Series / Sons of Anarchy

Gotta live this life...till you die.

"The concept was pure, simple, true, it inspired me, lit a rebellious fire, but ultimately I learned the lesson that Goldman, Prudot and the others learned; that true freedom requires sacrifice and pain. Most human beings only think they want freedom. In truth they yearn for the bondage of social order, rigid laws, materialism; the only freedom man really wants, is the freedom to be comfortable."

— John Teller

Sons of Anarchy is a FX television drama series created by former The Shield writer Kurt Sutter. The series, which can be described as "Hamlet meets the Hells Angels", focuses on the criminal exploits of the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle club in the northern California town of Charming. It ran for seven seasons from September 3, 2008 to December 9, 2014, along the way becoming FX's highest-rated series during its third season.

The Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original (SAMCRO, Sam Crow, the Sons, or just Sons of Anarchy) is a motorcycle club that sells guns to various gangs, all the while protecting the town, in order to preserve Charming as a small town unmolested by big corporations, chain stores, and other corrupt aspects of upper-class suburbia. The main character is Jackson "Jax" Teller, son of deceased founder John Teller and step-son of the current leader of the group, Clay Morrow. The series begins with Jax entering fatherhood as his ex-wife gives birth to their first-born son, while at the same time discovering a manifesto his father wrote prior to his death in which he decries how his anarchist biker club became an organized crime syndicate that was the very thing that he was rebelling against when he conceived of the club.

The manifesto inspires Jax to try and steer the club towards his father's original vision by attempting to move the club away from organized crime. Needless to say, this does not go over well with the Faux Affably Evil Clay or his Affably Evil mother Gemma; the show implies that they had Jax's father murdered when he began "going soft" on them.

Like The Shield, Sons has a rich supporting cast of characters balancing out the Hamlet-esque drama; other bikers include Bobby Munson (a bookmaker/Elvis impersonator), Tig Trager (Clay's right-hand man and chief enforcer who has some bizarre sexual habits), Opie Winston (Jax's best friend, whose interests are also split between the club and his family), Opie's father Piney (who founded the club along with John Teller), Juice Ortiz (a Hispanic computer geek from Queens), Chibs Telford (a Scottish former Army medic and one-time member of the IRA), and Happy Lowman (a ruthless triggerman for the club).

On the civilian side, there is Tara Knowles (a doctor who was Jax's childhood sweetheart, who serves as the chief threat to Gemma's control over her son), corrupt Police Chief Wayne Unser, the straight-as-an-arrow deputy (and potential successor) David Hale, and his brother Jacob Hale, a prominent member of the community who has his eye on profiting from the town, along with a number of progressively higher-ranking law enforcement agents as the show progresses.

While the show borrows heavily from Hamlet, much of the drama comes from the gang's criminal exploits and the Faustian implications of SAMCRO's presence within Charming. This has led to both the wealthier elements of the town to make their own (even worse) Faustian pacts, such as bringing in white supremacists into Charming (see Season Two) to destroy SAMCRO by any means necessary, and the club in turn making more and more desperate decisions to survive.

Has a character page.

Spin Offs include:

• Sons of Anarchy (2013-2015): A Comic Book series published by Boom! Studios.
• Sons of Anarchy: Men of Mayhem (2014): A Tabletop Game with players controlling rival gangs fighting to control territory and resources.
• Sons of Anarchy: Bratva (2014): A novel written by Christopher Golden.
• Sons of Anarchy: The Prospect (2015): An Adventure Game that meant to be episodic but was cancelled after poor reception of the first entry.
• Sons of Anarchy: Redwood Original (2016-2017): A Prequel Comic Book series published by Boom! Studios.
• Mayans M.C. (2018-2023): A series based on the Mayans that premiered on September 4, 2018 on FX, 10 years after the airing of the Sons of Anarchy pilot.

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The show provides examples of:

A-D

• Aborted Arc: Season two was supposed to feature the introduction of the Tacoma Washington branch of the Sons after Happy's appearances in Season 1. Their criminal specialty would be established as robbing banks along the west coast, resulting in an episode where they would team-up with Opie and several other SAMCRO members in robbing a bank, in order to obtain the money needed to bail out Jax and the other incarcerated members of SAMCRO. As it stands, the plotline got dropped save for the introduction of the Tacoma's Sgt. At Arms Herman Kozik. The storyline was eventually reworked for Season 4, only now its the Tucson, Arizona chapter and they're involved in the crystal meth trade.
• Accent Interest:
  • Charlie Hunnam 's hybrid American/ British accent often leads people to sarcastically why California golden boy Jax Teller has such a peculiar speech pattern. It peaks around Season 4, then just goes downhill.
  • In-universe, characters are more likely to comment on Chibs Telford's Scottish burr.
• Actually Pretty Funny: In the season two premiere, when Stahl drops off Bobby at the garage, Clay sarcastically invites her to the party and tells her she'd probably be pretty good on a stripper pole. Stahl happily tells him, "You have no idea" which makes Clay laugh.
• Affably Evil: In earlier seasons, Jax was this, until he became President, and forgets himself.
• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • Clay's death is played for tragedy in spite of his many crimes.
  • Juice betrayed the Sons and helped Gemma cover up Tara's murder, but his death was still very tragic, especially since he spent all of Season 7 trying to get back into SAMCRO, only to give up and face what was coming.
  • Gemma. She killed Tara and is responsible for the pile of bodies that turned up in Season 7, but she still loved her family and Nero. Watching Jax blow her brains out, after she spent her last two episodes saying goodbye to everyone she loves, is enough to make anyone misty-eyed.
  • Jax himself. Despite clearly having become irredeemable, his death, committing suicide and dying in the same way as his father, is more than a little saddening.
• All Bikers are Hells Angels: The Sons, which finances itself in the black market arms trade. The members of the Charming charter are completely capable of violence and murder, but are also more moral than other outlaw bikers, having formed a truce with the local police and community. Other chapters of the gang, as well as other gangs in the area, are little more than thugs. The show occasionally shows the contrast between outlaw bikers and regular bikers.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys:
  • Jax and Tara.
  • Donna and Opie.
  • Lyla and Opie.
  • Gemma's dad's caretaker and Tig.
  • Ima with both Jax and Opie.
  • Cherry, who starts out as a "sweetbutt" and moves in to try and become Half-Sack's old lady.
  • Collette and Jax.
• Ancestor Veneration: A big part of the club's culture revolves around remembering John Teller, the founding member of the Sons and Jax's father, to the point that his rebuilt bike occupies a prominent area in the hallway of the clubhouse that resembles a biker shriner for all intents and purposes. Jax in the pilot episode grabs the throttle when walking past in a thoughtful way as if connecting with JT.
  • Subverted when Jax finds his father's manuscript he wrote shortly before his death that reveals John's disillusionment with the direction the club took into organized crime.
  • In a still-living example at first, the club also venerates The First 9, the founding members of the club, with a special patch. John Teller and Piney co-founded the club, as evidenced by Piney's aging denim cut. Clay was the final member and the youngest, as shown by his willingness to move with the times by wearing a leather cut like the rest of the club. Season 3 introduces Keith McGee, the President of the Belfast charter aka SAMBEL, and Lenny "The Pimp" Janowitz, third founding member and former Sergeant-At-Arms of SAMCRO who was convicted of murdering 3 ATF agents.
• And Starring: Ron Perlman.
• Animal Motifs: The crow is a recurring symbol of the club.
  • Gemma in general seems to be associated with caged birds.
• Anti-Hero: Again, the Sons, being an outlaw motorcycle club and all.
• Anyone Can Die: Of the major characters from the first season, only Chibs, Tig and Wendy are alive after the series finale. Everyone else, and countless (340, according to the wiki) minor and major characters from in between, perish along the lines. Main cast members are written in bold.
  • Season 1: Josh Kohn, Donna Winston
  • Season 2: Vic Trammel, Luann Delaney, Ule, AJ Weston, Edmond Hayes, Polly Zobelle, Half-Sack Epps
  • Season 3: David Hale, Cameron Hayes, Michael Casey, Lumpy Feldstein, Liam O’Neill, Keith McGee, Sean Casey, Kellan Ashby, Luisa, Hector Salazar, Amy Tyler, Donny, Jimmy O’Phelan, June Stahl
  • Season 4: Viktor Putlova, Eric Miles, Piney Winston, Herman Kozik, Georgie Caruso
  • Season 5: Laroy Wayne, Dawn Trager, Opie Winston, Rita Roosevelt, Carla, GoGo, Greg the Peg, Frankie Diamonds, Damon Pope
  • Season 6: Phil Russell, V-Lin, Lee Toric, Otto Delaney, Galen O’Shay, Clay Morrow, Bohai Lin, Tara Knowles, Eli Roosevelt
  • Season 7: Cane, Orlin West, Colette Jane, Jury White, Bobby Munson, Leland Gruen, Henry Lin, Juice Ortiz, Wayne Unser, Gemma Teller Morrow, Brendan Roarke, Charlie Barosky, August Marks, Jax Teller
• Arc Words: "I got this."
• Armor-Piercing Question : From Season 7.
  Gemma (to Abel) Do you know what an accident is?
  Abel: Do you?
• Asshole Victim:
  • Josh Kohn is Tara's Psycho Ex-Boyfriend who stalks her and at one point even tries to rape her. Luckily, he is killed by Jax before that happens.
  • AJ Weston, the neo-nazi who gang-raped Gemma is shot in the head by Jax.
  • Jimmy O being stabbed to death by Chibs was a long time coming.
  • Finally Agent Stahl, the smug, self-serving fed who would frame, double-cross and kill anyone for her own ends, is shot in the head by Opie right after she thought she had betrayed Jax.
  • Macky, the prison guard responsible for Opie's death, is killed by SAMCRO in a similar fashion.
  • Alice. You know... Venus's abusive mother and a child porn director? Yeah, nobody mourns her when Jax blows her brains out.
  • Galen getting killed by Jax was also very satisfying.
• Ass Shove:
  • Early in the show, the Sons raid a warehouse where the Mayans are working with a Nord. After killing them all, the Sons pile the bodies and insert a lit stick of dynamite into the Nord's butt as a final insult.
  • Juice finds himself having to do this more than once while in prison.
  • Threatened (and very nearly realized) with a suspected traitor, Tig, and a flute.
• Attempted Rape: In season one Tara is attacked by corrupt ATF agent Josh Kohn, her former lover. She plays along until she is able to grab his gun and shoots him in the gut. She calls Jax who ends up shooting the rapist dead.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • Josh Kohn
  • Salazar comes close. Plus he uses an actual axe in his final appearance.
  • Happy. Pick any decision or vote - you can bet on him always favoring the more violent course of action.
  Bobby: "And what's the plan, roll up on him in broad daylight and cut off his head?"
  Happy: "Okay."
  • Galen, especially in season 6
• Axes at School: The little blonde boy in the first episode of the sixth season. First we see he's been cutting himself and drawing nightmarish illustrations, after which he proceeds to commit a school shooting.
• Babies Make Everything Better: Subverted; Jax's relationship with his ex-wife does not get saved by the birth of their first born. Jax had filed for divorce, due to his wife's drug addiction. After she does a stint in rehab, they try to reconcile, but soon separate again (for good). Jax later tells her that the second split was due to the pregnancy.
• Badass Bystander:
  • The gas station clerk in "Seeds" who saves Jax by killing a violent man with an axe.
  • In terms of relatives, at least. That random nurse who Otto so casually killed? Well, she had a seriously dangerous and pissed off brother who just happens to be a retired US Marshal, former Special Forces officer and Harvard graduate.
  • The same goes for the girl that was killed during Tig's misguided revenge hit on the leader of the One-niners. She was the daughter of a powerful crime lord.
• Badass Biker: A show built around the trope.
• Badass Preacher: Father Ashby. Looks old and slow. Turns out he's just resting. One of 2 characters in the entire show to manhandle Jax.
• Batman Gambit: Every season of the show involves these heavily.
  • This is how Zobelle deals with biker gangs who stand in his way. He finds a way of provoking them into brash, violent action, calls the cops and the bikers end up getting arrested and jailed for a long time. The only reason this initially fails to work with the Sons is because he underestimated Gemma.
  • Agent Stahl uses a number on the Sons, but they all fail since she does not understand what makes them really tick.
  • U.S. Attorney Potter has them on both Otto and Juice.
  • Jax was able to exploit Agent Stahl's arrogance to make her think that she has beaten SAMCRO and thus they were no longer a threat to her. If it failed the Sons would have been in a much weaker position with both the IRA and the Russians gunning for them.
  • Jax hands over Tig to Pope, knowing that Pope will want to take his time torturing Tig and allow Jax time to rescue him. Afterwards, Tig asks what would have happened if Pope had killed him on the spot. Jax just replies, "He didn't."
  • Tara pulls one off on Gemma by letting her find out some infuriating information and hanging out in a public area, counting on the fact that Gemma will rush over and violently confront Tara in front of witnesses. Part of her plan backfires, however, when she punches Gemma in the stomach and counts on Gemma immediately returning the favor. Tara didn't count on Gemma's strong maternal instincts. Gemma refuses to attack the supposedly pregnant Tara, forcing Tara to injure herself to complete the plan. This tips off Gemma that the whole sequence of events was a ruse.
• Beard of Sorrow: Sheriff Roosevelt grows one after his wife is murdered. His skull remains shaved to the skin, however.
• Because I'm Good At It: Jax, full stop. He has a knack for the biker life.
  "I'm an okay mechanic with a GED. The only thing I do well is outlaw."
• "Before" and "After" Pictures: A variant, in which Jax, the Badass Biker Anti-Hero, finds a guy posing on Jax's bike while his girlfriend struggles with the camera. Jax volunteers to help and takes the picture. "That's the before." You can probably guess what happens next.
• Being Evil Sucks: The general message of the show's later seasons. It is hidden behind ample doses of Do Not Do This Cool Thing, however. Jax struggles to reconcile his violent lifestyle with his desire to be a good father and husband. He realizes by the final episode that this was always impossible and it was what his father had also realized right before his death.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Tara has threatened and attacked quite a few people by the fifth season for various offenses.
• Big Bad:
  • Season 1: Marcus Alvarez and Ernest Darby fill this role at first; then Josh Kohn, for Jax and Tara only. For the last part of the season, June Stahl is this.
  • Season 2: Ethan Zobelle, although for the last few episodes he's basically replaced by AJ Weston.
  • Season 3: Big Bad Ensemble: Jimmy O'Phelan and June Stahl, again.
  • Season 4: Initially, the Russians look like they'll fill this role, but they're taken care of pretty quickly. Then there's the Lobos Sonora Cartel. Lincoln Potter also works on a RICO case against the Sons, but ultimately the big bad ends up being Clay Morrow.
  • Season 5: Damon Pope, and Clay Morrow, again.
  • Season 6: Subverted with Lee Toric, who ends up killed four episodes into the season. It ends up being Galen O'Shay... until the eleventh episode, anyways. Tyne Patterson shares the role with Galen, and for the last two episodes she is arguably the only one. Arguably, one could say that Tara fits this. Although what she's doing is by no means evil, it's still in opposition to the main character.
  • Season 7: Big Bad Ensemble: Henry Lin, August Marks and Charles Barosky all stand in the way of where Jax is trying to go. However, the real struggle for Jax is the internal one, which was arguably caused by Gemma Teller Morrow.
• Big "NO!":
  • Jax, as he watches Cameron get away with Abel at the end of Season 2.
  • Tara 3 times; first when she realizes Kohn is in her house, second when Half-Sack get stabbed by Cameron Hayes, and third after Otto stabs a nurse several times in the neck...with a crucifix she brought him.
• Bittersweet Ending: By the end, Jax has become an irredeemable killer, lost the bulk of the people he's ever cared about, and committed suicide by truck. However, he has successfully moved SAMCRO out of the gun business and ensured that his own sons will not follow the path of their father. He dies with a smile on his face.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: SAMCRO is a criminal organization that deals in illegal firearms and routinely commits other crimes like armed robbery and even murder. But the other criminal gangs they clash with are almost always even worse.
• Black Boss Lady: District Attorney Tyne Patterson in Season 6.
• Black Market: Every criminal organization on the show makes money in this manner. The Sons keep the local gangs armed, the Niners and Mayans deal heroin, the local Wahewa tribe sells psychedelic mushrooms and ammunition, the Cacuzza family deal in stolen goods, etc.
• Bland-Name Product: "Jake Danzel's Old No. 2 made in Kentucky" for Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 made in Tennessee◊.
• Blood Is Squicker in Water: Tara's death. Gemma dunks her head in a sink full of dirty dish water and then stabs her repeatedly in the back of the head with a two pronged fork. When it's finally over, the water has turned to a very dark red, and the counter is also covered in blood.
• Bluffing the Authorities: SAMCRO does this fairly often. Special mention goes to the Season 4 finale. With police arrival imminent, Clay spins a story of being shot by 2 black gangbangers in order to keep club business namely, the fact that he was actually shot by one of his own brothers out of the limelight.
• Book Ends: The very first scene is crows feasting on a bit of food before Jax speeds through. The very end shot is of crows digging into some tucker as Jax's blood reaches them after he smashes his bike. Fruit for the crows, indeed.
  • A subtle one in Seasons 1 and 4. Jax in his very first shot of the show is shown cruising along the highway enjoying life as a member of SAMCRO. That same shot is replicated in the Season 4 finale, complete with Jax smoking a cigarette as he cruises, yet you can see the strain that the events between then and now have laid on him. He visibly looks more world-weary and angry.
• Break the Haughty:
  • Gemma being gang-raped by white supremacists in the season two opener.
  • Otto does this to Agent Stahl when he breaks her nose after she tries to trick him into giving her evidence to open a RICO case against the club.
  • Agent Stahl herself intends to do this to SAMCRO by turning them against each other and thus subverting the principles of loyalty and brotherhood the bikers are so proud of. This becomes her primary motive in seasons 2 and 3. She fails and the Sons break her instead.
  • Pope knows that a hardcore biker like Tig is not going to be afraid to die and that Tig is Too Kinky to Torture. Instead he burns Tig's daughter alive while a chained up Tig watches in anguish.
• Brother–Sister Incest:
  • Jax and Trinity, though they find out before they go all the way.
  • Carla, the manager of Nero's establishment turns out both to be his half-sister and to have a Yandere-level crush on him.
• Burner Phones: SAMCRO is a big fan of using prepaid burner cells for communicating with the other gangs.
  • In Season 4, Clay is given one entirely wrapped in plastic to contact the hitman contracted to kill Tara.
• Bungled Suicide: Juice tries to hang himself. When he does manage to jump off, the branch snaps due to him using a chain instead of rope. Walking through a fully-active minefield could be considered a suicide attempt as well.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer:
  • Chuck Marstein is a skilled criminal accountant who develops a compulsive tic: unconscious masturbation. He has his problem "cured" by a rival gang leader who amputates all but his forefingers. In later seasons he attempts to start rhyming before being stopped by Gemma.
  • Bobby is an Elvis impersonator on the side, which seems seriously out of place in an outlaw biker gang. He is also a stone cold killer who takes club life extremely seriously.
  • Bachman, the crime scene cleaner, is an oddball and apparently likes to listen to Eighties music when he disposes of corpses. He also takes payment in assorted goods, up to and including a statue of Jesus' praying hands.
  • Lincoln Potter, the Assistant U.S. Attorney who's investigating the Sons. He has a number of strange mannerisms (including standing on the tables of his task force’s office while either addressing them or simply looking at pictures).
  • Happy Lowman is the club's resident hitman and Torture Technician but also laughs his ass off at Tom and Jerry cartoons and is great with kids. He also adores his mother and aunt.
• Butt-Monkey: Half-Sack, Juice, and Chucky.
• By-the-Book Cop: Hale and Roosevelt start out this way, although both evolve in their mindsets due to the events of the series. Hale stops viewing the MC as the Big Bad of his own personal Police Procedural story after first being entangled with the ATF and seeing the damage law enforcement will do to innocents for a perceived win, then trying to bend the law by allying with the Aryans in Season 2, only to discover how truly monstrous they are and realizing that SAMCRO truly is trying to protect Charming in their own way. Roosevelt comes to an understanding with Jax after working with him to get revenge on Clay for his wife's murder. Unfortunately, both characters' journeys away from this trope end in their deaths.
• California Doubling: An interesting variation, in that the show is set in Northern California—but filmed in noticeably more Southern bits of the state. So it's California doubling for... California.
• Call-Back: A subtle one. In the Season 2 premiere, Unser finds Gemma after she's been attacked and raped by Neo-Nazis. In Season 6, Gemma finds Unser after [[he's been attacked and had a swastika carved into his chest by Neo-Nazis]].
• The Cameo: Michael Chiklis appears in the latter half of the final season as a trucker named Milo who encounters Gemma at a rest stop. He reappears in the series finale when Jax drives his bike into Milo's semi.
• Can't Stop the Signal: Several examples:
  • An unwitting version happens in Season 1 when Gemma finds the partially burned copy of John’s manuscript and takes it away; in the Season 1 finale, Piney gives Jax his copy.
  • Tara makes copies of JT's letters after she realizes Gemma and Unser are trying to find them in Season 4.
• Car Chase: The Sons chase someone on their motorcycles almost once an episode, often in a running gun battle. Usually accompanied by 2000s rock/metal.
• The Cartel: In between seasons 3 and 4, Clay makes a deal with the Gallindo Cartel, ostensibly to sell them military-grade weaponry from their Northern Irish contacts, but a secret part of the agreement means that SAMCRO will transport their cocaine into northern California while the Mayans will distribute it. This causes an internal club conflict since the Sons have traditionally been hard on drugs, but Jax chooses to support Clay for his own reasons [[namely, leaving the club entirely and taking his family away]]. They also get involved in a major gang war when the rival Sonora Cartel shows up in the area. Additionally, the end of the season reveals that the Gallindo Cartel has been infiltrated and "subsidized" (read: taken over) by the CIA to stabilize and control the drug trade.
• Cassandra Truth: Juice in Season 4 Episode 6. Upon being indirectly accused of stealing a kilo of cocaine, which he did by shoving it in his pants and walking out the door, says "Yeah, I shoved a key of coke down my pants and walked out the door. Douchebag."
• Casting Gag:
  • Neo-Nazi gang leader Zobelle is played by Jewish actor Adam Arkin.
  • Henry Rollins, a man who frequently speaks out against racism, plays a white supremacist, right down to having 'I kill niggers' tattooed on his chest in large letters.
  • Similarly, Marilyn Manson, a man whose heritage includes Irish and Sioux Native American blood, plays a high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood.
