Literature / Haruhi Suzumiya

L - R: Kyon, Yuki Nagato, Haruhi Suzumiya, Mikuru Asahina, Itsuki Koizumi.

"I have no interest in ordinary humans. If there are any aliens, time travelers, sliders or espers here, come join me. That is all."

— Haruhi Suzumiya

Haruhi Suzumiya is a series of Light Novels by Nagaru Tanigawa, featuring illustrations by Noizi Ito.

The title character is a first-year high school student (equivalent to 10th grade or sophomore year in the USA) with a reputation for being beautiful, athletic, intelligent, and extremely eccentric. Seeking to dislodge a feeling of restless dissatisfaction with the world, Haruhi declares to her class that she is completely uninterested in befriending ordinary humans, and would instead prefer to know more fantastic beings such as aliens, time travelers, espers, and the like.

Having tried joining every school club and found them wanting, Haruhi is inspired by her classmate Kyon to start her own school club: the "SOS Brigade", a club devoted to hunting down the fantastic and supernatural beings hiding in the world, and having fun with them. She drags numerous students into the club as well: Yuki Nagato (a quiet bookworm who was already using the room that Haruhi hijacked for her club); Mikuru Asahina (a timid second-year student forcefully recruited to be the club mascot); Itsuki Koizumi (an affable transfer student mainly recruited to fulfill the Mysterious Transfer Student trope); and Kyon himself.

As Kyon's sleepy life is turned upside down by Haruhi's capricious, unpredictable, and sometimes dangerous whims, he soon learns of an explosive secret that must be kept from Haruhi at all costs.

The story is notable for having no definite genre; it convincingly uses comedy, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, romance and Slice of Life in one of the most typical anime settings—an ordinary high school—to tell a story about growing up and changing into a better person. The SOS Brigade is made up of five members that represent a spectrum of anime character types, both in their identities as high school students and their secret identities...

A "counterpoint series", which is unrelated except for the (authorized) use of the Haruhi name, also exists, called There Is No Haruhi In My Classroom.

---

The novel series contains the following titles:

1. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yūutsu) (JP June 2003/EN May 2009)
2. The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Tameiki) (JP September 2003/EN October 2009)
3. The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Taikutsu) (JP December 2003/EN July 2010)
4. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Shōshitsu) (JP July 2004/EN November 2010)
5. The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Bōsō) (JP October 2004/EN June 2011)
6. The Wavering of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Dōyō) (JP March 2005/EN November 2011)
7. The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Inbō) (JP August 2005/EN June 2012)
8. The Indignation of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Fungai) (JP May 2006/EN November 2012)
9. The Dissociation of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Bunretsu) (JP April 2007/EN June 2013)
10. The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya (First) (Suzumiya Haruhi no Kyōgaku (Zen)) (JP May 2011/EN November 2013)
11. The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya (Last) (Suzumiya Haruhi no Kyōgaku (Go)) (JP May 2011/EN November 2013)^note  Yes, this is volume 11, not 10b. However, the English translation was released as a single volume.
12. The Intuition of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Chokkan) (JP/EN November 2020)
13. The Theater of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekijou) (TBD)^*Compiles the short stories "Haruhi Suzumiya Theater" and "The Return of Haruhi Suzumiya Theater", which were both published in the now-defunct light novel magazine The Sneaker and previously did not receive a rerelease

An additional short story "Rainy Day" was released with The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya.

All the novels so far are available in English from your local online bookseller, and previews of the first three can be read at the English novel/manga website.

An anime series by Kyoto Animation which is based on parts of the novels was released in 2006, titled after the first novel. Cries for a second season seemingly went unanswered until mid-2009, when several brand-new episodes popped up in the middle of a supposed re-run of the first season (this time done in chronological order). These new episodes constitute the "second season", and are interspersed among the old episodes according to where they chronologically belong in the plot. An English dub of the series was produced by Bandai Entertainment, showcasing five of the most well-known names in ADR acting.

Novel four (The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya) received a movie adaptation (Trailer). The movie was also licensed by Bandai Entertainment. Following Bandai Entertainment's closure, the series is now licensed by Funimation.

The anime features the following stories (in chronological order):

• The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (first season, six episodes)
• "The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya" (from Boredom; first season, one episode)
• "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody" (from Boredom; second season, one episode)
• "Mystérique Sign" (from Boredom; first season, one episode)
• "Remote Island Syndrome" (from Boredom; first season, two episodes)
• "Endless Eight" (from Rampage; second season, eight episodes)
• The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya (second season, five episodes)
• "The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00" (from Wavering; first season, one episode)
• "Live Alive" (from Wavering; first season, one episode)
• "The Day of Sagittarius" (from Rampage; first season, one episode)
• "Someday in the Rain" (an anime original written by Tanigawa himself; first season, one episode)
• The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (theatrical film)

Both seasons were formerly on Crunchyroll, and the series was picked up by Funimation after Crunchyroll's rights expired. Funimation is releasing an "Ultimate Collectors Edition" DVD set of the full series, including episodes of Haruhi-chan, ~Nyoron Churuya-chan, and a fair chunk of Disappearance of Nagato Yuki Episodes. They have also been licensed the movie, though it isn't a part of the aforementioned collection.

The series has spawned the following Spin Offs:

• A manga adaptation by Gaku Tsugano (there was an earlier adaptation by Makoto Mizuno that was discontinued/disowned after one volume)
• Haruhi-chan: A self-parody gag manga and its anime adaptation.
• Nyoron Churuya-san: Another gag manga and its anime adaptation.
• The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan: A manga featuring Yuki Nagato as main character of a romantic Slice of Life comedy. It received an animated adaptation in 2015.
• The Intrigue of Itsuki Koizumi: A manga about Koizumi.
• The Celebration of Haruhi Suzumiya: An anthology manga penned and illustrated by various third-party creators.
• The Misfortune of Kyon & Koizumi: A third-party anthology with stories about Kyon and Koizumi.

As you might be able to tell from the length of this page, the anime in its first season became a smash hit both domestically and internationally, where it's been compared to similar ensemble absurdist comedies like Monty Python's Flying Circus. It spawned unthinkable levels of praise, with resulting amounts of Hype Backlash, a globe-spanning Cash-Cow Franchise, with fans from Japan to America to Britain to Russia to Palestine, probably the largest body of backlash in the history of all anime, and made Kyoto Animation a household name.

The books vary between several short stories and one novel, and have their differences from the anime. Usually because of the time limit the anime has, it compresses Kyon's narration process as well as the romantic focus and the character insight one would usually get from the novels, at the cost of saving comedy and the plot. While the plot alone is interesting, it leaves many actions and motives to the interpretation of the reader (often triggered by Kyon being an Unreliable Narrator), which makes you think about it long after you finish the book. However, the realistic Character Development of the Brigade members is also impressive.

If you check out the character sheet, please beware of spoilers, even if you've finished the anime.

---

The Tropes of Haruhi Suzumiya:

