Abhorrent Admirer: Modeus is this to The Plutonian. At first, the Plutonian finds it amusing, but it eventually turns ugly as Modeus is more than willing to take possession of Tony's ex-girlfriend's body, beat the crap out of him and super-rape him .

Abusive Parents: Bill Hartigan is a strange case in that while he (and by extension his wife, who was much more lenient) was the only foster parent who didn't reject or fear Tony's powers and did try to teach him responsibility and right from wrong, his methods were sometimes... questionable (if not downright extreme). One standout example is when the Hartigans got Tony all the presents he wanted that year for Christmas, and even gets to open them and see what he got. Upon thanking them for getting the presents, Bill then immediately tells Tony to wrap them back up and come with him to give them to homeless kids, not even allowing him to keep one. While not exactly actively cruel like most examples of the trope, it's apparent this way of "teaching" was common for Bill to do, meaning Tony was probably deprived of the things that would have helped him feel like a normal kid and might've even been the root of his perfectionist complex that added to his already long list of insecurities. And to add more salt to the wound, the next panel shows Tony listening in as his foster parents argue about the fact that the homeless kids did not even like or appreciate the presents that Tony had to grudgingly give away.

The Alcatraz One of the Vespans' prison planets where Plutonian was performing hard labor uses a graviton well capable of generating half the pull of a black hole to keep its superpowered prisoners in line. The prison overseers make a tidy profit by housing such dangerous prisoners for people willing to pay for that security. They've not much incentive to rebel with the weight of an entire star system bearing down on them.

uses a graviton well capable of generating half the pull of a black hole to keep its superpowered prisoners in line. The prison overseers make a tidy profit by housing such dangerous prisoners for people willing to pay for that security. The other prison planet is a planet housed inside of a star, with a force field keeping the inmates in and the sun out. It's also in the middle of nowhere. The caretakers/guards only enter and exit through a heavily guarded teleport facility at the center of the planet.

Aliens Speaking English: Tony thinks Mordanse can speak English, but Auronan explains that the Vespa implanted their language in all the prisoners.

All of the Other Reindeer: As a child, Plutonian was excluded from playing with other kids due to the pretty justified fear that he could accidentally hurt someone or cause other kinds of collateral damage. The isolation made him an easy target for bullies, and the one time he tried to stand up to one (to defend another kid no less) resulted in the bully dying from a simple shove.

An Arm and a Leg Gilgamos. Loses one wing in a fight and tears the other off to use the bones as lock picks. Hard. Core.

Volt tells the Plutonian that he'd "give his left arm" for all he's done for him — and is taken up on the "offer".

And I Must Scream: Plutonian was sent to the end of time by his parents in issue #32, where he'd be alone and completely paralyzed for all eternity.

Bait-and-Switch Comparison: When looking into the eyes of a comatose Scylla, twin brother to the Survivor, Modeus remarks that one of the twins is brain-dead vegetable, and the other is standing before him.

Batman Gambit: Qubit asks Plutonian to kill the Modeus-controlled Bette, knowing Modeus would then move into Qubits body - which is exactly what Qubit wanted, so he could gain Modeuss knowledge about the radiation that would soon cover the earth. And since Qubit had already armed his mind with psionic blockers, he could trap Modeus in his mind rather than Modeus taking over him .

Bedlam House: In issue #23, Plutonian ends up in one. In the middle of a sun .

Berserk Button Qubit does not like to be called "stupid".

like to be called "stupid". Technically, the whole premise of the series is that the Plutonian's button (the inability to tolerate criticism) was slowly pushed through the years until he snapped.

Better the Devil You Know: How Qubit justifies using the Nahru Visna candle wax bullet to kill Orian instead . It is helped slightly by the fact that Orian was planning to Take Over the World with an invading army, and he was a very sadistic being on top of that.

Big Bad Wannabe: Volt's opinion of a villain who tried to force the Plutonian to arrest him, hoping it could improve his Villain Cred. He tells him that he would barely register as a blip on the radar of Tony, who has better things to do, and will just have to "settle" for being captured by him and Bette Noir instead.

Bittersweet Ending: In the end, the villains are all defeated and Plutonian gains his "redemption", but millions have died, including nearly all of Earth's heroes (the only ones that we know are still alive are Gilgamos, Kaidan, Qubit, and the fully reformed Max Damage), most of society has broken down (the only known civilization still standing in decent condition is Coalville, thanks to Max Damage), every survivor including the remaining heroes have lost someone they cared about deeply, and a warrior alien race pissed off at Earth and liable to invade in the future is one of several threats on the horizon that Earth is vulnerable to, especially with the Plutonian no longer around to protect them.

Body Horror: To summon Orian, one has to read the magic word, upon which he crawls out through your mouth, killing you in the process. To make it worse, he doesn't have to , he just likes doing it.

, he just likes doing it. In the special, Kaidan explores her powers by summoning a Bakeneko. Its initial appearance is that of a ghostly giant cat with an Overly Long Tongue, tumorous lumps on the left side of its head, and what appears to be an infestation of tendril-like giant parasitic worms, before briefly mimicking Kaidan herself, but with purple skin and a misshapen face.

