Series / The Collector (2004)

(aka: The Collector)

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The Collector (2004–2006) is a Canadian TV series about a man, Morgan Pym (Chris Kramer), who made a Deal with the Devil to save his love. He now helps collect the souls of others who made deals, and is allowed 48 hours to help them seek redemption before their time is up.

The other main characters are Maya Kandinski (Carly Pope/Sonya Salomaa), a former prostitute and drug addict who reminds Morgan of his lost love; Jeri Slate (Ellen Dubin), an investigative reporter who notices something strange about Morgan; her son Gabe (Aidan Drummond), an autistic child with a mystical connection to Morgan; and her sister Taylor (Christine Chatelain), who takes care of Gabe when she's gone.

The first two seasons were released on DVD in 2008 and 2009.

Not to be confused with the 2005 Serbian sci-fi series Sakupljač (The Collector), or 1963 novel The Collector, or the 1965 William Wyler film based on the novel.

Provides examples of:

• Affably Evil: Even those guilty of some of the worst acts in the series may not always be doing so with a Hate Sink attitude.
  • Satan can get caught up in character while spending time on Earth in human disguises, often wants to justify their actions, and will sometimes give the people Morgan is helping a bit more of a chance than necessary, despite reveling in their suffering and being merciless in luring them into soul-sacrificing deals leading to a Hell worse than imagination. Depending on the Writer (and the Meat Puppet), this attitude can slip into Faux Affably Evil territory as the Devil talks his sweetest even while violating taboos, hiding ruthless plots behind phony Pet the Dog moments, or reveling in tragic suffering.
  • Rita Carlton/"The Campaign Manager" is a cocky and cynical proponent of classist, Darwinian politics and eventually a murderer but had a certain amount of confidence, grace and wit in her chats with Morgan and has some lines she refuses to cross as the Devil describes his idea of a perfect world to her.
  • Max Gunn/"The Chef" made his deal out of ambition and personally killed a person for it and is temporarily willing to kill many more people (starting with his beloved wife) as a sacrifice to stay out of Hell, but he is an earnest man who gets along well with Morgan, feels reluctant to give into his worst impulses, and cherishes simultaneously happy and remorseful memories of the people he has hurt. He is ultimately unable to kill his wife, but it is more ambiguous if he would have showed the same mercy and sacrifice to a stranger.
  • Warren Park/"The Media Baron" remorselessly and pettily wrecks careers, spreads fake news, panders to dictatorships he should be scrutinizing to expand his holdings, and has little interest in redemption (or chance of getting it). Still, he is a loving father who is polite and understanding with Morgan and has a generally calm Worth It attitude about his deal rather than a panicky visage.
• The Alcoholic: Otis from "The Old Man" wonders if he has done any good in his life besides keeping the distilleries he's a customer at in good financial shape.
• All There in the Manual: The official website has a full timeline of Morgan's life, including periods not explored in the series.
• And I Must Scream:
  • One client tries to avoid going to Hell by transferring her soul into a robot body. She succeeds, but the robot malfunctions and leaves her conscious but immobile. Satan decides not to collect her soul, declaring that her current state is punishment enough.
  • Also the fate of another client who avoided Hell without finding redemption.
• Balloon Belly: Happens to the titular Big Eater woman in "The Supermodel" as the magic expires in her deal to have someone else gain weight while she gouges herself.
• Beard of Evil: While meeting the younger Morgan in flashbacks, the Devil takes the form of a goateed Colin Cunningham.
• Bitter Sweet Ending: Even when Morgan saves the client it usually comes at a price (in the Prosecutor the client dies, and in the Ice Skater it turns out that the father had ALSO made a deal with the devil but kept his mouth shut because he wanted Morgan to focus on saving his daughter).
• The Black Death: Features prominently in Morgan's past.
• Big "NO!": Morgan after Katrina's death.
• Bottle Episode: The Season 1 finale, "1348 A.D.," tells the full story of Morgan's life as a monk and love of Katrina. The scenes in the present are of Morgan pacing alone in his apartment, the other main stars are missing, there's only one non-recurring guest star, and the flashback scenes are made up of clips from previous episodes interwoven with new scenes to form a complete narrative.
• Brain Uploading: One client was a roboticist who sold her soul to the devil so she could build a robot capable of thought but incapable of emotions (she has Rape as Backstory and is determined to Never Be Hurt Again) and soulless enough to escape being Dragged Off to Hell. When her time was nearly up for her to be damned to hell, she places her mind in the robot's body, proclaiming she will now be free, immortal and perfect. But her body ends up malfunctioning, and incapable of moving at all but still fully conscious.