#-E

• 12-Episode Anime: Plus two, originally. The second season's episodes (also presumably a 12-Episode Anime) are interspersed in the rerun of the first season, making it twenty-eight in total.
• 20% More Awesome: In The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon declares that Haruhi's ponytail makes her "36% more charming."
• Absurdly Powerful Student Council:
  • In the novels, Itsuki creates one to give Haruhi a foil and thus something to do. It quickly gets filled with members of at least two of the factions.
  • It's inverted before that, for the first half of the year, with the student council taking no action against the SOS despite their occupation of the Literature Club room and occasional other disruptive activities.
  • In Disappearance, Haruhi claims she's from the "Student Council Information Division" to convince Mikuru to go with her. Invoking the name of the Council is persuasive, as is dragging Mikuru away when she hesitates.
• Adam and Eve Plot: Brought up by Itsuki at the end of the first season. Kyon is not amused.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: An interesting case. In the original novels, Mikuru had chestnut-brown hair, Yuki had flat-gray hair, and Haruhi's hair was black. In the anime Mikuru's hair became bright orange, Yuki took up a few shades of purple, and Haruhi's hair became brown. But after the anime's release, in the later novels, Ito starts to use brown hair for Haruhi (though she retains Mikuru and Yuki's brown and gray).
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • "Endless Eight" was originally just one of three short stories in The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya. The anime adaptation stretches it out to eight episodes, which all depict the exact same events and dialogue but are animated differently.
  • The movie adaptation of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya has some shades of this as well. One notable example is Kyon's choice of "normal world vs. paranormal world", which was only about two pages long in the novel, but was expanded into an inner-conflictesque scene that lasted at least a good five or six minutes.
• Agent Mulder/Agent Scully:
  • Cleverly played with. At first, it seems pretty obvious that Kyon is our Scully, and Haruhi is our Mulder. However, Kyon just keeps running into too much weirdness to deny that any of it exists, and by the end of Disappearance, he's become a willing, full-blown Mulder who is more than happy to do what he can to keep his friends safe by confronting all the weirdness in his life — and he openly admits he wouldn't have it any other way.
  • Meanwhile, with Haruhi... Kyon eventually confronts Haruhi over the fact that there really is a time traveler, an alien, and an esper in her club. Her deep-rooted cynicism, however, prevents her from even vaguely taking Kyon at his word.
• Aliens Are Bastards: Every single alien except Yuki, and she has her moments.
• All Just a Dream: Subverted in the "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya VI," and discussed by Itsuki in "Sigh V."
• All Love Is Unrequited:
  • In one case, at least. It's strongly suggested in Disappearance that Itsuki likes (or even loves) Haruhi, and is depressed that she will never look at him the way she looks at Kyon.
  • The same is (probably) true for Mikuru and Yuki towards Kyon, as well as Kyon with his unspoken crush on Mikuru.
  • The reason for all this is The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life of course.
• All Psychology Is Freudian:
  • Kyon, when he wakes up from his "dream" in episode VI. Especially since the music playing during the "dream" was by someone who had sought Freud's advice (Gustav Mahler).
    Kyon: What kind of dream was that?! Sigmund Freud's gotta be laughing at me!
  • On a different sub and the English version of the first book:
    Kyon: Freud would have a field day with this!
• All There in the Manual: You're not going to understand everything in the anime if you're entirely unfamiliar with the books. Then again, you might not even if you have read them...
• Alternate Timeline: Beginning in The Dissociation of Haruhi Suzumiya, the narrative splits into two parallel timelines (which Itsuki later designates as timelines α and β, respectively): α starting off with Kyon getting a call from an unknown girl, and β with Kyon getting a call from Sasaki. Accordingly, the concurrent stories begin to snowball as the conflict rises, until ultimately being reunited by the end of Surprise.
• Alternate Universe:
  • The subject of Disappearance, at first glance. It's actually the same universe with a different timeline.
  • While Haruhi wants to meet a slider, Kyon has stated that this is the one type who offers no advantages. So far he wins.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Every single character, including Kyon. In-Universe this shows up a couple of times in Kyon's conversations with Itsuki. For example in Astonishment they debate whether Haruhi's unwillingness to be late is about making Kyon wait or simply about arrogance.
• Always Late: Haruhi has a rule for SOS Brigade meet-ups that whoever is the last to arrive for the day's activity is "late" and receives a penalty - usually having to treat the rest of the Brigade to lunch. Unfortunately for Kyon, he is always the last person to arrive for every activity. No matter how early he shows up (and he's sometimes arrived as much as 20-30 minutes early), everyone else in the Brigade is already there waiting for him. Itsuki believes that it's because Haruhi wants Kyon to be the late one and is unconsciously using her Reality Warper powers to make it happen, making this an invoked example.
• Amateur Film-Making Plot: invoked There's an arc where the SOS Brigade makes a film for the school festival. The movie is an incoherent action flick that casts three members in roles suspiciously similar to their real-life powers. Mikuru stars as a time-traveling waitress, Yuki is an alien witch, and Itsuki is an Ordinary High-School Student with ESPer powers. Haruhi goes into full-on Prima Donna Director mode. The lack of a script, Haruhi's demands, and the intensification of Haruhi's Reality Warper powers (which lead to Mikuru developing laser eyes) make the whole thing a very Troubled Production.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • At the end of the first season (which in chronological order would be the sixth episode), it is left very vague as to whether Haruhi recreated the world or not. Kyon and Itsuki don't know either. There is really no way to know for sure, only that the events surrounding the moment when it would have occurred, if it did, really did happen.
  • Multiple explanations for various happenings are also presented. For example, Itsuki claims that Haruhi created the espers and either attracted time travelers and aliens or created them, while Mikuru says that Itsuki is lying and that the residents of the future have their own goals. Yuki refuses to say what the IDTE thinks because neither she nor the previous two have the slightest bit of proof that they can show to Kyon and any of the three could easily lie to him. And, of course, any of the three could just be wrong.
  • A big ambiguity that is touched on occasionally but never truly addressed is whether Haruhi is a god or not. It's one of the early theories that Itsuki presented, and a large number of fans assume it to be the case, but even Itsuki himself doesn't know if it's true or not. He says it's just the worst case scenario that his Organization is acting on. Or at least that he claims it is acting on.
  • At the end of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, while Kyon and Yuki are having a moment together, Kyon says, "Yuki." She looks up in surprise, since he always calls her by surname, only to find him staring up at the sky, which has started snowing. "Yuki" is the Japanese word for "snow", thus it is ambiguous whether he really was calling her by given name or he was just pointing out the snow. The English dub keeps the ambiguity — after Yuki looks up and sees the snow, Kyon adds, "It means 'snow', right?"
• Anachronic Order:
  • The anime practically revolves around this, with in-joke references to events that have transpired but that aren't shown until later episodes — for example, having random items lying around the club room that are obtained in later (earlier?) episodes. Several episodes in the first season even include set-ups from earlier events whose episodes didn't get animated until the second season. Not as hard as it sounds, since the novels were written before the anime, but still shows very remarkable attention to detail on the animators' part.
  • "The Rebroadcasting of Haruhi Suzumiya" mixes old and new episodes (including Episode 00) in the order that Kyon experiences them — chronological for the most part, but not in every instance. Thus the so-called "second season" is, strictly speaking, neither a sequel nor a prequel to the first, but more of an "interleafquel".
  • The novels include this as well, though to a lesser degree (1, 2, 4 and 7-9 are in chronological order, 3 takes place between 1 and 2, and the stories in 5 and 6 are scattered between the end of 3 and the start of the main storyline in 7).
  • Also Haruhi is prone to making throw away lines whose real meanings are found on the other end of a time trip.
• Anchored Ship: The Love Dodecahedron seems to come down to this. (1) Haruhi likes Kyon. (2)And will subconsciously rewrite the universe out of jealousy. Kyon won't admit his (very apparent in the later novels) feelings for her and the second points keeps anything else from happening. Everyone seems more or less okay with the current situation.
• And I Must Scream: "Endless Eight". Yuki, who is supposed to be an Emotionless Girl (or at least really, really bad at expressing herself), is shown to be visually bored and possibly sad from having to re-live the same two weeks over and over again for over 595 years worth of time. (This reaction from her is comparable to a screaming hair-tearing fit from anyone else.) She's the only one who realizes that they're looping and she can't do a thing about it because her job is to "observe." Thankfully, for the viewers it's (only?) 8 episodes. Even more thankfully, for those that read the books it was only a few pages.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Kyon's little sister, to him at least. Everyone else seems to think she's adorable, but then again, that's how it often works out in Real Life.
• Anthropic Principle: Itsuki's explanation behind Haruhi's power.
• Apocalypse Day Planner
• Apocalypse How: The possibility of Haruhi having a bad day and unconsciously recreating the universe, or a certain someone hijacking Haruhi's power. The former seemed to be creating a new separate universe rather than rewriting the old one.
• Aside Glance: Kyon, when exasperated.
• Arc Number: The eight episodes of "Endless Eight."
• Arc Words: After a point, it starts to seem like every past-tense sentence in the Myth Arc contains the words "three years ago." Eventually subverted when Itsuki starts a sentence this way, and Kyon interrupts him with "Screw three years ago!" Dissociation takes place a year after Melancholy, so the Arc Words have appropriately changed to "four years ago."
• Artifact Title: For the anime at least, which takes the name of the first book. Those who haven't read the books will wonder why the show is called The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya, when she's anything but.
• Artificial Human: Yuki, Ryoko and the others of their kind.
• Ascended Meme: Nyoron Churuya-san.
• Aside Comment: Kyon closes The Movie with one.
• Asleep for Days: When Kyon resets the universe in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, he awakens in a hospital room, having apparently been sleeping away a bad concussion for days.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Tsuruya's fang.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: In Surprise/Astonishment Haruhi's subconscious beats the Anti-SOS brigade and solves the plot by herself. In the finale, she summons a giant in Closed Space while sleeping.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Despite arguing every other minute, Haruhi and Kyon are shown to care for each other. Any nagging doubts viewers had were killed by the movie. Kyon wakes up after spending three days in the hospital to find Itsuki, who tells him that the Brigade members have been taking shifts watching him. Haruhi, however, is curled up in a sleeping bag next to his bed, where she has been the entire time.
• Back from the Dead: In the tenth novel, Ryoko Asakura is granted a new body and used as a Boxed Crook to protect Kyon from Kuyo Suo. If you define "protecting Kyon" as "threatening to murder him yourself", that is.
• Badass Boast: "If anything happens to Yuki Nagato I will let all Hell break lose." Oh, Kyon...
• Bad "Bad Acting": The SOS Brigade's film. If you pay attention, some characters can be seen reading their dialogues. Of course, Haruhi says that they should win the Golden Palm, an Oscar, the Golden Bear and the Golden Lion.
• Barehanded Blade Block:
  • During the fight between Yuki and Ryoko, Ryoko dashes at Kyon with full force, blade extended. Yuki halts her charge by grabbing her combat knife by the blade. Subverted in that she takes visible damage.
  • Played straight by Kuyo Suo.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: "Which one of you is Mikuru Asahina? Hi, I'm Haruhi Suzumiya, from the Student Council Information Division. Please come with me!"
• Beach Episode: "Remote Island Syndrome".
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Mikuru, Yuki and Haruhi. Kyon thinks Mikuru's future self is supermodel level, Yuki is smarter than any human being, and Haruhi is the envy of all the athletes in the school.
• Beehive Barrier: One of the more tangible forms of Yuki and Ryoko's powers.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Kyon
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't threaten Yuki. Kyon doesn't like that:
    • When the Data Overmind considers erasing Yuki in Disappearance, Kyon threatens to reveal the entire Masquerade to Haruhi and have her rewrite the universe to save Yuki.
    • Then when the Heavenly Canopy Domain incapacitates Yuki in Surprise, Kyon storms off to confront their interface. Alone. And unarmed. It takes Asakura to save him, and even she only manages to fight Kuyo to a draw.
  • Considering how Haruhi reacted to Yuki's "illness", she is probably already very similar to Kyon in this aspect, towards the whole SOS brigade.
  • When Haruhi's abuse of Mikuru went too far and he was willing to punch her. Let's be clear, he was willing to deck GOD because she was being a jerkass.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: Kyon's unsuccessful attempt to explain the student film's plot; the irony here is that he did it this way on purpose to prevent Skepticism Failure.
• Between My Legs: In episode 00, there is one of these shots of Haruhi while she's standing on a table.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Kyon finally snaps and actually tries to punch Haruhi after she takes her abuse and assumed ownership of Mikuru too far during her movie's filming.
  • Mikuru is kind, sweet, and an utter doormat who is forcibly stripped and dressed up in various costumes by Haruhi, and who is given strict directives she can't understand from her superiors in her time travel organization. The most Mikuru ever manages in response is a high-pitched, desperate "noooooooo!" You may be surprised to find that she has a character song about her wish to have revenge on those who have used her as a toy and a pawn. And let's not forget the morally dubious things her future self does...
  • Sasaki claims she's an example of this, that she gets angry every few years and "It scares even me," but we don't actually see it.
  • Itsuki Koizumi is generally very polite and cheerful. However, near the end of Surprise, when Fujiwara threatens to kill Haruhi, Itsuki snaps.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Yuki saving Kyon from Asakura. And later Emiri (another Human Inteface) joins the fight between Suo and Asakura. It makes you wonder if basic training to be an extension of the Data Overmind includes learning how to pull this off.
  • Also Kyon does it for himself! Well, actually, it's Yuki again, but he does organize the rescue.
• The Big Damn Kiss Between Kyon and Haruhi, at the first season's climax.
• Big Damn Movie: The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.
• Big Eater: Of all people, Yuki Nagato is pointed out as being one.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Ryoko Asakura, not in a manner which is egregious, but definitely more so than the rest of the cast.
• Bishoujo Series: The series has posters and articles serialized in Megami, as well as far more bunnygirl Haruhi figures than any in her other outfits. Mikuru is a sendup of the whole concept.
• Black Comedy Rape: Haruhi's constant touchy-feely behavior towards Mikuru may not be rape in a strictly technical sense, but it is openly sexual and obviously very uncomfortable to the victim, and yet it's almost always Played for Laughs and/or Fanservice. After one such day of molestation, Mikuru even asks Kyon if he'll take her if she becomes "ruined for marriage".
• Bland-Name Product: Espon laptops, Sicao cameras, Kyon's Pumu bag, and the characters eat at WcDonalds and at a WOLKS family restaurant (inspired by VOLKS). Also done with brand logos: one episode shows a box with a logo shaped like an unbitten apple.
• Blatant Lies: Itsuki's entire explanation to Kyon about what happened during The Movie.
• Blessed with Suck:
  • Kyon is this and Cursed with Awesome for the largely the same reason. Pretty much everyone tells him that he has been "chosen" by Haruhi, but what this seems to entail in practice is that he is her Butt-Monkey.
  • Kyon eventually decides he has been blessed with awesome in the movie.
  • As the novel series has continued it has been hinted that Haruhi herself is entirely an innocent victim of Cursed with Awesome that Kyon has imposed on at least two instant goddesses.
  • Itsuki, it is cool that he can go into some other realm and use lasers to kill giants, but he can only use his powers in that other realm, and he can't do things other espers from other series can do like read minds or levitate.
• Bling of War: In "Day Of Sagittarius"
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma:
  • Yuki.
  • Kyon, too. Only its Blunt Simile Trauma: "Haruhi's endorphins ran through her brain like a hamster in a wheel at Mach 3", "the Celestial in Haruhi's Closed Space glowed blue like a luminescent fungus" and so forth.
    • This is topped off when, after Mikuru has been crying, Kyon narrates, "She exhaled like a dragonfly sighing. Not even I understand my metaphors anymore."
• Book Dumb: Kyon comes across as very smart and well-read (even though he isn't quite sure who William Shakespeare is, yet can perfectly describe his plays), but is barely above average in school, to the point that Haruhi's had to help him out with schoolwork.
• Book Ends: The second season ends with the screening of The Movie that opens the first season.
• Bookmark Clue: In The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon returns to the Literature Club room the next day and finds The Fall of Hyperion, which was the same book Yuki used to reveal her true identity in the The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Kyon opens the book and finds a bookmark which reads: "Program Run Condition: Collect the keys. Deadline: Two Days Later". Kyon is unsure about the message's significance and decides to heed Yuki's request to go to her apartment.
• Boomerang Comeback: Ryouko uses this technique with her knife against Kuyo Suo. It doesn't work.
• Bowdlerize: "Remote Island Syndrome" is changed from the book through the addition of Kyon's little sister, who in the novel attempted to come along, but was discovered and left at home. Once on the island, the SOS Brigade members avail themselves of as much alcohol as their host can muster, which can't be shown on Japanese TV, since the characters are still in high school. The TV show has them doing things appropriate for the presence of a grade-schooler instead. Minus the murder-mystery part, anyway. Though understandable, if you only watched the anime, it will cause a bit of confusion for the Disappearance movie. The movie is extremely close to the original novel, and even keeps Haruhi's line that went something like, "I'm never going to drink again." As she never drank in the anime in the first place, this creates a bit of a Noodle Incident by Plot Hole. The dub of the movie simply skirts the issue by having Haruhi say that she swore she would never drink ever in her life. (Which, according to the anime, is accurate.)
• Boxed Crook: In the tenth novel, Ryoko Asakura
• Boy Meets Girl: Essentially. Three years ago.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Asakura complains about how Haruhi is not doing anything interesting and talks to Kyon about whether or not it is all right to enact a change to get a result, even if it is dangerous, right before trying to stab Kyon with a knife to get a rise out of Haruhi — all without changing the pitch in her voice.
• Brick Joke:
  • When Kyon enters the clubroom after trying to punch Haruhi in Sigh, she's trying to put her hair in a ponytail, which she hasn't done since the last Melancholy episode.
  • In "Someday in the Rain", Haruhi wakes up Kyon and he asks if she drew on his face; in Disappearance, Kyon wakes up Haruhi and she asks if he drew on her face.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu / Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Subverted. Kyon and Sasaki's secret plan to deal with Fujiwara, Kyouko and Kuyo would have backfired horribly if Yasumi had not intervened.
• Bug Catching: Competitive cicada catching is one of the Endless Eight activities. Though, as Kyon points out, this is a weird activity for kids their age.
• Butt-Monkey: Sometimes Mikuru, sometimes Kyon, and always the poor, poor Computer Club President, though he's closer to The Chew Toy, as his endless torment is meant to be funny.
• Call-Back: The scene where the Brigade finally reunites in Disappearance is comically similar to their original meeting in Melancholy. The Stinger also features Yuki watching a little boy help a little girl get a library card, just like Kyon did for her. Mikuru's entrance into the Clubroom was practically exactly the same as her original entrance in "Melancholy".
• Call-Forward: ENOZ can be spotted in the first episode of Sigh.
• Canon Marches On: Emiri Kimidori's Image Song, which was released before the tenth volume of the light novel series, paints her as someone who wants to connect with humans and make friends but can't due to being a humanoid interface. However, the tenth volume reveals that she's actually largely indifferent to humanity and refuses to do anything that isn't ordered by the Entity, not even when Yuki's personal safety is at risk.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Averted by Haruhi, whose main specialty (considering the non-awareness of her own powers) seems to be beating this trope to death and beyond.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: Oh, man, Mikuru. It's worse in the anime, where she passes out after a bit of amazake (which is so weak you can give it to children) she was slipped for some Enforced Method Acting. Slightly more justified in the novel, where it's tequila, and in the dub, where they change it to sake.
• Can't Stand Them, Can't Live Without Them: Kyon and Haruhi's relationship gets this way, which comes to a head in Disappearance.
• Can't You Read the Sign?:
  • One of the repeated elements of Endless Eight: there is a "No Diving" sign in the public pool, and what does Haruhi do? She, obviously, dives. Which makes Kyon almost quote this trope (in his mind).
  • At least in the Sigh novel, Haruhi stands in front of a sign at a local shrine that says "Do Not Feed" and scatters bread crumbs across the shrine grounds.
• Care-Bear Stare: Haruhi's intention was to send her "warm energy" into Kyon. However, it was nothing but a scary Death Glare.
• Cassandra Truth: Kyon outright tells Haruhi that Itsuki, Mikuru, and Yuki really do have supernatural powers. Twisting Genre Savvy, she smiles sweetly and correctly guesses who has which powers — then promptly yells at Kyon for mocking her before storming out.
• Cats Are Magic: Shamisen, the calico cat. He (male calico cats being extremely rare) originally started as an ordinary cat, but was briefly given the ability of speech. This was because Haruhi believes witches need magical cats, and this belief altered reality and made Shamisen magical. She never finds out that Shamisen could talk, but was originally a little disappointed that he wasn't a black cat.
• Caught the Heart on His Sleeve:
  • Performed by Haruhi to avoid a Security Cling to Kyon's arm. Lampshaded by a possibly disappointed Kyon.
  • Also by Yuki to Kyon in Disappearance when he was about to leave her to have dinner alone with Asakura.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: A double entry when Kyon was closing the pictures of Mikuru's chest with star-shaped mole: He forgot to close the folder named "Mikuru". He also neglected to name the folder something other than the obvious "Mikuru".
• Character as Himself:
  • Ultra Director Haruhi Suzumiya!
  • Similarly, some of the real life creators are listed as members of the SOS Brigade. The credits have several other similar jokes.
  • In the English dub version the anime, the Series Compositors are credited as "HARUHI and HER FRIENDS".
• Character Catchphrase:
  • Mikuru — "Classified Information." Taken to absurd lengths in "Endless Eight": "I used classified information to contact the future or for classified information... But when I hadn't heard from classified information for a week I thought something was wrong. And then classified information... I was so shocked that I classified information, but there was no classified information... What should I do?" All while crying her heart out. It's a compulsion deliberately put into place by her superiors to prevent her from divulging sensitive information, even if she wanted to. Normally, she just avoids using the taboo words altogether, but here the mechanism repeatedly trips because she's too emotionally vulnerable to watch what she's saying.
    • However, the reader can rest assured she isn't saying anything actually important, as Kyon acknowledges Mikuru is literally saying 'classified information' as a self censor.
  • Haruhi — "I'm so bored!"
  • And then of course there's Kyon's "Yare yare" (translating to something like "good grief"/"oh my"/"oh well"). Sasaki said it first, and Kyon picked it up.
  • In the DVD's previews:
    Yuki: Watch it.
  • Lampshaded and subverted — in the first episode, Kyon notes that Haruhi has a habit of saying "totally", but the audience doesn't hear it enough for it to qualify as a catchphrase.
• Character Development:
  • The novels are primarily focused on the character development. It is often left to the readers' interpretation just how far the characters have changed within the progress of the story.
  • Best example, Yuki Nagato: From a stoic "machine-like" Extreme Doormat, to a person who is not only kind and caring, but also independent from her boss. Hell, her rampage in Disappearance because she developed feelings must not be forgotten. Furthermore, the relationship between her and Kyon gradually expands over the time, to the point where Kyon stated that no one would "shake the bell in him" quite like Yuki. Nagaru Tanigawa himself stated that he likes focusing on Yuki's development.