The child-killing sonic plague melts off children's flesh as it slowly kills them, turning them into agonized, still-moving, still-screaming (and therefore still infectious) skeletons for some time before they finally die.

Brain Uploading: Modeus uploaded his brain into Samsara and then later into a robot copy of himself built by Qubit. In the final issues, he goes through a range of hosts to achieve his goals and prevent his own death.

Broken Ace: The Plutonian had the front of an incorruptible savior but underneath it all was a deeply insecure man who wanted to be loved and accepted unconditionally thanks to a deeply messed up childhood.

Broken Pedestal: Oddly, the Plutonian's pedestal broke before he went crazy. After he made a crucial mistake in the field that left thousands of children dead and he initially lied about his role in this tragedy , his sidekick stopped trusting him. Knowing his closest friend couldn't look up to him the way he used to was one of the last straws. What made it worse was that the people from the lab (where he had turned over the alien device that led to the tragedy ) went behind his back and told Samsara about it, claiming to be too afraid of him to do it themselves . Volt also sees the Plutonian as one. Plutonian helped him control his powers which allowed him to have a normal life. In a flashback, we see him trying to reason with Plutonian, only for Plutonian to rip his arm off.

Brown Note: The child-killing sonic plague and the sigil that summons Orian.

Call a Human a "Meatbag": Plutonian calls Hornet's daughter "a carbon bag of atoms and bioelectricity".

The Cape: The Plutonian, prior to his FaceHeel Turn. He notably only wears the cape in flashbacks when he's still good.

Chekhov's Boomerang: The bullet made from the Candle of the Nahru Visna.

The Chessmaster: Modeus. The Plutonian's arch-nemesis, and reportedly the only one he was scared of. Possibly the only one capable of finding a way to kill him. Disappeared a few years prior to the main story. Is now possessing/controlling the lobotomized sidekick, egging on the Plutonian on his rampage. Oh, and a Robot Double with his exact mental patterns has started making trouble on his own. And then in the body of one of the few people that Tony has non-homicidal emotions towards. Thankfully, he is outwitted in the end .

Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: "Wow. I didn't even get to the end of the sentence." Leads to a wonderful moment of self-Darwining thanks to The Plutonian's magnificent bastardry.

Comforting the Widow: The Survivor attempts this with Kaidan. Made particularly disgusting by the fact that the recently-deceased lover in this scenario is his twin.

Comic Books Are Real: The final panels reveal that Superman was inspired by part of Plutonians essence being sent to many worlds and dimensions, including ours, and being received by Joe Shuster.

Conveniently an Orphan: This trope is extremely common in superhero comics, keeping the heroes from having to explain things to their folks (Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, most X-Men, all the Flashes, most of the Green Lanterns, just to name a few). Keeping with the series' tone, this is deconstructed and played for tragedy, as Plutonian spent most of his boyhood bounced around between unloving and heartless foster homes where everyone feared him for his powers, instilling him with a compulsive need to be loved by everyone as an adult.

Dead Sidekick: Samsara's not quite dead, but he's been lobotomized. The reason for this is that Samsara's power protects him from mortal harm and he thus can't be killed, so he had to be neutralized another way. And of course, the Plutonian did it himself to keep him from spilling the beans on his secrets.

Death by Secret Identity: Plutonian scares his co-workers that they will tortured and killed by his enemies, because they know his identity. They all end up killing themselves out of fear.

Death Equals Redemption: Qubit presents Plutonian's death this way, sending his "essence" to hundreds of worlds and dimensions, in hopes that somehow Plutonian's legacy can be redeemed. Part of Plutonian"s essence ends up in our universe, inspiring young Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel to create Superman.

Disproportionate Retribution A representative of Singapore told the Plutonian his country was grateful to him. The Plutonian however, recognized this to be a lie, and responded by sinking the country into the sea.

In a flashback from Alana Patel, before his FaceHeel Turn, the Plutonian warned his secret identity's coworkers of this when they discovered he was actually their coworker and almost broadcast it over live radio. They initially think it's not that big of a deal, but he points out to them that any one of his enemies would gladly torture, rape, and murder them and their families to find out any of his secrets. Several commit suicide afterward.

Driven to Suicide: There are several cases of this. The above-mentioned former associates of Plutonian.

Tonys original foster mother and the foster mother he loved most before his final foster parents. In both cases, they could not handle the stress of having a foster son with such amazing powers.

It is implied that Tony's only set of decent but controlling foster parents (the father specifically) went out this way. After revealing to them the mother had cancer and due to the father's teachings of not using his powers for personal gain, Tony withheld that information until it was far too late.

After reading a Modeus-possessed Cutter's mind, former supervillain Burrows, a telepath, almost immediately commits suicide.

Eldritch Abomination: The Eleos are nigh-omnipotent Reality Warpers who can smack Plutonian around with ease, and they claim that their true form is too much for the brain to perceive. That said, they're actually pretty nice, styling themselves as knowledge keepers of the multiverse intrigued by humanity, and when they were sealed by a specialized radiation, they chose not to break containment so as to not harm the human race, instead settling for friendly chats with whoever's assigned to watch their imprisonment. They're also Plutonian's origin race.

