YMMV / Brooklyn Nine-Nine

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• Accidental Aesop:
  • Interdepartmental rivalries are petty and stupid, but they can't be avoided. Terry always advocates going for the high road — he tells Jake to pursue Sophia despite the fact that she's a defense lawyer and cost them a case against a suspect — but even he acknowledges that fighting inherent biases is an uphill battle. Ultimately, you do what you can to get the job done and save lives, while dealing with those rivalries. Indeed, it's the firefighters that help deliver Amy's baby, because they care more about a pregnant woman's well-being than a rivalry between them and cops.
  • The ongoing rivalry between Wuntch and Holt shows how otherwise-professional authority figures can become petty and bickering, not caring how they hurt those in the crossfire. Jake, Rosa and Amy have to reel in Holt from his worst moments, reminding him that Wuntch may be the worst, but stooping to her level always puts him in a bad spot. In the end, Holt has regrets when Wuntch dies, saying their rivalry is now over, and unspoken is that they won't ever reconcile or at least call truce.
  • The moment Gina is hit by a bus is played as a shock in "The Fugitive, Part 2", but it was also partly because Gina was looking at her phone in the middle of a street, which was a very prominent issue when it first aired at the start of 2017 due to Pokémon GO's popularity.
• Adorkable: Amy, on paper, is the sort of brown-nosing teacher's pet type that people love to hate, but Melissa Fumero makes it cute as hell.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Jenny Gildenhorn, Jake's first crush who snubbed him at his bar mitzvah for Eddie Fung, and does the same thing when Gina invites her to Mrs. Linetti's wedding to Papa Lynn Boyle, dancing with another guy instead of with Jake after divorcing her husband. Is she a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who was never worth Jake's time or obsession, or an Innocently Insensitive kid that didn't realize she hurt his feelings and had every right to turn him down? It's hard to tell since Jake says he's been following her info for twenty years, which makes him unsympathetic, but he takes Amy's advice to not snub her in turn and be nice at the wedding. It is highly possible that Jake was Loving a Shadow and didn't actually know her.
  • Jake in the episodes with Jenny Gildenhorn in them; a jilted man who didn't deserve to be snubbed in his youth at his own bar mitzvah and should get at least a chance of a do-over with her, or a creepy pathetic Manchild stalker who abuses police resources to stalk an innocent civilian and should be given a restraining order triple-checked by Santiago?
  • In Season 3's "Into the Woods", is Gina's attempt to re-style Santiago's appearance and personality (even suggesting that she change her first name to "Vanessa", since she considers it more attractive) just another of Gina's wacky and non-too-subtly rude attempts to mess with her co-workers under the guise of trying to become better friends? Or is she taking a genuine interest in Amy for the first time now that Amy is dating her childhood best friend, and just showing her own insecurities and social failings because she's actually trying to be friendly when it matters more?
  • Is the fact that Amy is much more willing to go along with Gina's weird plans than usual less to do with her own random one-episode-long ambition, and more because she's also making an effort to be better friends with Gina now that they'll be spending more time together socially?
  • Rosa's one of the most professional members of the team when it comes to working a case, despite the occasional bouts of immaturity on her part. However, her often violent tendencies raise the possibility that she might be a Blood Knight who only got into police work due to being able to get away with violence.
  • Was Adrian Pimento driven crazy by his undercover work or was he chosen for undercover work because he was already crazy and thus, no one would ever suspect he was a cop? The fact that he held a grudge against computers because he died of dysentery on the Oregon Trail suggests that his mental health issues were a pre-existing condition.
  • How much of Boyle's Innocent Innuendo is actually innocent? Some fans theorize that he actually knows full well just how weird he sounds and plays it up to see his friends squirm. He displays a surprising amount of social awareness when the situation calls for it, such as almost always coming out on top when dealing with Gina or his casual manipulation of both Holt and Terry as part of his plan in "The Golden Child".
  • Is Charles' dad as obsessed with Jake as he claims? Charles is always talking about how much his dad loves Jake but when we see him he seems more interested in talking to Charles and Gina and in spite of Charles' claim he didn't ask Jake to be his best man. Charles has a tendency to project his own personality traits onto people he likes, and since his dad is his best friend and Charles HeroWorships Jake it's likely he's convincing himself his dad feels the same way.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: "Super Dan", the local neighborhood vigilante in "Full Boyle" who dresses like a comic book superhero. Vigilantes who dress like superheroes actually aren't unheard-of in Real Life: they're commonly called "real-life superheroes", or "RLSHs" for short. Super Dan is actually a pretty accurate depiction of an RLSH, being a glorified neighborhood watch volunteer who just monitors local crime and reports it to the police.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Despite everything they've been through, especially Jake, the squad always goes back to being their chipper selves by the next episode. It's understandable since it is a comedy show, but it still gets lampshaded in "The Therapist."
    Terry: Wait— have you never been to therapy?
    Jake: No, don't need it.
    Terry: Not even after the time your wife shot you?
    Jake: Nope.
    Terry: What about when you were held at gunpoint and had to write your own suicide note?
    Jake: Uh, that was crazy... I forgot about that.
    Terry: ...or when you were falsely accused of bank robbery and went to prison?!?
    Jake: Was that a big deal?
    Terry: You joined a gang and tried meth!
    Jake: Well, I didn't want to be anyone's bitch.
  • Lynn Boyle has not had an easy life. Each of his six marriages ended in failure, and he knew that the boy that he raised was not his blood relative. Despite that, Lynn insisted on raising Charles anyway because Charles is his son, no matter what the cousins dare to say. He also shakes off being pegged as a suspect for murdering Pappy Boyle, as well as each subsequent marital disaster.
• Anvilicious: The show can be heavy-handed with some of its social commentary. Very often the subplots will simply conclude with a character giving a lengthy speech about the problem and explaining what needs to be done for it to be fixed.
  • The Amy-Holt-Gina subplot in "Boyle's Hunch" ends up essentially suddenly slamming the brakes on the comedy in order to deliver a serious discussion on how police abuses of authority have damaged public trust in them.
  • Similarly, "Moo Moo" is very up-front about the wrongs of racial profiling.
  • "He Said, She Said" is a commentary on casual sexism, sexual aggression taboo and the faults of patriarchy.
  • Several of the show's episodes end with the message that a person's past tragedies and traumas cannot be used to excuse any wrongdoing on their part, whether that be lawbreaking or mistreating the people around them.
• Ass Pull: The reveal that Charles isn't actually a purebred Boyle in Episode 7 of season 8. This comes out of nowhere and not a single previous episode hinted that Charles might not be part of the family and it's never mentioned again in the show's three last episodes. These factors, as well as the reveal coming to light so late into the show's run when it was almost over, has resulted in the episode falling under Fan Discontinuity.
