The world has ended in an ice age, with a luxurious train (1,001 cars long in this version) being designed by the mysterious "Mr. Wilford" to traverse the globe non stop and provide shelter from the cold. The train is built for luxury, with those who paid to be there being ridiculously pampered; those who were hired to work onboard are housed and fed adequately, although more modestly. People who simply jumped onboard as the train passed by to keep from freezing to death are less fortunate, and forced to live in squalor and misfortune. Naturally, this causes a great deal of resentment. The series follows both sides of the class struggle, as the tail section readies itself to try and break forward, whether by diplomacy or violent means, as various secrets of the train find their way closer to the light. This begins when Andre Layton, a leader of the tail section and former homicide detective, is recruited by Melanie, the train's PA announcer and head of hospitality, to investigate a series of murders further up the train with the Brakemen (the train's security force).
The cast includes Tony winner Daveed Diggs as Layton, the level-headed leader of the tail section; Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly as Melanie, lead member of the hospitality staff; Steven Ogg as volatile tail-section leader Pike; Timothy V. Murphy as Commander Gray, head of the front section elite military unit; Mike O'Malley as Roche, head of the train's police-figures; and Lena Hall as the resident Miss Kitty. Joining the cast in season two are Rowan Blanchard as Alexandra, who is Melanie's daughter and first appears in the first season finale, and Sean Bean as the creator of the Snowpiercer, Mr. Wilford.
The series is notable for its Troubled Production; switching networks twice, having a pilot script discarded after the actors had signed on (causing some actors to be given roles vastly different than the ones they had been preparing for), and experiencing multiple delays in filming, to the point where filming for the second season was underway long before the first one even aired due to the network not wanting to lose the actors during the delay.* Still, it was considered enough of a success that a third season (which debuted on January 25th, 2022) was ordered prior to the second's premiere, plus a fourth before the third's premiere. It was later confirmed that the fourth season would be the end of the series, which would have made it the last original series to air to completion on TNT; however, in January 2023, the network cancelled the series, despite the completion of the fourth season, and announced it would not be aired on the network. In March 2024, it was announced
that the series had been sold to AMC, and that the fourth season will air in 2025, but that the network had commissioned the filming of a new Season 4 rather than using the previously completed one.
Snowpiercer contains examples of:
- Aborted Arc:
- The early part of season 1 has considerable mystery around the drawers; what they're for, why there are so many of them, and who could potentially be in them, with Nikki's being reawoken and being in extremely poor shape mentally and physically playing into what could happen to the others in the drawers. In the middle it's revealed that, far from being the gulag Layton suspects, it's a way for the best and brightest to survive if something happens to the train. After this, it's almost ever mentioned briefly that everyone in them was reawakened after the rebel victory over the Jackboots, but no-one from the Drawers is ever seen or heard from.
- There's a few plot threads introduced in the middle of season 3 - Ben and Josie hooking up, the possibility of a Heel–Face Turn for Wilford - that go absolutely nowhere and are never referred to again once Melanie returns.
- Adaptation Expansion: More of the workings and various classes of the train get explored than in the film and comic.
- Adaptational Mundanity: The engine in the film is a mysterious, ominous chamber with a clean and elegant design that may or may not play a part on the mind control of the passengers and is Powered by a Forsaken Child. The engine in the show is... a regular train engine, albeit a highly advanced one. To drive the point home, in the movie the passengers develop a Cargo Cult towards the engine, while in the series the cult seems to be more based on Wilford himself.
- Almighty Janitor: There seems to be an emphasis on how the people with the real power on the train are the senior crew members, rather than the paying first class passengers, but those passengers are allowed to remain on top. In a literal sense, Terrence, the head janitor of the train (and a pre-apocalypse janitor as well), controls the train's extremely influential Black Market.
- Alliterative Name: Bojan Bosovic.
- Alternate History: The series takes place in 2021, but is set about 7 years after the Freezing, meaning the disastrous attempt at reversing global warming, not to mention the technology for a perpetual motion train like the Snowpiercer happened in 2014, confirmed by the Engine's blueprints in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. Jinju also mentions that some of the super rich who didn't join the Snowpiercer tried to upload their minds to computers to escape the apocalypse, though it's implied this failed.
- An Arm and a Leg: Layton mentions that thirteen rebels had their arms frozen and then broken off after the last attempted revolt, and the first episode ends with a demand that someone suffer that punishment for the most recent one. Ruth ends up demanding the arm of the girl who used the Borrowed Biometric Bypass, but her mother steps up to take the punishment in her place.
- And I Must Scream: Heavily implied to be the case for people kept in stasis in The Drawers. So far we've only seen two people taken out of stasis, Nikki and Layton, and both were in very rough shape, physically and mentally. According to Nikki, "it's nothing like sleep".
- And You Were There: Layton's coma dream in "Ouroboros" features just about everyone he knows in real life in different roles on an alternate Snowpiercer that has a Casablanca Noir theme.
- Arc Villain: The series initially started with a Serial Killer onboard, until it was revealed that the Folger's bodyguard, Erik Soto, was revealed to be the killer, acting under orders from his lover and employer, L.J. Folger. Following the death of Erik, L.J.'s controversial trial and the outing of Melanie's impersonation of Mr. Wilford, Lilah & Robert Folger ended up instigating a coup with the aid of Commander Grey and the Jackboots with the overall goal of putting themselves in command of the train, until Melanie and the Tailies overthrew them. Then Mr. Wilford was revealed to be alive and well, having finally caught up with Snowpiercer after apparently chasing after them for seven long years.
