their know how from the Work Bench.
• Batman Gambit: The Devil, in "Rebellion," is revealed to have set Sam, Sock, and Ben in their new apartment next door to two demons who happen to be members of a demonic underground dedicated to fighting the Devil with goodness. Because of Sam's special relationship with the Devil, the demons devise a plan to trap the Devil and kill him: which is just what the Devil wants. He kills all the demons in the rebellion (except for one), because the goodness plan would have eventually worked in about 400 years. What's more: The Devil left a series of clues that he easily could have avoided. Giving them gifts meant for the escaped soul that Sam is chasing, and putting his own name on the lease are the big ones. This allows Ben to figure out what's going on exactly one moment too late to stop it.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Employed by Sock every once in a while.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The Devil seems like a pretty relaxed, happy, friendly guy. Then Sam saves a random guy's soul from him, and the Devil congratulates him on doing so... right before the Devil collapses several giant shelves on top of Sam.
  Sam: (terrified) I thought you said you weren't angry!
  The Devil: (smiling) I'm not. This is me... disappointed. You should see me angry.
• Bland-Name Product: Work Bench, the Home Depot/Best Buy Fictional Counterpart.
  • Averted elsewhere. Sam's Prius is heavily featured thanks to Toyota paying a promotional consideration, and the first episode features Sam using, what else, a Dirt Devil as a vessel. They also usually don't bother to cover logos on the wide shots when Sam and company are stealing massive amounts of merchandise yet again.
• Book Dumb: While Sam, Ben, and Sock might not be particularly smart about other things, some of their plans to capture souls are really elaborate and complicated. Ben is slightly smarter than Sam, they are both much smarter than Sock. That being said, none of them are intellectuals.
• Bounty Hunter: Sam works as a bounty hunter for the Devil: instead of escaped criminals, he catches escaped souls.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Referenced often.
• Brother–Sister Incest: One of Sam's girlfriends, Cady, is implied but never confirmed to be a daughter of the Devil. If she is, that means Sam slept with (what he believes to be) his own half sister.

• Cain and Abel: Morgan and Sam.
• Cain and Abel and Seth: subverted as Cady doesn't get involved in the Sibling Rivalry and it's never really confirmed if she's the Devil's daughter.
• Call-Back: In the two episodes "Unseen" and "Cancun", Sam asks the Devil to give him a straight answer and just tell him the truth. In both cases, Sam asks about the Devil's children. In "Unseen" he's asking about Cady, in "Cancun" he's asking about himself.
  • The Call-Back also shows how the Devil's relationship with Sam has changed. In the earlier episode "Unseen", the Devil flippantly replies that he'll tell the truth. In "Cancun", the Devil decides to be honest and tells Sam that he's probably going to lie.
• Cannot Spit It Out: A lot of problems come from Sam's inability to tell Andi about his problem with the devil.
• Cassandra Truth: Sprong. Though he deserves it.
• Cast from Lifespan: Kissing a succubus takes years off the end of your life. You temporarily gain super-strength, super-speed, and the good effects of a hundred cups of coffee.
• Chekhov's Gun: the "Get Out of Hell Free" card used in "Greg, Schmeg" to null and void Greg's deal with the Devil.
• Chess with Death: Sam plays coin toss with the Devil. He loses. He plays again and is going to win... but an angel CRUSHES HIS HAND. Cause the forces of good don't want him to win. While it's all part of their plan, they really didn't need to be such assholes about it.
• The Chosen One: Sam is special even for a Reaper: Satan regularly talks to him. He might even be the Devil's son.
  • He's special even as one of the devil's children. It is implied God had a plan for him, but we never find out what it is.
  • Series 2 implies the reason the Devil favours Sam to be his eventual successor over his other children, such as the more obviously evil, Morgan, is that while their personalities are in line with his own and willingly obey him, they don't have any drive to complete the tasks he assigns them. Sam on the other hand, despite his protests, is the only one who actually gets the job done.
• Christianity is Catholic: The show tries to make its theological underpinnings as ambiguous as possible, but whenever we get exposition (especially from Ben) the result is clearly Catholic.

• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Sam's brother disappears after the second episode.