  • Joel Mc Hale, known for playing likable jerks, plays a slimy conman who seduces married women before robbing them.
  • Tom Arnold, who usually acts as comic relief in his roles, portrays a sleazy pornographer who is willing to have a woman beaten to death.
• Catchphrase: Chucky: "I accept that."
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • The Shield is a fictional television series in the universe of Sons of Anarchy, even though the series uses one of the gangs from the show (the One-Niners) as major characters in the show's mythology and the casting of multiple Shield actors in the series (most notably Jay Karnes, Kenny Johnson, David Rees Snell, Benito Martinez, and Michael Chiklis).
  • Jax's ex wife is played by Drea de Matteo, who played Adriana on The Sopranos. He once chastises Luann for thinking he was going to kill her, saying, "You think I brought you here to Adriana you?"
• Characterization Marches On:
  • Remember the pilot when Bobby used to be a bomb expert and apparently could barely count his own fingers? If not, its probably because it only lasted a few episodes before he became the clubs bookkeeper and left all the explosive stuff to Opie. His Elvis impersonation is also completely dropped after the first 2 seasons. Justified in that due to the club’s antics over the course of the show, he is either busy with club business or in prison. Not to mention, cocaine and guns likely make a hell of a larger profit than singing Elvis tunes in Lake Tahoe.
  • Juice's computer skills were also much more prominent in the first season or two before his character is developed. After that, its mostly relegated to off-screen fact-finding.
  • Tig went from the disturbed enforcer for Clay who would do what others wouldn’t, to having his sexual tastes played for laughs, including a joke about being raped by his father making him the way he is, and entering into a loving relationship with a trans woman.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The ambulance stolen by Half-Sack on Season 1's "The Pull".
  • Maureen's message for Jax.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In the season 6 opener, the episode starts with an unknown young boy getting ready for school, and making sporadic appearances throughout the episode. He's a very literal example. At the end of the episode he's shown to have committed self-harm, despises his classmates with his notebook filled with grotesque drawings of their deaths, and commits a shooting spree at his school with a automatic pistol he stole from his mom's boyfriend, a member of Nero's crew.
• The Chessmaster:
  • Ethan Zobelle
  • Stahl, who repeatedly attempts to play this role, though her plans all eventually have unfortunate consequences.
  • Jax Teller shows throughout the show that he has the best head for intrigue. This is particularly notable when he utterly outplays Agent Stahl at the season 3 finale.
  • U.S. Attorney Potter stays a few steps ahead of the Sons and local law enforcement for a while.
• Child Soldiers:
  • Jimmy O'Phelan's recruiting these to employ as muscle
  • Weston's son Dukie who tries to shoot the Sons and and Hale who come to raid their house.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: The nanny hired in Season 2 who helps around the house and befriends Gemma obviously had nothing to do during the third season and was never seen or mentioned again
  • A weird case with Opie's kids. They disappear from the show after Season 3 (they don't even get to show up for Opie and Lyla's wedding!) but are frequently mentioned as being present in the background of the show. It's even a plot point in Season 6 that Lyla is struggling to support them and her own daughter after Opie's death.
  • Speaking of Lyla's daughter, she showed in Season 2 for a handful of episodes before never being seen again but similarly plays a background role in the show.
• Cleanup Crew: Stephen King played one in a guest spot. Gemma, while on the run, had just killed a woman who threatened to report her to the police. Tig calls in this guy. After he's finished, the main characters are clueless how he managed to completely disappear the corpse with nothing more than regular kitchen appliances.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Sean Casey of the IRA subjects Liam O'Neill to this. While Happy watches with a smile.
• Cold War: SAMCRO engages in a one-sided version of this against the Chinese in Season 7. Unfortunately, it collapses by the fifth episode due to Barosky ratting out the MC to Henry Lin for a higher payout.
• Colour Coded Armies: While it's not prominent, the gangs display their own colors. SAMCRO wears a lot of blue, Mayans have green, Grim Bastards rock orange and the One-Niners roll purple.
• Cool Bike: Good. God.
  • Jax's 2003 Harley Dyna Super Glide Sport with custom T-bars, complete with reaper maw.
  • Opie's also has an '03 Dyna Super Glide Sport with drag, another hint at their Heterosexual Life-Partnership.
  • Clay's '08 Dyna Super Glide, with a similar maw to Jax's.
  • Tig's customized '06 Dyna Street Bob.
  • Chibs' Dyna Street Bob.
  • Bobby's first bike is a custom bike built from the ground up.
  • T.O.'s bright orange Harley Screamin' Eagle Road Glide.
  • Lincoln Potter's 70s Triumph Bonneville
• Cool Car: Gemma's Cadillac XLR-V, Tara's Oldsmobile Cutlass.
• Cool Old Guy: Bobby and Nero; also Piney, full-stop. To a lesser extent, Unser.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Tig, and how! Pope takes advantage of this and kills his daughter in front of him instead before planning on having him raped continuously in prison for the rest of his life. Thankfully, Jax prevents this.
• Comic-Book Time: The show runs on an understated version of this; episodes usually encompass a single day, and there's rarely more than a few days between episodes- almost never a full week. But the big issue is that the length of time between seasons is rarely more than a month- the gap between season six and season seven is only ten days. The exception is the gap between season 3 and 4 is over a year where most of the main characters are locked up, but even that doesn't begin to bring the show up to speed. Never the less, current model phones and cars feature in each season.
• Community-Threatening Construction: Clay Morrow likes to invoke this as the reason why he opposes any new land developments in Charming. However, his reasons are much more self-serving. As long as Charming stays a small blue-collar town, Clay and the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle club have enormous control over how the town and the local police department is run. If Charming grows and becomes more affluent, the town council might get powerful enough to successfully oppose the Sons and clean up the corrupt police department.
• The Consigliere:
  • Father Kellan for the True IRA Council.
  • Pope has a right-hand man, August Marks, whom he's known since the latter was 17. He takes over Pope's organization after Pope's death.
  • Bobby for Clay, and later for Jax.
• Contrived Coincidence: Nearly every season is hit by this, and each time it happens, the outcome/consequences of said event triggers a plotline that takes up a chunk of an entire season.
  • The penultimate episode of Season 1 has Donna and Opie switching vehicles because Opie wanted to take their kids home while Donna bought some cleaning supplies for Gemma. That same night, Tig follows Donna, thinking it's Opie, and accidentally kills her. Even worse, Clay tried to warn Tig not to do this, but Tig just so happened to leave his cell phone behind.
  • In the Season 2 finale, Gemma and Tara are out buying some supplies and Polly Zobelle just so happens to be buying flowers from a shop at the exact same time. Gemma and Tara just so happen to leave the same time Polly leaves, and Gemma just so happens to spot Polly. Gemma just so happens to kill Polly in the same safehouse Edmond Hayes was murdered at, which leads to Stalh framing Gemma and her having to leave town for a chunk of Season 3.
  • See Unintentionally Notorious Crime below for examples relating to Seasons 4, 5, and 6.
  • In season seven, Jax is able to manipulate the outcome of a land deal August Marks is heavily invested in because he just happened to have killed Marks' partner in a case of mistaken identity.
• Cool Old Guy: Father Ashby easily tosses Jax on his ass when the younger man rushes him. Notable in that he's one of only two characters to do so throughout the show, the other being Nero.
• Corrupt Cop: Just about all of the local cops except Hale are in league with the Sons. Outside of the local cops, Agent Stahl is a particularly notable example, going from cocky crusading cop to dirty cop to cold-blooded murderer in just a few seasons. Meanwhile, most, if not all of the prison staff seen in the sow are either on the pocket of some criminal organization or at least willing to go Cowboy Cop when dealing with criminals
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Zobelle, though he's a small business owner rather than a corporate stooge.
• Corrupting Pornography: Explored. SAMCRO gets involved in the porn business when Jax takes over the Cara Cara studio, seeing it as a fast way to make legitimate money. Clay finds it personally offensive (pretty hypocritical, since SAMCRO already sells military-grade weapons to gangs in Oakland and he wants to expand their profits by trafficking drugs), especially when the Sons start hanging out at the studio most of the time. The studio also introduces the club to various unsavory characters, including a porn producer who murders the previous owner Luann; Ima Tite, a high strung porn star who causes repeated problems for the studio; and a group of underground torture porn specialists. On the more positive side, the actual productions are usually seen as just everyone having fun and enjoying themselves.
• Corrupt Politician: Jacob Hale becomes mayor just so he can streamline his real estate ventures. He doesn't even do a whole lot to conceal it, either.
• Cradle of Loneliness: Happens in the season six finale, when Jax finds Tara's dead body.
• Creepy Crows: Crows are a recurring them and a reference to "Sam Crow." They appear in the opening credits, and Gemma has a few as pets. The series opens and closes on a shot of crows.
• Crossover: One of the gangs featured, the One-Niners, also appeared in The Shield.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Half Sack is an Iraq War veteran and a surprisingly skilled boxer.
• Cultural Cringe: The black District Attorney wears a wig that gives her white-style hair. However, midway through the season, she decides to "go ghetto" by discarding the wig and getting tough with the Sons. A white cop expresses confusion over why she removed her wig, but a black cop seems to appreciate the significance.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Discussed a number of times in the fifth season. Jax and Nero both have the opportunity to cut ties with their gangs and live comfortably, but they both refuse. Jax also points out that Pope would be rich strictly through his legitimate business ventures, but still sees a need to maintain a drug empire on top of it all.
• Cycle of Revenge: Nobody actually bothers to talk about it, but it's worth mentioning that Opie went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Clay for killing Piney. This begat Tig going on one against the Niners because he believed they had shot Clay, and then that begat the leader of the Niners to start his own rampage against SAMCRO for attacking and killing some of his people in broad daylight. The current capper has everything coming full circle when Pope's revenge leads to Opie being brutally killed in prison.
• Daddy's Little Villain: Zobelle's daughter is just as cunning and ruthless as him.
• Dark Action Girl: Polly, Ethan's daughter. Luisa, Salazar's girlfriend.
• Deadly Euphemism:
  • The MC never votes on whether or not to kill someone. Rather, they vote on whether or not the person they want dead should "meet Mr. Mayhem." All club members who wear the patch "Man of Mayhem" have preformed hits on behalf of the club.
  • When Happy (the club's primary hitman) tells Gemma that he is to take her to a remote cabin so they can deal with a "family problem", she thinks that Jax found out what she did and will have her killed. Turns out the club is protecting a drug addict mother and her son and Jax wanted Gemma to help the mother while she detoxed, hence a "family problem". Gemma intimidates Happy so he kept the explanation short so she would not argue with him.
• Dead Man Switch: A variant with drug kingpin Damon Pope who, to ensure his own survival, has arranged a kill contract to be activated in the event of his death, offering a huge reward to whoever assassinates his killers. Jax gets around it by framing Clay Morrow for Pope's murder.
• Deadpan Snarker: Gemma. As well as Agent Stahl.
• Deal with the Devil: The running theme of the series.
  • SAMCRO is able to run roughshod over the town and its law enforcement officers in exchange for keeping outside influences out of the town.
  • Kurt Sutter recently posted backstory material on his blog, stating that the SAMCRO/IRA relationship was born out of a deal with the devil. The massive medical bills from when Jax's younger brother was in the hospital due to his ultimately fatal illness, led to SAMCRO entering into their alliance with the IRA, just so that John and Gemma could avoid bankruptcy.
  • When Jax makes a deal with Agent Stahl it's hard to distinguish whether the career criminal or the federal law enforcement agent is the 'devil' in that bargain.
  • In the season 4 finale Jax is forced into another deal like that when he receives An Offer You Can't Refuse from the CIA
• Depraved Bisexual:
  • Tig, by far the most sexually depraved member of the group, who is shown to be at least casually interested sado-masochism, cross dressing, bestiality, and necrophilia.
  • Agent Stahl is seen having sex with Deputy David Hale in Season 2 and in bed with Agent Amy Tyler in Season 3. She's devious enough that she could have been in either 'relationship' just the benefits she gained from it. She's also easily devious enough to get everything she wants *without* having to sleep her way to the top, So she probably really was just doing what she enjoyed.
• Deus ex Machina / Diabolus ex Machina: Romero Parada at the end of season four qualifies as both. On the one hand him being on the CIA's payroll gives him the means to prevent the police from crashing down on the MC... on the other hand he only does that because he needs the MC's supply lines for his drugs and the guns from the IRA, thus strongarming Jax into staying in bed with them; and preventing him from killing Clay since he's the only one the IRA trusts.
• Dirty Cop:
  • Unser works with SAMCRO, though he insists that he does it for the sake of Charming.
  • Agent Stahl, right down to killing her fellow ATF agent/lover and framing her for a crime she herself committed, to further her tenuous deal with Jax.
• Disc-One Final Boss:
  • Season 1 seemed to be setting up Kohn as the primary antagonist, right up until Jax shot him in the face.
  • In Season 6, Lee Toric was set up to be the main Hero Antagonist, similar to Stahl from Season 3 and Season 1. Instead, he gets his throat slashed before the season's even halfway over, and in the very same episode, Galen O'Shay appears to have become a much more primary threat for Jax and his club.
  • Henry Lin in Season 7.
• Disney Villain Death: Clay executes McGee for betraying the Sons to Jimmy O by shoving him off a roof.
• Disposable Sex Worker: Deconstructed. Many of the escorts killed by Lin's guys, in the massacre at Diosa, had appeared in previous episodes and been given names, personalities, and sometimes backgrounds. The Sons are less than happy about their deaths, Nero is upset, and Jarry refers to them as innocent people who were slaughtered because of SAMCRO.
  • Zig-zagged: they weren't targeted for their professions; they were targeted to hurt the Sons.
• Double Standard: Considering Jax isn't explicitly presented as notoriously unfaithful, he surely has quite some flings on the side (while being together with Tara) over the course of the series for various reasons, like sleeping with Wendy in season one (at the time, his relation with Tara wasn't settled yet and it appears as if he was bouncing back to his ex-wife), in season three sleeping with Ima in order to alienate Tara (he doesn't want to drag her into his outlaw lifestyle), almost sleeping with Trinity (he was at a somewhat one-sided break with Tara at the time, and only stops after being told Trinity is his half-sister), and finally sleeping with the escort lady in season six while Tara is in prison because she doesn't want to see him. All this while Tara herself is never shown to digress.
• Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male: Averted. Anytime a male character is raped (especially in prison), it's usually depicted as being unpleasant and horrific, as opposed to having it played for laughs. Unless Tig is involved.
• Downer Ending:
  • Season 1: Donna is dead thanks to Clay and Tig's scheme, and Jax has to cover it up for the sake of club.
  • Season 2: Jax's son has been kidnapped, Gemma is a wanted fugitive, Zobelle gets away, and Half-Sack is dead.
  • Season 3: Jax and company are going to jail for 12-18 months, at which time Tara has discovered horrific evidence linking Clay and Gemma to the murder of Jax's biological father. Also, Unser has been deposed and Charming's local police department has been disbanded. Hale's going to become elected mayor and has successfully eliminated the last remaining hold-out that is standing between him and the recreation of Charming into a yuppie paradise that SAMCRO has long attempted to keep from happening.
  • Season 4: Jax can't leave Charming with Tara, whose career as a doctor is in jeopardy. Opie has been alienated from the club. Tig kills an innocent bystander whose father is an extremely wealthy and powerful crime lord. Jax assumes his father's place at the table with Tara by his side in the same position as a young John Teller and Gemma, implying that their tragedy is repeating itself.
  • Season 5: Bobby quits as Vice-President in disgust over Jax's tactics. Jax and Nero both refuse to leave their lives of crime in spite of realizing that they should. Clay is framed for murder and Gemma is forced to go along with the plan. A powerful vigilante has set his sights on the club. Tara is framed for accessory to murder and arrested.
  • Season 6: Nero and Gemma break up. Gemma kills Tara over a misunderstanding and Juice kills Eli to cover it up. Jax ends the episode cradling his wife's corpse.
  • Season 7 is a Bittersweet Ending, though the emphasis is on the Bitter.
• The Dragon:
  • Tig and Happy fill this role for Clay.
  • AJ Weston for Zobelle.
  • Luke Moran for Jimmy O'Phelan on Northern California. Donny fills this role in Belfast.
  • Darby is recruited by Jacob Hale to act his Dragon but he quickly resigns. Then, Hale seeks out Hector Salazar, of the Calaveras MC. However, Salazar pulls a Dragon with an Agenda and blackmails Hale.
  • Liam O'Neill, SAMBEL Sgt-at-arms.
  • Sean, for Father Ashby.
  • Luis Torres for "Romeo" Parada.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Otto. Subverted, since he fails and it was actually part of a plan to get revenge for Jax by killing the Russian that stabbed him while in Prison. Possibly a double subversion when Otto asks Potter to get his execution date moved up as part of his deal to become The Mole.
  • Juice, due to his heritage (he's half-black, a no-no for the club) and the fact that he killed Miles. He bungles it, however.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him:
  • Hale, who's killed off suddenly in the opening of season 3.
  • Kozik, who's given a sudden and anticlimactic death by landmine. The main cast drinks a shot in his memory and the show continues as if nothing happened. Even his vitriolic best bud Tig barely bats an eyelash.
  • Laroy, who's killed off somewhere between Season 4 and 5.
  • After being the potential Big Bad for Season 6, Galen O'Shay is swiftly shot in the head by Jax in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Shortly after the massacre at Diosa, Tig jokes that people love pussy so much that customers would still come over even if they left the women's corpses on the floor. All the other Sons glare at him, and even he admits it was too soon to say that.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: A tongue-less, blind, broken Otto convinces Toric to releases his restraints, then taunts him about his sister's death, and manages to stab the man after he attacks him with a concealed knife. He then holds him hostage by putting a knife at his throat, waits for prison guards to show up, and then slits his throat. The guards cut him down seconds later.