  • Haruhi: From a self-absorbed, misanthropic loner, to a cheerful and hot-blooded, yet still quite sociopathic jerk who doesn't really get what she's doing wrong... Eh, well, see Kick the Dog. Then, in the later novels, she has become far more sociable, even to strangers, and generally has come more to terms with "this boring world" (and has come Out of Focus).
  • Kyon: From an apathetic, cynic and distrustful Deadpan Snarker who cares little for anyone besides "his" Mikuru and tells himself that he hates the brigade, to a True Companions-guarding, occasionally-badass Knight in Sour Armor who freely admits that he's a member and would follow their commander Haruhi.
  • Mikuru: From a self-sacrificing group mascot who lets Haruhi do whatever she wants with her (Present Mikuru), to an assertive, empowered, and even morally ambigious woman who controls the situation from behind the scenes and is responsible for setting the entire plot in motion by masterminding Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody (Future Mikuru). The exact details of how this transformation takes place is somewhat sketchy (time travel is involved), but its seeds are present in some of the later novels.
  • Itsuki Koizumi: From being a vague, mysterious representative of the Organization whose interest in the group seems purely professional, to a person who genuinely cares very deeply for the the Brigade, even stating that if he had to, he would choose the SOS Brigade over the Organisation. Which means a lot, considering he's in charge of the Organization!
• Character in the Logo: Seen on some Light Novel covers as well in some images of the anime, Haruhi's silhouette can be seen standing on the logo, mostly along with the big "H".
• Chekhov's Gun: Offhandedly mentioned objects usually play an important role later in the light novel it is mentioned in or in the whole novel series itself.
  • KyoAni is very careful about this. Objects that serve a purpose in a story are seen in the club room WAY before the second season was made (ex.- the bamboo leaf potted plant). Even more interesting is the fact that a couple of these were retroactively added to the DVD release, which weren't present in the original broadcast. This video, based around changes between the broadcast and DVD release of "Remote Island Syndrome", where one of the changes made was adding the bamboo plant to the background.
  • The anime's adaptation of "Remote Island Syndrome" ends with a conspicuous close-up of a mole on Kyon's neck. This is popularly considered foreshadowing toward "Snowy Mountain Syndrome", where Itsuki encounters a doppelganger of Kyon. He has to have some kind of distinguishing mark, right?
  • Based on a hunch, Kyon tells Tsuruya to dig at a specific spot on her property. She finds a strange artifact buried hundreds of years ago by one of her ancestors, but made with materials and craftsmanship that ancient Japan (and the rest of the planet, for that matter) simply could not have had access to. Although they don't know what it is, Tsuruya agrees to keep it, and from then on will remind Kyon to call once he decides he needs it.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Seemingly minor characters, if named, will usually have some major significant role in the plot later in the series.
  • A rather major example would be a character so minor she isn't even directly mentioned. Sasaki, a friend of Kyon's from middle school, is mentioned offhand by Nakagawa as the precedent for Kyon "liking weird girls," which Kunikida had said in the first chapter of the first novel. She doesn't appear until the ninth novel, where it is revealed that she is the cause of that particular misconception. Once again, KyoAni is on the ball with this when in Disappearance Sasaki's name can be seen at the top of Kyon's cell phone address book (See Early-Bird Cameo below).
  • Kimidori. Tsuruya. The esper girl (though really, who thought she WOULDN'T come back up again?), Kyoko Tachibana. If they get a name and they're not Taniguchi or Kunikida, expect them to be important. Those two are probably only still unimportant so that they can be Those Two Guys... and the light novels aren't finished, so it's hard to know if it'll stay like that.
  • In a way, Kyon himself is a Chekhov's Gunman. To quote Haruhi's extremely inconspicuous line: "Have I met you somewhere before?" She has in fact met him before, and the encounter is what led her to North High. This is also invoked when Kyon wonders what criteria Haruhi used to pick her high school.
  • How inconspicious is it? In the anime, it makes sense in context of the conversation so much so that it can simply be taken as an example of Haruhi's eccentricity! (That and the fact that it's the stereotypical pick-up line in Japan...)
  • How many times have the characters made a point about not yet having a slider around?
  • There's also a really inconspicuous one in Disappearance. While reading out the class roster, Kyon also mentions the person before Haruhi, Sakanaka. Later on in the eighth novel, she appears as the second client of the SOS Brigade.
  • Remember Taniguchi's girlfriend in Disappearance whose absence in the Alternate Universe is Kyon's first hint that something is wrong? In volume 10, it turns out she's Kuyo Suo, the alien interface from the Heavenly Canopy Domain which opposes the Data Overmind. She was trying to establish contact with Kyon, but was unable to tell him apart from Taniguichi.
• Cherry Blossoms: The opening of the first chronological episode. Cherry blossoms are also at the center of an important event in Sigh, when they bloom in autumn just so Haruhi can have them in her movie. Kyon is also constantly telling us the time of the year and season (especially in the novels), which often involves evocative statements about whether the cherry trees have blossomed yet, are currently in blossom, or how long it has been since the blossoms fell.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Haruhi.
• Chess Motifs: The five members of the SOS brigade have trengths that resemble the abilities of the five chess pieces.
  • Haruhi (and other goddesses) are strategically as important as Kings and as tactically useless.
  • The data entities are the strongest in tactical combat, and can dominate the environment like a Queen in chess, but are unable to effectively coordinate with each other, have limited social skills, and can't heal closed spaces.
  • The espers hunt in packs and their ability to enter and heal closed spaces resembles knight moves in chess.
  • The time travelers can rapidly advance or withdraw, but like rooks in chess they have limited flexibility once deployed and can get trapped.
  • And ordinary human beings are pawns that get in the way of the others, but Kyon seems to be getting dangerously close to the final rank.
• Chick Magnet: Check the audience of the play at the school festival. Who are they there for?
• Childish Pillow Fight: In "Remote Island Syndrome" Haruhi is extremely good at it during the club trip. Just before the murder mystery starts, Haruhi throws one into Arakawa's face unerringly. The Mood Whiplash is quite hard, especially if you haven't read the light novels.
• Cicadian Rhythm: One of the various summery activities Haruhi forces the Brigade to participate in during their endless summer vacation is cicada-catching.
• Clarke's Third Law: Clearest with the human interfaces' data manipulation (Yuki is even cast as an alien witch in Haruhi's movie for brevity), but also apparent with the technology of humans from the future, where mechanical devices seem to have been phased out. Kyon also quotes the law in the narration of Melancholy when Taniguchi asks him, "What kind of magic spell did you use?"
• Cliffhanger: Volume 9 ends the β timeline with the SOS Brigade learning that Yuki is sick, unknown as to whether it's because of the recently-introduced Anti-SOS Brigade. Unfortunately, due to Schedule Slippage, this cliffhanger didn't resolve for another four years.
• The Climax:
  • Discussed at the beginning of Sigh, when Haruhi demonstrates that the concept of The Climax completely goes over her head:
    Haruhi: There's something I've always wondered about. You often see people die in the last episode of TV shows and the like. Doesn't that feel unnatural? Why do they just happen to die at that time? It's strange. That's why I hate anything where someone dies at the end! I would never make a movie like that!
  • The series' plot itself seems to agree with Haruhi, The Climax happens in the chronological middle of the season, while the chronological ending is a generic filler episode.
  • Consequently, Haruhi's failure to drive the movie's plot toward some sort of conclusion and the consequences of it turn out to be a major plot element of Sigh.
  • Season 2 actually has two climaxes, since that season is split pretty evenly into two "mini-seasons."
• Closed Circle: Remote Island Syndrome. Haruhi wants to do one for fun, and Izumi's esper organization obliges because they think she will be less likely to use her powers if she becomes afraid of excitement. It's invoked actually. Izumi and the Organization provided the actors, island and mystery; Harui closed the loop by providing the typhoon! Kyon even lampshades it by name.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Haruhi.
  • Tsuruya can also be considered one for her tendencies to laugh at anything.
  • And even Yuki, if the short story she wrote in the 8th book is any indication, she views the world quite surreally.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Kyon is this to Haruhi in the open, while the rest of the SOS brigade are it behind the scene.
• Club President: Haruhi makes herself this. Also Computer Club President is never properly named.
• Color-Coded Characters: Lately each SOS member has been affiliated with a color.
  • Haruhi is Red, which shows her genkiness and her status as Brigade Leader.
  • Kyon is Blue, which is the opposite of red, which suits him as Haruhi's opposite.
  • Itsuki is Green, which stands for intelligence.
  • Mikuru is Orange, because of her hair.
  • Yuki is Purple. She seems to be the the blue oni on the outside, but is actually the red one on the inside. Red and blue make...?
    • The Brigade had specific colours for their "battle stations" when battling the Computer Club; out of these listed above, only Mikuru and Yuki had different colours. Mikuru was pink (to represent her status as a girly-girl), and Yuki was a sleek, whitish silvery-purple that wouldn't look out of place in an Apple store.
  • The image song albums had this first, but a few were switched around. Kyon's color is Yellow, Yuki's is Light Blue (which might have something to do with her seiyuu), and Itsuki's is Purple (The Movie's opening credits actually goes through these colors in the beginning). While we're at it, the covers also give us colors for Ryoko (Dark Blue), Tsuruya (Green), Emiri (Light Green), Kyon's Sister (Pink), and Taniguchi (Gray).
  • The English paperback novels are, in order: red, yellow, green, blue, purple, and orange.
• Comedic Sociopathy: If you can't handle Haruhi, stay back!
• Comforting Comforter: Last episode "Someday in the Rain". It's left unclear whether it was Yuki or Mikuru.
• Compliment Backfire: Kyon slowly learns to talk about what he likes in general, instead of telling the Tsundere that he likes whatever she's doing at the moment.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Yuki plays by the rules when she's asked to, but has no qualms with fixing a game, computer or otherwise, to keep Haruhi happy. Of course, Yuki playing by the rules is like asking Stephen Hawking to do elementary school algebra. She's still a highly advanced lifeform capable of simultaneously controlling 20 independent units in the above mentioned game while at the same time hacking into said game, rewriting/reprogramming while said game is being played (at super speeds flipping through multiple windows), and casually carrying on a conversation.
• Contemplate Our Navels:
  • Itsuki's favourite activity, much to Kyon's irritation. And, well...Shamisen too.
  • Towards the end of Disappearance, Kyon holds a good, long conversation with himself about whether he prefers a normal, quiet life, or the crazy, fun life as part of the SOS Brigade. The movie version is significantly longer, and includes mental imagery to represent Kyons thoughts.
• Continuity Cavalcade: Dissapearance is full of small nods to the first few chapters. See Call-Back above.
• Cooking Duel: Chapter 3 of The Vanishing of Yuki Nagato chan has one (or two, or twenty) between Yuki and Mikuru. Asakura and Tsuruya win.
• Cool Code of Source: In the episode "The Day of Saggitarius", Yuki with the help of a macro program reconfigures the entire steering method of a video game in C.
• Copiously Credited Creator: In-Universe. For Haruhi's B-movie in Sigh, she is credited for planning, producing, directing, screenplay, editing, costumes, supervising VFX, and writing "Koi no Mikuru Densetsu."
• Cosmic Horror Reveal: The Heavenly Canopy Domain's debut in Snowy Mountain Syndrome implies this, and Yuki outright confirms it in the first half of The Surprise. Kuyou Suou, its subordinate, just happens to be the icing on the cake.
• Covert Pervert: In the novels (and sometimes in the anime), Kyon is frequently filled with inner Squee when Haruhi makes Mikuru cosplay. He also secretly likes how Haruhi's bunny costume shows off her curves and has a ponytail fetish.
• Creature-Hunter Organization: The Agency (or so Itsuki says), a mysterious group of ESPers who fight manifestations of Haruhi's teen angst in a Phantom Zone of sorts. It Makes Sense in Context.
• Credits Running Sequence: The second opening theme of the anime for features all 5 main cast members running together towards nothing in particular.
• Crossdresser: Debatable, as the tracksuit Haruhi wears when sneaking into North High in Disappearance is technically unisex. Then again, it is Kyon's tracksuit.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • A number of characters qualify (especially considering how many of them are hiding supernatural abilities), but the top of the list for being a formidable Badass Normal amongst the bunch is Tsuruya-san.
  • In The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya Part V, Tsuruya is seen in the background waiting for Mikuru while Mikuru and Kyon discuss Haruhi. It's unclear if Tsuruya actually heard what they were saying.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Fujiwara has Kuyo manipulate Haruhi into this position in the final chapter of Surprise, deliberately invoking the symbolism. Of course, the sheer cliché and blatant villany doesn't escape a lampshade from Kyon.
• Cursed with Awesome:
  • Kyon is both this and Blessed with Suck for the same reason. Despite him constantly moaning about how he wants to have an average life, his bond with Haruhi means that he probably has the most control over her powers than anyone else in the series (even Haruhi on certain occasions).
  • As mentioned under the Blessed with Suck entry, Kyon decides he has been blessed with awesome in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.
• Cute Little Fangs: Tsuruya. It actually gives her a speech impediment, which can be heard clearest in the school festival's restaurant speech.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Haruhi in "The Day Of Sagittarius".
• Dancing Theme: The ED song "Hare Hare Yukai".
• The Danza: In-universe. All the main characters in Haruhi's movie. More interestingly, the actors are all playing as their respective secret identities. Which Haruhi has no knowledge of.
• Dark World: The Closed Space Haruhi creates is a gray world with no illumination, somewhat similar to an extremely overcast day. Sasaki's Closed Space is warm and friendly, though still empty.
• Day in the Life: "Someday in the Rain."
• A Day in the Limelight: The Movie and the related novel for Yuki. Except for being three days long.
• Deadpan Snarker: Kyon, the narrator.
• Death Glare:
  • Haruhi in "The Day Of Sagittarius".
  • Also in the spinoff manga Asakura can do it with the most cheerful expression
• Deep-Immersion Gaming: "The Day of Sagittarius".
• Deliberately Monochrome: The beginning of the anime has notably less vibrant colors than the rest of the series.
• Depraved Bisexual: Haruhi, though one should not take it as seriously as the trope depicts it.
• Deus ex Machina: The film the Brigade made ended in one where Itsuki's character's secret power is awakened by Yuki's character and he defeats her. The trope is explicitly mentioned by Kyon.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?:
  • The novels and anime frequently play with this. Since we almost never hear/read Kyon talking, only thinking, it is even more surprising when people reply to thoughts they really shouldn't have heard.
  • Made ambiguous when Kyon narrates with his mouth off screen, so the audience can't tell if he's speaking out loud or not. Making for even more ambiguity, Kyon's expressions aren't exactly opaque, so it would be quite easy for someone to guess what he's thinking and respond to that. And even if he was speaking everything aloud, Haruhi's selective hearing could steamroll right past it.
  • And even more confusingly, sometimes people around him reply to thoughts that were clearly not supposed to be said out loud, but without noticing the parts in the same sentence that were not addressed at them, like how much he wants to punch Itsuki Koizumi in the face, or how much he adores Mikuru.
• Didn't See That Coming: A note to Kyon to meet after class was not what it seemed.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: In Disappearance — Kyon vs the Data-God that created Yuki. Kyon wins, by simply pointing out that he knows how to end the world with 4 little words: "I am John Smith." The official translation gives it a whole second level of defiance.
  Kyon: Tell him to suck it.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • Before that, Kyon saves the universe by kissing Haruhi... which would make this something more like "Did You Just Make Out with Cthulhu?"
  • Kyon comes within a hair's width of this when Haruhi takes her abuse of Mikuru too far.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Kyon's sister hums "Bouken Desho Desho" in "Melancholy VI", and Haruhi sings a few lines of "Hare Hare Yukai" while stripping Mikuru in "Someday in the Rain".
• Dispense with the Pleasantries: Remote Island Syndrome, Haruhi starts out extremely polite to the owner of the mansion. He then mentions that he's rather surprised since he has heard she's rather... direct. At this point she dispenses with the pleasantries and launches a barrage of questions about how many mysterious events, murders, etc. have taken place there.
• Disturbed Doves: Sigh. They actually started out as ordinary pigeons, but changed to match the trope after Haruhi invoked it.
• Ditzy Genius:
  • For a girl as smart and generally talented as she is, Haruhi is capable of being incredibly dense at times.
  • The Day of Saggitarius showed that Haruhi is no Patton — she puts so much emphasis on being Hot-Blooded that she seems genuinely perplexed and irritated that "All ships charge!" is not an adequate strategy to win a tactics-based computer game.
  • So-called "Ultra-Director" Haruhi Suzumiya couldn't direct her way out of a wet paper bag (see above for her inability to even grasp a concept as simple as The Climax) and "The Adventures of Asahina Mikuru" shows it, with its only redeeming grace being Kyon's glorious narration. Yet Haruhi, without a trace of irony, proudly declares that it's worthy of an Oscar! Whether she's simply so arrogant that she thinks that ANYTHING she does is guaranteed to be genius, or whether her taste is simply so bad that she honestly believes this is impossible to tell.
• Divine Date: According to Itsuki, and others, Haruhi really wants to do this with Kyon. But she won't admit it, and he won't believe it.
• Does Not Like Men: Haruhi at the beginning, though she mainly doesn't like humans in general. Half of the time she barely acknowledged that men exist, or that there's some difference in social behaviour between boys and girls.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The sounds Haruhi and Mikuru make while Haruhi is dressing Mikuru in her bizarre outfits sounds a lot less like cosplay and a lot more like something else. Actually seeing what Haruhi is doing doesn't exactly clear up matters.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: In "Endless 8, pt. 1" there's a sign warning poolgoers not to dive into the pool. It features a guy with a huge grin who looks like he's having the time of his life.
• The Door Slams You: Kyon happens to be leaning against the clubroom door the first time Haruhi yanks it open. It opens inward, slamming him against the floor rather than the wall. He avoids the door after that.
• Double Standard: There is a big difference on how Kyon treats Mikuru, and how he treats Haruhi. Also, Haruhi is way nicer towards Itsuki than to Kyon, and never gives Kyon credit for what he does, but congratulates Itsuki for everything. Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody provides examples on the two cases.
• Drama Panes: In "The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya", Kyon is staring out the window at the Closed Space he and Haruhi are in, when an apparition of Itsuki Koizumi appears to deliver some important information about how this could be the End of the World as We Know It.
• Drives Like Crazy: Arakawa. Played for Laughs in Haruhi-chan.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma:
  • Subverted: Narrator Kyon implicitly threatens violent retaliation when Itsuki seems about to act out this trope with Mikuru in their film, as far as the viewer knows. Behind the scenes, he nearly does carry out this threat against the person he holds responsible for it. It's not Itsuki.
  • In a Season 2 episode Mikuru takes Kyon back in time 3 years, then promptly loses conciousness. Then Future Mikuru shows up to give Kyon a mission, saying she put her younger self to sleep because she didn't interact with herself in her memories. Kyon asks if he gets a reward for carrying out the mission, future Mikuru suggests that he can steal a kiss from her younger, unconscious self as reward. Try not to think about it too hard.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Kyon's reason for staying initially is to save Yuki and Mikuru from Haruhi—whether he's making up an excuse to do what he wants to do anyway is certainly debatable.
• Dynamic Entry: Haruhi gives the Computer Club president one with both legs at once.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Arakawa (the butler from Remote Island Syndrome), appears as the cab driver in episode five of Melancholy. Because of the Anachronic Order, though, this appearance was actually broadcast after RIS.
  • Sasaki's name (佐々木) can be seen at the top of Kyon's cell phone address book in the Disappearance (here◊ and here◊)
• Ear Worm: The end of "Sound Around" implies that Hare Hare Yukai is so popular because Haruhi composed it with catchiness in mind. The song later manifests as an actual worm-like monster.
• Easily Forgiven: Kyon still forgives Haruhi easily after she drugs Mikuru and he almost punches her for it. This was her beginning path towards Character Development and he partially did it to avoid the universe being destroyed, although Haruhi didn't apologize for what she did.
• Egocentric Team Naming: Haruhi's SOS Brigade doesn't look like this... until you expand the acronym and find that the second S stands for Suzumiya.
• Eldritch Abomination: The giants in Closed Space.
• Emotionless Girl:
  • Yuki Nagato, which is somewhat justified by the fact that she's a computer program. Sort of. There are a few hints dropped to suggest that she isn't devoid of emotion, but rather she's just really bad at expressing them. The other constructs that have shown up didn't seem to suffer emotional constipation in the way Yuki does, suggesting they all have emotions, or at least can ape them convincingly.
  • By Disappearance, she's had enough Character Development to show visible sadness, surprise, and gratitude when Kyon places her under his protection from the Data Overmind.
  • In Snowy Mountain Syndrome, which takes place immediately after Disappearance, at one point Yuki displays what is best described as loneliness.
• The End of the World as We Know It: At one point hinges on the outcome of a baseball game, of all things.
• "End of the World" Special: The entire plot revolves around Kyon, Yuki, Mikuru and Itsuki preventing Haruhi from causing such a thing with her powers.
• Energy Weapon: Nobody is able to dodge them and they're even invisible!
• Enforced Method Acting: invoked
  • Presumably the reason Haruhi had Mikuru get groped and not herself. Nobody's gonna believe those photos without the girl showing true horror and shame!
  • In Sigh, the lead-up to The Adventures of Asahina Mikuru, Haruhi and Tsuruya dose Mikuru with a full cup of tequila. Kyon is not happy.
  • Do NOT let Haruhi direct you in a movie, she's worse than James Cameron. She will resort to extreme measures to get you to do what she wants you to do, including everything from getting her star drunk so she can't protest against doing stuff she'd normally never do to subconsciously giving you lethal eye beams right in the middle of a scene
• Enemy Mine:
  • The SOS Brigade and the Computer Club team up to stop the Student Council President from evicting the Brigade from the Literature Clubroom.
  • Similarly, the conflicting factions of the Data Overmind seem to have put their differences aside to confront the apparently hostile Heavenly Canopy Domain.
• Enigmatic Minion: Yuki and Itsuki. Haruhi herself. Also Emiri later. Unclear for Mikuru.
• Epiphanic Prison: Subversion. The only thing binding Haruhi's power is her belief that she has none. Maintaining this disbelief is at least part of what the SOS Brigade does.
• Everyone Can See It:
  • Haruhi likes Kyon, no matter how deep in denial he is about it. This is so obvious that alternate!Itsuki in Disappearance can tell just from Kyon's cursory explanation of how things were back before the world-switch.
  • Sasaki figures it out immediately when meeting Haruhi. She then teases them about it.
• Evil Is Hammy: Fujiwara, after his Villainous Breakdown.
• Evil Laugh: Haruhi does this at least twice, both times after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "Endless Eight".
• Eye Beams: In Sigh, Haruhi keeps coming up with colored contact lenses that each have a different type of eye beam. First is a laser, second is some sort of Razor Floss; Kyon states there are a few more, but the one we're shown shoots large metal spikes. The official English translation mentions four contacts: the blue, for Mikuru Beam; the silver, for Razor Floss; the gold, for the spikes up above; and the green, for miniature black holes.
• Eyelid Pull Taunt: The final shot of "Someday in the Rain." This is actually a nice reference to the cover of volume 6 (The Wavering) of the light novel where Haruhi is doing just that. Volume 7 (The Intrigues) features Mikuru, and volume 8 (The Indignation) has even Yuki getting in on the gag.
• Eyes Always Shut: Itsuki, and in some cases, Kyon, as seen in The Day Of Sagittarius.