Everything Is Racist: Volt had a tendency to pull this out. There are some scenes where his hair-trigger accusations of racism genuinely find their mark, but there are other times when they don't, like accusing Bette of preferring Gil because he's not black.

Evil Costume Switch: As evidenced in the page image.

Evil Is Petty: The Plutonian enjoys puppy-kicking on a personal level as much as his mass atrocities, largely to demonstrate the points that used to frustrate him so much.

FaceHeel Turn: The Plutonian's occurred prior to the series' beginning.

Fallen Hero: The Plutonian went from being Earth's greatest hero to its worst villain.

Fate Worse than Death: This is what motivated Encanta to spill the beans to Qubit. He threatened to robotize her, this apparently having the effect of depowering her while being horribly painful. Of course, it's permanent.

Flying Brick: Deconstructed. The Plutonian's eclectic power set is the result of him being a reality-warping entity, which he himself is unaware of .

Foreshadowing: In Irredeemable #18, Hornet's reference to The Twilight Zone episode "It's A Good Life"

For the Evulz: But of course. This is the very reason the Eleos chose to punish the Plutonian, even though they show him that his meltdown was all but inevitable due to the circumstances of his creation; he is still completely responsible for his evil actions... they just showed him why he is evil.

Fun with Acronyms: Plutonian's name is one, though no-one else knows it. Chosen by the foster father he gained his alter-ego's name, Dan Hartigan, from , it stands for Piety, Loyalty, Utility, Truthfulness, and Order.

Genuine Human Hide: When he's captured by the Vespa, Plutonian is subdued by being placed into a Lotus-Eater Machine while tied up in a straitjacket revealed to be material made from his skin. Later, as Plutonian is escaping from the intergalactic insane asylum/multi-layered hell he was placed in, he comes across a delusional patient with sand powers and a god complex. After killing him, he makes a replacement costume out of the skins of the inmate's attendants.

Glowing Eyes of Doom: Plutonian has been showing this during his tantrums even before he became a villain.

Gone Horribly Right: Dr. Seabrook's constant nagging at the Paradigm for not sharing alien technology with humanity eventually leads to the Plutonian giving him what seems to be a harmless piece of alien tech... which ended up destroying Dr. Seabrook's lab and unleashing a deadly virus.

Bill Hartigan told Plutonian when he was younger to not use his powers for self-serving purposes. This backfires when Tony reveals that Bill's wife has cancer and by that point, it was terminal. He could've revealed it sooner, when it could've still been successfully treated, but Tony took the teaching too literally. Bill would later kill himself and his wife out of remorse.

Good Hair, Evil Hair: The Plutonian apparently gave himself a buzzcut after turning.

Grand Theft Me: Modeus does this repeatedly via Brain Uploading, first to Samsara, later to his own robot duplicate and intermediary hosts, and then to Bette Noir. It's not clear if it's an innate power of his or something he needs assistance for. In one of the issues before Plutonian got captured and dumped on the prison world, it shows Modeus talking to Encanta in a supernatural dimension. It turns out that Modeus has moved past super-science and is now experimenting with sorcery. This backfires when he tries it on Qubit.

Greater-Scope Villain: The Vespa certainly qualify as they are planet-conquering race that enslaves millions. Hornet may qualify as he makes a deal with the Vespa to enslave countless defenseless planets in order to save Earth from the Plutonian on the chance that Tony turns. He was right.

He Who Fights Monsters: Charybdis, after doubling in power and becoming the Survivor, basically undergoes an accelerated version of the Plutonian's turn to darkness in his efforts to stop the Plutonian and be a true hero.

Historical Domain Character: Gilgamos befriended Alexander the Great while they were both trapped in a Thracian prison. He taught Gilgamos the importance of using patience and one's wits to escape trouble and demonstrated this by cleverly breaking them out of prison.

Humanoid Abomination: The Eleos, the Plutonian's real race, are a race of humanoid aliens... with reality altering powers as a matter of subconscious thought. They do feel empathy and compassion, however — Tony's own psychopathy is entirely his own personality/upbringing.

Humans Are Bastards: The Plutonian's Sadistic Choices and mind games seems to be ultimately aimed at proving that. It also seems that he didn't kill most of his old teammates because he's striving to break them psychologically, for the same reason. And, as it turns out, he's a psychotic nutbag because his first human mother was. Had she not been so deeply disturbed, everything would have been fine .

Humans Are Special: The Eleos say about humans, "Never had we come across a population so emotionally rich and complex, in ways that defied formulaic expression."

I Am Not Left-Handed: Up to Eleven. The Plutonian lays a beatdown on the depowered Charybdis, but the tables are turned when we find out that Charybdis actually has at least twice as much power as he did before.

I Never Told You My Name: A variation, when the Plutonian refers to the Hornet's wife by name during a flashback. The Hornet had never mentioned her name to him, and realizes that he's spying on his teammates and may not be entirely trustworthy.

