The Matrix Film / Tropes G To O

The Matrix Trope Examples
A - F | G - O | P - Z

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G

• Gargle Blaster: Dozer's homemade hooch. Cypher says of it, "It's good for two things: degreasing engines and killing brain cells."
• Gatling Good: Neo's helicopter rescue of Morpheus involves him shooting up the entire room (including the Agents) with a door-mounted minigun. That the Agents aren't reduced to chunky salsa isn't mentioned.
• Genre-Busting: This is a Martial Arts Movie and a "Guns 'n' Explosions"-type Action Thriller neatly fused with grandiose Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic Cyberpunk making big-time Shout Outs to various philosophical and religious references.
• Genre Shift: More or less how the big, famous reveal works and how it was so impactful at release: the first half hour or so of the movie plays a lot like other "Government Conspiracy thrillers", especially ones that were popular at the time of the film's release (while leaving a few things rather confusing), with Hackers being a very obvious parallel, but then The Big Matrix Reveal happens and the movie shifts genres to a hybrid of a Martial Arts Movie, a pure action flick, and a Journey to Find Oneself, with various aspects emphasized at various points.
• A Glitch in the Matrix: Trope Namer.invoked An experience of Déjà Vu means that something within the Matrix has been altered. In this case, that the windows of their building have all been filled in with bricks.
• Go Back to the Source: "Returning to The Source" are Arc Words about returning to the heart of the Matrix's mainframe, where everything originated and hitting a Reset Button (or something like that).
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Morpheus suggests that adults who are freed from the Matrix have an exceptionally hard time adjusting, which is why they don't normally free people after they reach a certain age. Cypher's comment to Trinity in the opening scene ("We're gonna kill him. You understand that?") and the "He's gonna pop!" when Neo's reeling from the reveals in the first Construct sequence tie into this.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Any time you see it on TV heavily edited for language, Hilarity Ensues.
  Neo: How about, I give you the flipper, and you give me my phone call?
  Security Guard: [Neo pulls guns out from under trenchcoat] "Holy smokes/shmucks!"
  Neo: [The bug gets sucked out of his stomach] Jeepers creepers, that thing is real?!
  Cypher: We would have told you [Morpheus] to shove that red pill right up your ear!
  Mouse: Judas Priest, he's fast!
  Tank: Believe it or not, you piece of slime, you're still gonna burn!
• Graceful Landing, Clumsy Landing:
  • Trinity is pursued by an Agent accompanied by a squad of street cops. The first sign there's something unusual about the two of them is their sure-footed agility as they run and jump across rooftops with inhuman ease, while the cops tend to stumble and land with a thud.
  • During one of their virtual training simulations, Morpheus demonstrates some of the amazing abilities Neo can access in the Matrix by leaping from one rooftop to another. Neo tries to duplicate the same feat, only to fall and crash. This is also how Neo learns that if he is killed in the Matrix, he could die in the physical world as well.
• Grand Inquisitor Scene: Agent Smith (as the "official [who] doesn't support the society") during his interrogation of Morpheus. "Humans are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a... plague. And we... are the cure."
• Gravity Is Only a Theory: In the computer world of the Matrix, gravity is not real because the world is not real. At the end of the movie, Neo gives the tyrant overlords the proverbial finger by flying in broad daylight, showing mankind that gravity is not all it's cracked up to be.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Machines. While they are seen a couple of times, like the ones that flush Neo once he wakes up in the real world and the Sentinels, for the most part their influence is only felt or implied. Instead the main adversaries are the Machines' creations like the Agents or the Matrix itself.
• Green Aesop: Not really the point of the trilogy, but Agent Smith's monologue to Morpheus definitely has hints of this, likening humans to a virus in how they enter an area and multiply until all natural resources are expended whereas he believes lesser mammals do not.
• Ground-Shattering Landing: Morpheus ends his demonstration of his gravity-defying skills with a powerful knee attack that is aimed at Neo, though the latter manages to dodge it.
• Ground Wave: Happens when Neo strikes the ground when fighting Agent Smith, or some of the other characters cause this when making a jump or landing on a building or the freeway.
• Guns Akimbo:
  • Neo dual-wields pistols at several points in the first film, though again his being in the Matrix meant his strength was far higher than humans could normally have. In one sequence, he fires dual silenced 9mm pistols using subsonic ammunition; the relative lack of recoil would make this slightly more plausible than most other forms of Guns Akimbo. He even switches off which one he's aiming down at certain points.
  • Mouse dual-wields automatic shotguns in a Last Stand when cornered by the police/agents, using custom designs that are apparently meant for this since part of the weapon wraps around the user's forearm.
  • Trinity, Morpheus, and Seraph all dual-wield during the battle in the Club Hel coatroom.
• Guns Are Worthless: Played with:
  • Firearms are very, very useful when it comes to dealing with ordinary humans inhabiting the eponymous virtual reality like policemen or soldiers. However, they are definitely less efficient when wielded by the latter against the resistance fighters — who, being aware that they are in virtual world, can bend its rules and accomplish feats impossible for normal human (during famous scene with shootout in the lobby, an entire platoon of soldiers fired at Neo and Trinity from assault rifles and shotguns for three minutes straight and failed to score a single hit).
  • When it comes to Agents, their superhuman speed makes firearms useless against them in most situations, as they simply dodge all the bullets fired at them. Still, they can be hit in right circumstances, such as shooting them point-blank (thus giving them zero time to dodge) or spraying so many bullets that it's impossible to evade them all (for example, by unleashing a Gatling gun on them).
• Gunship Rescue: Neo and Trinity rescue Morpheus in a helicopter, complete with a minigun. Somehow, he takes out the Agents without hitting Morpheus.