• Breast Expansion: In the third episode of the first season, a svelte supermodel rejoices when she finds her breasts swelling to massive size, but expresses grim dismay when the same thing happens to her ass.
• Cheating Damnation: The premise of the show is the bored Devil granting his Mouth of Sauron Morgan the opportunity to help people who sold their souls try to balance out their deals with an equivalent amount of good before dying. Some refuse to cooperate with Morgan, and some of the ones who do genuinely care about righting wrongs and not just saving themselves, but there are also a few who seek to avoid Hell through other means.
  • Alicia from "The Roboticist" builds a robot to upload her brain into. He leaves her there as an And I Must Scream Ironic Hell.
  • Nicki from "The Supermodel" tries to seduce the Devil for clemency. He laughs in her face.
  • Edwin from "The Children's Book Writer" gets Off on a Technicality (he asked the Devil for the ability to kill anyone he wanted (being a Serial Killer), and when he couldn't kill the immortal Morgan, that voided the deal, to Edwin's smug glee and Morgan's horrified fury.
  • Rita from "The Campaign Manager" offers to introduce the Devil to politicians and businessmen who will sell their souls if he gives her an extension. He makes the counteroffer of her getting a reprieve if she helps streamline all the worst parts of Satanism and create a government of hedonism and anarchy, which is too much for her.
  • The Collectors like Morgan, Sophie, and Kandyse Crown/"The Spy" and the demon from the finale were damned over their own deals or for other reasons until they agreed to serve the Devil if he let them stay on Earth and away from Hell.
  • Jan from "The Alchemist" tried to make an elixir of life that would negate the Devil's power over him. Too bad completing the formula requires having a soul.
  • Max from "The Chef" negotiates to commit Human Sacrifices every ten years for an extension on his deal but ultimately isn't evil enough to go through with it.
  • Johannes from "Beginnings" murdered an innocent the Devil wanted dead to try and save himself, but the Devil was just toying with him and still took his soul.
  • Maurice "The Watchmaker" Jeanrichard uses time travel to flee from the Devil, but while it delays the time it takes the Devil to collect his soul, it still feels like just ten years to Jeanrichard. As his time runs out after he ended one life and ruined another out of Revenge Before Reason hatred, Jeanrichard locks himself in a realm between seconds where the Devil can't reach him. The Devil doesn't mind, as Jeanrichard is still in a state of horrible agony there and may eventually crack, exit, and get sent to the pits of Hell anyway.
• Chekhov's Gun: Rita "The Campaign Manager'' shows Morgan a hunting rifle while talking about her rural roots and later uses it for an assassination plot against a political enemy,
• Chekhov's Gunman: Maya's fellow waitress Gillian and her abusive husband Hank briefly appear a full season before it turns out the Devil is manipulating Hank to be abusive as the required bad karma of a Deal with the Devil that Maya herself unknowingly made with him.
• The Chosen One:
  • Morgan was God's chosen instrument to discover the cure for Plague, centuries ahead of reality. The Devil successfully distracted him from this role.
  • One episode involves a great spirit periodically guided to an Amerindian tribe, the latest being their needed savior, whom the Devil also tries to distract from her role.
  • There are suggestions that Gabe could be the foretold key to some victory against the Devil, although the Devil would like to hint the opposite is true.
• Connections Are Not Power: Rita Carlton/"The Campaign Manager" considers herself a kingmaker using her catspaws to push political agendas that she wants and they don't, while believing she can escape her Deal with the Devil by introducing him to all the politicians and tycoons she knows with tips on how to buy their souls. Her candidate rebels against her classist agenda and the Devil tells her that he handles his own sales and the only way she can delay damnation (besides penance, which she is stubbornly resisting) is if she helps him replace Christianity and Democracy with Satanism and anarchy, a notion too appalling for even her.
• Cosmic Play Thing: Several of the people who made a Deal with the Devil has had to deal with him influencing their whole lives in a negative way For the Evulz.
  • Earnest young lumberjack Otis from "The Old Man" was tempted by into leaving behind a happy and promising relationship to whack a coworker (really the disguised Devil) over the head a run off with a bunch of money to become a lonely wastrel plagued by guilt for the next fifty years. Then, once his bad habit shad taken a toll on his health, the Devil gives him ten more years of life if he will sell his soul just so the Devil can curse his grandson with bad luck to counter Otis’s good luck and rub in that trade and how he lured Otis to damnation twice over in ten years time once the deal expires.
