Series / SEAL Team

Out of the water and into the fray.

SEAL Team is a CBS (now Paramount+) drama series starring David Boreanaz that began airing in 2017. The production crew has gotten help from serving SEAL operators in making sure that operational procedures are accurately portrayed.

The show follows a group of US Navy Special Warfare Operators within DEVGRU^note popularly known as Seal Team Six, led by Master Chief Petty Officer Jason Hayes, as they're deployed all over the world to ensure the safety of the United States while also trying to cope with the loss of the one of their own during a mission. In addition to the stress of going into life-threatening situations for a living, they must also deal with family drama at home, frequently finding that it can be easier facing down an armed enemy than it is trying to keep wives and children happy.

Running parallel to these stories are the trials of Clay Spenser, already an experienced SEAL, as he tries to find his place within DEVGRU. Making things difficult for him, however, is that his reputation is pre-tarnished due to his father, a SEAL veteran, writing a tell-all book about his time in the teams.

The show aired its final network broadcast episode on CBS on October 31, 2021 during its fifth season. The series moved to Paramount+ when it aired its next episode on the next day, November 1.

Season 6 aired from September 18 to November 20, 2022. The series was renewed for a seventh season on January 18, 2023, which would serve as the final season as of November 2023.

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This show provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: At the end of the Mexico arc, Agent Rita Alfaro is outed as the cartel's mole and she betrays Mandy, who swears to hunt her down and pay her back. Nothing ever came to pass of this potential plot, and Mandy's departure from the CIA in Season 5 means it will never be revisited.
• Actor Allusion: Cerberus is occasionally referred to as the "Hair Missile" in reference to her portrayer's name: Dita the Hair Missile Dog.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Conspicuous Gallantry" has Bravo Team spending time to receover at a US military hospital from injured sustained after from RPGs and other debris.
• An Aesop:
  • Brett Swann's arc has a clear message that service to one's country comes with a severe physical and mental toll but that veterans' services are poorly funded and don't come close to providing even adequate care to those that are suffering.
  • "Medicate and Isolate" takes things even further by juxtaposing Swann's struggles with an extremely dangerous and expensive operation to retrieve the body of a dead soldier, illustrating the Skewed Priorities of the US government and how it grabs easy PR opportunities to the detriment of those for whom there are no easy solutions.
• African Terrorists: Boko Haram is mentioned in "Tip of the Spear," but they're not confronted. Instead, General Yomie Percival's militia is encountered by the SEALs during the rescue op.
  • "Fracture" has the Delta Resistance Army.
  • "Medicate and Isolate" has the Islamic Fighters of Mali.
  • "Rules of Engagement" finally has Bravo engage Boko Haram for real. In Season 4, the terrorist group becomes the arc villain for the West Africa deployment starting with "Rearview Mirror."
  • "Need to Know" has the pro-ISIS terrorist group Sahaba of the Greater Sahel.
• All Bikers are Hells Angels: "Violence of Action" has Bravo fighting a colectivo operating on behalf of the Venezuelan regime.
• All There in the Manual: The full names of Trent (Sawyer), Brock (Reynolds), and Full Metal (Scott Carter) are only seen in behind the scenes programs and the scripts. In Full Metal's case, Jason says his full name out loud in the ending of "One Life to Live" at his wake.
• Amazon Brigade: "Growing Pains" sees Bravo working with a YPJ militia ("Women's Protection Units") in Northern Syria while trying to figure out who attacked the U.S.S. Crampton.
• An Arm and a Leg: In "Violence of Action," Bravo is tasked with recovering the dead body of a Venezuelan colectivo biker thug who is suspected to have died of radiation poisoning from smuggling nuclear material. When the rest of the biker gang catches on to their presence, they have to make a quick getaway but can't take the entire body. Sonny brings out a hatchet and chops off a foot from the body, as they don't have time to drag the whole corpse along with them.
  • In "Low Impact," after being badly injured in an ambush, Clay's right leg is amputated by doctors at Ramstein Air Base's hospital to stop a sepsis infection from killing him.
• Apocalyptic Log: Brett Swann's video diary is a low-key version of this, showing his gradual slide towards the Despair Event Horizon, culminating in his suicide.
• Artistic License: The SEALs are shown conducting HAHO jumps without the protective clothing needed to counteract the sub-zero temperatures that are experienced. Especially egregious with Jason, who cuts the sleeves off of his combat shirts.
• Artistic License – Geography: In Season 5, Bravo heads to "Yongsan Air Base" in South Korea. Yongsan is in the middle of a densely packed section of Seoul with no way for air traffic to come in and out. Also, Yongsan Garrison was an army post and no longer in use as of 2018. If Bravo were to have flown into Korea, they'd have landed in Osan Air Base and if they'd needed to have visited United States Forces Korea headquarters, they'd have headed to USAG Humphreys.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Portrayed realistically in the Season 4 episode, "The New Normal." When Sonny is caught with a magazine of live rounds in a pouch during a force-on-force training exercise^note meaning they'll be shooting at real people playing the bad guys the exercise is immediately stopped, everyone safes their weapons, and all of Bravo is given an automatic fail.
  • In that season's seventh episode, Jason and Ray spend some time practicing at the shooting range. While Ray is wearing safety glasses and earplugs, Jason only has the latter and forgoes the eye protection.
• Badass in Distress: Occasionally a team member will get separated from the others during a mission, leaving them vulnerable until they can rejoin the squad. Can also occur when the team is tasked with rescuing other servicemembers.
  • "Danger Crossing" sees Bravo assigned to rescue a downed Marine aviator. Her skills at escape and evasion draw the admiration of many team members.
  • "Siege Protocol" has Bravo's safehouse - with their support staff inside - besieged by the local secret police.
  • Jason finds himself wounded, separated from the rest of Bravo, and evading insurgents in "Forever War".
  • A major Season 4 story arc sees Ray Perry captured by terrorists and forced to resist interrogation while the team tries to look for them.
• Bland-Name Product: The series likes to do this with real-world terrorist organizations.
  • The "Halani network" in the Echo Team story arc is a very thinly disguised version of the actual Haqqani network.
  • The "Delta Resistance Army" in Nigeria stands in for MEND and other similar groups.
  • The "New Resistance Force" in the Philippines arc is a thinly-veiled fictional version of the New People's Army.
  • The "Asian Liberation Army" in Thailand is a fictional version of the defunct People's Liberation Army of Thailand.
  • The "Venezuelan Special Police" (VSP) in the "Siege Protocol" story arc is a generic name for the Special Actions Force of the Bolivarian National Police, Fuerza de Acción Especial de la Policía Nacional Bolivariana, or FAES.
  • To a lesser extent, this also happens with better known groups, albiet mostly by just shortening the name. ISIS is now IS, Al-Qaeda is now AQ, and Boko Haram is now Boko.
  • Bravo runs into a gunfight between multiple terrorist groups in "Phantom Pattern": ISIS, an unnamed Chechen militia, and the season's arc villain, the Al-Sham Brigade. Which group this is supposed to reference is vague since there have been multiple organizations called that in the Syrian Civil War, such as Tahrir al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham, Faylaq al-Sham, and more.
• Blinded by the Light: When they find that Alpha Group is blocking their way to cross the Afghan border, Jason realizes they'd be just as well-equipped as his team and so likely wearing night vision and thermal goggles to see someone trying to sneak across. The team fires off all their flares and pyro to temporarily blind the Russians and sprint the 100 meters to the border while they can't see.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Several examples in the episode taking place in Tallinn, Estonia.
  • Trucks have signs on the back stating that "The vehicle stops tight."
  • The Estonian part of restroom signs is translated as "resting room" instead of toilette.
  • Other texts and phrases, while grammatically sound, have an uncanny ring to them.^note Almost as if someone who doesn't understand a language was trying to translate phrases into it.
• Bittersweet Ending: Season 4 has Bravo Team extracted out of Nigeria safely, but Full Metal dies of his wounds from an RPG explosion. Jason dedicates Metal's bravery in the team's bar hangout so that he's not forgotten. On the happier side, Clay and Stella get married and Ray and Naima start rebuilding their relationship.
• Bottle Episode: "Pattern of Life" takes place on mostly two sets (one existing) and has very little in the way of expensive stunts or gunplay.
  • "Time to Shine" has Bravo Team waiting to leave North Korean territorial waters via sub until Sonny gets stuck in a torpedo tube due to a malfunction. The entire episode is devoid of action, focusing on characterization of the team and takes place on again mostly two sets, and one of them being a submarine makes this almost a literal bottle episode.