• Awesome Ego: Doug Judy believes he can't go to jail because he is too cool. The fanbase agrees with him.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Gina is by far the most polarizing character on the show. While many fans adore her, an equal number seem to absolutely despise her, with nothing in between. Common criticisms are that she is a Creator's Pet who lacks character development of any kind, that she is frequently rude and insubordinate to her superiors (and never seems to get called out or suffer the consequences for this behaviour), and that she often crosses the line with her objectification of Terry. Even after her departure from the show, fans are divided on whether it's for the better or worse that she's gone.
  • Boyle has elements of this too. Either he's an amusing Butt-Monkey and woobie, or he's an annoying, clingy (firstly to Diaz and then Jake and Jake & Amy as a couple), overly emotional doormat and manchild. Some fans also think that his characterization is geared too much towards comic relief and that he has been deeply flanderized over the course of the show.
  • Hitchcock. While some fans find his incompetence hilarious, others find his perverted tendencies and massive ego to be grating, as opposed to the much more humble and respectful Scully. It doesn't help that unlike the rest of the Nine-Nine, he doesn't have much in the way of redeeming qualities. At least until Season 6, where it's revealed he and Scully took responsibility for protecting a witness when the law wouldn't.
  • The Vulture. While he is supposed to be a Hate Sink due to being one of the biggest jerks in the show, fans are split on whether they Love to Hate him or just find him irritating beyond belief, especially after his increased appearances in the third season.
  • Adrian Pimento. There is a split among the fandom between those who find his characterization hilarious, love his chemistry with Rosa, and want to see him added to the main cast, and those who find him unfunny and overacted, and think the character development their relationship triggered in Rosa came out of nowhere and was poorly done. It's also possible that Pimento's actor, Jason Mantzoukas, may have been overly saturated to many fans, as he's done basically the exact same role on several other NBC comedy shows.
• Broken Base:
  • Season 6 has quickly become the most divisive season in the series, partly due to coming right off the heels of the adored Season 5, and partly due to some fans feeling that the switch to NBC changed the pacing and tone of the series. Some fans love the season for its varied episode lineup, while others hate it for its emphasis on emotional drama over laugh-out-loud moments. It doesn't help that it has some of the most divisive episodes in the series such as "Four Movements", "He Said, She Said", and "Casecation".
  • Season 8 proved to be highly divisive, particularly in regards to the show's handling of the conversations regarding police brutality and race relations following the George Floyd protests. One group felt the show did a respectable job of addressing the issues while still providing great humor. Others felt that show's efforts came across as an Anvilicious Author Tract where the writers and cast prioritized voicing their personal views on the issues at the expense of established characterization, particularly in the cases of Jake, Rosa, and Charles. A third camp feels that the show didn't do enough to address the issues and felt the show's efforts came across as hypocritical due to the main characters still being portrayed in an overall positive and humorous light.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Kevin throat-punching the mob boss that was threatening his life and making Holt increasingly overprotective. Especially since Holt kept insisting that if anything happened to Kevin, he would die as well from despair, and Kevin gets fed up with his husband.
  • Doug Judy getting Laser-Guided Karma in "A Tale of Two Bandits," courtesy of his little sister Trudy Judy. She follows in his footsteps, frames him by stealing a Pontiac that belongs to a mob boss, and swindles him and Jake so that she gets away scot-free and gives him a So Long, Suckers! phone call, along with some Brutal Honesty that she's not a little girl that he needs to protect and she's free to make her own mistakes and victories. The expression on Doug Judy's face and subsequent Jerkass Realization towards Jake sells the scene.
  • For those who don't like Gina, the few times where she loses a conflict are very satisfying. The writers seem to be aware of this, as Gina actually invokes the trope in the episode "The Overmining".
    Amy: You did it, Sarge. You're gonna get our power usage down.
    Terry: I don't care about that crap. I took down Gina Linetti! I did the impossible. Terry is back on top!
  • Holt getting the best of O'Sullivan in the last season's third episode.
  • While it's soon revealed as a Daydream Surprise, Rosa smashing through the prison glass and brutally taking down a gloating Hawkins provides some relief in a fairly bleak storyline.
  • After years of belittling, demeaning, and harassing Holt as well as trying to ruin his career multiple times for extremely petty reasons, Madeline Wuntch finally gets hers in the episode Ding Dong when she dies unexpectedly and Holt effortlessly sabotages her final attempt to ruin him.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • "The Slump" features Amy and Rosa doing a presentation to recruit at-risk teens for the Junior Police Program, and at one point, one of the teens asks Amy why the drug dealer character she was just voicing sounded black. Amy tells them they weren't, which Gina then twists into Amy being a racist who believes black people are incapable of selling drugs. Cue the teens all chanting "Black people CAN sell drugs!" in protest. Then Captain Holt walks past the room.
  • "The Big House" two-parter uses a surprising amount of this. The highlight being Jake Peralta trying to get a prison guard fired by getting beat up by him and getting Caleb to film it. It's offensive until Caleb keeps messing up the video and Jake has to keep getting beat up by him over and over again.
  • Caleb in a nutshell. He's a cannibal and serial killer who specifically targeted children, even working as a counselor to earn their trust. He's arguably the biggest monster on the show but because he's so friendly and blissfully unaware of the atrocities he's describing, it quickly becomes hilarious.
  • The Backstreet Boys Cold Open. To clarify, Jake tries to investigate a lineup by having each man sing "I Want It That Way", with the witness identifying the voice of the perp. It turns out each suspect can sing well, so Jake gets into their harmonizing and sings along, forgetting that the perp murdered the witness's brother. As he puts it, "Oh my God I forgot that part".
  • Similarly, the Grand Finale reveals Jake has been trying to recreate the moment In-Universe, resulting in a similar punchline. This time, however, none of the perps can sing properly and a frustrated Jake tries to conduct them so they don’t sing off-tune, then turns to the witness and asks “So which one do you think killed your family?”
  • Many of the jokes in "Ding Dong", concerning the recently deceased Commissioner Wuntch:
    Holt: Want to see the selfies I took [at the funeral]?
    Holt: As God said when Wuntch tried to sneak past the Gates into heaven, it ain't happening, honey.
    Rosa: Judging by the flames around her, it could be a livestream.
    Adam: (to her death leaving Holt teary-eyed) Why? Because her heart was made of onions?
    Holt: Madeline Wuntch will not soon be forgotten, trick-or-treaters would dress up as her for generations!
  • In Cinco de mayo Holt comes up with a rather cruel plan to make Jake think Amy was pregnant (with a fake sonogram) just to win the heist, and Amy actually goes along with it (in fairness she did initially object, and was under threat of being tased when she did) however she still chose to do this instead of simply dropping the prize.
  • While Jake's dad and grandfather catch up on old times, we learn all of Walter's siblings are dead except his brother Dean who came out as gay. Then it is abruptly revealed they all died together in a family reunion fire and Dean only survived because they ostracized him for his homosexuality.