  • Julie from "The Tour Guide" ultimately learns that the Devil afflicted her younger brother with Hearing Voices to get him to kill their parents when she was twelve and then had him kill Julie herself decades later. Once he did so, the Devil tricked the dying Julie into selling her soul to him for a chance to stay alive for ten more years and solve her murder, knowing what an Awful Truth that will be and cursing her to die early if she leaves the vicinity of her lonely sleeping place except while giving tours of the place she died in.
• Creepy Mortician: The Devil appears as a callous and manipulative undertaker in "The Cowboy."
• Dead Person Impersonation: The Backstory of "The Historian" involves a concentration camp guard posing as a murdered inmate.
• Deal with the Devil: The premise of the show. Anyone can make a deal with the Devil, but it only lasts for 10 years, after which everything the Devil gave falls apart and your soul gets sucked into Hell.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Flashbacks are more drearily lit than the present day. See Splash of Color below.
• Demonic Dummy: The Devil took this form once. The human-looking ventriloquist was his dummy while the puppet spews the usual evil speeches even away from its ventriloquist.
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: The Devil seemingly has the power to be in thousands of places at once but makes some people who sold their souls immortal Collectors to undertake Mouth of Sauron duties and the finale reveals that other damned souls were spared to become demons ranked above the Collectors (not even Morgan, the first Collector, knew of their existence until 700 years later) doing more important tasks for the Devil. Whether he is less strong than he appears to need all that help or merely likes having henchmen to boss around, emotionally torture, and philosophize to is unclear.
• Demonic Possession: Features in "The Exorcist," wherein a demon blames it for humans' evil deeds.
• Devil, but No God: Whether or not this is true is left deliberately ambiguous, but Morgan's personal belief leans towards this. Averted with Maya; once she learns the Devil exists, she believes that God must exist to balance things out.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Played with. The viewers and Morgan know that the Devil is often assuming the forms of mundane people like the junkie squeegee wiper ("The Superhero"), a soup kitchen derelict ("The Rapper"), a pizza guy ("The Ice Skater"), a taxi driver ("The Supermodel"), a bus driver ("The Tour Guide"), a street musician ("Another Collector"), a ditzy door-to-door salesman ("The UFOlogist"), a deli guy ("The Chef"), and schoolgirls ("The Prosecutor" and "The Watchmaker") while buying souls and manipulating and observing events, but no one besides Morgan and maybe the client realize this.
• Downer Ending: Morgan doesn't always succeed in saving the client, which is the only reason The Devil lets him keep trying. Usually it's because the client was too stubborn or short-sighted to do what needed to be done to save themselves, sometimes not though which makes it all the harder to watch. Even in episodes where the client is an awful person and/or is fully to blame for their failure to find redemption, things still often end on a downer note due to their failure to find redemption meaning that some innocent other party undergoes some form of suffering that there is no easy comeback from.
• Easy Road to Hell: This is constantly emphasized for the Crapsack World vibe.
  • Anyone who makes a Deal with the Devil gets dragged off to Hell once ten years have passed (at least until the Devil starts letting Morgan try to redeem their bad karma in their last 48 hours as a kind of game). It doesn't matter if they made their deal while delirious, an innocent child, or otherwise not realizing they were talking to the actual Devil when they said they wanted something and he said he could deliver. Nor does it matter if they made their deal to do something genuinely good and beneficial to other people like healing cancer victims or exorcising demons. The Devil justifies this by using his power to make their good luck come at the cost of someone else's bad luck, but even though almost none of them knew that would happen when they made their deals, it still counts as cause for damnation in the series mythology.
  • Anyone who learns about the Devil and one of his deals gets a Killed to Uphold the Masquerade fate by being Dragged Off to Hell regardless of whether they were bound for Heaven beforehand.
  • The pilot even has the Devil (admittedly an Unreliable Expositor) suggest he has the power to damn a complete innocent just for that to count as the bad luck in one of his deals.
• Enhance Button: Treated a bit more realistically than usual in "The Photographer," where the pictures they blow up and enhance remain blurry.
• Fame Through Infamy: Kack the Ripper is very keen on going down in history for centuries as a legendary murderer and succeeds in this...only to be Dragged Off to Hell before they have a chance to have that fame attach to their true identity and not just a pseudonym.