H

• Hacker Cave:
  • Neo's room before he leaves the Matrix.
  • The operator stations in the hovercraft function as mobile Hacker Caves.
• Hallway Fight: The Final Battle between Neo and Agent Smith takes place in a building's hallway inside the Matrix.
• Hand Signals:
  • As the Agents and police are entering the hotel where Trinity is, Smith makes a "come with me" gesture to the patrolman standing guard.
  • As the Agents and some police approach Neo's cubicle, Agent Smith gives a hand sign to the police to move down another path.
  • As Morpheus and the others are climbing down the shaft inside the wetwall during the Déjà Vu shootout, Morpheus gives a "keep moving down" signal to the rest of the team.
• Hannibal Lecture: Smith loves these. In return, Neo delivers a famous Shut Up, Hannibal! in the train station scene; see Do Not Call Me "Paul".
• Happiness in Mind Control:
  • The resistance has a rule against freeing minds above a certain age, because they have a hard time letting go of their fake reality, preferring it to the bleak reality of the real world.
  • Like most of the rest of the crew, Cypher was extracted from the Matrix by Morpheus. When he sells out Morpheus to Agent Smith, the reward he asks for is to be re-inserted into the Matrix, to have all of his memories of the real world erased and be programmed to think that he's a famous, important actor. He doesn't get his wish, as the heroes kill him.
• Happiness in Slavery: Cypher is perfectly willing to accept slavery, so long as he's not aware of it. It helps that in this case, the "slavery" is just living a normal life in what is indistinguishable from the real world, and that part of his conditions for handing over his team are to be plugged back in as "someone important, like a movie star".
• Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?: Lilly Wachowski confirming the film is metaphor for the realization of being trans effectively means the rebel characters all fit this trope.
• He's Dead, Jim: After Neo has apparently been shot to death, Agent Smith tells another Agent to "Check him." The other Agent puts a finger to Neo's neck (apparently checking his pulse), then immediately says "He's gone."
• Hell-Bent for Leather: The protagonists' costumes when in the Matrix.
• Hellish Copter: Shortly after their Gunship Rescue moment at the office building, the chopper that Trinity appropriated takes too much damage and ends up crashing into a building.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Subverted; Morpheus does this to allow Neo and the others to escape, but in rather short order, Neo and Trinity rescue him.
• Heroic Second Wind: In the climax, Neo is defeated and lies dead on the floor. However, after receiving a True Love's Kiss by Trinity, he comes Back from the Dead to kick some serious Agent ass.
• Hero Stole My Bike: While running away from Agent Smith, Neo steals a person's cellphone so he can contact the real world. As soon as he does so, the person in question is promptly overridden by Agent Smith.
• Hidden Depths: Smith appears to be an emotionless puppet serving the Machines, like the other Agents. However, during his interrogation of Morpheus, he reveals that he is fully sentient and that he hates the Matrix as much as the protagonists, and, like them, is determined to get free by any means necessary.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Cypher kills Dozer and wounds Tank with a lightning rifle, and Tank then uses it to kill him.
• Hologram: The bridge of the Nebuchadnezzar (and presumably the other Zion hoverships) has a holographic display that shows other objects (like Sentinels).
• Hopeless War: The backstory tells about a a war going on between humans and machines. In a twist, the humans were the ones who struck first with nuclear weapons (it didn't do them a whole lot of good).
• How Dare You Die on Me!: After Neo is seemingly killed by Smith in the Matrix, Trinity insists to him that he cannot die because he's the One and she loves him. This works because the kiss Trinity administers along with those words makes Neo realize he isn't actually dead (only virtually dead and "Your Mind Makes It Real") so he revives. In other words, the input from the Matrix told his brain he was dead but the input from the real world trumped it.
  Trinity: Neo, I'm not afraid anymore. The Oracle told me that I would fall in love, and that man, the man who I loved would be The One. And so you see, you can't be dead. You can't be, because I love you. You hear me? I love you.... Now *get up*.
• How Is That Even Possible?: This is a beat cop's reaction to not only witnessing Trinity leap over a six-lane street, plus sidewalks, to go from rooftop to rooftop, but seeing Agent Brown follow her.
• Humans Are Smelly: Agent Smith is repulsed by the smell of humans. He admits this to Morpheus just before trying to physically torture him for Zion's access codes