Insufferable Genius: Qubit. This doesn't go unnoticed by this teammates, some of whom find it less and less tolerable as the situation worsens. Modeus as well.

Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: From the point of view of his former friends, the Plutonian's done just this; however, the flashbacks in each issue subtly indicate that it has been stewing for quite a while.

Kids Are Cruel: The Plutonian was forced to put up with being bullied as a child because any retaliation could have killed the kids bullying him. After his FaceHeel Turn, he uses that history of bullying to justify his willingness to murder children.

Kick the Son of a Bitch: Any time the Plutonian interacts with other bad guys. He tricks a posse of his old Rogues Gallery into activating the self-destruct sequence to the Inferno's secret lair, pretending that the buttons he was handing them were kill switches that would incapacitate him somehow. The fact they were stupid enough to believe he had a weakness, or that he would willingly hand the means to it over to his enemies even if such a thing existed, something he gloatingly lampshades, makes it easy to laugh their deaths off.

stupid enough to believe he had a weakness, or that he would willingly hand the means to it over to his enemies even if such a thing existed, something he gloatingly lampshades, makes it easy to laugh their deaths off. Frying Modeus' face off is done for the sake of being evil, but considering that Modeus is one of the most dangerous criminals in the Irredeemable universe, it's kind of hard to feel sympathy for him.

Kryptonite Factor: The Candle of the Nahru Visna is the only thing that can make the Plutonian vulnerable. Bette Noir made a little bit of its wax into a bullet in case Tony ever went rogue.

Laser-Guided Amnesia: Taken rather literally with Samsara.

Like a God to Me: The Plutonian is repeatedly referred to in this manner owing to his Physical God-like power levels, though it's seldom a compliment.

Lotus-Eater Machine: As a reference to For the Man Who Has Everything, the Vespans have stuck the Plutonian in one at the end of Chapter 19. When disengaged from it, he's still stuck inside, having chosen not to awaken. His dream? That he was able to atone for his sins, literally erase everything away, and have a second chance. And then it starts to get weird and horrifying .

Love Hungry: The Plutonian was this down to the core. Sure, he saved the world and helped people, but it was mainly because he wanted everyone to love him. He Can't Take Criticism whenever he made a mistake (or even if the person commenting was just a bitter jerkass), making him utterly terrified of failure. And when he does make a really bad one (which loses him his sidekick's trust), that is when he goes off the deep end.

Magitek: The Candle of Nahru Visna is described as 'a weird hybrid of sorcery and science'. Modeus has also combined his super-science with sorcery, with assistance from Encanta.

Make Them Rot: DK, a minor villain, has this as his power.

Meaningful Name Scylla and Charybdis, the legendary rock and a hard place; Scylla appears to be every inch the hero (this being the very reason Kaidan loves him instead of Cary), while Cary's descent since Scylla's death shows that he's lost any sense of propriety, not mentioning that Scylla is the name of a hideous monster in Roman and Greek literature.

Plutonian's name has a couple different ones. One meaning can be taken from how it's derived or associated with Pluto, the Roman god that is the Expy to the more well-known Greek god Hades, God of Death and Ruler of the Underworld. He's also as distant as can be from humanity in general (like the dwarf planet Pluto). Additionally, it's almost a homonym for plutonium, an element which can offer humanity great power but is incredibly dangerous if mishandled.

Bette Noire sounds like a fun pulp-style name for an adventuress. In French, it's a colloquialism about a dangerous thing to be avoided at all costs. Bette contributes heavily to Tony's moral decay, but doesn't fully realize it until they visit his Fortress of Solitude. She also has little problem bedding him after he returns .

. "Eleos" sounds a lot like Elohim. This, of course, makes the Plutonian another Satan trope .

Measuring the Marigolds: Done mockingly by The Plutonian in the first issue. The Hornet: Puh-please... Not my daughter too... She's only a little girl...

The Plutonian: I know exactly what she is. She's a carbon bag of atoms and bioelectricity.

A Million Is a Statistic: Invoked by the Chinese and Japanese leaders when they convinced the acting US President to release Plutonian's parents in an effort to stop him. The procedure would lead to the slow, agonizing death of one third of what remained of the world's population, but would stop the Plutonian from killing the rest.

Mood-Swinger: The Plutonian's swings from placid to psychotic are a major element of why he's terrifying.

Muggle Foster Parents: Deconstructed. Having a foster son with a Superpower Lottery means no privacy and poses a threat to your other kids. Many of Plutonians foster parents are ultimately Driven to Suicide. And its no better for the child, who can hear everything their foster parents say, creating massive insecurity. Being bounced from home to home proves to be Tonys Start of Darkness.

Mundane Utility: We see the Plutonian using heat vision to warm a cup of coffee in the third issue. Superman has done the same in his own works.

My God, What Have We Done?: We don't see much of them, but this is implied to be the reaction of Tony's "parents" upon seeing the devastation which he and they (unintentionally) unleashed.