• Felon's Failson: Warren Park sold his soul to build one of the most powerful and corrupt media empires in the country, if not the world, with passing it on to his son being one of his most cherished goals. He does not take it well when, less than a day before he is scheduled to be Dragged Off to Hell, he learns that his son wants to walk away from the company to practice smaller-scale honest journalism and also leaked a story about his corrupt practices.
• Fille Fatale: The Devil's form in "The Watchmaker" is a flirty young woman in a Catholic School Girls Rule-style uniform who gloats about how some modern college boys will sell their souls for little more than blowjobs and offers to take off her shirt for the client to give him one last glimpse of "paradise" before an eternity of damnation.
• Genius Cripple: Brendan from "The Roboticist" was a brilliant inventor before his spine was severed and his head penetrated, and he has recovered use of his mind (although not his legs) and been Obfuscating Disability for years while making complex plans to counter the efforts of an enemy.
• Get Out!:
  • "The Ice Skater" A sobbing Isabelle tells Morgan to leave after He fails to save her father.
  • In "The Old Man," as the Devil taunts Otis over his sadistic choice to take his grandson off life support or lose his soul, Otis rises from his chair to tower over the Devil and snarls for him to get out, robbing the Evil Gloating of some of its triumph.
• Ghostapo: Played with in the flashbacks in "The Historian", where the literal Devil goes incognito as a concentration camp doctor to ensure that more people die or cut deals with him throughout the Holocaust, but the human Nazis themselves have no idea of this. That said, it wasn't his influence that started the Holocaust, something that Satan apparently feels jealous of the human monsters over.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Literal example; the Devil identifies himself by letting the fires of Hell show through his pupils. Collectors also exhibit it when they are transformed.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Morgan's Healing Factor is shown A LOT. Which also shows the hellfire filling him, and is a fitting holdover from his early days as a flagellant monk.
• Gotta Catch Them All:
  • One client got the ability to get rid of guilt by transferring it to others through tattoos, turning them into sinners. His redemption required finding them all and completing their tattoos, restoring his memories of the guilt's reason as well as their original behavior.
  • Another client had to re-absorb the people made from her split personalities.
• Healing Factor: Morgan and other Collectors have Immortality this way. When they are injured or killed, Hellfire burns in their wounds to heal them. A client also exhibited it with fatal wounds; because of the Devil's obligation to clients, they are protected from death for the duration of their deal, one way or another.
• Hell Gate: Appears to collect souls, with flaming tentacles dragging them though a portal.
• Hollywood Exorcism: Features in the series finale, "The Exorcist," including the thrashing around, the fake exorcism rituals, the telekinesis, and a variation on the spinning head theme.
• Hollywood Old: Otis Hardwicke from "The Old Man" is eighty years old (although for the sake of argument, perhaps his Deal with the Devil made him stop aging at seventy), but his actor is only in his mid-fifties.
• Hope Spot:
  • Several clients, most notably "The Watchmaker", are on the verge of doing something that will greatly help another person and save their own souls, only for a selfish instinct to kick in at just the wrong moment.
  • The "UFOlogist" sees a flying saucer overheard when his time runs out, while getting encouragement from the spokesmodel standing next to him. Then the saucer turns into a Hell portal and the spokesmodel/Devil starts taunting him as flames come out of her eyes and he is dragged to his doom.
• Human Sacrifice: One client got an extension that would require one every 10 years. The Devil said he had the same arrangement with the Phoenicians.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Almost every episode is titled after the reason the client sold their soul — usually the name of their job. This is occasionally used for a bit of misdirection; for example, the title character of "The Children's Book Writer" actually sold his soul to be a serial killer.
• Improvised Weapon: In "The Exorcist," a priest knocks out a man by hitting him over the head with a crucifix.
• Incendiary Exponent: The collectors' Healing Factor. A client with X-Ray Vision said Morgan and the Devil's avatar are "full of fire".
• Internal Reformist: Morgan has been the Devil's reluctant henchman for almost seven centuries and has spent most of that time arguing on behalf of the damned souls he is forced to collect, eventually persuading the Devil to give them a chance to redeem themselves and avoid Hell. The Devil makes this deal more because It Amused Me and for further manipulations than out of genuine reform, but Morgan still exploits it as much as he can, and two other Collectors at least consider following his example.
• Intrepid Reporter: Jeri Slate, who grows suspicious of Morgan and later obsessed after noticing that he's been around for some high-profile deaths.
• Invisible to Normals: The portal to Hell can only be seen and heard by clients.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Applied to Morgan twice. Didn't work, of course. He must have built up resistance to pain from the fatal injuries he keeps getting.