  • In Valloweaster Amy arranges for Jake to seek treatment from a therapist who turns out to be an actress she was paying, Jake shares several deeply personal issues with this woman, thinking she was a doctor, and the entire time it was just a ruse to get heist intel, with Amy listening in . . . by hiding in a vent above Jake. Rosa later reveals she took advantage of this as well by hiding under the couch Jake was lying on.
  • "Balancing" has a bit where Jake is trying to hunt down a serial killer named Franzia. He suffers some parental worries when one of the recorded phone calls has audio of Scully feeling Mac in the nap closet, realizing that said serial killer interviewed as a babysitting candidate to sneak a bug into the precinct, using a lion toy. This should all be Nightmare Fuel but is actually really funny. Why and what is the punchline? Jake and Boyle reason this out while singing their dialogue to the tune of "Wiegenlied" (A.K.A. "Brahm's Lullaby"), to ensure that Mac stays asleep. They finish on a two-part harmony of "Son of a bitch" when Jake finds the bug in Mac's new lion plushie.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Many viewers have pointed out that Holt shows some signs of autism, with his stoic demeanor, monotone voice, and inability to understand how people interact with each other.
  • Jake loses focus easily, frequently goes off on tangents, struggles with organization and time management, is incredibly impulsive, and can easily slip into hyperfocusing on his work to the detriment of anything else he has to do. These traits have led fans to believe that Jake has ADHD.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Cheddar, Holt and Kevin's pet corgi.
  • Kevin himself after the events of "Safe House", which expanded on his friendship with Jake and marriage to Holt.
  • Scully tends to get a lot of love from the fans for being Endearingly Dorky, his beautiful singing voice and actually being useful in certain situations.
  • Doug Judy is always met with cheers from the fandom whenever he appears.
  • Officer Debbie Fogle became well-liked by fans during Season 7.
  • Mlepclaynos (the clay is silent), the silent immigrant from Leirkrakeegovnia has few but memorable appearances. It helps that he's played by Fred Armisen.
• Fandom Rivalry: Even after NBC swooped in to renew it for a sixth season, the B99 fanbase was pretty furious when Fox cancelled this show (as well as a few others) in favor of resurrecting Last Man Standing (2011). The inevitable Flame War was only made worse by the fact that the shows were near polar opposites, with B99 being a single-camera show and unabashedly progressive, whereas LMS is a multi-camera Sitcom whose politics (if not the primary reason for its existence) lean staunchly conservative.
• Fanon: A significant portion of the fandom treats Jake's Ambiguously Bi leanings as canon. (One popular take is that he's very bi... and also very oblivious to this himself.)
• Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans suggest to new viewers that they just stop watching at the end of season seven, due to the perceived dip in quality season eight takes (see Seasonal Rot and Broken Base) and the fact that many feel the season seven finale provides a perfect enough ending anyways.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: While Rosa got a few different major Love Interests over the course of the show, her ships involving the main cast tend to be far more popular. Early on, her most popular ship was with Amy, due to the chemistry between the two characters. However, over time, that ship was overtaken by Rosa/Gina, or Dianetti, despite the two not getting nearly as many interactions. This is likely because it worked better as Ship Mates with the massively popular Official Couple, Jake/Amy aka Peraltiago, in comparison to Rosa/Amy, the fact that they were the only cast members to not have a steady Love Interest, and interest in how the the two characters' personalities would mesh.
• Fountain of Memes: Holt's Comically Serious attitude and occasional Cold Ham scenes have led to a proliferation of .gifs of him used as reaction memes on imageboards and file sharing sites. Some examples:
  • Vindi-CAAAATTTIIIIIIOOOOOOON! for something being, well, vindicated.
  • His incredibly dry "Yass queen" sees frequent use.
  • Possibly most common is his "Hot Damn!" as it's applicable to anything going well.
  • See a nice infographic? "The statistical analysis... it's so beautiful."
  • These bullet points don't even scratch the surface of the deep, beautiful world of Holt Reaction gifs.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Star Wars fans, after Mark Hamill was one of the first celebrities to rush to the show's rescue after its unexpected cancellation by Fox.
  • With fans of The Last Man on Earth and The Mick after Fox cancelled all three shows at the same time.
  • There's also an extreme overlap of fans of this show and fans of John Mulaney. A popular post on Tumblr describes a hypothetical episode in which John plays Jake's ex-boyfriend.
  • Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of overlap with fans of Schur's other three sitcoms.
  • With Saturday Night Live, thanks to being spearheaded by alumnus Andy Samberg and the frequent cameos by his fellow former castmates, whose roles often hold Ensemble Dark Horse status.
  • With Hamilton fans, due to their Latin-American representation and Lin-Manuel Miranda, like Mark Hamill, being a major supporter of bringing the show back from cancellation. Miranda also later made a guest appearance as Amy's older brother, David.
  • With The West Wing, thanks to Jimmy Smits and Bradley Whitford guest starring and sharing screentime.
  • Fans of this show also like Psych due to being another comedy focused cop show with a quirky protagonist. It probably helps that 99 premiered a year before Psych concluded.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Both Jake and Doug Judy consider Captain Holt's beloved convertible Gertie to be The Alleged Car which is barely roadworthy, despite his love for her. Gertie is actually a Chevrolet Corvair, a make of car which was notoriously a central focus of Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed, an expose of unsafe and defective design/manufacturing processes in the American automotive industry, which went into great detail about how it was basically a death trap on wheels.
  • In "Moo Moo", Terry is briefly accosted by a policeman due to his believing that Terry was looking to commit a crime. In the US, the detainment of a person on this suspicion is actually called the Terry stop.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Papa Boyle gets cold feet at his wedding to Mrs. Linetti, worrying that he's rushing into another Fourth-Date Marriage; when his son tries to reassure him by saying he felt the same way before his first wedding, Papa Boyle points out that Eleanor cheated on Charles with Sleepy Stu. He eventually goes through with it because he truly loves her. Season 7 opens with The Reveal that Mrs. Linetti cheated on Papa Boyle and has been for a while, thereby proving his worries right.
  • In the third season episode "Maximum Security," Jake comments on how awful prison is while observing Amy undercover. In the fifth season, Jake goes to prison and experiences the horrors of physical abuse and solitary confinement firsthand.
  • In "Pimemento", one of Adrian's reminder tattoos is simply "BUY TOILET PAPER" in massive font, and Jake briefly wonders about why he would need it. About a month after the episode aired, panic-buying in response to the COVID-19 pandemic caused shortages of toilet paper in many places.
  • The Season 4 finale features a hacker named Pandemic who refers to "the quarantine." As above, this obviously became a lot less funny once COVID-19 became a serious problem.
  • Gina's Played for Laughs harassment of Terry looks quite different after Terry Crews became one of the first male Hollywood actors to share his experience with getting sexually assaulted.