- Arc Words: "1,001 Cars long". Every opening monologue, no matter the context and who's saying it, ends with that phrase. Which makes the Spoiler Title of the season finale all the more noticeable and meaningful.
- The phrase is update whenever the situation changes: when seven cars are detached to get rid of the Folgers and Gray, when Wilford's Big Alice latches onto and gets stuck with Snowpiercer, and when Layton and his inner circle destroy the aquarium car and run away with the engine and a ten-car pirate train.
- Art Shift: The very first scenes of the series (recounting how the world froze and the few survivors ended up on the train), as well as the last scene of the Season 1 finale, are presented in a style reminiscent of the original graphic novel.
- Balance of Power: Snowpiercer has been led by several individuals at various points in its history.
- At the start of the series, it was led by "Mr. Wilford" (later revealed to be Melanie Cavill, with help from Jinju Seong and the engineers), with power being shared by Hospitality under Melanie Cavill and Ruth Wardell, the Jackboots under Commander Nolan Grey, the Brakemen under Roche, the Night Car under Miss Audrey and First Class led by the Folgers and Rajiv Sharma, while other senior staff and key personnel included Bojan Boscovic, Jinju Seong, Dr. Henry Klimpt, Miss Gillies, Dr. Pelton, The Notary, Terrence, Senior Engineer Bennett Knox and Pastor Logan.
- After L.J.'s controversial trial and the outing of Melanie's impersonation of Mr. Wilford, the Folgers ended up instigating a coup with the aid of Commander Grey until Melanie and the Tailies overthrew them.
- Following the revolution, Layton formed a leadership council comprised of himself, Miss Audrey, Roche, Bennett Knox and Ruth Wardell.
- Mr. Wilford then overthrew them by turning the train against them, declared himself the Conductor and had Roche and his family imprisoned in the Drawers while Layton and Ruth, were sentenced to the Compost. After managing to escape, Layton formed his own pirate train out of the first ten cars of Snowpiercer, comprised of himself, Bennett Knox, Josie Wellstead, Bess Till and Alexandra Cavill, while Ruth ended up left behind on Snowpiercer along with a now vengeful Wilford.
- With Alexandra Cavill defecting to Layton, and Sykes and Audrey captured, Mr. Wilford's new leadership on the train is comprised of himself, Kevin as The Dragon, and a pregnant Zarah serving as the Honest Advisor / The Good Chancellor (especially against Kevin's The Bad Chancellor). Ruth secretly leads the Resistance, with Pike as her second in command eventually taking over when she is captured. When the Pirate Train attacks the Great Ark Train, Wilford is overthrown again, Kevin is killed and Zarah, no longer a hostage, rejoins Layton and the others.
- Towards the end of season 3, Melanie reveals Layton's deceit about New Eden, leading to another split. First and Javi support Melanie, the Tail (after a good bit of prodding) support Layton, with the other classes divided between the two. On top of this, Wilford escapes his imprisonment and invokes the balance part of this trope; with core support from devotees like L.J. and the last Jackboots, aiming to provide a third force either Layton or Melanie will have to court in order to win out over the other. Ironically, this only leads them to team up to finally get rid of him, with the train then split between those going onward to New Eden and those staying on the train.
- Big Bad: Mr. Wilford from Season 2 onwards, as he's responsible for initially turning Alex against her mother, as well as the deaths of the Brakemen, sabotage of Snowpiercer, turning the majority of the train against Layton and his allies, imprisoned Roche and his family in the Drawers, created a Cult of Personality onboard the train as the Conductor and is also secretly planning a purge of half of the train's inhabitants.
- Big Good: Melenie Cavill initially occupied the position, before Layton and Ruth Wardell started to hold it.
- Big Damn Heroes: Strong Boy and the Last Australian in the season 1 finale, taking down Nolan and the remaining Jackboots before they can execute Layton and Roche
- Blood Knight: Commander Gray relishes hand to hand combat with the tailies and looks like he's trying not to smile in the third episode when reporting on potentially violent unrest in The Tail.
- Body in a Breadbox: The second murder victim was found under a floor panel in the Sanitation sub-train. Three of his missing limbs are discovered by Layton in a freezer compartment's ventilation duct.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass:
- In the first episode, a Breakman's severed hand is used to open the Tail doors, only to find Gray and his men waiting on the other side, heavily armed.
- The third episode shows that the door scanners read an implant in the hand. The black market occasionally extracts these from the deceased and then trades the implant around for whatever they deem valuable. Layton takes advantage of this to get one such implant into the Tail.
- Braving the Blizzard: Bojan and the train's other breach workers occasionally heavily bundle up to carry out repairs outside of the train.
- Bread and Circuses: In the third episode Melanie tries to distract the passengers from the loss of the cattle by organizing a prize fight.
- Broken Pedestal:
- Ruth, first when she discovers Melanie has been posing as Wilford and then when Melanie relates she built the train and that rather than a visionary who saved humanity, Wilford never thought it would work long-term and simply sold tickets so he could live out his last days in luxury while humanity died. "We wouldn't have lasted one revolution with him," Melanie says. While she claims to not believe her, Ruth's reaction makes it clear she's shaken at the idea Melanie is actually telling the truth.
- In Season 2, when Wilford actually resurfaces alive in the backup storage train Big Alice and takes over Snowpiercer, Ruth gradually discovers just how right Melanie was, and ultimately joins the resistance against him. In Season 3, with Layton off the train looking for hotspots and Melanie's status unknown, Ruth is now the leader of the anti-Wilford resistance.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Ruth comes face to face with Winnie, a small child whose arm she was going to freeze off as punishment for aiding a Tailie rebellion before her mother begged to take her place. Ruth doesn't recognize her and has to be reminded that she was going to take Winnie's arm.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: Melanie, who is in fact Wilford, is constantly voicing praise and support for Wilford's strategies and philosophy.