• Karma Houdini: "The Children's Book Writer" strolls off unrepentant, mocking Morgan, and fully intent on more evil. The same statement describes Satan at the end of the average episode as well.
• Libation for the Dead: Otis spends his last hour drinking with Morgan, his last and best friend, trying to Face Death with Dignity, and a distraught Morgan tosses his flask after his companion as the poor guy is Dragged Off to Hell.
• Lilliputians: "The Miniaturist" revolves around mute lilliputians given to a miniature maker, which he tries to raise in a society better than the one outside.
• Literal Genie: The Devil ensures that a poorly-phrased deal will backfire. For example, Katrina dies of The Plague after Morgan's 10-year deal is up because Morgan asked for "more time with her," not that she be fully cured and live. Or in Carter Baines's case, he asked for the ability to win. Even though he made the deal to put away the guilty, the fact that he only asked for the ability to win ensured that a lot of innocent people got put away.
• Little Miss Badass: Isabelle in Episode 4. Satan tries to bully her into agreeing to an extension by subjecting her to about a minute of what life in hell will be like. She tells him to fuck off, prompting Satan to lose his cool.
• Loophole Abuse: Used in one episode to great effect. The deal in this case was the the undersigned would get to kill anyone he wished without consequences for the duration of the contract. In this case, he wanted to kill Morgan, which he can't do because Morgan will live as long as the Devil allows. Since technically he didn't hold up his end of the bargain, the Devil had to let him out of the contract. However, in this case, the man in question is truly evil to his core, so he'll most likely end up in Hell anyway when his life ends.
• Madness Mantra: The last scene of "The Roboticist" has her keep repeating "Original calculations confirmed. I will move now," while mainly trying to control her robot body.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Cilia from "The Alchemist" is the pretty young daughter and assistant of Jan, a chemist obsessed with making the elixir of life. The trope is deconstructed when she (and her mother) become terminally ill from helping Jan with toxic ingredients that he was working on without understanding the risks about.
• Meaningful Name: Maya is a concept from Hinduism meaning illusion or delusion, referring to the idea that what we experience is a self-created projection of our environment, not the environment itself. Spelled backwards, as the character Maya did when she was a child, it becomes "I am"; Gabe used it in this manner in Season 3.
• Meat Puppet: Some of The Nth Doctor forms the Devil takes are dead and buried people who he is apparently shapeshifting into, some will only be born generations later, and others are implied to have never existed at all before he created their faces from scratch, sometimes appearing and disappearing into thin air or having attacks pass right through them. Nonetheless, some (like the concentration camp doctor in "The Historian") are explicitly said to be real people who he is "borrowing" to communicate with people on Earth.
• Mercy Backfire: Morgan initially wants to kill the eponymous client in "The Children’s Book Writer" rather than redeem him after learning his Serial Killer Dark Secret. Deciding otherwise leads to that client trying to kill both Morgan and his girlfriend and surviving to continue his killing while getting in Evil Gloating about it.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: The Devil doesn't exactly take well to hearing the pain and evil thoughts of everyone in the universe.
• Mouth of Sauron: Collectors like Morgan act as heralds for the Devil, showing up to remind the people who sold their souls that the Devil is coming for them and to get ready to die. Morgan rebels against this role by trying to give clients a chance at salvation, and he only narrowly fails in getting a fellow Collector to do the same near the end of season 1.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: While mocking a Hindu guru, the Devil briefly sprouts two extra arms, one holding a magazine and one scratching himself.
• The Nth Doctor:
  • Each episode has a new guest star playing the role of the Devil, showing how he can appear in whatever form is necessary to put his victims at ease. The only recurring actor is Colin Cunningham, who plays the Devil as he appeared to Morgan in the 14th century and provides the series' opening narration, McKenzie Gray in a few scenes of the pilot and once in season 2, and Jodelle Ferland, who plays the Devil in the last scene of episode 1 and the entirety of episode 2.
  • Maya Kandinski is played by Carly Pope in Season 1, then Sonya Salomaa in Seasons 2 & 3. This is explained in-universe with the Devil giving Maya a new body and altering reality around it, and Maya's angst and confusion at her vague memories of Carly Pope's likeness become a major plot point.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!:
  • Contacting the sister of the Supermodel to learn more about the woman and how to redeem her ends up screwing with the sister’s life.