My Greatest Failure: Before he went insane, the Plutonian gave a piece of alien technology to a mudslinging scientist to be adapted for the benefit of mankind, also giving him a signal device to call him in the case that anything could go wrong. The device turned out to contain a sound-based virus that only killed children. The Plutonian and the Paradigm might have been able to stop it early on, but Tony was on the moon, enjoying ten minutes of silence from the constant cries for help that his super-hearing picks up . This not only rocketed him toward his FaceHeel Turn, but seemed to affect him even after he became a villain - he still keeps a (rather unsettling) memorial to the victims he failed to help in his Citadel.

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero! See My Greatest Failure for the most obvious of these on the Plutonian's part, though his former teammates have their share too.

Bette Noir could've stopped the Plutonian way early on by getting the bullet she made out of the Nahru Visna candle wax, which is the only object known to render him powerless . So why didn't she act sooner? Because she got that candle wax by going behind her husband's back with Tony . She let millions die to cover up a single act of infidelity.

. So why didn't she act sooner? Because she got that candle wax by going behind her husband's back with . She let millions die to cover up a single act of infidelity. As of issue 31, Gilgamos gets this by Scylla's ghost after killing Cary. It turns out Cary was the source of the power he and his two brothers (they were actually triplets) wielded, and with Cary's death, the third brother Elliott, who Gilgamos thought would get all the power, loses his own.

No Celebrities Were Harmed: The US president who holds the press conference with Plutonian when they announce the formation of the Paradigm greatly resembles Al Gore.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: What sets off the Plutonian's spiral to villainy was he gave a piece of alien technology to a scientist and Tony even checked the scientist's heartbeat to see if he was lying about using that technology for good purposes . While there's an ego reason behind it, there were some good intentions behind it. In fact, this happened pretty frequently to Tony. Two childhood flashbacks in particular illustrate this: One time, Tony tried to defend a girl he'd befriended from a bully. When he shoved the bully back, he accidentally killed the other boy. In another, Tony killed an abusive foster father in the hopes that it would make his foster mother love him. Instead, she was terrified and eventually committed suicide.



Not So Different: Charybdis becomes increasingly like the Plutonian as time goes on. By the time the comic draws to a close, his allies are wondering if he's anything resembling an improvement over Tony after all.

Oh, Crap! In a dark twist of the classic line used for introducing Superman, Scylla screams "Look! Up in the sky!" when he sees the Plutonian has found them.

Modeus gets this when he discovers that Plutonian knew he was inhabiting the body of Samasara the entire time.

Modeus gets a teary one when Plutonian rejects him once again after a tender session of rape. Figures.

And yet another when Qubit finally imprisons him in a mental cell after he tries to escape following Bette Noir's body's destruction by the Plutonian.

Qubit gets one after learning Cary/Survivor's dark secret.

Gilgamos (and everyone around him) gets one after killing Cary .

. The Plutonian gets one when he realizes Modeus possessed Cutter.

Omnicidal Maniac: Plutonian becomes this.

Paranoia Fuel: Invoked in-universe. Wanting to mess with people besides killing them, the Plutonian decides to point out how he might be able to disguise himself as anyone in a wide-range message to the people of Earth. Plutonian: You know what they say about the gods of myth. That they would disguise themselves and walk among you as ordinary people. I confess Sleep tight. : You know what they say about the gods of myth. That they would disguise themselves and walk among you as ordinary people. I confess I do that , but... who am I? That guy down at the end of the bar? The new recruit? The foreigner who just moved upstairs? I know what you're thinking. That at least in this moment, I can't be standing next to you. There is that. But I should add one thing. This has been a pre-recorded message.

Person of Mass Destruction: The Plutonian can destroy an entire city in less than an afternoon and sank a whole island nation to the sea in less than an hour.

Pet the Dog: Even after becoming a crazed, homicidal maniac with the end goal of bringing the world to its knees for not appreciating him enough, when the Plutonian finds out Samsara has survived his lobotomy with his brain functions intact, he at once becomes friendly and protective of his former sidekick again (even getting food for him by murdering owners of gas stations). Naturally, the series still manages to make this terrible as Samsara isn't really back, as he's just possessed by Modeus. Then it's revealed that the Plutonian knew it was Modeus all along; he was just playing along because he was amused by Modeus' crush on him. The sentiment's still there, as seen in the dream sequence example. Plutonian wants to reverse everything, but doesn't know how.

Physical God: Plutonian is the strongest being on the planet, and nothing in the (comic) universe (with the exception of Max Damage, Survivor, the Eleos, and Bette Noire once Modeus taps into the full extent of her powers ) has a chance against him. He's a reality warper, making him more god-like, although he's unaware of his true abilities. His parents have his powers to a greater degree and can also time travel .

Power Nullifier: The Candle of the Nahru Visna, a magical object that's the only known thing to render Plutonian powerless.

Protagonist Journey to Villain: The entire point. (And, apparently, not just for the Plutonian...)

Proud Warrior Race: The Vespans. After they capture The Plutonian, they agree to leave Earth and never invade again, simply because of an agreement they'd made with a (now dead) Earth human.