I

• I Did What I Had to Do: The exact words used by Morpheus when explaining to Neo why he had to pull him out of the Matrix, when Neo is older than the usual cut-off point for this.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: Said verbatim by Cypher, who believes that after many years, the freedom he was promised was a lie and who makes a deal with the machines to become part of their program again, under the condition that he's rich and popular and forgets everything about his life in Morpheus' crew.
• Ignorant of the Call: Neo thinks The Oracle tells him he's not The One. He then denies he's The One to the surviving members of the team despite fitting the role exactly.
  The Oracle: Being The One is like being in love. No one can tell you you are, you just KNOW it, through and through, balls to bones.
  [...]I'm sorry, kid. You've got the gift, but it looks like you're waiting for something. Your next life, maybe? Who knows?
• Ill-Timed Sneeze: During the crawl through the walls in the big escape scene, Cypher gets some dust knocked in his face and lets go of one of these, alerting the police to their location. It's possible this was deliberate.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Enforced on humanity by the Machines, who, as Morpheus describes, liquefy dead humans and feed them intravenously to the living humans in the power plant.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: None of the mooks or security guards in the lobby can hit Neo or Trinity with their automatic guns.^note Justified in that both Trinity and Neo have received training that enables them to dodge bullets due to their increased reflexes and speed.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Neo fires a minigun from the helicopter and hits everything besides Morpheus. Justified, as he starts bending the rules of the Matrix and becomes the One.
• Improbable Piloting Skills: Justified. Trinity turns into an Instant Expert at helicopter flying after having the knowledge directly uploaded to her brain. However the helicopter does end up crashing. Some of the maneuvers with the real-world hovercrafts fall into this trope as well.
• In a Single Bound: Anyone inside the Matrix or any simulation program that replicates it can jump like this. However, when he first tries to jump between two skyscrapers as part of his training, he fails miserably due to not truly having the confidence and certainty he can do it (and this happens to everyone else on their first time). Upon plummeting onto the floor and realizing that the wounds are also reflected in the real world, he learns about the dangers of dying in the Matrix. By the end of the movie, Neo realizes his true potential and can not only perform large leaps but also fly.
• Industrialized Evil: The Machines famously turn humans into batteries. Keep in mind that this is the machines being merciful to the humans who had treated them like crap.
• Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress: In the dojo fight in, when Neo does a wallrun and backflips over Morpheus, Morpheus traces his path and kicks him when he lands.
• Inherent in the System: According to Agent Smith, both this trope and Humans Are Flawed form the logic behind the dystopian design of the simulated world of the Matrix. The initial design of the Matrix was to be a utopia, but abandoned when no one would accept it and kept trying to "wake up"-this caused massive human casualties. Evidently, human beings just weren't physiologically and/or psychologically capable of living in an ideal world. Surprisingly though, this trope is actually not a major theme of the series: what irks the rebels most about the Matrix and what most spurs them to fight it isn't the fact that it uses their bodies for energy or that it's a massive lie; the main reason they're trying to free people from the Matrix is because the Matrix isn't real.
• Inside a Wall: The team is escaping by sliding down the gap between the inner and outer walls. When Agent Smith discerns their location, Morpheus launches himself out of the wall at him and simultaneously sends the others rapidly descending down, then delays Smith long enough for them to escape.
• Instant Death Stab: On the roof, while rescuing Morpheus with Neo, Trinity throws a knife into a guard's head, killing him instantly.
• Intimidation Demonstration: When Morpheus shows Neo the sparring program, he explains: "What you must learn is that these rules are no different than the rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bent. Others can be broken. Understand? Then hit me, if you can." Cue Neo and then Morpheus both waving their hands around in the air and assuming theatrical pre-fight poses.
• In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: Agent Smith gives Morpheus the whole spiel:
  "I'd like to share a revelation I've had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized... you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and you multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings... are a disease. A cancer of this planet. You're a... plague. And we... are the cure."
• I Reject Your Reality: Cypher rejects reality outside of the Matrix, and his betrayal was motivated by a desire to go back into the Matrix permanently.