F-I

• Facepalm: After Picard, Kyon is the best known Facepalmer on the Internets.
  • Near the end of the Disappearance movie, after Kyon wakes up in the hospital, the first thing he says to Haruhi when she sees he's awake is, "Hey." Itsuki laughs and facepalms as soon as he says that.
• Faint in Shock: During the island getaway episode, the shy time-travelling Mikuru faints promptly upon seeing the stabbed body of the mansion owner, and stays out of the action for a while under Yuki's supervision, providing Haruhi and Kyon an excuse to go exploring alone together.
• Fake Band: ENOZ, whose name is a homage to the real band ZONE.
• Fake Mystery: The murder of Keiichi in the "Remote Island Syndrome" arc is revealed to have been staged by Itsuki and the murder "victim" to let Haruhi play detective, which she wanted.
• Fake Video Camera View: In The Adventures of Asahina Mikuru
• Falling-in-Love Montage: Parodied without mercy in "The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina."
• False Camera Effects: Most notably, the first/zeroth episode consists of a simulated student film; but the whole anime has scenes drawn with simulated lens flare, barrel/pincushion distortions and fisheye lenses all over the place.
• Fanservice: Special mention to episode three of season two. It's essentially a repeat of episode two by nature of being part of a "Groundhog Day" Loop, but has gratuitous amounts of fanservice for both guys and girls. Specific focus given to Itsuki's and Kyon's bodies during shirtless scenes and an additional shirtless scene for Kyon at the beginning (he was wearing a shirt that time last episode!) as well as to Haruhi's and Mikuru's... assets. Also, close ups to the face play up Itsuki's bishonen-ness and the girls' moe-ness (and the entire episode seems to intentionally defy anyone to resist hugging Yuki). To cap it all, there's some Ship Tease all around for Kyon/<SOS member here>. (Kyon has reactions to each of the girls' aforementioned moe facial expressions, and even Itsuki arguably has his bit of ship tease). The episode just screams "intentional gratuitous fanservice". In episode six of season two (during the same time loop arc), Itsuki's swim trunks are even swapped with a black Speedo.
• Feel No Pain:
  • Yuki. Grapples with a combat knife by its blade. Intercepts lasers with her palm. Takes several steel spikes through the chest. Impaled with steel spikes the width of a ship's mast and lifted off her feet. Only the latter is enough to make her fall over — and even then, it's from exertion, not pain.
  • Then, of course, it gets horrifically subverted in Disappearance — Yuki has made herself fully human to finally be with Kyon. Now that she's human, though, she can feel pain and has a natural terror of it... meaning she can't rush to his rescue when Ryoko shows up for round two, as her old crazy stunting would only get her killed in agonizing minutes as a human. It doesn't help that she can't even remember her old stunts due to the way she rewrote the world and herself. This can lead to a little confusion when it looks like she grabs the knife anyway, but later on in the novels we learn a bit more about the rest of the incident and it turns out the actual trope is still in full force.
• Female Gaze: Exactly how Tsuruya sizes up Kyon when they meet in The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya.
• Festival Episode: Part of "Endless Eight".
• Fetish:
  • Kyon admits to Haruhi that he has a thing for ponytails, and encourages Yuki to lose the glasses because he isn't a fan of meganekko.
  • In one of the novels, he admits to himself that Mikuru's maid outfit is his favorite one and wonders if he has a maid fetish.
  • And later novels he subverts this trope by noting he finds seeing Yuki in her uniform especially comforting, but not because he has a sailor uniform fetish.
• Figure It Out Yourself: Both Mikuru Asahina (big) and Yuki Nagato give Kyon very incomplete information about how to ... save the world from Haruhi. Kyon puts both clues together at nearly the last minute to do just so. Justified to some extent because both Mikuru and Yuki are constrained by rules. It's actually pretty obvious. Kyon is just selectively oblivious as long as possible.
• Filler:
  • In the books, "Endless Eight" was a brief story that lasted about 30 or so pages and the time loop was broken without the reader seeing any other repeats after Kyon has Haruhi help him with his homework. In the anime, it's eight episodes of near-identical footage and dialogue, reanimated from scratch every single time (which in turn angered those who viewed the affair as a waste of money and season). You can just skip episodes 3-7 of second season and literally miss nothing.
  • Although overshadowed by "Endless Eight", the first season episode "Someday in the Rain" had 3 minutes and 23 seconds of continuous filler, with irrelevant chatter going off in the background while Yuki reads, occasionally turning the page. It was interrupted for a couple seconds with a scene of Kyon riding the train.
• First Kiss: The climax of season one.
• First-Name Basis:
  • Kyon refers to Haruhi by her first name, no honorific extremely soon after the SOS-dan's founding, and she's the only one to call him by just his nickname, no honorific. Also notable is that Yuki never, ever refers to Kyon by name, only "you". Neither does Itsuki.
  • Also significantly, Haruhi's the only person that Kyon addresses by first name and no honorific.
  • In the student film, the characters are supposed to refer to each other by first name, but the actors sometimes flub their lines and use last name.
  • End of the Disappearance movie (not the novel): "I'm sorry, Nagato...Yuki." However, it's unclear if he was using her name or simply pointing out the fact that it had started snowing (or both).
• First-Person Smartass: Kyon, in an combination of his Deadpan Snarker and Narrator roles.
• First Time Feeling: In Disappearance, Kyon discovers that Yuki set the whole plot in motion by developing emotions and, unable to deal with them, stole Haruhi's powers and remade the world.
• Five-Man Band: Lampshade hanging, Haruhi purposely creates the club to her expected stereotypes. Although, it should be noted that the roles change depending on the point of view. According to Haruhi, she is the leader, Yuki is The Smart Guy, Itsuki is The Lancer, Kyon The Big Guy, and Mikuru is obviously The Heart. But for Kyon, Yuki is The Big Guy (and to an extent, his Lancer) and Itsuki is The Smart Guy. So Haruhi would probably be Kyon's Lancer or vice versa. (Guess who he calls first when something happens....) He calls Haruhi when a the time-shifted version of Mikuru(Michuru) gets kidnapped. Luckily she thinks it's a joke.
• Five-Man Band Concert:
  • In one of the drama CDs, Haruhi assigns the S.O.S. Brigade rock instruments, although the gang doesn't know how to play them.
  • The five main characters appear dressed as rock stars on the cover art of one of the Image Song CDs and on a poster◊ for the Haruhi Suzumiya concert.
  • Downplayed in the episode "Live Alive", as it's only Haruhi (The Leader) and Yuki (The Smart Girl) who go on stage as stand-in musicians for the Cultural Festival. They both play the guitar and are in costumes (respectively, Playboy Bunny and Wicked Witch). Haruhi is the vocalist as well, and because of the double role, she needs a musical score during the presentation. They perform "God Knows" and "Lost My Music".
• Flashback: For example, after the SOS brigade finishes the movie, we see what happens right after Haruhi meets Kyon at the end of Melancholy Part VI.
• Flash Step: Done by Yuki twice to stop Mikuru's eye beams.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Episode 00 has everyone in more or less role they play in the series, Kyon's the Narrator, Yuki's an Alien, Mikuru's a time traveller and Haruhi's the Director so everyone has to bow to her wishes.
  • Kyon makes an offhand comment in Novel 11 that Itsuki is the last member of the brigade you would want to see angry. And who should be the one to explode (literally) at Fujiwara in the climax?
  • In one early episode (chronologically, not the broadcast order) Yuki mentions that Haruhi would never believe Kyon if he told her about Yuki being an alien. This is exactly what happens when he finally does decide to tell her at the end of the series
  • In the third novel/first series story "Remote Island Syndrome," Haruhi notes that it's better to go to an island in the summer, because you can't get caught in a blizzard unless it's the winter, with Kyon even noting that isn't something to hope for. Sure enough, in the fifth novel, they visit the mountains in winter and get caught in a blizzard.
  • The anime has a subtle one in "The Day of Sagittarius." As the Brigade members walk home together after accepting the Computer Club's challenge, Haruhi confidently tells Mikuru that her skills will put Admiral Nelson to shame. At Trafalgar, Nelson led the first attack wave personally and went straight after the enemy flagship, which is exactly what Haruhi's strategy for playing the game later turns out to be. The dub changes it from Nelson to Admiral Halsey, but since Halsey's strategy for carrier-based combat was, "Find the enemy as fast as you can and hit him with everything you have," the foreshadowing of Haruhi's playing style still fits perfectly.
  • Early in the fourth novel, Kyon's narration speculates that Yuki is possibly the only reason he's alive and remembering everything as he's trying to find her. Which is more or less true, but not in the way he expects.
• For Science!: Studying Haruhi? Okay. Killing one of your classmates to see how she'll react? Ooookay...
• Forgot the Call: There are scenes that indicate that Haruhi is up against a mental block as opposed to just being totally clueless. Note how something stops her in midstream here: "I'm the brigade chief and director and ... Anyway, I won't allow you to go against me!"
• Fortune Teller: Yuki in "Live Alive". However, as Kyon points out, she doesn't understand the difference between telling somebody their fortune and predicting their future; for example, she tells someone that he'll drop his ice cream in ten point three minutes.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: All in Haruhi combined! It's... totally awesome.
• Fourth Wall Psych: In The Movie when Kyon asks a question to "the world".
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the first part of the two-episode island mystery arc, there's a shot of the sunset, and then a wave passing over the beach. Pause in the two or three frames before the wave crosses the screen, and you'll see a bizarre sketch in the sand of... something. Haruhi? A caveman? Itsuki in a bikini?
• Friendly Scheming: The murder mystery from the "Remote Island Syndrome" episode was staged.
• Frothy Mugs of Water:
  • Underage drinking is a big no-no to the Japanese (or at least depictions of it are). In the Sigh novel, Mikuru was slipped tequila; the anime changed this to amazake, which is seen as alright to give infants, which makes Mikuru seem much, much worse at holding her liquor (not that she wasn't already bad in the original). In a rare inversion, the English Dub actually changes it to sake.
  • In Boredom the ''Remote Island Syndrome" segment has the entire cast get very drunk twice (with the possible exception of Yuki). The anime adaptation cuts this out entirely and drags Kyon's little sister along just to make sure everyone stays on their (relative) best behavior.
• Funny Background Event:
  • While Haruhi is talking about how she doesn't see the point in love, there is a brief cut to a random scene outside where a male student helps out a female student with something, and it's all very flirty. Later in the episode, there's another brief cut to where the female student shoves the male student to the ground and runs away.
  • Multiple in "Live Alive":
    • Two TV personalities "Hard Gay" and Akihiro Miwa grab Kyon as he's walking through the halls.
    • When Kyon is leaving the building at the festival, there's a mom getting a balloon for her kid. The kid protests, and the mother threatens to leave the kid behind.
    • When Kyon goes into the hall so he can doze through a concert (having just been up all night editing the brigade's movie), someone else appears to have already fallen asleep a few rows in front of him.
• Fun Size:
  • Tsuruya-san's fan interpretation, Churuya-san.
  • Now Haruhi-chan as well.
  • Achakura, Ryoko's (still psychotic) but barely two-feet-tall incarnation from Haruhi-chan, is notable in that she's tiny compared to the rest of the heavily chibified cast.
• Fun with Acronyms: SOS Brigade stands for Sekai wo Ooi ni Moriageru tame no Suzumiya Haruhi no Dan, or Haruhi Suzumiya's gang whose purpose is to greatly enliven the world. To maintain the joke, the fansubbers and the official manga and light novel, gave this as Save the World By Overloading It With Fun — Haruhi Suzumiya's Brigade, while the official dub translated it as Spreading Excitement All Over the World with Haruhi Suzumiya's Brigade.
• Future Imperfect: Mikuru sometimes does this. For example, she comments on Itsuki's telescope being "not very different from Kepler's." This particular example could actually make sense, who knows how future telescopes work? In Asashina's time they might use non-optical telescopes, or more conventional telescopes built into contact lenses, or even simply direct the visual input into their minds. From this point of view, there is little difference between two cylindrical telescopes with glasses, and only half a millennium's development between them.
• Gainax Ending: The final chapter of Surprise is the most confusing one yet.
• Genki Girl: Haruhi, as well as minor character Tsuruya.
• Genre-Busting: This comedy show steals aspects from high school slice of life shows, fantasy, and sci-fi settings by having several of its core cast members be supernatural entities attending a high school.
• Genre Savvy: Haruhi insists on seeing Genre Tropes everywhere, even where they might not have existed; in a completely different way, Itsuki attempts to "appease" Haruhi by providing textbook, predictable examples of tropes. Haruhi does not do "predictable", so these tend to mutate.
• Girlish Pigtails: One of Haruhi's haircuts. Also, Mikuru in her waitress outfit.
• Girl with Psycho Weapon: Ryoko Asakura.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Sometimes played straight but also used to reference Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Or just outright parody Phoenix Wright, down to the dramatic speed lines.
• A Glass of Chianti:invoked The Computer Club President during the Deep-Immersion Gaming. Also Haruhi in the manga, when describing the importance of moe. A glass of grape juice, that is.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: Yuki Nagato, of course.
• The Glomp: Mikuru does this to Kyon after the Melancholy finale. She then immediately lets go because she doesn't want it to happen again..
• God: Or something similar...
• A God Am I: Subverted and/or reversed: the character with godlike powers, Haruhi, has no idea she has them. Her delusions of grandeur are just that.
• Godly Sidestep: Kyon asks Yuki, after treating with beings that are effectively ghosts of alien lifeforms, what happens after humans die. Her answer? Classified information.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Nakagawa in "Love at First Sight", who senses the Integrated Data Sentient Entity through Yuki; the sensory overload causes him mental illness and obsession with Yuki.
• Good All Along: Sasaki.
• Good Versus Good: It is stated that the Organization, Itsuki's faction, and the time travelers, Mikuru's faction, are fiercely against each other. However, both sides are out to maintain the status quo, and protect the titular character. Meanwhile, Yuki's faction are formless data entities, with their own inner power struggles and wars. On the whole, they prefer to maintain the status quo by not interfering except to maintain the masquerade, while trying to learn how Haruhi's powers work. As for the three agents, they have stated that should their factions go to war, they will stand by the SOS Brigade, breaking ties if they have to.
• Gratuitous English:
  • This trope is mostly invoked by Itsuki. Probably the most ridiculous is his line in "Endless Eight": "Perhaps grab her from behind, and whisper 'AI LAAV YOU' into her ear."
  • Kyon tends to speak English a lot too, mostly in "Endless Eight" - highlights are exclaiming "Excellent!" upon seeing Mikuru in a yukata, and his hilarious outburst of "Three days!?" when Haruhi tells him how long it took her to finish her summer homework.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: "Endless Eight", in which the SOS Brigade gets stuck repeating the same two weeks of summer vacation 15,532 times and suffer from severe deja vu throughout — except for Haruhi, who remembers nothing, and Yuki, who remembers everything. The anime adaptation makes you feel it too, dragging the short story out beyond 15,500 and into eight repetitious episodes.
• Groundhog Peggy Sue: See above. An interesting variation in that only one character is aware of the situation, and she is unable to take action herself.
• Hands-Off Parenting: All characters' parents are so absent, they're not even mentioned. Yuki lives alone, being an alien, Itsuki's and Mikuru's parents are never shown, though presumably them being secret agents has something to do with their surprising amount of free time. Even Ordinary High-School Student Kyon is at home with his sister, but his parents are never seen. Both Kyon and Haruhi's parents are present (Kyon's sister often acts a a go-between for him and his mother-fetching him for meals, waking him up, etc-and is once even heard complaining to her one time when he kicks her out of his room), they're just unseen. Haruhi's mother is mentioned very briefly in the beginning of Surprise, where she's explained to be a Lethal Chef.
• Have We Met?: Haruhi casually asks Kyon this in their first conversation. She has in fact met him before, but Kyon hasn't; he will meet her three years ago a couple of months later. So it's really a case of Have We Met Yet?. There's a similar time-travel paradox in the first meetings of Kyon and Mikuru: Kyon and (future) Mikuru, as the latter tells the former something she thought he already knew. Hilarity ensues.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Kyon launches into a paragraph-long example in Disturbance to dispel some of the homosexuality rumors that had been accumulating.
• Head Desk: Kyon can be seen doing this in the opening theme song, Bouken Desho Desho, cementing his Only Sane Man role in the SOS Brigade.
• Heel–Face Return: Ryoko in the tenth novel.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • In the tenth novel, Ryoko, who comes to defend Kyon from Kuyo rather than kill him. At least, she's definitely more willing to listen to her superiors.
  • In the following novel, Kyouko also has one, being the only member of the "Anti-Brigade" to turn good (Sasaki, who was Good All Along, not withstanding.)
  • Haruhi has one in Sigh after Kyon makes her realize that what she had done to Mikuru is a potential Moral Event Horizon on her part. Said MEH thus becomes either a subversion or an inversion.
• Heel Realization:
  • Arguably Haruhi in Sigh when Kyon calls her on her treatment of Mikuru. After that incident, she is much more consistent in her Pet the Dog moments and less consistent in her Kick the Dog moments.
  • Kyon has one in Disappearance where he realizes that his inaction and over-reliance on Yuki is part of what led to her hijacking Haruhi's powers and re-writing the world.
  • Kyouko also has one accomponied by a brief Villainous BSoD.
• Heroic BSoD: Kyon is positively distraught in Disappearance when he finds no one remembers Haruhi or the SOS Club, to the point of shouting at and shaking people visibly frightened by his outburst.
• Heroic RRoD: The beginning of Book 10 reveals that Yuki's "flu" is a result of the Data Overmind using her in an attempt to contact/understand the utterly alien Canopy Domain. This weakens Yuki so much that she can barely communicate. More than usual, that is.
• High-School Hustler: Haruhi has gotten away with hijacking the literature clubroom, blackmailing the Computer Club President into giving a computer away for free by having him grope Mikuru, dressing as bunnies, submitting her film to the culture festival with the applications already closed...
• Hijacking Cthulhu: There was a story arc where someone stole Haruhi's powers.
• Homage: One scene plays out as a blatant Shout-Out to the Ace Attorney series, complete with all the epic finger pointing, speed lines, and character sprite animations. This video demonstrates.(WARNING: SPOILERS)
• Hostile Show Takeover: The entire plot of Disappearance. Yuki rewrites reality to change herself into the main character: a painfully introverted — but completely human — bookworm with a crush on Kyon. Meanwhile, Haruhi and Itsuki are Put on a Bus and Mikuru gets shipped with Tsuruya so Kyon can't get close. Got its own spin-off manga! Of course, once Kyon finds Haruhi and gets her going, she immediately sets out taking the show back for herself. Even in the official Alternate Universe manga, she seems poised to steal the spotlight...
• How We Got Here:
  • The written Remote Island Sydrome opens discovering Keichi's body, then flashes back to explain how events transpired.
  • The movie.
• Human Aliens: The Interfaces...whatever they actually are.
• Humanoid Abomination: All the Data Interfaces except Yuki, according to Kyon. Haruhi herself might be this...
• Humans Are Special: Humans apparently are the only organic lifeform that can actively seek knowledge and continuously advance themselves.
• He's Back!: In Disappearance, after telling Haruhi about the club, she gathers them back in the club room to start the club again.
• I Am Who?: Haruhi Suzumiya. Kyon also occasionally discusses or invokes this trope when thinking about his own role.
• I Choose to Stay: In The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon is given the opportunity to leave the SOS Brigade and Haruhi's fantastic world of aliens, time travelers, and espers, both of which he's complained about for the entirety of the series up to this point, behind him, and start a new life. The offer comes complete with new friends to make and even a potential love interest, but in one of the most moving inner monologues in the series, he decides that he can't leave that world behind, even going so far as to say he'd have to be an idiot to walk away from it all.
• Identical Grandson: In the manga, Kyon looks just like his grandfather.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every book, video game, and full-length album is entitled "Suzumiya Haruhi no ___", or "The ___ of Haruhi Suzumiya".
• Idiot Hair: Taniguchi.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Disappearance!Asakura to Kyon regarding Yuki. See the extra note under This Is Unforgivable.
• I Just Want to Be Normal/I Just Want to Be Special: The series plays with these tropes in a pretty elaborate manner.
  • Kyon spent his childhood dreaming about having supernatural powers or hanging out with people who did, but he says that he got over it and now he just wants to be normal. This is subverted in Disappearance: when push comes to shove, Kyon decides against an ordinary life, and admits that he is excited to hang out with an alien, time traveler, esper and Haruhi. So Kyon is really I Just Want to be Special posing as I Just Want to be Normal.
  • Haruhi lived a happy childhood until she discovered that her life was ordinary, and then decided that she would become an extraordinary person]], or find extraordinary beings like aliens, time travelers, espers or sliders. She creates the SOS Brigade with that latter purpose. Subverted, however, because it turns out that what she most enjoys is hanging out with her fellow brigade members and doing ordinary high school activities together, like playing baseball, doing summer activities or helping them do their summer homework. So Haruhi is really I Just Want to be Normal posing as I Just Want to be Special.
  • Kyon and Haruhi are foils to each other when it comes to these tropes. But the remarkable thing is that they show subverts the direction of the foil; Kyon's actually the one with I Just Want to be Special, and Haruhi the one with I Just Want to be Normal.
  • Yuki is a pretty straightforward case of I Just Want to be Normal.
• Image Song: The amount of additional music done for the show is staggering, rivaling Negima! Magister Negi Magi. 16 character albums, 4 soundtracks, 3 drama CDs, 8 combination soundtrack and drama CDs that shipped with one of the DVD versions, a live concert, and an orchestral concert.
  • First set: Haruhi Suzumiya, Yuki Nagato, Mikuru Asahina, Tsuruya, Ryoko Asakura, Kyon's sister, Emiri Kimidori, Itsuki Koizumi, and Kyon.
  • Second set: Haruhi Suzumiya, Yuki Nagato, Mikuru Asahina, Itsuki Koizumi, Kyon, Tsuruya, and Taniguchi.
• Important Haircut:
  • Haruhi cuts her hair after meeting Kyon, about the same time she changes from being antisocial to being outgoing and happy. Before that, she changed her hair based on the day of the week, with a full-blown explanation as to why. It's implied she did this to get Kyon to comment on it.
  • Haruhi can sometimes be seen holding her hair in a ponytail after Kyon claims to have a thing for girls with ponytails in a "dream," with the most obvious example being that she has her hair in a ponytail the very next day after said "dream." In fact, at one point, when deciding on whether or not to put Mikuru's hair in a ponytail, Haruhi looks at Kyon and immediately drops the idea out of jealousy. She does it again the day after Kyon blows up at her over her mistreatment of Mikuru during the shooting of their movie.
• Improbable Age: Itsuki may or may not actually be the one in charge of his Organization.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: Tsuruya says this about Mikuru in Sigh. Then they actually go to Tsuruya's house to do a scene.
• Incest Subtext: Though Kyon is most definitely not attracted to his sister, he is attracted to Mikuru, and at least six times, he pointed out how similar she is to his sister, causing an inverted example of the trope. He also sees simularities between Haruhi and his sister as detectives.
• Inconsistent Dub: An incredibly minor example, but when watching seasons 1 and 2 together in chronological order, you may notice that while the season 2 episode "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody" uses the term "Tanabata", the season 1 episode "Mysterique Sign" that comes directly after makes references to the "Star Festival" instead.
• Indecisive Medium: The Anime went out of its way not to show Kyon's mouth during his monologues, to keep the uncertainity from the novels, where you could never tell if he was saying something out loud, or just thinking.
• Indirect Kiss:
  • In Sigh, Mikuru shows some rare outgoing qualities by offering Kyon a drink from a water bottle that she already drank from, and Haruhi grabs it before Kyon can. Subtextual meanings runs rampant among fans.
  • A straight example at the end of the last episode of Sigh, when they flashback to when Kyon talked to Haruhi at the cafe in May - Haruhi finishes Kyon's drink shortly before storming out.
  • A better example in book 6 (with free bonus trope). Mikuru places her finger on Kyon's lips and then her own, in order to get him to stop talking.
• Infodump:
  • Lampshaded. Yuki, Mikuru and Itsuki lay these down on Kyon, who usually responds by pointing out that he doesn't understand, or just facepalming.
  • Itsuki in particular loves these, and seems to take pleasure in cornering Kyon for a few pages' worth of exposition.
• Inner Monologue: Loves to edge on Did I Just Say That Out Loud?.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: In Surprise, Kyon demands that the aliens take their fights to the fringes of the galaxy. Kuyoh replies that they have.
• Instant-Win Condition: In the Computer Club's game, "Day of Sagittarius 3", victory is automatically achieved by destroying the enemy's commanding fleet: Haruhi's fleet for The SOS Empire, and the Computer Club President's for The Computer Group Federation.
• Intra-Scholastic Rivalry: There is a great deal of antipathy between the Computer Club and the SOS Brigade, particularly since Haruhi essentially stole a computer from them by falsely accusing the Computer Club President of molesting Mikuru (with staged pictures to boot). Later the Computer Club tries to retrieve their computer by challenging the SOS Brigade to a computer game. The Computer Club is cheating, and when Kyon learns this, he gives Yuki full permission to backhack them and turn the tables on them.
• Invisible Parents: There are some parental figures, like the various adults in the island episode, but none of the characters' actual parents are ever seen. Yuki, of course, has no parents (in the human sense anyway) and Mikuru's probably haven't been born yet, but Haruhi and Kyon are implied to have parents...who never show up, (Kyon's mother is never directly seen or heard, but often referenced, and his dad is mentioned once) and never seem to say or do anything that affects the plot.
• Invoked Trope: Woobie, absurdly powerful student council and a few others.
• It's a Wonderful Plot: Created by Yuki in ''Disappearance''. Subverted in that the point wasn't to teach Kyon anything, she merely acknowledged the possibility that she could be wrong. She even went so far as to give everyone who could tell him what happened the flu.
• It Amused Me: Arguably the reason Haruhi does anything.