  • "Watch Your 6" largely takes place in an old wooden cabin in the woods as Bravo Team tries to help Clay Spenser psychologically recover from a crippling injury and address the underlying emotional trauma that nobody has really been paying attention to.
• Call-Back:
  • In "Fracture," Jason draws attention to Sonny's magnetic shark repellent bracelet from "Boarding Party."
  • When helping arrange things in "The Worst of Circumstances," Clay tells Stella to get American beer, not "millennial microbrew crap," the first order Jason gave him.
  • In "Say Again Your Last," Clay muses to Ray on how Adam reamed him out for Jumping on a Grenade while he was in Green Team, ironic given Adam died tackling a suicide bomber.
  • Season 2 ends with Jason in a bar, being asked how he's doing; Season 3 premieres with Jason in a bar being asked the same question.
  • The Season 4 finale, "One Life to Live", has Jason in a psychiatrist's office, rubbing his knee as he talks about his fallen friends.
  • In the same episode, Clay asks Stella to marry him; she asks him if he's high on painkillers again, like in the Season 1 episode "The Upside Down."
• Career-Ending Injury
  • SEALs have to be in top physical shape so injured team members will be taken out of rotation and could be permanently removed from the unit if they injury is deemed serious enough. It implied that some of them would rather die in the line of duty than be invalided out of the unit. Many will try to hide injuries rather than be left out of a mission.
  • Danny was severely injured by an IED and had to retire from the military. Chronic pain from the injury and depression from having to leave his SEAL family, resulted in him turning to drugs and overdosing.
  • Ray hides his shoulder injury and subsequently accidentally kills a kid. After returning to the U.S., he is transferred to a training role, ostensibly to have time to heal but he fears that he is going to be permanently benched.
  • Jason hides the extent of his concussion so he is not taken off the Halani mission. Fortunately, he does not suffer permanent brain injury and recovers fully between seasons.
  • When Clay is seriously injured in the Philippines, he falls into depression thinking he will never recover enough to rejoin the team.
  • This is the major theme of Jason's internal conflict in the third season, as he must face the reality that he can't be a SEAL forever and his career must eventually come to an end. He has a serious mental crisis when his knee gives out and he needs to have emergency surgery to fix the problem, which benches him for several missions.
  • Cerberus is retired in the Season 4 premiere, after years of constant combat and trauma and untreated post traumatic stress.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Ray Perry is subjected this in Season 4 after being captured by terrorists.
• Darker and Edgier: With the move from network TV to streaming in Season 5, the show edged more toward adult content, most notably with more explicit cursing and Sonny's behavior going from self destructive to full-on criminal. The violent content also moved up, with Bravo finding a pile of badly burned bodies in "Man on Fire" that would never have aired on broadcast TV, and Season 6 beginning with Clay's leg having a horrible compound fracture from an RPG explosion and having to perform emergency first aid to push the broken bone back into place and bandage himself up as he is vomiting from the pain.
• Dead Guy Junior: In "All Stations Bravo," Clay and Stella name their newborn son after Brian Armstrong, Clay's fellow SEAL candidate friend who died in the first season.
• Dented Iron:
  • Ray hurts his shoulder during "Pattern of Life"; the injury stays with him the rest of the season and throughout the deployment to Jalalabad and tragically leads to him accidentally killing a 10-year old boy.
  • Jason suffers a concussion from a helo crash in "The Graveyard of Empires" which persists for the rest of the episode and throughout the finale.
  • In a conversation with Ray in "Never Say Die", Sonny notes that everyone in the teams fights injured.
  • In the Season 2 finale, Jason gives a speech where he lists the incredible amount of wounds, injuries, surgeries, and chronic issues that the SEALs in his audience have suffered while serving their country.
  • In Season 3, it mostly gives a focus to Jason's injuries and the physical and psychological fallout from abusing your body for so long. The new commanding officer brings in a specialist who is supposed to help the older operators deal with their injuries better and develop ways to compensate for the damage. Jason is curious about it, but is also paranoid that if he reveals how much pain he is in, he will be pulled from active duty.
  • A major overarching plot thread of Season 5 is the mental damage from breacher syndrome (TBIs) catching up rapidly with Jason, causing him to become paranoid, short-tempered, and forgetful, which compromises multiple missions.
• Dirty Communists: The terrorists responsible for bombing Manila in "Paradise Lost" turn out to be a communist group. "Rock Bottom" also begins with Bravo wiping out another communist terror group in Thailand. Hammered in by Sonny.
  Sonny: "Can you friggin' believe there's still commies in this world? Don't these idiots read history books?"
• Disney Villain Death: During an assault on a hotel in Mumbai, one of the terrorists Bravo engages falls screaming down a stairwell, disappearing without any sign of impact.
• Downer Beginning: Season 6's premier "Low Impact" starts off with Bravo under heavy fire from a Sahaba of the Greater Sahel ambush, which leaves Clay severely injured. He barely manages to survive but ends up having his right leg amputated at the hospital due to a major infection.
• Downer Ending: "Pattern of Life" ends with the SEALs learning that the teenage girl Clay shot, who Trent treated and was so determined to keep alive, is the terrorist recruiter they were sent to find. None of them are happy about renditioning a teenage girl.
  • "You Only Die Once" ends with total mission failure, the first of the series. Because of Ray's personal issues, he fails to make a killing shot on the Hezbollah agent, who lives to see another day. In addition, because a U.S. Marine battalion had to be mobilized to rescue Bravo Team, the United States has no Plausible Deniability in the assassination and the mission was exposed to the Iranian government.
  • "Medicate and Isolate" ends with Clay finding Brett Swann having committed suicide in his truck after the VA denied any treatment plans for his traumatic brain injury.
  • "Thunderstruck" ends with the YPJ commander Nuri killing herself with a grenade to prevent capture by the Al-Sham Brigade. While the rest of the YPJ and Bravo manage to escape, they find out later that night that the Navy has recalled Bravo back home immediately, leaving their mission unaccomplished and the YPJ bitterly disappointed that once again, the U.S. has put in yet another half-hearted effort to help a foreign ally that it reneged on.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first season, the show was still finding its legs and kept with a Terrorist of the Week format for its first 12 episodes. After the show got picked up for a full 22-episode season, the remaining 10 episodes delved into a very lengthy and complex story arc. Beginning with the second season, the show found a happy medium between the two by focusing on major story arcs that range from 3-5 episodes long, and broken up with minor story arcs that are standalone episodes. It has kept to this pattern ever since.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Basically the show's theme, centering on the Navy SEALs. In various instance, they also work with foreign special forces units in joint operations.
  • Even among SEALs DEVGRU is a step above, with experienced operators putting themselves through hell just for a chance at being selected. And once they're selected they're told they can have pretty much any weapon or equipment that their heart desires. All they have to do is ask.
  • "Ghost of Christmas Future" has the team dealing with a fellow ex-JW GROM commando named Jakub Kowal.
  • "Borderlines" has the Paraguayan Army's Tropas Especiales del Ejército (Special Troops of Army). They, however, mess things up when they took casualties against Hezbollah fighters. In Brazil, it has the Comando de Operações Terrestres (Terrestrial Operations Command) under the Brazilian Army working with the SEALs to find a CIA agent in the Brazilian side of the Tri-Border area. They are ever bit as competent as the SEALs.
  • In "Rolling Dark," the team goes up against FSB Alpha Group. Lisa explains that Spetsnaz is a general term for Russian elite forces, and the Alpha group is the best of the best, similar to how DEVGRU is the best of the SEALs.
  • The Afghanistan arc has the SEALs team up with Afghan Special Forces with one Afghan Commando operator, the latter being a double agent for Gen. Hakan. It's later revealed that it's not the case and he's the victim of being stabbed by a ASF operator who is really the mole.
  • In "Never Say Die," the Saudi Army's Special Forces Brigade works with the SEALs in tackling Asbat Al-Allah.
  • In "The Worst of Circumstances," the SEALs work with the Mumbai Police's Force One. However, one of their elements is taken out during a raid at a museum due to a suicide bomber playing possum. By "Say Again Your Last", they were ordered to stand down and let the SEALs lead the raid on the university.
  • Beginning with "Hold What You Got," Bravo works with Mexican Marines, hunting down cartel leader Andreas Doza.