Psychopathic Manchild: One possible interpretation for the Plutonian's need to be loved. It's especially apparent in his confrontation with one foster family that gave him up for accidentally injuring their baby brother and leaving him permanently brain damaged. Plutonian: Why do you keep treating me like a ticking time bomb?!

Reality Ensues: This trope is one of the main themes of the series. In a flashback from his early teens, the Plutonian hears his foster mother is about to commit suicide. He gets there in a fraction of a second. But sound takes almost ten seconds to travel two miles. She was already dead before he left his school desk.

Bill Hartigan, the foster parent who forged him into The Plutonian, teaches him to be completely selfless; Tony took it a tad too far when he withheld the fact that his foster mother has terminal cancer and he has known all along. When she dies, his foster father kills himself in guilt.

On a more general note, Muggle Foster Parents would really have no idea how to handle the super-powered child who throws tantrums sometimes. The girl you've been dating won't find it fantastic that you've lied to her constantly about your secret identity. A Badass Normal won't stand a chance against a guy who has super strength and can shoot lasers out of his eyes. Indeed, the resident Batman expies, Hornet and Inferno, are very quickly dealt with by Plutonian (the former's death scene is the opening scene of the series, and the latter was killed off-screen without any manner of fight being shown or even referenced), a vicious hammerblow to the usual idea of a Batman vs Superman conflict. Because if a man who can destroy planets through brute force wants you dead, martial arts training, nifty gadgets, and money won't do jack to save you.

Reality Warper: Tony, albeit unknowingly. The Eleos (his "race" of origin) are this to an even greater extent .

Regional Redecoration: The Plutonian sinks Singapore into the ocean. This is not the worst thing he's done.

Replacement Goldfish: Played with. Both Cary and his brother Scylla had crushes on Kaidan and she wound up dating Scylla. When Scylla was killed by the Plutonian and Cary left alive, Cary expected this to come into play so he and Kaidan would start dating, especially when he becomes The Survivor. It doesn't play out that way, especially when Kaidan discovers Scylla is still alive and begins searching for him. This might be one of the many reasons why Cary is deliberately avoiding finding out where his brother is.

The Reveal Prompts Romance: The Plutonian was going for this, except that his girlfriend became so upset that he had lied to her all this time that she immediately broke up with him (and revealed his secret to their coworkers). One of the main differences between him and Superman - Superman isn't the kind of Psychopathic Manchild who would naturally assume that Lois Lane would be thrilled about being lied to all those years. Empathy and maturity would have gone a long way in that delicate situation. Then again, Plutonian pursued his girlfriend by actually entering the radio station because of her; in Superman's case, Lois happened to work at The Daily Planet before any romance sprang, making Plutonian's case all the creepier.

Rule of Cool: Kaidan's superpower is being able to summon the spirits of great warriors by recounting their stories. The characters in said stories are souls of samurai and Feudal warriors. It's awesome. She later finds that she summon the spirits of superheroes and open a path through the underworld . Double awesome. Even Qubit is surprised by this (and he's the one that figures it out for Kaidan), and this is a dude that can create technological wonders out of thin air!

Sadistic Choice: During his destruction of Singapore, the Plutonian caught his former teammate Qubit, who tried to evacuate citizens. The Plutonian allowed him to pick ten whom he'd let escape... to painfully illustrate the answer to Qubit's question: "All that power, all that responsibility... what does that feel like?" He then incinerates every other Singaporean on the scene .

Samaritan Syndrome: Nothing quite whittles away at your love of mankind than having to serve them 24/7. The Plutonian suffered a huge case of this before he went nuts, constantly hearing, and feeling he had to answer, calls for help every minute of every day. After one particularly ungrateful victim was rescued, he got fed-up and took a ten minute break by flying to the moon, where there was no sound. During those ten minutes, a child-killing virus broke out, partly because he'd given a piece of alien technology to a human scientist . Even after his FaceHeel Turn, there are traces of this. He promised to listen to everyone, but nobody believed he meant that literally.

Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: Max Damage immediately abandons Qubit when he learns that Qubit's master plan for saving the world from the fallout of Plutonian's parents' release involves making the Plutonian even more powerful.

Sealed Evil in a Can: Keeps happening to the Plutonian, including interplanetary travel, a black hole, a sun, a Lotus-Eater Machine, and time travel.

Played with in regards to Plutonian's parents. Personality wise, they're Sealed Good in a Can, but the Containment Field used to seal them is the evil; when the seal is broken, humanity is doomed by the unleashed radiation, but they gave Plutonian some needed disciplinary action.

Secret Identity: The Plutonian had one, and upon revealing it to the woman he loved she promptly told their four coworkers and rejected his affection . It was one of the bigger contributing factors to his FaceHeel Turn.

Secret Keeper: Subverted. Dan Hartigans workmates are about the tell the world the Plutonians Secret Identity immediately after they find out, and they would have had the Plutonian not quickly flown into outer space and destroyed their satellite. When he returns, he is Burning with Anger.

Sex Slave: Encanta is forced to be one for the Plutonian between issues 3 and 7.

Sexbot: Modeus built a half-dozen sexbots resembling Tony.