  • Morgan redeems the Children's Book Writer... except that the guy is a vicious serial killer, and because he's fled (and can drag Morgan and himself down to hell if he's caught), Morgan's essentially allowed a monster to escape justice. Notably, it's implied Satan allowed this to fuck with Morgan.
  • The Mother asks Morgan to send her to Hell early, but he convinces her to keep fighting for redemption to the very end, leading to the Death by Secret Identity of deuteragonist Jeri.
• Not Afraid of Hell: Most of the clients who sold their souls are afraid of what is coming and eager for a chance at redemption. Others aren't, at least not initially. "The Prosecutor", "The Exorcist", "The Customer Service Rep" and others are convinced that they are doing enough good as a result of their deals that they either will be spared Hell or will get a lesser degree of suffering (although they gradually lose this confidence the more they learn). "The Media Baron" shows some brief anxiety when Morgan first announces himself but is mostly fixated on protecting his business legacy and repeatedly passes over chances at redeeming himself and avoiding Hell all the way until his last second.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Some (although fortunately not all) of the clients who passionately argue about their good motives for making a Deal with the Devil are misleading Morgan or Secretly Selfish.
  • "The Roboticist" says she wants to build a thinking robot to further human knowledge and help people with medical conditions, but she just wants something to download her own mind in to free herself from human emotions and vulnerabilities.
  • "The Campaign Manager" is determined to play kingmaker to politicians who will cut welfare programs that she sees as a drain on society, but she really cares less about society than lashing out at her late mother (the kind of person those programs are helping) for committing suicide and leaving her alone.
  • "The Customer Service Rep" thinks he sold his soul to help and enlighten people according to his personal philosophy, but it turns out that is just a side perk, and he also did it to escape being arrested and included Laser-Guided Amnesia about his motives as part of the deal.
  • The Media Baron" justifies building a corrupt news empire by saying he wants to build a great business and legacy to leave behind for his son to run and find security in. However, once it becomes clear how disillusioned his son is with the way he does business, he can't quite reconcile with the idea of separating his business legacy and his son in his head and refuses to leave the company behind to be a Family Man.
• Off with His Head!: One client made a deal the moment she was beheaded. Also happened to Morgan once. He got better.
• The Omniscient: The Devil. The limits of his awareness and power are not entirely clear, but he can see into people's minds across the whole universe.
• Omniscient Morality License: The Devil implies that he has one, and that he only seeks to do good. He's chided Morgan for overestimating his own ability to judge a person's character.
• Once More, with Clarity:
  • In "The Ice Skater," when Morgan asks who the Devil made a deal with, he says to take a guess while gesturing in the direction Isabelle is skating. The ending scene (after the Devil says he never didn't tell Morgan he had a second deal with Isabelle's father) has a flashback of that scene from a different angle, showing that he was motioning at both her and her father in the stands.
  • In "The Superhero," Larry mournfully recalls how the Devil has cursed him to fail to save people, with a flashback showing that the first time he carried an unconcious woman out of a burning building, like Superman, she punched him until he let go of her as soon as she woke up. He assumes she just freaked out about finding a stranger carrying her in the middle of the sky, but Morgan later reveals that the fire her carried her away from was a suicide attempt, and a second flashback has a close-up of her face, showing she was hitting him to make him drop her to her death.
• Opening Narration: See the page quote.
• Our Vampires Are Different: One client was turned into her idea of a vampire, which she mistakenly thought was already real. Actually she is the only one of her kind (besides a friend she turned), so all of her own head canon about vampires, like no one but their makers being able to kill them, governs her lonely existence.
• Post-Modern Magik: Collectors used to have magic rings. Now they have magic cellphones.
• Public Domain Character: Jack the Ripper, who ends up being a woman who sold her soul to shapeshift into a man to kill her victims.
• Put on a Bus to Hell: Jeri, after one of Morgan's clients tries to run' she ends up telling Jeri about her deal and they both get sent to Hell, with there being no indication she will ever get out before the finale.
• Really 700 Years Old: Morgan has been around since the Dark Ages without aging.
• Recruit the Loser: Morgan, guest character Sophia, and implicitly other Collectors made a Deal with the Devil that resulted in them selling their souls for Jackass Genie deals that failed to buy their loved ones as much time as they had envisioned. Both unsuccessfully resisted or fought back when the Devil came for them. He was too powerful for them to beat but was amused/impressed enough to let them stay out of Hell if they did his bidding on earth, a situation both come to loathe over time.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Devil will typically meet Morgan in a new guise at the beginning of an episode, engage in 10-20 seconds of innocuous chit-chat, then reveal who he is by having his eyes glow red for a moment before talking about his latest victim.