  • "Moo Moo" has Terry and Holt discussing if Terry should bring a complaint against the cop that racially profiled Terry. Terry convinces Holt to approve of the complaint and move it forward, despite Holt's worry that it will stymie Terry's career as a cop. It may very well have, given Terry is denied a council position. Season 8 premieres with Jake trying to prove that corrupt cops can face the consequences to convince Rosa to not resign from the police force, only to learn that the union and established rules would punish the person firing the cops for being a "snitch", undo said termination, and have them back on the streets in a matter of months and no jury would dare convict them.
  • In "The Oolong Slayer," Jake asks Terry "why do you follow people's directions when you could literally pick them up and throw them out the window?" Later, when Terry Crews came forward about his sexual assault, he was asked why he didn't fight back.
  • Amy desperately wanting Holt’s approval and her anxiety about becoming a sergeant are less funny after “He Said, She Said” reveals her former captain tried to sexually assault her after her promotion to detective, which made Amy feel like she didn’t really earn her rank.
  • Jake's sex jokes to Amy which were initially played lighthearted can come off as more awkward after the revelation that Amy specifically transferred to the Nine-Nine because her past Captain tried to sexually assault her.
  • The Season 8 premiere has Amy refusing to return to duty amid the COVID-19 pandemic until virtually all first-line responders have been vaccinated which the show claims was quickly accomplished. At the time of the episode's airing, less than half of the actual NYPD was vaccinated.
  • It's a Running Gag in the show that Rosa is a Blood Knight. She implicitly threatens Terry when he learns she tried out a stint of ballet school and carries around a big knife to protect her motorcycle. Season 8 opens with her resigning from the Nine Nine to become a private detective & she tells Jake, she can't be a cop in good conscience if others in the force are allowed to get away with murdering innocent people and scapegoating them. As she puts it, there's a big difference between being scary and harming the citizens you are supposed to protect.
  • In "Safe House", Holt brushes off Kevin and Jake's complaints of his extreme safety measures by saying he's just trying to keep his husband alive. Kevin responds with "Well you may not have a husband when all this is over." Come season 8 and Holt's extreme dedication to police work due to the George Floyd incident has resulted in Kevin breaking up with him.
  • The jokes in "The Last Day" parts 1 and 2 about Ukrainian Etsy selling "tactical gear" seem harsher after the Russian invasion.
  • Holt describing how a colleague died of cancer due to smoking too much in “Beach House” becomes a lot more eerie after his actor Andre Braugher died on December 11th, 2023 from lung cancer and considering that he was a former smoker (though he had quit in 2010).
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • In the pilot, Jake flirts with Amy using a teddy bear. She nearly laughs before walking away after he makes a lewd comment. By Season 5, they end up married and Amy warms up to Jake's antics.
  • Kevin has a bad impression of cops but he appreciates Holt's team arranging an apology dinner for him and Holt at one of their favorite restaurants. Come Season 4, he comes to the 99 for advice on math disputes and in Season 6 directly asks Jake for help with a case at his university.
  • After helping officiate a wedding, Holt is happy that he found the words to mark the occasion. He and Kevin float the idea of renewing their vows, while Kevin reassures Holt that he wouldn't change their wedding day for the world. Season 8 features them renewing their vows after hitting a rough patch in their relationship, and they get a proper wedding.
  • In "Halloween III", while Jake and Holt are trying to get some heist-related info out of Amy, Jake gets halfway through a marriage proposal before being cut off. Two years later, in "HalloVeen", Jake stages an entire Halloween heist as an elaborate means of asking Amy to marry him for real. And she says yes.
  • Also in "HalloVeen", Jake spends the episode talking about how all he looked forward to while in prison was planning the heist, going to desperate lengths to make sure he won with what seemed to be his usual competitive drive. Knowing he actually did it all to propose to Amy makes this incredibly sweet in hindsight.
  • "The Last Ride" begins with the precinct on the verge of being shut down, but by the end Holt announces that it was saved thanks to a swell of support from the online community. Which is almost exactly what happened when it was cancelled by Fox after Season 5 and subsequently picked up by NBC, thanks to online support.
  • When Terry's wife gives birth to their third child, Jake does all he can to make sure the labor runs smoothly since he's the godfather and he can make Sharon laugh to distract her from the worries. Terry returns the favor in "Blackout" when distracting Amy mid-labor while Jake is riding on breakneck speed on Lieutenant Peanutbutter to see his son's birth.
  • Stephanie Beatriz has a vulnerable episode where her character Rosa comes out as bisexual to her family; the episode was considered revolutionary for its LGBTQ representation. It seemed to pave the way for further representation; Beatriz would later play Carla, who is Promoted to Love Interest, in In the Heights, and gains a girlfriend in the making.
  • Captain Holt is generally presented as either a mentor and/or father figure to a number of the characters in the show. After the passing of Andre Braugher, it was quickly made clear that a number of his co-stars felt that way about him in real life during their time working the show. They had great respect for his professionalism, advice, and dedication to his family.
• He Really Can Act:
  • A common response to Andy Samberg's performance as Jake Peralta, formerly most well-known for his crude, yet hilarious Lonely Island songs and for being on Saturday Night Live. He even won a Golden Globe for his performance.
  • As Anvilicious as they might be for some, the episodes "Moo Moo" and "He Said, She Said" are worth noting for how well the actors sell the serious subject matter, considering they only usually show off their comedic chops. In the former, Terry Crews perfectly sells the hurt and fear he felt being racially profiled and everyone's horror and disgust after the matter is the same. In the latter, when Amy confesses to Jake about her own experience being sexually assaulted and he admits how horrified he is of the reality women face, Melissa Fumero and Andy Samberg completely sell the seriousness of the discussion and both are on the verge of tears.
  • In a similar regard, when Rosa comes out as bisexual to her parents in "Game Night", Stephanie Beatriz does a fantastic job selling Rosa's vulnerability over the issue. Considering Rosa spends most of the show being closed off and The Stoic, her performance during these scenes really stand out.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One of the Digital Shorts Andy Samberg did for Saturday Night Live was "Great Day", a parody of "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" about a once-successful man whose spiraling addiction to cocaine has ruined his life, lost him his job and alienated his family. Jump forward a few years to "Sabotage", and a character played by Andy Samberg is being held hostage by a once-successful man whose spiraling addiction to cocaine has ruined his life, lost him his job and alienated his family. And to make it better, the cocaine addict in "Sabotage" is played by Chris Parnell, a former cast-mate of Samberg's in SNL.
  • A Season 4 episode sees the precinct saved from being shut down by a swell of support from the online community. After FOX decided to cancel the show after Season 5, many fans online protested against it in a similar fashion, leading to the show being saved and picked up by Creator/NBC.
  • The first season had a cameo by Adam Sandler As Himself, where Jake mocks him for working on a supposedly "serious" movie. Jake would need to eat his words pretty fast with the release of the critically successful Uncut Gems.