  • In "Backwards in High Heels," Bravo works alongside the British SAS in Qatar. Though they have some differences with some operational methods at first.
  • The Philippines arc has Bravo team training together with the Naval Special Operations Group in combat techniques such as taking over platforms at sea.
  • A subversion in "The Strength of the Wolf," Mandy mentions that Thailand's Navy SEALs attempted to retake the hijacked pirate freighter but failed and the ship successfully escaped Thai waters.
  • In "Unbecoming an Officer," Bravo works with Bangladesh's Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit, though they're not seen on-screen and are mentioned to be merely keeping civilian traffic away from the operations area.
  • In "Objects in Mirror," Bravo Team is sent to Turkmenistan to train Turkmen special forces. Except they're actually there for a covert op, have to achieve it without the Turkmen learning of it, and aren't supposed to actually train them in anything useful (in case Turkmenistan becomes an enemy).
  • In "Conspicuous Gallantry," all of Bravo is in a US military hospital after working an operation with French GIGN forces that got them all pretty banged up.
  • "Close to Home" has some Bravo Team operators working alongside the Special Boat Service in northern Iraq.
• Enemy Civil War: When trying to capture a terrorist leader in the first season finale, the team finds itself in the middle of a pitched battle between two insurgent factions. In the end they decide to wait things out, let their enemies kill each other off, and then mop up any survivors in the morning.
• Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: Discussed, debated, and almost carried out on the leader of a human smuggling operation in "The Carrot or The Stick." Clay manages to manipulate another prisoner into unwittingly spilling the beans before Jason can do more than tie up his intended victim.
• Even Evil Has Standards: "Ghost of Christmas Future" has the SEALs appeal to Kowal's GROM past in trying to tell him that he shouldn't protect Luka Baljic, wanted for the Travnik massacre.^note GROM is well regarded in the special forces community for hunting down war criminals from the Balkans to Iraq. This works when Kowal walks away, allowing Baljic to be apprehended. Although one can make the case that he decided to walk away since he could be easily killed if he fought back.
• False Flag Operation: In "Parallax," Bravo and their Mexican partners stage an attack on one of Andreas Doza's meth labs while pretending to be affiliated with the Merida cartel to lure Doza's 2nd-in-command to immediately return to Mexico City.
  • In "Strange Bedfellows," Bravo manages to get the location of the Al-Sham Brigade leader who attacked them previously in Syria from an ISIS fighter living in a chaotic refugee camp. The only problem is that said fighter was originally intending to kill that Brigade leader for ISIS, so he demands that Bravo make it look like the kill is done by ISIS terrorists. Bravo conducts the mission using AK-47s, intentionally sprays random bullets around after killing the man to make it look like the hit job was done by untrained amateurs, and Omar spray paints ISIS graffiti all over the compound before they exfiltrate.
• Fantasy Sequence: When Jason takes a psychedelic in "Keys to Heaven", he has visions of his former teammates who were killed in action and ultimately of his deceased wife. These visions help him confront his survivor's guilt.
• Far East Asian Terrorists: The New Resistance Force plants IEDs in Manila in "Paradise Lost," sparking a retaliatory operation from Bravo Team in the next episode.
  • The Asian Liberation Army in Phuket in "Rock Bottom."
• Four Lines, All Waiting: The third season follows a number of plot lines. First is Davis coming to grips with being an officer and the drama around her now-illicit relationship with Sonny. Ray is tapped for Master Chief and leadership of his own team but finds himself conflicted as to whether this is the right career progression for him. Jason continues to struggle with his home life now that he's on his own. In another storyline, DEVGRU's new CO gets Clay to back off his crusade for better medical care for SEALs and brings in a physiologist to begin examining the men under his command. And in a fifth line, Bravo welcomes a new candidate into their midst, only for this to cause drama because Jason didn't pick Clay's friend.
  • In the second half of season 3, a whole new set of plotlines develop. Jason wrestles with the question of what to do with his inevitable post-Bravo Team future, Ray continues to try for his warrant officer promotion while dealing with buying a new house and his daughter asking uncomfortable questions about his military career, and Clay's relationship with his new girlfriend Rebecca is starting to persuade him to pull his military career away from frontline combat towards a desk job officer track instead. Meanwhile, Sonny is the one member of the team who really hasn't changed all that much, which starts causing friction with Bravo since the rest of the team is undergoing major life changes which he has trouble accepting.
• Forever War: Characters occasionally comment that the War on Terror has been going on for two decades with no end in sight. Some of the SEALs, especially Jason and Sonny, actually want this because they can't imagine life without a war to fight. The fourth season's second episode is titled exactly this as well, and the dawning realization that the War on Terror basically has been a Forever War after destroying the Tahara network and personally killing two generations of terrorist leaders ends up shaking Jason to his core.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: After his harrowing experience in Al-Qaim, Clay asks Stella to marry him after he returns stateside. They've known each other for less than three months.
  • And then subverted, the next episode makes it clear this was a reaction born from fear and Clay acknowledges neither one of them is ready for marriage.
• Frame-Up: "Thunderstruck" reveals that the Al-Sham Brigade is using UCAVs to airstrike civilians, leading Middle Eastern news networks and the Syrian government to blame said atrocities on the United States military.
• Freudian Excuse: Discussed and played with in "The Spinning Wheel" in regards to Beau Fuller at his attitude. Both Lisa and Ray comment that he is an actual Jerkass, but he has also faced racism throughout his life and continues to even in the military. Ray at one point even tells Jason that Beau sees Jason (stubble, "shirt flapping as much as his mouth", etc.) having the things he wishes he could.
• Gambit Pileup:
  • The Echo Team storyline in Season 1 is an utter clusterfuck of various parties' competing interests intersecting:
    • Steve Porter, Echo Team's leader, had grown suspicious of Xeon Tactical Security's and Selim Hakan's interests in Afghanistan, and had begun investigating them and compiling evidence to take them down, leading to Echo being targeted for assassination.
    • General Selim Hakan, Afghan National Police commander for Nangahar Province. In addition to playing all sides (US, Afghan government, Halani Network) for his own benefit, he's buying up burnt poppy fields so that he'd control any lanthanum deposits that might be there. He also framed business competitor Tariq Jamallah as a Halani Network terrorist, and blackmailed him into leading Echo Team into the booby-trapped house that killed them.
    • Abad Halani, No. 2 man in the Halani Network, fingers his brother Nouri Halani for the Echo Team hit and offers him up to the US, so that the US will take out Nouri and weaken his forces, allowing Abad to seize control of the Halani Network.
    • Alan Cutter, CEO of Xeon Tactical Security, is also playing both sides; taking US and Afghan government contracts to burn poppy fields, while also spending years and millions of dollars exploring Afghanistan for lanthanum deposits. Cutter works with Hakan and Abad Halani to hit Echo Team to suppress knowledge of lanthanum deposits, then has Hakan assassinated so he can seize Hakan's burnt poppy fields and their lanthanum deposits.
• Gas Leak Cover Up: In the fifth season finale, the Venezuelan government officially declares that Bravo's destruction of their secret nuclear testing facility was because of long-term degradation of concrete support structures, which just happens to be exactly how they destroyed the building.
• Guile Hero: DEVGRU operators are selected for their intelligence as well as their combat abilities, as seen in episodes where Jason achieves his objectives by reading the situation or outsmarting his opponents and withdrawing without firing his weapon. Clay is also able to get Ray's location by appealing to a trafficker's ego, rather than the interrogation and torture by Jason.
• Gunship Rescue: Marine Cobras and Hueys cover Bravo Team's exfil in "You Only Die Once."
  • An F-15 Eagle destroys the Boko Haram "tank" in "Rules of Engagement."
  • In "Low Impact," a drone destroys two enemy technicals with a Hellfire missile, saving Bravo's lives.
• Hazmat Suit: "Other Lives" has the SEALs wear them when they're deployed in Syria. And again in "Kill or Cure" when Bravo goes to Liberia to track down a militia leader in the middle of a massive ebola outbreak.
• He Knows Too Much: As the team investigates the deaths of Echo Team, they quickly start to suspect that it was not an act of terrorism or revenge. Echo Team seems to have discovered some nasty secret and someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure that they were killed before they had the chance to pass the information on to their superiors.
• High-Pressure Blood: In "Kill or Cure," a militiaman's blood bursts out onto Clay's facemask after being shot a few times, which is not normal and confirms to Bravo that the men they're fighting are infected with ebola.