• Redemption Equals Death:
  • Dion from "The Rapper", convinced that nothing he can do in the time he has left will make up the bad luck his success cursed the daughter he abandoned with, still requests Maya's AIDs be transferred to him.
  • Carter Baines dies trying to stop an innocent man he inadvertently put in prison from being shot by the cops during a hostage standoff.
  • There's also the father in "The Ice Skater;" he goes to hell, but he deliberately ensured that Morgan wouldn't know because he wanted Morgan to save his daughter, since he himself wanted to make amends for all the things he'd done.
• Redemption Rejection: Often, one of Morgan's clients will have a chance to make amends and save their soul in the final minutes before being taken to Hell, but refuse the opportunity due to their arrogance, obsession, worrying they would be doing more harm than good, or simply being confused about what exactly is necessary to achieve redemption.
• Religious Scientist: Played darkly, if not inverted, with Alicia Keller a famous robotocist who believed in Heaven and Hell but sold her soul to the Devil for the knowledge to escalate her experiments.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Cree (Crystal Lowe) from "The Tattoo Artist" is introduced in her underwear at a strip club but is only dancing there due to brainwashing and is horrified and disgusted by her memories of the experience after her mind is restored to normal. Her ex-boyfriend says she would only take off her clothes before sex once he turned the lights off.
• Replaced the Theme Tune: The third season opening credits get a new theme tune and animation style, minus the Opening Narration used for the first and part of the second seasons.
• Ret-Gone: Rebecca Friedman from "The Historian" erases herself from existence after travelling back to the final days of the second World War and killing her father, who she discovered was a Nazi war criminal. Whether the Devil was still able to take her soul after she created a new timeline where she was never born is left unanswered.
• Revenge Before Reason: "The Watchmaker". The Time Traveller could have avoided his fate to Hell (or a nearly-as bad fate) if he had saved the descendant of the man that murdered his lover. He didn't.
• Rules Lawyer: The Devil uses the letter of the rules to screw the people who make deals, and to screw Morgan. Overlaps with Literal Genie.
• Satan
• Satan Is Good: Or so he claims. He insists the people whose souls he buys are far from innocent even when they seem to have good intentions and that his principles make more sense than he gets credit for. Morgan isn't buying it, feeling that Satan is everything the Bible says and keeps sinking lower and lower in depravity (with "The Ice Skater" and "The Historian" being two milestones in how appalled Morgan gets with his boss even by normal standards).
• Slave Liberation: A very dark combination of versions II and III is used in flashback scenes in "The Alchemist," where the Devil is taking the form of a sea captain and gloats that he has bought a slave ship simply to bring him into contact with slaves desperate for freedom. He boasts he will probably get every one of them to sell their souls for that freedom by the time the ship reaches America.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: The Devil is the one who sets his deals with both clients and collectors and takes pleasure in being able to change the rules on a whim at several key moments, like getting people to sell his souls without mentioning how the deal's just for ten years and using nonverbal gestures to keep Morgan from realizing that he needs to save two people instead of one in "The Ice Skater" until it's too late. Worst of all is in "The Other Collector". He agrees to let the eponymous other collector spare clients like Morgan but, upon seeing that she's really starting to consider it, he says that he doesn't have to offer her the same terms as Morgan and she can't spare a client without damning herself instead.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In "The Media Baron," past client Sanderson acts as a sidekick for much of the episode but decides he should keep his distance from Morgan after learning what happened to Jerri.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: "The Actuary" begins with a prediction that an actuary will kill a dangerous mobster. The mobster chasing him down to stop the prediction sets the events in motion that make the prediction come true.
• Self-Inflicted Hell: This is the fate of the woman who tries to attain immortality by uploading herself into a robot body. When her new body malfunctions and leaves her conscious but unable to move, the devil promises to pay the electricity bills for the next millennium and congratulates her for being his first client to literally devise their own personal hell.
• Self-Mutilation Demonstration: One client doesn't remember or believe that she made a deal, so Morgan cuts himself to prove it.
• Self-Serving Apology: Morgan's goal is to help those who made a Deal with the Devil recognize they have done wrong and make amends with the people they have harmed, but some (like Nicki from "The Supermodel") only parrot empty platitudes and end up Dragged Off to Hell for remaining selfish and insincere (although, sadly, some of the genuinely repentant still suffer the same fate).