  • In "The Box", Holt argues with a murder suspect about doctorates, ranting that medical practitioners co-opted the word "doctor". In 2020, Wall Street Journal columnist Joseph Epstein came under fire for an article criticising First Lady Jill Biden for calling herself a doctor, saying that it's not valid as she is a Doctor of Education.
  • Olga Merediz plays Julia Diaz, a tough, homophobic, controlling parent to Rosa, a tough, hardass police officer. She would reprise her role as Abuela Claudia in the film version of In the Heights, which also has Stephanie Beatriz as Carla. In stark contrast, Claudia is the neighborhood's kindly grandmother figure (the very kind of person Rosa would hate for being emotionally demonstrative), and Carla is a ditzy, feminine hairdresser, but still in a relationship with a woman (in a case of Queer Character, Queer Actor). Jimmy Smits (Victor Santiago, Amy's father) also plays a man with an overachieving daughter (Kevin Rosario, Nina's father). Lin-Manuel Miranda (David Santiago) played Usnavi (the protagonist of In the Heights) on Broadway, and the Piragua Guy in the movie.
  • In "The Tattler", Gina claims to have the script for "Thor 4: More Thor", claming that there's more full frontal in it. Come the reveal trailers for Thor: Love and Thunder, and not only are there literally more Thors (thanks to Jane Foster returning as the Mighty Thor) but one trailer even shows a scene where Thor is stripped down to nothing. More full frontal indeed!
  • Nathan Fillion's role as Mark Devereaux as Cole Tracker in the Show Within a Show cop show from "Serve And Protect". A year later, he'd go from playing an actor playing a cop to simply playing a cop on The Rookie.
• Hollywood Homely: Although most of the people who rag on Amy's supposed levels of attractiveness are self-absorbed, weird (e.g. Gina, who's both), or a work frenemy with secret feelings (Jake, of course), it's still jarring how much the characters on the show sometimes act like Amy isn't drop-dead gorgeous. For example, someone telling Jake and Amy in Season 6 that they're "both sevens" in terms of hotness. Melissa Fumero is conventionally beautiful by any measure and was even once voted the most beautiful woman from Cuba. That said, Amy is conspicuously super-nerdy and this may very well be a Casting Gag, as Fumero played a lot of glamorous Alpha Bitches from her years as a soap opera star.
• Ho Yay:
  • Detective Pembroke, 'the Vulture', seems to spend a lot of time talking about, slapping or generally thinking about Peralta's "big white ass". It's so far a one-way version, in that Peralta openly and virulently can't stand the Vulture and is clearly a bit discomforted by this.
  • In Season 3's "Yippie Kayak", the Vulture threatens to fire Terry for insubordination... and then talks about how Terry could then make a living as a model, "because, you know, you're shredded. And I respect that."
  • Peralta and Diaz are Boyle's fantasy threesome. Of cops on a case.
  • Peralta is really involved in Boyle's love life. And doesn't seem to mind watching him and his new fiancee turn the interrogation room into a "live sex show".
  • Peralta at one point asks a woman "Damn it Diane, what are you doing later?" and then asks a guy the same thing in the exact same tone of voice.
  • In "Beach House", when Amy has four drinks and "becomes a bit of pervert" she slaps Gina on the ass and says "You are a hot little piece." She's also the only one to visibly appreciate Rosa's black bikini still being clearly visible under her white t-shirt.
  • Jake occasionally shows an interest in how muscular/strong Terry is. The two also have ever increasing amounts of this in Season 3, culminating in Jake being treated as a third member of Terry's marriage as Sharon's 'god-husband'... and Terry's 'god-wife'.
  • Peralta's admiration of Holt takes a weird turn in Halloween IV, where Holt's competitive trash talk appears to turn Jake on a little.
  • In the same episode, Rosa and Amy are a perfect team, with Rosa 100% rolling with whatever crazy idea Amy has, even encouraging her nerdiness. At one point, she leans in close and tells Amy, "Come on. Show me the binder," and it almost sounds like she's trying to seduce her. (And since this is Amy, it totally works.)
  • As soon as Doug Judy enters the plot in The Fugitive, Jake's and Holt's case begins to play out like a kid whose parent doesn't approve of their new friend... or partner. Judy also describes Peralta to his brother as a "thirsty ass white bitch".
  • Jake, Charles and Terry spooning. Yeah, you read that right.
  • In The Jimmy Jab Games II, Jake seems oddly delighted to find out that Boyle is hung like a horse during a wardrobe malfunction.
• Informed Wrongness: Jake in Casecation. Jake is not ready for kids but Amy is pushing for it. Despite Jake making several good points, not to mention not being ready, he is treated like he is bad for it. Amy implying that she would leave him makes things much worse.
• I Knew It!: A lot of fans, particularly on Tumblr, guessed that Rosa is bisexual, and that the revelation about her personal life in 99 would be that she has a girlfriend. Naturally, they were delighted to be proven right.
• Jerkass Woobie: Peralta is a childish jackass, but only because his childhood was absolutely miserable and his father abandoned him at a young age. It's also hard not to feel sorry for him during the end of Season 1/beginning of Season 2 arc that sees him completely lovesick over Amy.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The detectives have dealt with criminals who have committed some of the most heinous crimes imaginable. Thanks to the show's half-hour format, however, few get any notable characterization, and as a result none of them are as detestable as the 99's gleefully crooked superiors, personified especially by Madeline Wuntch, Frank O'Sullivan, and "The Vulture", who have next to no redeeming qualities whatsoever and will jump at the chance to screw the 99 over for any petty reason.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • The series was well-received by the LGBT+ community from the get-go: in the opening episode, Holt was introduced as an older gay African-American character who has finally risen to the position of Captain, despite facing prejudice due to his race and sexuality. Captain Holt is shown to be Happily Married; very active as a community organizer for LGBT+ and POC police officers (he even heads up the organization for NYPD officers who are both, even though to start with there were only three members); and scarily good at his job, despite facing criticism that any promotion he received always looked like diversity hiring.
  • In Season 5, Rosa came out as bisexual. Even greater popularity was gained as she's played by a bisexual actor; that she's another (still comparatively rare) LGBT+ main character of color; and that the show became the first US prime-time comedy to have a character use the word "bisexual" to self-describe.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Doug Judy is the Pontiac Bandit, an affable car thief known for stealing 200 cars. Making himself known to Jake by pretending to be an informant, Doug sends Jake on a goose chase to the barber Doug framed, while he slips past him unnoticed. When Doug unexpectedly encounters Jake, he gives him the drug manufacturer of giggle pig in exchange for a four-star hotel suite where he collaborates with the suite's waiter on his escape, with Jake being too busy capturing the manufacturer. When Doug learns of a hitman trying to kill him he contacts Jake for help, making sure to meet Jake on a cruise ship, where Jake has no jurisdiction, escaping once Jake catches the hitman. Doug later helps Jake capture Doug's adopted brother in exchange for full immunity of his crimes. Getting Jake’s attention again by holding hostages, Doug gets Jake involved in a plan to rescue his mother from a drug lord before escaping once more. Upon getting engaged to a judge who wants Doug to uninvite his criminal friends, Doug gets Jake involved in his bachelor party knowing that Jake will get his friends arrested, resulting in Doug avoiding having to uninvite them directly. Always being Jake’s most elusive adversary, Doug Judy’s master planning was only matched by his unlimited charm.