• Hollywood Healing: Subverted in "Horror Has a Face." In spite of Ray having been a prisoner for weeks being poorly fed, and then being tortured with a nail ripped off and a power drill to a knee, he at first looks like he's ready to immediately get right back to fighting, even going so far as to take the boots off a dead terrorist to wear and taking a pistol. However, mere minutes later as soon as the team starts engaging the enemy, it becomes clear this was just a brief adrenaline rush, and he collapses from exhaustion and has to be carried to safety by the rest of Bravo.
• How We Got Here: "Conspicuous Gallantry" starts with the team in the hospital recovering from various injuries they sustained on their last misssion. Clay tries to figure out what went wrong and interviews his teammates to get their persepective on what happened. As he (and the audience) get a more complete picture of the events, it becomes evident that enemy action alone could not have been responsible for the explosion that put the team in the hospital. Clay realizes that Jason has memory problems and during the battle, he forgot that there was a cache of explosives in the building.
• Insignia Rip-Off Ritual: In "Fog Of War," the team discover Vic was not only responsible for a mistake that killed a civilian but willing to let Ray take the fall for it. Ray says he forgives Vic but he and the team can't trust him and personally cuts the SEAL Trident off Vic's tunic as the team kicks him out.
• Insistent Terminology: The SEALs have to preface all their on-the-record observations with "what appears to be" as a legal cover just in case they're wrong. Clay and Trent mock this practice while doing counter-sniper surveillance in Paris.
• It's Personal:
  • "Getaway Day" deals with another DEVGRU team being killed in an ambush, and Jason's team trying to comfort the families while waiting to be sent after those who did it. The arc for the rest of the season is them trying to find and kill the ones responsible.
  • The season 2 episodes "Payback" and "Never Out of the Fight" have Bravo hunting down terrorists responsible for the bombing injury Clay suffered in Manila.
• Interservice Rivalry: Averted, the SEALs and the CIA analysts they work with all clearly have great respect for each other.
• Institutional Allegiance Concealment: Bravo Team disguises themselves as Mexican Marines by using Mexican uniforms and camouflage in anti-cartel ops to avoid being easily identified as American special forces.
• Jumping on a Grenade:
  • Clay does this in "Boarding Party" and gets reamed out for doing so by Adam.
  • Adam tackles a terrorist wearing a suicide vest in "Say Again Your Last" to keep him from killing everyone in Bravo Team.
• Jurisdiction Friction: A staple of the series. The SEALs get into problems (most of the time) with their foreign special operations forces partners or from their domestic counterparts.
  • "Borderlines" has the SEALs clashing with the Paraguayan army over who will lead the operation to rescue a kidnapped CIA agent. The Paraguayans refuse to allow the Americans to operate on their soil and do the operation themselves. Unfortunately, as the Paraguayan army isn't the most battle-hardened force on the planet, their tactics end up with almost a dozen casualties on their side and the Hezbollah operatives managing to escape with the hostage.
  • "The Upside Down" has an Air Force general overseeing Bravo's operation and taking control when Clay is separated from the group, much to everyone's displeasure.
  • In "Never Get Out of the Boat," Bravo is initially prevented from snatching the Afghan drug lord they believe is responsible for Echo's assassination because he's the DEA's biggest snitch.
  • In "Never Say Die" the Saudi military officers are constantly trying to micromanage the joint SEAL-Saudi operation despite the Americans having operational control. The Saudi spec-op soldiers themselves have no problems working with the Americans. The real problem arises because the Saudis maintain strategic and political control of the operation and thus order in an airstrike when it looks like the terrorists are winning.
  • Averted in "The Worst of Circumstances," mostly because Mumbai Police and Bravo Team work on different missions in different locations. When a Force One element is taken out by a suicide bomber, the Indians realize they are outmatched by the terrorists and defer to Bravo to secure the final location under attack.
  • In "Hold What You Got" there is some major tension between Bravo and the Mexican Marine detachment they are supposed to be cooperating with. The Mexicans are dismissive of the Americans who "have been here for five minutes and already have all the answers."
  • In "Backwards in High Heels," Bravo works alongside the British SAS in Qatar. The British have operational control of the situation and Jason gets quite testy about his team being subordinate to them. However, they all quickly recognize each other as Consummate Professionals and join together to form a rescue plan. When the initial plan has to be abandoned the SAS leader has no hesitation giving up operational control to Jason and the teams flawlessly switch responsibilities.
  • "Time to Shine" has the SEALs (primarily Jason) objecting the submarine commander's decision to not cut open the torpedo tube hatch that has one of the SEALs trapped. Jason is worried about his friend's well being while the commander is trying to find a solution that will not permanently disable one of his torpedo tubes and thus reduce the sub's combat capabilities by a significant amount.
  • In "What Appears To Be," Bravo and General Trask butt heads with Congolese General Sunda of the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC), who is extremely eager to call in an airstrike on a densely populated district to possibly kill a notorious warlord in spite of the Americans not able to confirm if the target is even in the building.
  • "Cover for Action" has escalating tension between Ray, who is now a Warrant Officer and in charge of the operation, and Jason, who is not used to being ordered around by his former second-in-command.
  • "Head On" has Bravo going on a deep-cover mission operating in Colombia going into Venezuela on an "Omega" mission, meaning they assume different identities, are not acknowledged by any branch of the U.S. government, and do not operate like a conventional military unit. Since Bravo is for all intents and purposes regular civilians here, this means rank does not apply, and it leads to Clay and Jason butting heads since the latter technically has no formal authority over anyone.
• Kill the Lights: In the episode "Say Again Your Last", Bravo Team infiltrates a university in Mumbai that's under siege by Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists. To rescue the students and extract them safely, they inform Mumbai Police to switch off the lights from the outside. With this and the use of night vision goggles, they were able to take out the terrorists since they can't see and the team was also using suppressed rifles.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Kowal's decision to allow the team to snatch his war-criminal client is made easier by the fact he's trapped in a corridor with no cover and nowhere to go, surrounded, outnumbered four to one by heavily-armed operators, only carrying a pistol, and he'd likely be killed before getting a shot off and his client taken anyway.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": In "My Life For Yours," Trent is the victim of such as they unwittingly enter a small minefield. Bravo has to waste precious time jury-rigging a substitute weight with a rock while avoiding terrorist detection.
• Left Hanging: The Tahara story arc in the third season comes to an end without an adequate resolution by the season finale, with the organization still powerfully active and the U.S. presence in Afghanistan continuing to dwindle down. The reason was because the COVID-19 global pandemic forced production on the show to stop (due to California's state government ordering numerous shutdowns for "non-essential businesses"), and thus the third season was cut down to only 20 episodes instead of the usual 22.
  • Eventually averted after the show was renewed for a fourth season: what would've been episodes 21 and 22 of the third season became the first two episodes of the fourth and concluded the arc.
• The Load: Whenever the word "strap" is used, they're talking about this — anyone who is not a Tier-1 Operator like the main cast. This normally refers to noncombat specialists who need to share their expertise, but even Clay Spenser is considered a strap in the first episode despite being a Navy SEAL himself, just not Tier-1.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The episode name "Rearview Mirror". Sonny is seen in the rear of a vehicle conducting suppressive fire against Boko Haram fighters.
• Mêlée à Trois: In the first season finale, the team goes on their last mission in Afghanistan to capture Abad Halani, but by the time they land, the remnants of his brother Nouri Halani's men are already assaulting the compound. DEVGRU infiltrates the bunker and finds it's rigged to blow, so they decide to hang back and let the two Halani factions kill each other.
• Middle Eastern Terrorists:
  • "Tip of the Spear" involves snatching an ISIS commander in Liberia. Bravo Team tangles with them again in "Things Not Seen."
  • "The Spinning Wheel" is about the SEALs prepping for an operation to snatch an al-Qaida commander in Yemen.
  • "Borderlines" has Hezbollah involved.
  • "Pattern of Life" doesn't specify any groups, but the team is in Yemen looking for a phone whose signal has been traced as belonging to a terrorist operative.
  • "The Upside Down" has the team go into Al-Qaim, Iraq to recover a crashed Air Force UAV from ISIS.
  • "Never Say Die" has Asbat Al-Allah trying to poison the Saudi water system with anthrax.
  • "Backwards in High Heels" involves terrorists from the Brotherhood of Islamic Jihad. The episode implies that they're Tunisian Islamists.
  • "You Only Die Once" is a sniping mission to assassinate a high-level Hezbollah operative in Afghanistan before he crosses the border into Iran.