J

• Job-Stealing Robot: This is the reason humans started fighting the machines. Artificial Intelligence had evolved to a point where machines became better than humans at everything. Eventually, the humans started discriminating against the machines and kicked them out. The machines claimed a worthless piece of desert, turned it into a gigantic company town for machines, and decided to export absolutely everything except labor so they couldn't steal jobs from abroad, but that just made humans angrier and started a war. And to twist the blade, this trope was inverted when the machines won the war; they discovered that humans were capable of some kind of psionic energy that gave them the power to subconsciously create energy from almost nothing, so they were all forcefully drafted as human crops in machine-grass fields. Initially the process was excruciatingly painful, and now it is totalitarian enslavement to the titular Lotus-Eater Machine Matrix.
• Jurisdiction Friction: In the opening, Agents Smith, Brown, and Jones drive up to the Heart o' the City Hotel where they've dispatched the police to capture Trinity. The conversation between Agent Smith and the senior uniformed cop on the scene suggests that in the simulated world of the Matrix, bluepills see the Agents as the equivalent of the FBI:
  Agent Smith: [Getting out of the car] Lieutenant.
  Lieutenant: [Under his breath] Oh, shit.
  Smith: Lieutenant, you were given specific orders.
  Lieutenant: Hey, I'm just doing my job. If you give me that "juris-my-dick-tion" crap, you can cram it up your ass.
  Smith: The orders were for your protection.
  Lieutenant: [Chuckles bitterly] I think we can handle one little girl. [Agent Smith ignores him and starts walking towards the building.] I sent two units! They're bringing her down now.
  Smith: No, Lieutenant, your men are already dead.
• Just in Time:
  • Trinity, in the beginning, manages to exit the Matrix right before the truck smashes into the phone box. And then she does so again as an Agent fires. She makes it; the handset does not.
  • Neo, in the climax, manages to get out of the Matrix just in time for Morpheus to activate the EMP without killing him.
• Just Toying with Them: At the end, Neo has become The One after returning from the dead. Agent Smith furiously attacks him, but even his own Super-Speed is no match for Neo now, who casually fights him off one-handed before going for a killing blow by destroying Smith's program.

K

• Kill the Host Body: Agents operate by possessing anyone who hasn't been "unplugged", and killing them kills the host body. Unfortunately, all the Agent has to do is possess someone else in order to come right back after you. This is best shown when Agent Smith overwrites the body of a bum on a subway platform to fight Neo. After an extended fight where Neo holds his own against him, Neo manages to throw Smith into the path of a oncoming train. The victory is short-lived since Smith possesses the train operator, stops the train, and emerges re-vitalized, full clips of bullets and all. Neo, still hurting and with no ammo, has no choice but to beat feet out of the station.
• Kiss Me, I'm Virtual: Mouse offers to set Neo up with the "Woman in the Red Dress", an AI character he created to distract recruits during the Agent training. He warns that she doesn't talk much.
  Switch: The digital pimp, hard at work.
• Knuckle Cracking: Agent Smith cracks his knuckles and his neck during the subway fight
• Kubrick Stare: After Neo destroys Agent Smith in the finale, he gives one of these to Agent Smith's two accomplices, which is enough for them to make them immediately leave.