J-N

• Jerkass: Haruhi in the beginning of the series. Until...
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: What Haruhi eventually matures into.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: A Gambit Pileup, Stable Time Loop and Love Dodecahedron form around a Wrong Genre Savvy Ontological Mystery title character and an Unreliable Narrator protagonist who doesn't really understand what's going on (or does he?). Said narrator relays most of the background information and interpretation from a Mr. Exposition who nobody completely believes or trusts.
• Joshikousei: In the book, Kyon wonders if the principal has a fetish for this, since male students wear blazers and ties, but girls wear the more traditional sailor uniform. Ironically, the real school North High is based on features the opposite uniform configuration, with militaresque gakuran for boys and parochial-style uniforms for girls.
• Just Eat Gilligan: In Sigh, Kyon repeatedly suggests doing this to Haruhi to solve the problem.
  Kyon: Can't we just knock Haruhi out until the festival is over?
• Keep It Foreign: "Why?" -> "naze?"
• Kick the Dog: Haruhi, obviously. Most famously, the blackmailing of the computer club president. Some people don't find the molestation of Mikuru very funny, either. In the novels, Haruhi actually punched Mikuru on the head several times because her contact lens didn't fly out like in stories. She nearly gets hit by one really (and understandably) upset Kyon, but Itsuki restrains him.
• Lampshade Hanging: Where to begin? Among the popular Japanese media tropes, if it isn't lampshaded, then it was probably invoked by Haruhi.
• Language of Magic: Sped up and backwards played SQL queries.
• Layman's Terms: Particularly in the Drama CD. Kyon is fond of asking for his companions' Infodumps to be rendered in words he can understand, though he's generally good at getting the gist of things.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Haruhi behaves this way when they play a LAN game against the Computer Club.
• Lemony Narrator: Kyon, especially in the novels.
• Lighter and Softer: While the main series is relatively light in tone, The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan takes it even further — it takes the world of Disappearance (with no aliens, time travel or psychic powers) and normalises it (no threat of it being remade). It also makes Kyon less snarky and cynical, Asakura isn't a Psycho Knife Nut Psycho Lesbian, and Haruhi is pushy and abrupt rather than sociopathic. The entire series is a romantic comedy between Yuki and Kyon.
• Light Novels: The anime is based on them and so far covers the first four of eleven and some chapters from 5 and 6.
• Limited Wardrobe: Yuki. Eventually Kyon picks up that maybe she just likes her school uniform.
• Little Stowaway: Kyon's sister tries this when the SOS brigade goes on vacation, but she gets caught in an instant. In the novels, she has to stay home, but in the anime they ultimately allow her to go with them.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • There's a lot of things Haruhi doesn't know about herself and the other members of the SOS Brigade.
  • The Time Travel arcs often leave Mikuru in a similar position. Kyon, Yuki, and Future Mikuru all know what she needs to do and why, but they can't tell Mikuru 'cos of paradoxes.
  • Kyon himself seems to be left out of a lot of the secret meetings between Yuki, Itsuki, and Mikuru.
• Locked Room Mystery:
  • "Remote Island Syndrome."
  • Done again with Where Did The Cat Go?, the murder mystery that was supposed to be the main excitement during the Snow Mountain Syndrome trip.
• Locker Mail: Kyon finds a note telling him to meet the sender in a classroom after school. It's from Ryoko who wants to kill him to goad Haruhi into action.
• Lost Him in a Card Game: Haruhi bets Mikuru during "The Day of Sagittarius." When the Computer Club President is taken aback by this, she offers Yuki instead. And when Kyon protests her willingness to wager other people, she relents and offers herself — an offer which the Computer Club president very much rejects...
• Lonely Bachelor Pad: Yuki Nagato has one. Kyon comments on how empty the places feels and ask himself if Yuki feels the same way as her apartment. Before the series started, Yuki spent years quietly sitting in the middle of the room waiting for something to happen.
• Love Letter Lunacy: in the short story Charmed at First Sight LOVER, Kyon transcribes a (hilariously melodramatic) love note from an old classmate to Yuki. Unfortunately, when he's done reading it, he tosses it out the window—just as Haruhi is passing by. Or as Kyon puts it in helpful question-and-answer format:
  Q: What was written on that piece of paper?
  A: A confession of love for Nagato.
  Q: Whose handwriting was on the paper?
  A: My handwriting.
  Q: What would a stranger think if he had read this?
  A: He'll probably misunderstand.
  Q: Then what would Haruhi be thinking if she read it?
  A: I don't even want to know.
• Lotus-Eater Machine:
  • The Alternate Universe in Disappearance seems to be like this for Kyon, but gets subverted when he goes into a panic over the one good thing it had over the real world — that is, the SOS-Dan.
  • Further played with in that a couple days without any leads finds Kyon falling back into routine, and it takes a further shock to snap him out of it.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The song "God Knows". The song is awesome, but the upbeat sound is overlayed with lyrics about a girl's love for/attempts to reach out to a man who's on the brink of despair.
• MacGuffin Super-Person: Itsuki Koizumi plays this role in "The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina". Yuki Nagato wants to steal his hidden esper powers, and the eponymous Mikuru Asahina is charged to protect Itsuki.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Kyon on a bike with fireworks, in "Endless Eight".
• Magical Incantation: See below.
• Magic from Technology: Yuki's incantations in SQL.
• Male Gaze:
  • Really confusing when used on Yuki's chest in Disappearance.
  • The pool scene in the 7th Endless Eight episode begins with Haruhi's bikini-clad butt taking up almost the whole screen.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl:
  • Haruhi is a seemingly textbook example of the manic pixie dream girl, coming into Kyon's life, unknowingly introducing him to a group of supernatural and just making his life wackier and crazier than before. Only problem is that Haruhi is terrified of living a regular, unremarkable life, and is violently determined to make sure that doesn't happen. Along with the whole thing about her being God. She goes between relentlessly perky and hyper, vaguely sociopathic and having an existential crisis throughout the first arc (thus the Artifact Title 'The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya'.) Kyon finds her behavior to be irritating and obnoxious and wishes she had left him alone to be an Ordinary High-School Student. Subverted with Kyon being the one to inspire Haruhi to begin the SOS club and draw the melancholy out of her by making her subconsciously realise living a regular life might not be so bad. Via a kiss. In a way, dull, snarky Kyon was Haruhi’s MPDG.
  • Then played straight in the Big Damn Movie, where when presented with the choice between a world without Haruhi and one with, he does everything he can for the latter, realising that he really quite likes being a part of Haruhi's crazy life. This revelation is topped with tons of Ship Tease to boot. Despite this, Haruhi is clearly far more complex than your typical dream girl, so she still dodges the trope slightly.
• Masquerade: On just about everybody's part.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The end result of Wandering Shadow. Are the data lifeforms that inhabit animal hosts really ghosts, or yet more run-of-the-mill aliens? If so, does their Bizarre Alien Biology apply to humans, as well? In any case, Yuki's not telling.
• Meaningful Background Event:
  • "Live Alive": Full of them in regards to Haruhi and the band ENOZ. When Kyon, Taniguchi and Kunikida are talking in the locker room at the beginning, you can see ENOZ arguing about performing at the festival and Haruhi approaching them about acting as a stand in for the singer. When they are standing in line at Mikuru's food stall, the two remaining members of ENOZ (Mizuki and Mai) can be seen running off into the distance. And when Kyon is talking to Taniguchi and Kunikida after they get out of the food stall, Haruhi and Yuki can be seen in their costumes with guitars strapped to their backs running off behind Kyon.
  • "Day of Sagittarius": As the SOS Brigade walks home together after accepting the challenge, the scene focuses on Kyon and Itsuki's talk. Just in front of them, Yuki is already reading the game's instruction manual (we learn later that she and Itsuki were the only ones to thoroughly study it). During the Brigade's Training Montage, every day ends with a shot of the members slumped at their laptops after another defeat, all except Yuki who is still typing away and getting faster and faster each time. She starts out doing hunt-and-peck on the first day, but by the end of the fifth day Kyon finally notices that her fingers are now flying across the keyboard.
• Meaningful Name:
  • According to Wikipedia, Kyon's nickname might come from κύων (kyôn), Ancient Greek for "dog", from where the word "cynic" may come from. Another possibility: Haruhi in the novels loves the story of Tanabata, involving a romance between a man and a woman separated and only allowed to meet once a year; the Korean name for the man can be romanized as 'Kyonu'.
  • Yuki's name as written means "has hope", which arguably fits with her later Character Development. Written in another way, it can also mean "snow", leading to several snow motifs. The 8th novel suggests that "snow" meaning was why she chose this name for herself as a metaphor, because as the Entity is formless and unified, like a mass of water, or a cloud, she is individual, and material, like a snowflake originating from that water. Additionally, the kanji in her surname name can translate to "gate manager" (or "master", in that context), which makes sense since she's essentially managing a "gate" to the Data Overmind.
  • Another probably intentional one — 'Mikuru' written a certain way in kanji can mean 'future'.
• Meaningless Meaningful Words: Played with in The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina when Itsuki and Yuki, to fill Haruhi's messed-up script, improvise a dialogue and manage to talk for a full minute without saying anything that makes the tiniest sense!
• Meta Guy: Kyon, Genre Savvy Deadpan Snarker that he is.
• Milking the Giant Cow: Itsuki has a bad case of this; he just can't stop gesticulating whenever he talks, especially when he's lecturing Kyon on something.
• Mind Screw: If you haven't been spoiled, watching the series from the start in its original out-of-chronological-order order, will mess you up.
• Minimalistic Cover Art: The paperback editions of the English-language novels.
• Miracle Rally: Played with in "The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya". Yuki cheats and modifies the attribute data of the baseball bat the team uses ('Homing Mode'). Kyon asks her to disable it afterwards, and the team go right back to sucking again... but they still win. And then forfeit, because Haruhi's had her fun. And then Kyon sells the other team the bat.
• Mistaken Message: Ryoko's anonymous note on Kyon's Inside Shoes locker.
• Mood Dissonance: The episode "Sometime in the Rain" has Haruhi share an umbrella with Kyon, and act like she cares about him, as they walk home together. There's a sense of them almost being friends, honestly. It's a noticeable difference from where Haruhi was at the beginning of the show, and definite character development. It was a little hard to take at face value though, considering that Haruhi had spent the day forcibly dressing Mikuru up and filming her, after sending Kyon off on an errand so he wouldn't interfere. Of course, her sending Kyon off so he wouldn't interfere counts as character development. She never worried about what anyone thought early on.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Ryoko's conversation alone with Kyon at first sounds like a heartfelt confession of love... then it starts making no sense ("the higher-ups are all sticks-in-the-mud who can't keep up with change, but I can't afford such complacency out in the field")... and then she says she's going to kill him, pulls out a big Rambo knife and lunges at him.
  • The movie ends on a rather light note—basically, Kyon states he chose this world. It's way more fun here. I have to go back in time and make sure I don't screw up foiling Yuki's plan at some point, but whatever, time for some Christmas hot pot. Cut to the credits and an a capella song called "Gentle Oblivion". Especially sad when you realize that it's a character song for Yuki.
  • Watch the cheery first episode of "Endless Eight," then watch the following ones.
  • Kyon's confrontation with Haruhi in Sigh leads to a sudden change of the mood. And to a dark, overcast, rainy, musicless day.
• Morality Chain: The only reason Haruhi got any nicer is Kyon. And we don't wanna know what would happen if he should die. But Ryoko Asakura does.
• More than Three Dimensions: Mikuru Asahina describes Time Travel as moving in a four-dimensional direction across a series of stills, as in an animation.
• The Movie: An adaptation of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, to be exact.
  • Big Damn Movie: Naturally, since Disappearance is one of the more epic stories in the series.
• Mr. Exposition: The show hangs a lampshade on this with Kyon constantly telling Itsuki, aka Mr Exposition, that he talks too much.
• Mr. Imagination: Haruhi, naturally.
• Mr. Vice Guy: Haruhi starts out as a jerkass Genki Girl and eventually becomes, well, a selfish jerk who means well and values her friends more than making the world exciting.
• Ms. Fanservice: Mikuru again. Haruhi herself has a few moments.
• Mugged for Disguise: Invoked by Kyon during Disappearance (when Itsuki and Haruhi, who attend a different school in the altered reality, try to sneak into North High), but averted with them using Kyon's P.E. uniforms instead. Though Haruhi naturally thinks this trope is an equally good idea.
• Multiple Demographic Appeal: And how. At least part of the massive popularity of Haruhi Suzumiya has something to do with the fact that it combines light high school drama, sitcom-like comedy, sci-fi and something resembling a love story or an unconscious Unwanted Harem, along with dashes of mystery, musical, maths and physics fanservice and wacky misadventures, with a strong-willed (and cute) female lead opposite an affable and extremely relatable male lead. Its' appeal spreads across all genders.
• Mundane Made Awesome:
  • Kyon using Hot Blood to plan a day of homework and BREAK THE TIME LOOP in the anime version of "Endless Eight". It even had epic music to accompany it, and was preceded by the coolest and most dramatic "Oh, Crap! Haruhi's about to leave the restaurant" sequence of all eight episodes (or maybe a bad acid-trip). This was a moment when the viewers were celebrating too.
  • That five minute scene that climaxes in Kyon stomping on himself with his decision to go back to the world he knew in the Disappearance movie.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Ryoko's motivation for stabbing Kyon in Disappearance. Probably also a secondary motivation when she initially tries to kill him in Melancholy.
• Musical Pastiche: Soundtrack during the baseball match pastiches the theme to the Touch (1981) anime.
• Myself, My Avatar: The Data Overmind/Heavenly Canopy Domain "Agents".
• Mysterious Backer: The Data Entity.
• Necktie Leash: Mostly just in the anime. In the novels she leads him arm in arm. It shows character development for Haruhi when she stops dragging Kyon along by the tie and takes him by the hand instead.
• Necro Cam: Subverted. When Haruhi and Kyon are trying to solve a murder, their suppositions are Art Shifted. Haruhi's is in low-res red-filtered live-action (possibly a Cultural Cross-Reference to CSI). Meanwhile, Kyon's is simple crayon sketches. We don't get to see how the actual murder happened.
• Neutral Female: Mikuru. She even knows that she won't be a combatant or competent.
• Newspaper Dating: Kyon in the novel of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
  • Episode 00 "The Adventures Of Mikuru Asahina", Mikuru's and Yuki's characters.
  • Kyon's suggestion for the cultural festival: "Let's combine everything and do a fortune-telling survey play cafe."
• Next Sunday A.D.: It's implied in Disappearance that Kyon's freshman year in high school started in April, 2010. (He mentions that the date, July 7, is a lucky date — 7/7/07.)
• No Communities Were Harmed:
  • The series' setting is described/rendered in sufficient detail (in both novels and anime) to be readily identifiable as the author's hometown of Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, but it's never referred to by name in-series. Most likely, unwillingness to come out and say it is to avoid invoking a different trope based on the dialect of the region. Nevertheless, there are a few dead giveaways in the series, such as scenes directly in front of (a circa-2006) Osaka Station in "Melancholy III" and an establishing shot in "Endless Eight" that is unmistakably the waterfront of Kobe. (Perhaps the series' attention to detail is also its own undoing.)
  • The American DVD release of Season 2 includes extra videos where some of the crew walk around the town visiting the real-life locations that served as the models for many of the scenes.
• No Name Given:
  • Kyon, the Computer Club President, and Kyon's sister — Kyon bemoans his stupid nickname but never says his real name (his school introduction is cut off). Even his sister's image song had to be titled as "Kyon no Imouto-san" or "Kyon's Little Sister". When someone is about to say the president's name, it is covered up by a sudden cut-off to a random cat meowing.
  • The novels tease us by saying that Kyon's actual name is "hard to spell" and "regal sounding."
  • At the beginning of "Melancholy", the introductions were alternately boy/girl, with boys and girls each being alphabetically ordered. After Kyon, Haruhi Suzumiya introduces herself, then Taniguchi. So Kyon's name likely starts with "Su," "Se," "So," or "Ta." Among the resulting possibilities are "Nagaru Tanigawa" and "John Smith" (Jon Sumisu), although in Disappearance Kyon makes it explicit that John Smith is not his real name.
  • Haruhi introduces Mikuru to Kyon, but then fails to introduce Kyon to Mikuru, a fact that doesn't escape Kyon's attention. And a few days later, when Itsuki is introducing himself to Kyon, Haruhi interrupts Kyon's self introduction with "That's Kyon!"
• Non-Indicative First Episode: First episode, which parodies most of the Japanese Media Tropes and many others in The Catalogue.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Yuki's messages to Kyon at the beginning of book 10 suddenly become completely unintelligible before she passes out. Not Played for Laughs.
  yuki.n> i will not allow them to harm you or haruhi suzumiya
  yuki.n> this is one of my duti□□□□□□□□□ata integrati□□□□□□□ciousnes□□□□□□ttempt□□□□□□□municat□□□□□□□□□□□□□□anopy doma
  yuki.n> my operat?????æ–‡å —å????OE–ã‘ã??§ã™????æ–‡å??? —åOE????–ã‘ã§???
  yuki.n> ????????ã“ã‚OEã?????‚‚æ–‡å??? —å??OE–ã‘ã???•ã“ã‚???OEã‚‚æ?????????????–‡å —åOE–ã‘ã•??
  yuki.n> need to sleep
• Noodle Incident: Only Kyon's "dream" is shown in Snow Mountain Syndrome, the other "dreams" sound interesting.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Itsuki, to Kyon's constant annoyance. Asakura does so too with Kyon, though this is less noticeable since she is only present in a few episodes. In both cases it is unclear whether they are aware of how uncomfortable Kyon is.
• No Such Thing as Wizard Jesus: There are alien data creatures, life forms that are based around physical bodies, but their data can live without their silicon-based bodies. Wait! Doesn't it mean that maybe if humans are also like this, it could be proven that there is life after death for our non-physical part, call it data, mind or soul? The trope is averted, as Kyon does ask this question as soon as he can, and Yuki knows the answer but it is classified information
• Not Actually the Ultimate Question: Haruhi asks Kyon what's the most important thing to have when making a movie. He answers a unique vision and the passion to bring it to life. The answer she was looking for was "a camera".
• Not a Date:
  • Kyon and Mikuru. Aww.
  • If you're talking about Haruhi's insistence in III, there's an even bigger one in the later novels. Mikuru actually asks Kyon out at one point, but it's under orders, and all so Kyon can stop a kid from being hit by a truck.
  • In a subversion, Kyon flashes back to one of these in when Haruhi forces him write a romantic story for the required Literature Club publication. His sisters friend Miyoko wanted to see a scary movie that she was to young for. Since she's Younger Than They Look (Kyon mentions she looks to be closer to his age than his sisters), she asks her best friends brother to take her; since it looks like a date, no one will question them.
• Not So Stoic: There's definite traces of actual emotion under Yuki Nagato's Extreme Doormat Emotionless Girl facade. She's still pretty hard to read though.
• Not What It Looks Like:
  • When Kyon picks up Yuki from the floor and Taniguchi comes in.
  • Likewise the time Haruhi wrestles Kyon to the ground, sits on top of him, and tries to strip off his jacket. She just wants the paper in his pocket, but the scene is enough to traumatize Mikuru when she walks in.