Smug Super In addition to the rapid walk down a very dark path he seems to be taking, The Survivor is becoming one of these as he's more than a little bit too pleased with himself in recent issues after the pwning he helped give the Plutonian.

The Plutonian after his FaceHeel Turn. When he became evil, it turned out Tony's false modesty was exactly that.

Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond: Played for Drama. The Plutonian has an intense, driving need to be loved by everyone around him and receives endless praise from being the world's greatest super-hero. But he's unable to get over the few people who don't shower him with praise, leading him to bitterly think that the entire population of Earth are nothing but selfish, ungrateful animals.

Sorting Algorithm of Evil: As brief as it is, the Plutonian's HeelFace Turn also shakes up the supervillain community who had once seen him as the ultimate "goody-two-shoes" and they're not sure if he's really going to be on their side. Surprisingly, he's not. As a result, most of the other supervillains of the Irredeemable verse have either reformed (Max Damage), laid low, or just quit altogether.

Starfish Aliens: The Ultrasonic Lifeform that infects children and spreads through their (and their immune parents') screams.

Stepford Smiler: The Plutonian's defining personality trait prior to his breakdown. He was the "Unstable" type with more than a few touches of the "Empty/Depressed" kind.

Strong as They Need to Be: Deconstructed. The Plutonian's only real super-power is warping reality and violating the laws of physics. He's as strong as he needs to be because he re-writes the universe to make himself that way.

Superpower Lottery: The Plutonian was the clear winner, which led to certain members of the Paradigm resenting him even before his FaceHeel Turn. While he acted humble during his time as a hero, he didn't mind gloating once he went evil. At one point, while killing Gazer, Tony remarks how he made him totally redundant, being able to do everything he could do but better. Turns out he "only" has Reality Warper powers — since he thinks he could win, he does.

Charybdis/Survivor is another winner. How else would you describe someone who can fight off the Plutonian successfully?

Super Senses: The Plutonian, to a truly insane degree. He can perceive the movement of electrons inside people's brains.

Take That!: Just to make sure that no-one misses the subtext, the first issue comes with a long essay about how comic fans saying mean things on the internet suck and will destroy comic heroes. The essay was written by Grant Morrison, not Mark Waid, and is not quite as simplistic as that. If anything, the subsequent issues since number one have indicated Morrison's reading of the point is a bit off from Waid's true intent. To elaborate, said essay wasn't saying anything about people talking on the Internet destroying heroes. Morrison was talking about people's opinions, the difficulties in changing them, and what a hero must have to do to become completely irredeemable. And how Waid showed him the script for the first two issues, after their discussion if the internauts will ever stop seeing him as a Silver Age Fanboy, a reputation Waid earned after Kingdom Come. This is justified in the text itself, in a flashback to one of the triggering events of the Plutonian's fall. After Plutonian has literally saved an entire stadium's worth of people from a bomb, he hears the cheers of almost everyone... except for one snotty jerk who calls him an 'underwear pervert...' a term coined by Warren Ellis and popularized by Cory Doctorow to protest the trademarking of the term super-hero . Here it comes across as the ultimate internet forum comment, only the Plutonian not only hears it, but in one sense hears it more clearly than all the praise

Talking Is a Free Action: Kaidan must tell a story to activate her powers. It is more of a snippet than a full story, but those couple of sentences are racing against drawn guns.

Technical Pacifist: "Everyone knows Qubit doesn't kill"... Humans, that is. He's fine with killing an entire spaceship full of Vespans and Orian, the space demon.

Technopath: Qubit's actual power.

Teleporters and Transporters: Quibit has built several devices that seemingly produce wormholes. The Vespans, having had access to his technology, weaponize them and defeat Plutonian with them. After Qubit takes them back and Plutonian's escape from the prison-planet, they're put out of action.

Then Let Me Be Evil: This is what happens when Superman gets pushed slowly over the years with ungrateful comments, snide remarks, and generally being treated like a time bomb, and he finally says "oh fuck it" note or more accurately, "Fine." and boy it's not pretty.

Throw-Away Country: Averted. The destruction of Singapore is shown in full, and is just as horrifying as it should be. And although not shown, the death of tens or hundreds of millions in Australia and India is treated with equal horror.

Took a Level in Badass: Charybdis (later taking on the alias Survivor), a second-tier superhero, gains a considerable boost of power when his brother dies, putting him on the same level as The Plutonian.

Tulpa: It turns out that the Plutonian was basically this. Unfortunately, the woman who gave him (unwitting) form was mentally ill and full of guilt over killing her baby. This did not, of course, help his own psyche later.

Unexpected Successor: General Walter Ehrlich becomes President of the United States after the Plutonian (apparently) kills the President, Vice President, and all others in the Constitutional line of succession. These deaths all happen offscreen, but there is a shot of the White House half-destroyed.

Ungrateful Bastards: Every superhero universe needs them, and like several such tropes they are deconstructed. Super Senses meant that the Plutonian could constantly hear bitter Jerkasses, like the one from the football stadium he saved in a flashback depicted in the first issue and the Entitled Bastard with the yacht, who made snide comments about his costume and refused to accept him no matter how many times he saved their asses. This was one of several factors that contributed to the Plutonian's breakdown.