  • "Rock Bottom" reveals that a series of seemingly unrelated terrorist attacks throughout Southeast Asia, committed by a mixture of Islamic and communist terrorist groups, are actually all being orchestrated by a Saudi-born ISI operative who is using his own agents to push these groups into committing attacks to destabilize the region.
  • "The New Normal" mentions Ansar Al-Masar from Tunisia.
  • In "Growing Pains" Bravo assists Kurdish militias in Northern Syria in suppressing a prison break by ISIS inmates.
  • "Phantom Pattern" encounters the Al-Sham Brigade.
• Mildly Military: Demonstrating the blurred line between officers and enlisted in DEVGRU, Bravo addresses Blackburn by name rather than by rank. Part of Blackburn's job is to be the intermediary between the team and regular Navy officers. In one instance he has to give Jason a What the Hell, Hero? speech and remind him that on board a US Navy submarine, the captain's orders are law and a Master Chief Petty Officer does not have the right to rush onto the bridge uninvited and argue with the captain.
• Mushroom Samba: Played with. When Jason takes a psychedelic in "Keys to Heaven", those watching see him interacting with things that aren't there. However, from his perspective, it's a Fantasy Sequence.
• Nitro Express: The team intercepts a convoy supposedly carrying radioactive materials. What they actually discover is three Soviet-era nuclear artillery shells. The shells have been stored in a bunker for the last two decades and the conventional explosives in them have become unstable. While the chances of a nuclear explosion are slim, a conventional explosion will still kill anyone near the shells and contaminate a large area with radioactive material. The team must transport the shells to a nearby airfield where specialists can defuse the explosives and remove the nuclear material. However, the roads in the area are unpaved and the only bridge across a river needs serious repair. To complicate matters further, the criminals who stole the shells want them back and send a dozen men to attack the SEALs.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The acting ambassador in South Sudan in "Collapse". He needed to be persuaded and intimidated to make the decision to leave Juba.
  • The Pentagon liaison official in "Rolling Dark" due to his insistence that the SEALs move quickly as possible due to possible PLA intervention while rescuing defectors.
• Oh, Crap!: When the SEALs learn that in Syria, the military is supposedly conducting WMD tests in an abandoned hospital and they're suppose to go there in "Other Lives".
  • In "Ghost of Christmas Future", the SEALs are nearly forced to abort a black op mission in Estonia when a war criminal's close protection officer turns out be someone they trained with back at JW GROM.
  • "Rolling Dark" has the SEALs going up against the FSB Alpha Group.
  • "Parallax" when the SEALs are under attack in Mexico City.
• Oh, Crap!: In "Hollow at the Core", Bravo Team finds out that there are Nigerians held hostage by Boko Haram when they infiltrate one of their camps. They couldn't find any space to extract them since they were told that an American aid worker was being held prisoner.
  • Jason's personal info gets doxxed by pro-Islamist groups in "Close to Home," forcing his family to go into protective custody with the U.S. military until the NSA can determine if they have anything concrete on him.
• On-Site Procurement: In the "Siege Protocol" episodes, Bravo Team is forced to strip dead Venezuelan Special Police assaulters of their 30-round 5.56 NATO magazines for their HK416 carbines due to their safehouse/makeshift command center compromised, which meant that they can't get resupplied.
• One-Steve Limit: Due to characters often referring to each other by last names, there are three Lopezes who've affected the plot so far: Mexican Marine Lieutenant Juan Lopez (with whom Bravo operated with in Season 2), Lopez (a previously unmentioned member of Bravo who haunts Jason from beyond the grave at the start of Season 3), and Vic Lopez (the newest member of Bravo in Season 3).
• Only a Flesh Wound: Averted in "Pattern of Life". A teenager is accidentally shot in the shoulder. The rest of the episode has the team trying to keep her from bleeding out, eventually giving her a blood transfusion, and has several characters say she needs to be taken to an actual hospital.
• Paintball Episode: Bravo spends most of "The New Normal" on a training exercise using Simunition, paintball-like bullets designed to be fired from regular weapons.^note Their pistols and rifle magazines are colored blue to prevent mixups with live ammo. And Bravo Team has previously spent time on training exercises with simunition weapons.
• Phony Veteran: Sonny and Full Metal bust a guy at a bar pretending to be a SEAL in "Rules of Engagement."
• Product Placement: Done for GMC Sierra pickup trucks, with Jason taking a moment to lower his truck's tailgate to show off its fold-out step and that it can take the weight of two full-grown men.
  • Hyperstealth's LBX Caiman camouflage is used to take the place of actual Mexican Naval Infantry camo since they're not allowed to sell it/have it used by non-Mexicans.
• Precision F-Strike: Season 5 Episode 5 has the series jumping from CBS to Paramount Plus. To show the change, late in the episode, Jason openly says "you fucking tell me" to a contact.
• Real Men Wear Pink: In Season 3, Jason meets another SEAL Master Chief who swells with pride over growing the best garden in town.
• Retool:
  • The first half of the first season has the show as mostly an episodic series as the DEVGRU team gets sent to various different countries and eliminates some enemy group. After the show was picked up for a full 22-episode season, it ditches the episodic structure and changes to a long-running Story Arc covering Episodes 13-22 about the destruction of a fellow SEAL unit Echo Team in Afghanistan and trying to figure out who killed them.
  • Season 2 moves away from the episodic setup to somewhat longer story arcs. Episodes 1-2 deal with Bravo trying to regain its equilibrium; Episodes 3-5 cover Bravo sent to stop a major terrorist attack in India as Jason remains at home due to his family life spiraling into disaster; Episodes 6-10 see Bravo on task in Mexico hunting down drug cartel leaders, Episodes 16-18 shift to Bravo's deployment to the Philippines, and Episodes 20-22 follow an operation to go into Pakistan and eliminate a powerful terrorist mastermind.
• Revenge Before Reason: In "Payback," Bravo Team easily dispatches the New Resistance Force cell and captures the high-value target. Once enemy reinforcements start closing in, Mandy insists that Bravo immediately evacuate with the HVT. But with the team still smarting from the IED that crippled Clay, everyone in Bravo Team (along with the Filipino soldiers accompanying them) unanimously agrees to stay and slaughter every last one of the NRF terrorist scum. Mandy is quite furious that they are jeopardizing the mission for the sake of a vendetta.
• Ripped from the Headlines:
  • "Other Lives" is based off of allegations that the Syrian military is illegally retaining chemical weapons and using them on civilians.
  • "The Exchange" is based on the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange controversy; the episode even compares the similarity of the scenarios by outright namedropping Bergdahl.
  • In "The Graveyard of Empires," Ray, Sonny, and their half of DEVGRU are racing to get to the helicopter crash site when they come across two Afghan boys. The situation and debate over whether to kill them or let them go is outright stated by Sonny to be just like Operation Redwings.
  • The scenario in "The Worst of Conditions" where Pakistani terrorists launch a coordinated attack in Mumbai against multiple targets, including a major hotel, is completely based off of the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks.
  • "Things Not Seen" has the team look into Jenna Robertson and dubbing her "Jihadi Jenna," a reminder of the real-life "Jihadi John" and how people like him (middle to upper-class liberals) are hated by the West for joining up with ISIS of their own free will.
  • "Dirt, Dirt, Gucci" has Bravo's first mission in the Philippines be to investigate the wreckage of a crashed aircraft that was the source of several major naval collisions in the South China Sea. Throughout 2017 and 2018, there were a series of high-profile collisions in the South China Sea involving U.S. Navy ships and civilian merchant vessels for unclear reasons: one major theory floated was that Chinese military exercises involving electronic warfare tests were indiscriminately scrambling navigational systems in the area.
  • "Medicate and Isolate" has a Mali arc that resembles the event of the Tongo, Tongo attacks in Niger.
  • "All Along the Watchtower" is a mission for Bravo Team to protect a U.S. Ambassador and other State Department staff at the ambassador's residence as a hostile crowd of locals lay siege to them after the building's local security contractors abandon their posts. It's the 2012 Benghazi attack, except in Yemen.
  • In "Fog of War," Bravo is reeling from a failed mission to rescue one of Mandy's informants when someone from the team made an ill-advised grenade toss that got the informant killed, and Jason even attempts to come up with a false cover story to ensure no one on the team will be blamed. The storyline has strong echoes of the disastrous Operation Anstruther from October 2010 when the real-life SEAL Team Six failed to rescue British hostage Linda Norgrove in Afghanistan, got her killed with a grenade, and was caught covering up the true story. The culprit turns out to be New Meat Vic Lopez, just like the real Team Six member who got Norgrove killed was a brand new member of the team who was on his first deployment with them.