• Serial-Killer Killer: Ax-Crazy Edwin Yancy asked the Devil for the power to kill anyone he wants and get away with it, but he also asked for guidance to kill deserving murderers. That said, not all of his targets are bad people and he isn't the least bit sorry about that.
• Snake Oil Salesman: A variant occurs with at least some of the people who sell their souls to the Devil for magical healing powers. The Devil grants their wishes, and they think they really are helping people with no side effects, but it all comes with a catch that they know nothing about until the last few hours of their deals.
  • "The Pharmacist" is given a powder that can cure cancer. What she doesn't know is that anyone who uses it merely transforms their cancer into a contagious organism that passes on to the next person they touch (usually a loved one).
  • Dr. Escobar from "The Other Collector" is an actual surgeon but, lacking faith in his skills to perform the most complicated operations, he asks for psychic healing powers. The people he heals do get better, but only temporarily, with their sickness coming back stronger than ever as soon as the magic behind Escobar's deal collapses.
• Splash of Color: Katrina's red hair in Deliberately Monochrome flashbacks of Morgan's life in the 14th century.
• Stripped to the Bone: Morgan's hand when dipped into some chemicals during interrogation.
• Suddenly Shouting: When Morgan says "The Prosecutor" sold his soul so good could triumph over evil, the normally deadpan or smug Devil (who is taking the form of a saccharine little girl at the time) has a rare slip-up, screaming "AND WHO IS HE TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE?!"
• Super-Empowering: Done by the Devil to collectors and some clients.
• A Taste of the Lash: Morgan was a flagellant monk.
• Temporary Bulk Change: One of the victims made a deal as a teen to transfer her excess fat to her sweet sister, allowing her to become a model. When it's time for her to pay up, she piles it back on in a matter of hours.
• Tempting Apple: The Devil peddles weird black apples "plucked from the tree of knowledge you'd rather not have". They make people realize unpleasant things about themselves, sometimes by restoring forgotten memories.
• Time Stands Still:
  • Used by the Devil sometimes to talk in privacy. Or to offer a deal to someone who is seconds away from death.
  • One client asked for the power to make time stop around him. The result was somewhat closer to actual time stoppage than the usual frozen world, and he did not like it.
• Undeath Always Ends: Zigzagged. The Devil and his immortal but perhaps not entirely human collectors remain alive (save an unseen Collector who sent himself to Hell in season 3) but the vampires who the Devil artificially brings to life as the terms of a deal in "The Vampire" are a different story. The original is cured and the one person she ever turned, who is absolutely miserable as a vampire, hands her maker a stake and requests a Mercy Kill.
• Unseen True Form: The Devil uses dozens of different meat suits or illusions for The Nth Doctor casting but his true angelic or demonic form never is shown.
• The Voiceless: Gabe is physically capable of speech, but never speaks to anyone until Season 3. The first word he says in the show, "goodbye" right before his mother dies, comes as quite a shock.
• Waif Prophet: Gabe, a non-verbal autistic child, is one of the few people who can see through the Devil's disguises.
• War Criminal in Victim's Clothing: Rebecca from "The Historian" is the child of an accused concentration camp officer she insists is a former inmate and she sold her soul to go back in time and prove this trope isn't at play. She does indeed encounter a victimized prisoner with her father's name only to see him murdered by a guard who then steals his identity to flee prosecution, driving Rebecca to kill him and seemingly erase herself from existence.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Four episodes follow Morgan's earlier collecting career before he made a deal to save souls. "1348 A.D."; "The Ripper"; "Beginnings"; "The Alchemist."
• Wham Line: From "The Old Man":
  Maya: He's like a father!
  Maya's father: Please. He wants to have sex with you!
  Maya: Isn't that what ALL fathers want?
• The Wild West: The client of the Season 2 premiere lived out the deal in his idealized version of this trope. Morgan was actually there and tells him a little about how bad it really was.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • Ahneel from "The Yogi" is convinced his is in a spiritual Hindu story and takes a long time to understand he is in a Christian Religious Horror tale and that the Devil buying his soul was literal and not symbolic.
  • "The Cowboy" has unrealistic views of Wild West tropes from the kind of Western entertainment he enjoys.
  • Bruce Harriman from "The UFOlogist" is convinced that he lives in an alien invasion thriller and that God, Morgan, and the Devil are just extraterrestrials posing as divine or demonic figures.
  • Ashley from "The Vampire" thought she lived in the Masquerade and was selling her soul to join the reclusive, tormented vampires, when really there were no vampires until she became one.