L

• Lady in Red: The woman in the red dress during the Agent Training Program.
• Last Chance to Quit: The iconic choice between the red and blue pills. The blue pill is the way out — the final interaction the individual will have with Morpheus and his crew and lets the person resume their lives as if they never met. The red pill helps disrupt the Machines' ability to track the individual being disconnected and also gives their people something to lock onto once the target is out of the Matrix.
• Lecture as Exposition: Morpheus gives lengthy ones to Neo about the Matrix.
• Left for Dead: Inverted. Smith empties more or less an entire magazine from his Desert Eagle into Neo's chest before checking he's dead and leaving. THEN Neo gets back up and hands Smith his ass, marking the point at which he becomes the one.
• Liberty Over Prosperity: Everyone who lives outside of the Matrix has basically chosen this. Cypher, however, has second thoughts. Of course, since the Matrix is a representation of the world as it was in 1999, not everyone has prosperity there anyway. Agent Smith states a utopia was once attempted, but no one would accept the programming, with it being seen as a dream they "kept trying to wake up from" and "entire crops were lost."
• Like a God to Me: A Downplayed Trope example, where a guy calls Neo "My own personal Jesus Christ" more out of politeness than awe. Also a "subtle" form of foreshadowing, as that's what Neo ends up becoming.
• Literal Surveillance Bug: There's a tracking device Smith places in Neo's body. When it's about to be surgically removed from Neo's body, Trinity explains to him, "We think you're bugged."
• Little "No": Agent Smith utters one when he sees the helicopter outside the window and Neo says another one before he stops all the bullets after becoming the One.
• Living a Double Life: Neo, which Smith lays out at the start of the interrogation sequence.
  Agent Smith: It seems that you've been living two lives. In one life, you're Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you … help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias "Neo" and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future … and one of them does not.
• Local Reference: The Wachowskis are from Chicago, and drop several references to it. For example, streets in this movie share their names with Chicago streets, and there is a photo of the Chicago skyline as it was in early 1999 on the wall of Mr. Rinehart's office. Subverted by the actual location shots, which were done in Sydney, Australia — for example, the famous AWA radio mast tower is clearly visible in the background when Morpheus is hanging from Neo's arm during the helicopter rescue.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: "So what do you need? Besides a miracle." "Guns. Lots of guns." We do not see the actual tooling up, just the racks of virtual weapons and Neo slapping down the cocking lever on an MP5K-PDW.
• Logo Joke: The Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures logos are tinted in Matrix green.
• Long Song, Short Scene: The iconic "Clubbed to Death" is trimmed significantly for under a minute's use in the "red dress" scene.
• Louis Cypher: Cypher, the murderous and traitorous human crewmember, says to Agent Smith on his deal to return to the Matrix in exchange for the capture of Morpheus, that "ignorance is bliss." His name also represented a number opposite to Neo: one definition of "Cypher" is "zero," in contrast to Neo, the One.