  • "No Choice in Duty" has Bravo Team attempting to track the leader of the Tahara terrorist network by exploiting the fact that he has a rare blood disease that requires a constant stream of specialized medication from a doctor, and they plan to capture his courier to find him. This is rather reminiscent of the CIA's attempt to track down Osama bin Laden by exploiting his diabetes and intercepting his courier, most famously dramatized in Zero Dark Thirty.
  • A story arc in Season Four sees Davis forced to deal with an officer who sexually harassed her at a previous posting and is now harassing one of her female subordinates. Confronting him off the record results in retaliation, and a formal complaint results in little more than a slap on the wrist. This is reminiscent of continuing allegations that harassment of female servicemembers is nearly endemic within the military... and that attempts to curb such harassment amount to little more than lip service.
  • In the ending of "Nightmare of My Choice" and continuing into "One Life to Live," Bravo Team's battle to help the Nigerian military defend an oil pipeline against a massive Boko Haram assault gets very complicated when a Russian mercenary battalion enters the fray and they end up in real conflict with them. This is similar to the incident in February 2018 in Al Tabiyeh, Syria, where a pitched battle between ISIS, Kurdish SDF, U.S. military forces, and Russian Wagner Group contractors got really messy and ended with a number of dead Russians (exactly how many is unknown since everyone involved gave out conflicting information).
  • "What's Past is Prologue" has an arc where a CIA agent was captured by Taliban fighters and locked up in the now overrun FOB Fentry after Kabul was captured in August 2021. He informed Bravo Team that he's trying to extract a female Afghan asset who's known to help educate a lot of Afghan women, putting herself in the Taliban's crosshairs. Already, there has been local reports (Afghan-based) where pro-female teachers/activists/human rights campaigners were being attacked and executed throughout Afghanistan since the GIRA-based government collapsed and the NRF is forced to regroup after half of Panjshir was taken.
• Running Gag:
  • In Season 1, after Clay joins Bravo, the team keeps a running tally of cases of beer he owes them for every infraction (real or imagined), as well as the occasional case of beer earned for good performance. This is revisited every now and then across the seasons.
  • In Season 2, Sonny starts trying out new nicknames for Clay every episode, trying to find one that will stick.
• Ruthless Modern Pirates: "Boarding Party" has Filipino pirates as the antagonists after they take a Stanford University research team as hostages. "The Strength of the Wolf" again deals with Southeast Asian pirates who hijack a freighter and take hostages.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: In "Other Lives" the team encounters Syrian civilians who have been exposed to VX gas. After his superiors are unwilling to extract them, Jason immediately begins looking for ways to force the military to come save them.
  • Jason and his team attempt to do this for Sonny in 'Time to Shine', but are talked out of it after being told what the consequences would be.
  • Ray writes a letter defending Senator Marsden that pisses off SEAL command and the State Department.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: In episode 6, "The Spinning Wheel," the DEVGRU team is tasked with assaulting a Yemeni compound to capture a senior al-Qaida leader. The entire episode consists of training for the mission on a mock-up of the bunker with another SEAL team, whose commander has serious personality clashes with Jason, and leads to both teams failing the training over and over again. However, Jason manages to think outside the box and comes up with an unorthodox method of breaching the bunker that fulfills the mission requirements, earning the other commander's respect. But just as DEVGRU is getting on the plane to carry out the mission, they receive word that the Pentagon has cancelled the mission as the al-Qaida commander has left Yemen and disappeared.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Ray gets agitated and angry upon hearing a neighbor drilling in "Rearview Mirror". Earlier in Season 4, he was tortured by a terrorist using a drill on his leg.
• Shirtless Scene: Clay gets a few while Jason does one as early as the fourth episode, which is pretty much expected since he's played by David Boreanaz.
• Short-Lived Aerial Escape: The end of "Enemy of My Enemy" has the team securing Nouri Halani for capture, but the helicopter carrying him, Jason, Clay, and half the SEAL task force gets shot down with a surface-to-air missile less than two minutes after takeoff.
• Shout-Out: Crossing over with Theme Naming. Bravo Team likes to use pop culture references when naming their mission checkpoints, such as naming them after famous TV detectives or the characters from The Goonies.
  • Clay gets berated for thinking that a long distance shot is equal to doing a quick scope in the Call of Duty game series.
  • In "Ignore and Override" Ray compliments Jason on his clean kill of Vadim Boyinka by calling it "pretty ninja."
  • In "Edge of Nowhere" as Clay has spent most of the day staking out a likely Taliban mortar position with a squad of Army soldiers, one of them remarks, "Hate to say it, Linus, but I don't think the Great Pumpkin's showing up."
  • In "No Choice in Duty," as Sonny & Ray are arguing over whether the latter has the skills to defuse a tripwire booby-trap, Thirty Mike remarks "I say we go ahead and let Sonny play Hurt Locker."
  • In "What's Past is Prologue," as Clay talks to his dad Ash about his cancer prognosis, Ash admits he didn't ask his doctor what the odds of a successful recovery were, to which Clay tells him that this isn't piloting the Millennium Falcon, this is his life on the line here.
  • In "What Your 6", Jason shouts "Here's Jason!" when he and Brock enter Full Metal's cabin.
• Shower of Angst: Bravo Team goes through one at the end of "Say Again Your Last", trying to deal with Adam's death.
• Shown Their Work: Being that the show is about the SEALs, actual SEALs helped the production crew by ensuring that operational methods are accurately done.
  • "Boarding Party" has the analyst explain that piracy is not that bad in Southeast Asia because of stable governments in the region. The Filipino pirates also use M3 Grease Guns; if they were anyone else, it would be ridiculous to see an ancient relic of an American submachine gun from World War II being used in the modern day, but as it stands, the Philippines is actually one of the very few countries that still uses the M3 as a standard-issue service weapon in the 21st century. Heck, some of these M3s are still the same guns that were used in WWII!
  • "Borderlines" centers around Hezbollah activities in the Brazil-Paraguay-Argentina border region. Most people would be surprised to find out that Middle Eastern Terrorists are so active in southern South America, as it is almost completely ignored by all other media.
  • In "Rolling Dark", Lisa explains that the Spetsnaz is a general term for all Russian elite units. This is used hilariously by a Pentagon liaison officer when he explains it to his superior.
  • The Mexico arc is a pretty accurate picture of how powerful drug cartels control entire cities in the country, down to having bribed local/state police forces (and keeping federal law enforcement away) while simultaneously performing goodwill projects for the local population to win their loyalty. The Doza cartel is so powerful it can perform an assassination in the middle of the day in public and not suffer any repercussions from anyone.
  • In "Backwards in High Heels", multiple characters note that an airliner hostage rescue mission would usually go to Delta Force, and Blackburn refers to "CAG"^note Combat Applications Group, a common alternate name for Delta.
  • "You Only Die Once" has Mandy mention Hezbollah's supposed involvement in a bus bombing in Bulgaria in 2012.
  • In "Payback", the terrorists responsible for the bombings in Manila turn out to be a communist group called the New Resistance Force. While most people would associate Filipino terrorism as always Islamic-related, the Philippines has a long and unfortunate history with communist terrorism dating back to the 1950s after the end of the Pacific War, with groups still active to this day.
  • In "Rock Bottom" the Batman Cold Open begins with Bravo in Thailand in a pitched battle with the Asian Liberation Army. This is actually a reference to a long-destroyed Thai communist terrorist group known as the People's Liberation Army of Thailand, which was essentially the militant wing of the Communist Party of Thailand. The CPT, which had a running insurgency ongoing for decades, began to lose much of its power in the 1980s due to severe government crackdowns and was basically defunct by the early 1990s, taking the PLAT with it. Much of this history is unknown to the world outside of Southeast Asia.
  • In the "All Along the Watchtower" two-parter, the Yemeni tribes that Ambassador Nicole Marsden is trying to broker a peace deal with are the Bakil and Hashid tribes, which are indeed the two largest tribal confederations in the country.
  • "The Ones You Can't See" depicts a counter-sniper mission, including a primer on sniping principles, showing how sniper hides are prepared (including a decoy firing position) and how the most important element is an extended period of surveillance so the sniper-spotter teams can spot divergences from the norm.