- Buy Them Off: Attempted but averted when LJ offers to arm the Tail after being caught by Layton in exchange for his silence, but he refuses.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You:
- The ticketed passengers lack the competence to find the killer, a fact Layton uses to keep them from just getting rid of him, especially when he deduces that they're less concerned about the murder itself than the secrets the victim knew and may have divulged under torture.
- Subverted in the sixth episode, when Melanie tells the riotous third-class passengers that she can always replace them with tailies if they get too far out of line.
- Childless Dystopia: Tail section residents aren’t allowed to have kids until another five years have passed.
- Child Prodigy: Miles is a great math student who hopes to eventually get an apprenticeship at the front of the train, working on the engines.
- Co-Dragons: Commander Gray, an SAS veteran who leads the Jackboots (the train's soldiers), and Lead Brakeman Roche, who instills order on a normal basis for Wilford, come across this way at the start of the show.
- The Confidant: Bennett, one of the engineers who steers the train apparently serves this role to Wilford, whose alter ego he is aware of. The second episode also shows him taking part in management discussions but questioning some of the policies the train is following.
- Contrived Coincidence: That Wilford would return on the first day in seven years where Melanie isn't opposing him, giving him a divided train to exploit by pure chance.
- Control Freak: Wilford is obsessed with being in total control of everything on the train, and ensuring that everyone is loyal to him rather than to each other.
- The Coup: The Folgers, Commander Grey and Ruth unite to oust Melanie and take over the train when they find out that she's been impersonating Wilford.
- Cover Version: Most of Miss Audrey's repertoire is made of those. Till lampshades it in a moment of snark.Till: You know, when you sing, I can almost convince myself you're not a horrible person. And then I remember you only sing covers, so the words aren't actually yours.
- Cracks in the Icy Façade: Ruth began as a Wilford loyalist, not batting an eye when freezing limbs of insurgent passengers, including children. In the course of the series, Andrew's optimism starts to rub more and more on them, and start reflecting on her past, the first time when meeting the little daughter of the woman she mutilated (said mother having volunteered to protect her daughter Ruth originally wanted to punish). In the end of the series, she joined Andrew's colony in East Africa.
- Cryonics Failure: Roche's wife is revealed to have died while in Drawer stasis, leading to him seeking revenge on Wilford.
- Cryo Sickness: Cryogenic suspension in "the drawers" is used for preserving ticketed passengers who commit crimes. Short-term confinement can cause some disorientation, but long-term confinement can lead to drastic brain damage.
- Cult of Personality: The passengers hold Mr. Wilford in reverence as the one who created Snowpiercer and perpetually works to keep the engine eternal. More heavily shown if you watch the show with subtitles, as it capitalizes the pronouns when people refer to him, a trait usually reserved for talking about God.
- Da Chief: Lead Brakeman Roche fills this role at the start of the show, being a gruff leader who is forced to work with Layton against his will and closely watches his progress while rubbing in the lack of privilege of the tail section in Layton's face and resenting the idea that he will bargain to enact change.
- Disney Death: The last we see of Josie in Season 1, she appears to have been left to freeze to death. Season 2 reveals that she survived, albeit with extreme frostbite damage to her whole body.
- Divide and Conquer: Layton leaks the knowledge of Melanie's true identity to LJ so she will in turn reveal it to First. This kickstarts a mutiny in First, with Grey bringing the Jackboots uptrain to support it. Meanwhile, the Tail and Third cut off communications and open the doors to allow the full force of the Tail into the rest of the train. By the time Grey realizes he's been had, they've already set up ambushes and Grey is forced to retreat after a bloody battle.
- The Don: Terrence evokes this with his control of the black market.
- Dreadlock Warrior: Layton, a dreadlocked man who fought his way onboard the train bringing many more with him, and also holds authority over the tail section's best fighters.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Possibly - After almost freezing to death in the North Korean power plant during the season 3 premiere, Layton begins having visions of a thriving dragon tree, a plant that only exists in the subtropics, which happens to include the last remaining temperate zone they haven't been able to check yet. Unfortunately, the end of the season reveals that the "vision" was just a picture in a calendar hanging in an open locker that Layton saw while close to death, meaning that the safe zone may very well just be a delusion. At the very least, there's nothing supernatural about what Layton has been seeing.
- Driven to Suicide: Old Ivan in the pilot. One of the climate scientists at the research station, whose body Melanie finds by the computer terminal, having slit her wrists.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: There is a certain amount of dissent towards the train's system in Third Class. They're the ones who do the most real work in keeping the train working and its passengers fed, while receiving less privileges than many others who do far less, and having to lobby hard to even warrant having a third class juror placed on the jury trying the First Class murderer of Third Class passengers.
- Due to the Dead: As par "Old Ivan's Way", the method by which two opposing parties must settle their dispute man to man or fight to the death, the surviving party must spend a night with their deceased foe so as to help guide the into the afterlife.
- Ear Ache: Bojan's ears show signs of frostbite from doing repairs while exposed to the cold.
- Eat the Rich: Josie's opening monologue in episode 2 name-drops this, saying the Tail is looking forward to it.