  • Trudy Judy is the younger sister of Doug Judy. Turning to crimes for the fun of it, Trudy eventually discovers Doug's old notebooks, and decides to follow his footsteps as a car thief. After being caught, Trudy takes advantage of her brother offering to capture an arms dealer she stole a Ferrari from in exchange for Trudy's charges being reduced. Having an employee of hers act as if he bought the stolen car, Trudy manipulates Doug into arguing with Terry, distracting them from noticing that her employee placed a bomb in the Ferrari. She later sets off the bomb when the car is being delivered, and uses the chaos to sneak away without facing any charges. With an attitude as playful as her brother's, Trudy earns the distinction of being the first person to outwit Doug Judy.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Expect any mention of the series online to be greeted with several answers of "NINE NINE!", especially after being Un-Cancelled.
  • While most lines in the show could qualify, given the rise of crossover blogs on Tumblr, using quotes from the show on caps of other shows, Jake's response of "Cool motive. Still murder." from "Unsolvable" gets special mention for being used to reference everything from comic books to Game of Thrones.
  • "Guess who just got MURDERED!" gets quoted a lot, especially when a hated character on a TV show dies. Again, Game of Thrones was popular with this.
  • Diaz's views on pet ownership:
    I've only had Arlo for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.
  • Holt's Comically Serious scenes have led to a proliferation of .gifs of him used as reaction memes. These are documented under Fountain of Memes.
  • It's never been confirmed, but there are many moments throughout the show that hint that Jake may be bisexual. Fans who support this interpretation, particularly on Tumblr, started discussing ideas for an episode where we would meet an ex-boyfriend played by John Mulaney, and the concept (usually containing references to Mulaney's own memetic stand-up routines) has become a running joke in that section of the fanbase.
  • Jake and the line-up singing I Want It That Way. It even has it's own subreddit!
  • Jake playing an off-key guitar while yelling has also become one.
  • "That's on me, I set the bar too low" from when Zooey Deschanel makes a guest appearance as her character from New Girl. The usual setup involves Jess asking Peralta to list something that the latter answers pretty easily, which results in her giving the line.
  • As the show approached its finale in Season 8, it was popular to reference Terry's "I'm in denial" scene from "Suicide Squad".
• Mis-blamed: There are fans who inexplicably blame Disney's planned acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox for FOX's decision to cancel the series despite being a fan favorite. This completely ignores the facts that a) the FOX network isn't part of the sale due to FCC regulations, b) the series was produced by Universal Television, and not 20th Century Fox Television, which meant that FOX wouldn't see any syndication royalties for the show, and c) the show was consistently bleeding viewers and advertisers each season, and it would've eventually led to the point that keeping the series on would be financially undesirable for the network. With all that in mind, even if the deal with Disney hadn't come into play, the series would've had no shot of staying on the network for a sixth season, and FOX was perfectly content with letting NBC pick up a sixth season.
• Moe: Amy's Adorkable attempts at impressing Holt. And anything else that doesn't come under her badass moments, pretty much.
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize:
  • In Serve & Protect, did anyone believe they brought in Nathan Fillion for a side role? To no one's surprise, he was the culprit.
  • Ticking Clocks has Sean Astin guest-star as an IT expert who helps Holt track down a hacker. Said hacker? Played by none other than Sean Astin!
• One-Scene Wonder: The "I Want It That Way" Cold Open, which has a perp line up sing "I Want It That Way" in sequential order with surprisingly good harmony... until the killer is identified, swiftly followed by the Mood Whiplash, which spawned a huge fan following due to the ridiculous nature of the scene. Not only is it the most viewed video on the official channels (for any perspective, most of the videos are 400k — 2 Million views, the "I Want It That Way" clip has 18 million views.), it has its own subreddit, and the song is so synonymous with Brooklyn Nine-Nine fans that the official song upload, as well as covers and parodies, are now inundated with quotes from the scene in the comments sections.
• Out of the Ghetto: Several left-leaning fans of the show have semijokingly called it "the only good cop show" online and in memes.
• Pop Culture Holiday: September 9th (9/9) is observed by fans as "Nine-Nine Day".
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • Peraltiago = Jake Peralta + Amy Santiago. It even gets mentioned in Season 5
  • Dianetti = Rosa Diaz + Gina Linetti
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Shaun Ricker makes a cameo in a Cutaway Gag in "The Boyle-Linetti Wedding" as one half of a couple Terry marries in a gym. Wrestling fans know him nowadays as LA Knight.
  • A pre-SNL Pete Davidson appears in "The Slump" as one of the at-risk teenagers.
  • Jack Reacher actor Alan Ritchson played as "Young Scully" in the episode "Hitchcock and Scully."
• Seasonal Rot: Season 8 suffered a tonal clash as the series attempted to address the Black Lives Matter Movement protests, institutional deficiencies in policing, and the COVID-19 Pandemic while also maintaining its usual brand of breezy humor. This also shook up the characters so that Rosa left the precinct, Charles' characterization leaned harder on his Innocently Insensitive nature, and Holt and Kevin plunged into relationship drama. Jake, meanwhile, suddenly decided to let Doug Judy flee, despite Judy committing multiple felonies, despite always being a character who'd enforce the law even if it comes at a personal cost. These sudden changes and the need to wrap it all up in a shortened season made it difficult for some long-time fans to watch.
• Signature Scene:
  • Captain Holt's epic rant against Rosa, particularly him shouting "BONE" in Skyfire Cycle.
  • The Backstreet Boys cold open, which has more than double the views of any other video on the Brooklyn 99 YouTube channel despite being a later-season sequence. It even got an oral history feature in GQ.
    Top comment: This scene has a separate fanbase.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Being a show not normally reliant on SFX, it gets glaringly obvious in "Operation Broken Feather", from Boyle's coffee spill to the gas grenade going off indoors.
  • In "M.E. Time", the mirror that Jake breaks has reflections in one shot but shows an empty room in the next.
  • When "Game of Boyles" initially aired there were several scenes of Pappy Boyle where the green glove worn to mask out his missing hand was not digitally removed. This error made it's way to Netflix, as well.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • Brooklyn Nine Nine follows the tradition of cop comedies like Barney Miller and lovingly lampoons cop dramas like... about 50% of the shows on television.