M

• Machine Blood: As Neo, Trinity and Morpheus are escaping in a helicopter, Agent Smith shoots the copter with his pistol twice. A liquid (presumably oil or hydraulic fluid) starts spraying out of the holes at high speed and warning lights and alarms go off inside the copter. The helicopter goes out of control and crashes into a building.
• Magic by Any Other Name: Bending the rules of physics while jacked into the computer world is ostensibly just hacking a program, but tends to be accorded mystical significance. Then Neo starts controlling machines in the real world with his mind alone...
• Magic Countdown: During the climax of the movie, the Sentinels start cutting into the interior of the Nebuchadnezzar and it looks like only seconds are left for the crew. But then Trinity starts giving her The Power of Love speech to Neo during which the Sentinels don't progress because Talking Is a Free Action. Then Neo has his Heroic Second Wind and overpowers Agent Smith in the Matrix, all while the Sentinels still make little appreciable progress on the Nebuchadnezzar. Only by the time Neo is finally able to get out of the Matrix, do the Sentinels charge the crew, but the EMP disables them Just in Time.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Neo's Dull Surprise reaction when Agent Smith shoots him in the gut by during the climax. It's implied to be shock and disbelief from being taken by surprise, given that he reacts appropriately when Smith proceeds to empty the rest of his clip into Neo.
• Manchurian Agent: The entire population the Matrix, being as how anyone who hasn't been freed from the Matrix can become an Agent at any time.
• Meaningless Meaningful Words: The text on the computer in the beginning reads: "Wake up Neo. The Matrix has you." While this is technically correct, there is no plausible reason why any of the characters would feel the need to write that. It just sounds mysterious to the audience who doesn't yet know what the Matrix is. Perhaps Trinity's writing it in her blog. Then again, it might be deliberately planting the question "what is the Matrix?" in Neo's head.
• Mecha-Mooks: The Sentinels are squid-like robots that come in the millions, and the only thing that can destroy them is an EMP.
• Mess on a Plate: The food aboard the Nebuchadnezzar is a semi-congealed whitish glop dispensed from a nozzle. Mouse and Apoc compare it to runny eggs and a bowl of snot, respectively.
• Messianic Archetype: Neo, the prophesied savior known as "the One" bears a close resemblance to Jesus. He came before, but was prophesied to come again, and resurrects close to the end. On the other hand, he's far more violent than the Christian depiction, but perhaps would be closer to Jewish views of the Messiah as a warrior king. Morpheus may also resemble John the Baptist, Trinity Mary Magdalene, and the Oracle the various prophets who are believed to have foretold Christ.
• Metal Detector Checkpoint: Neo walks into the building where Morpheus is being held prisoner, setting off the metal detector. A security guard comes over to him with a tray and a handheld scanner.
  Guard: Would you please remove any metallic items you are carrying? Keys, loose change...
  (Neo opens his trenchcoat to reveal enough guns to kill a small city)
  Guard: Holy shit! (violence ensues)
• Meteor Move: Neo does an inverted Multihit Meteor on Smith, smashing both Smith and himself into the train station ceiling.
• Mexican Standoff: Subverted. Agent Smith and Neo have guns pointed at each others' heads in the subway, then it's revealed that they both ran out of bullets at the same time.
• Military Moonshiner: Dozer distills liquor. Word of Cypher is that it's good for just two things: Degreasing engines and killing brain cells.
• M Ind Over Matter: Neo can fly and stop bullets with his mind. You'd think he'd be able to do more stuff (like disarming enemies), but apart from one scene where he pulls some weapons from across the room, stopping bullets seems to be it.
• Mind Prison: The Matrix itself is a massive virtual reality prison built by robots and designed to keep the human population complacent and asleep so their physical bodies can be harvested for bio-energy, with legality established by the fact that humanity are the losers of an apocalyptic Robot War and the machines are now running the world. Morpheus even describes the Matrix as a prison. Interestingly, earlier iterations actually experimented with this before settling on a rendition of late 20th century Earth; people's minds didn't accept either the Gilded Cage or Crapsack World versions.
  Morpheus: [The truth is] that you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.
• Mind Rape: Implied to happen to Morpheus as the Agents try to "hack" his brain for the access codes to enter Zion.
• Mini-Mecha: The movie features mini-mechas which also have Guns Akimbo large caliber machineguns.
• Missed Him by That Much: Neo attempts to escape the agents during a bleary post-hacking morning at work, all the while taking the mysterious instructions over the phone he's just received in a FedEx package, though he eventually chickens out rather than risk a narrow ledge along the outside of the skyscraper.
• Missing Mission Control: The away team is rendered helpless against Cypher, who has incapacitated the Mission Control crew and starts killing off the team members one by one.
• Mistaken Death Confirmation: After Agent Smith shoots Neo, he demands another Agent check him; the Agent checks for a pulse and confirms that Neo is dead. However, as the Oracle hinted earlier in their meeting ("Your next life, maybe. That's the way these things usually work."), this was necessary for the Prime Program to activate, and Neo is brought back to life with his powers as the One fully unlocked.
• Mobstacle Course:
  • During the Agent Training Program scene, Neo is continually bumping into people as he and Morpheus walk through a crowded city street. Conveniently, the crowd parts for Morpheus, but that's because he's done this simulation many times before and knows each person's programmed walking path.
  • Later, Neo is forced to do this while running through crowds of people in the streets while escaping from the three Agents near the end of the movie. The Agents tend simply to throw people out of their way, or shoot them, or simply change places with them.
• More Dakka: The minigun scene is just one example.
  Tank: So, what do you need? Besides a miracle.
  Neo: Guns. Lots of guns.
• More than Mind Control: Agent Smith's monologue while trying to take control of Morpheus' mind. Additionally, the Matrix can only imprison you if you make a choice to allow yourself to be imprisoned. It doesn't have to be a conscious choice, and in fact The Matrix can only really exist if most people aren't aware on a conscious level of what's actually happening, thus the vast majority of the subjects in The Matrix have subconsciously agreed to be imprisoned by it. Only a small handful of people reject the unreality of The Matrix and leave.
• Motivational Lie: The Oracle uses this, telling Neo that he's not the One and that Morpheus will sacrifice himself for Neo because he believes Neo is the One. From Neo's perspective, this would mean that Morpheus would have thrown his life away for nothing. Unable to live with this, Neo saves Morpheus, proving that he is in fact the One and awakening his powers along the way. Morpheus says that the Oracle told Neo "exactly what [he] needed to hear." She later confirms this in Reloaded.
• Motive Rant: When interrogating Morpheus, Agent Smith delivers one comparing human beings with a virus.
• Multiple Gunshot Death:
  • Mouse meets his end when police officers gun him down.
  • During the climax, Agent Smith empties a magazine into Neo.