E-H

• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Minor example: in the early episodes Jax, Tig, Opie, Bobby, and Chibs all have noticeably shorter hair than in later seasons and some are missing facial hair. The cast clearly started growing out their hair upon landing the role and continued letting it grow as the seasons progressed.
  • Likewise, Jax, Clay, Juice and Opie don't have their more muscular builds that they do later on in the show. Opie in particular (other than one scene which was shot after the original pilot) is much more hefty in the pilot than any of the following episodes.
  • The earlier episodes followed the cliched formula of SAMCRO running around, solving problems and pissing off Hale with the way that they are always five steps ahead of the local cops due Unser being in bed with them. It would not be until closer to the end of the first season that a real overarching storyline would take hold.
  • In Season 1, Half-Sack was seated at the table in "Giving Back" (in Juice's seat) despite being only a prospect and would be seen multiple times sitting in the background of the room afterwards. Later seasons would have it that prospects were not even allowed in the room during Church unless specifically invited in and would show shock to be offered a seat.
  • In the same season Unser is also allowed a seat at the table when Hale and Stahl conspire to keep him out of the loop on their investigation of SAMCRO and bar him from the station. At the time the situation is deemed serious enough that Unser seated with the club isn't commented on, but given how crazy the club's antics get later in the series, its odd seeing a supposed Godzilla Threshold of allowing a cop in Church crossed this early in the show with how low-stakes the situation seems to the viewer.
  • The 2nd episode of Season 1 introduces Hale's father, a prominent local businessman who is eager to push the Sons out of Charming. He's never seen again after this and in Season 2 his role is taken by Hale's brother Jacob who is basically a Generation Xerox of his father.
  • Bobby's moonlighting gig as an Elvis impersonator gets dropped quickly, especially once his hair and beard get so long that all hope of a celebrity resemblance would be lost. His role as the club's bookmaker quickly takes precedence.
• Easy Evangelism: Subverted; after being gang raped and forced to hide what happened to her in order to keep her family from going to jail for murdering her attackers, Gemma does some soul searching of the God variety and ends up coming to the conclusion that God wants her to kill the woman who colluded with the rapists.
• Elvis Impersonator: In the early seasons, Bobby Munson is an Elvis Impersonator in addition to being a Badass outlaw biker with a sizable body count. When another impersonator tries to steal his gig, he has the guy savagely beaten.
  • Hilariously, in a deleted scene, Bobby scolds Half-Sack for beating up his competition as it will probably cost him any future gigs at the location in question due to fear of reprisal and suggests Half-Sack's action may lead to him losing any chance of joining SAMCRO. This was cut, probably for not adding anything of real value to the storyline.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Sons seem pretty progressive for an outlaw motorcycle gang, which helps keep them sympathetic for the majority of the show, but typical outlaw biker bigotry occasionally rears its head to remind us that these aren't boy scouts.
  • For seasons one through three, a positive aspect of the group was that they were largely shown to treat their women with respect, and Gemma even wields a lot of power as the club's Team Mom. But season four ended this with Clay savagely beating Gemma and cursing her out. Jax also beats up a porn star who was creating havoc with Jax and Opie's lives.
  • Similarly, the group accepts Latino and Jewish members into their ranks and also have Black and Latino allies. Chibs also has a black ex-wife and a mixed-race daughter. Most real outlaw biker groups are racially segregated, and white gangs often have strong White Supremacist ties. However, black members are not allowed into the Sons. The current members adhere to the rule even though they recognize it as a relic from another age. This becomes a major plot point when Juice's father turns out to be a black man. The police use the fact to blackmail him into cooperating, since exposing it would get him kicked out of the Sons or worse. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for him, it turns out that the rule is more lax than he expected: as long as your birth certificate doesn't list you as Black, your actual ancestry doesn't matter..
  • When Chibs tells Jax and Bobby about the reason for Juice's betrayal, they both roll their eyes and laments never having changed the rule against black members. In the final season, SAMCRO does start patching in black members, but they acknowledge that the other charters will object.
• Establishing Character Moment: Nero establishes his badass credentials by voluntarily engaging in some Car Fu to protect Jax. He chuckles throughout the chase and proclaims it a good time. This foreshadows his eventual return to the gangster lifestyle.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas:
  • Happy may have murdered 14 people, enjoy torture, and frequents a strip club that employs victims of sex trafficking, but he's not about to let you make his aunt or nana wash your dishes!
  • Averted with Gemma: she had a horrible relationship with her mother and lists her as one of the few people who could legitimately scares her.
  • Episode "Dorylus" introduced Vivica and her sons Luther and Vandross. The club suspected that she had bought their stolen weapons, but it turned out to be her sons who went behind her back. They wanted to to use the money to surprise their mother with a new vehicle. Her disapproval clearly indicates that she's got her family of thugs well under her thumb.
  Tig: Vivica makes Gemma look like Donna Reed.
  Jax: I suddenly feel a little less dysfunctional.
• Even Evil Has Standards: A big part of the show is putting the characters into situations that test whether they will adhere to the standards they set out for themselves.
  • Violence against children is a big no-no for SAMCRO. Also dealing drugs in Charming.
  • Clay does not seem to have a line he is not willing to cross if it is to his benefit. When Clay beats up Gemma everyone in the club who finds out about it is horrified.
  • In contrast even Tig has principles he will stand up for even if it means opposing Clay.
  • In season 3, Neo-Nazi Ernest Darby is hired to run an old Jewish gym owner out of Charming by a renegade Mayan ally. Darby pays the man a visit, but first tries to convince the old man to leave willingly, and eventually refuses to go through with it.
• Everyone Went to School Together: Charming is a small enough town that it's likely. Deputy Hale mentioned in a few throwaway lines that he went to high school with Jax, Opie and Tara.
• Evil Matriarch: Gemma, though she's since been downgraded to Defrosting Ice Queen.
• Exact Words: After an argument between Galen and Jax, Jax tells him to keep his hands off his club. Later on, Galen kills Phil and V-Lin, and Jax and the rest of the club find their mutilated bodies with their hands chopped off and neatly placed on their jackets.
• Expy:
  • "The True IRA" are a stand-in for "The Real IRA," which splintered from the IRA to continue their militant actions after the ceasefire in 1997.
  • Several of the main characters are stand ins for characters from Hamlet to certain extents. Jax Teller is Prince Hamlet, John Teller is the dead king Hamlet, Clay Morrow is Claudius, Gemma is Gertrude, Piney is Polonius, Opie is Laertes, Tara is Ophelia, and Chibs is Horatio.
• Face Death with Dignity: Practically part of the outlaw code. Protagonists and antagonists alike, when faced with inevitable, but not sudden death, all seem to calmly accept their fates and let their would be killers finish him off. At most they allow themselves either a small last request ( like finishing a slice of pie or smelling roses) or a dignified plea to spare a family member additional pain.
  • Jimmy O'Phelan: First when the Russians give him to the Club all he does is greet Jax and Clay and gets in the car without another word. Second after the ATF rescues him and then Stahl gets ambushed He looks his killer in the eyes, smiles, tells him to take care of his wife and stepchild. He even takes his Glasgow Smile and stabbing without any fear.
  • Averted with Stahl, who breaks down into full on Inelegant Blubbering when she realizes she's gonna die
  • AJ Weston simply sits down and accepts his defeat. In an apparent trade-off, he demands that his son be left out of the grudge and not see his corpse afterwards.
  • Piney. He simply tries to plead for Tara's life without any regard for his own after being disarmed by Clay. Too bad Clay didn't listen.
  • Opie. He volunteers himself for the box knowing that he would be the dead Son that Pope demanded. He fights hard, but when he's overwhelmed by the guards and can't fight anymore, he simply stands up, looks calmly at Jax, and awaits the fatal blow to the head.
  • Clay Morrow. Upon realizing that all the Sons voted to have him killed, he calmly walks into the room Jax intends to kill him in and calmly asks "This good?" before Jax shoots him in the neck.
  • Juice. He knew that killing Tully for the Chinese wouldn't save his life, and it would hurt the club. So he hands the blade to Tully and calmly lets him do his thing. Tully, who had up till that point treated Juice like a joke, actually gains a small amount of respect for him.
  • Gemma. Knowing that outlaw code dictates that she must pay for murdering Tara with her own life, merely asks Jax if they could go out to the rose garden behind her childhood home. When he hesitates on pulling the trigger (understandable since Gemma is his mother), she coaxes him into exacting his vengeance while telling him how much she loves him. Though considering Gemma's reputation, some viewers thought this was actually one of the cruelest things she could do to her own son.
• Face–Heel Turn: Ignoring the fact that the Sons are antiheroes, Clay Morrow goes from one of the protagonists to an antagonist over the course of the show. Same for Juice, although by the time he becomes an antagonist to Jax in the final season, its arguable who is the heel, him or Jax. Not helping matters is the fact that the only real way in which Juice antagonizes Jax is not revealing who killed his wife.
• Fair Cop: Deputy Hale is square jawed and muscular, especially when compared to aging Chief Unser.
• False Flag Operation: So many.
  • Tig stages the murder of Opie to look like a Mayan retaliation, accidentally killing Donna.
  • After Opie takes vengeance on a Mayan biker for Donna's death; Jax, (who knows it was actually Tig who killed Donna) stages the dead Mayan to make it look like a One Niner killing
  • Agent Stahl stages the Irish killing to look like Gemma's to frame her.
  • Agent Stahl stages her partner's killing to look like the Calaveras trying to rescue Hector Salazar.
  • SAMCRO stages the murder of Stahl as a Real IRA hit (at least Jimmy's killing was done on their orders).
  • The Galindo Cartel is being manipulated by the CIA, using them and the Sons to take control of the Mexican drug trade. Jax is forced into staying a Son and becoming President, and in turn forced to keep Clay alive as the Irish will only deal with him.
  • The home invasions in season five are part of Clay's scheme to make Jax look weak and incompetent, allowing him to reclaim the gavel.
  • Jax and Tig killing Pope, pinning the hit on Clay (who Jax otherwise couldn't get rid of without angering the Irish), fully knowing that Pope had an insurance policy in place that grants five million dollars to the one person that kills his murderer.
• Family-Friendly Stripper: Although several scenes take place in a Sons-affiliated porn studio, the actresses are almost always seen clothed.
• Family-Values Villain: Or rather, small-town values villain. Local law enforcement gives the Sons a pass on their criminal activities in exchange for the Sons keeping crime and outside influences out of Charming.
• Fan Disservice:
  • There are a few rape scenes here and there, most notably Otto getting raped in prison in the Season 6 premiere.
  • Most of Juices shirtless and nude scenes in season 7, really. While he is an attractive man with a toned, muscular body, the fanservice is limited by the fact almost every scene he's in has him extremely distressed and mentally unstable.
• Fanservice:
  • There's at least one sex scene per season. "Faith and Despondency" starts with a montage of various Sons having sex.
  • The show clearly milks any shirtless scenes with Jax for all they're worth. That or showing his bare ass (which gets more screen time than any female posterior in the show!)
• Fate Worse than Death: Zig-zagged. Gemma is clearly traumatized by her gang rape in Season 2 but she moves on as the show progresses. In Season 6, Otto is subjected to daily rapes organized by the guards on behalf of Lee Toric for his murder of Toric's sister. This is clearly shown as a special kind of hell for Otto, who at this point is 3/4 blind, mute and on death row eagerly awaiting his fate after losing his wife and being betrayed by his club.
• Faux Affably Evil: Ethan Zobelle, Clay Morrow, Putlova
• Foreshadowing:
  • Happens subtly in Season 3.
  Kozik: "You do realize one of us is gonna end up dead, right?"
  Piney: "I'm counting on it."
  • In Season 4, after Unser and Gemma find Piney's corpse, Unser tells Gemma that she needs to find a way to stop Clay, or else she'll be standing over the body of her grandson's mother. The next body Gemma physically ends up standing over is that of Tara...after Genna brutally murdered her.
  • In Season 5, Tara threatens Gemma not to hurt her or her family. When Gemma taunts her by asking if she'll kill her, Tara responds by saying no, but her husband might. Jax ends up murdering Gemma in the penultimate episode after finding out she killed Tara.
  • In Season 7, Unser angrily shouts that Jax is such a ruthless thug that he'd go as far as killing him, just because Unser refused to help him find his mother. In the very next episode, Jax does just that, albeit because he was trying to protect Gemma.
• Feeling Their Age: This is a major issue for Piney and Clay who as founding members of the club are getting on in years. Piney is forced to carry an oxygen tank with him but can still ride a motorcycle so he is still considered a full member with voting rights. Clay has arthritis in his hands which makes riding a motorcycle difficult for him. If Clay can no longer ride a motorcycle, he will lose full member status and will not be eligible for his share of the profits from their criminal operations. While Piney is content to be a Retired Badass, Clay gets progressively more desperate and reckless as he tries to make enough money to afford retirement, which culminates in him attempting to have his own daughter-in-law killed for the perceived threat she poses to his criminal profits.
• Freudian Trio: Tara is the ego being pulled in two different directions. Margaret Murphy, the hospital administrator, is the superego who wants Tara to get away from the club, advance her professional career, and raise her family in law-abiding safety. Gemma, obviously a raging id, wants to pull Tara deeper into the club and make her a proper old lady. This notably overlaps with her Important Haircuts: in Season 5 she cuts it like Gemma when she accepts her role as Jax's old lady, then in Season 6 she cuts it like Margaret when she wants to escape the club for good. Her storyline in the series basically consists of trying to find a balance between the two.
• Friendly Enemy: Darby toward the Sons. He works against them, but will sit down and chat with Gemma for a few minutes, even though she's got "some Jew in her." He also behaves this way toward the local Jewish boxing coach. Darby has reformed at that point, but it's clear that the two men have exchanged more than just threats and slurs over the years.
• The Fundamentalist: Unlike the Big Bad Ethan Zobelle, or fellow CoDragon Ule, AJ Weston can't even consider the idea of collaborating with Latinos.
• Gambit Roulette: Season 3 is either this or a Gambit Pileup.
• Gangland Drive-By: Tig performs a drive-by shooting on Laroy (usually an ally of the Sons) in broad daylight while he's at a restaurant with his girlfriend because he—falsely—believed Laroy to be responsible for a previous hit on Clay. He misses Laroy and accidentally shoots the girlfriend instead, which both results in an immediate high-speed pursuit by an angry Laroy that Tig only survives with Jax's help, and later the girlfriend's father, a powerful drug kingpin, seeking revenge on both Tig and SAMCRO.
• Genius Bruiser:
  • Jax is a rough-and-tumble biker outlaw as well as a genius at intrigue. He's taken advantage of the fact that certain enemies underestimate him as a simple thug.
  • An Informed Attribute of Toric, who is a former law enforcement officer, Green Beret and Harvard graduate.
• The Ghost: We never see Wayne's wife in the show, she's only mentioned in passing a few times and then apparently divorces him later on. The only thing we ever know about her is that she was black.
• Glasgow Smile: Chibs was given one by Jimmy O and returned the favor. O'Neill also gets one from SAMCRO.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Subverted with Chibs' Glasgow Grin and even Darby, who sufferes severe burns and turns his back on his gang and drug-dealing
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: The Sons occupy a middle ground between their Obviously Evil enemies and the rare genuinely good people.
• Gorn: Numerous instances, especially from Season 5 on.
• Grim Reaper: The Sons' motif. Their symbol is the Grim Reaper holding a crystal ball with the anarchy symbol and a M16-handled scythe reflecting the founder's service in The Vietnam War. Other examples are M16 scythe shirts and Jax's cut, which features a "Reaper Crew" patch. Some members have it as a back tattoo.
• Grin of Rage: Jax is a big fan of this, being the fearless Blood Knight he is. He almost always grins when he is angered by someone, especially Clay... unless he becomes even angrier, in which case he becomes Unstoppable Rage incarnate.
• Groin Attack:
  • The carny from "Fun Town" who was castrated by Clay and left to die. They even show his severed testicles!
  • And later in Season 3, Gemma stabs someone in the groin.
  • Early in season 1, Jax finds the dealer who sold smack to his pregnant ex-wife, breaks off a pool cue, and stabs him in the crotch with it.
  • The Sons shoot a belligerent survivalist in the crotch to get information out of him, then execute him.
  • In Season 7, a neo-Nazi makes one too many comments about how Tig is into men and transsexuals. Tig responds by shooting his dick off.
• Handicapped Badass: Clay is still dangerous even as he's facing crippling arthritis in his hands.
• Hellhole Prison: Stockton Prison. Not just the prison gangs, but the guards are corrupt or perverts, and even medical staff is on the take.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Tig, who regularly uses and abuses women. He's not disturbed by two rotting female corpses and at one point quips, "This is why I beat hookers!" In one episode, he casually executes a captive woman, which shocks the rest of the gang. However, it's often played on its head: Tig is always very respectful to Gemma, and he has two daughters that he obviously loves a great deal.
• He Who Fights Monsters:
  • Season 2 Big Bad Ethan Zobelle claims to be this, after telling Deputy Hale that he formed the League Of American Nationalists after his wife was killed by a stray bullet during a drive-by shooting. Zig-zagged in that he's revealed to be an informant for the FBI who is making a decent chunk of change from his criminal exploits while taking down various gangs involved in arms-dealing. How much of what he told Hale is true is left open to interpretation.
  • Every law officer who goes against the Sons makes a pact with them at some point or outright becomes corrupt.
  • Jax himself eventually succumbs to this. Killing innocent witnesses, allies, their friends and families. He stops caring as long as his club and family are protected.
• Hero Antagonist: Averted or played with for the most part.
  • Pretty much all the cops in Charming are corrupt and on the take from the Sons in the first three seasons (except for Hale and even he starts to become slightly more cooperative towards the end of season 2 before he dies).
  • Agents Kohn and Stahl are also revealed to be a stalker/rapist and a manipulative corrupt murderer.
  • Season 4 has Eli Roosevelt and Lincoln Potter who both fit the bill a lit bit better. Still played with because Roosevelt has some Cowboy Cop tendencies (mostly towards the beginning of the season), while Potter uses people rather callously and occasionally bends the rules, but not to the point of corruption.
• The Hero Dies: The series ends with Jax's suicide.
• Hero of Another Story: Alvarez, the President and founder of the Mayans MC. Not particularly "heroic", but he is playing power games with SAMCRO while also fighting a bloody turf war over Oakland with the One Niners for the majority of the show.
• Hollywood Healing: Averted. When someone gets some kind of wound (from a bite, bullet, brawl, blade, broken bone...) you can bet it'll take really long to heal (or won't heal completely like Otto's eyes, Tara's hand, Clay's lung...). Even rather mundane injuries such as a black eye will take days or even weeks of in-series time to disappear completely.
• Hollywood Silencer: Every time a suppressed firearm is fired on this show (which is surprisingly often), it makes the standard movie 'fwip' sound effect.
• Hypocrisy Nod: Jax: "You are really gonna stand there, and lay the guilt of a dead wife on me?"
• Hypocrite: Gemma and Tara, despite their own criminal behavior, are initially unable to accept Lyla's involvement with Opie, or even look past Lyla's profession as a porn star. They get better about it, however.