- Emo Teen: Teenaged first class passenger LJ Folger is introduced slumped back in a chair, looking bored and/or embarked listening to her mother complaining about the sauna and then letting out an irritated groan after being forbidden from taking a trip down to Third Class. This is somewhat justified given the nature of the train's society, being constantly overlooked and it being established how much difficulty she has feeling anything on it. This takes a darker turn once it's revealed she convinced her bodyguard to help her commit the murders simply so she'd be able to feel something.
- Endless Winter: The train has been circling the globe for almost six years and it's still below -100 degrees outside. In Season 2, Melanie discovers that the world has started to warm, with the season finale confirming that there are several regions around the equator which are now habitable again.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Roche seems upset to find out Osweiler has been funneling drugs to the Tail.
- Several first class passengers are utterly disgusted by the actions of the Serial Killer when they're revealed during said killer's trial.
- Extinct in the Future: Cattle become extinct in the second episode, when the avalanche shatters the cattle-car's windows and its occupants freeze in seconds. The fourth episode reveals the train also had bee farms until they suffered a colony collapse.
- Everything that's not currently on the Snowpiercer or Big Alice is likely extinct, possibly aside from some deep sea vent ecosystems. Season 2 reveals that a colony of rats survived in a geothermal vent beneath a climate research station, implying other small species may have survived the same way.
- Failed a Spot Check: Kronole has been circulating throughout the train for two revolutions around the world, but because most of it is in the Tail, which they turn a blind eye to, Melanie and the Brakemen remain completely ignorant of this until shortly before the second murder.
- Fallen Princess: LJ becomes this in the Season 1 finale, as the Tallies take over First and toss her out of her cabin to live in Third. In Season 2, she's reduced to working as a janitor. The finle, however, has her regain some of her old status as one of Wilford's favourites.
- False Flag Operation: Wilford's supporters do this in Season 2 to instigate a counter-revolution against the Tallies. After mutilating Lights' hand to make it permanently resemble the "W" salute symbol of Wilford's worshippers, they then slaughter the Breachmen (Wilford's strongest supporters on Snowpiercer) to make it look like retaliation from the Tallies. This causes tensions to boil over as the other passengers start rioting and attacking the Tallies.
- Fantastic Caste System: Just like in previous versions, the tail section passengers are packed like cattle, fed far worse, and treated as subhuman, even though in this version it’s stated that there is enough room and food to provide for them decently. Outside the Tail, the train's inhabitants are strictly divided into First Class (the super-rich who paid for their fare), Second Class (train employees who attend to the needs of First Class, or whose position or expertise merits respect), and Third Class (manual laborers whose grueling and oft-dangerous work in the sub-train and the agricultural cars keep Snowpiercer in operation).
- Fantastic Underclass: As with the film, the "Tailies" - passengers who hopped the titular train without tickets and who have been banished to the tail-end of the train - occupy this position. Hated by most of the other passengers, they survive by the mercy of Melanie Cavill, the train's secret boss, who recognizes that some of the Tailies might have skills that she needs to keep the train running.
- Fingore:
- Melanie freezes then smashes Josie's right pinky while trying to torture information out of her.
- Lights is attacked by Wilford supporters, who remove her pinkie and thumb in order to leave her permanently making their "W" salute.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Till is initially assigned to assist Layton in the murder investigation simply as a means of keeping an eye on him and keeping him in line. Although their relationship starts off quite frosty, it doesn't take long before they bond over their shared background as former cops dedicated to pursuing justice. By episode 8, Till has officially turned her back on being a Brakeman, and becomes Layton's lancer in the revolution.
- Flawed Prototype: Of the "just OK" variety. The train had a prototype only 40 cars long and with less technology, speed and presumably amenities. The season finale reveals that it survived the freeze, with the real Wilford aboard, and has been following the main train the whole time.
- Flipping the Bird: Icy Bob does this to the Tallies after repelling their attack on Big Alice.
- Foil: So far, Layton seems to be one to Curtis from the film. Curtis was a white man, a former cannibal, and the leader of a violent revolt. Layton is African-American, a former policeman who helped stamp out a group of cannibals, and is trying to prevent a violent revolt.
- Food as Bribe:
- The promise of fresh food is enough to get Pike to turn on the Tail.
- In season 2, Snowpiercer's ability to grow and trade fresh food proves a critical bargaining chip with Big Alice, which doesn't have the ability to grow food and has been barely subsisting on rations of some kind.
- The Future Is Noir: The series (or at least the opening mystery arc) involves a mystery in a dark, corrupt, setting where its hard to tell who is trustworthy.
- Giant Mook: Icy Bob is about 8 feet tall and a few hundred pounds of pure muscle.
- Gone Horribly Right: As in the film, the backstory is a chemical fired into the atmosphere to stop global warming. Boy, did it succeed there...
- Groin Attack: The murderer Layton is looking for castrates the victims as torture and amputates their limbs on top of that.
- Heel Realization: Ruth starts off blindly supportive of Wilford's authoritarian rules, but after spending most of Season 2 seeing the gentler way the Tallies do things, she starts to realize how wrong she was. Encountering Winnie, who is terrified of her for almost taking her arm after the failed rebellion in the pilot, is the final straw, as Ruth is horrified to realize she doesn't even remember the incident in question.
- He Knows Too Much:
- After Nikki is released from the drawers after it's proven that someone else was the killer, she's treated as a witness and the real killer makes an attempt on her life.
- Melanie has Layton consigned to the drawers when she realizes he's figured out that she's been impersonating Mr. Wilford all along.
- Heroic Sacrifice: When the Snowpiercer passes through a massive volcano cloud of toxic gasses, Asha sacrifices herself to replace the corroded air filters on the train to save Layton and the other passengers.