  • Josie vanishes after the first season.
• Citizenship Marriage: Ben gets into one.
• Clingy MacGuffin: The vessels tend to stick with Sam no matter how much he tries to get rid of them.
• Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: Alan Townsend escapes from his deal with the devil by winning a poker game. The condition of his release is that he is forbidden to sin again or he goes directly back to Hell. The problem with this is that he's a gambling addict and gambling is a sin. He eventually ends up back in Hell when the devil arranges for his plane to be grounded in Las Vegas.

• Continuity Creep: Started off as a Soul of the Week show, but about halfway through season one it started with the demon rebellion arc and examining the thorny questions of who Sam's dad is. The most likely candidate is the Devil himself.
• Cursed with Awesome: Subverted. At first it seems like the devil owning Sam's soul looks like the best thing that's ever happened to him: he gets a cool job as a hunter of escaped souls, powers specially designed for each soul so he shouldn't have too much trouble with them, and the big guy's inside advice on how to get laid. However, the devil also occasionally screws with Sam's life just for the hell of it, and he can't say anything about it to the girl he really loves since it would jeopardize her ownership of her own soul.
• Cut Short: The series was cancelled, resulting in this.
• Dangerous 16th Birthday: The 21st birthday is the dangerous one.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Tony, as well as most of the other fallen angels.
  • And Sam, as the son of the Devil.
• Dartboard of Hate: Sam, Sock and Ben have one of Ted.
• Deadpan Snarker: sometimes Sock and Ben, always the Devil. Occasionally Gladys and Andi.
• Deal with the Devil: True to form, Satan really likes to make these and, of course, he usually exploits Exact Words as much as he possibly can, and sees to it that there is always an ironic twist or two included somewhere in said deals. The protagonist is the victim of once such deal that was made by his parents before he was born, that forces him to work for the Devil as the title character.
• Depraved Bisexual: The Devil admits to "swinging both ways".
• Devil, but No God: God is mentioned several times but never appears or intervenes until the end of the series, when an angelic Steve sabotages Sam's attempt to get out of his contract with the Devil. This implies that God actually wants Sam to keep working for the Devil, which might make this a Justified Trope.
• Devil in Plain Sight: The Devil, appropriately (or strangely) enough, who apparently sets off no alarm bells when he's interacting with humans other than Sam.
• Devil's Job Offer: The premise. Sam's parents sold him to the devil before he was born and now the devil has come to collect - by making Sam track down souls who have escaped hell and sending them back.
• Diabolus ex Machina: In the season 2 finale, there is a perfectly logical opportunity to end the series — Sam will win the contest, he and Andi go free, and the devil is sad. Presumably in order to make way for Season 3, the Diabolus is employed: picking up on some rather vague hanging plot threads, an angel comes out of nowhere and ruins everything by breaking Sam's hand. And then the show got canceled.
• Discriminate and Switch:
  Sock: Yes, Steve and Tony smell terrific, and yeah, they've got great taste in beer, but They. Are. *oh-so-short pause* Demons.^note They're also gay...
  • Steve and Tony initially assume Sam and the others stopped hanging out with them because they're gay, until Sam mentions it's because they're demons.
    Steve: The homophobia, I understand. I don't agree with it, but I understand. But fallen angels cursed to walk the Earth for all eternity—and that freaks you out?!
    Sam: Well... yeah.
    Steve: Just explain what it is that worries you.
    Sam: Well, have you guys ever... eaten anyone?
    Tony: ...That is rude.
    Steve: That is rude, and uncalled for, and we are not going to answer that.
• Disproportionate Retribution: A bunch of rebellious demons set up a human sacrifice so that Sam can get out of his deal with the Devil. When Sam protests, saying he won't send an innocent soul to Hell in his place, Tony contends that the guy isn't innocent, he's a drug dealer who tried to sell him weed in the park.
  Tony: It's a gateway drug!
• Divine Parentage: Cady might be the devil's daughter. And Sam might be the devil's son.
• Doorstop Baby: Sorta, a baby was left over after Sam reaped a soul. Baby Carriage also comes into play.
• Downer Ending: The Devil owns Sam's soul, as well as Andi's.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Sam had his hand broken right before he could beat the Devil in a game of coin-tossing and win his soul back. By an angel, no less!.