I-L

• I Am a Humanitarian: A human head gets hidden and cooked in a chili pot. When some cops demand free bowls of the chili, they are none the wiser. They even praise the flavor!
• Iconic Item: Every character's "cut" or "colors," their vest with the MC patches. Taking or damaging another biker's cut is VERY Serious Business. Jax puts it best in Season 2 when held at gunpoint by Alvarez.
  Jax: Pull that trigger, man. Cause that's the only way this leathers coming off my back.
• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • Unser says his dealings with Clay and SAMCRO were about protecting Charming, not about getting payoffs.
  • Gemma says this after killing Tara.
• Idiot Ball: Half Sack and Juice tend to trade off possession of this. In the last half of the Season 6 final episode, everyone around Gemma is carrying the ball in order to affect the outcome of the episode.
• I Have This Friend: When Tara asks her supervisor for help finding Lyla an anonymous abortion clinic, she assumes it's really about Tara. It was about Lyla, but Tara does have the same thing on her mind.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: What Donna wanted for her and Opie. Sadly, Donna got killed off and her husband became a child-neglecting biker even more devoted to the gang that Donna loathed.
• I Love the Dead: Tig insinuates that he's had a sexual encounter with a corpse. When Gemma is asked if she's ever broken into a crypt, she quips, "I'm not Tig!"
• Informed Attribute: Toric has just about as badass a combination of credentials as you can have, being a former law enforcement officer, Green Beret and Harvard graduate. What we see, however, is that he's a strung-out junkie who accidentially shoots a prostitute, does an unconvincing frame-job, and gets himself killed by a blind invalid.
• Informed Attractiveness: Georgie Caruso tells Jax that he's got a "Kurt Cobain thing going," and Charles Barosky nicknames him Handsome Jack.
  • Juice is noted to be attractive as well but is seen as more of the The Cutie to Jaxs Hunk. This can be seen when Carla refers to him as a "real cute thing" and, when in prison, Jax refers to him as the "short, pretty one".
• Insignia Rip-Off Ritual:
  • Taken to an extreme in Season 1, when the Sons have a run in with an excommunicated member who didn't black out his club tattoos. The Sons forcibly remove them—with a blow torch.
  • In the Season 5 finale, Clay loses his patch when it's revealed that he used the Nomads to try and undermine Jax's leadership. All of the property he owns that has a reaper on it is repossessed by the club, and he is forced to have all of his SAMCRO tattoos inked over while the club watches.
  • When the Sons decide to make Rat a proper club member, they mess with him by sternly ordering him to remove his Prospect patch before they hand him his new patch.
  • In Season 7, Jax Teller removes his patch when he steps down as President. He hands his patch to Chibs, who in turn removes his Vice President patch and hands it to Tig.
• Insult Backfire: Abel's teacher suggests that Gemma is a corrupting influence, telling her Abel behaves aggressively because it's what he sees Grandma do. Gemma shoots back, "Good!"
• Interrupted Suicide: Juice tries to hang himself but the tree branch breaks.
• It Was His Sled: Jax kills himself at the conclusion of the series.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: SAMCRO and their women as a whole, with Clay (until Season 4), Tig, and Gemma on the "jerk" side while the rest lean more towards "heart of gold" territory, although Jax and Tara begin losing their way in Season 5.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Clay in Season 4, Juice in Season 6.
• Jurisdiction Friction:
  • Between the local police and Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
  • Averted in the 4th Season. The ATF, FBI, and San Joaquin Sheriff Department collaborate to bring down the Russians, the True IRA, and SAMCRO. Played Straight, however, in that their efforts are scuppered at the end of the season when it's revealed the the CIA is backing the Gallindo Cartel and won't allow any of the other agencies to touch them.
• Karma Houdini: Ethan Zobelle manages to escape to Budapest with his life, though little else. He lost his daughter, his business, and his contacts, and his status as an informant is known.
  • Ron Tully nevers gets any comeuppance or punishment for raping (and later killing) Juice. It's explicitly stated that people are aware of Tully's abuse of Juice (including the police, and Jax) but they just don't care.
• Karmic Death: In the third season finale, both Stahl and Jimmy O get this. Stahl, whose setting up of Opie in season one as a rat got his wife Donna killed by mistake, is in turn killed by Opie. Chibs kills Jimmy O, finally getting back at him for taking his wife and child and holding them hostage for years.
  • Tara's death is this for Jax, coming in the same season that he has a woman murdered on the off-chance she might rat on him and the club. Nero specifically mentions this in Foreshadowing .
• Kill It with Fire: How Pope has Tig's daughter Dawn killed, in vengeance for Tig's incidental murder of Pope's daughter.
• Klingon Promotion: The way Clay Morrow got control over SAMCRO.
• Kavorka Man: Bobby and Tig.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Deputy Police Chief David Hale.
• Knight Templar: A. J. Weston.
• Lady Drunk: Gemma. The violent, biker chick version.
• Ladykiller in Love: Subverted. Borderline misogynist and lady's man Tig is clearly broken up by a girl who was taken from him by Kozik. Tig says he still thinks about her every day, even years later, and refuses to ever forgive Kozik even though they were clearly close friends. It turns out that Tig's "girl" was actually his dog.
• Lady Macbeth: Gemma.
• The Lancer: Opie to Jax's The Hero.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": More like Land Mine Goes High-Pitched Beep in "Call of Duty."
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Stahl explicitly calls Tara an ingénue.
• Leave Behind a Pistol: Upset that Wendy's drug use while pregnant has led to Abel being born prematurely and with complications, Gemma visits her hospital room and leaves behind a syringe with enough drugs to cause an overdose. Wendy takes them, but survives.
• Les Yay: When Stahl and Gemma first meet, Stahl tries to intimidate Gemma by reminding her she's investigating SAMCRO. Then, they get close, Stahl plays with Gemma's hair and calls her pretty, and Gemma ends the conversation with "If you want me, you know where I live". Stahl seems rather pleased with the invitation.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: The Sons are gun-runners, drug dealers, and killers who stomp on anyone who stands in their way, yet the villains of each season always end up being worse than them. Subverted in season five; the Sons are their own worst enemies.
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: Discussed between Jax and his actual mother Gemma no less. When she sees him hooking up with the female brothel manager of Diosa International (who is older than most of the girls working in the place and about 10 years Jax's senior), Gemma refers to her as "Miss Mommy Fetish". Jax replies that if he actually had any hang-ups about Gemma, he'd be attracted to a psycho dominatrix instead. Besides, NO WAY does he ever want to hear the words "mommy fetish" coming out of the mouth of his own mother.
• Loophole Abuse: Before Jax was patched in, Piney had lost all interest in the club and rode the bare minimum each month in order to retain his patched status.
• Love Makes You Crazy:
  • Josh Kohn in Season 1.
  • Tara whips out a gun to take her kids back from Wendy and Unser in Season 6.
  • Big-time for Jax in Season 7.
• Love Triangle: Subverted by Tig and Kozik when it's revealed that they were fighting over a dog, not a lover.
  • Gemma, Nero and Clay in Season 5. Nero wins.