  • In the "Siege Protocol" and "Fog of War" story arc, the Venezuelan Special Police are hardly police and little better than violent thugs with fancy uniforms. The real-life counterpart of the VSP, the Fuerza de Acción Especial de la Policía Nacional Bolivariana (FAES) were founded in 2017 by the Nicolas Maduro regime (some would say it is little more than a loyalist militia to him) and have been documented by local and international rights groups to have an alarmingly high number of actual criminals in their ranks.
  • In "Rules of Engagement," during the briefing for the mission to Niger, Lisa notes that major world powers like Russia and China are very interested in obtaining a stake in Niger's natural resources. Ray brings up the fact that China has already built a major military base in Africa in Djibouti in 2017, which is true: more notably, this was the very first permanent military base ever built by the People's Liberation Army on foreign soil.
  • "One Life to Live" has Bravo Team engaging Russian contractors on deployment to Nigeria to assist Boko Haram. Russian private military companies have been expanding their presence to parts of Africa and there are allegations of wrongdoing committed by these companies, including supposedly training and assisting rebel and terrorist groups in the region.
  • "Head On" revolves around Venezuela having plans to develop an indigenous nuclear weapons program. While Real!Venezuela doesn't have it, Hugo Chavez did say that he supported such a program before he passed away. Current financial problems have placed it to a halt. They would have received help from Iran, like they did in the show with Iranian military hardware being exported/allowed to be produced in Venezuela.
  • "Crawl, Walk, Run" sends Bravo to Abkhazia to cut off a weapons pipeline of illicit missiles that were used to destroy a U.S. destroyer off the coast of Turkey. Ray chimes in to point out that Abkhazia is a highly volatile breakaway region of Georgia that is supported by Russia and whose territorial disputes predate the Cold War.
• Skewed Priorities: In "Medicate and Isolate", multiple SEAL teams are sent into enemy held territory to retrieve the body of a US soldier killed by insurgents. When enemy reinforcements arrive, air support is called in and thousands of dollars worth of ordnance are used up. In the parallel plotline, a retired SEAL tries to get help for a debilitating medical condition and has to navigate the Veterans Administration bureaucracy. In the end, the military uses Loophole Abuse to deny him treatment deeming it an unwarranted expense.
• South Asian Terrorists: The second half of the first season sees Bravo Team taking on the Halani Network in Afghanistan. Hizbul Mujahideen raids the Sephora Grand Hotel in Mumbai in "The Worst of Conditions" after infiltrating Mumbai from Pakistan. The third season's last story arc goes back to Afghanistan, when Bravo encounters a rapidly expanding terrorist network calling itself "Tahara."
• Spiritual Successor: The show is essentially this to The Unit, albeit from a different branch of the U.S. military (Navy rather than Army). The actor who plays Charles Grey, Michael Irby, even appears as a character on this show for a while.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: They may be members of a celebrated elite military unit and considered heroes armed with all the latest and greatest toys, but the members of DEVGRU are still members of the US Navy and the US Navy does not pay its members exorbitant salaries. Ray finds out his family is in financial difficulty when he realizes his wife, who handles the family finances, is struggling to pay their bills.
  • Jason and the team are talked out of trying to save Sonny from drowning in the torpedo tube against direct orders, as mutiny is a charge that would carry the death penalty.
  • Sonny's continual antics and cavalier attitudes get him temporarily reassigned to a training post in Texas, as the Navy is seeking to get rid of the culture that Sonny constantly embodied.
  • Clay's political activism for veterans only works so much against seasoned politicians in Washington and SEAL command. If he wants to continue said activism, it would either cost him his military career or force him to go into politics and give up his days as an operator.
  • A constant theme towards the end of Season 3 and parts of Season 4 concern Jason's increasing age. Sheer determination won't be enough for a body that's gradually breaking down from relentless combat operations and age. Jason is forced to come to terms with the fact that he can't operate forever, and will need to eventually embrace a command role away from the front lines.
  • Injuries are not taken lightly on the show. When Jason is concussed by explosions or suffers head trauma, his mental faculties deteriorate over time. His knee condition gets worse and it isn't something that'll go away with booze, pills, and willpower. When Clay is injured by a bomb blast, he is out of commission for much of the season. A teenager shot in the shoulder nearly bleeds to death and needs intensive medical care. Ray ignores his shoulder injury which leads to the decline of his combat effectiveness and the accidental killing of a child, as well as a long period of time off to heal. Swann's plight is a tragically and brutally realistic depiction of the shortcomings in America's treatment of veterans.
  • Bravo Team's constant antics, lack of discipline, and mishaps in the field lands them in hot water with SEAL command, forcing them to clean up their act in Season 2 or risk the breakup of their entire team. This lack of effectiveness also gets them benched at the start of Season 4.
  • Sonny's relationship with Davis cannot last now after she graduates OCS and becomes an officer, given that both of them could face severe consequences if caught.
  • Davis's bar fight lands her in jail for the night, and is reprimanded by her superiors later on.
  • Many of Bravo's missions are restricted by geo-political issues far out of their control.
  • No matter how many terrorists they take down, another one will pop up in their place. This revelation hits Jason especially hard considering how hard he's fought the War on Terror for 20 years and has killed literally two generations of a terrorist group.
  • Ray's letter angered the State Department and SEAL command, and would've cost him his ambitions for Warrant Officer if Clay didn't take the fall. Clay's ambitions for STA-21 are crushed forever as a result, he's put on desk duty, and nearly reassigned to a different team.
• Survivor Guilt: Despite his gruff exterior Jason is deeply affected by the deaths of SEAls under his command. It's ultimately revealed he also blames himself for his wife's death.
• Tank Goodness: Or rather, Tank Badness: Boko Haram fields a tank^note Which is a BTR-50 outfitted with a cannon turret in "Rules of Engagement," and the best Bravo Team can do against it is to snipe the machine gunner and the other fighters on foot, but are otherwise helpless against it. Fortunately, an F-15 Eagle is scrambled to destroy it.
• Tap on the Head:
  • Subverted. After the team ends up in a helicopter crash, Jason appears to be dazed but coherent. However, as the other survivors start to regain their faculties, his mental state deteriorates and it becomes clear that the head injury he received in the crash is not Just a Flesh Wound. His situational awareness is highly compromised, he repeats himself and has short term memory problems. While the other team members are fighting for their lives, he is made to sit things out since in his current state he is too much of a liability. The end of the episode reveals that he is suffering from serious hallucinations. He recovers by the next episode but the doctor and his teammates are worried. When he returns to the United States, he has a bad Shell-Shocked Veteran episode in a burrito shop.
  • Brett Swann survived multiple nearby bomb blasts during his career as a SEAL but years later his mental faculties start to deteriorate and he realizes that one or more of these blasts must have caused a Traumatic Brain Injury.
  • In season five Jason starts having memory problems which could be caused by a Traumatic Brain Injury.
• The Dreaded: The mention of the "Scorpions" in "Ghost of Christmas Future."
  • The Alpha Group in "Rolling Dark".
• The Siege: Bravo is forced to take cover in a church in "Santa Muerte" during a gunfight.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Generally, the team is weapons free when up against clearly identified terrorists, mercenaries, and other non-state hostile forces. Other times, however, discretion turns out to be the better part of valor, and knowing when not to engage is far more productive than opening fire:
  • In "Collapse," the DEVGRU unit manages to make it out of South Sudan without fighting any of the rioters, as American troops shooting South Sudanese civilians (even if it was a justified self-defense situation) would have been a political disaster.
  • In "The Exchange," despite the intense hostile atmosphere, they manage to bluff their way past a Pakistani army checkpoint, and end up concluding the prisoner swap with the Taliban representatives without any shots fired.
  • In "Rolling Dark," this is an Enforced Trope as the Pentagon liaison gives the DEVGRU team extremely strict orders to give the Russian special forces a wide berth and avoid contact with Chinese military forces, for the simple fact that the United States cannot risk triggering World War III with either country for the sake of a single defector. The SEAL team manages to complete their mission without harming anyone.
  • In the "Trust, But Verify" two-parter, Bravo goes into North Korea to extract a high-level government defector. They are under orders to leave absolutely no trace of their existence in the country, which even extends to storing and carrying their bodily waste with them, so naturally they cannot fire a single shot or even be seen by any North Korean soldiers. The only action is when Sonny firebombs a pile of junk to create a distraction.