• Dude, Where's My Reward?: Pretty much the story of Sam's life.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In the pilot episode, Gladis has reptilian eyes on top of horns on her forehead. For the rest of the show, her eyes are normal.
  • A prominent plot device in the first season is if you stand inside a circle of any kind (even a chalk-drawn circle on the side walk), the Devil will be unable to hear what you're saying if he's not physically present; the characters occasionally use this to their advantage by standing inside a circle when they're having a conversation they don't want the Devil to hear. Come the second season, this plot device is abandoned, and the characters never bother to draw a circle even when discussing something they wouldn't want the Devil to know about.
• Escaped from Hell: It's Sam's job to capture souls who had escaped Hell and bring them back. Exactly how they escaped isn't revealed until later in the series: the demon Gladys was helping some escape.
• Establishing Shot: _epartment of Motor Vehicles
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Devil is a petty S.O.B. with no moral compass, but he takes umbrage at the idea of desecrating the dead, whether it's Sam and co. stealing ashes out of urns to keep them away from a soul or using a corpse as a proxy. He also seems to think of the idea of having claim over a soul over pettier indescresions (like coveting and eating shellfish) to be beneath him, though it doesn't stop him from wanting to keep their souls in Hell.
• Evil Feels Good: The Devil clearly has fun getting a reaction from Sam and clearly enjoys tempting humans, he even encourages Sam to be evil because of how much fun he'll have.
• Evil Mentor: The Devil wants to take Sam under his wing. When he's not treating Sam like an underling to be ordered and abused, the Devil will sometimes try to tempt Sam into acting evil in some way or trick him with a Batman Gambit into doing his dirty work.
• Firefighter Arsonist: The very first infernal fugitive Sam is tasked with capturing is Ned Schmecker, an arsonist from The '50s who died trying to burn down his parents' house. Escaping from Hell in present day, he continues his fire-starting antics whilst disguised as a fireman, now with Playing with Fire powers.
• Flamboyant Gay: Steve, though not as bad as some.
• Flirty Stepsiblings: In season 2, Sock finds out that his mom had gotten remarried to a Japanese man and he now has a stepsister. A noticeably attractive stepsister with no personal boundaries. Their interaction is then played for laughs. They eventually do have sex, but then her dad finds out, hits him over the head and sends her back to Japan.
• Freaky Is Cool: Sock tells Sam this about having Devil powers: Sam disagrees
• Gainax Ending: Are Sam and Andi damned or not? Why on Earth would Steve breaking Sam's hand be for the best?
• The Gambling Addict: Alan Townsend.
• Goodbye, Cruel World!: The Devil leaves a fake one of these when he uses Psychic-Assisted Suicide on someone.
  Devil: Quick question: Quoting Hamlet — too cliche? [glances at corpse] Nah, he'd totally do that.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: A wannabe rocker whose great idea of a stage name is just "Ryan" almost does a literal Deal with the Devil and becomes the even-more-ludicrous-sounding "Ryän".
• Heroic Sacrifice: Andi in the finale. It doesn't go well.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Again, Sam/Sock/Ben anyone?
• I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship: Andi, when she realizes that she really likes Sam romantically.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Sam
• I Lied
  Sam: I need to ask you something, but I need you to promise me you'll tell me the truth.
  Devil: Sam, I like you. So I'm going to be honest: I'm probably going to lie to you.
• Improbable Weapon User: For each job, Sam gets a new vessel to use to capture the escaped soul. They range from the reasonable (e.g. a taser, a whip, a scythe) to the bizarre (e.g. a remote-control toy car, a dove, or bubble solution).
• Inconvenient Summons: How the Devil meets Sam.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Sock's stepsister is blissfully unaware that he's got the hots for her.
• Insult Backfire: One episode has this exchange:
  Sam: You're a real ass!
  The Devil: Sammy, I am the Dark Lord of asses.
• Interspecies Romance: Ben hooks up with a demoness named Nina after she kidnaps him. She can transform between looking like a winged monster and a pretty blonde.
• Ironic Hell: Although we never see it first-hand, apparently this is the case for most souls.