N

• Neck Lift: When Neo first wakes up from the Matrix in the gel pod, a Docbot happens along, grabs him up by the neck and removes the plug from the back of his neck.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: Neo's experience in the Jump program. After seeing Morpheus effortlessly leap between two buildings, Neo gets the courage and adrenaline to try it himself. He gets a huge running start, leaps... and promptly falls.
• Neural Implanting: The movie tends to use this and Brain Uploading willy-nilly. When you have a giant jack in the back of your head, why not use it?
• Neverending Terror: Morpheus unplugs Neo from the Matrix, where he was living in a Virtual reality simulation of Real Life. He teaches Neo the truth about the Matrix, including the nature of their foe, the evil Artificial Intelligence machines. Neo has a mental collapse and falls unconscious. When he wakes up, he asks Morpheus "I can't go back, can I?" In fact, fatigue with the unending, terrifying Robot War is what prompts Cypher to betray the group on the slim hope of being able to go back.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: During the scene with the Oracle, she explains that Neo technically isn't the One, but he will probably be one in a later life. Later in the film, Agent Smith kills Neo, thinking that he got rid of him that way. However, Trinity manages to revive him and Neo awakens as the One in a new life.
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Agent Smith believes this to be the reason behind the failure of the "paradise" Matrix that preceded the current one. He rationalizes that humans define themselves through misery and suffering, and thus paradise was a dream they couldn't accept as reality. The true reason is that, to accept the Matrix, humans need to believe they have a choice in the matter, even if they don't realize it fully.
• Nonchalant Dodge: After unlocking his potential as The One, Neo could dodge (or parry) any single attack even by an Agent this way (Types 1 or 3), although then they start throwing more and tougher opponents at him so that he has to start paying attention again.
• Nondescript, Nasty, Nutritious: Rations aboard the Nebuchadnezzar are an unappealing porridge of synthetic nutrients. Apoc calls the stuff "a bowl of snot."
• No-Sell: Throughout the film, the Agents are all but immune to anything that the rebels try against them due to their programming; Neo's evolution to the One begins when he manages to land a telling blow on Smith for the first time. Later, he learns to No-Sell the Agents' attacks on him, until the upgraded Smith comes along.
• Not in Kansas Anymore: Just before the red pill taken by Neo kicks in, Cypher says, as Layman's Terms to summarize what Morpheus was saying, "Buckle your seat belt, Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye-bye!"
• Not Quite Dead: When Cypher shoots Tank and Dozer, it's assumed that he killed them both. However, Tank regains consciousness and has enough energy to kill Cypher.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Along with his fatigue with the hardships of life outside the Matrix, this is part of what ultimately leads Cypher to betray La Résistance. As he explains at length, while Zion and the rebels have freed him from the tyranny of the Machines' simulated world, the Zion military themselves are not above using lies of omission and forced conscription in order to draft more soldiers, and all he is able to do as a member of the military is what he is ordered to do; he is ultimately no freer under the rebellion than he was under the Machines.
• Now or Never Kiss: Played with. Trinity gives Neo a kiss as it appears the Machines have triumphed, only for him to revive from her kiss. At the same time, it's subverted because Trinity knows that they're not going to die just yet.