  • "Close to Home" has Jason getting his family to take shelter in Norfolk after pro-Islamist groups have doxxed his personal/professional information online. Meanwhile, American and British commandos accompany a MI:6 agent to meet with an Iraqi-based arms dealer to broker deals to be the British informant. However, pro-Ankara mercenaries were secretly deployed to take out the dealer since his activities have been on Turkish law enforcement radar for some time.
• Three Lines, Some Waiting: Starting from "Dirt, Dirt Gucci" in the 2nd season, Bravo Team is in the Philippines to participate in joint exercises with the Naval Special Operations Group. Meanwhile Lisa undergoes training at Officer Candidate School and Jason is approached by someone he knows from his Navy days, who currently runs a private security company, and persuades him to be recruited in order to pay for Emma's college tuition. Then it escalates to Four Lines, All Waiting after Clay's IED injury and follows his rehabilitation process back home, until Lisa successfully graduates OCS and her plotline ends.
  • Season 6 juggles three major plot arcs: identifying and destroying a terrorist group in northern Syria that attacked a U.S. Navy ship in Turkey, Clay attempting to recover both physically and mentally from the ambush in "Low Impact," and the Navy looking to downsize its special operator forces which means a SEAL Team is in danger of being decommissioned, which is likely Bravo.
• Training from Hell: Clay Spenser's plot thread in "Borderlines" is about enduring SERE training, arguably the most brutal training regimen in the entire United States military.
• Two Lines, No Waiting:
  • The plot for the show's first season is split between Bravo's lives and missions abroad, and Clay Spenser's training to qualify for a Tier-1 special forces unit. The two plot threads merge at the end of episode 8, when Clay formally joins DEVGRU.
  • The middle of the 1st season follows DEVGRU operating in Afghanistan to continue where Echo Team's work has left off with the CIA checking on whether corrupt officials are using the drug trade to funnel money into their pockets.
• Urban Warfare: Many of Bravo's operations take place in the middle of big cities, requiring speed and extreme precision to eliminate their targets without harming civilians.
• Villain with Good Publicity: One major reason why Andreas Doza is untouchable by the Mexican government is due to him funding schools and hospitals in various towns, giving him a very loyal following among the population. Of course, said publicity is also backed up by the threat of force: one church that has posters of Doza hanging on its walls is said to keep them up because anyone who dares to tear down the posters will be promptly murdered.
• Weapons Understudies: Blackhawk helicopters operated by Helinet Aviation serve as stand ins for other helicopters:
  • In "My Life For Yours" the team gets evacuated out of Kashmir by an Indian Air Force helicopter. The only problem is that it is a UH-60 Blackhawk: IAF helicopters are mostly comprised of either Russian or domestic designs. American-designed helicopters only began to get ordered by the IAF in the late 2010s, and these consisted of the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter and the CH-47 Chinook heavy transport, which both entered service in late 2019.
  • Similarly in "Danger Crossing," the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are seen flying another Blackhawk, despite the Iranians being embargoed from obtaining American military equipment, forcing them to rely on Russian and Chinese-made choppers.^note That said, Iran took delivery of some 300 Hueys before the American arms embargo, as well as a number of Cobras, so they do have a substantial number of American helicopters in their air force inventory.
• Wham Episode:
  • In "Ghost of Christmas Future", the ending suggests that the woman in the photo Jason is looking at is the Afghan interpreter who worked with the SEALs back in 2016.
  • In "Collapse", Jason secures the mysterious woman's passports with her photo on. Also, Brian, another SEAL training with Clay, dies during the freefall parachute qualification test.
  • In "Credible Threat", Mandy tells Jason that the assassin who took shots at American officials was actually going for Gen. Hakan of the Afghan National Police and was told to make it look like an accident.
  • In "Takedown", Mandy receives a call from Abad Halani and informs her that he's willing to turn traitor and turn over Nouri to the American-led RSM forces.
  • In "Never Say Die", Stella's father asks Clay if he has a plan on what would happen to Stella in case he's killed while in the SEALs. Also, Alana gets into an accident and a Sheriff's deputy stops by her house to inform Jason about it. Meanwhile, Jason and Ray's feud about the latter being made a training instructor is made public to the other SEALs.
  • In "Say Again Your Last", the CIA finds out that HM is backed by a Pakistani MP. Adam is also killed when he tackles a suicide bomber to keep him from killing Bravo Team.
  • In "Parallax", most of Bravo Team is trapped in an ambush laid by the Doza Cartel leading to speculations that someone gave them info on their presence.
  • "Santa Muerte" has Rita outed as the mole for Doza, although someone in CISEN gave her personal info to the cartel.
  • "Things Not Seen" reveals that Jenna Robertson aka Jihad Jenna, who was an ISIL bride, was deemed expendable by the rest of ISIL for running away from her husband, Abu Rakim, after she realizes that he was extremely brutal towards her.
  • In "Paradise Lost," Clay is severely wounded by a terrorist IED and is reported to be in critical condition. Blackburn reveals in the end that he has been immediately airlifted back to the U.S. for medical treatment.
  • "Drawdown" has a mysterious group targeting the US military's Afghan liaison officer for setting up peace talks with the Taliban.
  • "In The Blind" begins with a boy in his father's jihadist hideout, raided by American soldiers. At the end of the episode, it's discovered that boy has grown up to become the leader of the Tahara Network. Jason has to grapple with being at war so long, the son of the man he killed has now taken his father's place.
  • "The New Normal" ends with Ray captured after being caught in the blast of a suicide bombing.
  • "Need to Know" has Jason and Ray examine a photo of Mandy, apparently caught by SGS fighters. They don't know why she's there since she lost most of her clearance with the CIA.
  • "Head On" has Bravo Team working on a black op mission with the CIA to capture or kill a Venezuelan scientist who trained in North Korea and is ordered to establish the country's nuclear weapons program.
  • "All Bravo Stations" end Season 5 with Bravo Team caught in an ambush conducted by SGS fighters.
  • "Low Impact" ends with Clay being hospitalized. The surgeons had to amputate his right leg to save him from sepsis shock.
  • "Aces and Eights" ends after Clay is shot and killed by an armed guard doing his night patrol, mistaken him for an armed intruder while he was calming Ben down from shooting up the USAF recruitment office.
• Wham Line:
  • In "Pattern of Life, "I am a warrior of Allah," said by the teenage girl who Clay shot at the beginning of the episode, as she proudly comes clean on being a terrorist recruiter.
  • The ending of "Rock Bottom": "Havoc, we have lost Bravo Two. I say again, we have lost Bravo Two."
  • "Forever War's" ending: "It's time for Bravo One to take a step back from operating... and find a life as Jason Hayes."
  • "Low Impact": "Clay's been stabilized." The last shot of the episode shows Clay without most of his right leg.
• Wham Shot: "The Carrot or the Stick" ends with the camera panning up through the ceiling to reveal Ray is being held aboard a ship.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Danny, Sonny's old friend and Lisa's boyfriend, was last seen in the first season finale in a hospital ICU after overdosing on drugs. Neither of them even so much as mention him in the second season. It takes until episode 7 for him to get brought up when Clay of all people asks Lisa about him, and the way they talk about him heavily implies that he passed away from the overdose.
• You Are in Command Now:
  • In "Say Again Your Last" after Adam dies tackling a suicide bomber, with Clay the 2nd in command concussed and shellshocked, Ray steps up and takes over as Bravo Team's leader.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: General Selim Hakan is assassinated in "Credible Threat"; his usefulness to Alan Cutter and Abad Halani having ended after he provided Tariq Jamallah as a patsy for the Halani Network's hit, and bought up the burnt poppy fields with lanthanum deposits, which Xeon Tactical Security can now acquire and control.
• You Killed My Father: A rare villainous example, as one episode features Jason and the team hunting down the son of a terrorist Jason killed many years ago. It's revealed through flashbacks that the son witnessed his father's death as a child, and was driven to revenge.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!:
  • The Echo Team story arc in Season 1 is full of this, to the point that it practically becomes a Running Gag. Every time the DEVGRU unit thinks they've got the guy who killed Echo, it turns out he was just another patsy in a long chain of men in the employ of some Mysterious Backer. Also Truth in Television, given the clusterfuck of competing interests that is Afghanistan. See Gambit Pileup above.
  • In "The Worst of Circumstances," Bravo Team heads into the Sephora Grand Hotel to extract an American Foreign Service Officer, only to arrive at his hotel suite and find it empty, and are forced to search the hotel for him.