- Hidden Depths: Dr. Klimpt, the brooding jailer of the train, gets a surprisingly complex speech at the beginning of the third episode, hinting at greater insight and discontentment than previously shown.Klimpt: You'd think loneliness would be impossible all crammed in here, but this train was designed to separate us from our possessions, from our loved ones. Now every last shred of us is worth something to someone. Everything's rare, so you gotta pay with something personal. And we're all trading up for the most valuable thing there is... Access. Access all the way to First, where they hold the table for sport, then trade it right back down. People avoid me because I care for the Sleepers, but that's my value, how I open doors and live in Second. I can trade for things, while the weakest can only trade their carbon for compost. So we keep pushing, pushing uptrain, pushing for access to feel more alive. Access is freedom. Access is power. We kill for that on Snowpiercer, 1,001 cars long.
- Hypocrite: Melanie rants to Layton about the train being the last bastion of humanity which only persists through order and the dedication of Mr. Wilford, but if that was the only concern then all the passengers would be treated equally.
- Human Popsicle: The fate of the prisoners in the drawers, albeit using drug-induced comas rather than actual cryonics. As episode 6 reveals, there are actually FAR more subjects in this state than is officially known. See Sleeper Ship below.
- Melanie is revealed to have survived this way, using a maintenance vehicle and the sleeper drugs to keep herself in suspended animation for over a year, the computer periodically waking her up to allow her to rehydrate, do some excersizes to keep her body from completely withering, and track her progress. She was still almost dead by the time the Snowpiercer found her.
- Identity Impersonator: When Melanie is asked to call Mr. Wilford on the spot, she calls someone who knows she's actually Mr. Wilford and is prepared to impersonate him.
- I'm a Humanitarian: As in the film, the Tailies resorted to cannibalism during the early times aboard the train. Played with in that those who didn't kill others for food ganged up on and killed the worst of the cannibals, then deliberately divvied up the cannibal leader's heart so that everyone had eaten human flesh. That way, there wouldn't be a difference in status between surviving cannibals and non-cannibals, and their society could be rebuilt with everyone on an equal footing.
- The climate scientists at the research station seem to have resorted to this, judging by the human arm in the freezer. Melanie is forced to seriously consider this as well, due to the loss of her rations in an avalanche, but she ends up finding another option.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Happens to a squad of Jackboots during the uprising in Episode 8, as the Third Classers have jury-rigged a kind of makeshift ballista launcher in one of the corridors.
- Irony: Invoked by Wilford in that he built the special "hand holds" where people would have limbs frozen off as nothing but a bluff only for Ruth to use them thirteen times.
- It's All About Me: As it turns out, this is why Melanie left the real Wilford behind and took his identity — he wanted Snowpiercer to exist solely for the sake of his personal comfort, and didn't care at all about the other passengers. When he's properly introduced in Season 2, we see that he runs Big Alice like a cult leader, leaving everyone to starve in discomfort while he keeps all the best food and supplies to himself.
- Killed Off for Real: Notable characters such as Lilah & Robert Folger, Commander Nolan Grey, Terrence, Javi and Bojan Boscovic are all killed off during the show's run, while the fate of Melanie Cavill is left up in the air.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Between the Tailies and Third Classers uniting in revolt, the Jackboots being lured uptrain and cut off from communication, and learning that Wilford is dead, Roche and the other Brakemen stand aside to let the revolution carry on.
- Lack of Empathy: If you don't live in the tail section, chances are you feel this way about the people who do.
- Last of His Kind: The Last Australian is the only Australian onboard the train and therefore is disturbed by the Childless Dystopia nature of the tail section keeping him from having kids to pass on his heritage to. "A Simple Trade" reveals there's a woman from Perth on Big Alice, who'd long assumed she was The Last Australian. Then in Season 3, both of them have died of the flu during the time skip between seasons, so Australians are extinct.
- Wilford's guard dog Jupiter, who is presumably the last dog on Earth.
- Lead Police Detective: Layton is brought out of the Tail and given the title Train Detective, allowing him powers to investigate the murders wherever the evidence takes him. This is also Layton's backstory - he was a homicide detective before the Freeze. The Train Detective technically outranks even the Brakemen, Snowpiercer's version of police.
- In season 2, Bess Till is made Train Detective to investigate the deliberate mutilation of Lights' hand.
- Let No Crisis Go to Waste: A hydraulics failure that nearly derails the entire train proves to be the perfect distraction to diffuse a potential work stoppage in Third. Audrey lampshades that she got lucky with the timing and that Third isn't going to just forget their grievances, but Melanie just smugly tells her to read the room.
- Lingering Social Tensions: In the second season the train is ostensibly united after the various factions all came together to repel a brutal counter-revolution, but there's still a lot of bad blood. Namely, the Tailies are still bitter about the years of oppression they faced at Melanie Cavill's hands, and First Class being not at all happy about their loss of privileges over the Tailies. Further complicating things is that all the passengers now know that the train's owner, Mr. Wilford, who many of them view as a Physical God, was cast off the train before it departed, and that Melanie Cavill has been impersonating him for years.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Jinju is a fairly feminine character and in a relationship with Till.
- Locked Out of the Loop: The survivors on Big Alice had no contact with Snowpiercer since it started its journey so have no idea how the Snowpiercer society has evolved. Markedly, they have no idea what a Tailie is.
- Masquerading As the Unseen: This happens within the first few episodes, thanks to Mr. Wilford's No One Sees the Boss status.
- The Mole: What Layton hopes to be by getting a job higher up in the train and finding out more about how things work. He also alludes to the Tailies having informers in "half a dozen sectors" already helping them.