O-S

• Obfuscating Stupidity: Kyon constantly denies knowing or understanding things that the events or narration show that he does, as a way of avoiding conversation with others; most notably Itsuki, but also quite a bit with Taniguchi.
  • Itsuki initially believes that Mikuru may be using this to win Kyon over to her side.
• Occult Detective:
  • Ostensibly the goal of the SOS Brigade, though they very rarely get around to it. Though, to be fair, the SOS-Dan's objective has already been fulfilled: "To find aliens, time travelers, sliders and espers and have fun with them", right...?
  • They haven't found a slider yet. Unless Kyon counts after "Disappearance". Probably not, though. It was technically the same universe.
  • In the eleventh novel, Yasumi fulfills the role of slider, joining the SOS Brigade in one timeline, and popping in to confuse Kyon in the other.
• Odd Friendship: Kyon (laid-back and skeptical) and Haruhi (borderline sociopath with a huge belief in the supernatural). Really, everyone in the S.O.S. Brigade to some extent. Mikuru and Itsuki are in rival organizations, Yuki was not supposed to develop human emotions, and Kyon was not supposed to be there at all. Yet they all become friends.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • In Disappearance, Kyon's reaction to the revival of Ryoko. Understandable when your last interaction with a person was her trying to stab you to death. This reaction turns out to be wholly justified, too.
  • Towards the end of Melancholy Mikuru accidentally stumbles across the folder where Kyon stashed her sexy maid pictures. The dub put it best:
    Kyon: I'm screwed!
  • His general reaction to, well, the disappearance of Haruhi is pretty frentic as well, especially since his initial thoughts center around the idea that she somehow unmade herself (and just how profoundly fucked the universe might be in this case, given what he knows).
  • Realizing the true nature of the paradox, what caused it, and exactly what his decision could mean for Yuki. (And everyone else, but Yuki above all.)
  • In Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, when young Haruhi says, "North High, huh," Kyon's eyes immediately show that he's fully aware of how monumental that moment is, and what it means for his future.
  • Kyon is similarly disturbed in the preview for Surprise when Yuki's text messages reassuring him that there is nothing to worry about suddenly degenerate into unintelligible gibberish, and he becomes horribly aware of just how much strain Yuki is being put under. And then Asakura comes back.
  • Itsuki's face in the novels when he realises his screen-time in the movie he doesn't want to be in has been increased due to his questioning of the lack of characters. Considering his typical Stepford Smiler expression, the fact that his smile becomes visibly strained in the anime can probably still be considered an "oh crap" face.
  • In Someday in the Rain Haruhi is bending over a sleeping Kyon. She has her best Oh, Crap! face of the series when he wakes up and she even holds it for about 10 seconds.
  • In The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of the climactic moments happens when Kyon almost slaps Haruhi in anger after she declared Mikuru "property." Kyon is too upset to notice in the novels, but Itsuki stops smiling and is visibly alarmed (which, for him, may as well be as frightened as he can express) at this point. Itsuki later admits that he was afraid that Haruhi would have had a breakdown and rewriten reality right then and there if Kyon hadn't been stopped.
  • And earlier in Sigh, when one of Mikuru Beams slashes the light reflector right above Itsuki's head. You know shit's gone completely out of control when Itsuki stops smiling.
• Old School Building: The SOS clubroom is in the old wing of the school.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Bilingual Bonus, to boot; the music is part of the first movement of Mahler's 8th Symphony, and the lyrics are taken from the Latin hymn, "Veni, Creator Spiritus", which talks about the creator of the world.
• One Cast Member per Cover: The light novel's early volumes feature a different girl per cover; Haruhi on Volume 1, Mikuru on Volume 2, Yuki on Volume 3, and Ryoko on Volume 4. Volume 5 breaks the pattern, featuring both Tsuruya and Kyon's sister. From then on, the volumes once again feature the girls of the SOS Brigade (Haruhi, Mikuru, and Yuki, but the first gets more solo covers than the other two), until the final volume featuring Sasaki.
• One Head Taller: This becomes extremely obvious in the gender-bent fan version: when you switch the genders, the heights are also accommodated.
• One Myth to Explain Them All: Haruhi is behind everything. Or time travelers. Or aliens. Or espers.
• One-Steve Limit: Haruhi is a very common name in Japan, but in the Disappearance movie, on December 18, no one at Kyon's classroom seems to know a single Haruhi. The novel explains that all of Haruhi's classmates from her junior high were out sick that day.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Kyon.
• Only One Name: We never get to know Tsuruya's complete name; it's never even made clear if Tsuruya is her first or second name. People who don't hang around with her call her "Tsuruya-san" and Itsuki refers to "The Tsuruya Family", so it may be her second name, but Haruhi calls her "Tsuru-chan" so it could very well be her first name. The fact that the name Tsuruya can serve as both doesn't help.
• Only Smart People May Pass: In "Winter Cabin Fever", Kyon and Itsuki are presented with the equation x - y = (D - 1) - z, and are told to find x, y, and z. Their only hint is the number four... maybe. It's incredibly Solve the Soup Cans-y, and requires quite a bit of Moon Logic to solve. This is a rearrangement of Euler's Formula, something that nobody would know unless they had a basic understanding of graph theory or topography. Four means to make a planar graph out of the shape of the number 4.
• Orange/Blue Contrast: Somewhat. The covers of volumes 10 and 11 of the light novels are orange and blue respectively, and they're getting a simultaneous release. Bonus points because it further shows how Haruhi and Sasaki are on opposite ends of...whatever.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Kyon actually is confirmed completely 100% ordinary. Through background checks. For now at least. Considering that this is the Haruhi verse, it's quite possible that this will change. The fact that sliders are so far unaccounted for has caused many fans to believe that Kyon may eventually become a slider.
• Or Was It a Dream?: What Kyon is asking himself after the climax of Melancholy, until it becomes obvious.
• Otherworldly Visits Youngest First: Zig-zagged due to Timey-Wimey Ball. Haruhi met "John Smith" (actually Kyon), when she was only twelve. But this was after Kyon had met time-travelers, ESPers, and aliens, as well as being told that Haruhi was a Physical God, albeit an unaware one...three years in the future.
• Our Souls Are Different: Data entities like the cave cricket the computer club president ran afoul of can exist even after their physical medium has been destroyed. When Yuki is explaining this, she lets slip that this is true of data in general, not really anything unique to these entities. Kyon realizes the implications of that statement, and asks if human souls exist. Yuki's response is...interesting.
  Nagato, she—
  "..."
  She was silent, she was blank, and yet I felt that there was some kind of a look to her. And so long as my perception wasn't indicating "zero"—
  "..."
  It was like she was trying to avoid smiling at her own joke.
  "That is classified."
• Out of Focus: Haruhi Suzumiya herself in a lot of ways! Justified, in that keeping her unaware and uninvolved is pracitically the SOS Brigade's true modus operandi. For everyone's sake.
• Outsourcing Fate:
  • In Disappearance, when Yuki left it to Kyon to choose between the old and new worlds
  • Kyon does something like this on a daily basis in the series, but without anyone willingly empowering him.
• Overly Long Gag: "Endless Eight", with a full eight episodes. Based on one single 30-page chapter. With each episode about 24 minutes long, the gag ran for three hours and twelve minutes. It has not been received well. The Arc Number is visually cued in episode 6: Kyon endlessly repeatedly scrawls an '8' into Haruhi's checklist, and from the camera angle it appears to be the sign of 'infinity'. Yes, eight whole episodes were committed to this symbolism. Let's put this in perspective. While it only takes three hours and twelve minutes to watch every episode, this is not what was was Overly Long about it. Many fans watched these episodes as they came out over the course of a few months. Yuki Nagato was an effective woobie because after about 4 episodes the viewers began to get more and more frustrated and felt like they themselves were stuck in the endless recursion of time with the characters. It didn't help that each episode teased at breaking the cycle at the very end of each episode, only to have Kyon not know what to do/chicken out.
• Pac Man Fever: Possibly justified, as it was a game built by a bunch of talented amateurs.
• Pals with Jesus: Kyon. To the point that anyone who wants to affect Haruhi in any way goes through him first (sometimes with a knife), to his irritation. It's combined with Kid with the Leash for Yuki, who listens to Kyon and Kyon only.
  Haruhi: Okay, Yuki, wreck her with your magic!
  Yuki:... [looks over at Kyon]
  Kyon: [narrating] No. No. No. I shouldn't even have to tell you that.
• Paratext:
  • The layout of the 2009 episodes plays around with this by reflecting their content: the new episodes came three years after the first run, playing on the interval of time travel in "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody"; "Endless Eight" had eight iterations; and The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya, about the SOS Brigade's creation of a movie, was treated like a single long movie-like episode and simply cut whenever each episode's time limit was reached (even in the middle of conversations). It had also become a minor meme to state that "Disappearance disappeared" or some variation of it, but it's now The Movie. And it was released on DVD and Blue-Ray on December 18, a majorly significant date in the story.
  • Despite the majority of the tenth novel taking place in April, Kyon travels a month in the future in the ending.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Haruhi has a few. Most famously, the ENOZ concert and in the later novels... Valentine's Chocolate!
  • The way she deals with little kids, such as Kyon's sister, qualifies as well.
  • She gets an explicit version in book 8 also with Rousseau.
• The Philosopher:
  • Itsuki. Not only effective as The Philosopher but nearly as difficult to follow as his ancient Greek forerunners. Just trying to make sense of what he's saying is a mental workout, for the audience as well as Kyon.
  • Kyon himself is a more down-to-Earth version of The Philosopher (especially in the books), but unlike Itsuki usually keeps it to himself.
  • Shamisen deserves an honorable mention. Although he only has one speech, he's a good enough philosopher that upon being introduced he manages to sidetrack the brigade members into a debate over the nature of conversation and away from the fact that, you know, he's a talking cat.
  • Sasaki exemplifies this trope, so much that even the aforementioned Itsuki is impressed. You have to admire someone who can come up with a clever and confusing speech about light and quantum mechanics on the drop of the hat while talking about schoolwork.
  • Haruhi will talk about her philosophy at various points only when alone with Kyon though. Like when she explains how she became the way she is in Melancholy or when tutoring Kyon in Suprise. She also knew the origin of Rousseau's name.
  • Asakura has a moment as part of her Motive Rant.
  • Yuki has her trust speech
  • Kunikida even gets into it in book 11 it's a ship tease with Tsuruya.
  • According to Taniguchi Kuyo Suo would do this on their dates.
• Pinball Protagonist: Kyon. He grows out of it. Because this sort of thing is part of what led to the events of Disappearance.
• Pinch Me: Kyon in Disappearance, upon finding that Haruhi has mysteriously disappeared as if she never attended their high school. He initially thinks he needs to wake up, and when it fails, he starts to panic.
  Kyon: Kunikida, I need you to pinch me. I'd like to wake up now.
  Kunikida: Huh? Seriously?
  Kyon: Yeah.
• Pinky Swear:
  • This gesture has apparently persisted into the far future, if older Mikuru in "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody" is anything to go by.
  • The trope's name is also the title of Ryoko Asakura's first Image Song, showcasing her Nice Girl personality before she decides to kill a man just to provoke a change in the status quo.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Despite being a club for investigating paranormal activity, the SOS Brigade rarely actually does anything, at least in the anime.
• Plot Hole: Directly referenced and combined with Pun in "Intrigues"; when Kyon and future!Asahina-san (small) has to move a boulder, he comments on the crater it leaves behind and asks if anyone will notice it.
• Porn Stash:
  • Well not porn as such, but Kyon has stashed a few photos of Mikuru that she most certainly wouldn't be happy about him having on the Computer Club's... that is, the SOS Brigade's computer.
  • In Surprise, he claims Taniguchi lent him a rare porno mag as an excuse to leave the rest of the Brigade. Haruhi is left speechless.
• Post-Episode Trailer: The "broadcast order" featured Kyon and Haruhi arguing over the episode number. The "DVD order" has Yuki laconically state everything deadpan.
• P.O.V. Boy, Poster Girl: Kyon is the POV protagonist, but Haruhi drives the plot.
• Powers as Programs: The humanoid interfaces.
• Practical Voice-Over: Kyon, narrating the first episode film.
• Precision F-Strike: In the anime: "Then I'll tell everyone at school that all you geeks ganged up on her and fucked her!" Of course, the line in the novel is the relatively innocuous "gang-raped". In the Disappearance novel, Kyon swears once at the very end (apparently for the first time in the series). By the Astonishment novel, he's less restrained.
• Prepare to Die: A crazed Ryouko Asakura says this to Kyon in a rather pleasant tone before Yuki's Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Press-Ganged: Pretty much everyone in the SOS Brigade can attest that they were bodily forced- er, recruited using this method.
• Pretty Boy: Itsuki is repeatedly stated to look like he stepped out of a fashion magazine. Kyon doesn't look bad either, but Tsuruya notes that while he's attractive, he's not especially so.
• Prima Donna Director: Haruhi throws some epic tantrums during the making of The Adventures of Mikuru and displays some of her worst behaviour for the entire series.
• Prolonged Prologue: The novels often have extremely long prologues, or at least chapters titled so. Kyon lampshades the very long prologue of Disappearance, but the prologue in Intrigues is nearly twice as long as that, and the prologue in Dissociation is in turn considerably longer than Intrigues. Kyon does have a point though, despite their length there really isn't any other name for them other than "prologue" as they don't quite fit into the story proper.
• Puberty Superpower: Haruhi and Itsuki both gain their powers at age 12 (Itsuki because of Haruhi).
• Public Domain Soundtrack: Classical music is used very effectively throughout the series (see the trope's page for details).
• Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Yuki, though she stops wearing them later.
• Rapid-Fire Typing:
  • And Rapid Fire Speaking, too. In fact, being an alien, Yuki takes this to such a ludicrous degree that Mikuru gets scared and Kyon gets nervous she'll blow her cover.
  • Yuki's typing during the Day of Sagittarius is so fast that an ordinary computer should be unable to keep up.
• Real-Place Background: The anime is set in clearly recognizable locales in and around the city of Nishinomiya, with occasional glimpses of Osaka (the Celestial attack in "Melancholy V") and Kobe (the fireworks in "Endless Eight").
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Ryoko (Red) and Yuki (Blue). Actually subverted, as their inner workings are exactly flipped.
  • Ryoko (Red) and Emiri (Blue), both in terms of action and inner workings. Ryoko has a tendency for individual action and shows some interest in moving beyond being a "mere terminal" while Emiri is very by the book and shows no interest in being anything other than a tool of the Data Integration Thought Entity.
  • The same dynamic applies to Haruhi and Kyon (Haruhi's theme color is red, though Kyon is yellow since Yuki means blue is taken), but it takes a somewhat closer reading to see who, when it comes down to it, is actually inclined to be a hothead and who's prone to, well, melancholy.
• Red Pill, Blue Pill: Kyon is given the choice to either remain in the new world where espers, aliens, and so forth don't exist or return the world to its former crazy, troublesome self.
• Rescue Romance : Well, friendship at least. The start of the Yuki x Kyon Ship Tease is her saving him from Asakura . Interestingly, she's portrayed as slighly creepy prior to this incident. After this, Kyon warms up to her a bit, and she is portrayed as much less creepy.
• Restraining Bolt: Yuki places one of these upon herself after the events of Disappearance as a precaution, disabling her ability to time travel via synchonization. This also has a unique subversion — losing her knowledge of what the future holds gives Yuki "freedom beyond what I had imagined", allowing her to exercise free will for the first time... And as a result, she spontaneously offers to make dinner for Kyon and Mikuru. D'aww.
• Rhetorical Request Blunder: Throughout the Haruhi series, Kyon continually wishes that he were living a normal life. In the fourth book Yuki provides just that.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: Yuki Nagato fits this trope to a T.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Averted and played straight. Once in "Endless Eight" and once in Disappearance. The times it is played straight are explained. Yuki in "Endless Eight", because her information is the time frame and Kyon in Disappearance, because Yuki precisely made it so he'd remember.
• Robe and Wizard Hat: Yuki wore this for her fortune-telling, the student film, and impromptu guitar replacement. "The Wizard of Rock" indeed.
• Running Gag:
  • Kyon always being the last one to arrive at any outing of the SOS Brigade, and consequently always being the one who ends up paying for the group's lunch.
  • Itsuki will lose any game he tries to play.
  • Yuki will make an obscure one or two word comment on something. Someone, usually Kyon, will ask her to explain. She does. This rarely helps
• Sailor Fuku: Kyon comments on the school's girl's uniforms in the first novel, and wonders if the principal has a Sailor Fuku fetish.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: This is set out for Kyon and Haruhi in the prologue of the first novel and extends to at least the tenth novel.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Yuki, until she stops wearing them. When the Student Council President attempts to shut down the SOS Brigade, Kyon notices his glasses were flashing for no reason. "Are those special effects?"
• Scenery Censor: It's a Running Gag to have characters and objects blocking the view of Haruhi forcibly stripping a flustered Mikuru while commenting explicitly on her body. It was played most obviously and repeatedly in "Someday in the Rain", with recurring shots of Yuki discretely turning to gaze into the bookshelf while Itsuki courteously leaves the room.
• Scenery Porn: Compare the real town of Nishinomiya with the anime. The similarities are astounding. Deserving special mention is The Movie; the backgrounds are quite stunning.
• School Club Front: The S.O.S. Brigade is one of these with a twist. On paper, it exists to find supernatural stuff (espers, aliens and time travellers, among other things). On application, it exists only to cater to every crazy whimsy that Haruhi Suzumiya has. The 'twist' lies in that there *is* an alien, an esper and a time traveller amongst the members of the club-and their objective is to observe, report, and keep The Masquerade in front of Haruhi's eyes, because she's a Reality Warper of massive power who could bring along The End of the World as We Know It without even wanting to... and her getting bored increases the chances of it happening a whole damn lot. The Lemony Narrator and POV character of the show is the club's sole normal member, an Unfazed Everyman who is on the Dark Secret, and supports The Masquerade whole-heartedly (if snarkily).