M-P

• The Mafia: The Cacuzza crime family, led by Jimmy Cacuzza.
  • In Season 5, the club encounter Leo Pirelli, head of the Pirelli family based in Reno, Nevada.
  • Frankie Diamonds is mentioned to have mob connections from the East Coast besides his relationship with Pirelli.
• The Mafiya: Led by Viktor Putlova. But not anymore, courtesy of Jax's Ka-bar knife. It's just business.
• Manipulative Bastard: Hoo boy. Pretty much everyone gets in on this throughout the series. Special mention goes to Gemma and Clay.
  • Stahl evolves into this in Season 2 after initially seeming repentant for her actions in the prior season.
  • In Season 5, Jax becomes this from a combination of his desire for revenge on Clay and the struggle of being The Leader.
• Mama Bear: Gemma in regards to her son, Jax, and her grandson to the point of being a Knight Templar Grandparent, especially in Season 3 where she holds a gun to the head of another baby to extort information about Abel's whereabouts. Comes to a rather blatant and extreme example in Season 6, where Gemma brutally murders Tara with a carving fork because Gemma believed that Tara turned in Jax..
• Manly Facial Hair: The Sons all qualify, being members of an outlaw motorcycle club who specialize in violence and mayhem. Most of them end up rocking significant amounts of facial hair for most of the show's run. Notable exceptions are Juice which ends up foreshadowing his betrayal and exile from the club, Tig being clean-shaven for the first few episodes of Season 4 sans a goatee, and in Seasons 5-6 where Clay wears a permanent five'o'clock shadow due to his health problems and loss of status.
• Matricide: Jax Teller ultimately kills his mother Gemma in the last season after he discovers that she's betrayed the club and murdered Jax's wife Tara. Nero notes that the severity of the act will destroy Jax, and he admits that despite everything she's done he still loves his mom. It's enough for Jax to willfully arrange his own death in the series finale.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: There's a recurring homeless woman who might just be slightly crazy or might be an Angel Unaware. Or Jesus. It's anyone's guess.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • In the pilot, Tara explains to Gemma that she kept her tramp stamp to remind her that she had put her past with the Sons behind her. Later, in the third season Margaret her supervisor explains a similar rationale was behind her keeping the tattoo on her own back.
  • After killing Piney, Clay is the oldest man at the table in SAMCRO. With Piney it was highlighted by his oxygen tank. Clay carries on the tradition after being shot by Opie.
  • In the fourth season finale, Jax and Tara assume a pose that is identical to a photograph of John Teller and Gemma, implying that history is repeating itself.
  • In the fifth season finale, the photograph pose is again echoed, but this time Jax is weeping and Gemma is consoling him.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Jackson Teller is the son of John Teller.
  • Abel's name emphasizes his innocence, in contrast to Jax's outlaw lifestyle.
• Mercy Kill: Jax gives one to O'Neill after he gives up Jimmy's plan under torture in Season 3.
  • Subverted in Season 4, Clay is introduced to a man who is slowly being eaten alive by ants. He kills him because he overheard a conversation he and Bobby had, not to end his suffering.
• Mirror Character: After becoming President, Jax uses his club brothers like chess pieces, kills innocents, manipulates the landscape of Charming for his own personal gain, and does it all with the excuse of "protecting the club." In short, everything he despised in Clay. Referenced in the final episode of Season 5. Bobby accuses Jax of this. Jax responds, "Maybe we're not so different."
• Mob War:
  • A bloody war with the Mayans in the early 1990s is a large part of the backstory of SAMCRO. By the time it was over, John Teller was dead and Clay was in charge. Without that conflict the club might have been quite different than what it is now.
  • In seasons 1-3, a large part of the plot is driven by the Sons trying to avoid getting entangled in a Mob War with the Mayans, Aryans or the various factions of the Real IRA.
  • In Season 4, Clay's scheme ends up putting the Sons in the middle of a war between rival Mexican drug cartels. As the situation deteriorates there is also a real possibility of a war between the Sons and the Niners.
• The Mole:
  • Liam O'Neill and McGee.
  • Both Juice and Otto in Season 4 after some prodding and manipulation from Potter.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Gemma's telling Jax and Clay about being raped is intercut with a couple of members tripping on shrooms, and with Opie's kids watching cartoons. The same sad music track is playing throughout, but it's tough not to laugh at the guys' respective shroom trips. to a lesser extent, most of the show's laugh-out-loud moments are pretty much like this.
  • Clay's "I Love Pussy" rant, followed immediately by a corrections officer getting his nose bit off.
• Mother Makes You King: Gemma is shown to very much be pulling the strings on the men in her life. Women are not allowed to be members of the motorcycle club but Gemma always manages to be attached to the President of the club. Her first husband, JT, was a founding member. When he no longer wanted to live the outlaw life, it is implied that Gemma conspired with JT's best friend Clay Morrow, to kill JT so Clay could become President. Clay and Gemma married shortly after J Ts death, making Gemma once again, the revered wife of the club president. Once Clay got older and struggled with arthritis which made it hard to ride his motorcycle, a requirement to be an active club member, Gemma began manipulating her son, Jax to take Clay's place. Many considered Jax the rightful heir to the club Presidency, even referring to him as the crown prince, but Jax was only 15 at the time of JT's death, too young to be an active member of the club much less the president. With Gemma's encouragement, Jax challenged Clay for presidency and won, making Gemma now the revered *mother* of the club's president.
• Motive Decay: Agent Stahl's obsession with bringing down SAMCRO, which went from normal case to full-blown obsession after she was brutally assaulted by a member in prison, who broke her nose in the process. By season two, she's forgotten all about bringing them to justice and is just fucking with them for the sake of malice. In season three, her motive seems to shift to ruthless ambition when she is presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break a major IRA network in the US. She promptly starts to undo her frame-up of Gemma and starts to protect the Sons since she needs Jax Teller to make the case. She then quickly goes even further over the Moral Event Horizon than most of the 'bad guys' on the show. And at the end she seemed to be primarily motivated by a case of Break the Haughty when she can't resist betraying Jax Teller so she can show the Sons how their pride in club loyalty and brotherhood was just a lot of hot air.
• The Mountains of Illinois:
  • Charming and Lodi have too many hills for being located in the San Joaquin valley.
  • Ireland in the third season.
• Music Video Syndrome: Music montages show up fairly often in this show. On several occasions, the vocals to background music are provided by Katey Sagal, therefore doubling as The Cast Showoff.
• Murder by Mistake:
  • Tig, on Clay's orders, murdered Opie's wife because she happened to switch cars with him.
  • He does it again in the first half of the season four finale by accidentally killing the girlfriend of the leader of the Niners (Laroy) while aiming for Laroy - because Jax told him that the Niners were responsible for Clay's attempted murder.
• Mushroom Samba: Tig and Half Sack get dosed with mushrooms to test their efficacy before SAMCRO sells them. Tig has a breakdown due to his guilt over killing Donna. This leads to him revealing the truth to Opie the next day.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: The Sons' loyalty to their club.
• Naïve Newcomer: A young lady who gets picked up by Jax for a weekend in the fourth episode of Season 1. Her curiosity in joining the biker world is used as an excuse to unload exposition to the audience of terminologies and how certain things work around here.
• Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters: The Sons make themselves a fixture in the Charming community; while the club may give back through fundraisers and toy runs, many local business pay protection to SAMCRO as noted by Zobelle in Season 2.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Loads of, with the consequences dragging out over several seasons. In fact, most of the long term-problems the club has have their roots in a single decision that was made by a member or one of their associates.
  • Towards the end of season one, Tig tries to kill Opie, killing Donna instead. Which sets the stage for the conflict of season 2 in general (Jax' quarrel with Clay), and in the short term drives Opie to kill a Mayan (with Jax framing a One-niner for it), which reignites the conflict between the Mayans and the One-niners, making life more difficult for the MC just as they were making their peace with both sides at once.
  • In season two, Jax' decision to get in business with Luann backfired when the MC provoked her main competitor into ordering an assault on her which resulted in her death. Cue Otto, for whom it was the final straw that made him turn his back on the club - thus giving law enforcement the means to shut down the MC for good in general and creating loads of problems for the main characters in particular.
  • Towards the end of season two, Gemma kills Polly Zobelle, who was partially to blame for her rape. Agent Stahl frames Gemma for the murder of Edmond Hayes, whom she coincidentally killed in the same house. Which creates loads of problems for Gemma with law enforcement and makes Cameron Hayes abduct Jax' son Abel as revenge, therefore giving the sons the motivation to go to Northern Ireland in season three in the first place.
  • At the end of season three, Maureen hiding JT's letters (which implicate Clay in his death) in Jax' stuff and Tara finding them sets the wheels in motion for the conflict in season four, resulting in Clay killing Piney (who got wind of it and threatened to expose him) and trying to get Tara killed.
  • At the end of season four, Opie shooting Clay for killing his father. Since the hit gets pinned on the One-niners, Tig tries to go after Laroy on his own, killing his girlfriend in the process - which coincidentally is the daughter of a powerful crimelord who not just kills one of Tig's daughters as revenge, but also demands the death of one of the Sons... who happens to be Opie.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: If the League of American Nationalists had just waited for SAMCRO to implode, Clay and Jax would have fallen out irreversibly and Jax would have gone Nomad, leaving for good. Instead, they rape Gemma - the worst possible target they could have picked, being the wife of the President and mother of the Vice President- which united the Redwood charter in a special hatred of the League, whom they promptly deal with after that. And it gets Zobel's daughter Polly killed into the bargain.
• Nonindicative Name:
  • Charming, in spite of SAMCRO's claims that they keep out bad influences, is a corrupt little podunk town with its fair share of crime. In season four, Tara calls it "poisonous."
  • No one mentions it, but the Sons of Anarchy have a well established hierarchy of authority in each charter.
  • Happy, a violent clubmember and accomplished scowler. When Unser mentions that he seems "nice," Clay does a Spit Take.
• Obfuscating Disability: In Season 5, Clay suffers multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and arm that damages his lungs and gets him put on an oxygen tank, and also keeps him from riding. Midway through the season, it is revealed that he has completely healed and in perfect health, but he continues to wear the tank and pretend to be weak and frail. Forshadowed a few episodes earlier where he is shown attempting to keep his bike upright for a 2nd time. He is perfectly able, yet when Juice and Bobby enter, he pretends to struggle and lets it fall.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Jax tries to portray himself as nothing more than, in his words, "a white-trash biker boy" to Pope and Marks so that they will underestimate him. Somewhat downplayed in that Pope recognizes how intelligent Jax and the Sons are, leading to him sparing them and creating a business relationship. After framing Clay for the murder of Pope, Jax claims that he's not nearly smart enough to do something like that when Marks confronts him.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Given the show's nature, the Sons give a lot of these and are on the receiving end of a few themselves
  • In the series premiere, Clay forces Unser to stay on as chief of police by threatening to destroy Unser's trucking business.
  • Juice is forced to help the police or Potter will reveal to the club that he is half black.
  • Georgie has to help the Sons wreck Mayor Hale's housing project deal or they will kill him.
  • Jax has to keep Clay alive and keep the club in business with the Irish and the drug cartel or the CIA will withdraw its protection and let the Feds arrest everyone in the club.
  • When Jax tries to get out of the gun business and make a clean break with the Real IRA, the Irish bomb the club house and threaten to do the same to the other chapters unless Jax gets Clay to take over being the IRA's middleman.
• Oh, Crap!: Kozik's reaction when he steps on a land mine.
  "Aw, you gotta be shittin' me!"
  • In Season 1, Clay when Unser tells him Stahl set up Opie to look like a rat; Tig had just gone out to execute Opie (and kills Donna by mistake) on Clay's orders.
• Oireland: A major part of Season 3.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The individual Sons have patterns of behaviour they tend to stick to and if they break that stereotype, we know that things have gotten really serious.
  • When Tig goes against Clay and makes a stand based on principle, we know that Clay has crossed a major line. For example: Tig turns in his Sgt-at-Arms patch after he discovers that Clay brutally beat Gemma towards the end of season 4.
  • When goofy Butt-Monkey Juice tries to hang himself
  • When Otto loses faith in the club, things are really falling apart.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
  • A number of non-Irish actors play Irish characters. Titus Welliver (who plays Jimmy O) has the worst accent. At times he manages to do a passing Irish accent, but with his pronunciation of certain words he actually ends up sounding more English or Newfoundlander than Irish.
  • The English Charlie Hunnam has a good American accent overall, but you can sometimes hear his accent, particularly in scenes where he's shouting. It gets especially egregious in later seasons.
• Outlaw Couple: Clay and Gemma.
• Parallel Porn Title : A couple of pretty hilarious in-universe examples, including Skankenstein and 12 Inches a Slave.
• Personal Hate Before Common Goals: Kozik is a biker from another charter who seeks to transfer his membership to SAMCRO, but is constantly vetoed by SAMCRO Sgt-At-Arms Tig Traeger. Tig refuses to change his mind even though Kozik is both on good terms with the other members and proves to be a handy asset against the Lobos Sonoras Cartel. Eventually it is revealed that Kozik is responsible for the death of a female character they both loved (who turns out to be Tig's dog, Candy). When Kozik is patched in while Tig serves a brief prison term, Tig accepts it since he didn't have to make the decision.
• Pet the Dog: Tig is initially characterized as a depraved misogynist, but he always behaves like a gentleman around Gemma and clearly cares for her. He also loves his daughters and willingly lets them exploit him because he knows that he'll get to see them again when they need more help. He's also a dog lover.
  • Gemma gets a few, as she's tender toward children and anyone in need of help. Notably, she fixes Venus' makeup after she's been crying and before confronting her (Venus') mother, and when she helps another character kick heroin.
• Pillow Silencer: In the episode "Old Bones", Clay holds the pistol on Lowell while contemplating using a pillow as an improvised suppressor.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Gemma and Unser move in this direction throughout the second season. By the end, when she's on the run from the law this has pretty much been cemented.
  • Averted in Season 4 and beyond when Gemma kisses Unser to manipulate him into helping hide Clay's involvement in Piney's murder. Unser explicitly admits he's in love with Gemma.
• Plot Armor: Whenever some rock or metal music kicks in during an action scene, every major character is completely encased in it.
• Police Are Useless: The Sons have the local police chief and county sheriff deputies on their payroll so they see little interference from them in their criminal activities. The ATF agents who go after them have their own private agendas and grudges and the Sons are able to use this against them to neutralize them. Season 4 averts this with new, more competent county police moving in and providing an escalated threat. The Sons still get several digs in at them, such as provoking them into an illegal chase or serving two officers chili from a pot containing a severed head.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Unless you cross one of their standards or make the problem personal, the Sons can be very pragmatic. They will gladly make peace with an enemy if it is good for business and they think the person can be trusted to keep his word. When Jax tries to get the club out of gun dealing, he gets the most support when he points out that gun dealing is causing so much trouble that the club is hardly turning a profit once the lawyer fees, repair bills and funeral costs are accounted for.
• Product Placement: When Unser requests a beer in the middle of the day, Jax responds, "Is it Miller Time already?" He proceeds to fetch a beer from a fridge that is indeed filled exclusively with Miller Lite.
• Professional Killer: Happy's primary function for the club is murder for hire, but assassination missions are given to a number of club members.
  • In Season 4, Clay attempts to hire an outside agent of the Cartel through Romeo and Luis to kill Tara because of her knowledge of JT's letters to Maureen. Unbeknownst to Clay, all 3 men are CIA agents.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: Jax was never an angel, but in early seasons he was considered to be an idealist, especially when compared to most of the other members of the Sons. His relationship with his mother and step-father, coupled with his rise to the presidency of SAMCRO, changes all of that. By the end of Season 5, he has gone from an Anti-Hero to a Nominal Hero at best, and by Season 7 he has become a full-blown Villain Protagonist.