  • With its humor and light drama and focus on a precinct of underfunded and undisciplined cops, this show is pretty much Patlabor only without any giant robots or sci-fi elements.
  • With the presence of outlandish quirks and a newcomer in the pilot (except the wild card's the one already on the team), you could easily say it's Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger (itself intended as Homage to the same gritty cop shows that B99 also homages) without giant robots or sci-fi.
  • Much as Parks and Recreation was initially conceived as a sort of public-sector version of The Office (US), it's easy to see B99 as the law enforcement successor to Parks and Rec — this time with the focus on the goofy-but-good-hearted Andy Dwyer character (Jake) rather than the hard-working stickler Leslie Knope (Amy).
  • On that note, B99 is basically The Office but with cops.
• Stoic Woobie: Holt, not so much in the present but in his backstory. He downplays it and never seems anything other than impassive, but it's pretty clear that being black, gay, and a cop could not have been pleasant for him. He does get a few Not So Stoic moments, such as in "Johnny and Dora" when he is clearly broken-hearted and at one point almost breaks down while informing the precinct of his forced transfer, but the stoicism regarding his past never wavers.
• Strangled by the Red String:
  • Rosa's relationship with Holt's nephew Marcus in the second season comes off like this. The relationship is supposedly one of the most significant that Rosa's ever had and she is apparently deeply attached to him. However Marcus wasn't ever a big part of the show or interesting when he was, and with Rosa being The Stoic means the relationship fell flat and never gained any popularity.
  • Season 3 has Rosa very suddenly fall in love with Adrian Pimento shortly after his introduction. He's weird and creepy so it's believable that Rosa would have a thing for him, but the leap from just met to getting married is jarring. Their whirlwind romance ends up being the catalyst for the season-ending cliffhanger, as the Nine-Nine ends up banding together to protect Adrian from a mob hit. One can easily get the impression that the relationship was introduced to keep the audience from wondering why the rest of the precinct would come together so easily in support of an officer they barely know, who is a loose cannon they feel incredibly uncomfortable around. Then they break up early in Season 5.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Jake's half-sister Kate never appears after her initial appearance despite being pretty happy to meet Jake and start a relationship. None of Jake's other half-siblings are ever mentioned either.
  • Officer Debbie Fogle immediately became popular when introduced in Season 7, with fans enjoying her odd quirks, compelling backstory, and interactions with Holt and Boyle during the first two episodes. This left a lot of people disappointed when she was revealed as a dirty cop out of nowhere and arrested in only the fifth episode of the season. This was especially surprising since adding a Naïve Newcomer to the team seemed like it would have been a much more interesting plotline in the long term, especially as the show has frequently used the "guest officer turns out to be corrupt" plotline.
  • Also from Season 7, Captain Julie Kim, who is introduced in the second episode as Holt's replacement for the duration of his demotion to beat cop. Despite several of the characters having suspicions about her motives, she nonetheless comes across as an extremely likeable Reasonable Authority Figure, who feels like she'd be a good fit for the ensemble, then pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here at the end of the episode. Terry ends up as acting captain for a few more episodes before Holt is restored to his normal position. This begs the question of why they didn't pick Kim or Terry to just do the job the whole time.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The final episode of Season 1 hints that Deputy Commissioner Podolski is in the pocket of a Mafia drug syndicate that Jake goes undercover to investigate, but it never comes up on the second season and we never see Podolski again.
  • The first episode of Season 2 sees Jake despondent because he only managed to secure the arrest of sixteen of his seventeen targets while undercover. The end of the episode shows him once again barely missing out on catching the guy, and seemed to be setting up an arc with Jake trying to track down his final suspect. It's never even mentioned again.
  • Amy being caught between her Detective Squad and her new squad of officers in Show Me Going had a lot of potential, but was quickly sidelined for the active shooter plot.
  • Jake, Charles, and Amy are being stalked by a cult, but none of them seem to mind despite the fact that they're powerful enough to hire "contractual security."
  • In the episode before "Undercover", we only see Jake introducing himself to the Mafia. We never see his adventures in the Mafia, how he became good friends except in the form of flashbacks and Cutaway Gags.
  • Holt's demotion in Season 7 could have been a good way to show him being forced to experience police work in a different rank and maybe make him feel humble about the work everyone else does. However, it's only ever shown in two episodes, and halfway through the season, he becomes captain again after Wuntch unexpectedly dies off-screen.
  • The first episode of season 5 has Holt and Terry visiting Rosa in prison. Rosa tells them that nobody likes cops so she had to start a bunch of riots to earn the other inmates' respect. This has had some fans wishing they could've seen Rosa's prison adventures along with Jake's.
  • In Season 8, Rosa leaves the NYPD because she's become disillusioned to the police brutality, particularly to Latinos. Considering that Rosa herself was often the most violent of the squad (even implying in the Season 5 finale she would use police brutality to find Amy's veil), it might have been an interesting opportunity to comment on her own tendencies and how being an officer enabled that, which would have made the plotline a little more nuanced.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Jake in Season 2. Most of the time whenever he screws up, he has to go through hell to make it up, no matter how minor the offense. No one else has to do this in the show, making Jake's Butt-Monkey status rather unfair.
  • Defense lawyers for murder suspects. Special props to Phillip's lawyer in "The Box" who goes This Is Gonna Suck in a Freeze-Frame Bonus when Jake successfully baits Phillip into confessing that he murdered his partner by monologuing. Yeah, she is defending an alleged murderer but is just doing her job.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • In the first season, Charles' unrequited attraction to Rosa was obviously supposed to paint him as a Dogged Nice Guy, but his constant comments were enough to qualify as workplace sexual harassment in the real world. Luckily the writers accepted the criticism and quickly and quietly reworked their relationship entirely.
  • Captain Holt can cross this many times, such as "The Wednesday Incident" where he lashes out at everyone, particularly Jake after fending off unidentified muggers. Even when he emotionally hurts his husband, he still blames Jake. It makes him look more like an Easily Forgiven Jerkass than genuinely sorry after everything got fixed at the end. Halloween II especially makes it seem like he goes overboard in humiliating Jake to the point where the latter had to walk on cut glass trying to get his car back. Jake is a Graceful Loser about it, but Holt's planning makes him come across as overly petty since all Jake did was annoy him the year before.
  • Gina gains this most of the time. In "The Ebony Falcon", Gina's apartment is broken into. She starts out by demanding that Holt calls the FBI because she doesn't think that anyone at the precinct is good enough to help her, she spends the entire investigation belittling those who are helping her, and then when Amy and Rosa admit that they're struggling to find a lead, she issues a formal complaint because she isn't getting special treatment. We're then meant to feel sorry for her when it's revealed that she's scared, and that's somehow supposed to excuse her awful and unprofessional behaviour.