• School of No Studying: Most of the characters never stop to worry about their grades. Not even Mikuru, the upperclassman (but it's implied she's not that bright anyway.)
• School Uniforms are the New Black: Yuki Nagato will wear her school uniform even when the rest of her friends change into their casual clothes. Kyon suggests that maybe she just likes her school uniform because she exhibited similar behavior with her fortune telling/witch costume.
• Second Year Protagonist: Volume 9 sees the SOS Brigade (except for Mikuru, who's now in third year) become second years. This becomes a plot point in the tenth novel when Haruhi decides to recruit freshmen.
• Secret-Keeper: For three opposing factions, all whom seem to get along pretty well for opposing factions, although it is mentioned that certain parties within each group don't get along as well as the three close to Kyon. Until he actually tells Haruhi about it. Luckily (?), she's an Agent Scully.
• Selective Obliviousness:
  • Kyon's non-comprehension of Haruhi's feelings for him is acceptable in the anime, as the series is short and romance is not a gigantic focus, but it's getting downright ridiculous in the novels. It's even got Itsuki openly exasperated. Bear in mind though that in regards to his feelings for Haruhi, Kyon's an Unreliable Narrator. The issue is less any stupidity on his part and more of a refusal to understand. But on the other hand, there are occasions where Kyon's thoughts clearly betray that he knows that if Haruhi gets jealous over him she might end the world. Happens in "Live Alive" and Sigh.
  • Given that twice in the anime ('End of the World' and Endless Eight) solutions cause Kyon to directly interact with Haruhi on a personal basis, it might be less of 'obliviousness' and more 'refusing to see it'.
• Sequel Hook: In the end of Surprise, Kyon travels a month into the future, and because there already is another Kyon in that future, he must return to mend the timeline. It also will serve for us to find out what the hell happened.
  • Part of the same time slip shenanigans, before Kyon travels one month into the future, into Haruhi's room no less, he actually gets dumped into an even further future to a place that appears to be a college campus. To his surprise, there is an older Haruhi staring down at him in surprise and confusion as to why he's wearing his old uniform. The kicker? He also catches a brief glimpse of his future self running up just before he fades away with Haruhi smiling at him. The implication? Kyon and Haruhi are still together even in college. It's pretty good payoff when Haruhi had been helping Kyon to study throughout volumes 9-11. Even better yet, Kyon decides he wants to work toward making that future happen so he can see that Haruhi again. Made STILL better by the earlier chapter "Wandering Shadow" in which Kyon recalls seemingly randomly having received a book from Yuki (whose fortune telling talents he simultaneously implicates) that details the romance of a boy and girl transitioning from high school to college together. That's one hell of a sequel hook.
• Series Continuity Error: In the movie, Haruhi says she had sworn off alcohol. However, the kids were never drunk in the anime version of Lone Island Syndrome. The dub sidesteps this, as mentioned above under Bowdlerize.
• Sexiness Score: Kyon's friend Taniguchi informs Kyon and Kunikida that he's got a ranking system for the girls in the class. He's given a ranking of A+ to Ryoko Asukura, and later informs Kyon that Yuki Nagato is an A-. Not surprisingly, Taniguchi is regularly noted to be unpopular and/or unlucky with the ladies.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: More like a nudity discretion shot. In "Someday In The Rain," whenever Haruhi changes Mikuru's outfit, the viewer is treated to what could only be described as sounds of rape, a shot of Yuki's face as she's picking out a book, and Itsuki standing outside the room saying something completely unrelated. Yuki is apparently Genre Savvy and aware of the viewer and the camera placement during these scenes. At one point after switching out her books during one such occasion, she makes a deliberate glance at the bookshelf, and presumably, the viewer, as if she knows what we're all thinking.
• Sexy Surfacing Shot: Haruhi is seen climbing out of the pool in her bikini with the camera focusing on her body during one of the "Endless Eight" loops.
• Shadow Archetype: Kyon and Haruhi to each other. Kyon is the rational Agent Scully that Haruhi learnt to suppress for the sake of fun. Haruhi is the irrational Daydream Believer that Kyon learnt to suppress for the sake of order (and lack of disappointment) in his life. To a lesser extent, Itsuki and Taniguchi could be considered Kyon's shadows, constantly bringing up things that Kyon would prefer not to think about.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Haruhi is an example of this. She doesn't have a problem with changing in public because she doesn't care about anyone else or what they think. A major sign of her growing relationship with Kyon is that she does begin to care if he's watching and violently tsuns him out of the room.
• Shipper on Deck: Itsuki is pretty unsubtle about thinking Kyon and Haruhi should hook up.
• Ship Tease:
  • All of the Kyon/Yuki shippers got a massive dose of Ship Tease from the movie. Sadly, it looks like Kyon will always go back to Haruhi.
  • At the risk of starting certain...arguments he might just enjoy the old SOS Brigade and the weird things that happen around him when he's with Haruhi.
  • Kyon kissing the princess awake is naturally, yet frustratingly, wiped out with All Just a Dream.
  • Intensifying Ship Tease concluding each episode of the "Endless Eight", until Kyon's momentous epiphany...of Anti-Climax.
  • In ''Snow Mountain Syndrome" Kyon and Haruhi get into a spirited game of Twister.
  • In novel 11, Kyon is sent a month into the future. Where does he appear, you ask? On all fours over Haruhi in her bed. And Haruhi doesn't seem very bothered by it. To make it worse: She is the one who sent him there in the first place.
  • As part of the same time slip, Kyon actually ends up going a few years into the future, appearing in a college campus, where an older Haruhi is waiting to meet him. She's initially confused at him wearing his old uniform, but smiles when Future!Kyon does show up. This moment is particularly noteworthy in that at the end of the earlier chapter "Wandering Shadow", Kyon speaks of having innocuously received a book from Yuki about the romance of a boy and girl transitioning from high school to college together, his thoughts simultaneously referencing Yuki's "fortune telling" abilities.
• Shirtless Scene:
  • Kyon in the second part of "Endless Eight". Stupid sexy Kyon.
  • Endless Eight VI has both Kyon and Itsuki in swim trunks, and Endless Eight V has Itsuki in what is basically a thong.
  • Also, chapter 10 when Kyon and Haruhi crawled into a cave and took off their dripping shirts. This one, however, is fanservice-free.
• Show Within a Show:
  • Also, the books within a book, when Haruhi forces the SOS Brigade to write short stories for a magazine to save the Literature club from being disbanded due to lack of membership. Through these, we get some interesting looks at the personalities (and possibly even back stories) of the SOS Brigade; especially noteworthy is Yuki's, where it is hinted that Kimidori has known Yuki since she was first "born," and helped her come up with her name.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Sighted Guns Are Low-Tech: The hypodermic dart gun that Yuki gives to Kyon in Disappearance in order to inject the corrective program looks distinctly sci-fi-ish (or like a toy); either way, it is missing its sights.
• Significant Anagram: Watahashi Yasumi(zu) = Watashi ha/wa Suzumiya = I am Suzumiya.
• Silent Bob: One single word with a bit of emotion from Yuki says it all.
• "Silly Me" Gesture: Kyon's sister's trademark. Future Mikuru also does it in Disappearance.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Yuki Nagato may be Kyonsexual. Given that she's a stoic Emotionless Girl who hardly says a word to anybody, it's interesting that she talks with and defers to Kyon on a regular basis. Then there's also that time Yuki recreated reality, including shunting the other three members of the Brigade out of the way. The alternate version of Yuki had a pretty obvious crush on Kyon.
• The Singularity: Mechanical technology is a dead end in the Haruhi-verse: both the Aliens and Time Travellers are past it. Mikuru can't operate anything more complicated than a flashlight because what she's familiar with isn't remotely similar; when asked about the future, she can't reveal anything, but her non-answers imply that mankind doesn't even need to use boats anymore. This makes Yuki's love of Science Fiction novels and games an interesting quirk.
• Sliding Scale of Realistic vs. Fantastic: the series has three discernible layers with regards to this scale: a Mundane layer (Kyon, school life and the club's for-fun activities), an Unusual/Fantastic layer (the aliens, time travelers and espers, whose powers are bound by rules they don't create), and a Surreal layer (Haruhi, whose power is implied not to be bound by the rules that the others' are).
• Slipstream: With all the post-modernism, genre-blending, and the layered scale above, this is about as close to a genre as this series is likely to get.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Haruhi invokes this trope during the filming of the movie by outfitting Mikuru with twin (airsoft) Desert Eagles. The results are about as awesomely, ridiculously hilarious as you'd imagine.
• Snark Knight: If it was an actual chivalric order, Kyon would be its Knight Grand Cross, maybe the patron saint.
• Snow Means Love: Snow accompanies a moment between Kyon and Yuki, in which Kyon declares that should anything happen to her, he'll set out with Haruhi to save her. Also, one reading of "Yuki" (雪) means "snow."
• Some Kind of Force Field: The walls of Closed Space.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Kyon's Little Sister and Computer Society President's real names.
• Space Whale Aesop : Endless Eight Haruhi created a Ground Hog Day Loop that went around 15,000+ times and drove Yuki(who remembered all of it, rather than having her memory reset eachtime like everyone else) insane enough to cause the Disappearance plot line because....Kyon didn't do his homework. To be fair, her subconscious probably didn't know it would be as bad for Yuki as it was.
• Sparkling Stream of Tears: Mikuru, in the opening.
• Spin-Off:
  • Haruhi-chan.
  • The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan
  • Nyoron Churuya-san
• Spinning Paper: Kyon randomly remembers a scene from a previous episode in this format.
• Spock Speak: Yuki Nagato.
• Spoiler Cover: In The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon spends pages and pages reacting with shock to the sudden reappearance of that person in his classroom, and how that person seems to be acting like nothing is wrong. It's finally revealed to be Ryouko Asakura, back from the dead, which would've been a neat twist if she wasn't on the cover of the book.
• Spoiler Opening:
  • But only once you've seen the episode.
  • For a Brick Joke Spoiler Opening, go back and rewatch "Bouken Dessho Dessho" after Disappearance. Several scenes from the opening are taken directly from the movie.
• Stable Time Loop: Lots of these:
  • Kyon is John Smith, who met a young Haruhi and influenced her to become who she is today; at one point in the novels, there are four Kyons and three Mikurus existing simultaneously.
  • When an older Mikuru informs Kyon about her star-shaped mole, only to realize he was the one who told her about it, and he didn't know until she told about it. She's understandably upset at the implications.
  • Following Future Mikuru's instructions, the two of them plant the basic ideas of time travel in the head of a primary school boy. Present Mikuru recognises him as the future inventor of time travel.
  • The events of Intrigues. At the end of the novel Kyon sends Mikuru 8 days back into the past to find him and follow his instructions, because at the beginning of the novel he finds the 8-days-later Mikuru that he will send back.
  • At the end of Disappearance, future Kyon, Yuki, and Mikuru come back to save Kyon's life after he's stabbed by Asakura. Think about that for a minute: If Kyon hadn't survived at that moment, he couldn't have gotten them to come back in time to save his life at that same moment. He lived because he lived.
• Starfish Aliens: The Data Overmind and its "inhabitants" are really these, even if the Interfaces all look like high school girls. Also hilariously played with in the Book 10 preview, as the residents of the Canopy Domain are incomprehensible Starfish Aliens to the Data Overmind. Part of the reason Ryoko engaged Kuyo was to try and gain at least a modicum of understanding of the latter. For Kyon's part, he finds Kuyo so unbelievably alien and bizzare that he calls her and her fellows straight-up Eldritch Abominations. Even more hilarious, however, is the suggestion that the Data Overmind (and the Canopy Domain, for that matter) ultimately view humans as a kind of Starfish Alien. Just consider the fact that specific "Humanoid Interfaces" needed to be constructed to even attempt to communicate with mankind. It also explains a lot of their oddities; for example, Yuki's furnishings are very simple because she literally does not understand the need for decoration or comfort (at least at first), those being relatively pointless (as we know them) to her in her "natural" state.
• Start My Own: Haruhi's motivation for starting the SOS Brigade. No bonus points for guessing who gave her the idea. Guessing that the same person also inspired the odd name? You might be a genius.
• Stating the Simple Solution: During the filming of the student movie, an in-universe Plot Hole is pointed out: If Yuki has the power to control minds, why doesn't she just mind control Itsuki instead of doing the whole roundabout method of recruiting him? Unfortunately, this is brought up while the camera is running, by the cat. Kyon yells from offscreen for him to shut up, or he's not getting any dinner.
  Yuki: Apologies. That was ventriloquism.
• Stepford Smiler:
  • Itsuki, always cheerful and smiling even if the world is in serious danger. Kyon is not amused. Itsuki is always smiling, anyway. There are many hints, even in the anime, that he is jealous of Kyon a bit.
  • Ryoko Asakura. Big Time. Her cheerful personality is, at best a facade over total lack of emotion and lack of understanding of human concepts.
• Still the Leader: Downplayed most of the time. There's no chance of Haruhi ever losing her role as the Brigade's official leader, but whenever Kyon starts making plans or instructing the other Brigade members without her input, she still feels obligated to remind him that she's the leader and it's her job to give the orders (even though she usually just ends up going along with his ideas anyway). Kyon attributes this to her competitiveness.
• The Stinger: After the Disappearance movie. Yuki is shown reading by herself at the public library, but stops for a moment to watch a boy help a girl make a library card. Yuki then looks toward the camera and does that adorable thing where she holds her book in front of her face with only her eyes peeking out over it. Who said Yuki needed emotions to be moe?
• Strange Minds Think Alike:
  • Kyon and Haruhi provide a number of subtle examples of this. Arguably the reason why Haruhi "chooses" Kyon.
  • In the very beginning of the chronological first episode, Kyon specifically mentioned that in the past he hoped that there are "aliens, time travellers, and espers".
  • Kyon seems to actually understand the logic of pre-SOS Brigade Haruhi's cyclical hairdos, and can follow her explanation of which color belongs to which day. The only part they disagree on is the numbers assigned to the days: She says Monday is 0, making Sunday a 6, whereas he thinks Monday ought to be a 1, presumably making Sunday 0 or 7.
  • In "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody" there's a couple of superficially apparent false examples of this: Kyon tells Haruhi to go get the line marker before she explains what they're going to do (which visibly surprises her in the anime), and he also manages to guess the symbols are a message to Orihime and Hikoboshi without her explaining it. He has the advantage of, well, knowing high-school Haruhi, but her middle-school version seems surprised at John Smith's ability to understand what she's thinking. On the other hand, Kyon imagines the message scene when first told about it back in Melancholy. He actually got some of the details right, like her stealing the materials ahead of time.
  • In "Someday in the Rain" and Disappearance, both Kyon and Haruhi, upon being woken up by the other, think that the other one must have been drawing on their face.
  • In the 8th book, both Itsuki and a random passerby come to the conclusion that cats and dogs must be avoiding a certain area because there is a hibernating bear somewhere. In the middle of the town. In the same book, both Haruhi and Sakanaka's father use the nickname "J.J." for a dog called Rousseau. Maybe they had the same philosopher in mind.
  • In Sigh, Kyon accurately guesses why Haruhi wanted to make a movie.
  • 101 Hamsters, but perhaps this is an artifact of her powers at work.
• Student Council President: The... um... Student Council President from the short stories. Though he's really a Punch-Clock Villain working for the same Agency as Itsuki, and was brought into the school to prevent Haruhi from inventing her own Big Bad.
• Stylistic Suck: The student film in "Episode 00". One of the few justified examples, as it's a student film, trying to look like a Toku show. Oddly enough, the effort required to achieve this look in animation makes it perhaps the most technically sophisticated episode.
• Subordinate Excuse : Haruhi uses this a lot to help out Kyon. It's her reason for staying in the hospital in Disappearance and she tutors him later in the novels. Interestingly, she can take care Yuki because she's worried about her.
• Subverted Trope: In Disappearance we are initially led to believe that, since he's in an apparently alternate universe, Kyon is technically our much-awaited slider. He's proven to not be one in short order when we find out that he didn't go to an alternate universe; Yuki just changed everyone's memories in the current one.
• Suddenly Always Knew That: Yuki's unexplained guitar skills. Considering her other talents, this is pretty easy for her.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Yuki and the others of her kind.
• Suggestive Collision: Created by Haruhi so she could blackmail the Computer Club President with the pictures.
• Super-Deformed: Haruhi-chan and Churuya-san, though apart from these self-parodies, it consistently averts the trope.
• Super Power Lottery: Yuki, and how! Haruhi's got a winning ticket, but we'll see if she ever cashes it in.
• Super-Reflexes: Yuki can react fast enough to block lasers. That would require her to move at faster than light speeds. It's never made clear if the lasers gave some sort of sign that they were about to go off, giving her time to react, or if she can just move at faster than light speeds. Asakura's fight in Surprise implies that she stopped time. The Hyperion Cantos reference would also support this (it's one character's Signature Move).
  • There is a little flash caught on camera before Yuki catches the laser, which logically can't be the laser's flesh-burning beam. That is the sign. No FTL-movement here.
• Supporting Protagonist: Haruhi is usually the focus of the story (and leader of the brigade), but Kyon is always the main character.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • In "Live Alive," after wolfing down his lunch at top speed, Kyon takes a walk just to settle his stomach and certainly not to look for Haruhi. Seriously. There was no other reason. Don't read too much into it.
  • Also, when filming "The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina," there was no extra footage of her being undressed by Haruhi. None. At all. So don't bother asking for it.
• Synthetic Plague: One of the characters knocks out half the class with a sudden flu so she can have some quality time with the male lead. Unfortunately there is one survivor who unravels her evil plot.