• Kavorka Man: Sock verges on this from time to time.
• Jerkass: The Devil loves screwing with Sam, and it becomes worse when Morgan is in the picture. Morgan fits this as well, although he doesn't realize it.
• Jerkass Gods: Some of God's actions may come across as jerkass-y (having an angel break Sam's hand to keep him bound to The Devil and leaving Andi's soul sold for colateral for unspecified reasons) or petty (punishing the Devil for his rebellion by making it impossible for him to eat ice cream).
• Job Title: Even though its only called that once, its apparently the title of Sam's job as a bounty hunter of souls that escaped from hell.
• Just Friends: Andi wants to remain just friends with Sam, even when he wants more until she decides to be his girlfriend.
• Kryptonite Factor: The Devil seems nearly omnipotent but has some weaknesses that even humans can exploit (although, Magnificent Bastard that he is, any or all of these could be carefully disseminated disinformation). Most notably, he cannot enter a circle without an invitation (he has to enter through corners) nor can he see or hear anything that goes on inside. He can also be killed by the sword of the Archangel Michael, though he has that safely hidden away. He is also weakened when people, humans or demons, do good deeds. It's stated that if they had not been killed, Steve's group of rebel demons would have successfully defeated the Devil in 400 years or so by doing good deeds. For a being that existed long before Earth was created, that probably seemed like a very immediate threat.
• Left Hanging: Cancellation is a bitch.
• Limited Wardrobe: Given their level of income, the main cast has maybe three outfits apiece. Sock is the most noticeable in this regard because one of his shirts is prominently stained.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: Starting with the first episode when Sam and Sock suit up to face off against Schmecker, and to varying degrees afterward...always using stuff that happens to be on sale in their place of work.
• Loophole Abuse: In The Cop, the detective sells his soul for catching five high profile killers. Satan then turns around and gives him four and the fifth ends up with the detective shooting himself since he failed to specify what he meant by catch thoroughly enough. Satan admits it was a little sneaky.
  • Used against the devil himself in one episode where a man makes a deal for all the material wealth he wants but refuses to sign the contract for his soul.
    • The man argues that he doesn't have to sign the contract with the devil since he's under no obligation to sign it until the devil's side of the bargain is fulfilled; which logically means the devil cannot have his soul until he says so (which will be never).
    • Sam angrily argues that the man's blatant materialism and endless greed will inevitably condemn the man's soul to hell anyway.
    • The man agrees that Sam has a point but states he plans on repenting at the eleventh hour (a loophole the Devil himself claims does actually work).
    • The Devil responds by trying to kill the man since he's under no obligation not to do so (since the clause preventing the mans early death would only count if the man signed the contract).
    • The man then proceeds to simply repent on the spot and sell all of his material possessions; meaning the devil would have to trick him again to claim his soul.
    • The Devil gives up and decides to not go after him after that, since the man is clearly more trouble than he's worth. But not before punishing Sam since it was his job to get the contract signed in the first place.
• Meaningful Name: One of the escaped souls is named Jack King, who uses sperm banks to trick women into carrying his children.
• Monster of the Week: Practically all the escaped souls Sam catches are these.
• Morton's Fork: At the end of the first season, Tony tests if Sam is the son of the Devil by dropping a laundry machine on him. If Sam dies, it proves he's human (but still dead). If Sam uses his demonic powers to save himself, Tony will execute his plan to kill Sam.
• Ms. Fanservice: Nina. Her demon form... not so much.
• Mushroom Samba: Sock gets one in the finale. On accident.
• Narcissist: This is The Devil's weakness. The secret to beating him in a contest is to bring a mirror to the competition ground with you, because The Devil is incapable of not looking at his own reflection.
• Necessarily Evil: The Devil sees himself like this; he believes the bad souls need severe punishments for their crimes and they need to be returned to hell. He also believes that his deals cull the herd between true good souls and bad ones since he never forces people to accept his offers.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When The Devil confronts Gladys the DMV Demon about allowing souls to escape from hell, her face says it all.
  • Alan^note a gambling addict who will go to Hell if he sins a single time, when he realizes that the plane he's in is stopping over in Las Vegas en route to the Vatican, and he's been given $100 in poker chips. And the Devil is right behind him.