- Mouth of Sauron: Melanie broadcasts Mr. Wilford’s will over the PA every day and Ruth visits the tail section to deliver in-person messages.
- Never Found the Body: The Folgers, Commander Grey, the majority of the Jackboots, several First Class passengers, as well as a handful of Tail prisoners, are left behind to die during the Rebellion, but their deaths are never shown.
- Melanie walks out into the frozen wastes after being left behind by Snowpiercer during Wilford's takeover and Layton's hijacking, leaving her records and data behind in the research station, but we have no comfirmation of her death
- Never Trust a Trailer: The pre-premiere promotional material gave a lot of people the impression that this was a prequel series to the film version, not a reboot.
- Not His Sled: Due to being a Continuity Reboot, some plot points from the movie we would expect to show up here are changed or removed entirely:
- In the movie, the protein bars the tail passengers are fed are made of cockroaches. This is discovered near the beginning and further incites the rage of the rebels. While the protein bars pretty much look the same in the show, we never learn what they're made of, nor does anyone bring this up.
- Halfway through season one, Miles is taken as an apprentice to the Engine. We may assume he will suffer the same fate of the kids taken to the Engine in the film - to power the engine manually as a living piece - but he really goes there as an apprentice. Due to the nature of the Engine here, it's unlikely they would ever consider using kids to replace missing mechanical parts.
- It's unlikely that kronol has any explosive properties in this continuity.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Melanie does this with Layton when he rages at First having endless opulence while the Tail is starving, telling him that she was originally a poor Ohio farm girl who worked her way up from nothing and as such knows what it's like to feel such anger at those of a higher class.
- Oh, Crap!: Melanie has one in Episode 8 when her impersonation of Wilford is exposed, and an even bigger one in the season finale when she realizes that Wilford is alive and catching up to Snowpiercer on Big Alice.
- Open Heart Dentistry: The autopsy of the second murder victim is performed by a physician who's never done one before, but has at least seen similarly-graphic injuries before due to having served in a military medical unit in Afghanistan.
- Past Experience Nightmare: While in stasis in the Drawers, Layton has a nightmare of the early days of the train when he massacred a cannibal cult preying on the other Tailies, then took their leader's heart and chopped it up, before eating a piece with the other people of the Tail as a symbolic rejection of viewing each other as food.
- Parental Substitute: Layton and Josie help raise Miles, whose family died when they first boarded the train.
- The Peter Principle: The end of series 3 lays out quite clearly that Snowpiercer has three choices for leadership, all of him are deficient in some way; Melanie, whose For the Greater Good tendencies cause her to overlook the human element of the train; Layton, who's a very effective fighter and general that can never look past being a Taillie; and Wilford, a selfish, megalomaniacal tyrant with a god complex. Melanie even refers to them as the original sinners, as it's always the decisions one or other of them makes that end up leading Snowpiercer to disaster.
- Platonic Prostitution: Everyone outside of Third thinks that the Nightcar is a brothel, but what it actually sells is a private room for people to be alone. In theory, it can also be used for sex, but it's unclear how often that actually happens.
- Population Control: Tailie women are forcibly sterilized, and the train's other occupants are only authorized to reproduce if they win a [rigged] "baby lottery".
- Pretty in Mink: Ruth puts on an opulent fur coat before going back to the tail section to take Layton.
- Put on a Bus: Pike and a couple of others are sentenced to the prison drawers indefinitely at the beginning of the second episode for their revolt. They're all freed during the revolution at the end of the season.
- The Quisling: Audrey in Season 2. Initially, she acts as The Mole, using Wilford's infatuation with her to gain information for Layton and the rest of Snowpiercer's leadership. However, she eventually decides she likes the comforts that come with being his paramour, and legitimately switches sides.
- Rage Breaking Point: Old Ivan being Driven to Suicide in the pilot kicks off another tail section revolt.
- Ragnarök Proofing:
- Despite the incredibly rough climate, the tracks and bridges the Snowpiercer uses have no apparent need for upkeep despite being subject to a new ice age, including more complex ones like track switchers. Granted, they were designed for the exact purpose of weathering the Freeze, but it's hard to imagine a world-spanning track network needing no repairs at all for 7 years. Season 3 reveals this is not entirely the case; several tracks have degraded from exposure, namely a particularly flimsy bridge section in Africa, and it's feared that this problem will only grow worse over time. There are redundancies in place, but that only lasts so long.
- Averted with the Snowpiercer itself which requires near-constant upkeep, and nearly derails in Episode 6 due to mechanical failure. This is why Bennet goes behind Melanie's back when he realizes that Big Alice is out there and lets the supply train catch up, because it has numerous redundant parts stored aboard that they need.
- The climate research station Melanie travels to, which only needs to be powered back up, with none of its equipment being notably damaged from being exposed to the Freeze for seven years. Downplayed somewhat when the radio antenna breaks during a windstorm, nearly derailing the whole mission.
- Averted in season 3 with the North Korean nuclear plant, which collapses when Ben is walking across its roof while taking ice samples, trapping him inside and forcing Layton to leave the train to save him.
- Rebel Leader: Pike, Strong Boy and Z-Wreck serve as this during the Nineteenth Revolution, while Layton, Miss Audrey and Till take the role during the joint Tailie/Third Class Rebellion with Josie, Big John, Lights, the Last Australian, Miles and Dr. Pelton each having a major or prominent role either before or during the early stages. Melanie and a reluctent Roche also secretly aid or defect to them following the Folgers' and Commander Grey's coup, or after being told what the new leadership were planning on doing to end the revolution once and for all respectively.