Un Reveal: Qubit never says what he sees in the Survivors mind that leads him to ally with Modeus and rescue the Plutonian.

Unskilled, but Strong: While practically a Physical God, the Plutonian turns out to have next to no hand-to-hand combat skill due to never really needing to learn how to fight. Weirdly, this is subverted in a story about him told by Max Damage, who says that he expected this when he caught the Plutonian in a field that nullified their powers... and got knocked onto his ass for his troubles. He could be exaggerating the story for effect, though, and might simply have been caught unaware by the fact that a depowered Plutonian was not totally incompetent. That, or Tony's Reality Warper powers were still in effect.

Unwilling Roboticization: What Qubit threatens Encanta with to make her reveal what she knows about Modeus.

Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The Ungrateful Bastard who complained of the bullet damages to his yacht, after Plutonian and Kaidan saved him from a pirate attack. This particular event made Plutonian to seek solace in the moon for 10 minutes, but then the virus strikes... True there's other Ungrateful Bastards as well, but this is the guy who's the figurative spark that ignited the whole fuel spill.

Villain Protagonist: The Plutonian.

Walking Wasteland: Minor background villain Dekay melts everything he touches.

What Ever Happened To The Mouse: Encanta's screentime decreases greatly after she is turned into a being of technology by Qubit. She appears as Modeus' assistant briefly before just disappearing altogether mid-series.

What the Hell, Hero? Bette Noire gets it particularly hard. After escaping a trap set up by the US army and a demonic bounty hunter, who revealed her secrets to her teammates, she meets up with her father and, desperate for some kind of support, comes clean with him. He then tells her that her inaction not only cost him everything he had, but also caused the deaths of the rest of their family at the Plutonian's hand. When she asks for forgiveness, he simply says "Not now".

Survivor is furious with Qubit for foiling his plan to kill Plutonian. Survivor later tells a group of farmers that Qubit is helping that he let Plutonian get away, and they begin to physically attack him.

Qubit calls Survivor out on giving murderous supervillains full pardons in exchange for help to clean Earth up when Cary should be looking for his Not Quite Dead brother instead.

when Survivor gives one to his and Scylla's retired and estranged third brother Elliot for not trying to help them stop Plutonian's rampage, or even use his powers to help others.

Who's Laughing Now?: This seems to be a major factor in the Plutonian's snap into madness. Flashbacks to his life as a hero show him to be very bad at dealing with critics, to the point that he often seemed to resent the people he felt obligated to save. In particular, the other supervillains are much less comfortable dealing with him once they know he has no trouble killing them.

Who Wants to Live Forever?: Invoked near the end of the series as a last resort, Kaidan and Gilgamos are prepared to plant the Tree of Life, granting every living thing on the planet immortality but due to the consequences it would bring (no longer being able to have children, go to the afterlife, and worst of all, possibly stuck forever at the mercy of the Plutonian), they hesitate until the last minute, where Qubit stops them and saves it as a 'Plan B' in case his plan doesn't work.

Wonder Twin Powers: Scylla and Charybdis are have something like this going on, where they're only super while close to one another. Except not really; this is a lie that they used to make Scylla feel better about simply siphoning his brother's power. After Scylla's death, Charybdis only faked being powerless to get to the Plutonian, who he felt he could handle with double his normal power.

The World Is Not Ready: Tony makes the mistake of revealing to Alana his secret identity as the Plutonian, which only results in her revealing this to her co-workers and them almost revealing it to the world; it's implied that The Plutonian's Dan Hartigan was like Superman's Clark Kent, meaning his only possibility of blending in and having a normal life. Superman argues that he is Clark Kent and that he would go insane if he had to be Superman all the time note -as seen in Superman: The Animated Series

"World of Cardboard" Speech: Subverted. Moral Event Horizons. Tony mentions why as he was growing up he was ostracized, out of fear he might hurt the other kids, and casually explains that now he's The Unfettered and doesn't have to worry about such things... chucking a grenade at a terrified mass of huddled schoolchildren in what is one of many

Would Hurt a Child: Plutonian has no qualms with killing children. Tony's first human mother and the one whose desire for a child forged him into a human body, to a horrifying extent.

Writing Around Trademarks: In the final panel, the drawing the young Siegel and Shuster make is unmistakably Superman, but it's not in color and the S symbol hasn't been drawn yet.

You Killed My Father: While the Plutonian needs to die for the safety of Earth and has slaughtered countless people already, the thing that seems to really make it personal for Charybdis/Survivor is that he also killed his brother. Of course, this being Cary (and even when his intentions are noble), he manages to mess up basically everything he touches because of his pride, even reaching the end of undermining his brothers Scylla and Elliott, and rapidly eroding everyone's respect for him.

Zombie Apocalypse: The Sonic Plague liquefies children's flesh and animates their bones. Worst part is that it spreads like wildfire through the screams of the living. The Paradigm managed to stop it before it got out of control, but the damage is done and this plays into one of the biggest reasons behind the Plutonian's FaceHeel Turn.