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• Obfuscated Interface: The Matrix Raining Code provides any information required for the plot without the burden of a conventional user interface: Less danger of the UI becoming dated being or be too hard for the audience to follow. It is there to be visually evocative — the audience gets their information from the characters talking about it. When the déjà vu shootout is about to go down, however, we cut back to Tank's workstation and the code starts flashing ominously.
• Obligatory Earpiece Touch: The Agents do this whenever they receive new orders from the mainframe. Since they don't communicate much except vague menace, this cue is important to signal that they are going to try something new next.
• Oblivious to Love: The Oracle outright teases Neo about this regarding Trinity.
  The Oracle: You're cuter than I thought. I can see why she likes you.
  Neo: Who?
  The Oracle: [smiles] Not too bright, though.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Neo gets one when Morpheus alerts him of the Agents in his office.
    Neo: [Ducking back down after spotting them] OH, SHIT!
    Morpheus: Yes.
  • The "déjà vu" sequence — and what the heroes discover has been altered in the Matrix — causes several for the entire team: Neo's "Huh, déjà vu" and explaining what he saw immediately puts the team on high alert. A shocked Tank says "Oh my God" when he realizes their exits have blocked by newly-created brick walls, and Mouse and Tank both have an "Oh no" when they both realize Mouse is trapped and a full police force is about to barge in.
  • Cypher answers the phone, and not Tank or Dozer. Trinity, horrified, realizes he's caused theirs and Mouse's death along with Morpheus' capture. Apoc and Switch can only react with an "Oh God!" as they know they are completely vulnerable and about to be murdered via an abrupt disconnection.
  • The security guard who sees all the guns Neo has under his coat yells out "HOLY SHIT!" before the carnage ensues.
  • After Neo destroys Smith, Agents Brown and Jones take a look at each other and scamper off.
• Ominous Multiple Screens: Multiple screens show Neo in the interrogation room before the camera zooms in on one screen, which becomes the actual scene itself as the Agents walk in.
• One Myth to Explain Them All: This is the explanation given for the existence of the supernatural within the Matrix. The sequels and Animatrix would later clarify that they were programs from earlier, imperfect versions of the Matrix that escaped deletion.
  "Every story you've ever heard about vampires, werewolves, or aliens is the system assimilating some program that's doing something they're not supposed to be doing."
• One Phone Call: Neo demands one when being interrogated by Agent Smith in the beginning.
• One-Woman Wail: Heard while they're giving Neo acupuncture as part of his transition into the real world.
• Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap: All the food that isn't gruel is virtual.
• Only Flesh Is Safe: As it is set during a Robot War, EMP generators are one of the few effective large-scale weapons that the human resistance has against the Machines. A complication is that Neo is still jacked in to the Matrix via remote broadcast, and simply pulling the plug will lead to fatal shock, so they have to wait until Neo gets to an exit point and unplugs on his own before they can use the EMP on the robot Sentinels bursting into the ship.
• The Only Way They Will Learn: "No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself."
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Belinda McClory's Australian accent starts to come through in the scene right before her character, Switch, dies (the part where she says "Not like this!").
• Oracular Urchin: The androgynous monk child ("Spoon Boy" according to the script) who claims that "There is no spoon."
• Orifice Invasion: The "bug" Smith implants in Neo enters through his navel. It later departs Neo the same way when Trinity, Switch, and Apoc pick him up.
• The Outside World: There are three different "Outsides" to which an enterprising human could escape.
  • The first level of the Outside is escaping the Matrix itself and getting to the real world. However, the real world is a prison, more specifically a human body farm wherein the people are living batteries.
  • The next "Outside" is getting from the power plant to the colony called Zion.
  • Outside of Zion is the rest of the world, which is totally dark and inhabited by robots. So, the True Outside World is a depressing Crapsack World.

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