- Reduced to Ratburgers: Miles is responsible for the care of a colony of rats, which are bred as edible livestock by the Tailies. Melanie manages to survive the loss of her rations in "Many Miles from Snowpiercer" thanks to discovering a nest of rats living in the walls of the research station, having survived the Freeze thanks to a geothermal vent in the bedrock. She eats these to last the rest of her stay.
- The Reveal:
- Wilford has been dead before the train ever left. Also, he never built it, Melanie did and has been posing as Wilford to keep it and civilization going.
- The first season finale reveals that Wilford has actually been alive and leading another pack of survivors on a secondary supply train, Big Alice, catching up to Snowpiercer. One of these survivors is Melanie's daughter Alexandra, who Melanie thought had died during the Freeze.
- Right-Hand Attack Dog: Wilford has one by the name of Jupiter who he orders to sic Javi after he's beaten up by his jackboots for helping Layton's Pirate train escape.
- Rousing Speech: Layton gives one to the Tailies as they kick off their full-scale revolution.
- Schoolmarm: So far, only one teacher for the front section children, the relatively young Miss Gillies, has appeared.
- Sanity Slippage: Melanie quickly begins to lose it during "Many Miles from Snowpiercer", both from the isolation and her lack of food, as she begins having hallucinations of Wilford, Layton and Alex, so she'll have someone to talk to.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: LJ's trial ends with a unanimous guilty verdict, only to be reversed by Mr. Wilford commuting her sentence because she reveals during the trial that she knows the secret of the drawers.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Till and Jinju start having a heated argument about supplies that's really about their relationship issues, Roche quickly leaves the room to avoid getting caught up in it.
- Sexual Extortion: Osweiler has the son of the woman who lost an arm give him oral sex before he'll give them painkillers.
- Shout-Out: In a flashback to the night the Snowpiercer began it's journey, Wilford referred to the launch as "The Last Train To Clarksville".
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: After Melanie's rant about the order necessary to keep the train going, Layton puts her down by pointing out she's dealing with murderers and cannibals among her own while the Tailies already sorted that out, so she's in no position to judge.
- Sleeper Ship: Melanie claims that this is the true purpose of the Drawers, and the reason why there's secretly 11 entire traincars dedicated to them, rather than just the one everyone knows about. Should society on the train fail for whatever reason, the secret prisoners (consisting of all manner of skilled people) will serve as an Ark for humanity, watched over by a skeleton crew of survivors using the remaining resources until the Freeze ends.
- Small, Secluded World: Since it's impossible to even open a window without freezing to death, the world is for all intents and purposes limited to the Snowpiercer, and even then, the majority of the occupants never leave their designated class areas, especially not the Tailies who are essentially treated like human vermin and imprisoned in the back of the train.
- Smart People Wear Glasses: Javi, one of the engineers who keeps the train moving, wears spectacles.
- Sole Surviving Scientist:
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Word of God claims that Bennett is one of the people who built the train, and he takes a keen-eyed interest in maintaining it to keep people alive. - Dr. Klimpt is described as a former research scientist and seems caught up in the science of freezing prisoners, which is eventually revealed to have greater applications (it's The Ark in case the train fails completely).
- Season two introduces Mr. and Mrs. Headwood, a pair of isolated, idiosyncratic scientists from Big Alice who care for their work more than humanity and ethics.
- Season 3 introduces Asha, a western scientist who had been part of a small enclave of survivors in North Korea, hiding out in a nuclear plant. By the time Layton stumbles across her, she's been alone for four years, the other survivors having slowly died off from marauder attacks, the cold, and radiation, once the reactor began to fail.
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- Space Cold War: Melanie engineers this in the season 2 premiere by permanently sabotaging the docking mechanism on Big Alice so it can't disconnect from Snowpiercer, removing Mr. Wilford's primary leverage of being able to detach from Snowpiercer and let the cold kill the passengers.
- Spoiler Title:
- The title for the fifth episode of season 1 ("Justice Never Boarded") is an ominous one considering that it covers the trial of the killer.
- The season 1 finale, "994 Cars Long", indicates that seven cars of the train, implied to be the tail section, will be separated from the rest of the train to gain speed. It doesn't refer to the tail, but seven cars near the middle where the Folgers and the Jackboots are holed up, along with several people who've been captured. Melanie and Layton (with reluctance) deliberately separate it from the rest of the train and send it down a different track while the rest reunites and continues onward.
- Sports Hero Backstory: Brakeman Osweiler is a former soccer star.
- Super Prototype: Downplayed with Big Alice in the season 1 finale, which is slower than Snowpiercer, but bigger, sturdier and far more well equipped, having been intended as a supply train. The "slower" part is also relative, as Snowpiercer is dragging 25 times the weight and can't accelerate as fast, allowing Big Alice to catch up when Bennet deliberately slows the train to gain access to Big Alice's resources and Melanie arrives too late to regain the lost speed.
- Supreme Chef: Jinju, who cooks for the front section and shares most of their privileges.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Ruth Wardell has a heavy Yorkshire accent, loves wearing furs, and serves as Wilford's liaison to the Tail, whose population she treats with disdain. She is essentially a younger version of Minister Mason from the film.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Melanie spikes Layton's sake with a sedative when the two share a celebratory drink after catching the killer, because Layton has figured out she's been impersonating Mr. Wilford.
- That One Case: Heavily implied with Till, who played a role in the conviction of the woman accused of the first murder who now appears to be innocent, and takes an interest in the continued investigation.