• Omniscient Morality License: Steve breaks Sam's hand to prevent him from winning his rematch with the Devil, citing an undefined greater good and orders from "upstairs".
• One-Hour Work Week: The characters do have jobs at the Work Bench (and its one of the major settings), but the boss is so terribly incompetent that they can come to work, clock in, and just leave. Later, Sam's girlfriend Andi takes over the job and, being in on the Reaper secret, lets them go whenever they need to.
• One-Word Title:
  • The show's title, as a Job Title where the job is one word long.
  • Episodes:
    • Rebellion
• Only Good People May Pass: Alan Townsend takes advantage of this to hide from The Devil after he wins his freedom from his contract. He hides in a cemetery, which is consecrated ground. This prevents The Devil from tempting him into sin.

• Outlaw Couple: Had a pair of escaped souls in an Outlaw Couple relationship. The woman is played by Harmony the vampire.
• Pink Is Erotic: In "Coming to Grips", an escaped soul calling himself Jack King started working in a sperm bank and selling his sperm to oblivious mothers and becoming a father to hundreds of children who aren't aware of their relation to him or their half-siblings. Jack is a narcissistic pervert who has the power to multiply himself and wears a salmon pink dress shirt in the final confrontation within a hospital that's covered with pink wallpaper.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Ben and Sock are often relegated to this role
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Ted, mild overlap with Bunny-Ears Lawyer. While Ted is a jerk that almost no one likes, he seems fairly good at his actual job.
  • Until he gets fired, and for excellent reason.
• Preserve Your Gays: Tony, is the only survivor after the Devil killed all the other demons, and his boyfriend Steve is then redeemed and goes to Heaven as an angel.
• Put on a Bus: John.
  • Sam's ex-girlfriend, Cady, says that she's going to New Mexico for a short amount of time while taking a break with Sam. She never appears in the series again.
• Refusal of the Call: Sam, in the second episode, tries to leave the vessel behind. It follows him.
  Ben: You put it on a truck to Delaware? You think that'll work?
  Sam: Can you find Delaware on a map?
  Ben: ...good point.
• Relationship Upgrade: Sam and Andi and Sock and Josie in the episode "Rebellion."
• Satan: Sam's boss and father.
• Scream Discretion Shot: Subverted. The shot pulls back and you hear a scream, but the person doing the screaming is extremely happy.
• Shared Universe: With Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, as Sam and Sock appear in at least one episode.
• Shirtless Scene: several. The most gratuitous was Ben in the second-to-last episode. Absolutely necessary for the plot.
• Shout-Out
  • The premise owes more than a bit to Ghost Rider, but there's a lot of smaller nods as well, most blatantly to Ghostbusters in the first and third episodes.
  • One episode deals with a soul of an assassin named Léon. The assassin is named after the actual assassin of President Mckinley, Leon Czolgosz, making this more of a historical in-joke.
  • In one second-season episode, The Devil mentions having contracted an advertising agency to improve Hell's image. This mirrors the plot of The Hades Business, a short story by Terry Pratchett, which was the first thing Pratchett ever published. (The story is collected in A Blink of the Screen.)
• Soul-Sucking Retail Job: Sam and his friends spend as much time dealing with the incompetent management and obnoxious customers of The Work Bench as they do chasing down escaped damned souls. It's a toss-up which job is worse.
• Stealth Pun: Episode 4: The Monster of the Week is a woman scorned, and controls a swarm of bees.
• Stigmatic Pregnancy Euphemism: Sock attempts to cheer Sam up by telling him a story about a girl he knew in 11th grade who got shipped off to convent school for getting pregnant in high school.
• Straight Gay: Tony
• Summoning Ritual: Subverted: You can summon the Devil by calling him on his cell. (The area code is Phoenix.)
• Tarot Troubles: Villain of the Week tarot reader lady understood that Sam is working for Satan by drawing several devil cards in a row.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Ted Gallagher. Especially funny when the trope was still called Ted Baxter.
• There Is Only One Bed: Deliberately invoked by Sock when he and everybody went to the mining town to find the soul to get with Kristen. It works.