  • In "USPIS", Rosa comes across as this. She forces Jake to work with Jack Danger, an agent for the United States Postal Inspection Service. Danger is The Load bordering on The Millstone that damages their case repeatedly (once out of pettiness, the rest out of sheer incompetence) and Jake is absolutely right to criticize her decision to force him and Danger to work together, despite her being in charge of the case and insisting they need him. Instead, the episode frames it as though Jake is being a Manchild who's leveraging his friendship with Rosa to get his way.
  • When Jake and Sophia break up, we're supposed to understand that her reasons for doing so are because lawyers and cops are simply incompatible, and that her dating Jake has led to her being the victim of harassment from her boss in the form of not giving her any good cases. The problem is that the final straw for her is that Jake arrested her boss over a legitimate crime and instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt, she ignores the obvious evidence and comes in to act as his attorney, which ends up making her come off as someone willing to get known criminals off the hook if they can benefit her like how most the cops on the show see attorneys like her. Not helping matters is that she's pinning all the blame of Jake for just doing his job, whereas he was fairly understanding about her wanting to put their relationship on hold for her job, with the worst he did in response being trying to get closer to her boss so he'll be a bit more lenient on her.
  • While Gina's actions in "The Tattler" were noble, justified and ultimately helped Jake in the long run, she also decided not to tell Jake that she was the real Tattler when he was falsely accused for it in high school (and people were still calling him that at the 20th high school reunion) for twenty years. Jake had the right to be understandably angry at her for it considering how it deeply affected him, his reputation and his senior year experience (and that's not getting into how it could've affected him mentally) and yet she's still forgiven anyway.
  • In "Casecation", Jake and Amy have an argument about having kids in the near future. Amy wants to have kids, and Jake doesn't. Although their arguments as to why Jake doesn't want children, (while Amy does) are extremely well reasoned and justified, (Jake believes he'll be a bad father like his father was and that having children will forever disrupt their careers; especially Amy's. Holt as their mediator keeps giving argument wins to Amy. Many people thought that Amy's ultimatum towards Jake was extremely out of character and very mean-spirited. She basically told Jake "Change your mind about having kids right now, or I'll divorce you." Not helped at all by Rosa, who, while talking privately with Amy, proposes that she (Rosa) should bully Jake into changing his tune, nor does Amy earn any points by admitting to Rosa that she purposefully lied about one of her arguments so that her arguments would trump Jake's.
  • Sam, Rosa's Little Brother from Brooklyn Big Brothers, in The Mattress. She is understandably furious at Sam for shoplifting a phone and she threatens to punish him to the full extent of the law. Terry spends the whole episode pestering Rosa into letting Sam off with a warning on the grounds that "He's just a kid.". Sam's age is irrelevant and doesn't change the fact that he intentionally stole something, which would reflect badly on Rosa as his mentor (it could also look like Sam was getting special treatment if he didn't get punished because his mentor was a cop). Rosa is shown as being in the wrong, with her pressing charges being called Disproportionate Retribution. In the end, Rosa relents and lets Sam off with a slap on the wrist, because she doesn't want him to quit the Big Brother program because of her doing her job and punishing him for breaking the law.
  • While everyone grabs the Jerkass Ball in the Heists specials, some felt that Amy setting up fake therapy sessions for Jake to spy on what he has to say was crossing a line, given how much the show has emphasized how hard it has being for Jake to open up to others and seek for professional help, this would have being a major violation to his privacy that could lead him to go back to stage one.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Hitchcock and Scully. Those Two Guys are hated by the other characters but popular with fans, especially Scully. In Season 6, they are Promoted to Opening Titles and get their own A Day in the Limelight.
• Wangst: Gina in "Sabotage". While Holt might have been a bit blunt in informing her that he and Sgt. Jeffords hadn't attended her dance-group performance and suggesting that her dancing is a hobby, Gina reacts to it as if she's been told by a doctor that she's going to lose all use of her legs. Granted, Gina's melodramatic flouncing is itself largely played for laughs, but both Jeffords and Holt act as if Holt's comments were a major insult that he has to atone for rather than Gina reacting to his comments way too dramatically.
• The Woobie:
  • "Six-drink Amy" is so pathetic even Gina can't help but take pity.
  • The second season isn't very kind to Peralta. Roughly in order: he's rejected by the woman he has a crush on (Santiago) because she was in a relationship with someone else. He spent several weeks unsuccessfully trying to get over her with several failed dates, only making himself miserable in the process. He finally met another woman he really clicked with (Sophia), only for her to break up with him both because he arrested her boss and because it turned out she wasn't that into him, after he'd ended up developing some serious feelings for her as well. So essentially, he's been smacked with All Love Is Unrequited twice. He was also once again outwitted by the Pontiac Bandit, had a major falling out with his best friend, had his debts to his work colleagues come back to bite him, and lost the Halloween bet to Captain Holt after almost all of his friends betrayed him (although admittedly the latter was Played for Laughs and Jake himself was apparently "turned on" by it). His dad also came back and took advantage of him being a detective and he was also kidnapped by Sophia's boss. He didn't even get to have a dance with his childhood sweetheart and had to watch as she passed him over for someone else again. And then he sustains multiple serious injuries twice in less than a month ("AC/DC"). By the end of the season, you kind of just want to reach through the screen, give the boy a hug, and after wards, bitch slap everyone who did him wrong in the second season.
  • Rosa becomes one in "Into the Woods", when she tearfully confesses to Holt that she's genuinely afraid that she might never find love, seeing as she couldn't make it work with an actual Nice Guy like Marcus. It comes back in "Game Night", when her parents refuse to accept her coming out to them. She finds love a few more times in the series, but they don't last for her.
  • It’s really hard not to feel sorry for Terry. He apparently grew up with no friends and a strict and uncaring father. Early in his career, he became the laughing stock of his old precinct, to the point they are still bullying him about it twenty years later, due to one ridiculous claim made in a moment of blind panic. He went through a period where he developed a massive eating disorder and got extremely overweight, so much so that he’s still incredibly conscious about his body to this day. Before the beginning of the series, the sheer amount of stress he was under, combined with his fears of dying on the job and leaving his new-born daughters fatherless, caused him to have two separate panic attacks that put him out of active duty for several months and left him a nervous wreck. He has spent years putting up with his brother-in-law Zeke undermining him in his own home. Not to mention the fact he’s also the one who always has to supervise the squad and clean up everyone’s messes, putting him under yet more stress. Not to mention all of the inappropriate behaviour and sexual harassment he had to deal with from Gina on multiple occasions (touching him inappropriately, objectifying him, making sexual remarks or comments) despite being a married man with kids. The fact that after all of this he’s still such a gentle, caring, hardworking, Nice Guy makes it even worse.
  • Luanne from "The Crime Scene". A single mother who had a minor falling out with her son, only to see him murdered. Her story combined with the actress's performance is a major Tear Jerker.

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