- The Chessmaster: Played repeatedly by Mr. Wilford.
- In season 2, Wilford silently engineers a mechanical failure which threatens to derail the train, one which only he has the capacity to fix. He uses this to create a surge of support and take control of the train.
- In season 3, an exiled and imprisoned Wilford reveals that Melanie is still alive, and leads the train to her location. Once she’s back on board, he manipulates her into betraying Layton, and uses the chaos to escape his confinement.
- Totalitarian Utilitarian:
- Season 1:
- When LJ threatens to reveal the drawer project, Melanie has her sentence commuted.
- When Layton figures out that Mr. Wilford isn’t on the train, Melanie puts him in a drawer.
- Melanie dismembers and attempts to kill Josie during an interrogation.
- Upon losing control of the train, Melanie has a Heel Realization and hands the train over to Layton.
- Season 3: With Melanie off the train and presumed dead, Layton decides that Utopia Justifies the Means, and formulates a lie that there is a habitable land known as New Eden.
- Layton attempts to resolve a conflict with Pike peacefully. When Pike reveals he knows New Eden is a lie, Layton kills him.
- Subverted when Melanie, still alive, returns to the train. She hijacks the train, revealing to everyone that New Eden is a lie, and that getting there requires covering dangerous track. This causes Layton’s support to dwindle.
- Season 1:
- Two Aliases, One Character:
- Unlike in the film, Mr. Wilford does leave the engine and traverse through the train in disguise, being known as Melanie Cavill by the rest of the train.
- Subverted. There was an actual Mr. Wilford who commissioned the train, but Melanie, the engineer who designed the train, decided that he didn't actually care about keeping civilization afloat (being more interested in maintaining his own comfort), so she left him behind when the train departed and stepped into his shoes.
- Unwanted Rescue: Zarah, Layton's ex-wife who left the Tailies for a chance to live in third class, says that she’d rather he have let her die with her family.
- Upper-Class Twit: Quite a few of the front passengers, who enjoy rich foods, sauna, bowling, and luxurious cars of their own while squabbling about petty things.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Wilford is a self-absorbed despot, but is practically and as seen in season 2, literally worshipped by some passengers.
- Wardens Are Evil: Done ambiguously so far with Dr. Klimpt, who oversees "the drawers" where prisoners are cryogenically frozen. He has a somewhat creepy, off-putting demeanor, but and protests at the idea of switching to an alternate means of imprisonment, but those could just be poor social skills. He also appears to be dealing drugs made from the chemicals used to render inmates comatose, but claims this is only to get additional necessities for the prisoners.
- The Watson: Brakeman Bess Till (a former Detroit cop) kind of wants to take this role in the investigation at the beginning of the series, but doesn’t exactly get off to the right foot with Layton, beating him up for trying to refuse the case, although she has more of the dynamic in the second episode, both about the case and about conditions in the tail.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Layton and Pike (a leader of the tail whose claim to fame is escaping from jail to make it onto the train in time as the world froze) don’t get along or share many strategies. Layton also hopes to make common ground with allies in the other sections of the train who are unhappy about the class situation.
- Wham Episode:
- Season 3 - "Born To Bleed": Layton kills Pike in a duel to the death.
- Season 3 finale - Wilford is exiled on a maintenance vehicle, while Snowpiercer is split in half, with Melanie in one half, and Layton and his supporters on the other. Layton's group manages to reach New Eden, discovering that it's indeed real. L.J chokes to death on her father's glass eye.
- Wham Line:
- The final spoken lines of Season 1: Wilford's representative from the second train reveals herself to be Alex, Melanie's still-alive daughter.
- In episode 7 of Season 3, Wilford reveals that while tracking the rogue Snowpiercer on Big Alice, he came across a track signal in France while Layton and the others were actually a continent away, and that someone else is still alive out there. Wilford believes it may be Melanie.
- Wham Shot:
- The Season 1 finale revealing that there's a secondary supply train catching up to Snowpiercer.
- The second season finale reveals that Melanie's weather drones have discovered that Earth has already returned to a temperate climate around the equator, meaning that the Freeze is ending
- The season 3 premiere has Layton discover a set of fresh footprints inside a North Korean bunker. Shortly afterwards, he's attacked by the person who made them, the first human being to have been shown to survive outside the Snowpiercer.
- The man who tried to kill Layton with a bomb the same day his daughter was born was Pike!
- Season 3 ends with Layton and his supporters finding New Eden, which is indeed a temperate zone where human life is possible, complete with a freshwater lake, allowing the passengers to disembark for the first time in seven years.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Repeatedly throughout Season 2, Layton gets called out for the post-revolutionary compromises he's being forced to make.
- Where It All Began: The Season 1 finale features Snowpiercer passing through Chicago, where it first departed from. Fittingly, this is where it's forced to stop after Wilford's backup train catches up to them.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Season 3 begins with the reveal that while the Freeze is ending as predicted by Melanie's data, the weather patterns means that even the new temperate zones will be uninhabitable for human life for about a century or so, far too long for either Snowpiercer or Big Alice to last. So far, the last remaining hope appears to be a possible exception on the Arabian Peninsula. The trick will be to actually reach it.
- During his coma, Layton finally discovers that his "vision" of the dragon tree is actually a memory of a photo calendar he saw while almost dying in the North Korean plant, meaning that his faith that New Eden even exists is nothing but a delusion, making it even less likely that the area will be habitable.
- After being rescued, Melanie is convinced by Wilford that the risks of reaching New Eden are too great due to the faulty tracks, and end up exposing Laytons lie to the whole train, leading to another schism.