• Title Drop: Sam is referred to as a "bounty hunter" for most of the series. Only once is he ever called a "Reaper."
• Toad Licking: One the escapees from Hell was a stoner whose preferred method of getting high was licking toads. Fittingly, his demonic power was having a prehensile, Overly-Long Tongue.
• Tonight, Someone Dies: The season one finale was heavily promoted as, "Someone Will Die". However, it seems that this death is John, buried alive and presumed dead by the characters. In the last few minutes Linda seems to have dug the still-alive man out of the ground. In a later episode, it was revealed that the commercials were technically correct. John is no longer alive. Apparently Exact Words matter when making a Deal with the Devil.
• Too Dumb to Live: Especially in the early episodes, Sam frequently decides it's a good idea to tell the Prince of Darkness off to his face. Then again, if you could do this and get away with it (as Sam obviously can), wouldn't you?
  • He is also frequently shocked and offended that Satan, known as the Father of Lies, would lie to him.
  • Not to mention how frequently Sam trusts Sock, of all people, with aspects of his job.
  • Sam's parents are the worst of the whole bunch for thinking they could trick the DEVIL. You didn't honestly expect the Prince of Lies to play fair did you?
  • Sam announcing to the escaped souls that he's a bounty hunter. Because, you know, element of surprise is overrated.
  • Alan Townsend, if only for the fact that his plan to fly to Vatican City to be protected from The Devil clearly didn't factor in the several hours that The Devil would have to get to him while he was on the plane.
• Trickster Mentor: The Devil to Sam.
• Tricked into Signing: In "My Brother's Reaper", Sam had to get a guy to sign the contract for his soul, so he slipped it in with a delivery receipt. Unfortunately for Sam, the guy knew what he was up to and signed it with an alias.
• Tropaholics Anonymous:
  • The Devil runs an AA meeting to promote relapse.
  • The demon resistance under Steve also ran a meeting to talk about their attempts to do good and avoid evil. Sample day: Did some recycling, put quarters in a stranger's parking meter, almost ate a child.
• Ultimate Job Security: Sam, Sock and Ben routinely slack off on their jobs, do it wrong and just flat-out steal from the store, but Ted never fires them. He threatens to fire them on a regular basis, but he never does, thinking that his own ineffective penalties will somehow teach them to do better. It never does. It takes them not showing up for work for weeks for him to fire them in the Second Season premier, and he very easily caves to Sock's blackmail.
• Unwitting Pawn: Sam, constantly. He plays a major role in undoing the demon rebellion. As the series progresses, though, he becomes more savvy and sometimes comes out ahead.
• Villains Blend in Better: In one episode, the next escaped-from-hell soul that the protagonist Sam must capture is a thirteenth-century Mongolian warrior. Sam's employer urges him to hurry lest the Mongolian adapt to our world well enough to start conquering it. It never goes that far, but after the heroes lose the Mongolian for several days, he's wearing an expensive tailored suit by the time they catch up with him. Subverted in that he's still a roaring, raving and destructive brute attacking Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese restaurants. Doubly subverted when the heroes attempt to repeat a previously successful trick and scare the Mongolian with the ringing of a cell phone. The Mongolian grins and shows them his brand-new Bluetooth head-set.
• Walking Wasteland: Cady. She's mostly a nice girl, though there have been hints of Yandere tendencies, but flowers and small animals die in her presence. She may or may not be the devil's daughter.
• Weapons That Suck: In the first episode, Sam is given a demonic Dirt Devil vacuum in order to recapture a soul that escaped Hell.
• Where Everybody Knows Your Flame: Sam meets the Devil a one of these places once.
• Will They or Won't They?: Sam and Andi until "Coming to Grips"
• Woman Scorned: Dumping an ordinary woman is bad enough. Dumping a demoness who's got a crush on you and is really, really trying to overcome her murderous cannibalistic urges is criminally and suicidally insane!
• The Worm That Walks: A woman made of bugs.
• You Are Not Alone: The last line of the series, followed by a reveal that leaves Sam and Andi speechless.
• You Can't Fight Fate: One guy manages to weasel out of his Deal with the Devil. The Devil gets his soul anyway.

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