Q-T

• Quick Draw: Not in the traditional sense but the Sons are all lightning fast when pulling their guns. In the world they inhabit, you have to be.
• Quickly-Demoted Leader: Clay goes from triumphantly leading the club in killing Stahl and recovering Abel to having the entire club vote to excommunicate him 2 seasons later and to kill him a season after that.
• Rape as Drama: Gemma in the second season opener. This is about as graphic of a depiction you will ever see (but mostly hear) on American basic cable television.
  • In the sixth season opener, Otto being raped by Stockton prison guards, on behalf of Toric, may well top the previous example, with a closeup on Otto in severe pain as he's being raped, followed by a shot of his soiled prison uniform and blood smeared on the walls of his cell. This is stated to have been happening for weeks.
• Rape by Proxy:
  • In Season 5, Carla forces Gemma and Nero at gunpoint to have sex in front of her. She did this out of jealousy, since she had an unrequited crush on Nero (who turns out is in fact her half-brother). Gemma and Nero start, but refuse to go along with it when Gemma breaks down crying. Carla then shoots herself.
  • Otto suffers this in Season 6, courtesy of Lee Toric, in revenge for him having murdered Toric's sister.
  • Gemma is again put in this situation by two prison guards, this time with Clay. They go through with it due to the club needing Clay. This is the same reason Gemma wards Clay off killing said guards.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: In one of the first episodes SAMCRO catches a carnival worker who raped a young girl. They castrate him and allow him to bleed to death.
• Rated M for Manly: Yup, definitely.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Bobby. Don't let the pompadour or organic cooking fool you.
• Real Stitches for Fake Snitches: * A recurring plot element as various club members struggle to deal with Law Enforcement officers who attempt to coerce them under the threat of making it look like they're snitches even though the club member has been loyal and refused to cooperate.
  • In season 1, Opie's wife Donna is murdered after dirty ATF Agent Stahl makes it look like Opie is informing on the club. She does this despite multiple local law enforcement officers warning her that she is putting Opie's life in extreme danger. Donna is killed in a case of mistaken identity because she was driving Opie's truck late at night.
  • The club is able to turn this threat around on Stahl in season 3 when she uses the threat of imprisoning Jax's mother on charges of murder she didn't commit if Jax doesn't inform. He feeds Stahl the information she wants in order to make sweetheart deals for all the club members who are facing time, but has long since told the club what he's doing. Despite believing that revealing Jax's status as an informant will guarantee his death, she does it anyway just to be petty. However, her actions provide an alibi for the remaining club members who are not facing prison and are supposedly out of town in hiding but actually double back and murder her.
  • In season 6, Gemma murders Tara because she inaccurately believes Tara informed on Jax to the police.
• Rearrange the Song: The Theme Tune during the Belfast episodes is rearranged with some Irish/Gaelic style.
• Record Needle Scratch: In "Fun Town," the beginning of the Sons' raid on a house is underlaid with a heavy metal soundtrack. However, after they open the doors, the song is cut off by a Record Needle Scratch, which segues into a light acoustic guitar piece as they discover that they've barged in on a Christian support group for former sex criminals/addicts.
• Red Shirt: If ever you see a club member who you don't recognize or have never seen before, chances are pretty high that this is the first time they're being shown simply to be gunned down in a firefight unceremoniously. This goes double for Prospects. Even if you get used to seeing one around for a good amount of time, it's best not to get too attached...
• Replacement Goldfish: After Half-sack's actor wanted to leave the show, two-fingered Chuck seemed to replace his part as the club's chew toy and butt monkey pretty easily.
• Retcon: There are a few examples, but most are relatively minor, which is impressive for a show with a Kudzu Plot and Continuity Lock-Out:
  • In the Season 1 episode “Old Bones,” Gemma tells Cherry that she’ll be safe in Canada. The same scene is replayed during the “Previously On” segment of the Season 3 episode “Caregiver,” except the word “Canada” has been replaced with “Ireland.” Sure enough, that’s where she is, and has been for the whole time.
  • At the end of Season 3, when the Sons know they’re going to prison for a while, Clay says there are six guys willing to transfer to SAMCRO to make up for the lost manpower. The Season 4 premiere ignores this statement, and there are no new faces, let alone six of them, on their roster.
  • A minor one is in Season 3, after Opie goes berserk at the Lin Triad’s porn party, Henry Lin is pissed, and to smooth things over, Clay hands over the Cacuzza Crime Family, one of their biggest gun customers. In Season 4, the Italians are mentioned in passing as being their customers again, and when the Lin Triad makes a bid for the Family's business in Season 6, there is no mention of their previous deal.
• Revenge by Proxy: In the Season 4 finale, Tig unwittingly killed the girlfriend of another gangster during a Drive-By Shooting when he was aiming for the gangster in retribution for another crime (his culpability for which had been fabricated by Jax). It turns out that the girlfriend was the daughter of Damon Pope, the undisputed kingpin of black crime in Oakland. His retribution for Tig's stupidity is to burn Tig's daughter alive.
• Revenge Porn Blackmail: A twofer, when SAMCRO hires trans hooker Venus Van Dam to pose with an unconscious insurance salesman for porn pics that they plan to blackmail the guy with. The salesman's stepson stumbles onto the scene and wants a piece of the money; Venus offers him her "services" instead, but slyly records on a cell phone while she goes down on him and gives the footage to Jax, who then uses it to blackmail the kid into staying out of their business.
• Rural Gangsters: SAMCRO (Sons Of Anarchy Motorcycle Club — Redwood Originals) combine this with All Bikers are Hells Angels, appearing as a stereotypical biker gang operating in the small town of Charming, California. They have their fingers in many pies, manipulating the local police and controlling illegal gun sales and drug smuggling throughout the region. With them even making deliberate efforts to chase away outside business and investors, to keep Charming rural and thus under their control.
• Sacrificial Lion: Opie
• Sand Necktie: When the Sons visit their allies at the local Native Reservation who supply them with ammo and mushrooms, they witness the Indian tribal leader disposing of a man who crossed him by burying the man up to his neck, covering him in honey and setting fire ants on him. When the condemned man later overhears the biker leader conspiring behind the chief's back, the bikers kill him to make sure he won't be able to talk.
• Sarcastic Confession: Done at the start of "With an X" when a kilogram of cocaine is missing.
  Juice (Juan Carlos Ortiz):: Yeah, I stuck a key of blow down my pants and just walked out the door. Douchebag.
  • A rather odd inversion in season 5: When the Sons try to infiltrate a Neo-Nazi group, they're asked about their motivation. Tig says, without flinching, "I watched a bunch of niggers burn my daughter alive", an answer that satisfies the group. The inversion is that the confession isn't supposed to be dismissed as outlandish (quite the contrary), but that it isn't a motivation for Tig to join the group.
• Scary Black Man:
  • The One-Niners is a gang full of them.
  • The Grim Bastards are a biker gang full of them, though they're allied with the Sons.
• Serial Escalation: How much more shocking will the next episode be? How much more shit will be on thanks to one of the Sons? How much of a monster will the next Big Bad be? How much further off the rails will any of the main characters go? A lot to all four questions, as it turns out.
• Setting Update: Of Hamlet.
• Shame If Something Happened: After roasting Tig's daughter Dawn alive, Pope says he'd hate to see the same thing happen to Tig's other daughter, if Tig says anything about the murder.
• Shared Universe: With The Shield. As of 2018, it also has a sequel series in Mayans M.C..
• Shirtless Scene: Jax gets these most often, but there are small doses of Opie, Juice, and Happy mixed in.
• Shout-Out:
  • The phrase “sons of anarchy” first appears in “The Progress of Nihilism,” an essay by William Barry which was published in the 1886 edition of ''The Dublin Review''. This also happens to be the book on tape that Otto Delaney is listening to before killing an Aryan Brotherhood member with a screwdriver in the prison library.
  • SAMCRO has a similar history to the The Hells Angels MC. Both founded by veterans (WWII instead of Vietnam in this case) in California, and originally had more counterculture leanings before becoming a straight up organized crime syndicate. The Hells Angels also have a vicious rivalry with the Mongols MC (founded by Hispanic Vietnam War veterans), similar to the feud between SAMCRO and the Mayans. Sonny Barger and Chuck Zito even both have roles as members of SAMCRO, Barger portraying one of the founding members of the club and Zito portraying a member of the Nomad charter.
  • In "Old Bones," Jax is nervous about "all the poison that Hale is going to pour in Lowell's ear." This is a reference to Hamlet, which sees Claudius kill the elder Hamlet in this way.
  • In "Seeds":
  Chibs: Shit is addictive. Turning me into a fat bastard.
  • In "To Be (Part 2)" Juice is actually watching The Shield on TV.
  • Early in Season 2, Luann's studio is shown making a porn parody of Mad Men
  Actress: "You're such a bad boss, Mr. Draper! *spank spank*
  • In Call Of Duty Juice mention the games by name when they inspect a weapons shipment.
  • Happy's real name? Happy Lowman. Death of a Salesman, anyone?
  • One of the bikers is named Opie and the town barber of Charming is named Floyd. Hmm...
  • In Season 7 Tig gets the idea to shove a flute up a store owner's ass, a la Man Bites Dog.
• Sitting on the Roof: Jax does this a lot, especially in the early episodes. He takes John Teller's manuscript out there and reads about all the things the club was supposed to be.
• Situational Sexuality: Referenced after the Sons are released from prison when Gemma teases Clay by implying that he engaged in sexual activity with Juice while inside.
  Clay: "Don't turn what Juice and I had into something cheap and tawdry!"
• Sociopathic Hero: Pretty much everyone in SAMCRO. Tig is the leading example in the early episodes, but he's overpaced by Happy. While the club watches an IRA member torture a traitor, most are shown to be either stoic or disturbed by the display. Happy is smiling.
• Sole Survivor: Of the original SAMCRO members in the first season (Jax, Clay, Tig, Bobby, Opie, Piney, Chibs, Juice, Half-Sack), only Tig and Chibs survive the entire series.
• Spit Take: Clay spits out some beer when Unser mentions that Happy seems "nice."
• Stalker with a Crush: Josh Kohn.
• Straw Hypocrite: Ethan Zobelle is initially presented as a white supremacist who is trying to run the Sons Of Anarchy out of town. His white supremacist right hand man thinks this is because the Sons are selling guns to Latino and Black groups. However Zobelle has no issue with dealing with nonwhite gangs. Zobelle is actually an FBI informant who is trying to kill the gun trade and make a tidy sum of money in the process.
• Taking the Bullet: A non-fatal example. The show pretends that the Sons are about to execute Jax per club decision, only for Chibs to shoot Happy in the arm. This is done to fake Jax's escape in order to spare his brothers the pain of executing him.
• Tattooed Crook: An Enforced Trope. All of the Sons have various club tattoos, along with various other ones unique to their character. Jax and Opie◊ both sport the club colors (the Reaper with M16 and Anarchy-crystal ball along with the club name and state) on their back. Juice has the Reaper on his left forearm and gets 2 Sons-themed skulls on his chest at some point between Seasons 5 and 6. Clay has the Reaper on his right bicep as well as a more old school Reaper◊ on the left side of his back. Tig also has the Reaper on his right bicep, likely in reverence to his sponsor and mentor. If you leave the club, the tattoo also has to come off. When Kyle Hobart, an excommunicated member of the MC who got Opie caught on a job, comes back to Charming and accidentally reveals his uncovered tattoo (the same as Opie and Jax), SAMCRO burns it off. In Season 5, Clay has his blacked out when he is voted out of the club.
• Team Mom: Gemma, who wields a lot of influence over the club in spite of not being an actual member. She eventually tries to groom Tara into taking her place.
• Tears of Remorse: Tig, while high from shrooms, breaks down and cries from the guilt of killing Opie's wife by mistake.
  • Jax initially breaks down while preparing to shoot Gemma for killing Tara before she reassures him to go through with it.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Jax and Hale work together during Season 2 to neutralize Ethan Zobelle's crew as well as the continuing presence of the ATF.
  • Kozik, Tig and Piney are forced to work with not only Alvarez but Stahl and the ATF to keep Tara alive in the hands of Hector Salazar while the rest of the Sons are in Ireland searching for Abel.
• The Alcoholic: Piney. Good God. He quite possibly has more scenes with a drink in his hand than without. Justified in that he's Drowning His Sorrows after 35+ years of the outlaw life.
  Gemma: "It's nine in the morning."
  Piney: "So it is."
• The Cameo: NBA superstar Carmelo Anthony as one of one of Mark’s men.
• The Drifter: The Sons have an entire charter of these, the Nomads. They are essentially traveling problem-solvers for the club. Happy becomes one between Seasons 1 and 2, transferring from the Tacoma charter.
• The Ophelia: Opie, who serves as the Heterosexual Life-Partner equivalent character of the Hamlet setting update.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Unser unloads a megaton one on Gemma in "Small World" (episode 5.06), basically telling her he's tired of cleaning up her messes while remaining stuck in "the friend zone".
• The Triads and the Tongs: The Lin Triad
• Those Wacky Nazis:
  • The Nords are a local Neo-Nazi gang. They're pretty harmless.
  • L.O.A.N. (League Of American Nationalists) is a more militant but also more respectable organization of Neo-Nazis.
• Three-Act Structure: Kurt Sutter stated that he views the story through this lens, with Seasons 1-2, 3-4, and 5-7 as Acts 1, 2, and 3 respectively.
• Time Skip: Considering the first three seasons were all supposed to have happened over the course of about a month each, the fourth season opens up two years later to try and catch back up to date.
• Title Drop: In-Universe. Otto listens to William Barry's essay "The Progress of Nihilism" on audiotape, wherein Barry uses the phrase "sons of anarchy."
• To the Pain: "If you ever talk that way about Tara again, I will pound those half-dead hands so hard into this table, you won't ever be able to hold that gavel again."
• Tongue Trauma: In the last episode of Season 5, Otto Delaney bites off his own tongue and throws it at a two-way mirror when he's formally interrogated about his murder of a nurse.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Half-Sack's death could've been avoided if he just locked the front door. Or closed it.
  • Pope's guard who was supposed to be watching Jax while Pope tortures Tig. After disarming Jax, he takes no notice as Jax simply retrieves another gun from his bike's saddlebag and shoots him.
  • Toric dies in virtually the same way as his sister. He should have known better than to turn his back on Otto.
• Totally Not a Criminal Front: Although they're a motorcycle gang rather than the Italian mob, SAMCRO uses this trope in the exact same fashion. Everybody knows what they do for a living, but whenever they're accused of being a biker gang by law enforcement officers, they'll assert that they're just a club of Harley enthusiasts.