T-Z

• Taking the Bullet: Subverted. Yuki doesn't sustain lasting damage shielding Kyon with her own flesh.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Somehow, Kyon in the anime, when thinking or narrating (you can hardly tell the difference between the two). Especially obvious during "Someday in the Rain".
• Team Mom: Haruhi is actually turning into this, starting around Disappearance, but especially obvious in the preview chapter of novel 10.
• Technobabble: Every time Yuki, Mikuru and Itsuki explain something to Kyon, who normally lampshades it.
• Technology Porn: The futuristic videogame "world," with tons of ships and views of torpedoes being loaded everywhere.
• Temporal Paradox: Future Mikuru would not have showed her star-shaped breast mole to Kyon as a Trust Password if Kyon didn't tell Present Mikuru that she had one after Future Mikuru told him, because she didn't even know until Kyon told her.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Or rather, Tempted Fate. In the infamous "Endless Eight" arc, Itsuki said that Haruhi is so happy and could not possibly do anything horrible. Guess what happens.
  • "Stop yelling 'contest' over and over. If those words reach Haruhi's sharp ears..." [HARUHI KICK!]
  • In Kyon's opening narration in the very first episode, he says he just wants a quiet life, passing through high school uneventfully. Then he meets Haruhi...
  • Real-life example: When the first Endless Eight episode was aired and it didn't end the plot conclusively like the original novel did several fans jokingly said that there'd be Endless Eight repeating for the whole season. Others jokingly responded that KyoAni would never do such a thing. Guess what happens.
  • Mikuru almost catches Kyon looking at his folder full of pictures of her, but he quickly closes the window, thinking smugly that he doesn't make mistakes. Immediately...
    Mikuru: Huh? What is this? This MIKURU folder.
    Kyon: Gah! I slipped up.
• Time Loop Fatigue: In "Endless Eight", the SOS Brigade is trapped in a time loop covering the last two weeks of summer. They go through the loop over 15,000 times before breaking it. Fortunately for their sanity, most of them don't retain memories of the past loops, apart from deja vu. The exception is the alien Emotionless Girl Nagato, who recalls everything with superhuman clarity. The toll this takes on her comes up in Disappearance, when her fatigue with her duties causes her to alter reality so that the Brigade never met.
• Time Travel: The novels get really complex about this later.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: One of the reasons Kyon hates Time Travel.
• There Are No Therapists: Early Haruhi hit a fair few points of the criteria for Psychopathy (or similar social disorder), and as far as we know, never gets taken for therapy of any kind, even though she really could have used it. Then again, you could make a decent argument that Kyon is acting as her therapist.
• Theme Naming:
  • Twice called out over Yuki Nagato's name in the books, once in Wavering and again in Indignation.
    • In fact, her name is written with the kanji for "has hope"^note as Kyon points out in one of the novels, but can also mean "snow" (which forms the basis for several Bilingual Bonus puns in the light novels, the manga, and in the spin-off manga/anime Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan).
  • Mikuru's name can be read to mean "Sees it coming."
  • Kimidori can be read to mean "green" — something lampshaded in Haruhi-chan.
  • Itsuki means "tree." Mori means "forest."
  • There is a large hotel chain in Japan named "Tsuruya" (similar to Hilton or Marriott in the United States).
  • Haruhi itself means "spring day" (as in the kind of day that makes one energetic) and can also mean various things depending on what kanji are used.
• This Is a Work of Fiction: In Sigh, Kyon actually uses this to save the world from talking cats, Mikuru Beams and autumnal cherry blossoms.
  Haruhi: This story is a work of fiction. All character names, organizations, incidents and any other names, phenomena and such, are fictional as well. It's all made up. Even if it resembles someone, it's probably just a coincidence. Oh, except for the commercials! Shop at Omori Electronics and Yamatsuchi Model Shop for great deals. Stop by and buy! Huh? I gotta say it again? This story is a work of fiction. All character names, organizations, incidents and any other names... Hey Kyon! Why do I have to say all this stuff anyway? I mean, it's totally obvious.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Movie!Asakura's way to vaguely threaten Kyon should he happen to start dating Yuki and not take it seriously. The official English translation in the novel is a bit less threatening ("...if you intend to go out with Nagato, you'd better be serious about it. Or else I won't allow it.")
• Tin Man: Subverted with Yuki, who legitimately appears to lack normal human emotions... at least, at first glance.
• Title Drop: The anime, in episode 8:
  Kyon: After that, Haruhi was strangely quiet, and dare I say, a bit melancholy.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Several, including:
  • The most explicit such pairing is of boisterous, sporty and boyish Genki Girl Haruhi Suzumiya (who actually leads a sports team at one point) and sweet, shy Girly Girl Mikuru Asahina. Everyone else falls in between these two spectrums.
  • Later on, Haruhi becomes part of two other pairings, once again on the tomboyish side of the spectrum with each; the girly girl in one of them is Sasaki, who has no desire to take charge of the Anti-SOS Brigade and is in fact a supporting character in its downfall, and in the other pairing, Haruhi is considerably more boisterous and less moe than her intended successor in the role of SOS Brigade leader, Yasumi Watahashi (who turns out to be a product of the branching that takes place during the Dissociation/Surprise arc).
  • Haruhi and Yuki
  • Yuki and Mikuru
  • Haruhi (suburbanite) and Tsuruya
  • Tsuruya and Mikuru
  • Haruhi and Ryoko
  • Tsuruya and Ryoko
  • Yuki and Ryoko subvert this trope. At first Ryoko may seem like an outgoing girly girl but she is actually a proactive alien who plays loose cannon to the Data Overmind and Yuki is usually a stickler to the Data Overmind's regulations.
• Touched by Vorlons:
  • Espers, but if you apply it strictly, then every super-natural being only exists because Haruhi created a world like that 3 years ago..
  • If you believe what Itsuki has to say. Mikuru's camp seems to have the opposite perspective on the matter.
• Trapped in Another World: Kyon in Disappearance. Subverted in that the timeline of the original world has been altered instead of going to another world directly.
• Troperrific: The Genre-Busting nature of the series helps Haruhi Suzumiya to be on the Trope Overdosed list up with the long-running series and major franchises, despite being twenty-eight episodes long, with a few scattered mentions of the unanimated novels.
• True Companions:
  • Subverted in the first few novels, at least for a while; neither Itsuki nor Mikuru trust the other fully, if at all, and Yuki warns Kyon not to trust anything any member of the SOS Brigade tells him. Kyon in particular is annoyed by most of the members, particularly Itsuki and Haruhi, and explicitly only cares about Mikuru, and regards Yuki as no more than a part of the furniture. The fact that the entire group has been brought together against their will is often a point of contention, and though Haruhi treats the group as True Companions, no-one else sees it as such until Disappearance. After that, however, the characters begin to treat each other in a manner that befits the trope, with Itsuki in particular saying he would gladly betray the Organization for the SOS Brigade.
  • The 11th book REALLY showcases this trope, with Itsuki once again being the main one to show it, saying that the SOS Brigade has become a part of him now.
• True Love's Kiss: Kyon kisses Haruhi to convince her to turn the world back to normal — or at least give her an interesting romantic subplot with Kyon, keeping her from getting TOO bored.
• Trust Password:
  • A crowning moment of awesome for Kyon in Disappearance — "I am John Smith."
  • There's also "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody" — first, Kyon proves himself to three-years-ago!Yuki with a note from present!Yuki. She then proves herself to Kyon — after synchronizing with herself from three years from then, Yuki pulls off her glasses as if to say "Yes, Kyon, you don't have a glasses fetish."
  • Adult Mikuru attempts to use her mole as a Trust Password with Kyon. It doesn't quite work. Similarly, in the movie, Kyon tries to use this with younger Mikuru, but it doesn't work out either.
  • In "The Melancholy of Mikuru Asahina," Kyon says that his option of telling Mikuru his knowledge of her future self is a trump card comparable to telling Haruhi that he is John Smith.
  • Kyon might also be the key to unsealing Yuki's full power. Yuki says she has willingly sealed off her ability to synchronize, and that she cannot unseal it herself. She says the password to unsealing is in someone else's hands, but doesn't actually say who.
• Twice Shy: Kyon and Haruhi eventually have their BST turn into this. Itsuki lampshades it in the 10th novel.
• Umbrella of Togetherness: The anime-only episode "Someday in the Rain".
• Uncanny Valley Girl: Ryoko Asakura.
• Undressing the Unconscious: When the SOS Brigade makes a film for the school festival, one of the scenes has Mikuru's character throw into a lake and then nursed back to health by Itsuki's character, who puts her in bed now wearing a nightshirt, with the scene implying he changed her clothes while she was unconscious.
• Unequal Pairing:
  • The Kyon x Haruhi pairing hinted by the series comes with a really big double bind: Haruhi can't be Kyon's equal as long as he actively continues to deceive her about her true nature, but Kyon can't be Haruhi's equal if she becomes aware of her true nature.
  • The fans who want Kyon with Yuki (also hinted by the series) notice the all-powerful data entity probably doesn't want to see Yuki actually liking someone. And Mikuru can't have any relations with anyone not from her future.
• Unfazed Everyman: Kyon, quite obviously. He's quite Genre Savvy about it, too, although having a world-changing demiurge as a friend/boss kinda forces him to be.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Mikuru Asahina and by extension everyone except Yuki.
• Unreliable Narrator: Kyon is odd. There are contradictions and quirks in what he says as a narrator and as a person that are just out of place.
• Unreliable Voiceover: Sometimes Kyon's narration is contradicted by what's on the screen, with no reason to doubt that the visuals are anything other than the truth. The best example is in the first chronological episode, when he says he's not interested in Haruhi, despite having just spent several scenes very obviously checking her out.
• Unseen Audience: Whoever the heck Kyon is talking to
• Unwanted Harem: It seems like the rest of the SOS Brigade is this to Kyon. Including Itsuki.
• Villainous Breakdown: In the 11th novel, when Fujiwara meets Future!Mikuru (whom he believes to be his older sister) he completely loses it.
• Villainous Rescue: Asakura, of all people, saving Kyon from Kuyo Suo. Suffice to say, she doesn't exactly do it out of kindness. It doesn't help that most of the time she holds a knife at his throat!
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • As Taniguchi said about him and Kunikida, "So I threw him out the window, and that's how we became friends." * Tsuruya laughs*
  • Haruhi and Kyon also have this sort of relationship.
  • Itsuki and Kyon as well, particularly because they're the only males in the SOS brigade and Itsuki is the most open and talkative compared to Mikuru and Yuki.
• Viewer-Friendly Interface: Averted to extreme detail. The Literature Clubroom computer in Disappearance is a genuine PC-9821 running NEC Windows 95, complete with original start-up chime.
• Virtual-Reality Warper: In the anime, the crux of the episode "The Day of Sagittarius" is a computer game battle. The opposing team wrote the game and uses this to cheat their way to victory, so Yuki, herself essentially a computer, reprograms the game while playing to level the playing field.
• Wager Slave: "You're late! Penalty!"
• Waking Up Elsewhere: The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya combines this with Timey-Wimey Ball. Kyon wakes up after experiencing being stabbed by Asakura, but by the time he wakes up, the past has been rewritten so that he fell down a set of stairs and hit his head.
• Weirdness Censor:
  • It largely seems like nobody who hasn't had the Masquerade broken for them can connect the dots and notice the weird events that happen around Haruhi for what they are. Events or situations where this is evident:
  • Haruhi's herself, of course. Most incredibly in the "Snow Mountain Syndrome" story.
  • Many of the supernatural events in Sigh happen in the presence of Haruhi, Tsuruya, Taniguchi, Kunikida, and in one case the whole city, who either don't notice them or come up with mundane explanations for them (for example, "the fence must be really old" when it breaks in perfect, neat lines due to Mikuru's cutter beam).
  • Nagato's performance in "The Day of Sagitarius."
  • Nagato's "ventriloquism" in the student movie.
  • The SOS Brigade's baseball game — though the Kamigahara Pirates become superstitious about Kyon's bat.
  • Possible exception: Tsuruya, as seen in Novel 7. She knows that the SOS Brigade isn't normal, but we don't know whether she's figured it out on her own, or whether she's been told.
• Wham Episode: Oh, there's been a couple so far.
  • To start with, Melancholy, part 5. Now that is how you peel back a masquerade!
  • The biggest Wham so far, though? Disappearance, entirely, in both book and movie form. It's basically three hours of having your face hit with a sledgehammer over and over — and you'll love every second of it. By the end of it all, everything you knew about the universe of the show has been turned on its ear and all previous suppositions are called into question.
  • Book 10 pulls this off rather nicely too. It's even called "The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya". Fujiwara is trying to give Sasaki Haruhi's power so he can control Sasaki and resurrect his sister—who is an alternate timeline version of Mikuru. Except it completely fails, because Haruhi saw this coming, split the timeline a week ago, and created an avatar that could consciously wield her powers to save everyone.
• Wham Line:
  • While certain parts of Episode 00 do drop hints at Haruhi's abilities, Shamisen speaking and Kyon and Nagato's attempts to cover it up clearly indicate that the show will have supernatural themes.
  • In chronological order, it's not entirely clear if anything supernatural is going on for quite a while, or if Haruhi just attracts weirdos (because none of them offer any proof of their abilities). Then Ryoko Asakura calls Kyon to an empty classroom and, after a slightly odd speech, says cheerfully "That's why I'm going to kill you and see how Miss Suzumiya reacts!"
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Shamisen, the talking cat, appears in episode zero (eleven chronologically) of the 2006 version of the anime, in the opening and ending animations, and nowhere else in that season. It's implied that Kyon takes the cat home with him after the filming incident, but he's never seen at their house in the later episodes (most of which take place earlier in the year). This can be confusing to first-time viewers, who might think of this as clumsy continuity until they figure out the gimmick of the first season. The 2009 version of the series, however, inserts the episode that introduces Shamisen into the proper place in the chronology. Amusingly, the short story that expands on Shamisen is called "What Happened to the Cat?"
• When It All Began: Three years ago...
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve: The anime's "Endless Eight".
• White-and-Grey Morality: There are pretty much no villains, aside from maybe, possibly Asakura Ryouko, and even then she's just a really, really, really far extremist. All forces are genuinely trying to create the world they think is ideal, and only very few seem too extremist for rationality. The Data Entity wants to just "observe"; the Organization wants to maintain the world as it is; the Time Travelers want to keep a Stable Time Loop. Haruhi herself isn't evil, just a Jerkass who wants a little more excitement, and Kyon just wants his peace. Even the Anti-SOS Brigade has somewhat stinted yet good intentions: Fujiwara wants to keep his race from being "slaves to time travel", Kuyou Suou just wants to communicate in the first place, Tachibana Kyouko just thinks the world is more ideal under Sasaki's influence, and Sasaki wants to figure out the truth behind everything. Not to mention the fact that it might even be better for Sasaki to become God.
• Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him?: Despite having "total data jurisdiction over [the classroom]," Ryoko insists on using her military knife to do the deed when she obviously could've crushed Kyon with flying desks (or done anything else, really).
• The "Why Wait?" Combatant: When the computer club president challenges the SOS Brigade to a duel, no sooner does the "d" word leave his lips than Haruhi, without waiting for an explanation, does a flying kick to his head. She justifies it by saying that a duel is a duel from the moment the word is mentioned.
• Wife Husbandry: Time traveling high school boy encourages junior high school girl towards the topics of his interest.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: After going through nearly 15 and a half thousand of the same 2 weeks, Yuki gains emotions and becomes this. Except that she doesn't destroy the world. She steals Haruhi's powers and retcons reality for 1 year, according to the novels, and 3 years and 5 months, according to The Movie. And she succeeds. And she's stopped by the protagonists. And, for a point in time, there's 4 Kyons and 3 Mikurus.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Most characters have realistic hair colors, aside from the Humanoid Interfaces; Yuki has greyish purple hair, Ryoko has blue hair, and Kimidori has green hair. Oddly, Tsuruya also has green hair despite not being a Humanoid Interface herself. No one seems to regard any of these hair colors as unusual even if most characters who have them aren't human.
• The Worf Effect: Happens to Nagato with the Heavenly Canopy Domain, both in Snowy Mountain Syndrome and Surprise
• Written Sound Effect: The opening of the new episodes.
• Wrong Bathroom Incident: Two classes take P.E. together. The girls have to change in another classroom but the title character doesn't bother with going there and change between the boys. Changing her mind is impossible so they end up switching the rooms for changing between the boys and girls. Thus the other girls will change with Suzumiya, instead of her with them.
• You Didn't Ask : Endless Eight would have been a lot shorter if someone just asked Yuki. Justified in that her role is to observe. Subverted when a Genre Savvy Kyon uses this to help solve the Remote Island mystery. Itsuki asks Yuki for a body's temperature to estimate the time of death. Kyon later realizes that she would have just told them the time of death if asked directly (remember her fortune telling?) ...which would have revealed that the person was not actually dead.
• Younger Than They Look: Yuki is technically only 3 years old, until "Endless Eight" anyway.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Haruhi can alter reality unknowingly.

---