U-Z

• Unintentionally Notorious Crime:
  • After Piney sells some guns to some "gun enthusiasts," they end up killing two sheriff's deputies during a prison break.
  • During a revenge hit, Tig accidentally kills an innocent bystander, who happens to be the daughter of the most most powerful and ruthless drug dealer in Oakland.
  • Otto kills a random prison nurse as a means of getting back at the club while still sabotaging his testimony against them. It turns out that she's the sister of a brilliant and ruthless ex-soldier/US Marshal.
  • This hits the Sons badly in season 6 when a machine pistol they gave to an allied gang ends up being used in a school shooting. The District Attorney takes personal charge of the investigation and targets the Sons as the ones enabling such crimes to occur. When the Sons try to cover their tracks, they cause even more deaths.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: When the members are told Clay was shot by two black men (In reality: Opie avenging his father), Tig feels responsible and decides to enact revenge on the One-Niners by going after their leader. Like most dramas, Tig doesn't kill the intended target but his girlfriend, who happens to the daughter of the most dangerous gangster in town, Damon Pope. Had he not been irrational, Damon Pope's daughter wouldn't have been dead, Damon Pope wouldn't have caused hell for the Sons, Tig's own daughter and Opie would have been alive today.
• Villain Protagonist:
  • While the main characters are already antiheroes at best, Clay Morrow becomes the villain in Season 4.
  • By Season 5, Jax's own steady path toward villainy is repeatedly lampshaded.
  • One could argue that Gemma is this in Season 7 after she murdered Tara.
• Villainous Ethics Decay: Lampshaded by Jax in the beginning of season 4. He tells Tara that the club used to be about brotherhood and love but now is more about greed and power.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Tig and Kozik. Tig will never forgive Kozik for stealing his "girl" long ago, but they are still clearly friends.
• Warrior Poet: Apparently John Teller was this.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Tig is a cold-blooded killer who happens to have a crippling fear of dolls.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Sinister Minister Father Kellan Ashby is a highly respected Catholic priest who is also a high ranking IRA leader. He strongly believes in the Cause and will go to great lengths to protect it. This includes having a man executed in his church and using Jax's infant son as a bargaining chip to have the Sons murder a rival IRA leader.
• Wham Episode:
  • Each season finale tends to be this. Particularly the Season 2 finale, which ended with Half-Sack dead and Jax's son getting kidnapped.
  • "Laying Pipe," which kills off Opie a whole three episodes into the season!
  • Season six could well be a Wham Season. The opener begins with Iranian torture porn and ends with a school shooting that sets the primary events of the season in motion.
    • "Wolfsangel" has the Irish killing Phil and V Lin for trying to hand off the gun running and delivering more KG-9s used in the shooting, and Lee Toric is behind Otto's and Tara's suffering, before Otto kills him as he is gunned down.
    • And then in "The Mad King" the Irish blows up TM.
    • Halfway into "Aon Rud Persanta", Jax and the Sons abruptly kill Galen O'Shay and two of his mooks, and then Jax guns down Clay to frame him for the murders.
    • The Season 6 finale "A Mother's Work", Jax agrees to take the fall for the club over the school shooting. Gemma, believing she ratted on the club, murders Tara, which results in Juice killing Eli Roosevelt, when they discover the women at the scene.
  • Season seven, being the final season, significantly upped the body count and number of shocking revelations.
    • "Poor Little Lambs": Leland's thugs shoot at two police officers during a drug deal with SAMCRO, killing one and putting the other in the hospital. The Chinese discover that the Sons stole their drugs, and they retaliate by stealing their shipment of guns, and by massacring everyone at Diosa, including Collette.
    • "Greensleeves": Abel eavesdrops on Gemma confessing that she murdered Tara while she's talking to Thomas, and Bobby is kidnapped by August Marks' thugs and has his eye cut out and delivered to the Sons.
    • "The Separation of Crows": Jury White confesses that he wasn't the rat who sold the Sons out to the Chinese, and that Clay Morrow had nothing to do with Jax's father's death, implying that it was suicide. Jax then kills White after assaulting him, which one of White's men witnesses. Later, Jax tries to negotiate with Moses into releasing Bobby; he responds by sending the Sons some of Bobby's fingers.
    • "What a Piece of Work Is Man": Unser and Jarry discover that Chris Dun, the man who allegedly killed Tara, was never even in the city when she was murdered. When Jax meets August and is about to rescue Bobby, August pulls out a gun and coldly shoots Bobby in the head as retribution for Jax disobeying him to begin with.
    • "Faith and Despondency": Jax and his crew successfully ambush and kill Moses and his team. Abel cuts his arm with a fork and blames Gemma to try and get her arrested. Jax confides in Abel and tells him that Wendy is his real mother. Just as things are finally looking up, Abel tells Jax that Gemma killed his mother.
    • "Suits of Woe": Arguably the biggest Wham Episode in the whole series. Henry Lin reveals that the traitor who sold out SAMCRO is Charles Barosky. Juice kills him before Jax has time to call off the hit. When Jax does confront Juice, he finally confesses that Gemma is the one who murdered Tara. Gemma, realizing she's been exposed, flees the city—but not before Nero and the club also find out the truth. The episode ends with Gemma on the run, and Jax broken, realizing that his lust for revenge led to the deaths of several people, including Bobby.
    • "Red Rose" is just as bad, if not worse, than the previous episode: With nothing left to live for, Juice lets Tully kill him before the Chinese do. Unser goes after Gemma and gets to her before Jax does. Before he can leave with her, Jax shows up and confronts them. Jax kills Unser after he refuses to leave Gemma. After spending the entire episode debating on what he should do with Gemma, Jax eventually kills his own mother.
• Wham Line: The very last line from "Faith and Despondency":
  Abel: "So is that why Grandma killed my other mommy?"
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: At times it seems as if this is the club's operating principle.
• What Have I Done: When Clay sees Donna's corpse as he had mistakenly caused her death, having sent Tig to kill Opie, whom Clay believed had sold them to the ATF. Stahl has a milder moment at the scene as well.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Almost none of the Irish characters in the IRA storyline were played by actual Irish people. Their various fake accents range from "almost tolerable" to "Where'd he get that accent from? A Lucky Charms commercial?" The worst is probably Titus Welliver as Jimmy O'Phelan. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Bellina Logan and James Cosmo both manage pretty flawless southern Irish accents, despite their characters being Northern Irish.
• When Elders Attack: Piney. The man uses his portable oxygen tank as a melee weapon!
• Wife Husbandry: Jimmy O threatens this against Chibs, which also counts as a Kick the Dog moment for him.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: In the ninth episode of season seven, after Wendy tells Jax that Abel has been frustrated, Jax responds with "He's five years old, he shouldn't be frustrated about anything!" Abel was born in the series premiere, and the writers apparently forgot that at most only three years could have passed since the show's beginning. By the end of season two, he was around eight months to a year. Season three picked up almost right after and was only a week long. Come season four's beginning, fourteen months have passed, making him around two. Season four was about two or three weeks long, as was the fifth season which picked up six weeks after the former. Season six picks up about two weeks after season five, and like the last two could only have been a few weeks long in length. Season seven picks up ten days later, and is only a few weeks long. All of this added together would make Abel at the oldest two and a half to three. The writers must be going by the actual actor's age at this point, who has for some reason been played by the same child actor for the last four years.
• Wrong Insult Offense: Occurs when, after the Sons are released from prison, Gemma teasingly accuses Clay of having a sexual relationship with Juice while incarcerated:
  Clay: Hey! Don't turn what Juice and I had into something cheap and tawdry.
• Yiddish as a Second Language: Claimed by Juice when he's asked to translate Spanish. "I'm a Puerto Rican from Queens. I speak better Yiddish."
• You Have Failed Me: You really, really do no want to disobey when Popes gives an order. Similarly, if Pope promotes you to a position of responsibility you better not try to decline.
• You Remind Me of X: In episode 4.08, Piney to Jax:
  "I'm not going to tell you how much you just sounded like your old man."
  • In Season 5, Jax asks Opie if he's afraid Jax will turn into Clay. Opie's response?
  "I'm afraid I'll turn into you."
  • Bobby to Jax after sabotaging his vote to kill Clay.
  "I stopped you from becoming the guy you wanted to kill."

---

“Doubt thou the stars are fire,

Doubt that the sun doth move,

Doubt truth to be a liar,

But never doubt I love."

-William Shakespeare